Can you convince me to not PMO?

So you never stopped watching porn/psubs and you're wondering why you didn't receive the benefits of not watching porn/psubs?

Have you asked her about why she isn't interested? Maybe sex with you is not a fulfilling experience? Even if porn is not cheating to her, it still filters the way you see, encounter, and engage in sexual interactions. Porn makes men bad at sex and unpleasant to be around, to the point that once partners experience a few relapse cycles, they can tell when their addict is about to/has relapsed and has not admitted yet.

 

Unless you like the idea of a deadbedroom, definitley do not marry or have kids with this person until the sex stuff is sorted...

 

Ummm, it’s bad for you? At this point it may have minimal effects on you but addiction usually escalates and destroys you from within. Why should an alcoholic quit? One of the main problems with addicts is they are addicts, not the loss of attraction. Addiction affects you and those around you. I think I’d try and talk about why your girlfriend doesn’t want sex. Usually there is a reason. Just like if the man doesn’t want sex , there is a reason. Does she masturbate? Is she avoiding it because of your pe and it’s just not an enjoyable experience? As someone with a high libido having a partner who is unwilling to be there for you sexually is, in my opinion a huge sign of a problem in the relationship. Differences in libido should mean that you as a couple talk about it and agree what’s acceptable.

 

Hmm. Where to start? I am assuming you are under 50. As a long-time addict, I can tell you that PMO also did not affect my performance in my 30s and even into my 40s; but it did a number on my emotions, trust, self-confidence, spiritual relationship, personal relationships.... the list goes on and on. I did not even comprehend the impact it was having in my life, until I started looking objectively at things.

Then, in my 50s, it seems that the years of this behavior caught up with me and began affecting my performance, too. I'm not going to type up my whole story here (you can look in my journal), but recovery from this is a BATTLE. Think about how hard it is for heroin addicts to recover and you will have an idea about how hard this can be. The sooner you give it up the better. You are at an inflection point that you may look at years from now and wish you had chosen differently- what will you do?

Practically speaking, I would suggest a frank conversation with your GF. She may not care whether you PMO or not, but she should care about what it will do to you in the long run.

 

Nobody can convince you of anything you don’t buy into.

You wanna quit? That has to come from within, not from crowdsourcing reasons why. We can support you, we can offer assistance. But if you wanna quit that starts with you and you alone.

Decide one way or the other. Anything else is mental masturbation.

 

No p or psubs at all? Your gf was the only person you saw sexually the entire time? "P or psubs on occasion" doesn't sound like just a month of relapse.

 

I'm going add a little interpretation. By her using the words "not everything has to do with you" instead of "it has nothing to do with you" implies that you're correct. Her lack of desire has a lot to do with you.

She doesn't feel like having sex of any kind with you.

Sorry, but that's the truth. Anyways, I've discovered that women's sexual attraction is not so much about what their men do, but more about who they are. Let me explain. Providing financially, offering love, acts of service, trying to be a more affectionate person in the bedroom can make a woman happy. But by displaying more masculine attributes in my own life, displaying confidence, being ambitious, building strength physically and emotionally will make my wife horny and more sexually attractive to me. Not having a backbone, always being sensitive to her wants without being vocal about what I want comes off as very weak, feminine, and dishonest. She won't be attracted to that.

Understanding what I know now, if a woman doesn't want to have sex with me and doesn't care if I PMO would make me serious doubt the strength of this relationship. Why doesn't she mind me doing something that would open the gateway to infidelity in our relationship? Is this relationship even important to her?

Women that value the relationship would want sexual intimacy. Because it helps to strengthen and build the relationship. Seriously, how hard should it be for a woman to actually have sexual intimacy with her loved one on at least some sort of regular basis? If she can't do that, then she probably has no business being in a relationship. So if my wife is no longer interested in having sex with me, that may say a lot about her.

But if I continue to stay in this sexless relationship, that would say a lot about me. Relationships are co-created. If I'm dissatisfied with my relationship over years, then a real good question to ask myself is why did I co-create this relationship?

Especially since I know I can easily end this one and start a new one. There are plenty of women out there who would be happy to have a relationship with me aaaannnnnnd have sexual intimacy with me.

But no, instead the solution I hear is to compensate for the lack of sex by going back to porn. ?????!!!

Let me tell you something.

There is no problem that using porn cannot make worse, 100%

 

Human beings are complex.

The only women I've been with have been okay with porn. But, they were complex people. My last relationship, she hadn't experienced an orgasm, despite a lifetime of trying. I decided that I wasn't going to be able to change that. She also sometimes viewed sex in repulsive ways. And she was generally depressed.

Who knows why your woman doesn't want to have sex. Perhaps therapy would yield an answer.

As for myself, that last woman took an emotional toll on me. And I decided to stop having sex with her at some point, mostly because it didn't make me happy. Even more gradually, I excised myself from her life. It was hard to realize that we weren't good for one another, and even harder to cut myself off entirely when friendship didn't work either. I wish her happiness in whatever the rest of her life holds in store.

 

Sorry for my harsh opinion here, but porn IS cheating on someone you love. And if your loved one allows you to watch porn, then she either a) doesn't have enough respect towards herself or b) she's afraid that she'd lose you if she forbade you. That's a given. You won't tell me that it's normal to allow your loved one to watch other women/men in the obnoxious way that porn shows them. Also, your loved one isn't a person that should be used as some release of your urges. As an addict you have no way of knowing whether you're objectifying your girfriend unless you stop PMO for long enough. The difference between having an urge to have an orgasm and giving another person your love through sex is VAST. I've felt that difference towards my wife only after a serious reboot.
An easy tip: if you don't feel a complete difference while having sex with your loved one from PMOing (and I'm not talking about the fact fact that she's a person and pictures are pictures), then you still need a serious reboot.

Women can feel the difference between desire and love.

 

I didn't know my husband was pmoing at all when he was doing it, but the changes in him were enough that I did not want to have sex with him hardly at all. Maybe 1x a month at best. We still managed to have a few babies during that time period. We did things as a family. Seemed happy from the outside by all means. But I wasn't getting the emotional support I needed. He did things that I considered very uncaring. He was on his phone all the time. He was just a jerk enough that when he touched me I pulled away. In my personal experience, at least in my marriage, there is no possibility for healthy intimacy -both physical and emotional - when your partner is using porn or masturbating thinking of other people. My husband thought he had it all packed away in it's own little box where it couldn't hurt me. But it just doesn't work that way and now he is horrified because he can see it all very clearly, all the damage he did to me on every level.

 

Wanted to add a few more thoughts because all of this is hard, it is so much more complicated than just stoping pmo. My husband has been clean for 4 years now, no slips, no relapses, which is great but he had previously had a very long time between between the first time he started using (while we were engaged) and the second and more serious time a decade later. He has come a long way, but my betrayal trauma is still significant. We both have more work to do for our marriage to become safer. But the more progress we make, the more it is clear to both of us, how much his acting out destroyed all of our intimacy. We've always been best friends, but it's clear that other than that first falling in love part, I did most of the talking and sharing. His acting out caused him to become more inwardly focused in all ways. He did not share his opinions or emotions much at all because he hated any kind of conflict and didn't know his emotions (we now see that he was never allowed to do this as a child and so he thought a good husband was compliant), porn gave him a way to escape any feeling that was too much. He never needed help from me. Never needed anything really and always was a helper. He seemed great. But what we've learned now is that when he didn't share himself with me on the deepest level, when he didn't let me care for him when he was hurting and stressed, he was robbing me of my agency as his wife. I wanted to be his comfort, his rock, his second hand. And I wanted him to do the same for me. But he was turned inward to himself and then outward towards the world (work, church, etc) and never towards me in a deep, soul binding way. And so all of that effected our physical intimacy. After our ddays it was so confusing because he'd told me horrible things, but told me everything, told me all of his feelings. There was yelling, crying, fighting, uncontrollable sobbing (me) and then some. But I'd say 8 times out of 10, the next day we were more physical with each other and felt emotionally closer. As things are ever so slowly improving (with lots of emotional setbacks along the way when he does something stupid, because like I said the way he behaved while he acted out caused everything to be tainted, or I have a trauma trigger), but we both notice that when we are making the effort to turn to each other, let each other in, communicate even when our old instincts tell us to run, then our physical relationship is significantly better. When he was on porn, and again I never knew he was using it when he was I only found out after he stopped and I caught him in other lies because he was starting to be different (as in improving, connecting and then I realized he must have been hiding things), on the times I managed to convince myself that I should try harder to want to be with him, to be honest it wasn't very good. I didn't feel very loved, I didn't feel like he wanted to enjoy my body or give himself to me. I had little desire to want to do anything to him either. I mostly just wished he would hurry up. He is different now and I can honestly say it has never been like this before and we've now been together for 23 years.

So I really, really believe now that taking your sexuality into yourself and using the visuals or fantasy of other people prohibits your ability to fully participate in intimacy. The emotional and the physical are meant to be interlinked, strengthening each other. You can't wreck one and not impact the other, and so on and so forth in circles of impact, holding it all back from what it could be. I know that I'm married and have been for quite some time so the bond and the history is deeper, but I think it applies to all levels.

 

Yes! This!
This describes what I said earlier in a real life situation! That's not surprising, because I'm also married, so I have to live with all the stuff that hurt my wife. That's why, to me, an idea of a serious relationship doesn't exist when one person uses porn. Because... why would he/she?
It reminds me of how people say that you can't have a party without alcohol. No! From my perspective, they're the ones that can't party without having a drink. Heck! They're sitting like logs if they don't take several sips first! And they're considered fun?