Have your partner’s porn habits caused you to believe you’ll never feel good or happy or whole or enough? I want to take your hand for this journey you’re embarking on and show you that you can feel good and happy and whole and enough again, regardless of whether or not your partner admits they have an addiction or is willing to address the issue actively.
My d-day (discovery day, which set me down this path) was in January 2020. My husband (let’s call him Alex) and I had been married for five years and together for eight. It was my third marriage and what I considered my healthiest relationship ever.
The discovery of Alex’s porn use (and the extent of it – it was very much a “tip of the iceberg” situation) devastated me. I didn’t know what to do.
Good resources can be hard to find. Porn addiction is a controversial subject. Porn use is so normalized that partners are often ridiculed, labeled insecure, or accused of being controlling, sex-negative prudes if they reveal that they aren’t OK with their partner using porn.
Another problem I encountered was that many of the resources I found online centered around religion, which does not work for me as an atheist.
It was hard to find resources that addressed my needs.
When I couldn’t find secular, sex-positive resources that fit my situation, I made an SOS post in an advice forum for people whose partners have chosen porn over them. I want to share the story of what happened when I discovered, for the fourth time, that my husband had broken the boundary of “no live porn,” to which he’d agreed several times.
Re-reading my story after two years of recovery work for both of us, I realized how naive I was back then, how little I knew.
I want to share my story with you, but I want to annotate the things that jump out at me now, two years later.
How it started
I caught my husband last night. Again. First time in years that I’ve caught him red-handed. The last time I did, years ago, I made my boundaries clear (masturbation is fine, erotica is acceptable, drawn porn is okayish – just not real porn with real people). He agreed to that.
There were instances in the years between d-day #3 and d-day #4 where I thought Alex had been using porn, but he was so incredibly good at switching to another window or putting his device face-down when I walked in the room that I questioned whether I had actuallyseen what I thought I’d seen. On the rare occasion I asked him about it, he always explained away, and I took him at his word.
“Gaslighting” is a term you often see on self-help and relationship-oriented forums, often incorrectly used. Merriam-Webster defines gaslihting as,
“psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability…”
Alex had spent the majority of our relationship gaslighting me into thinking he honored how I felt about his using porn within our monogamous relationship. I did not know, at the time, that gaslighting is abuse.
This is our fourth major blowout about porn in eight years. I think [Alex] has largely abided by the agreement from the last blow-up – he has admitted (now, this morning) to 4-5 times, though I suspect it’s been more than that, so I think he may still be lying to himself and me. I occasionally have gut feelings, but I hate how checking up on him makes me feel, so I have ignored those feelings and thrown myself into trying to engage him more.
Alex had not, in fact, abided by the agreement I thought we had made. He was a daily porn user, multiple times a day. He hid it so well that I had no idea what the realities of his interior life and external behavior were.
Each time I had talked with Alex about how his porn use made me feel, he made me feel heard and said he could and would stop using pornography. He has since told me that he gave it a half-hearted effort for a week or two each time we came to an agreement, but then slipped right back into the same compulsive sexual behaviors, which escalated over time. He said to himself that what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me, another lie he told himself even as he was lying to me.
Now, back to the story:
Our sex life is good, though maybe not as often as he would like – several times a week on good weeks, once a week on bad weeks. We both initiate. I have not noticed any ill effects on our sex life due to porn. We are both middle-aged and well-aligned in virtually every regard. He did not try to turn his porn problem back on me; he used it and he lied about it, but he at least didn’t try to tell me it was my fault.
He was drinking last night. A lot. He quit drinking in the fall because his functional alcoholism had started to have adverse effects on our relationship, especially in his attitudes and behaviors toward me. He stopped drinking voluntarily (his idea) until the new year. He told me a couple of weeks ago he was going to get a six-pack of beer, and I appreciated the heads-up. I was worried because he has trouble moderating, but I’m not his mother.
The first week Alex resumed drinking, it wasn’t a problem. He imbibed only on the weekend, not more than three beers daily. This past weekend, though, he went nuts, three six-packs and a bottle of wine over the weekend. Last night was a six-pack and a bottle of wine. I hated it. He was loud and obnoxious (not toward me, just loud drunk ranting and repeating himself). I didn’t dig the belligerence. He noticed my response. I told him kind of bluntly that I found his loud rambly pontificating unenjoyable, and I was going to bed.
I lay awake thinking I could have softened how I expressed my feelings. I didn’t like the way I felt after that conversation. I wanted to clear things up. I slipped on my robe, walked to the living room to talk with him, and stopped short.
There he was with a cum rag on the sofa beside him and what was clearly porn on his iPad. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. You probably know the feeling. He had earbuds in so I wouldn’t hear the blowjob video he was watching.
When he realized I was standing there, he flipped his iPad face down against his belly, hiding it. I called him out for watching porn. He summoned this, “I have no idea what you’re talking about” look, and when I asked him to open up his active windows, he opened a casual game he’s played for years, insistent that he was only playing his game. I said, “No, open that fucking Chrome window,” and there it was.
He knows how I feel about porn. He knows how I feel about lies. How I felt and what I wanted – needed – didn’t matter.
I was so incensed I was shaking. He apologized and I went off on him. I went outside to clear my head. Wanted to take a drive, wanted to be away from him. He followed me out, begging for a way to find “a path forward.” I told him he knew goddamn well the path forward, and he consciously chose to step off it. He tried to “poor me” himself, saying it was only one time in all these years. I called bullshit and said it didn’t matter if it was true because I knew he was willing to protect the porn at any cost; his word is worthless to me. He cried and begged as I sat in my car. I rolled up the window, told him, “Live with it,” and drove away to weep in an empty parking lot.
He slept on the sofa last night when I came back home. We didn’t talk until this morning, when he gave me an apology that felt sincere.
He said he wasn’t even horny; he was just drunk and bored. Had I walked out five minutes later, he said, he would have already closed the windows and been done with it. I’m not sure if he meant he’d have finished masturbating or if he’d have finished looking. Maybe it was just a bullshit line to appease me.
I had never understood, on the few occasions I’d noticed his porn usage, how he could spend so much time watching porn as if it were an episode of a TV show he was particularly into.
I’m a modern, progressive, sex-positive woman. I’ve watched porn before. For me, the process was always to find the video that would do the trick as quickly as possible and get down to business ASAP. The whole shebang usually took 10 minutes or less, and once I had finished, I felt no desire to linger over the porn. Most of the time when I masturbated, I used my imagination or focused on the physical sensations. Still, on the rare occasion I used porn or erotica myself, it was a brisk, if not exactly businesslike, experience.
My husband’s porn process was completely different from mine because he had an addiction to the dopamine hits he would get browsing porn for hours each day. He frequently used pornography to alleviate and avoid uncomfortable feelings like loneliness, boredom, anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression. This is why he “wasn’t even horny” while watching that blowjob video when I walked into the living room on d-day.
People who are addicted to pornography often use it as a way to combat uncomfortable feelings.
Back to my “cry for help” post:
I believe he’s sorry, though I’m not sure how much of it is regret that I caught him and am threatening to leave our marriage and how much is genuine sorrow for how his actions made me feel. Based on his past behaviors and attitudes toward me, I think it’s probably a mix of both.
It was both, but mostly he was sorry that I had caught him. It took months of hard work trying to build empathy for me before he cared as much about how his behaviors had impacted me, as he cared about getting caught out for lying to me for the entirety of our relationship.
Addicts often lack empathy. The good news is that anyone who desires to can cultivate greater empathy, compassion, and connection.
He has told me he will quit drinking; that’s a step, though it’s obviously not enough. I believe he’s genuinely contrite, and I think he wants to go forward in good faith.
The National Institutes on Drug Abuse has prepared a research report, “Common Comorbidities with Substance Use Disorders,” that explores the connection between addictions and mental health, positing that addictions and mental illness “often interact, affecting the course and prognosis of both.” This was certainly the case for Alex.
I am pleased to inform you that Alex has been in successful recovery for both alcohol and porn addiction for the last two years with hard work and accountability. I believe his stopping drinking has strongly supported his efforts to remain in recovery as a porn addict.
This morning, he made no excuses and took responsibility. Last night he was still lying to protect the porn with lies, even when he realized I was seriously considering leaving our marriage over this. He seems to have stopped lying or trickle-truthing me, but with all the lies he’s already told me, how can I know?
Again, I was wrong to think the lying had stopped. It took months for Alex to disclose everything to me. And even then, he experienced some blind spots; more lies came out even after he’d made a concerted effort to be more honest with me. He was so in the habit of lying to me that it was second nature, and it has taken a long time and a great deal of intentionality and effort on his part to overcome that impulse to lie to me, even about benign matters.
Even after two years of healing and effort to return to my center, I still sometimes struggle to believe Alex when something he says doesn’t pass my (sometimes hypervigilant) gut check. He was such a convincing liar, and sometimes his truths now look the same to me as his lies before. I continue to work on this within myself, and the passage of time helps, now that I see Alex’s words match his actions and attitudes more consistently.
I told him he should spend today figuring out how he wants to fix this. He is out of work right now and ostensibly spends his days looking for a job; he should be able to spend some time looking for a solution. I told him I would not do the work to look for the fix. I told him he now burdens me by either trusting his worthless word or being his keeper. I am not in a place right now to do the former, and I don’t want to do the latter.
The above was one thing I got right from the beginning: when your intimate partner has betrayed you by lying to you about their addiction, you, alone, cannot fix it. The onus is on them to take active steps to find a solution and activate recovery. You can be supportive if that’s a space you can inhabit comfortably while being true to yourself. But you cannot change your partner’s behavior or make them see your side.
You might think, “if only he knew how it makes me feel, wouldn’t that be enough to help him change?” The answer is often no, especially if he is deep into his addiction. Refer to the bit above regarding addicts and empathy.
You cannot control your partner or what actions they take. You can only control yourself and your actions. That is a big focus of this blog.
He says, and I believe, that he’s willing to do anything to rebuild my trust in him and save our relationship. I desperately want this; of course I do, though I recognize that love is not sufficient on its own. There must be respect and trust, and we have neither right now. I honestly don’t know what he can do to rebuild my confidence in our relationship.
Help me, please. I feel so broken, and I don’t know how to fix it.
How it’s going
I’m delighted to tell you that I am more confident in Alex’s and my relationship than I ever thought I could be after that heartbreaking mid-January d-day two years ago. He consistently shows up for me on the daily and has continually improved as he deepens his recovery and embraces the new life he’s working to create for himself – and for me, for us.
Alex has worked hard these last two years, but I have too. I am not broken! I am learning to love and respect myself in a way I never have. I enjoy my own company more than I ever knew I could. I prioritize myself in healthy ways. I honor my feelings and listen to my gut. I face my complicated feelings and sit with them, confident that I am resilient enough to weather any storm. I am more comfortable in myself than ever and often unbothered. moisturized. happy. in my lane. focused. flourishing.
This can be you, too!