Cutting it off before I get worse

If you really want to stop this…

• Get a sex addiction therapist and commit to do the work with them. If they aren’t having you do work on yourself, find another one.
• When is your wedding? If it is within 12 months, suggest pre-marital counseling to your wife. Recovery from porn addiction takes at least 12 months. Your future wife deserves to know before she gets married. If you don’t tell her, it will be a secret and a betrayal that will make it hard for you to get free from porn addiction.
• Go to 12 step and SAA meetings and commit to go through the 12 steps. The accountability in these groups is better than accountability in NoFap.
• NoFap is a helpful tool to stay connected to your purpose, share with other addicts and get feedback. It is only as good as your commitment to recovery and willingness to receive feedback.
• Find a therapist and work through Facing the Shadows with Patrick Carnes and Recovery Zone. These are great tools for understanding our addiction.

 

Seconding telling her before you get married. Literally the worst thing you could do for her mental health here would be to not say anything and take away her right to choose whether she wants to get married to the real you and not the fake front You're keeping up by hiding this from her. You would literally be tricking her into marrying you and tricking her into entering a relationship with someone she does not really know. That was the most mindfuck part for me was to find out that he didn't think I even had enough human worth to know the truth before making what was supposed to be a lifelong commitment. Nothing broke my marriage harder than knowing he stood there, as my friend, and just let me get married, knowing the truth himself.

 

He told himself a million times he didn't need to tell me because he was "never going to do it again" or was going to stop. It wouldn't have mattered to me if he was 20 years clean when I discovered it, if I'd ever found out he kept it hidden and I had to find it, it would have immediately been over. It's a reflection of whether you view her as a human worthy of basic decency or not.

 

I second this. I didn't know what he was doing while we were engaged. In my case he managed to stop before we got married and stayed clean for a long time. But all his emotional issues that caused it (that he kept hidden) were still there, and eventually the distance he created and the birth of the smartphone brought it back full force and worse than before. I did not find out until after he got clean again. At that point we'd been together for 20 years with multiple kids. Now the mess is giant. It will take the rest of my life to try to heal. He has been clean again for over 4 years and we are still slugging through issue after issue because of all that he hid.

 

Agree you should tell her. All it takes is 'I thought you should know I've been using porn more than I'm comfortable with and I've been working at trying to stop this but I'm struggling'. It doesn't need to be a blow-by-blow of every video you've ever watched or the times and places, just let her know there's an issue and you're working on it but having a hard time.

 

This video was helpful for me. Thought I'd share with you.

 

All the best on your journey, I understand that in real life it is hard to separate every single issue and pretend that things can be solved perfectly if it were done in one way or another. Truth of the matter is that life is messy and things happen. It's a reality. I do think one of the important things is to have ownership of your actions, but at the same time, don't let your mistakes take away your self worth or make you feel that you are lesser than others. If you do really want to solve it, you should speak responsibly and in straight forward terms with your fiance, tell her about your plans to take responsibility. Fix the mistakes, may take a long time, but start anyway. From my point of view, ownership of my problems also means that I would not give up my partner or fiance even if I had such problems. "Yes I made mistakes, yes I did wrong things when we were together but I am going to solve them because I'm don't want to lose this relationship". If she wants to give you up, then thats another issue altogether, you'd have to fight to keep her.

I have seen much much worse problems in a relationship than PMO. Things that threaten personal safety, and things that directly harm families and relatives for generations to come. Don't lose hope, don't self-bash too much. When you get knocked down, get back up. There's a roof over your head and you have bread to eat i assume. You are still alive and kicking, she is still alive and kicking. It's a blessing. The time we are given is a blessing. Take shelter in the small things, celebrate small victories. Upwards and Onwards. You can do it. Be the man that you were born to be!