Wife of a cybersex addict

It's basically a porn addiction. I have had a porn addiction for 30 years now. I have been in relationships but until ten years ago, none were really close. Fifteen years ago, I met my partner and it wasn't long and she discovered my porn addiction. We tried to talk about it but I hadn't even heard of a porn addiction at that time. Over the course of our relationship, she would bring it up from time to time, the last time was two years ago. I refused to believe I was addicted. About a month ago, I remember her asking about it so I started researching "porn addiction". I found a couple of websites and a Reddit. The more I read, the more I realized I WAS addicted. I took a few days to delete all my porn and delete my porn bookmarks. I put a porn blocker on my phone and laptop. I am a prostate cancer survivor and my partner helped me get past that, including surgery to remove my prostate and cancer entirely. Since then, due to surgery and the damage done to my penile nerves, I have what I believe is a permanent case of ED. My partner is post-menopausal and has lost her libido. She also suffers from depression and agoraphobia. We have not had sex in about a decade. Now, we are not married. One of the reasons I decided to eliminate my addiction, was because I saw it was hurting my partner. She got the idea somehow that she had to compete with women in porn for my attention. I have told my partner about deciding I wanted to deal once and for all with my porn addiction. She is very happy I"ve gone over three weeks without porn or masturbating. She is in no way interested in sex, however. That is not to punish me but rather because of depression and agoraphobia. Menopause has been very difficult for her. Full disclosure: She is 60 years old, and I am 59 years old. I want to try to work on restoring our relationship, sex, or no sex. We have tried couple's counseling a couple of times. For me, I had to accept my addiction before I could work on it.

 

I understand that. I have never been on any dating or hookup sites. I was on dating sites a lifetime ago but I had no luck there. Since I have been with my partner, I stay committed to her and don't sext with anyone. I will admit that about a year ago, I was chatting on Facebook with a woman I worked with about 20 years ago. Then she starting acting weird, starting to sext with me. At first, I didn't allow it but then I let myself get sucked in. After about ten minutes of sexting, she told me she was going to call my partner. She's on Facebook too. I have no clue how she got my partner's phone number. I surely didn't give it to her. I told my partner not to answer the phone and then admitted what I did. Obviously, she was upset. I blocked that former coworker on Facebook (both mine and my partner's) and on my phone AND my partner's. I think that former coworker must have been drunk or something. It was still wrong of me to do that. It took a long time and many hours of talking but we got past it It has not and never will happen again. I hate the fact that I hurt my partner like that. I have been diagnosed with ADHD and one of the hallmarks of that affliction is compulsive behavior. It was wrong and I apologized to my partner profusely. I still feel very guilty and ashamed. I'm lucky my partner forgave me. I can understand why you feel betrayed and cheated on. What he did was emotional cheating. I hope the two of you can work through this and save your marriage. As I said, my partner and I are not married and we have no kids together. Your husband IS married and DOES have kids. When you are in marriage counseling, get him to agree to delete all his porn bookmarks including those dating/hookup sites. He should sign on to these forums and get support for his addiction if he wants it. I'm sure you feel like my partner, which is to say, why do I watch porn and masturbate when she was an available partner for sex? I'm still working on that answer but it has nothing to do with you and my partner. I'm guessing he's been doing this for a while and now, despite having you, he still feels compelled to do this. I was doing it every night after my partner went to sleep or I'd do it in the bathroom. I might have THOUGHT I was doing a great job hiding it but I only fooled myself. My partner knew. If you two could have a frank discussion of how long he's been doing this, I believe he was doing this since before he met you. That doesn't excuse it but it might help to understand. I really hope he will come to realize how painful this is for you and for that reason, begin working on eliminating his addiction.

 

Any "need" for sexual fulfillment, including masturbation, outside of a partnered relationship indicates an addiction to sex/orgasm, as I see it. I've never been addicted to porn, having only rarely run across it in my life and having deliberately chosen to steer clear of it, but as I understand it, porn is just the "spice" that makes the otherwise rather monotonous and lonely vice of "solo sex" a little more titillating. Some here seem to think it's necessary to reach a climax, but I sure never needed it.

It's very typical for women to feel more satisfied than their partners, and to think they have a good sexual relationship when the partner may feel otherwise. My wife, for example, would be quite happy with once or twice a month, whereas I much prefer twice or thrice a week, unless under a particular strain or illness. This disparity in preference is what caused me to think I might be addicted, because when I would go without, it seemed almost unbearable at times. Once, when my wife was away for over a week, I felt some severe withdrawal symptoms that made me look up online if sex could be like a drug. The results were sketchy, as research seems lacking, but the pattern certainly was there.

During the past half-year plus of not having sex, I've gone through quite a few ups and downs, emotionally. I never realized before how intricately linked my sexual habits were to my emotional stability and well-being. One interesting fact that's almost a side-note: After a couple months or so of total semen retention, I could cry again, almost like before I reached adulthood. For many years I had been simply unable to cry, physically, for any sad/negative emotion (for some reason, tears of joy were still possible at times). But being off of my "drug" changed this.

I do believe that I had been addicted. I feel as if, as soon as I'm back with my wife, I may very well be right back into the sexual addiction. I wonder if God intended it thus? Are we supposed to be addicted to each other?

But men often fail to satisfy their wives in wholesome, non-sexual, ways, which in turn means that their wives do not respond as well sexually, leading the men to feel unfulfilled. It's the men's fault, really, but they don't understand it. Thinking their wives just don't want so much sexual attention, and craving more themselves, they turn to finding satisfaction themselves--and, while this is, of course, a selfish thing to do, they may not think of it as such because they feel like they don't want to bother their wives. They may think that they are helping their wives by satisfying themselves, even if the satisfaction is less fulfilling, in order not to trouble their wives. Who wants to bother someone else, especially a loved one, just to meet one's own, perhaps selfish, needs? Thus, it is easy to rationalize as a "good deed" the very thing that one is addicted to, despite its harmful effects. For many men, who are naturally visual to begin with, porn just makes the solo-sex more palatable in lieu of a real sexual encounter. But I'm not a porn addict, so take this perspective with a grain of salt. Just the same, I am persuaded that there are hardcore addicts and those which are not really even addicted, just curious, and many shades between. Not every porn consumer will have the same motivation, level of addiction, or response to it.

 

If you masturbate instead of having sex with your wife, that means you are addicted to masturbation. I would sit down and find out what is missing in sex with your wife that you prefer masturbation. I don't know if you can be addicted to a person. It sounds to me like you may have a high libido and your wife has a lower level libido? Would I be correct?

d

I started masturbating to porn because I was very down on myself and believed I would never find a woman to have sex with. For reasons of personal trauma, having sex felt scary to me. I could never relax during it. I have rarely been able to masturbate without porn so when I'm done with rebooting, it'll be interesting to me to try to masturbate without porn. For full disclosure I'm a 59-year-old man and my partner is 60 years old. We had a pretty good sex life up to when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I chose surgery to remove the prostate and cancer within it (it was pre-stage 1). They told me it would be nerve-sparing and after I recovered from surgery, I would be able to resume having sex with my partner. They were wrong. They damaged the penile nerve so I've had ER ever since. I got scared that I would never have an orgasm again so I increased my masturbation with porn. I haven't had sex with my partner for the past 9 years. My partner got the idea that she had to find a way to measure up to the women in the porn I was watching. Our relationship is badly damaged and I embarked on my no-PMO journey and I am hoping to rescue our relationship after that.