SOs, what are you most angry about?

Sounds like there's a lot of built up pain there from years of not feeling able to talk openly. Hopefully if she feels able to share this old pain now she will also be able to share issues as they arise, and in that way start to build a better way forwards.

 

I'm so sorry this has happened to you, especially after setting your boundaries and trying to protect yourself from the outset. After spending my 20s with one with guy, and my 30s with another I was brave and trusted for a third time only to find out 15 years later this relationship has been based on lies and deceit.
It's not much comfort to think 'well at least I've learnt something from that damaged relationship' when it's taken key years of your life. And when they are so good at lying, how do you trust again? Building trust takes time, and understandably it's really difficult to give more time when you've lost so much already.

 

He has thrown himself into recoverybut in the end it doesn't really matter. Got no kids and I'm not going to keep being with someone I can't trust. I already spent my 20s unhappy because I wanted to stand by him and put up with his symptoms every day. Knowing that most of those were caused by staring at better looking naked girls all day is worse than if he were just an asshole.

 

This is the part that makes it so hard. I struggle with it every day even though my husband has changed. It makes me feel like I was nothing. And that I now will be nothing forever. Because look around us, this world is so smutty and gross. There is no such thing as appropriate anymore because men have created a world where they have to be visually stimulated at all times. And stupid women have taken the bait. I hate it. How do you exist in a world where every single aspect of life is filled with psubs? How?

 

Exactly. We will be nothing to these men forever. It's just not worth it.

The moment they choose someone else over us when we were being faithful, it was done. Sounds like you are still in it. I can't imagine dealing with this with kids. It's hard enough just with shared assets.

 

I am still in it, and yes we have lots of kids so it's not just about me anymore. It is difficult, I feel like I am spinning, stuck in a maze trying to find my path. I love him, he is my best friend. Which makes it so difficult to wrap my mind around how he turned into someone he said he wasn't. To understand how he could decide to listen to the world that told him porn is fine, you deserve it when he knew full well it would kill me. I believe he is changing, he is 4+ years clean. But I just don't know how yet to exist in a world like this given what he did.

 

This is actually is a massive problem. When I was 13, my parents handed me a 'birds and the bees' book, and it said within it that masturbation was good for you and there was no detrimental effects to doing it a lot. Still, that's the line now, but it's very clearly not good for people's health, welfare, behaviour, mental health or relationships. The health authorities are asleep at the wheel, it's cowardice and apathy passed off as sex positivity.

I'm annoyed that I was lied to and that kids are still being lied to. I'm annoyed that no one seems to be willing to discuss it in moral terms, only in terms of consent, power and transaction. There's thousands of actresses and millions of men pissing away their chances at healthy, happy relationships so a handful of pornographers can profit. Even in purely secular terms, it's clearly about as grotty and exploitative an industry as you can imagine.

Sorry to derail, but that just struck a chord with me.

 

I agree. I was somewhat attacked for suggesting that I was too young to consent myself to what I stumbled onto due to a pop up on the Internet.

The industry preys on young boys natural interest in sex. Addicts them, destroys their lives, and claims that's normal. It's sad, that we have to prepare children for the dangers of p before they even hit puberty.

Should I have known better at 12? Sure. But how was I to know how deeply addictive this was then?

I know I will be having convos with my kids and doing everything I can to protect them from this early exposure.

 

Exactly. I keep reading these articles in the news that completely gloss over some of the problems. One keeps being how teenage girls are having unprecedented rates of depression and anxiety. While social media is a lot of it, they are glossing over the fact that teenage boys are hopped up on porn and put all kinds of sexual deviation onto girls. Social media is full of horrible images because of the influence of porn. The other article I read that just really got me boiling, was one on heterosexual males not being sexually attracted to their partners. How they picked "wife material" but forgot to make sure they were sexually attracted to them. Bullshit. I'd bet that most of these men have a porn problem and are measuring their wives against their other activities. We've all seen on here how addicts end up watching and doing things they say they are repulsed by because of how much this messes with the brain. It's not a stretch of the imagination to believe there are a whole lot of men out there watching enough porn to mess up their attraction to their partners.

Society just glosses over a problem that is destroying people. Acting as if it is healthy. Not even considering it as a problem. My husband went to a family counselor for "anger and stress" after he mentioned he was feeling down and struggling with our kids to our family dr. All he got was some counting exercises to calm himself down. The man never asked if he used porn or anything of the sort. He and I are both so angry because therapists should be able to see that level of anger and stress as potential side effects of an addiction. We could have been spared a lot of years of pain had that counselor had a clue of what porn is doing to men and their marriages.

 

I don't think you should have known better at 12. A 12 year old is a child with a curious outlook on life. A 12 year old should not need to be making adult decisions about p. Even in our early 20s our brains are still developing, unless you manage to avoid all p until 25+ there's a reasonable chance it will have made a significant imprint on the brain.
This article talks about how teenage 'love' impacts the same area of the brain as addictions. If your first 'love' was p rather than a person, it could make giving it up even more of a challenge.
‘I have mourned her for decades’: why first loves can shape our lives for ever | Relationships | The Guardian

 

Definitely my husbands first love.

 

That's interesting I'll check that out thanks.

On the topic of addiction and getting hooked at a young age. I do think me (and many others) knew it was bad, even at a young age. But didn't realize the power of the addiction. I don't think I realized its power until 3ish years ago, and again didn't realize how hard it was to quit until joining NOFAP. I don't mean that as an excuse more just an acknowledgement of the reality. I always thought I could just quit, not realizing that's not how it worked.

Constantly told myself that the next "big" change in my life would fulfill me enough to drop the addiction. This lie I think might be the first one we tell ourselves, and the long chain of lies that follow stems from this. I'm just sort of formulating this idea as I type. Need to take more time to think about that.

On the gf issue I was exposed before I would say i was fully "addicted" had a serious gf high school. And I do know I used P to dull pain from relationships ending throughout my life. So I see a similarity there too what you are suggesting even if P wasn't my "first" love. It was at the very least the rebound relationship for my first love.

Good stuff.

EDIT: Thinking more on this I grew up in a home with only one computer, dial up Internet, and we worked as kids. So I didn't have a lot of time early in life to go deep into this stuff like kids of today. I think there definitely was a correlation to the first smart phone I got and the amount of p use. I had a dumb phone until grad school. Lol Yes I was that guy. Even with that though I still was most definitely hooked in my teen years.

 

I’m eternally grateful my husband did not grow up with computers and smart phones. We didn’t get a computer until he was 35 and then it was terrible and slow dial up. I cannot imagine how he would’ve destroyed his life if he’d had a computer as a kid.

 

When we first got together we had a shared family pc. My husbands use restarted as soon as he got his own laptop. After a break of about 5 years by his own admission he couldn't believe what was available once he rejoined online p sites, they had obviously increased significantly around that time. Now of course there is no escape, unless you can give up your smart phone.
He says the things that come back to him most are the static images from the magazines he looked at as a teenager, 40 years ago, rather than the more recent videos he's watched. I suspect p was his first 'love' too.

 

Yup it’s the images from his childhood

 

Thinking of this more this morning. 2 things sticking out to me in my life and "my first loves". 1. My high school gf was my first real crush that dated back before my exposure to p we were probably 8 or 9? Though we didn't date until 16. We had a good relationship but ultimately college choice made dating unfeasible.

I've posted this next part before but will again.

I was about 14 the first time I saw my now wife. I remember that day like it was yesterday. She was 16. I have never seen a woman more beautiful. I swear there was heavenly music and bright light shining on her doves flying in the background the whole bit. Though we didn't know each other personally and didn't really ever talk until our first meeting almost 10 years later. I still see her as beautiful physically as I did that day. Even though we both have physically changed a lot.

I've said before that I've never seen a woman I thought was more attractive than my wife. IDK why but I truly feel that way, I still feel like that 14 year old boy looking at her honestly. And many rejected that notion. Maybe this is in part a reason why I honestly feel that way. I wonder if I hadn't had these experiences if I would feel different? IDK very interesting to think about.

 

Reading this was actually a lot of fun. I can definitely relate with you. The few times I was starstruck like that were very memorable. And as you mentioned those girls did not have the qualities of a porn star. In fact that does not attract me at all as odd as it may sound. Kinda like porn created a completely parallel system of sexual behaviour, well it did lol.

But you know being in love or having a crush on someone it's a really nice drug that porn can't compare to. Can't get enough of it, and if the other person does reciprocate then all the better. I wish it would be easier for my wife to understand that I do not seek or would like to be with anything related to P, but my behavior in the past and the several times I broke her trust obviously make it very difficult to understand or believe.

 

I'm learning the hard way that those feelings your wife has are hers, as are my wife's. We cannot fix them even though we desperately want to. And it is wrong to expect it. We can't go back and change what we did. What we do have though is the future, and doing what's right now. I have no plans of wasting it on P. P is the ultimate one way relationship, no matter how much one loves it, it will never love them back.