The first time I had sex with my husband, he didn’t come. I found out much later that this was standard for him — for most of his sex life, he got hard, but then lost it halfway through. As our relationship got serious, the sex got better, but it never seemed to feel like it should for me. Even when we were two young honeymooners with no kids and tons of time, we didn’t do it as often as I wanted. There were still times he didn’t come. He blamed it on dehydration, alcohol, work stress, lack of sleep, or worrying about my orgasm.
After a couple of kids and no time, inevitably we did it even less. He rarely asked for it. And if I asked for it, it was a crapshoot whether he would be into it. The timing had to be just right — he had to be well rested, not too drunk, not too full, not too busy. I told myself he probably had a low sex drive, and took what I could get.
Over the years, I only found porn a handful of times. He was crazy good at hiding it. But there was still a nagging feeling, a block in our sex life that I couldn’t figure out. Once we were laughing about the infamous Seinfeld masturbation episode, and I jokingly asked him how many times he jerked off per week. He looked uncomfortable, and admitted to 4-5 times per week. I was stunned. I of course wondered: How does he have the energy to jerk off that much but have no energy for me?
One day during an Internet research deep-dive into relationship and sexual issues, I read an article on porn addiction and porn-induced erectile dysfunction. In that moment, even without a lot of proof, I knew.
I told him about the article. To my shock, he told me that he’d long suspected he was addicted to porn, and that he used it most days of the week as a way to cope. He said he’d tried to kick it over the years, but couldn’t seem to, and he wanted to stop once and for all, with me and for me.
Now that I understood more of the extent of his relationship with porn, I felt terrified, betrayed, kind of horrified, but timidly hopeful. After he first quit, he said he felt empty and blank and wasn’t interested in sex. This, I found out, is a common response to quitting porn. But in the months that followed, he changed physically. He got harder than he ever had, and he came quickly and way more easily. He wanted sex more often. I told him how different his body seemed since quitting porn, and I think he was glad, but I also think it was extremely painful for him to realize the damage porn had done not just to our relationship, but to all of his past relationships and ultimately, of course, to himself. …
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