I didn’t know my husband watched porn. Mostly because he told me that he didn’t but also because he didn’t like the idea of me watching porn. I didn’t have any reason to not trust him.
I found this subreddit when my husband first started recovery and thought that after a difficult year, I could share our experience.
When we first started dating, during our senior year of high school, we couldn’t have much sex and that trend continued throughout college. We lived far apart and there weren’t any issues when I came to visit him.
During one of my school breaks I moved out to live with him, temporarily, and quickly felt that something was wrong. He never wanted sex and nothing I did to initiate turned him on. He even struggled to maintain an erection during my visit.
I was heartbroken. I cannot express the weight you feel when the person you love rejects you and the damage it does to your self esteem. I went back to school at the end of summer wondering what was wrong with him…what was wrong with me?
He called me a few weeks after I had returned home to tell me that he had low testosterone and ED. It was difficult to hear that he struggled with a condition but I was also relieved that I wasn’t at fault for our sex problems.
Later that year he proposed to me and I moved in with him permanently.
I often think back to the year we spent living together and wonder why I chose to marry him but, I know things now that I didn’t back then. During that first year our sex life decreased even more and my self esteem was at a all time low. He would become defensive if I asked for sex and, as a result, I began to stop asking. When we did have sex he was selfish and it wasn’t enjoyable but, I never knew when it would happen again so I took what I could. I was miserable and although I considered leaving I always told myself that I loved him enough to see past his medical condition. I was willing to give up sex because, to my knowledge, he was living without it too.
We got married and besides sex, we had a great relationship. However, I now know that sex isn’t something you can live without (excluding asexuals) and the resentment and frustration from sex seeped into the rest our life. I cried every night and begged him to get medical help. From my perspective he seemed embarrassed and I had convinced myself that he was just searching for the courage to face the doctor again.
After months of struggling to get release (I was only home when he was home) I decided to talk to him about porn. I had never cared about pornography but it was something he had told me he didn’t think we should watch. I asked him if I could use it since he struggled with sex and his reaction was horrible. He cried and begged me not to watch because he wasn’t comfortable with me getting off to another man and he swore our sex life would get better. It didn’t and after nine months of marriage his company sent him away for a five month trip to New York and I chose to stay home for school.
Let me take a break in my story and to say a few things to the readers here. If your partner is being denied sex then they will naturally start to wonder where else it could come from. I never cheated on my husband but during his business trip I was overwhelmed with options. The surest way to push your spouse towards others is to deny them the truth and to withhold intimacy.
During his time gone I decided to make new friends. Many of the woman I knew were on the other end of the spectrum and they were the ones who struggled to have sex with their partners. They didn’t stop their husbands from watching porn because they didn’t think it was fair to make them go without stimulated masturbated when they weren’t able to have sex instead. I grew a back bone during his time away and realized that I would not longer let his ego get in the way of something I desperately needed.
He returned and we had amazing sex for the entire month following. It was incredible but it didn’t last. After his joy from being home with me subsided he went back to porn (without my knowledge) and I became empty. I got divorce papers.
We didn’t fight and we had a lot of fun together. He was nice and we spent more time together than other couples. He actually used that against me whenever I brought up my frustration with sex, ” don’t I love you enough in other ways?” I questioned whether or not I could divorce him over a medical condition.
I gave him an ultimatum: get help for your condition or we get divorced. He was shocked when I told him. The pain he felt was visible and over the next week he was physically ill from the heartbreak he felt. I was miserable for putting him through it and this lead me to plummet into a deeper insecurity than I already was.
A week after I told him about the divorce papers a friend of mine came over for dinner. During her stay she talked about Game of Thrones (GOT) and I hoped my husband was listening. I had wanted to watch the show since it had been released but he wasn’t interested in paying for it nor did he want us to watch something with so much nudity. He feelings were mutual with wolf of wall street. After my friend left I retouched on the subject but he was firm and not wanting to pay.
Another week later and my friend had offered to lend me her GOT series and I thought “I can finally know what all the buzz is about!” So, I asked my husband while he was playing witch hunter (a game I was unaware of the nudity content but ill get into that later…) if he wanted to watch the show with me.
“I’ve already seen it” he said. Surprised and confused I asked again. His face turned white. “I watched it during my trip, I told you that” He had never lied to me before, at least I didn’t know that he had, and for a moment I questioned whether or not I had forgotten. Then I remember my friends visit and said that he had clearly mentioned to both of us that he had never seen the show. “I don’t remember your friend ever being here”
He was lying. Why? Why didn’t he allow me to watch? Then it hit me, the show has nudity. He lied because of the nudity and perhaps he felt guilty but why wouldn’t he allow me to watch?
He acted more guilty then I thought reasonable for someone who just watched the show for the show. He was doing it for the nudity but this didn’t make sense. He couldn’t get hard so why would the nudity be a factor? Even if he just watched it with friends why did he lie? Was he trying to cover up for making a rule and then breaking it?
He cried and apologized and I forgave him but my trust was broken. I now knew that he was not only willing to lie to me but that he was good at it. I decided to take the next day off work without him knowing.
The next day I called my mom and she said that his extreme guilty reaction was just because he was a good guy. “There isn’t anything more to be discovered.” I checked his laptop. I never felt the need to do it before but I opened the history and typed in “porn”. Nothing came up. I typed in other pornographic terms but still, nothing was there. I felt some relief and thought it must have been nothing. He just felt guilty for making a stupid rule and breaking it.
Then it hit me…I typed in GOT. His search history has tones of sexual content related to the show. My heart sank. I had spent over a year in a sexless relationship and was made too guilty to masturbate to porn while he was doing…this. I checked his ipod and the normal history was deleted but the backup was filled with porn. He masturbated everyday.
I vomited. I questioned how this could be real. He had a medical condition! My phone rang and I knew he was on his way home. I picked up and asked whether or not he watched porn. He went silent. I asked if he had a medical condition. He didn’t respond. I told him I would divorce him and he finally spoke, “Yes, I watch porn and no I don’t have a medical condition”
For the readers here that have been addicted and have not told their partners. I cannot express the selfishness of that choice. Just like open relationships should be discussed, so should porn. You have to make rules and discuss boundaries. If your partner isn’t okay with porn than you either need to not watch or find someone else. If your partner is okay with you watching so long as you watch together then you need to watch together. Its all about honesty, communication, and trust. I don’t think porn is bad or evil but I think when used in secret it is a destructive thing.
After everything was on the table I became a mess. Suddenly the realization set in that my husband didn’t have a medical condition that stopped our sex life. He was choosing a screen over me and I had never felt uglier. He got rid of all of his devices so that he could no longer watch porn and he called me during any work breaks to try and build back trust. However, recovery is hard.
During the beginning I dealt with the anger side effects. In defense of his actions my husband would tell me everything he found unattractive about my body and it became clear how distorted his view of me was. I learned that he pictured every woman he saw naked and I couldn’t leave the house without feeling small and insignificant. He told me he watched porn everyday on his cellphone at work. He works in an office out in the countryside where he doesn’t have cell reception and I learned that he put in effort to use gas and money to find a spot where he could masturbate. I was mortified by the sexual views he had of woman, of me, and the insecure view he had of himself.
The road to recovery was long and we came close to divorce after one of his bigger selfish outbreaks but pulled through.
He is one year clean and our sex life is perfect. I love and trust him less than I did but the healing on my part will take longer.
I never would have married him if I had known what I would be walking into but I know that selfish fear is what kept him from telling the truth. Don’t take away your partners choice to go or stay. This is your demon to face and it isn’t fair to place the burden on someone who claim to love (I say claim to love because real love is putting the others needs before your own).
He went to counseling and did everything he could to not lose me so I chose to stay with him through recovery.
Some words from him: “I followed this reddit after my wife showed me the stories and it was good to know that I wasn’t alone. Until I was caught I didn’t admit to myself that porn was the problem and never connected my sex life to the time I was wasting online. I hurt my wife badly and the pain I watched he go through bothers me now more than it did before and I wish that I could go back and fix everything. I struggled with empathy during my recovery and now I struggle with forgiving my selfishness. I am more confident now than I was during my porn usage and I honestly think that my wife is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, porn stars included. It’s difficult to explain how or when that opinion changed but it’s made me happy. My wife has said that she doesn’t mind if I use porn during our separations but I have chosen to give it up completely. I know some recommend not having sex with your partner during reconditioning but I think I needed to have sex with her to relearn why I thought she was beautiful. We didn’t have a lot of sex in the beginning of reconditioning but after five months in we had sex weekly. Now its almost daily. The anger I felt during nofap was the result of not being able to get off regularly and I feel like crap for making my wife go through that suffering for years. It’s a tough road but its worth it and I wish I had done something sooner.”
TLDR: Husband had porn addiction but didn’t tell me. Lied about having a medical condition to explain our sexless relationship. Went through recovery and are now happier than ever.
Feel free to ask either of us questions about our experience.
LINK – I am the wife of an ex-porn addict. This is my story, AMA
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