Do I stay or do I go?

I do understand, me and my wife were in the same situation. After 222 days clean, I can tell you that our life is like never before. so there is hope. But your man has to "man up", take ownership of his issue with porn and work towards getting clean. Get him involved, give him a signal that you can't live like that anymore. I added a little bit of my story below, so you can have faith that getting better is possible. I was a porn addict and it took over my life and thought. I was being selfish like you wouldn't believe, I needed my daily fixes.

Its too early to decide if you should leave him, engage him and see how far he is willing to save his relationship with you. My wife helped me out a whole lot and part of my success depends directly on her support.
It's not that you aren't good enough for him. He is being hit by the coolidge effect:

http://www.heretical.com/wilson/coolidge.html

I know that I started masturbating as soon as I could (I was 13 yo). I did seek arousing material by reading novels that has sex scenes in them, lingerie catalogue. Old porn mags I could get from friends older brothers and stuff like. Seeking arousal from "material" instead of real people was ingrained in me since my youth.

I married a girl when I was 18yo, had a lot of sex with her, but it dried up. Porn was there to compensate. She was hypersexual, and for her, she needed more, and wanted us to get involved in 3-somes and 4-somes and such..although it sounded very appealing at the time, I couldnt do it, it was against my belief. I was also afraid to see her orgasming with another man, it would have shaken my manhood...We divorced after 5 years...the girl wanted to become a stripper for money and that was TOO MUCH...so I ran away.

I met the woman of my life when I was 25, and she was 34. We are together for 18+ years now. Married for 15 years. I watched porn and masturbated to orgasm (PMO) during that time, as the internet was getting faster and the offering becoming more and weirder....I PMO'd during 18 years, letting her go to bed while I was spending a long part of the night fapping to porn....She knew about it and felt like shit of course...I was having erection issues, where real sex was not arousing me enough to keep me up....we call it PIED here (porn induced erectile dysfunction). I was struggling at work too.

She finally spoke up about 220 days ago, and this is when I stopped hurting her feelings and abusing my body.

Since then, here are my improvements so far:

-Better sleep, MUCH better. Better energy and resistance to stress from the fact of being in better shape.
-Better performance at work, better decision-making, more "courage" to tackle projects
-I got my full erections back, and we have real sex more often than ever before, as my wife feels better about herself, but she is also supportive of me.
-On NoFap, I got to interact with a lot of good people and learned a lot about myself.
_I have many self-improvements plans and initiative going on with the wife, including weight loss, increased physical activity, meditation, massages (non-sexual, but if often turns into sex lol).
-My emotional life is a lot better and my relationship with the wife has been saved at the last minute.....

Porn watching is a real addiction, PMO is strong and nasty and can cause one person to make bad decisions, and spend valuable time of their life MESSING THINGS UP.

 

Help him to become a better person,Help him to quit

 

I am sorry you are going through this. It is so difficult to love someone that cannot see how much their addiction is damaging their relationship. Sometimes it does take the addict to feel rock bottom before making those changes necessary in their life. You can only do so much for the other person, most of this is only fixable on his end and sounds like you have done your part. Sometimes it takes the addict to lose their SO before they will commit to change. Sometimes it is worth working together after a separation, other times it's not.

You are not alone here. I added you to our SOs group. You may find additional support there. You must take care of yourself, whether that means you leave or not, you must see that you are important and are not at fault for this. Do what you need to for yourself, and tell your SO that you are contemplating leaving him. That may be enough for him to take this seriously, or maybe it won't but it may put things into perspective for you once you lay everything out there.

 

He holds all the cards, he has to make the move. Toward the end I kept hoping I would fall out of love with my husband so I could leave. He knew I was fed up, he said the right things, he got better at hiding it, we lost 4 more years to it. 1,500 more days! I got lucky, I caught him this last time in March, and he gave it up, he had hit rock bottom, he could see it in a way that he couldn't before. I like to think that I would have left if he hadn't quit, but I do not know. That is the strangest thing about being the SO of a PMO addict, or maybe any addict, not being able to see the future - everything is so complicated. I don't blame you for wanting to get out, I have felt that hopeless feeling, I still do sometimes.
He has to want to change his path, but also, if he could just get some clean days under his belt, the brain fog will start to lift and he may really get attached to getting better.
I HATE YOU PMO! You royalty suck and you ruin lives and relationships!

 

It's already been 4 years! I would suggest that you give him an ultimatum (you will leave the relationship if he does not make changes by a future day that you choose). Unless you can reach him and make him realize the consequences of his continued P use it is very likely nothing will change.

 

I am no relationship expert but for me it sounds like the best thing is to yust break up with him. You gave him a chance to quit but he really needs to want it. It doesnt sound like he is ready to quit for good. I have struggled with quitting for 5 years. If I had a gf I would have been happier if she yust broke up with me. It is enough destroying yust my own life. Unless he shows you that he is able to pull off a good streak you simply cant be sure if this wont be a problem 5 years down the road.

 

Maybe leaving will be his rock bottom. Even if the two of you do not get back together, maybe he will decide to get help. I am in the same boat. Husband knows there is a problem but does not want to stop. I feel your pain and I know it first hand! I have thought of leaving but I am married so it would be a little more difficult by the more time goes by, the closer I am to walking out the door. I am tired of my feelings getting hurt. Even worse, he knows they are hurt and he gets angry. So, the cycle starts all over again. I know why you fear leaving or at least I think I do and it is probably for the same reasons I do.

You are afraid if you leave, he will realize what he lost and get help or stop after you are gone. Then he will move on and be the person you wanted him to be but by then, someone benefits from the pain. At least that is how I feel. I have a smart, wonderful husband who cannot stop PMOing.

 

PMO addiction is a hard place for someone to be, it was killing my husband, and he still could not stop. It was killing our relationship, like a slow drip of poison over the years, and sometimes I feel like the scars will never heal... And yet with him in recovery, I do have hope.
When things seemed hopeless, I would superimpose another addiction on the situation instead of PMO, to take out that personal element that is inherent in PMO addiction. What if it were drinking, or gambling, or drugs? How would I deal with it? This has helped me many times in the past 5 months. Sobriety is the key, I think if he could catch a glimpse of life without it he might be able to change him life. Read about addiction, it is effects the brain in very specific ways, your husband is out of his mind, he has lost the ability to make good choices, he is not capable of being the caring loving person you married right now, and he won't be until he gets into active recovery. Keep you chin up and read alanon info for yourself, don't get sucked down the PMOaddiction drain with him, that is an awful place to be. Get out in the sunshine and take a walk, you have a story that needs attending to. The only thing you can control is yourself, that is what you can change, with or without him is only a piece, take care of yourself, get strong, eyes wide open, storms coming, get ready.

 

What helped you get into active recovery? Do you really believe that a spouse leaving could be a game changer? Does a jolt like this maybe get through the brain fog?

 

That was exactly the rock bottom moment for me at least.

 

I agree that there has to be consequences for his actions. Otherwise, there is a good chance that nothing will change. He may need that tough love push to jolt him into action. I second the suggestion of saying that _______ [support group, specialized counseling, accountability partnership, etc.] need to happen by a certain date and if he continues to act out while using that support network and you find out about it that you will be doing ________ [sleeping in a different room, then separating, then divorcing, etc. fill in the blank with what you feel is appropriate].

That's what it took for me this last time too @ChangeMattersToMe. My wife caught me in an affair that was basically sexual for both of us and laid out consequences that let me know that this was it and there were going to be consequences for my actions. If she found out that I was using p or m while in recovery, I was going to have to sleep in the guest room and if I continued after that or if I was involved with someone else she would be leaving me and taking my daughter along and if it continued after that it was divorce. Rock bottom wake up call for me.

To answer @oreogirl question, yes! A spouse leaving for many guys can be the wake up call. In the weekly men's support group that I lead, more than half our guys have had a spouse leave them and that is why they are in there. Of that group, about half of the marriages have eventually survived and reconciliation happened after the hubby got serious about recovery and the wife could see the change, the other half did not make it as a result of the hubby not completely getting serious or even if he got serious the spouse may have been too hurt or damaged by his destroying their trust foundation and didn't want to try to rebuild things. Just my observation from that group of 30-40 guys I have seen come through the group over the last 5 years or so.

Wisdom and discernment to you @Sadnurse4 as you seek the path you need to travel.

 

That's a good question. I guess the short answer is Google. Initially I was just trying to watch less P and through research I found NoFap. I've since learned that it not possible for me to be a causal P user. I would endlessly search for the "perfect scene". The "perfect scene" of course can never be found and does not exist. I've also learned that P causes me to value intimate time with my wife less and causes me to compare her (and our sex life) to others. Using P causes me to feel shame and it brings unnecessary secrecy into my marriage. My wife has brought so much into my life and I feel like I can't reciprocate (and be the best partner possible) if I'm devoting so much of my energy to P.

I believe it definitely could and @Ted Martin and @ChangeMattersToMe have confirmed that it can. My wife supports my decision to quit, but she never gave me any type of ultimatum concerning PMO. Prior to my decision to quit she had told me that she was OK with me using P.

 

I think this is pretty accurate but maybe breaking up is the only way for him to realize that he has to do something about it. He will probably thank you for what you did a year or so down the road.

 

[QUOTE="oreogirl, post: 581891, Do you really believe that a spouse leaving could be a game changer? Does a jolt like this maybe get through the brain fog?[/QUOTE]
I think this is a good question and I do believe that by leaving he may realize something important. I personally needed to reach rock bottom a dozen of times before I started to take things serious. But even then, there is no absolute guarantee that he will make it out. It is a serious addiction after all. He have to really committ to recovery. Maybe even seek professional help. Otherwise you have to decide wheter or not you are able to live with an addict for up to several more years.

 

In the end, it did for me. But I can't say it's the right thing for anyone else.

 

The "reach rock bottom a dozen times" from @Nofapsincebirth really resonates with me. That was the case for me as well. I have several rock bottom points when my wife found out that I was back acting out again with P and M. The sad thing is that as I reflect, each one of those rock bottom points was an even lower level of rock bottom than what we would have thought possible. That's the nature of this escalating addiction. You have to keep sinking to lower and lower levels of depravity in order to get that same fix or high that you used to get. Addiction will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you more than you want to pay.

 

"I've since learned that it not possible for me to be a causal P user. I would endlessly search for the "perfect scene". The "perfect scene" of course can never be found and does not exist. I've also learned that P causes me to value intimate time with my wife less and causes me to compare her (and our sex life) to others. Using P causes me to feel shame and it brings unnecessary secrecy into my marriage. "

Right on.
For me as well, P is too addictive, interferes with a natural physical relationship with my wife, and is a source of shame if kept secret.