Watching porn with a partner

I CAN SEE IF IT WERE HER IDEA, BUT EVEN THEN AS A RECOVERING PORN ADDICT THIS IS COMPLETELY ASININE.

 

Your caps lock is on dude

 

Another captain of the CAPS. Fear and doom aside, there is a valid point. Trying all kinds of other things that other people have failed with is a recipe for failure. Let's look for uplifting and edifying methods to improve out situations.

 

A MANS WIFE IS THE MOST SACRED THING ON EARTH. TO HUMILIATE THIS CONNECTION IS PURE CRIMINAL. WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY THIS GUY IS IN SERIOUS NEED OF REAL IN PUT THAT WILL SAVE HIS RELATIONSHIP, OR AT LEAST HIS WIFE'S SELF-ESTEEM IN THE FUTURE!

 

WAIT I JUST CAUGHT THAT... CAPTAIN OF THE CPAS. LOL

 

Caps lock is on the left side of your keyboard...

 

I agree about P helping to create unfulfilling patterns but I don't buy the part about eventual infidelity. I think there are people that will grasp at any "reason" to justify cheating and those that will always remain faithful (at least in terms of not involving others).

 

I will respectively disagree.
I was watching my SO make comprises and to this day admits that he was making so many because he thought it was just progressiveness of self he would not have known when he crossed a line...
I told him I watched him cross it.
It wasn't until a year into reboot, looking back he was able to see it.
He was right there... RIGHT there, on the bridge to real people from porn during PIED.
It's just looking tho
No harm in just looking..

It's one compromise followed by another following another following another... That's all it is.
Maybe not for everyone..
But I do believe if you start early enough and have a certain porn trajectory (I realize this varies)
This is/can be a eventual thing.

It's not wrong... It's just the next step.
It's something I've always done... How can it be wrong if it's just the next level of something I've always done?
That everyone does?
This is just sexual evolution.
---these are things, excuses I heard as to why he almost crossed THE LINE.

 

Thanks for your post, @Kenzi -- super scary. I'm glad it's possible to turn it around from the brink and reclaim a real-life, living in the present and appreciating what we've always had in our own homes.

I agree that it takes like a year into reboot before we're very well rewired. @Chopin42, to reiterate something often referenced, most experienced therapists say that recovery for adults with a problem will require a 3 to 5 year commitment to complete that kind of change. It isn't a "healed" place, because we addicts will always need to remain vigilant and work to keep the changes in place, but then we're at least on a level playing field with regular social interactions and in the more balanced place.

 

Yup!! Our story is just that, the escalation that lead to physical infidelity and all the risky personal justifications & compromises in between that it made so much easier for him todo so.

 

@Chopin42 I do have some ideas. I'll number them to help keep my thoughts straight.

1) You are aware of this because you used the term "one major caveat", but look at how crazy these two quotes look together:

I remember sex with my wife as consistently great, even when I was using porn. Recently my wife reminded me that sometimes I could not reach a climax. I can now. I think my memory of constantly great sex is me deluding myself. You may be too.

2) You have found a girlfriend who you love, who will tolerate your failure to reach a climax with her for three years, who feels inadequate because of your porn use but is still willing to watch porn with you in an attempt to help you heal. She sounds like a keeper. You should do everything in your power to let her know how important she is to you, make sure that she feels the centre of your world. Giving up porn may be the message she needs.

3) We are lucky on NoFap to have some wive's and girlfriend's of porn addicts here too (some with their addict partners, some here alone just to try and understand). When they write I get a real insight into how my wife feels. That doesn't and shouldn't replace talking with my wife, but often it is easier just to read. Sometimes their posts really get me: the hurt and the fragility of their self esteem are heartbreaking.

My wife either accepted (I'll come to that in a second) or turned a blind eye to my porn use until we hit middle age. Then, gradually, the knowledge that I was getting off on young women's bodies gradually destroyed her self-esteem until eventually she had to deliver an ultimatum: stop porn or she would have to leave. The part of this story that floors me even now is that I could see how frightened she was. She believed that after 27 years together I would choose porn over her. How had I let my pornography use destroy the woman I love?

4) We tried it. This was back in the 90s, before internet porn was a big thing, it was mainly magazines for me. I was in therapy (not about porn use) and my therapist was keen for me to stop feeling guilt ridden about pornography. He wanted me to learn to love myself. So I became more open about it and we decided to use porn in our love making. It was amazing: very, very sexy. But we had to stop, not because my wife complained (she didn't) but because I couldn't cope. I realised that I needed porn to be separate from my wife, I needed a sexual outlet that was nothing to do with her. Bringing my porn use into our bedroom frightened me, it felt stifling.

5) There's a political angle on all this. NoFap is a diverse place, so there are lots of men here (and some women) who do not see it like this but I believe that the normalization of pornography in society is threatening all women. It encourages and normalizes the objectification of women and teaches men to expect women to be always ready and willing to perform. It is worryingly common for a young woman walking down the street to be told to smile by random strangers. That has *never* happened to me. One young woman took to asking the men who cat called her for a selfie and posting it to Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/dearcatcallers/ She didn't get all of them, some said no and some frightened her too much to ask, but it is shocking how normal these men look, how blissfully unaware they are that their behaviour is wrong and makes women frightened to go out. Porn is a big part of all this.

So perhaps, instead of watching porn together you could watch something that helps you understand the harm porn does to women. At the start of my current porn-free streak I watched the documentary Hot Girls Wanted (the original documentary, not the follow-on series). Again it is heartbreaking how the naive and eager young women are subjected to horrible horrible things by the end of just one year trying to make it as porn stars. There is no way I want to be part of that industry as a user, do you?

 

GREAT RESPONSE. IT IS ONE OF THE BEST THAT I HAVE HEARD.

 

DID HE CHEAT ON YOU OR DID YOU CHEAT ON HIM JENNICA?

 

He cheated.

 

Well, I disagree with the part of your notion that others around here might disagree

Alexander (the founder) and the NoFap banner definitely asserts that porn is B-A-D bad bad bad.
https://www.nofap.com/videos/porn-impacts-young-men/

Your point that it is beyond bad for men in and just of itself? Sure. It's also bad for our outlook on women. And, in the end, without massive correction across society, it will certainly be women who bear the burden of "our" failings as men to uphold their dignity and sacred identity.. our duty which was ever defended by successfulcivilizations past, and the violation of which we fear is preceding a catastrophic fall.

 

OH SORRY TO HEAR THAT. DID YOU TAKE HIM BACK?

 

GREAT POST, AS YOU ARE ALWAYS COMPLETELY WISE IN YOUR POST. I BELIEVE THAT PORN SHOULD BE BANNED, AND MADE ILLEGAL. THEN YOU HEAR ABOUT HOW SINCE PORN HAS GROWN THERE ARE FEWER RAPES, AND MOLESTATIONS, SO I DON'T KNOW IF IT IS GOOD TO KEEP IT AROUND OR NOT. I BELIEVE THAT IT IS EVIL AND CARRIES WITH IT THE POTENTIAL TO DESTROY A LIFE; BOTH MALE AND FEMALE.

 

A little challenge:
Please give me one benefit of using porn that will not lead to more stress.

 

Yes, it’s been a long hard road for the recovery. It wasn’t until recently that I can see the full depth that the PA played in it. The PA was a missing link so to speak, the real healing is just beginning.
However it were to happen again that’s it, I won’t go through it again, I can deal with a relapse with porn if it happens but not if he in gages with another woman.

 

Really? Where are you getting this data? It seems like rape and sexual molestation are both rampant in our society, maybe under-reported, but rampant nonetheless. My dad happened to be a porn addict and sexually abused me and my sister. That's how I was introduced to porn, by my dad.