is this common?

I asked lots of hard questions and am now dealing with lots of hard feelings.

 

Oh no. He was discovered so I found everything he looked at. There are no secrets there, although I am positive he never would have disclosed any of it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Keep in mind that i have never taken his addiction personally. I have never equated his looking at porn with a dissatisfaction of me, and I have prefaced our conversations with that. That's not to say it isn't still painful though.

I have asked him things such as what motivated him. Why did he enjoy a particular fetish? Does he consider it cheating? What if the situation were reversed? If I were okay with it, would he still continue? At one point I found a picture of a cashier's butt from the local grocery store on his phone. She is in her early 20s. I asked him what he would do if he found out some random guy took a picture of our 18 year old daughter's butt and did God knows what with it in the privacy of his own home. Or car. Or gas station bathroom. Or wherever he decided to defile the picture of our daughter at. I pointed out that that young cashier is someone else's daughter and he has defiled her. That shook him up. He swore he never did anything but look at it, and I believe him, but the point is the same. He said he never thought about it that way because the addiction is in the way. And I get that.
But that is why I ask those questions.

We don't talk deep like that very often. He used to completely clam up so I never said anything. Now it's little by little I can get him to talk, but it is also farther into reboot. We both are healing more.

I don't talk about my hurt much to him. I don't really see the point in what that would accomplish. I mean, yes, I want him to know how deeply wounded I am. No, I don't think he gets it. But that is a topic for a different day.

 

I sometimes say to people “I don’t ask questions that I don’t want the answer to”
Knowing can be a double-edged sword

 

Yes but at the same time I think that it might be necessary for true healing....

 

True. I think that’s part of the reason I volunteered to tell my wife stuff. So I could feel like I was really seen. Even if she wasn’t that interested in knowing

 

@Sadgirl do you have a pointer to an article or book? That sounds like useful reading.

 

Yes! Mating in Captivity. Fantastic book

 

Thanks for sharing and clarifying!

 

Thanks for posting this. My initial reaction was that I didn't like the idea of my wife fantasizing about others (yes, I realize that this is exceptionally hypocritical of me but it also plays heavily in to my insecurities). However, if fantasizing were to help my wife be better about communicating her "needs and desires" to me than I would be all for it.

In your experience has this been the case? - Have you shared your needs/desires with your husband?

 

I never did before his PA was disclosed. I notice in retrospect though that I fantasized much more about other men when there was a disconnect between my husband and I. One of my favourite go to fantasies is about attractive older men I know or meet and how they really know how to take care of my needs and want me. Upon analysis, I think this fantasy appeals to me because my husband is kinda wimpy and has just deferred to me about everything. So my fantasy tells me that I crave a man who can really take care of things, including me.

 

A big step in my recovery was to acknowledge to myself that that is exactly what porn use is. I would see a scenario and imagine myself as part of it, or how the scenario would evolve if I was to turn up. Now this veraion of me in such fantasies was very much hypothetical and the fantasies helped me get off: they were not what I WANTED to happen. I did not want the imaginary sex depicted or imagined, but it was excited and appealing for the function it served. BUT... I was exciting myself ans deriving pleasure, giving myself orgasms while enjoying other women's beauty and sex appeal, and reall

 

...y thinking about that and admitting it both to myself and my wife was a turning point in how I thought about porn. I could better understand her feelings of hurt and betrayal. I had been conceptualising of P use as the norm, as standard male behaviour, and justifying myself and excusing my behaviour because I knew I did not WANT sex with other women. But clearly a part of me does in order for the fantasy to be appealing. My true desire is only for my wife, and the desire for any other attractive woman is not a complete or true desire, rather it is a symptom of certain hormonal and psychological aspects of my biology. In order to honour my wife I needed to transcend this vestigial aspect of myself and stop pmo, or mo while engaging in fantasy.

 

I tried a lot if different ways to stop PM
Stop P but not M, didn’t work,
Stop M but not P, didn’t work,
Stop P, but only M to thoughts of my wife, didn’t work,
Only when I stopped FANTASIZING was I able to stop M.
And when you control what you let your mind think about, and even if you see something erotic, you don’t M, then P loses a lot of it’s pull.
So MY success hinges entirely on not fantasizing.

 

Apparently it works for some, but not for others.

But I’ve heard it helps to kill urges to relapse.

 

One benefit is it’s supposed to be a healthy way to produce dopamine.

 

I do know how it works

 

So...
It takes about 30 days to adjust.
And you start by lowering the temperature to tepid...
Do this for like two weeks and then a little colder for a week.
And move it a bit more when you adjust to that...
Leave room for even colder later...
But you want it Cold.
It'll still shock.
Wash and shampoo and whatever else you need... Stay in 5-10 minutes.
In a few months you will adjust to the temperature and want it a smidgen colder...
Make sure that it's been a few showers and you are sure you want to adjust.