After struggling for more than a decade, I finally overcame my porn addiction..

I felt stupid and embarrassed trying to stop watching porn for a long time… nothing I tried worked.

In every other area of my life, I was successful. Straight-A student. Captain of the track & cross-country team. Oldest of 5 kids. Leader in my church community.

I don’t drink or smoke, and I’ve never so much as even touched illegal drugs. I don’t gamble—as a member of the Latter Day Saints, I don’t even drink coffee.

By every external measure, I was living a clean life and crushing it—but I had a secret addiction of the worst type.

See, when you’re addicted to porn, no one ever has to know. It’s not like they can smell the porn on your breath after an all-night bender. You never have to explain to people that you spent the night in jail because you got behind the wheel after watching one too many videos.

You do it alone, no one knows, and everyone thinks you're all good because. That was me, but eventually I got tired of the shame and guilt I felt, and I had to figure out a way to stop watching pornography.

Of all the things I’ve accomplished, quitting porn was the hardest thing I’ve ever done—by far. 

It was a difficult road, but I’ve come a long way, so I know how hard it can be for guys to quit porn. Especially younger guys who are on their phones and immersed in a hyper-sexualized digital landscape where everything is sexualized.

In this article, I’m going to share everything I’ve learned after working with therapists, attending hundreds of recovery groups, and using my background in tech to create an app to help others. 

Combining Personal Experience With Clinical Expertise

This piece contains all the wisdom I’ve gained from struggling in the trenches. I’ve combined:

• Practical techniques and habits developed from my personal experience

• Clinical methodologies from Joseph Alto, a Licensed Professional Counselor on staff here at Relay, to help us design research-backed strategies to help guys quit porn

Joseph Alto has collaborated with me in writing this guide to corroborate and further explain why many of the strategies work.

Alto’s experience as a therapist who has worked with hundreds of men quitting porn has given him extraordinary insight into a variety of powerful approaches that have a high degree of success. 

Together, we hope this piece offers some ideas to help you leave porn in the past and become a healthier, happier version of yourself in 2026. 

10 Ideas for Overcoming Your Porn Habit This Year

1. Write down all the ways porn is negatively impacting you 

You’re reading this article because you already know that porn is no good for you, and you want to quit. But something I’ve learned from all of my failed attempts to quit is that commitment and motivation have two parts:

You need something you’re trying to attain, and something you’re trying to avoid. 

It’s not enough to want something. You have to know clearly what you don’t want, as well.  

This matters more than most people realize. Research on behavior change shows that people are more consistent when they are clear not only about what they want, but also about what continuing the habit will cost them. 

Wanting confidence, focus, or better relationships gives you direction.
Clearly seeing what porn is taking from you gives you urgency.

Without that second part, motivation stays soft and fleeting. You “want” to quit, but not enough to endure discomfort, boredom, or withdrawal. The habit keeps winning because the downside remains vague and distant.

That’s why the first step isn’t willpower or discipline—it’s clarity.

Before you think about streaks, blockers, or accountability systems, you need to do something simpler and uncomfortable: write down exactly how porn has been negatively impacting your life. 

Not in general terms. Not what you’ve heard online. But what you personally have noticed, experienced, avoided, or lost.

This isn’t about beating yourself up. It’s about making the trade-off visible. Porn works best when its costs remain blurry, its rewards feel immediate, and the value of consumption appears to exceed its cost.

Writing down the negative impacts of pornography—specifically in your life—brings the somber reality into focus, implodes the distance between the habit and its consequences, and forces a brutal confrontation with the consequences you’ve tried to ignore.

Here’s an example of some of the things I noticed when I finally got real with myself and took inventory of what my secret porn habit was doing to me, and that I wanted to escape. 

My list of what porn was costing me

• Isolation. I was detached from real connection with real humans—platonically, sexually, or otherwise. I was using pixelated women on a screen in place of connection, and it made me lonely.

  
  

• Shame. My accomplishments didn’t matter. I still felt horrible about myself because I had this dirty habit that went against the values and morals I was brought up with.

  
  

• Compulsive watching. First, it was a one clip every once in a while. Then it was one every day in a never-ending escalator of insatiable desire, only leading to more ache and emptiness.

  
  

• Impotence. This is the one that’s the hardest for me to talk about. It’s not so much that things didn’t work. It’s that things only worked if I was watching porn or thinking about porn. Of course, this only hurt my self-esteem, more and made me feel like a loser. Now we know that Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED) is a real issue, but back then, it was just another symptom guys were suffering in silence with.

  
  

• Continued guilt for contributing to sex crimes. Even after I found that there are a lot of women who are forced or trafficked into doing porn—and it’s almost impossible to tell who is doing it consensually—I couldn’t stop watching. And this made me look at all women as objects, which only intensified my isolation. 

  
  

• I felt misaligned with my faith. I was raised as a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints and have always taken my faith seriously. I could not ignore the disconnect between what my values were and what I was doing in secret. 

  
  

• Low energy and less time. I don’t know how many late nights I wasted watching porn, which translated into groggy mornings and lethargy throughout the day.  

I realized that although all of this porn was free, it costs my time, energy, attention, and my soul. 

The porn industry wants to keep you stuck, vegging behind the screen in your basement for life. This is not the path to achievement or fulfillment, and you already know that. It stifles your creativity, extinguishes your motivation, and blinds your vision for life. 

Once you’ve identified what you’ll lose, ask yourself:

• What do I lose if porn remains part of my life?

• How does this affect my focus, discipline, confidence, or ambition?

• What happens to my relationships, intimacy, or ability to connect?

• What opportunities do I miss because of time, energy, or motivation lost?

• What kind of person will I become if I keep watching porn?

Be specific. Avoid vague answers like “things are worse.” Name the costs in real terms—time wasted, relationships strained, goals delayed, self-respect eroded.

Commentary from Joseph Alto, LPC

“Studies in motivational interviewing and self-regulation show that people are far more likely to sustain change when they are not only oriented toward a desired future, but also vividly aware of the future they are trying to avoid. In clinical practice, clarity precedes discipline. When men stop arguing in the abstract about whether porn is “bad” and instead confront what it has already taken from them—connection, confidence, sexual function, faith alignment, time, and self-respect—the habit loses its psychological leverage.”

2. List All the Benefits You Want to Gain From Quitting Porn

Most guides on quitting porn start here. I’ve deliberately placed this step second.

That’s because people don’t usually pursue change just because they want something better. They change because something hurts now, or because they’re trying to avoid a future that looks painful. We’re wired to move away from pain more urgently than we move toward pleasure. That’s why the first step—getting clear on what porn is costing you—matters so much.

But avoiding pain isn’t the whole story. We’re also motivated by what we want to gain.

So now it’s time to ask the other half of the question:

What do you want your life to look like without porn?

What do you believe will improve if porn is no longer part of your routine? More focus? More energy? A clearer conscience? Better self-control? Emotional presence? Confidence? Peace of mind?

Write it all down.

Your reasons don’t have to sound impressive. They don’t have to be noble or socially approved. They just have to be yours—and easy to access when motivation dips. If something motivates you quickly and honestly, it belongs on the list.

There’s only one important constraint to keep in mind.

Whatever you want to gain from quitting porn will not come from the outside world.

You won’t automatically have better relationships. You won’t suddenly meet the perfect partner. No one is going to congratulate you for being porn-free. Most people don’t even know you’re using porn now, so they won’t know you’ve stopped. There’s no applause, no external scoreboard, no social pressure keeping you in the game.

That means your motivation has to be internal.

And internal motivations are powerful—but fragile. They’re easier to talk yourself out of when things get hard. When you’re stressed, lonely, bored, or tempted, it’s easy to rationalize that the benefit you’re chasing “isn’t worth it” in that moment.

Compare that to something like school or work. If you skip class or quit a job, there are visible consequences. Money is lost. Progress stalls. Other people notice. There’s external pressure keeping you aligned. Porn recovery doesn’t come with those guardrails.

That’s why clarity matters here.

The benefits you list should be felt, not imagined outcomes dependent on other people or future circumstances. Think in terms of how you want to feel in your own body and mind. More grounded. Less anxious. More self-respect. More control over your attention. More alignment with your values.

Those are the benefits that survive temptation.

So write them down. Revisit them often.

And make sure what you’re working toward is something no one can take away—and no one else needs to validate.

3. Replace Porn With Healthy Habits and Purpose

Quitting porn—or any destructive habit—isn’t just about stopping the action and perpetually relying on willpower to stay committed. You need to replace it with a constructive habit to fill the void.

Porn fills time, regulates mood, numbs stress, and gives your brain a cheap hit of reward. When you remove it, you create space—and that space will always be filled by something, either intentionally or by default. If you don’t make a conscious choice to fill it with a goal or plan, then 

This is where most people fail. They focus entirely on stopping the behavior, but not on building a life that makes relapse less attractive.

So the goal here isn’t just abstinence. It’s redirection.

Fill your time with things that move your life forward. Create realistic goals and pursue them vigorously. Identify areas of your life that have been neglected, underdeveloped, or avoided, and start rebuilding. 

But it’s important that you avoid overcorrection, a common mistake that people make when trying to stop a bad habit.

Oftentimes, people are desperate to fix everything wrong all at once, so they swing to extremes. They design plans that look impressive on paper but collapse under the pressure of real life. 

If you haven’t stepped foot in a gym since high school, deciding that you’ll wake up at 5 a.m. every day and train like a professional athlete isn’t discipline—it’s fantasy. Not only will you not get in better shape, but you’ll likely injure yourself and end up worse than you’d be if you’d done nothing at all. 

When that fantasy plan collapses—and it always does—you don’t just miss a workout or break a streak. You reinforce a far more dangerous belief: I can’t follow through on anything. 

That belief quietly feeds porn addiction. Once you see yourself as unreliable, escape becomes easier, discipline feels pointless, and relapse starts to feel inevitable.

That’s why recovery doesn’t start with intensity. It starts with consistency—small, boring, repeatable wins.

This is why “one day at a time” exists in every addiction recovery space. Not because it sounds comforting, but because the brain recovering from compulsive behavior cannot handle grand promises. Porn addiction is broken one kept promise at a time—not one heroic burst of motivation.

Think in micro-steps. Goals so small they feel almost embarrassing to write down.

• A 10-minute walk instead of a full workout

• One short journal entry instead of a life overhaul. 

• Two pages of reading. 

• Five minutes of prayer, meditation, or silent reflection when urges spike.

These actions aren’t meant to fix you overnight. They exist for one purpose: to restore trust in yourself.

A simple way to structure this is to set one small goal in three key areas of your life:

Physical health
Porn addiction thrives in low-energy, overstimulated bodies. Do something that increases baseline energy and reduces restlessness—walking, stretching, light lifting, or simply fixing your sleep schedule.

Psychological health
Compulsive porn use is often an avoidance strategy. Choose something that strengthens focus and emotional regulation: journaling, reading, therapy exercises, mindfulness, or learning a skill that requires sustained attention.

Spiritual health
Addiction narrows life down to impulse. Spiritual practices widen it again. This might mean prayer, scripture, philosophy, gratitude, or quiet reflection on who you’re becoming and who you want to be. It’s about reconnecting to meaning beyond momentary pleasure..

Porn thrives in unstructured time, depleted energy, and lives without direction.

Purpose doesn’t just compete with addiction—it starves it. When your days are filled with effort, responsibility, and meaning—even imperfectly—porn starts to feel out of place in your life.

Commentary from Joseph Alto, LPC

“What this section gets exactly right—and what I see confirmed every day in clinical practice—is that recovery fails when men treat porn like an isolated behavior instead of a functional substitute. Porn isn’t just something you “do.” It’s something you use. It regulates mood, reduces anxiety, fills boredom, and provides a predictable reward when life feels overwhelming or empty. When you remove it without replacing its function, the brain doesn’t experience freedom—it experiences deprivation. And deprivation always looks for relief.

The warning against overcorrection is especially important. I’ve watched countless men sabotage their recovery by mistaking intensity for discipline. Extreme plans feel morally satisfying, but they collapse under stress, fatigue, or real life. When they do, the damage isn’t just behavioral—it’s psychological. Each failed grand promise reinforces the belief “I can’t trust myself,” and that belief is gasoline for addiction. Porn thrives in people who feel ineffective, defeated, or unreliable.

Recovery works in the opposite direction. It rebuilds self-trust first. That’s why consistency matters more than ambition, and why micro-steps are not a concession—they’re a strategy. Small, repeatable actions retrain the brain to associate effort with success instead of failure. This is how compulsive behavior loosens its grip: not through heroic willpower, but through hundreds of kept promises that are almost too small to notice.

The emphasis on physical, psychological, and spiritual domains reflects something clinicians have known for decades: porn addiction is rarely just sexual. It’s systemic. Low energy, emotional avoidance, and loss of meaning create the perfect environment for compulsive behavior. When you begin restoring energy, attention, and purpose—even imperfectly—porn no longer feels like relief. It starts to feel out of place.”

4. Find real accountability partners

Accountability is not just screen accountability.

While filters, blockers, and monitoring software can be helpful tools—and for many men, they are a necessary starting point—they are not enough on their own.

Software can track websites. It cannot track intent, fantasy, rationalization, or the quiet internal negotiations that happen long before someone ever opens a tab.

Relying exclusively on screen accountability creates a false sense of security. The blocker keeps you from accessing obviously explicit material. You can’t cross the line, but you can still get close enough to see what’s on the other side.

Porn blocks don’t limit suggestive or outright pornographic social media content. They don’t stop you from accessing borderline images or lingering in places that aren’t explicitly pornographic but still trigger arousal and fantasy. Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter/X are full of this type of content, and those are just the places where it can stumble across your feed and lead you into temptation.

And those are just the places that are notorious for suggestive or explicit material surfacing, but they’re places where you can preemptively change your settings and retrain what’s shown to you. But what about suggestive materials that you might stumble upon elsewhere?

For example, you might read an article on ESPN about women’s volleyball. There’s nothing explicit about it. But the outfits the women wear are so suggestive that they are provocative enough to light up the same neural pathways porn once did.

The software doesn’t flag it. No alert is sent. You didn’t even see any porn.

Technically speaking, you’re still “clean”—but your mind may still wander down the old dirt road. 

This is where relational accountability matters.

Everyone working to overcome a porn addiction needs at least one real person they can talk to honestly—about wins and failures, about urges and close calls, about the thoughts and stressors that make temptation stronger. Recovery is not just about what you did or didn’t click. It’s about what you wrestled with.

Alcoholics Anonymous has the concept of a sponsor for a reason. Human connection has repeatedly proven to be a powerful prophylactic against addiction. The concept of confession in Catholicism may have spiritual roots, but it serves a similar psychological function.

We keep our stresses to ourselves until we collapse underneath their weight, and in the context of porn addiction, that means a morale-busting relapse. But motivation boosting isn’t the only reason why getting an accountability partner is a crucial step in your fight to break your porn addiction.

A real accountability partner gives you someone to talk and help navigate through those “gray areas”—the moments that aren’t full-blown relapses or exposure, but still tempt you. An accountability partner can call out when you’re rationalizing nonsense and excuses to yourself. 

They help keep the damage from happening, not just in picking yourself up after it’s done. They help you stay aligned with your values, not just compliant with rules.

Remember, porn addiction thrives in secrecy, isolation, and plausible deniability. Software can reduce access, but an accountability partner can reduce self-deception.

The goal of accountability isn’t surveillance. It’s transparency. It’s having someone you can say, “This didn’t cross a rule, but it crossed a line for me,” and know you’ll be met with honesty instead of judgment.

Commentary from Joseph Alto, LPC

“Filters and blockers can slow behavior, but they do nothing to interrupt the internal process that leads to relapse: fantasy, justification, stress accumulation, and self-deception. Addiction rarely begins with a click. It begins with a conversation you have with yourself when no one else is listening.

Screen accountability creates boundaries, but boundaries without relationship are porous. The brain is remarkably good at finding loopholes when desire is involved. As you note, suggestive material that isn’t technically porn can still activate the same neural circuits. When that happens in isolation, the person often tells himself, “This doesn’t count,” even as the craving quietly intensifies. From a clinical perspective, this is not abstinence—it’s rehearsal.

Relational accountability works because it interrupts secrecy, and secrecy is the fuel of porn addiction. The presence of a trusted human being destroys plausible deniability. A trusted accountability gives you someone you can talk to about urges, impulses, and temptation—and once something is spoken out loud, it loses much of its power. This is why sponsorship models in recovery and confessional practices across cultures have endured for so long: they externalize the struggle before it metastasizes into behavior.

What I appreciate most here is the emphasis on gray areas. Recovery doesn’t fail because of obvious lapses; it fails in the moments people convince themselves they’re still “clean” while drifting further from their values. A real accountability partner doesn’t just respond after a relapse—they help you course-correct before the damage is done. They don’t enforce rules; they help you maintain integrity.”

5. Learn How to Regulate Your Emotions

If you strip porn addiction down to its core, most people don’t actually have a porn problem—they have a pain regulation problem.

Porn is rarely about sex. It’s about relief.

For many men, porn is a fast, reliable way to self-soothe when life feels overwhelming, dull, or out of control. If you’re stressed about money, it’s easier to escape into porn than to sit down and create a budget. If you’re anxious about your future, lonely, bored, or afraid you’re falling behind in life, porn offers a temporary anesthetic. It quiets the nervous system just long enough to avoid dealing with what’s underneath.

Fear. Boredom. Anxiety. Frustration. Shame. Restlessness.
These emotional states often show up before the urge, not after.

When you’re disconnected from your emotions, all you feel is the urge to watch porn. It comes out of nowhere, feels overwhelming, and seems irrational.

But when you learn to slow down and tune in, patterns start to emerge. You begin to notice that urges are signals, not commands. They’re telling you something needs attention.

The more emotionally aware you become, the easier it is to interrupt the space between emotional triggers and watching porn.

More revealing than asking  “How do I stop watching porn?” is to start asking, “What am I trying not to feel right now?”

That’s a subtle shift, but it’s powerful.

Here are a few practical ways to begin developing emotional awareness:

Keep a journal
This doesn’t need to be poetic or insightful. Simply write down what you’re feeling—especially when urges show up. “Anxious.” “Bored.” “Tense.” “Lonely.” Over time, you’ll start to see patterns between certain emotions and your porn use. Awareness precedes choice.

Slow down
When you’re constantly stimulated, rushed, or mentally scattered, it’s almost impossible to identify how you’re really feeling. Porn addiction might be fueled by secrecy, but its urges to watch are driven by chaos.

Taking intentional pauses—deep breathing, a short walk, sitting quietly for a few minutes—creates enough space to check in with yourself instead of reacting automatically.

Set a reminder
Emotional awareness doesn’t happen by accident, especially in a culture that rewards constant distraction. Schedule a daily check-in. It doesn’t need to be long; 5 minutes is more than enough.

Ask yourself: What am I feeling right now? What’s been sitting under the surface today? Being proactive beats trying to regain control mid-urge because it’s a lot easier to put a fire out before it even starts.

There’s no single method that works for everyone. Some people prefer journaling. Other guys will get more from prayer, meditation, therapy, movement, or simply honest conversations. The key is consistency. Emotional regulation is a skill, not a personality trait.

Commentary from Joseph Alto, LPC

“In practice, I rarely see men who are compulsively watching porn because of a high libido or sexual curiosity alone. What I see, over and over, are men who lack reliable emotional regulation skills. Porn is just a way to achieve fast relief. It’s predictable, private, and neurologically effective at dampening distress, which makes it incredibly appealing when someone feels aimless, stressed, or ashamed.

What’s especially important here is the reframing of urges. When men experience urges as random, overpowering forces, they feel helpless against them. But urges don’t come from nowhere. They are downstream signals of emotional states that haven’t been recognized or addressed. Anxiety about money, fear of falling behind, loneliness, boredom, frustration—these states precede the urge far more often than people realize. Porn doesn’t cause the pain; it temporarily masks it.

Teaching men to ask “What am I trying not to feel right now?” is one of the most effective shifts I use in therapy. It moves the focus from suppression to understanding. Once someone learns to identify emotions early—before the urge crescendos—the compulsive loop weakens. Awareness creates a pause, and that pause creates choice. This is where real recovery begins.”

6. Consider Enlisting the Help of a Therapist

For many men, professional help provides something self-guided efforts can’t: external structure, emotional clarity, and objective feedback.

Porn addiction isn’t just a behavior problem—it’s often rooted in stress regulation, attachment patterns, shame, trauma, or long-standing avoidance habits. Therapy helps address both the behavior and what keeps driving it.

This isn’t about weakness or outsourcing responsibility. It’s about dooing whatever takes to achieve your goal of being porn free in 2026.

Evidence-Based Therapy for Compulsive Porn Use

Therapists trained in behavioral health use evidence-based approaches designed specifically for compulsive behaviors.

One of the most common is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT helps you identify distorted thought patterns, challenge irrational beliefs, and develop alternative responses to cravings. Instead of acting automatically, you learn to interrupt the cycle between trigger, urge, and behavior.

Other approaches focus less on control and more on resilience:

• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) teaches you how to tolerate urges without obeying them, while reconnecting your actions to your values.
  
  

• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) builds emotional regulation skills—especially useful if porn is your primary coping mechanism for stress, anxiety, or overwhelm.

These methods will help you learn to sit with discomfort without going straight to pornography..

Support Groups and Community-Based Recovery

One thing that has showed up repeatedly in studies is that recovery is harder in isolation. 

Peer-based programs like Sex Addicts Anonymous or SMART Recovery give men a place to talk openly about urges, relapses, progress, and setbacks—without judgment or shock. Hearing others articulate thoughts you’ve kept hidden reduces shame and normalizes the struggle.

Community also automatically introduces accountability. Porn recovery becomes something you participate in regularly, not something you attempt alone when motivation happens to be high, and this active, structured participation increases the likelihood of your success.

Men tend to stay engaged longer when they feel seen and understood, and community provides that. It also provides camaraderie and friendship and helps you see that you are not alone.

Now remember—community doesn’t replace personal responsibility. It merely reinforces and enhances it.

Being alone is the worst company an addict can be in. 

Mindfulness and Cognitive Skills

Many therapists integrate mindfulness-based techniques into treatment for porn addiction. Mindfulness trains you to pause instead of reacting. 

Urges lose much of their power when they’re noticed, named, and allowed to pass without resistance or indulgence. This isn’t suppression. It’s changing your relationship to the urge. Instead of “I must act on this,” the response becomes, “This is uncomfortable, but temporary.”

Cognitive skills reinforce this shift. Instead of spiraling into thoughts like “I’ve already failed, so it doesn’t matter,” you learn to respond with “This moment doesn’t define the outcome.” That reframing matters. Real change happens in the space between impulse and action.

Rebuilding Healthy Sexuality and Relationships

Porn use can distort expectations around intimacy, attraction, and connection. Real relationships may start to feel awkward, demanding, or emotionally risky by comparison. Therapy helps untangle those effects.

A therapist—especially one experienced with sexual behavior—can help you redefine intimacy in realistic terms: trust, emotional safety, mutual presence, and connection that develops over time. This work isn’t about moralizing sex. It’s about restoring a grounded, human experience of it.

Quitting porn is only part of the process. Rebuilding a healthy relationship with yourself—and with others—is often what makes quitting sustainable.

Professional help isn’t a shortcut.
It’s a support system that makes long-term change far more likely.

Commentary from Joseph Alto, LPC

“Therapy isn’t a last resort—it’s a force multiplier. Most men struggling with porn addiction have already tried willpower, blockers, streaks, prayer, and isolation. What’s missing isn’t effort, but structure and skilled feedback. Porn addiction rarely exists in a vacuum; it’s usually tied to stress regulation, attachment patterns, shame, emotional avoidance, or trauma. Therapy works because it addresses both the behavior and the underlying drivers, giving men clarity about why they keep returning to porn despite sincere intentions to stop.”

7. Fully commit to stop watching porn

You have to burn the boats and go “scorched earth” when it comes to kicking porn.

You can’t be lukewarm or indecisive. You need to be 100% committed to the journey and be all the way in, because there’s no such thing as halfway quitting. 

We surveyed a group of people from the Relay community who have successfully quit porn, and they shared that going all-in is the number 1 thing that helped them.

Porn is not like other drugs, where you can simply wean yourself off slowly, but some guys try this by only cutting out “hardcore” porn. They continue hanging out on social media or consuming content that satisfies the desire in ways that are rationalized as better because it’s not hardcore, explicit porn.

This is a mistake, not just because it increases the likelihood of relapsing, but because it mistakenly treats porn as something you partially get off of. Remember: you don’t have a porn problem—you have a pain problem.

If you want to help your brain change and to really move beyond this behavior, you need to fully commit.

You can read all the tips you want, but you ultimately decide if you will continue to look at porn in 2026.

As the saying goes, “If nothing changes, then nothing will change.”

The First 60 Days: How to Begin the Process and Gain Momentum

The longer you go without looking at porn, in any form, the easier it gets, but like anything, it’s always the most difficult at the beginning.

We want to start right, gathering momentum in the first days that will serve as motivation and confirmation of our commitment. 

Here are some tips we have gathered at Relay that have worked for other people to get a strong start: 

• Deactivate your social media apps. Don’t just delete them from your phone; deactivate them so you can’t access them on your laptop or desktop.  You probably won’t  need to cut them out permanently, but deleting them for a period of time can help create a healthy barrier as you work on retraining your brain

  
  

• Don’t watch shows/movies on streaming services that are rated R 

  
  

• Don’t listen to music that has sexually explicit lyrics/imagery 

  
  

• Don’t engage in explicit conversation via dating sites or messaging platforms

  
  

• If you see someone at the gym wearing revealing clothing, look away and remember that they are someone’s friend, daughter, or mother.

  
  

• Install a screentime app or porn blocker.

  
  

• Limit your sex. The Chaser Effect is the spike in libido that occurs after sex. It’s important to remember that this is an anecdotal experience reported by many in the No Fap community, and has yet to be officially studied. Sex with your spouse is and could be a beautiful, positive thing. It increases connection and cultivates vulnerability. However, if you’re heavily using porn, that increase of libido can cross over into a rekindled desire to seek porn as the brain attempts to satiate the craving. 

  
  

• This is a good excuse to increase emotional intimacy with your spouse through dating, intentional conversations, etc. Remember, intimacy is not the same as sex! Focus on building real closeness, care, and connection.

Conclusion: Never Give Up

Surround yourself with motivation and be prepared to continue your journey in a post-motivation era. Listen to podcasts, attend lectures, and read books that continuously motivate you on your porn-free journey. 

The wisdom you gain from these practices can be the thing that gives you an extra boost of support on the days when you are really struggling. 

However, there will be a time when you simply don't have the time anymore to watch, read or listen constantly. This is when you will need to gain support from those in a similar boat, which is exactly why a constant, supportive community is the lifeblood of recovery. 

Remember, you don't have to do it alone. There are thousands of men and women using Relay as a safe, supportive community. You can find daily encouragement, accountability, and tools to help you stop watching porn for good.

NOW is the time to act. Get your life back in 2026.  Quit today. Join Relay. 

Supporting References

Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013).
Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2007).

Self-regulation, ego depletion, and motivation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1(1), 115–128.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00001.x