Strong personalities

...is he giving your husband an excuse?

 

And I would suggest getting a new therapist, lol...

But if I remember your story corrrectly, you were way more sexually experienced when meeting him. Maybe this could have played a role (albeit a very small one).

But the real question is:
Does it even matter why we started?
Does that knowledge help us overcome it?

IMO the answer is no.

This is one of the reasons why I didn´t go to therapy yet.
Friend of mine went to therapy and they tied every problem she had to one event in her childhood.
Great, but does that help anyone? IMO a more sensible approach is to look at times, where the addiction was losing its grip. And then try to repeat the exact behavior that was responsible for the addiction to become better.

 

Also, didn't you say that he was using long before you two met?

 

He used P because it was nice. He carried on because it was nice and also engrained in his behaviour and harder to stop than to continue. He is now stopping because of how you feel about it and because your relationship is more valuable to him than cheap thrills. The extent of his use and when he chose to use will be influenced by factors such as relationship issues, work stress, your schedules and how often he is alone, how frequent sex is, how valued he feels by you and in general by others etc etc. But men do not need a reason to start using P in the first place. It has its obvious appeal and we all discovered it before our relationships. Our friends too. We have used it and compartmentalised it from our romantic relationships. We have watched our friends do the same (perhaps watched is not quite the right phrase...). When the reasons to stop become obvious (PIED, escalation to behaviours that disturb us or our partners, or the possibility of our SO leaving) then our perspective on P has to shift. Then the reasons why we continue become difficult to explain and require reference to psychology, addiction, theory of mind, game theory and so on as the PA's behaviour quite clearly does not match up with his intentions or his best interests if he continues to use, but that is what so often happens. There is likely no simple answer to your partners P use during your relationship, but you may discover and solve a number of issues that have contributed and thus strengthen your relationship by going through the process of therapy. Good luck.

 

My thoughts on this are that the SOs with "weak" personalities don't make it to NoFAP, because they are not proactive and don't Google enough to find help. They might be stuck in their bad relationships without knowing what to do. And even if they do make it here, they may be less vocal and open.

 

In my BF's case, that would be, when he had no access to the internet, which nowadays is almost impossible to achieve, especially that his work is ALL on the internet. He would have to change his job and become a lumberjack in order to repeat that scenario.

 

But surely a SO who has truly beat their addiction and can use the internet without the risk of using P again is preferable to one who only abstains from P due to lack of availability. My wife gets hit on all the time but wants to be with me. That is much nicer than moving her to the countryside or locking her in a tower away from all the attractive men out there.

 

My wife does have a strong personality, but my addiction had started before I met her.

 

I have a strong personality as well but I believe his addiction was also before me. He was able to conceal it bc we were "trying" (very poorly may I add) to abstain from having sex until marriage.

 

I have a strong personality (I know, hard to believe ) and my hubby started way before he met me, even though I didn't know it.

 

I'm a strong personality.
Although, I gave him "permission"
Rock_Star said that it allowed him to crash and burn his already there addiction and that was the way he was able to properly get help.
Still not sure about how I feel about this... Onwards!

 

Nah. My SO has one of the strongest personalities I've ever met. Didn't have anything to do with me using P. Addiction ultimately comes down to a personal choice, wether we want to admit it or not.

 

Maybe the correlation is not that people with SOs with strong personalities are more likely to get into P, but that people with SOs with strong personalities are more likely to try hard to quit and end up here. An SO with strong personality is more likely to be strongly against P and M, convinced that they can be quit, and strong enough to live alone if they are not.

 

Nailed it.