I told her

So a few months ago I was here asking for advice on how to disclose to my girlfriend about my addiction. I asked for advice in this thread.

The short of it if you don't want to read that whole thing. A healthy long-term, long distance relationship in which my addiction hasn't really affected the relationship but has affected me. I've long been a masturbation addict and in recent years have struggled with webcams. I was terrified to tell her and struggled with some of the logistics because of our long-distance. But I told her.

I wasn't sure I wouldn't chicken out. It was hard to plan a detailed disclosure given that we live in different places. But on my visit I planned to tell her on Sunday early day. I woke up around 5 am and was pretty panicky the whole morning. A few hours later she woke up. We were cuddling as we always do, but I was emotional and she could tell. She asked what was wrong and I started crying. I obviously was in it now.

I warned her I was going to tell her something that would hurt and shock her and then I read the letter I wrote. It was hard to do. I've never seen her cry like that. It hurt me so much to see her hurt. After I finished reading it we sat quietly (other than the crying) for a few minutes.

Then the questions began. She asked if this is what "all of this" is about, this being my struggles with anxiety and depression I talk about in therapy. I explained no, how it was both a cause and a consequence of my depression. Then came some logistical questions. How does my addiction work? What's going through my mind at any moment?

But then the questions shifted. She asked about my anxiety and depression and how I deal with this. She told me it killed her to know that I was dealing with all of this shame and pain alone for half my life. She asked about how I'm doing to get better. And then she thanked me for telling her.

It was an awful morning. So painful. But she wanted to be there for me, which made me love her more than I ever had. We were crying for a few hours, just sitting in her bed. She asked if I could hold her hand. Of course I did. And when we took the conversation as far as we could for that moment, she asked if I wanted to watch some tv.

There's a lot of work to be done. She told me that she doesn't love the webcam stuff, but honestly she hasn't processed that part of the whole thing yet. There will be more reflection and anger in the coming weeks, that's for sure. There will be more pain. But she re-assured me she wasn't just gonna dump me out of the blue. And she was so thankful I told her, and I felt relieved I made the right decision.

I am lucky. Our relationship has been built on a remarkably strong foundation, which simultaneously made it scarier to torpedo the whole thing, but also more difficult to knock down all at once. She was grateful for my honesty, and I was grateful for her compassion. And while there will certainly be difficult conversations ahead, I'm confident that we can get through it.

It's been a day, but I feel more confident than ever that I can work to overcome my problems. I haven't used a webcam in the almost 2 months leading up to this disclosure, but it was a struggle. It will keep being a challenge, but I feel the best I ever had about my ability to make progress. Accountability changes everything.

I had a lot of doubts about disclosing. It was the scariest, hardest thing I've ever done. But it was the right move. And I'm ready to move forward, no matter what the future brings.

 

Figured I'd show up with an update.

Following our initial conversation we've had a few more (mostly in person, but not too many overall because it's hard to talk about).

More anger on her part has kicked in, as one might expect. She's more mad about the act of the webcams than anything else. She described thinking about it as "making her sick." We're still able to talk and laugh and have fun, but I know this is on her mind and she acknowledges that she feels right now as though she might hold this act against me in arguments down the line, which we both agree is not remarkably healthy, albeit human nature. Maybe it'll just take time.

We're struggling a bit with how much to incorporate her in my recovery. There are two sides to it. One is wanting to be involved as my teammate and support system, while the other is not wanting to devote so much of our limited time together talking about this because we don't have much time together and obviously it hurts her to think about. For now, I'm going to only inform her if I slip up or have strong urges/need to talk about it. She said she trusts that I'll be honest with her, which is perhaps the most important thing. I'm going to talk to my therapist more about how to healthily involve her in my recovery plan.

Anyways, after telling her I didn't have any sex life for like 8 days and had no urges to masturbate or anything. Then it kind of reverted back to normal. Masturbating frequently and peaking (but not using) webcams. I filled her in on this the other day (the first time we'd seen each other since D-Day). Knowing that we're obviously not having sex anytime soon, I decided now would be the best time for a full abstinence from masturbation and orgasm, as I don't really need to worry about performance with her right now. We're gonna try 3 weeks (til the 21st) for now and reassess at that point.

Thanks for all of your kind words. If any of you addicts or partners have advice about anything, I'd love to hear it.

Happy new year!

 

Those are great thoughts. I'm going to run these by my therapist and girlfriend. Thanks for this!