What Findom Actually Feels Like at 10:30 PM

The house is quiet in a way that feels earned, like everyone else paid their toll for the day and I didn’t. I lean over and kiss my daughter on the forehead, careful not to wake her, already feeling the first crack of guilt before anything has even happened. My wife is asleep in the other room, door half closed, the distance between us measured in more than walls.

I feel the addiction before I name it. That tightening in my chest. That pull. I walk into the living room and leave the lights off. The dark feels like cover. The phone lights up my face and nothing else. I tell myself the same lie I always do. Just one look. No messages. No sends. Just enough to take the edge off.

Reddit loads and I start scrolling. Faces, captions, confidence sharpened into something cold and inviting. I tell myself I’m just observing, but my breathing changes anyway. There’s excitement there, real and immediate, the promise of being reduced to something simpler. Of handing over the weight I carry all day and letting someone else decide what I’m worth.

But the hurt is right there with it. The awareness that this relief only exists because it costs me something. That the secrecy is part of the high and part of the rot. I think about how easy it would be to disappear into this glow while the people I love sleep down the hall, unaware of the quiet fracture happening in the next room.

The addiction doesn’t rush me. It waits. It knows I’ll sit here longer than I planned, telling myself I’m in control while inching closer to the line I’ve already crossed before. Excitement and shame braided together so tightly they’re hard to separate. I’m alone, awake, staring at a screen, feeling both powerful and pathetic at the same time.

And the worst part is how familiar it all feels. Like muscle memory. Like coming home to something I know will hurt me, but opening the door anyway.

Every night I tell myself this is the last time, and every night I’m lying.