Should I tell my girlfriend I am trying to recover?

I think you should tell when the relationship is becoming serious. At the point when you’ve both decided to be exclusive to each other. Then she can make a choice to enter into that with full knowledge that her partner is addicted to pornography.

I will tell you that 1 week on hard mode is not sufficient to know if you’re actually free from porn addiction. Generally, it’s 90 days at minimum and more realistically, a year free.

 

Honesty really is the best policy. U should not waste this girls time staying with her n pretending u don't have a problem. Waiting til the relationship becomes "serious" will only result in u causing her more pain. If ur asking this question, u already know the right thing to do.

 

Here's my experience... I would start a new relationship and my desire for P would be much less for the first few months but would come creeping back in time. Not sure if it was just the excitement of a new relationship that gave me my fix or not. But that feeling would go away and back to P I'd go.

As far as telling your girlfriend all I can say there is I always hid this and didn't tell anyone. I always thought it would just naturally go away. It hasn't and I'm now dealing with the consequences. Honestly is absolutely key. And I would suggest not dating anyone until this issue is resolved. This is what I would tell my younger self anyway.

 

Although I understand the angle in which @ANewFocus is coming from, I agree with @Whatsbroken because it may freak her out when it gets serious between both of you. She possibly will confront you as to why she was not informed much earlier on? And what will your answer be then? I felt ashamed of my addiction and so I felt the right time to tell you is if our relationship goes to the next level?

Trust me I know that sinking feeling one has when trying to digest the reasons to NOT tell a partner about the issue, but the truth is, we must be honest. Tell her buddy. And go from there. What do you think? @Seahorsesareweird

 

I understand the logic of tell her now. It’s an honest sincere approach. I just don’t agree with it and have never seen it work. There is still a large stigma around porn addiction. Long-term dating is about learning about and exploring each other. It’s not, tell everyone everything in the first month. No one would ever stay if that’s the case.

After a month, you barely know enough about the other person to know if they are worthy of your most intimate secret.

Relationships aren’t about not hurting the other person or not wasting their time under all conditions. In long-term relationships, we consistently disappoint each other and hurt each other through the years. It’s normal for people to go through 2-3 years relationships that fail. It’s life and life is about experiences, both good and bad.

 

Totally get this point. For that reason I think it's a better approach to deal with addiction before starting a relationship.

What happened to me was I would convince myself that I could solve this without telling others for the reasons you point out. But then I didn't ever actually deal with the issue. It became all too convenient to kick that can down the road.

At the very least I would tell my younger self not to get too serious physically while I delt with my issues. The problem was other than that I knew it was wrong.. I didn't realize how serious of an issue it was so my motivation to stop wasn't there.

 

And I agree with you completely on this.