My Introduction - Partner of Longtime Porn Addict - Feeling Hopeless & Traumatised

Hi, I have just joined NoFap and would like to introduce myself....

I am not really sure where to begin and find it difficult to believe that I am here in this situation yet again and writing this after so many years of it. It has been a long row to hoe and I feel like I’ve been to hell and back again countless times on this nightmare journey with my PA husband.

We are married and have been together for 21 years and have 3 children. He is a lifelong porn addict starting back in his teenage years. I am 42 and he is 50 years old. I was unware of his porn addiction when we first met back in 1997. I was 21 when we met, he was 29. We occasionally looked at porn together back then but I had no idea of his history with porn addiction and after we were married and had children we never looked at porn together. Our lives were so busy and the focus was on raising our children and being a family. For the most part we had a pretty good relationship and we always had a good sex life but porn was not something that we got into together.

The first D Day was just over 7 years ago. I perhaps would have cottoned on to this much sooner if he didn’t work in IT and have covered his tracks so well and made sure there was never ever a trace of anything. I have been through ongoing hell since then. The lies, the betrayals, the trauma, pain and suffering I have felt and endured in this time feels like a lifetime and a life sentence.

There have been quite a number of D Days now over the past 7 years despite his ongoing promises and lies that it’s no longer happening, he doesn’t look at porn or masturbate anymore, he doesn’t feel the need for it, he wouldn’t do that anymore because he doesn’t want to hurt me, he’s learned and grown and is a changed person now – it’s all been nothing but LIES, AFTER LIES, AFTER LIES!!! I’ve come to believe that he’s nothing but a compulsive liar and perhaps even leaning toward sociopathic behaviour because he expresses no real remorse, caring or understanding toward me. Somehow, he always manages to turn everything around and despite me feeling victimised and traumatised and in so much pain he plays the victim. He can’t see that he is the perpetrator of this whole situation, its his actions and his choices that have us in this ongoing vicious cycle instead he behaves like he’s the victim and what I’m going through is really not that bad and he can’t understand how I could be so affected and traumatised by it all.

For the most part over the past 7 years he has been in nothing but total denial but it’s really not as simple as that because for years now he tells me what he thinks I want to hear or need to hear but all the while believing none of it himself and not following through on any of his commitments or agreements. For example, he has repeatedly told me for years now that he knows he has a problem and a porn / masturbation addiction and it really started back in his younger years but then on the flip side has also repeatedly told me for years that he doesn’t believe he has a problem anymore and it was never that bad, and that he has healed/fixed himself even though he hasn’t done any really work on himself. In the past 7 years, if what I understand is true, he has had a few occasions where he hasn’t looked at porn for a few weeks. That is it. And even during those periods he was still masturbating. He masturbates compulsively everyday during his morning showers and has done pretty much his entire life. And there were many periods of time he was masturbating up to 5 or 6 times a day whether it be at home or at work in the toilets.

We have tried various types of intervention / help, all which I instigated and pushed for him to do. To this day he hasn’t instigated anything toward his own healing or recovery. Most times he has agreed to go along with it but was not ever really that committed because I don’t feel he has ever truly felt he has a problem but more he feels that I’m the one whose got a problem with his porn / masturbation addiction behaviour and have made an overexaggerated and unnecessary issue of it. Even though I feel it has destroyed our marriage and our lives in such a way that nothing else has.

About 6 years ago we tried seeing a relationship counsellor but she had no background in porn or sex addiction and I felt so traumatised, angry, and in pain that I don’t think she really got it and neither of us could really relate to her so that ended after 2 sessions. Unfortunately, we don’t have any therapists in our area that particularly specialise in porn / masturbation addiction.

I have done years of reading and research online about porn addiction, the way it chemically changes the PA’s brain, the addiction to dopamine, the affects of depression, anxiety, low self esteem etc…as well as much reading on the trauma that partners of PA’s experience all of which I can totally relate to. My husband has done little reading or research on porn addiction in this time bar a few articles that I practically forced him to read and has not shown any interest. Most likely due to his denial and because he felt he didn’t have time for it and had better ways to spend his free time like, watching movies, TV shows or playing games on his mobile.

About 4 years ago, I suggested that he join a SLAA group as maybe that would help. He did attend this weekly for about 12 months and didn’t seem to mind going. He doesn’t have any friends that he socialises with and so I think he felt good to be connecting with other men. The downside in my opinion was that many of these men had much worse problems than porn addiction. Many had full on sex addictions where they were having multiple sex encounters with others while in relationships. I didn’t feel him getting close to these kinds of men was a good influence in anyway. He started becoming infatuated or preoccupied with thoughts about how these men manage to have so many sexual encounters with prostitutes and/or other women without getting caught. I started to feel threatened by this especially so because only 3 months prior to starting SLAA I had discovered that he had created an account with a local Meet up for a Fuck website. At the time he tried to assure me that he had no intention of meeting up with anyone for sex but was just curious and wanted to look at the pictures on these women’s profiles. Either way I was feeling threatened and very disturbed by it and felt this group was perhaps doing more harm than good and so he agreed to stop going.

About 3 years ago, I suggested that we both go to separate psychologists. My doctor was able to find one for him who dealt with sex addiction but not so much porn addiction. He attended about 6 sessions but didn’t feel he was getting much out of it and so stopped going. I have no real idea of how honest or real he was being about his addiction with the therapist. Given how much he has lived in denial over the years it’s possible that he wasn’t 100% forthcoming about the extent of his problem.

Not long after this, I found Recovery Nation online. Recovery Nation has a very extensive and free Online Course for Sex/Porn Addicts, Partners of Sex/Porn Addicts and also a program for Couples in Recovery. The course was designed by a former Sex Addict but was also tailored toward Porn Addiction. I was so pleased to come across this after years of trying to find something that would help. I immediately started the course for Partners of Sex/Porn Addicts and encouraged my husband to join and to participate in the online forum and to start doing the program. At first he was reluctant, but then with my persuasion, warmed up to the idea and joined. He started the program but then read the book by Jon Marsh, the guy that started Recovery Nation and decided that given that Jon was a sex addict and much worse than him that he didn’t need to do the program even though it was still very much tailored toward Porn Addicts as well. He only completed the first couple of topics and then decided that was it, he didn’t need it and it didn’t suit him. I was devasted and told him that if he doesn’t do something that I can’t see how our relationship can keep going like this. Basically, he said he would rather leave than to have to go through all this work on himself. For about 9 months I desperately tried to get him to attempt to complete the program and just give it a chance and that it might help. He point blankly refused.

I started looking into Porn Addiction books that he could read and perhaps work through the exercises and suggestions they contained. He agreed he would read some. He read one and at the time said he felt it helped and didn’t need to continue reading any others.

This is last kind of recovery or help he has done for himself and that was about 2 years ago. We have had regular discussions over the last couple of years with me giving him a safe open space for him to talk about his addiction and for him to be open and honest with me about anything that might still be going on. Everytime, he has assured me that he is no longer looking at porn anymore, that he hasn’t felt the need to look at anything in years and he doesn’t even feel the urge or need to do it anymore.

I should also mention that about 5 years ago I put Accountable2You monitoring software on his phone and that the computer at home was password protected so he could only use it when I was home and he was not in a separate room on his own.

Three weeks ago, I discovered a whole lot of porn and sexually explicit movies that he has been watching on his laptop at work. His workplace has monitoring software obviously so he wasn’t on porn sites as such but instead had everything on hard drives. For years now, he has had this obsession of collecting movies and TV shows on hard drives and there must be about 8 hard drives with thousands of movies/TV shows. Most of these are normal movies etc….but I’ve discovered he was keeping a couple of hard drives at work that contained porn and movies with loads of female nudity and sexually explicit scenes. I also found some of these on the hard drives at home but hidden under different movie titles.

For years, we have argued over the extra time he spends at work and why??? His work hours are 7.30am to 3.40pm with 20-25min travel time each way. There have been countless times over the years where he would leave for work at 6.30am and not get home until 5-5.30pm. I often felt he could be spending time on his work computer looking at porn but he assured me he was not and that he was extremely busy and had a lot of work on. Although, I do believe this has been the case in many instances, it is now very obvious that he was also using his time to look at porn everyday at work. The only reason I now know this is because about 18 months ago they were all issued with laptops that they can take home with them to do work after hours when required. Even though he never bought his hard drives home I was able to access information on his laptop which showed the titles and dates of what he’s been viewing from his hard drives on his laptop. At work he was also using his computer to watch porn and view videos and images of naked women etc through YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Vimeo, Pinterest, Tumblr and google images. Through using these sites it is harder to trace what is being viewed exactly.

Once again, through my efforts, I have encouraged him to join NoFap which he has and he is also reading Your Brain on Porn and another book too. I am trying to encourage him to join in on discussions and participate by posting in the forums. He has started a PM Reboot and I now also have monitoring software on his laptop. He has given me his hard drives from work but he is part of a group where they all share movies at work and this is where a lot of the porn and nudity/sex scene movies have come from. He assures me he won’t be getting any more but how does one even control that and like he said if he really wanted to he could easily get a media player and watch stuff from hard drives or USB's on that which I’d never know about because it’d be at work and unmonitored.

So here I am, once again feeling betrayed, lied too, traumatised, lost and stuck in this never ending vicious cycle of his addiction…..I feel like the last 7 years have been nothing but traumatic and wasted years of my life where everyday has been polluted and centralised around his addiction, trying to get him to deal with his problem and struggling and trying to cope with my own pain and trauma.

I’m sorry this has been such a long post but I really just needed to vent and get this all off my chest. I feel so helpless and feel like everything is just a vicious repeated cycle, and that I’ve been here before so many times, venting and expressing my pain and frustration and I’m just so tired and exhausted of it all…..I don’t know what to do anymore…..

 

Thanks for your reply. Yeah its a long road.... So many times I've just wanted to leave. Him addicted to porn our entire marriage (21 years) is just f***ing depressing. I've read quite a bit on betrayal trauma and what it is and how it feels but not so much on how to deal with it. Would love any suggested reading / articles if you have any links....

 

@GhostWriter

Thank you GhostWriter - I will certainly check these out.

And thank you so much for your support and your honesty. I feel for your spouse too because I know what I've been through. I will be needing all the help I can get and will definitely reach out for sure. Best of luck on your healing journey as well.

 

@MikeDownUnder

Openness & honesty in any relationship or marriage in my opinion is absolutely crucial. It's the foundation for Trust and if you don't have it, then the quality of the relationship doesn't really equate to much.

In our situation, in all the time we've been married (21 years) NOT ONCE did he ever come to me and admit his porn addiction or that he's been looking at porn - not once! Even after being caught out multiple times - this is where it's a real problem to me.

Like I said to him many times, if only he at anytime during our relationship had come forth and been honest with me about it, it would have saved me a lot of pain and suffering. Knowing that he was looking at porn or had a problem would have been hurtful but the fact that he was man enough to be honest with me would have counted for something. I would have had a lot more respect for him and appreciation for his honesty, even if it was hard to bare. I also would have found it easier to rebuild trust in him, because he had come to me in the first place.

This is not our situation. Most of the pain and suffering that I have endured is due to the ongoing lies, even after each and every time I busted him, he still kept doing it and still kept lying about it, despite promising me that if he did it again that he would come to me and tell me and we would work through it - but he never ever did and never has to this day!!! Even up until 3 weeks ago, the only reason I found out is because I busted him yet again.

In short, I would rather have found out in the beginning of our marriage or early into it rather than 14 years later. But I would have expected honesty from that point forward and him to get into serious recovery. If he had told me after 20 years, I would no doubt still feel betrayed and would be deeply hurt that I was married to someone who had been lying to me for 2 decades. But if he was serious about helping himself and then went into recovery and was truly honest with me from that point forward then I would be hopeful that maybe he could heal and we could move forward. I'd probably find it easier to trust him again because he made himself vulnerable and opened up to me. But if after telling me, the behaviour continued and he just hid it and lied about it for years to come, and was busted over and over again, and still kept lying, then that's where the real pain and suffering comes.....

A bit long winded - but I hope that answers your question.

 

@GhostWriter

Yes, I can understand what you are saying here. But at what point does the addict begin to understand the need to be honest first and how CRITICAL that honesty is, regardless of what bomb they believe will drop. Can an addict ever get that? Will they ever get it at some point? Or is it just a case that because they are an addict that they will never get it, no matter how much recovery work they do on themselves?

I want to be there to walk the walk with him. But in all these years, he's the one who is not walking the walk with me. It's so difficult. His time and grace have just about run out. And although we haven't gone our separate ways yet, I already constantly hear what you are saying from him, except that he blames it all on me. So because I feel betrayed, traumatised, angry and upset with how his porn addiction affects me, that it's all my fault that he feels not good enough and that he feels unworthy. He turns everything around and makes out he's the victim.

I have a partner who is very pigheaded and hates to be wrong. So trying to get him to acknowledge anything is like pulling teeth. Just trying to get him to acknowledge he has an addiction and the way to beat it is by doing some real work on himself, is like trying to climb Mt Everest. And he is never consistent in what he says. One day he'll agree he has a problem and needs to work on himself, then only days/weeks later he is minimising it and saying that it's not really that bad and so he doesn't need to do anything. He's also very lazy and it's hard to get him to consistently put any effort into recovery work.

I don't ever feel safe or secure in my relationship anymore. Not because the pain runs deep or the memories never subside (and that's true the pain does run deep) but because of the ongoing lies. I can't feel safe or secure because I can never truly know if anything he says is real or the truth or whether he will keep his word or follow through on his agreements. That's what makes me feel so unsafe and insecure in the relationship.

Find out what? I don't understand really what you mean here as I don't have a background on your situation. Do you mean unless she shows willingness to find out that you have learnt and you now understand that what an addict does and the way they think is totally irrational or do you mean unless she shows willingness to seek out and find that you are still being dishonest that you wouldn't just come forth and be honest with her?

 

@Thor god of thunder

Thanks for that. I seen that YouTube link somewhere as well & saved it - still to watch it though.

I often listen to podcasts so I will check both them out.

Thanks heaps for your suggestions!

 

Thanks @FallAway....I hear you loud and clear!! Its all the same here. He constantly tells me he understands, then everything that he does or says and how callous and uncaring he can be, I'm thinking what on earth are you actually understanding??? Glad you're not feeling alone, and believe me, it's so good for me to feel understood too...

 

@Lady1975

I am so sorry you are going through this....and yes words don't seem to do any justice for the pain of so many years of lies and betrayal....believe me, I feel you! It has taken me many years to understand that my husband wasn't doing it to me a such and to this day I even still struggle with this....all the information out there will say that we didn't cause it, it's not because we weren't or aren't good enough, it wouldn't have mattered what we did or who we were - it wouldn't have stopped it from happening. I understand that and believe it (mind you over the years you'd be surprised how many times he has actually tried to blame me for it) But either way it doesn't change the betrayal pain and the feeling that I am not special too him, that I had never been special to him and that anything sexually related that was supposed to be shared just between the two of us, was not. Instead our entire relationship of 21 years, consists of his sexual thoughts and behaviours with me as well as the countless other women he viewed and lusted after and got off on.

Yep, I've had all the denial too....but for many years longer. The worst of it was that he would finally admit that he had an addiction, but then over time would minimise it and say that it's really not that bad, or others are worse, or that he's healed himself now and it's no longer a problem....this happened multiple times over the years. It was almost like he was just admitting to it so then he could later down the track try and convince me of his sobriety and that he's definitely no longer doing anything.

My husband was doing the exact same thing....

Yep, I got this one too. But it wasn't like we weren't having sex. When the kids were much younger it definitely wasn't as frequent, I was so busy....I had our 3 children very close together, so I was extremely busy and exhausted a lot. I think most mums are but it certainly wasn't non existent that's for sure....the interesting thing is since I discovered his porn use 7 years ago he has also tried to blame me in multiple other ways too.....

It's been the same here too....last 7 years (since first D Day) many many arguments.

This all sounds so very familiar. And him saying "that he is done with that life because he can see the pain and hurt it had caused and would never again do anything that hurts me" DON'T BELIEVE IT FOR A SECOND!!! I can't tell you how many times my husband said this too me as well and every time it turned about to be LIES!!! This is what has caused me EVEN MORE PAIN!!! The fact that he has told me countless times he can see my pain, how his problem is destroying me and my life and he won't do it anymore. But it's never stopped. Even though he reckoned he could see my pain, could see the breakdowns and how it was destroying me, he still kept doing it all the while LYING about it!!! and still refused to be consistent and ongoing with any type of recovery....none of it has made any sense to me. Why do you think because you have joined accounts that you can see what he is doing online? Do you mean you have a joint google account/email. We had the same. Not for the purpose of monitoring him as such. We just already had it before I even discovered any of this. He later setup his own google account which he never told me about. Some time later I discovered this and also found that 3 months earlier he'd signed up to a local "Meet up for a Fuck site" through it. The latest D Day only a couple of months ago it came to light, that he had setup yet another google account that I didn't know about approx 4 years ago and had been using it for the past 4 years without my knowledge to sign up to various porn subs like twitter, vimeo, pinterest, flickr, youtube, and multiple others....and what about Incognito Mode? And his phone or other devices?

Don't believe for a second that he is done with it!!! Not until he goes into genuine recovery and you are not the one who is having to push him to do it. If he does, keep watch that he's consistent and it's long long term. My husband started many things, as per my original post but mainly because I was pushing for it and he was doing it to make it look to me that he was genuinely in recovery but all the while he was still in actual denial (not telling me that of course) and he believed his problem wasn't that bad. Each time, he lost motivation and wasn't consistent and they all faded out....and him saying that he no longer needed it and felt that he now had control over it. They have to genuinely realise they have a problem and he has to want to get himself help and actually do it all himself. You doing it for him does not work - believe me I've done it!!! I am still struggling to pull myself back and not do things for him to this very day.

I remember going through this about 5 or 6 years ago....but I had no problem telling him about it either. I told him I feel like doing this, not because I actually feel like being with another person but because I want him to feel the pain I am feeling...I said it to him a lot of times actually because I was going through ongoing hell everyday....day in, day out.... He eventually told me "Well just go do it then!! If that's what it's going to take for you to get it out of your system then just do it. I don't care. I don't want you to but if it means that you will get over all of this pain and trauma then just do it!!

I feel I have become all those things too. I don't know if the pain ever stops??? I would like to think so. It has been 7 years and I am still in enormous amounts of pain....but because it's been going on so long I have also kind of numbed to it I think. I feel a lot of anger and rage.... Have you looked into Betrayal Trauma?? If not, this will really help you. There are lots of books, videos and things on it. There is a link in the Partner Support Forum - PA & SO Resources and there are some links to things on BT in there too.

I wish you all the best. I don't have a lot of advice at this point, I am still learning and have much to learn myself and it's all a process. The biggest thing I can say is you need to focus on your own healing, and he has to focus on his recovery, and then together you should both focus on healing the relationship. It's a 3 part process....

I hope the NoFap community helps you and you feel you have a place you can reach out and connect with others going through same or similar difficulties. Perhaps even suggest to your husband to join NF if he hasn't already....xx