How much is porn to blame?

Hi Everyone,

My husband is a PA. It's been 4.5 years together and he has been using porn on and off the whole time and also masturbating the whole time.

I could write a book there are so many layers of how this has crushed me and pushed me to my limits. But long story short, my question is about our sex life and how much people with experience think the porn and masturbation might be to blame for our problems (I'll try keep it as short as possible).

I was married before and as hard as it was to break up my family I was not happy and wanted to leave for the hope of something better and someone who I could really explore my sexuality with.
I was upfront with my now husband about what I wanted from our relationship and sex life. I have ah 'not vanilla' tastes when it's comes to sex and have a high sex drive.

The first 2 months were amazing, he was so attentive and seemed so excited to have met me and I never doubted that he wanted me.

Fast forward a few more months and he was changing, he was distant emotionally, seemed irritated by my presence and l could tell that he had little interest in me sexually.
I would do anything and dress up and try to keep things exciting but in my heart and gut I knew something was off.

By random occurance after using my Gmail on his iPad I noticed bizzare search terms coming up on my phone, all his search history was now linked to my phone. When I realized and looked further into it I got a huge shock with the content of what I found and the high level of usage (2 hours a day or more) but at that time it was also as if a penny had dropped, if I can get rid of the porn I will get my man back.

So fast forward 4 very hard years of on and off lies etc and you know the rest, I haven't found him watching porn since April, but our sex life had not improved and his emotional intimacy with me in general non existent, totally blocked me out. I told him I was done and separated from for the past few weeks, and in this time he has started seeing a therapist and also has spoken to me about how he no longer wants to masturbate at all, which he was doing all along and not telling me about (I have never felt comfortable asking him not to masturbate all together, but he knew my hope was that our sex life would improve and he felt guilty for doing it).

So my question is this, do you think that the masturbating in secret could carry on all the issues that I had previously only thought porn was responsible for.
At this point I have been afraid that he may never want me how I want him, however I never considered that masturbation alone would cause the same issues as the porn did.

Just really hoping for some help to understand what others think of this and if the two are linked in such a way that could still be causing him sexual issues...

Thank you so much in advance.

 

Sorry I didn't type that well.

I did expect that he would and I never asked him not too, I guess I just thought he'd do it now and then like most people would.

He has told me that he now wants to stop masturbating all together and that he was doing it frequently and feeling guilty which got me wondering if the masturbation alone could have been hindering his ability to heal...

 

Sorry there is alot more to the story I was trying to really keep it as short as possible lol. Impossible!

When I first found the porn in my search history that was unexpected and completely divine intervention if you will.

Since then it's been years of him 'trying' to stop and me having blockers and key loggers etc to check up on him in regards to the porn. The trust has had times of ups and then times of me being the FBI.

He has memory issues, lack of concentration, no motivation or ambition and I could go on.

I just never considered that him masturbating and not using porn would continue on the problems he was having and just came to a miserable place that he is not ever going to be the man I first fell in love with again...

 

I really don't have the answer to that... he told me at the start of our relationship he wasn't doing it much at all but then a few months in it escalated and that's when I felt him pull away emotionally and sexually...

 

I'm sensing that you think his problem is more emotional or to do with how he feels about me than the masturbating causing him to not be able to reboot?

 

I agree, and hopefully he will get the help he needs through therapy. I am just scared I suppose that it's not going to get better.