Husband's porn addiction is destroying our marriage.

[skantechtech]

Hi all:

 

I am 31, my husband is 36. We have been together for 3 1/2 years.

 

I have been previously married for 10 years and in that marriage we would sometimes watch porn together or experiment sexually. I am fairly open-minded.

 

After that marriage ended, I met my current husband. I knew he liked porn and didn't think anything of it at first. We were pretty open and shared are deepest secrets. After a while we fell in love. A relationship started and then the rockiness started. For no apparent reason he would complain or get angry. He didn't want me to come on to him anymore, it turned him off. The only way I was allowed to turn him on was to pose for him or service him, if I was intimate, he was turned off. Then he started to become obsessed with porn of all kinds, spent every waking moment when not working, downloading, viewing, jacking off. Our sex life ended. He called sex work. Would only participate in mutual masturbation. I have a high sex drive and a strong desire to show my affection, so this was the beginning of me being hurt. When I tried to make suggestions or talk with him, they were rejected and then he started to order me to cook dinner while he jacked off, or send me to the store. If I was away for the day, he would jack off at least 5 times, I was quite disappointed and sexually frustrated. I felt rejected, betrayed. He would turn me down at night, "too tired", turn me down in the morning, "not in the mood". Then ask me to go to the store, jack off, then do something different to hide what he did. His porn interest began expanding into every imaginable porn. He was chatting with women online. A couple of times he posted nude pics of me online behind my back. I was so unhappy, I started to leave him a couple of times, he talked me out of it using his charisma, baby-face and lies. The third time I left, I was gone for a number of months. My love for him still strong, but I was so hurt by his actions. He visited me and begged to marry him, sacrificed his job and moved, made many promises. I still wasn't dead set against porn, just how it had destroyed our sexual, emotional, and social relationship. I am not against porn, it turns me on too, but his addiction destroys all good between us. He will call in sick to spend a day viewing it. He let it control his life. A number of times in trying to resolve this issue, he has been willing to "move on with his life" because I had a problem with his obsession. When he first moved and we got back together, he refrained from it for about two weeks, then he started his hiding again, wake up at 4am to do his thing. Send me places or to do chores for time alone. I have two sons from my first marriage. When I was working later than him, he would stay in our bedroom with porn and leave the boys unattended or send them to a friend's house to have his time. This doesn't match the promises and dreams he told me to get me back. Now I am pregnant, 7th month. Smoking two packs a day struggling with the stress related to his addiction. I am beginning to feel hate toward him. I don't mind porn occasionally in my sex life but now I fear sharing it with him, because then his addiction will escalate again. He knows it hurts me. But it doesn't affect him. I stopped talking to him. Stopped telling him everything I know about what he does. If I bring it up, he does it more, but puts more efforts into hiding it. I know before he is going to do it, and after, I know his tactics, Every time I suspect, I find proof. It destroys my intimacy and desire. I am still open-minded, playful, experimental, not a boring lover, just as I have always been. He knows that I am always ready and eager. So, this isn't a matter of lack of sex, desire or boredom. But I can see me raising the family, doing all of the chores, spending all of the family time with the kids, while he spends all of his time with his porn. This is not the marriage I wanted. I feel I am kept around as a cook, maid, and mother. My intimate, sexual, and emotional needs are ignored. Any complaints about anything from me spawns a defensive argument. So, I've stopped complaining. I've stopped talking. But my thoughts are filled with things that I would love to say out of anger, I frequently call him names in my mind and state that I hate him. But I do not give these thoughts voice. I have started to think of things I could do that will make him feel the way I do, like turn him down for sex, spend lots of time away from home, plant some other brand of cigarette butt in the ash tray to fake that I am cheating on him. I have no desire to actually cheat, though I fear that after enough negligence, I may find myself longing for what I am missing. I even thought of printing out tons of porn pictures and taping them up everywhere in the master bath, where the kids can't see them. "You want porn, here it is, I'll give you all you want". I have already started to leave the house and avoid him, ask him to leave encourage him to spend more time away from home. He calls asking me to come home, I tell him he has everything he wants at home with him. Guess he wants a cooked meal. Or maybe his laundry done. Even though I feel this rage, I also still love him. Wish that things could be different. Sometimes he is still the sweet guy I fell for. It just dawned on me tonight, being I sent him out so I could be alone, while researching the web that this is an addiction. I researched on the web and in a sense, this changes my perspective, but I still don't know what to do about it. If I told him, he would deny it, say that I am the one with the problem. I am not sure what to do, 7 months pregnant, unemployed, we originally had plans for me to return to work next school year to reduce child care costs. I have been thinking of kicking him out, but then I would have to pay child care for an infant and two boys, plus not to mention maternity leave. No employer would hire me this late in my pregnancy, I get job offers every few days, but I know what they will say if I actually go to the interview. Then I have considered accepting what I have and making the best of it, no matter how unhappy I am. He does pay the bills. In fact that is the only form of responsibility he will accept. He thinks that is the meaning of responsibility. I am lost.

[moimeme]

So if you're too poor to do without him, detach emotionally. Start now making plans to leave him when the baby's old enough for you to take a job. AND QUIT SMOKING!!!!!!!!!! You are endangering your baby's health. Do deep breathing exercises instead. They will relax you without the chemicals going into your body.

 

You can suggest to him that he has an addiction. Maybe he'll be open to getting help. If not, as with any other addict, you can neither help nor fix him. He'll have to do it himself and if he won't even acknowledge the problem, it could take years.

 

So continue on as you have been but quit wanting him to want you. Think of him as ill (addictions are sicknesses) and unable to desire you. It's nothing to do with you at all. Get counselling, if you can, to help you cope with the present and the future without him.

[LucreziaBorgia]

Out of all that you said, this is what caught my mind:

 

Now I am pregnant, 7th month. Smoking two packs a day struggling with the stress related to his addiction.

 

You have to stop that. This kid does not deserve to suffer too. None of your problems are worth this kid's life or health. So stop. Talk to your doctor, and tell him that you need help to stop smoking. Blaming your husband for forcing you to smoke won't cut it any more than your husband blaming you for forcing him to use his porn.

 

His porn addiction is not a problem: its a symptom of a larger problem. He is acting out toward you and the way that he is using porn is his way of doing it. He likely has some deep anger toward you, or resentment that is causing him to do this. He has withdrawn from you emotionally and has turned to masturbation/porn physically - why? Because he just likes porn? In this case - I think its more of a way to take the focus off of what your real problems are. Its a coping mechanism. An escape. You just need to find out what he is escaping from and go from there. You two need to hit some hardcore counseling. You will probably end up having to take your kids as well. This is a big ugly mess. You are even involving your unborn child into this mess by your smoking in response to what your husband is doing.

 

This is a cycle. A painful, hurtful cycle - and as long as porn is the scapegoat and the real relationship problems are buried it will continue. No one wins.

 

Tell your husband that you two need to go to marriage counseling. Tell him if you do not go, then you will remove yourself and your children from this harmful situation until he can agree to go to fix these problems. If you can go, your counselor will help dig out that buried resentment and anger you have for each other and can alleviate the symptoms of it: the overuse of porn to replace you, the smoking that is harming you and your child, the pain that your children are going through seeing their parents like this - and trust me, they pick up on it pretty quickly and children will internalize that pain. Awful situation.

 

I hope that you can drag this man to counseling and begin to patch up your family. It sounds like a horrible situation for all of you.

[skantechtech]

Shortly after love entered the picture, I noticed that he had relationship phobias, he would frequently accuse me of things I wouldn't think of doing, like trying to get pregnant to keep him, being deceitful, having ulterior motives. Paranoid that I would wipe him out financially. This is from his past experiences in his adulthood and things he saw happen in his family while growing up. Plus he was sexually molested as a child. When love entered the picture, I saw lots of his insecurities surface. His mother died when he was 9, drove over a cliff while on drugs leaving his father. He was in the car at the time, was in a coma for 3 days, suffered seisures for a year after and no one ever told him anything about his mother or father for a year, his father simply left him in his grandmother's care, showed up a year later and tactlessly told him his mother was dead. So, he has major relationship phobias and fear of rejection and abandonment. He married young and lead a military marriage life, both in the army. She frequently took tours taking her away from him a year or two at a time, home for 9 months, 12 years in that marriage. He left the army, asked her to stay home and start a family, she decided to sign up for another tour instead and he divorced her when she left. Shortly later, his father was hospitalized with liver complications from alcoholism. He helped his father get off the bottle, but when he left, his father picked the bottle back up and died a few months later. In order to deal with his father's death and failed marriage, he resorted to drugs, alcohol, strip clubs, porn, and wild times. One day he saw his life falling, gave up the drugs, but didn't completely give up everything else. At the time when I first met him, I was going through my own way of dealing with divorce, live life, party, seek happiness. We were both in the IT field, could talk openly to each other, and had an exciting sex life. He was very caring and sensitive, attentive. But shortly after love entered the picture, he would complain and start arguments for no obvious reason, just his insecurities surfacing. He even voiced to me concerns about his ability to father children because he was in desert storm and read reports of deformities and miscarriages. Plus he had two girlfriends before me that supposedly miscarried, though I have to question if they were pregnant at all and their drug use. I feel like I walked into a lot of baggage. I kept coping with it, feeling that in time he would get over it. He started to become verbally abusive and occassionally physically abusive. When he got physical I put a stop to it by standing up to him and fighting back. He tried to get me to permit and participate in sexual activities I wasn't comfortable with. He had a big problem with that. But after I left him, when he asked me to marry him, he dropped that too. He realized that I could live fine without him successfully and also realized how much he wanted me in his life. I told him I didn't want all the wild stuff he wanted and that my focus was on my boys, I wanted a family life. He said that he wanted that too, made many promises. He said that he could see that his life didn't have purpose without a family. But we still have the porn addiction which is one of the major reasons I left him to begin with. Personally I believe he has had this addiction since before I met him. Probably started out as a way to release sexual tension and remain faithful to his first wife while she was on tours. I just never realized it was an addiction or how it would affect my life.

[LucreziaBorgia]

Well, its good that you know all that stuff. I figured that there was probably something more to the story. The only hope that you two have is to work not on the porn addiction, but those things that happened to him in his life that led him to it. Once he can reach a point where he can reconcile his feelings for those things that shaped him in his past - then he can begin to work on those things that are symptomatic of those traumas he suffered: his relationship problems, his porn addiction, his inability to have a normal sex life, and so on.

 

As long as those traumas are unresolved, the symptoms of them will not go away. Your husband will not be able to make the necessary changes that will help your relationship become a positive healthy one. Your problems will not be solved until your husband can resolve those things that caused the problems in the first place.

 

The biggest problem, is getting him to see that and to agree to get help. If he is not willing to help himself, then there is nothing you can do. You can try to treat the symptoms, but truly: wouldn't it be better to treat the illness?

[Ladyjane14]

I agree with the other posters. This guy needs treatment. I'm no psychiatrist, but the addiction is clear. And if I were to guess at what's underlying it, I'd say he has a HUGE fear of abandonment, hence the intimacy issues.

 

The on-line porn goes away at a touch of the off switch. The real-life wife does not. You are triggering his fears. You are close enough to hurt him or leave him.

 

I'm concerned about his history of sexual abuse as it relates to his reluctance to be intimate and to his paranoia.

 

The most difficult part of treatment is getting someone to admit they need it. Since you have been researching addiction, you know that often they must hit rock-bottom before they will accept it.

[The_Analyzer]

I agree with the other posters. Something else for you to think about as well, yes he may have an addiction but look at what you now have as well. An addiction too, the smoking. I'm not trying to minimize his addiction to the porn but because he has chosen that outlet, release or whatever you want to call it from dealing with whats really going on, you have now chosen an unhealthy "addiction" as well. Don't put your unborn childs life at risk because you don't know how to cope other than smoking your troubles away. They will always be there until you all can get some help asasp, good luck.

[UncleAlbert]

Once while working in the lower mainland I overheard a story being told in the lunchroom.

This other worker was telling his friend over lunch how was so upset that his daughter spent the nite with her boyfriend in their rec room. When he was asked why did he let them, he said "I really didn't care about the kid staying over but they watched a bunch of my porn movies and never put the tapes back in the boxes". "You have porn in the house just lieing around ..! With 3 teen daughters..? he asked incredulously. "Yea..sure..I tell those kids to stay out of the rec room...I have over 1000 movies and I don't want them all wrecked up" Then he showed a picture of all the tapes he had, lining the entire walls of the rec room..it looked like a porn movie store down there.

 

Another story was my wifes friend got a divorce. Near the end, while her friend was moving out. The girls mother decided to break down the door of the girls husbands 3rd bedroom he kept locked all the time, only to find stacks of porn movies and roaches from marijuana. She never had a clue he was a porn addict either. Her mom said the room smelled like he had been jerking off for a month in there.

 

There is free porn on the web just type in "thehun" and it will give you thousands of pictures every day..I mean it's getting ridiculous.

 

As far as your husband goes...some guys like doing it to anyone they see, everything as a cum receptacle. I bet your husband smokes pot too...Could explain his paranoia..Other wise, say goodbye, or join in the action! Maybe he's gay..., and watches that stuff. You could get a software program that will allow to copy the swap files on his hard drive-no pun intended- and see what the hell he's actuallyviewing. Also keyboard loggers that are pretty cheap, if you want to slueth it out. I mean, sounds like your on a trip to splitsville any way.

Sad to say!