Hi guys. This is in some ways a very overdue post, with a mix of good and bad to be laid out. There's going to be a lot. I'd like some advice for the questions I have at the end, so you can skip everything else if it's too much text. Background I starting using porn aged 10ish, after being sexually abused in my early childhood, and never stopped using porn until my late 20s (I'm now 30). Had unhealthy sexually orientated relationships in my teenage years (including catfishing friends). I met my now wife when I was 17, and have been with her ever since. Ironically, we met on Netlog, a rather notorious website back in the day for just messing about online with few restrictions. The (kept secret from my wife) porn addiction slowly destroyed my ability to have a healthy sexual relationship, with that and other reasons leading to a dead bedroom situation with my wife and doing severe damage to her self-esteem. I eventually confessed my porn addiction to her in 2018, but continued to use and escalate behind her back into 2021 - including communicating and sexting with people on reddit and other platforms. I was regularly masturbating 3-4 times a day but was at the stage where it wasn't really about the pleasure, but just to keep a baseline. Things came to a head, and she gave me a very warranted ultimatum to be honest with her at all times while she helped me to actually recover, or she was leaving me. We came to some practical arrangements (she has a monitoring app on my phone, for example) and I went to therapy. Some additional background is that she works as a psychologist (is currently doing her doctorate to finally get the official letters after her name so she can be a Psychologist with a capital P), so I'm very lucky that she had a deeper and more complex understanding of what I was going through than many partners would. From there, I went completely cold turkey, and have been porn free since 14th October 2021. Why This Wasn't Enough My addiction was obviously extremely deep-seated in me, and I found the early weeks and months of my abstinence very difficult. I used the pain I had caused my wife and my powerful feelings of guilt as a large part of my motivation to overcome my urges, and basically crushed any feelings of sexual desire down. This was broadly effective to prevent me relapsing. Unfortunately, I have had a very difficult time rebuilding a full sexual relationship with my wife. We took some time for emotional healing, and after a while did occasionally manage penetrative sex (typically aided by sildefanil), but I typically have been unable to get an erection over the past 2 years. We've defaulted to using toys, and my wife has been slowly increasing her sexual desires and fantasies, but I've struggled with initiation as well as the erectile dysfunction. We've had big success in rebuilding the overall relationship and her trust in me and generally communicating like adults, but there have definitely still been some barriers on the sexual side. The Last Week My wife initiated a conversation with me last Monday where she broadly posed the question of "you've said you want to have a full sex life with me, so why has nothing changed in some ways?" This wasn't a new question, but this time it struck home like it hadn't before, and I've managed to achieve some actual self-honesty I think. What is sex to me? How do I see myself? Sex with toys was safe. Not getting an erection was safe. I didn't feel threatened by those things because they didn't challenge me - didn't remind me of masturbating or lying. I could make my wife feel good and that was enough - it was comfortable and had become normal. The most recent time I used sildefanil and we had penetrative sex (without me orgasming, I hadn't any time previously either) I had fairly powerful intrusive thoughts about masturbating the day or two after (which I told my wife about), and that made me feel unsafe. The idea of relapsing and hurting my wife again makes me feel physically sick. As my wife has helped me realise, I've formed an identity of someone who doesn't have sex. I view myself as an addict who can't be allowed any leeway or he'll jump through the window and escape. I've also realised I have no idea what I want, sexually. What are my kinks? I have never had a healthy relationship with sex, even when having enjoyable sex where I orgasmed. I've always had a mask on. Unsurprisingly, when using porn as heavily as I was for as long as I was, I accessed some fairly extreme things and orgasmed to them. Is that really me? Do I really want those things? Who am I? What is good sex to me? We discussed options to help me change this identity. It was scary. Change is scary. We discussed me masturbating without porn. Very scary. I told her I would only want to do it with her because anything else would feel like lying. Two nights ago, aided by these questions and conversations, we tried something different. I read a chapter of one of my wife's dirty romance books to her while we lay in bed (I regularly read to her at night to help her sleep, but this was my first time with something like erotica). Things escalated, and I had my first genuine erection in 2 years. She gave me a handjob, then a blowjob. I masturbated while she watched from inches away and orgasmed for the first time in 2 years. We talked about it late yesterday in the car - I wanted to let her know that I hadn't had any intrusive thoughts but did feel a kind of "pressure" that I associated with wanting to masturbate. She asked me, gently, "how is that different from being horny?" Is that what that is? Oh, fuck. I also felt so stupid. If I could have done it with her all this time why did I ever keep it a secret? Also stupid. We were very different people at 18. We discussed my feelings of resistance to doing something similar again, even though I enjoyed it. Rooted in the difficulty in changing identity and doing something new, and exposing myself to risk. Sex had been masturbation to me, and then nothing, for a long time. The Questions Does anyone have any experience in changing from complete sexual denial to a more complete sexual person? What helped? How do I balance the feeling of being unsafe with my addiction, and the fear of feeling unsafe, with actual meaningful change?
My husband feels these things as well. He also has IA which he has been working through along with his addiction. My husband thought sex was bad and women didn’t like it ( he was deeply shamed by his mother about sex) even after 4.5 years, he still struggles with fear. Not necessarily about sex but that a chaser may make him reset. But, it does get better! He can actually have fun during sex now, he initiates and we talk a lot about it. I may ask him to respond to you via my account. He could better answer you
Really appreciate your reply. I think fear is a big part of it for me; fear of change especially. My wife asked me if I was scared about doing similar things again in case it didn't work, but we actually ended up concluding that I was scared of it working again and what that says about me. It's hard to have those kinds of barriers that I'm putting up against myself. I'd appreciate his insight.
My input is of limited utility since I haven’t reached your level yet. I’ve been more successful than many, but less than you. However, I do have theories and my wife is a pelvic floor therapist, so she deals a lot with the physical side of sexual dysfunction and has shared some information with me. You’ve described your problem well, and you’re not a jackass. That’s rare, so I did want to note I appreciate that. While reading your story, the first thing I thought was “why try to be sexually active in the first place?” It could be my own filter, but it seems to be distressing to you. We assume we need a sex life because everyone says it’s necessary for a balanced life and we deserve it etm., but is it necessary? Do we need it? If it was just you I’d say you don’t. However, you are in a relationship, it’s not all about you. If your wife wants/needs you instead of the toys, this is a necessary step forward. I think you and your wife’s focus should be on the relationship; on her, and you, and how you feel about one another. It shouldn’t be on sex, on her or your pleasure, on performance, with the goal of orgasm in mind. Set time to cuddle and talk, and don’t move anything forward unless you’re comfortable with it. Psychologists would call it acclimation therapy, so your wife should be familiar. If a person doesn’t feel safe in an elevator, for instance, they don’t force him into one. Maybe he’s only comfortable looking at one, or maybe only a picture of one. Wherever he’s at, he does that for a while. Then he goes up a step. He can press the button for the elevator, kind of lean his head inside, but he doesn’t have to go in if he doesn’t want to. Gradually, as he keeps pushing that boundary where he didn’t feel safe, as long as he is safe and nothing bad happens, that mental block is broken down in pieces and he learns it is safe to ride an elevator. In the same way, instead of saying “I’m going to have penetrative sex, even if I have to take a pill to do it,” you take it slow, one piece at a time, and take advantage of your ability to back it down when you need to, that will help teach your sensitive self that this kind of stimulation is safe and okay. Unfortunately, I have never heard of anyone bypassing the “chaser effect.” It’s too close to that thing we were addicted to, so it takes some reeducation. It’s counterintuitive. We don’t feel the urge to eat more after a big meal, but after a relatively brief refractory period, our bodies and brains seem to want more sex soon after we had some. I don’t know what to do about that piece except keep in communication about it. Sounds like you can do that in your relationship, that’s an outstanding resource. I still support monk mode. In my experience, sex has been a net negative and I’m not optimistic about my future there. If I were to kick that beehive, though, that’s how I’d go about doing it, if I could.
