So, how long am I in for?

Hi, everyone. This is my first time posting. You already know the story. It's nothing new around these parts. At 19 years old, I married the man I thought to be my soulmate, my high school sweetheart. I saved my virginity for this man. I was very excited to have a thriving and fun sex life with someone I loved so much. Well, a month later, I began my research into sexless marriages. As you can imagine, for 19 year old me- this was an extremely depressing and confusing thing to be experiencing. My husband didn't initiate sex with me, he rejected most of my initiations unless I would start an argument about it, and he had a very hard time maintaining or getting an erection.... as a 19 year old virgin! I thought we would be having sex non-stop but I was shocked to find this was not at all the case. As my self-esteem completely dwindled away and I blamed myself for not being attractive enough, things proceeded to get worse with sex happening maybe once every 2-3 months. I once did an experiment to see how long it would take him to initiate sex if I didn't mention it- and then I snapped and mentioned it at 4 months in. As for me, I tried everything. Everything from begging to explore his sexual desires, spending hundreds on lingerie and sex toys, taking him on romantic weekend getaways, even to the point where I brought my body fat down to "fitness" level and got 32DDD breast implants. I "porn-ified" myself as much as possible. Meanwhile, over the years, I begged and pleaded for some sort of explanation for his lack of interest in sex. He had every excuse in the book to reject me from headaches, stomach hurts, too tired, "he's more in the mood during work hours", "we are out of condoms" when we weren't, etc. I remember moments where I'd press my naked butt up against his crotch in bed and he'd shove the blanket in between us. This man has never once pulled me to him in bed or started to kiss me or massage me in hopes of getting laid. I spent the whole marriage trying to solve the mystery while crying myself to sleep after being forced to masturbate once he was snoring away. Anyway, he never gave me a reason. He either said he didn't know, he said he just had a low drive, he said he had anxiety, and a bunch of other things. I brought him to 3 different therapists begging him to just talk to me and tell me what's going on. He even agreed to go see a doctor and had bloodwork done to check his T levels, which all came back normal. Well, at some point last year, I found a forum in Reddit and posted about my situation. Several people immediately pointed me in the direction of porn addiction or PIED. So, I began looking into that and the more I read, (articles and personal stories) the more it became apparent and explained all of it. I began remembering situations like- when I was using his laptop for the first time ever and he began literally pacing the room. His behavior was so strange that I decided to mess with him and say I was gonna look in the recycle bin of his laptop. He immediately sprinted over and hit "empty recycle bin" before I could do so. And anytime I asked to borrow his phone for any reason, he would get so beside himself with nervous and erratic behavior. So, in January, I confronted him with my findings (although I never had any evidence because he never left any behind), and he denied having any sort of porn issue. He said yes, he looked at it occasionally but that it wasn't the issue- just a symptom of the issue. So I decided to sign us up for a sex and porn addiction therapist. He agreed. The therapist asked him lots of questions and he answered them all like a good little patient and was cleared as a non-addict. He told me at that point that knowing it made me uncomfortable, he would simply stop watching porn and that it wasn't an issue. So, during the next few months, we started having sex more often. Maybe once every 1-2 weeks. However, about half of the time- he could not maintain an erection, and the other half of the time- I noticed that he required more intense stimulation to maintain it. Basically, the whole sex experience was just me trying to keep him from going soft. There was an instance where he had to straddle my chest and vigorously "fuck my face" for a solid 5 minutes straight and when I stopped and suggested he put it inside me, he immediately went from fully erect to fully soft while trying to put it in. So, all of these things were red flags to me and in June, I decided to sit him down and very calmly ask him again about his relationship with porn. He admitted he had been using it since January but again insisted it was not an issue. I told him that the only thing that would end this marriage is lying. The next night, he extremely reluctantly admitted that he MAY have a problem with porn. Since then, he's admitted to being a full blown porn addict and he's admitted that that's the real reason our marriage has never had a sex life. He admitted to watching it every day at work and/or in the home with me. I'm sure you all know exactly how broken, hurt, devastated, confused and unstable I am feeling now. Realizing that this whole time, while I was begging my husband to have sex with me and connect with me, he made up excuses not to- so that he could watch other naked women instead. I mean, it is thoroughly nauseating to say the least. The betrayal is unbearable.

Anyway, he finally started therapy for an actual program in the end of August. Since his initial confession (although I can't shake the feeling that he's only told me the bare minimum and there's a lot he's not telling me), I've completely compartmentalized all of my feelings and I jumped straight into supportive partner mode. I didn't want to scare him away from being honest with me. I never processed or allowed myself to feel any of what this made me feel. I focused entirely on helping him start his recovery. He installed content blockers to which only I had the password, he deleted apps and set his Reddit to not show NSFW images. He promised that was it and he wasn't gonna lose me. He even started initiating sex and acting genuinely interested in me and my body during it! On Labor Day this year, I noticed that he had been acting a certain way again (not giving me any attention whatsoever) so I asked him if about it and he admitted to jerking off again. At that moment, I completely snapped. It was like my brain couldn't compartmentalize anymore and I was suddenly forced to face everything this had done to me. We got into a massive fight that our two small children witnessed and were really shaken up about, so that was my wake up call. I asked him for a separation that day. It's been 2 weeks since we've been separated and haven't shared a bed. I told him that I cannot even begin to consider repairing our marriage until he's repaired himself, and I've healed from the damage this has done to me. I've become insane. I'm jealous of baristas handing him coffee, of pretty girls in tv shows, of his own damn cousins... I can't trust a word he says to me because of how many times he's promised he was gonna put in all his effort to "solve the problem" that he was actually secretly causing the whole time. He saw what it did to me. And he did it anyway. He admitted to going around the blockers three times since installing them, just to watch porn. I hate who I've become and what this has done to me. I feel so worthless. I feel like the whole time he actually had good sex with me, it was only because I was just his bottom of the barrel, last resort option when his porn was removed. So that's where I am now. 7 years and 2 kids in. 26 years old. Sleeping alone. My husband is a porn addict. And I have no idea how long this is supposed to be my life. How long do I give him until I decide if I wanna stay or go? How many more chances do I give? When do I know if he's recovered? When can I trust him again? Will I ever? I don't know anything about any of this and I never thought I'd need to. Please help.

 

Well, what kind of boundaries? Because we aren't living as husband and wife at all for now.

 

Thank you. I have been spending a lot more time just by myself doing things for myself. It's been nice. The wound is just very very fresh for me right now. I break down at least once a day.

 

I worry that he doesn’t respect me. And because the boundaries aren’t being respected and the separation isn’t being done correctly, I fear that this won’t be corrected the right way. I am powerless to him and he knows that. I am codependent, I am betrayal bonded, I am weak. He knows my weaknesses well. I can’t be strong in stopping him when he breaks the boundaries and makes the situation uncomfortable and half the time I don’t even care because I just want to be held and to have someone to spend time with cuz I’m lonely and I miss what we had before D day. Even though it was contrived and I still felt that something was wrong, at least we had something. This relationship purgatory is worse than hell.

 

I specifically asked him not to lead me on and try to entice me sexually this weekend on our anniversary trip. That was one of my B+Cs. He does this all the time! I hate it more than anything. And yet, he spent the whole weekend doing just that and for some reason I felt like it would be different since it’s been so long since we’ve had sex, and he’s doing his reboot, and we’ve talked so much about what I need from him to make this easier for me. So, I finally gave in because he got me feeling so horny and excited and I said alright, let’s have some fun when we get home. And as soon as we got to our driveway, he out of the blue says to me, “well you know I’ve been thinking about it’s probably not a good idea to do anything tonight. I’ve only been able to reboot for a week at a time so I wanna see if I can go longer..” and that was the end of that... what. The. Fuck.

 

Ugh girl. Mirror image of my life. Except he’s always been really really good to me in every other way. Almost too good.

 

I just need to vent somewhere. I’m growing very impatient and suspicious of his “flatline” thing because it looks identical to when he’s just straight up choosing PMO over me. I’ve tried to be as patient and understanding as possible but it’s really hard when even my 56 year old in-laws are very obviously active in their sex life and went home to enjoy one another on Halloween- while I, looking hotter than I’ve ever looked before in my costume, after getting tons of compliments, went home to the same shit as always. He’s “had too much to drink” “he thought I was mad at him” blah blah blah. The point is he doesn’t even try. He gives me so many compliments in public, very affectionate in public but as soon as we get home alone together, it’s crickets. And this time, now that the addiction has been found out, he can just say it’s a flatline. So now he has that excuse for however long he can get away with and he knows I won’t be “troubling him” for sex anymore. It’s just so fucking STUPID that ALL I ASK OF HIM AS A GODDAMN MAN IS TO WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH ME! I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around the fact that the only
Problem in my marriage is that the man I’m married to is the only man that doesn’t wanna fuck me. Ever. I can’t believe that my marriage may end because of this. And meanwhile, I’m just getting older and more tired and wasting my best years waiting for him to get his shit together. I hate my life.

 

I’m starting to regret ever finding out about this porn thing. I thought that getting him to confess and start recovery would help our sex life but it’s gone from rare to nonexistent. Our relationship went from occasional tension with an elephant in the room to full blown constant weirdness and not knowing how to act with one another. It’s just so draining. I wish I could go back to before I made him confess so he can keep his porn that actually gave him some measly ounce of sex drive left for me, and I didn’t have to go about life knowing about the betrayal of my marriage.

 

Well, we finally attempted to have sex last night but, as usual, his penis didn’t want to join the fun. Normally, I would get frustrated about it or just ignore it but this time, after all the pain I’ve been through with this addiction, I just burst into tears. You finally get a moment where you are wanting to be intimate with the person you love but then you are immediately reminded that their body doesn’t want your body and it feels like this will never ever change. It’s so draining and horribly saddening. I hate all of this so much.