My husband is addicted to porn

You have every right to feel terrible about all of this, but luckily this is something that can be fixed.

Porn damages our brains to the extent of what you describe, but it can be reversed entirely, and if he accepts his problem and wishes to truly change and live a Porn free life, he needs your love and support.

I am all alone, and I wish I had someone with me on this journey, but he doesn't have to be alone, you can be with him every step of the way.

Sit with him and watch this if you haven't already.




I know its a long video, but it will change your lives, I promise.

 

There is a whole community here to support you and your struggle. You may find better support in the “rebooting in a relationship” section and its subsection “partner support”. Porn use is a disease of disconnection. Until your husband can make the choice to live a life free from porn addiction and be honest with you about himself, his problem, and how it impacts your relationship you will not see any improvement. Hopefully you can help him see the damage this is bringing to your marriage, but for a real recovery to begin it needs to be his decision.

 

Really sorry to hear your pain and struggle. This is everyone's worst dream, to be emotionally disconnected of our loved ones because of this terrible addiction taking over our lives. You need to confront him about his porn use intelligently. He is still responsible 100% for his actions and for not fulfilling his role in the relationship, but as you will see through different posts on this forum porn addiction is a very evil, difficult thing to shake off. So educate yourself about it and get him to commit to quitting. You may need more counselling support for this, and to get him to be accountable to a third party too. Ultimately, for a healthy relationship, he must stop porn. If he doesn't you have every right to stand up for yourself and choose the consequences.

 

It's sad what you have been through.. it really sucks! I can't understand the part where he neglected your rights completely... I sincerely hope he wakes up from his fantasy world before it's too late. This is a great community with great people, even couples. I am sure they will guide You. Best of luck!

 

Does he want to stop now that you have found out? Can he be persuaded to come here and introduce himself and keep a journal? He'd find lots of support from many many other men (like myself) in exactly the same situation (though you beat me on age - I met my wife when I was 17).

 

I didn't stop until I had to. It is unpopular on these forums to talk about what porn gave us. Most people prefer to paint it as entirely negative as they hope it will be easier to resist if it is seen as all bad. There's truth in this, porn is evil. But I think it is important to face up to what we are missing if we give something up. I've written about the reasons I think I used porn for so many years in this post, I'll copy-and-paste them here. (This will end up a long post - sorry!)

1) It is probably too obvious to state: beautiful women look amazing (getting) naked. That is something I miss now. But I want to dig deeper into what I got out of looking at them.

2) My mind is a real buzz of stuff, quite the opposite of what we now call mindfulness. But when using pornography I had an incredible sense of focus. My whole mind and my whole body were focussed in on the images or videos I was sifting through. I only feel that sense of mind and body focus through sexual activity and I love it.

3a) The next one is weird, and I would not be surprised if I am alone here as it is clearly false, but it felt like acceptance. Something feels wrong about me wanting to see women naked (though intellectually I recognise that it is an urge that’s natural and not wrong) but it feels wrong. I think that is something from my parents. My mum and dad were feminists and mum especially brought me up with a keen sense of women’s rights and the injustices they face in society. So my teenage desperation to see women undress felt wrong. I say “teenage” but I’m 52 now and still feel it. It still feels wrong. Pornography gave me acceptance. It is as if the women in the pictures were saying “I know you want to see my p*ssy Tim, and that’s OK; here, take a peek”. I know they were not thinking that, they were probably thinking “help, how do I get out of this shitty soul destroying job” but what I felt was their radiating acceptance.

3b) It was almost as if I was accepted into a coven of women, welcomed into their secret feminine moments. That felt amazing.

4) That sense of something wrong is also exhilarating in its own right. That dry mouth tingly feeling of being naughty. When I started using porn it was so embarrassing to have to go into a newsagents to buy magazines, but that acute embarrassment was also exciting. Even online the knowledge that I’m turning to something bad is exhilarating.

5) I’ve mentioned focus. The focus I experience when looking at pornography is so all-consuming that it drives out my other thoughts and feelings. When I am stressed or depressed pornography proved an amazing way to take time away from those emotions. Work deadlines or other worries might crowd in but I could escape them for hours on end.

6) You can probably tell from this long list that I’m slightly OCD. Not clinically, or diagnosed, or to the extent that it gets in the way but I do like to catalogue, list, and make sure that things are in their right place. On oddly compulsive side to my pornography use was collecting. One of the odd things about this is that it is the collecting that’s compulsive. I would rarely look through my collections. Sometimes I’d find an amazing picture and favourite it or add it to a board only to find out it was there already. It’s the chase after something new that was exciting. Like bird watching or train spotting! I miss that sense of filling in my collection.

7) I talked a bit about mum and dad earlier in this post and I do not like writing this kind of stuff. It feels like the worst pop psychology and I feel like an idiot. But I have come to recognise some things in my pornography addiction that are rooted in my childhood. Although dad was a good man, in many many ways a much better man than me there are some ways he was not. One of those was that he normally had a mistress. I do not think I realised this when I was young, though I could see that he was out a lot, but something of that and the dynamic it introduced into mum and dad’s marriage has affected me. And that’s what these last two entries in my ‘what did I get out of porn’ list.

Porn gave me a way to experience other women without infidelity. Dad was not faithful to mum and that is not something I want to put my wife through. But I could not resist other women. Pornography was a way to satisfy that urge without being unfaithful. I know there are many spouses and partners here that would disagree with me there, but that’s how it felt. My wife disagreed when it came to cam girls, and she insisted that stopped as for her (and if I am being honest for me) it counted as infidelity.

8) I need to own my own sexual activity. When I was growing up, I think in response to the hurt she felt from dad’s infidelity, mum moulded me into what she wished a man was. I found this claustrophobic and now I sometimes find my wife’s ownership of my sexual world claustrophobic. I know that’s mad, marriage means I have dedicated my mind, body, and life to her, but it can sometimes feel oppressive. Pornography gave me a safe way to reassert my sexual independence.
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The obvious follow on question to your "why you never stopped" is why did I stop? I answered that in this post, I'll copy-and-paste that too.

1. I sink way too much of my own energy into porn. When I'm stressed at work or at home, especially near a work deadline, I will hide from my fears by immersing myself in hours and hours of porn.
   
   
2. I think porn is bad for the people (especially the women) in the industry. Reading and watching the experiences of some of the women who have got out is shocking. I do not want to be a part of that.
   
   
3. I think porn is bad for women the world over. It helps support an environment where men feel OK objectifying and sexually exploiting women.
   
   
4. Porn makes me a hypocrite. I consider myself a feminist and yet I have this secret world of porn. Quitting porn makes me feel true to what I believe.
   
   
5. Eventually my porn use ate away at my wife's self esteem until in 2010 she told me she could not cope any more and I had to give up porn or she would have to leave. I started getting serious about giving up then. But it's been a long journey, and I am not clear yet. I doubt I will ever be.

I wrote these lists back in October so I might reflect differently now. I'd certainly swap to the past tense for the second list.

I am sorry this is such a long post, I do not want to hijack your thread. I hope it helps and more than that I hope your husband can join me on this road to a life free of porn.

 

@Ash89 I am sorry you are here and going through this. It is a really difficult thing. I totally understand the double life thing. I feel like everything has been a lie since I didn't know about this our whole marriage (13+ years) as well, so you are not alone in that. Hugs to you.

I'm curious on what the difference is for you? Why is porn not unfaithful but cam girls are?

 

The main reason is interaction. The women in pornography do not interact with me at all, they are interacting with other actors, a camera, and a camera crew, not me. I was 'just' a consumer. Cam girls are not like that. Part of what made it so intoxicating was getting to know each other first, before they undress. That's how I knew in my heart that it counted as infidelity.

Another is how it affected us. For the years between 1989 and 2010 my wife could tolerate (or turn a blind eye to) my pornography use. She was not happy about it but it was not a deal breaker. Infidelity would have been, and cam girls were.

I know that many of the wives here see this in very black-and-white terms, and that after discovering their husband's pornography use it is important to them that all his erotic thoughts are about them. For them anything else is infidelity. But to me it feels to me like a continuum. At one end of the continuum is total monogamy of thought and deed, and at the other is having a consummated affair. Pornography and cam girls fit on that continuum, but not in the same place. Somewhere on the continuum is the point beyond which everything is infidelity. When I used porn I assumed it was not an infidelity (for the reasons above), now I think it was.

(N.B. I guess another point on the continuum, using prostitutes, would be even worse than cam girls. I never did that.)

But it is not that simple. If someone asked me "Have you ever cheated on your wife?" I would assume that they meant "Have you slept with another woman since marrying your wife?", I would answer "No" rather than "Yes, I viewed pornography".

How about you @TryingToHeal, is it all infidelity?

 

OK, I didn't know there was that much interaction, as in you having conversations with them beforehand. I mean I knew they were undressing, doing whatever acts you requested, or whatever. To me that would be super similar to you just searching whatever term you were wanting to see and watching it. Only difference being one only you can see and one everyone can see. But if there is an emotional component here, talking with them, getting to know them, etc., I see where that is different.

For me, my husband knew I thought it was cheating 13 years ago (we had been together a couple of years at that point before we discussed it). The fact that he continued to do it all that time yeah, I see that black and white because there was no question there what I thought of it. He knew. If a couple hasn't discussed this, I could see it being a greyish area. But honestly, to me I only see it as cheating. I know some don't, I can't see it any other way, though. It makes it worse for me that my husband said for the first year or two we met that he didn't use porn. His reason was he was committed to me then. Imagine how that feels hearing it? To me that says he was then not committed the rest of the time he was using it (13 years). He swears he didn't mean it that way, but really?

If cam girls or people in porn are receiving money for sexual acts, that fits the definition of prostitute as far as I can see it. I know a lot of them receive money directly from the consumer, or some via ads on their videos/sites even if you aren't paying them.
I hope this doesn't offend anyone, I don't mean to, this was just a discussion I had with my husband as well and we looked up the actual definition. Here it is via google.

pros·ti·tute
ˈprästəˌt(y)o͞ot/
noun
noun: prostitute; plural noun: prostitutes

1. 1.
   a person, in particular a woman, who engages in sexual activity for payment.
   synonyms: call girl, whore; More
   
   • a person who misuses their talents or who sacrifices their self-respect for the sake of personal or financial gain.
     "careerist political prostitutes"

I can see why you'd answer that way to someone else. My husband probably would too even though he knows I feel that he cheated by using porn. He feels this way as well. But that isn't really a discussion he'd want to get into with someone else, I don't think. I would be he would answer something like "No, I haven't ever physically cheated."

Hopefully I answered that above for you but yes, to me it is all infidelity. I feel his wedding vows were broken.

 

I have a journal on here if you want to read it all but it's long. Basically I found out over a year ago last year on Thanksgiving that he was viewing P. Then in July I found out it was an addiction (lots of p-subs during that time, too). I had told him 13 years prior that and all along that I thought P was cheating. I defined cheating as anything you wouldn't do with your partner right there next to you. He knew that, agreed, etc. so to find this out was a real shock.
It's been a roller coaster with ups and downs. He is trying, he's changed, I see that, but it doesn't make it go away. I have not forgiven or moved on. I fear it will always be there but I don't want it to be. It just is what it is right now.

 

@TryingToHeal, I think we’re talking at cross purposes about using prostitutes, but it’s not what this thread is about so I’ll drop it for now.