Need an SO's Perspective

IMO the first few months are the hardest. She is probably questioning everything wondering was was real. The best you can do is be there for her, listen and be consistent. Answer all her questions and don't hold back. Get it all out, but don't overwhelm her. Time and consistency are the two biggest things to help with healing.

 

1. Complete honesty, don’t omit things that you know you should tell her. Don’t “trickle the truth” that will cause intense damage.
2. Patience- it takes a loooong time to heal, long time to trust again.... be sweet and kind.
3. Space. But ask her what she needs from you... and give it to her.

 

All the stuff the other SO’s said. Avoid diminishing her feelings, however extreme. Avoid diminishing the impact of addiction on yourself, her, your relationship. Realize that if you ask her to stay with you through this, you are asking for a huge thing. She should examine the potential future she will have with you if you do not overcome addiction.

Good for you for admitting this to her rather than let her find out on her own.

 

i know men often think porn is no big deal but to women it often is, we often think we are not enough for you, that you want to do those things to us, to cheat, that you are secretly violent and want to control us. it feels like we knew you and now we don't. you are the predator we are taught from a young age to fear. also why cant you just be satisfied with her you have probably rejected her for porn. this hurts wheither it be sexual non sexual. we are not encouraged to enjoy or initiate sex.
however unfair or wrong she may be feeling or thinking this is probably how she she feels.you need to acknowledge that. she probably needs time. yes it is your addiction and has little to do with her but it will have affected her and she does feel betrayed. remind her why you love each other. be your best self show her you are kind and loving and caring.
anyway well done and good luck!

 

As an ex SO I second third and fourth what everyone has said, absolute honesty is the best thing you can do. Be honest to a fault. Take her lead as far as how much she wants to know about your addiction and the behaviors, but ask her, say what do you want me to tell you? Then tell her, don’t hold back tell her what she wants to know. Put her feelings before those of your own, that’s hard for addicts. The betrayal is likely worse for her than the actual PMO addiction, so you need to recognize that and work to rebuild trust. Know it will take time, so give her that time, don’t rush or push her. Forgiveness is on her timeline and that is going to be a lot longer than you think it should be. I anticipate that your relationship has been going south for awhile, she just did not know why. If you have had problems in the bedroom, or avoiding sex she likely feels unattractive and unloved. Even if you have not, PMO addicts have sex in such a way that women feel used and lack of connection. Recommend that she see a counselor , go to one y ourself and go together.

 

I have to disagree with you a bit that a betrayal is a betrayal and at a certain point it does not matter if he slept with 1 or 101 prostitutes because it would matter to me and I suspect to many others.
When rebuilding trust the person who has lost trust is the guide on what they need. So they may very well want or need to know something you think they don’t but you will never know that if you don’t ask. The risk you run is that if she did want to know and you don’t tell her and she later find out (always does) then it appears as a second, third or fourth betrayal and you are back to square one on rebuilding. And each time you break trust it’s harder the next time to rebuild. The only person I can see that benefits from not telling is the addict who does not want to. And often the addict tells themselves that the decision not to tell is in the SOs best interest to justify not telling all. But only the SO gets to decide what’s in her best interest not the addict and if the addict is avoiding disclosure of a particular thing because they know it would likely cause the SO to leave, or see you differently then you absolutely need to tell and not doing so imo is lying. An SO recovering from betrayal should never find something out about you that does not come from you. If she finds it out on her own or from another source then all the trust you have gained is gone.

Every person recovers from betrayal differently and each of us needs to know different things at different levels. The addicts job is to say “I am an open book I will tell you every single thing you want to know no matter how embarrassing or tough it is,” and do that. When a pmo addict shares something with an SO that is very though for he or she to share and does so voluntarily with no push back that shows most SOs that you truly want to rebuild.

 

It could matter the 100 versus the 101 it really depends on how much trust has been lost and each person. To some betrayed even the simple little white lies or half truths are devastating particularly early on. And the whole thing can turn a normally easy going person like myself into a raging maniac who questions every single thing the addict does. To complicate things the PMO addict is looking often for that easy going partner and does not understand, why if he was an hour late getting home from happy hour she’s pissed, because she never would be before. The way that the PMO addict interacts with his partner is totally different. There are certainly things you don’t recall and you cannot be held accountable for that, but the addict should make sure he truly does not recall and it’s not a situation where the addict does recall, he or she just does not want to tell. It’s sort of like when I am questioning a witness and every single answer is I do not recall, hmmm. .. Just some thoughts that others might encounter based on my personal experience.

 

It does make a difference and the biggest reason it makes a difference is because you are fighting not to tell it. And if my ex or partner started saying things like “it should not make a difference,” my question is well then why would you not tell it? People don’t reveal things for a reason. So if 101 versus 100 in your mind makes no difference then why is revealing 101 such a big deal? To me as an SO that says, you are not truly there yet, you are still trying to keep some things from me, and you are still fighting with me, when you should totally be just falling on your sword. That to me was one of the biggest factors as to why I could not forgive my ex, the constant fighting for him to have something he could still hide and be justified in doing so. It also would say to me that the addict did not understand my pain and was not truly sorry. My whole point in this is you cannot judge the SOs feelings, by what you or the addict thinks does not make a difference, since you are not in their mind. Even if you do not understand that it does make a difference to them, you need to accept that it does and proceed accordingly. Bottom line just tell.

 

I would need tk know to forgive. I can only forgive what i know. For instance i was not aware that this one p stsr he looked at it was starting to be an emotional thing.. Once he figured it out and told me we worked througg it and i forgave him for that one thing in his addiction.

Just like Sam says in affair recovery videos "you cant heal from what you refuse to talk about"... i think "you cant forgive what you dont know"

So i could forgive 100 prostitutes but i wouldnt ve able to forgive 101 without knlwing the details because what if 101 had something the first 100 didnt. what if 101 there was an emotional affair starting? you know?

 

You had me .. up until this line.

Full, open, honest disclosure does not equal "feeding the betrayal" ..... I know you don't mean that, but throwing those 5 words in the middle there --- it didn't feel right.

I do understand your general question: how important is it to share every particular detail about every part of acting out?

The answer is there is no answer. It is 100% up to the SO.

 

I'd also want to know about #101. It does matter to me. I want it all out there, period. Plus the reasons that Anna said.

But in addiction to just wanting to know, I also think it is important to get it all out since it may come up later and if I didn't know about it, it would feel like he didn't disclose everything the first time, which sets the healing and trust back.

 

I’m thankful for you saying this. I hadn’t really let that gel in my mind before. My SO used to have sex with me in a fairly connected way. After he mostly stopped having sex with me for PMO, even when we did it felt like he was doing it like a job or a least just for his pleasure. I felt used when we did have sex and undesireable when we didn’t.

 

This is me 100%.

 

Or as my mom used to tell us as kids when we kept asking why about every single thing “because.” Why do I need to know all the details, because I do.

 

Yes. Exactly so.

 

@GhostWriter
In my case.... The #101, was the most protected one.
The one he actually cared about.
I freely got the information about the other 100, it was the last one he tried to bury and protect that mattered most...
The last one Absolutely matters.
Every Single one does.
Just my opinion.

Or...
How do you know u are #1?
Or can ever be again??

 

Absolutely this!