On my biggest streak I had (11 days) I had my first erection just from a hot thought again after 8 days and had great sex with my GF after 10 days. This was already a gigantic success for me, but then I destroyed it all again by being so overwhelmed by this success that I opened up to my GF about my success and the next morning I shared my porn addiction with her and that I think I am on a good way to get out of it by feeling what it already did to me after 10 days. I was so happy. Somehow I was thinking that she also sees the last night as a success and that she would support me on my way to overcome the addiction e.g. by telling we that if I ever feel too much urge, I can always come to her for sexual relief. BUT ... This was the moment when she was shocked and wanted me to leave her alone. Then she wanted to pause the relationship. We only meet to talk now and it looks like the relationship of 2+ years is slowly breaking up cause of me sharing my secret - and of course I relapsed after that. 3 days in a row, I spent every waking hour with dick in hand. I went completely numb. Now I came here an find a lot of support. Support I expected from my GF. It still feels like a graveyard down there. My first thought is that like to shout out to everyone: DON'T SHARE YOUR ADDICTION PROBLEMS WITH YOUR PARTNER!!! But maybe you have made other experiences with sharing your addiction with your partner. I would be interested in YOUR STORY of coming out and how your partner reacted, so I can related this to my relationship and maybe it will help me in the decision to try again or walk away from her.
So many things about how you did it may be the cause of her being angry (or whatever you wanna call it). Might be the "betrayal" of you watching porn while being with her, might be you telling her you can come to her for sexual relief (as if that was what she is there for), might be your excitation when telling her about your success instead of going firstly with exposing the problem, might be her realisation that your ED problem (I assume this from your text) had an identified cause all along. Open up to her, express your feelings and hope she understands and is supportive. But also know that she has a lot to process right now and that might take time to sink in.
Thanks for advice I have not asked for. Not really helping to tell me what I've done wrong. Don't you think I tell that to myself over and over again?
Hi @Smeggo I believe telling our partner about our addiction is the best thing I can do, even if things do not turn out as we expect. Over the past week I had some P&M slips. When I masturbated I did not tell my fiancee. Upon escalating to mild porn and masturbation I knew I had to tell her, so I did. Last night I went into hardcore porn pics and masturbation. Once again, I told her. She seems supportive of me, though I know I it's important to talk more about this when I see her face to face. We do not have sex together since we are leaving it for marriage. I told her about my porn problem fairly early on in our relationship so telling her about my slip into porn doesn't come completely out of left field. She thanks for for opening up to her. This said, I should not take her apparent understanding for granted. My best advice is to apologize to her for viewing and using her as a sexual tool to appease your own needs. Tell her that you understand that you hurt her but not yet to what degree. Let her know she has every right to be angry. As for you, do the 90-day no PMO reboot. This includes having no sex with your GF. As hard as it may be for us to understand, sex is optional. Edit: To add, find some sort of local support group you can get involved in if possible. I have a Sexaholics Anonymous group in my area and being able to attend meetings face to face or online has been a great help.
For me, telling my girlfriend was the best thing. She first asked me about a month or two into our relationship, i told her i used to watch porn but decreased significantly when I started dating her. She told me she didn't mind because she assumed it's a guy thing. But told me she'd like to know and not be lied to. I decided to promise her i won't do it again and made her my accountability partner. I was clean for over a year and a half and it was amazing. However, one day i was too horny during lockdown and asked her if i could watch porn once, she said yeah sure, hesitantly maybe. After rthat day, i would watch porn every 2 weeks maybe. A couple months later, the addiction kicked in. I noticed i was addicted when one day i was kissing her and felt that it was passionless for me. So i told her i got hooked again and I'm really sorry, and didn't think it would affect us in anyway. She was very understanding and noticed that i was being sincere. Since that day, I've been clean. I won't ever watch porn again because now i felt it impacting the most beautiful thing in my life, my relationship with my girlfriend. Just be open with your partner and hope they'll understand. And if they don't, you should still stop porn nevertheless.
I've shared my problems with my partner and she has been fine about it, but when I told her, I didn't expect her to be. I was prepared for the worst possible outcome. Once she knew and I'd been honest, I felt a huge weight had lifted and it became easier to deal with the problem. We aren't having sex atm and I feel bad about it, but she understands it's part of the process of my healing. PMO is such a unique issue and if the person you're telling doesn't have a good understanding of it or understands why you are struggling with it, I can see why they would want to step away. People understand alcohol, drugs and food, but PMO is still largely a mystery to most.
I had a similar experience: sharing my addiction with my partner years ago was basically a disaster. We're still together, but I don't think the relationship ever recovered. I also realize she has her own traumatic experience growing up, very negative opinions about sex in general, health issues, depression, etc. So the problem may not have been me sharing my addiction with her, but partially her own recover of what she's been through. We sometimes think we are the only person a relationship, so we either give ourselves all the blame or all the credit! The basis of EVERY relationship is TWO imperfect and flawed people. Maybe they can grow and learn to get a long, maybe they cannot. It's a daily choice and effort.
Hiding it is the worst thing you can do. If she doesn't understand, she's not the one for you. It's that simple.
Sorry but what you have said about not telling your partner is beyond damaging. I don’t think guys get how unattractive it is putting in 110% to someone, living with them, giving them love, security and total honesty only for them to ignore you sexually and Chanel their sexual urges not to their gf but to multiple different random naked girls! I’m the woman on the receiving end of 20 agonising months to a man with servere pied it’s costing him his life. This il need to explain. Firstly before giving out information of please don’t tell your girlfriend.. you had a bad experience but does that mean everyone else will because they want to do the right thing about being honest. Let’s just say for example it was a woman’s world for a change.. and all we did was pleasure ourselves to random men fully muscly and gorgeous huge bits etc.. imagine then, giving that woman your whole heart and when it came to sex.. she couldn’t do anything because of her daily desires for naked hunky men. Do you know how black and white that is from a real woman’s point of view! Do you know that yes men are on here to make a start as they realise they need to do something about it.. I’m all for that, but my ( now ex) partner whenever I was rejected ( all the time) rather than comfort me, he’d go silent , sometimes run away .. I’d have to chase him physically around my estate ( he’s nearly 50) I had to call police because he’d threaten suicide all because I told him the rejection is painful. This IS the real damages of this shit!!! Porn not only destroys men.. it kills people! I had to abandon the relationship as my daughter was picking up on this, the shadiness, the arguments, suicide threats, self harm.. and what I’m getting to this very day is him still trying to kill himself because I won’t take him back! This is extremely damaging to me and I can’t function as a result in fear of that dreaded phone call. This is a story of a man who didn’t choose to tell his partner the truth. So telling your partner is in my opinion the right mature way to go about things! I honestly wish I had that choice. I had to figure all this out for myself!! I am a very attractive woman, slim and very affectionate, I offered intimacy all the time, sadly I wasn’t enough. I told him after a month into the relationship if you could call it that, what he had and why his bits didn’t work. It was because he was by himself far too long didn’t work and had everything paid for living wise by his mum! That was total breeding ground to just sit there day in day out wanking.’sorry it has to be said. I’m a realist. So when he got with me I understood things would be rocky down there. The problem I had was, even after me telling him what he had pied, an what steps he needed to do in order to train his body/ mind to rewire to a real body again.. he still chose to ignore it AND 20 long awful toxic months on still denied he was wanking behind my back. From a womens point of view it’s the worst thing ever, you simply CAN get away with this!! It’s not like alcohol or drugs where you can hide it or smell it etc on them.. porn is so enabled, the minute you take a bath or pop to the shops this nasty shit can happen! I’ve had a very very bad experience because my partner kept this going at any given chance I wasn’t around. It’s wrong on every single level. I was neglected in the bedroom as a result.. in nearly two years morning sex NEVER happened. I felt I was some mug paying all the bills providing security whilst he ignored my basic needs. Not only that do you realise the ongoing damage this causes us women? I’m an attractive woman and before this I never had any problems with myself .! I had confidence and a big zest for life,… this comes into my life ( it was a choice) and I no longer am that woman. I died with his flatline. Seriously I’ve not been normal and ok since. When you date a man like this who in a nut shell can’t stop looking and searching for naked women.. every single thing becomes a living hell!!! Every single aspect of my life now isn’t the same. My once innocent happy mind is now totally corrupt and full of dirty things purely from what I learned. You end up ( total damage level) viewing everything in a dirty ugly light!!! Tv was once enjoyable can no longer be enjoyed sitting with a man.. you literally scan everything which makes life uncomfortable and unbearable. Beach trips.. joking right?! Swimming with your child.. a total no go after knowing what you know being on the receiving end! I struggle now even tho he’s gone, I have sunk into a huge depression and you literally can’t undo all you know and have educated yourself on. I will add when I was rejected and lived with that man.. he did 5000 steps on his fit bit watch just by apparently watching tv.. I had evidence on everything in the end. Women aren’t as stupid as you think. When confronted.. all I’d get was oh that was tidying the house. All dead end answers. I had a long walk that day and much more.. I didn’t even make it to 2000 steps! Men aren’t realising the REAL damage this shit is doing to us! I had to abandon this man who knew needed help but chose to turn a blind eye purely for the simple fact he enjoyed porn too much. He would simply do what he tried to get away with and at a cost to my and my daughters mental health! I would have huge breakdowns infront of him to which he knew he was the cause so all he’d do is sit and watch. I was depressed and bed ridden from the rejection and cruel manipulation .. but nothing was enough for him to stop! The more the flatline happened the more I knew it was going on.’it fully destroyed me. I lost happiness in anything I once found happiness from. Months and months slow torture and a family wasn’t enough for him to stop or get help. What comes with this whole pied thing isn’t just rejection but a whole list of things, lies, cover ups, misery, fake stories, he even hid the blue pills.. so I once thought our sex life improved only it didn’t sit right with me one min flat line to the next day two erections in a row!!! It messed with my daily thinking, my mind constantly ran over time and in the end I had mental health issues. Atm I’m getting suicide threats from him and even showed me letters with my name and his family members for when he decides to do it!!! It’s like a living time bomb all because I had to save my sanity and end that very damaging, toxic relationship! Im getting punished .. even though the last 20 months were painful enough! I told him he needed to fix himself before projecting his issues onto any relationship! I can’t stress that enough in doing this! This is the brutality of it all from the woman’s end.. maybe things you men need to hear before saying things like don’t tell your partner! If I had honesty and maturity from the start maybe I wouldn’t have these issues now and I do believe for the rest of my life. That’s all Hope recovery goes well.. it’s a shocking existence as a woman being a part of this!
