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The UNEXPECTED Way Married Men Stop Porn Relapses (and it's shockingly simple) · Sex & Porn Addiction Recovery with Russell Beebe

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a married man who wants to be free from sex and porn addiction, you need to stop trying to quit porn.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I know that sounds ridiculous, especially if porn has been damaging your marriage, taking over your time, or causing you to live a double life.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason so many men keep relapsing is that they spend all of their energy trying not to watch porn without changing the thing that actually keeps them going back to it.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: The goal of recovery is not to spend the rest of your life fighting urges.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is to become free from them.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Russell Beebe.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a licensed mental health counselor, a certified sex addiction therapist, and a recovery coach.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've been sexually sober for 17 years.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in this video I want to show you why relapse starts long before you open the website and what has to change if you want to stop going back.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most men don't sit down and make rational decisions that pornography is going to improve their life.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're doing it because in the moment it works.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're stressed out from work, maybe you had an argument with your wife, maybe you feel lonely, rejected, anxious, resentful, bored, or just uncomfortable in your own skin.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then you start looking at pornography.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: You click a few times, you start scrolling, and before you know it, you get pulled into what can feel like a trance-like state.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Time disappears, the pressure from work goes away, the tension in your marriage goes away.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: For a little while, you get out of yourself.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is what makes this behavior so powerful.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you relief.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: However, it creates a whole bunch of other problems afterwards.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: You come out of it feeling ashamed, you delete things, you worry about being discovered, you promise yourself that this was the last time, but your mind still remembers that relief.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the next time you feel stressed, lonely, rejected, or restless, your mind brings you back to the thing that's worked before.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is why this is often not just about being horny.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of men act out when they're not particularly aroused at all.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: They actually are looking for a way to change how they feel.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Pornography just happens to be the fastest way they have learned to do that.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Early in my own recovery, somebody said something to me that completely changed how I understood my addiction.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Russell, you don't have an acting out problem, you have a life problem, you have a sober problem.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: That hit me hard because I always believed that acting out was the entire problem.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that if I could just stop, everything else would be okay.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth was that acting out was doing something for me.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: It helped me escape the way that I felt when I was sober.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: In recovery, I use the term RID, R-I-D, restless, irritable, and discontent.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: RID is the underlying reaction to life.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: You feel on edge, you're short with people, you're sitting with your family, but you're not really present.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You finish the one problem at work and immediately start worrying about the next one.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you finally get an evening with nothing to do, but instead of enjoying it, you feel uncomfortable.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: You need stimulation, you need something to take the edge off.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of men have lived this way for so long that they do not even notice it anymore.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: They just think this is my personality.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm stressed, I get bored, I have a short temper, I have a lot going on.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: But underneath that is a low-level discomfort.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Pornography becomes an effective way to shut that discomfort off for a while.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the sober problem.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you remove pornography but do nothing about the way you feel or experience life, your mind is going to keep suggesting the same escape, the pornography.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Most men think a relapse starts when they open the website.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: It usually starts much earlier.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've not been sleeping well, work has been building for several days, you're angry with your wife, but you haven't talked to her about it, you've stopped exercising or checking in with anybody.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your isolation is more.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're spending more time alone with your phone, your recovery routine has slowed or disappeared, then the thought comes in.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not even go watch porn just yet.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's just scroll for a few minutes, see what's on Instagram, look around for a second.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You tell yourself no, but the thought comes back, then it comes back again.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: By the time the urge feels overwhelming, the train may be gaining speed for many days.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now you start standing in front of it hoping that willpower will stop it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually you give in.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: But you get pulled back into the acting out ritual and lose track of time, then you come out of it ashamed, remorseful, promising yourself you'll never do it again.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: For a while you feel motivated, maybe you're good for a few days or even a few weeks.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then that restless, irritable, and discontent feeling begins again.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: The obsession returns and the cycle starts over.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Men can go around that loop for many years.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know I did.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Real recovery means learning to recognize the cycle while the train is still moving slowly.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: You notice the isolation, the resentment, the scrolling, and the routines starting to disappear.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then you reach out, tell the truth, or change what you're doing because the obsession has taken over.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been trying to stop for months or years and you recognize yourself in this cycle, there's a link below where you can schedule a confidential call with our team.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: We'll help you look at what may be missing from your previous attempts and what a real recovery plan could look like for you.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to be really clear about something.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sexual sobriety is the first part of recovery.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking at pornography, messaging people, using OnlyFans, soliciting prostitutes, or engaging in any other behavior that is destroying your marriage and your life, those behaviors have to stop.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: You need clear boundaries around what sexual sobriety means for you.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot continue to hurt your wife and say that you're working on underlying issues.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's not recovery.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: The behavior has to stop.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: But stopping the behavior is not the entire process.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can be technically sober and still be miserable.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can stop watching pornography and remain angry, isolated, defensive, dishonest, and obsessed with acting out.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can spend every day fighting urges and telling yourself that this is what recovery is supposed to be like.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: That may be abstinence, but it's not freedom.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom does not mean you never have another sexual thought.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're still going to have sexual desire.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: You may notice attractive people, you may occasionally experience an urge.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are normal.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom means the mental obsession is no longer running your life.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're not waking up every morning fighting with yourself, you're not spending every day, every evening trying to stop doing the one thing you promised yourself you would stop doing.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is what began to change for me.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: The obsession lost its power.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Staying sexually sober became easier.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not because pornography disappeared from the world, and not because I became more disciplined than everybody else, became easier because I no longer needed it in the same way.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the difference between abstinence and freedom.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Once those boundaries are clear, you need structure.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: What are you doing every day to support your recovery?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: You need to know exactly which behaviors have to stop, which grayers are usually pulling you back, and which situations make you most vulnerable.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do better is not a recovery plan.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: You need clarity.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: You need structure.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: What are you going to do every day to support your recovery?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Who are you going to check in with?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: What are you going to do when an urge appears?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: What happens during the times of day when you're most vulnerable?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery can't be something you only think about after a relapse.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It has to become part of the way you live.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: You also need support.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Most men try to recover alone, especially successful men.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're used to solving problems and being the person other people come to for help.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So they think I should be able to handle this on my own.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: But isolation is one of the things that keeps addiction alive.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: You need people who know the truth.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: You need people who you can reach out to before the obsession takes over, not just people you confess to afterwards.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, you also have to examine what you've been doing to try to escape from this.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is it stress, loneliness, shame, resentment, rejection, fear, a feeling that you're never enough?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Understanding that does not excuse the behavior.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: The behavior is still your responsibility.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if you do not understand what pornography has been doing for you, you'll not know what needs to change in your life.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Most men ask, how do I stop watching porn?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's an important question.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: But there's another question you need to ask.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening inside me before I feel I need to escape?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: What am I feeling?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: What am I avoiding?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: What am I been building in my life?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Why does getting out of myself feel so necessary right now?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's where deeper recovery begins, because once you start changing that part of your life, pornography begins to lose some of its power.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: The obsession gets quieter, you become more present with your family, you stop spending so much energy hiding, recovering, apologizing, promising, and starting over.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You begin to become the husband, father, leader, and man you actually want to be.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is the goal, not just removing the behavior, becoming free from it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you're tired of making the same promises and ending up back in the same place, there's a link below where you can schedule a confidential call with our team.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: We'll help you understand what may be driving the cycle, why things you've tried have not worked in the past, and what kind of recovery structure could help you create lasting change.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if your wife has discovered your addiction and you're wondering whether she'll ever trust you again, watch the next video appearing on your screen.