YES! the problem is when your in denial you cannot see the wood for the tree’s let alone see an entire forest. When you in denial ALL your focus is on the wood, the grains in that particular piece of wood, the tree rings, what type of wood you have hold of, the shape of that wood, the smell of that wood, the kind of tree that wood comes from & so on. Its only when you have some distance from the wood, its only when you walk away back up the hill can you see were you have been and can then see the forest for what it really is. Healing can only take place once distance is achieved and porn is no longer used to prop up the denial mechanisms. But here’s the real kicker (paradox) you can only let go or heal a porn obsession, porn habit by being willing to face your actual pain and by NOT burying that pain with more pain (i.e. porn to numb out).

In response to your comments. Ah! yes! your argument makes complete sense & rationally I agree with you. BUT, and its a vital & BIG BUT the human psyche is NOT rational and the unconscious is incredible and a persons psychological self defenses are also weird & incredible I know this from my training as a counselor & therapist and from working with people and from my own therapy experience.

j – you can do nothing more for this man. it may be that just by sticking around you are giving him the security to keep doing this thing. i know this as the former wife of an addict even though it was not a porn addiction. i am sure the same applies here. i hope you can break away and heal and find a man that treats you right.

This is such a great question/observation, Alex. Yes, what *would* someone be willing to lose so many loved ones to protect? What’s baffling to me is that it takes *so* much work and a piling up of losses to avoid the pain of uncovering these issues. It almost seems like it would be less painful to just confront the issues head on. What’s more, once one finally does grieve those issues, he/she will have to grieve all the losses they’ve accrued while trying to cover up the original pain. It’s very hard to understand that mindset.

From my own experience, I can imagine how grief-stricken you must be. It’s so hard to watch someone you love self destruct.

Talking of pain try to bear in mind that its VERY common for people who use porn or have a porn habit, they use porn to numb themselves out. Porn can be used almost as a form of pain killer which sounds a bit odd perhaps but it is actually true, if the pain is very deep down for example if someone hasn’t grieved or sorted out a past situation or issue then porn might be what keeps the pain at bay. Porn is thus used to keep the lid on Pandora’s box so too speak.

I read your story carefully & with sadness, and I really feel for you, its very very hard being a partner to someone who has such an obsession with porn and with dating sites. And as you have said its obvious that he remains in deep denial that there is any kind of problem. Indeed it seems almost as if he is blaming you for his problem i.e. Oh! god if only you were not so insecure then you would accept my porn habit. Which we both know is utter rubbish, this is just a form of defensiveness & an attempt to rationalize the nature of the problem.

**There is 100% NOTHING WRONG!! with you my friend, porn does make people do very odd things at times, porn itself can make things seem quite bonkers, so no! its NOT you going crazy its porn that’s makes things feel crazy at times. Porn is so utterly filled with paradoxes its very confusing at times and much of the time it doesn’t make sense but this is because the way human beings behave is NOT RATIONAL at times. Porn is not rational.

**You are faced with some very stark & hard choices given what you have said about your circumstances. a) clearly you hate & feel immensely hurt by his behavior & despite your best efforts he is not going to change for you or anyone else?. b) The fact that he is still in denial about the problem & unrepentant means you have to ask yourself where & when you need to draw a line in the sand & say enough is enough. c) I would strongly suggest that all you can now do is seek some counseling or one on one therapy for yourself to help you deal with your hurt & pain. A therapist might also be helpful in sorting out the best way forwards for you and what you want. I would strongly encourage you to get some form of support for yourself given the situation.

**Porn doesn’t just hurt or damage the porn user, its like throwing a rock into a pond, i.e. the effects & consequences of the porn habit ripple outwards from that person to everyone around him or her. It touches a wider circle.

**You can “love the core person” but you are still fully entitled to hate the behavior i.e. his porn habit & use of dating sites etc.

**My sense is that the choice is quite clear here, if you carry on using porn & pretending that there is no problem then that hurts me. And I’m not prepared to go on allowing myself to be treated in that way. I don’t want to go on feeling hurt in that way any more and I’m going to have to leave. Perhaps only the starkest of deadlines or ultimatums might force him into a position were his is prepared to change but of course there can be no guarantees this will work as hoped for. Leaving him would force him to see that he’s not perfect, it also seems that his other relationships have floundered on the same rock of his denial. What I am most interested in is what would be uncovered here if the denial was removed, because there must be something incredibly powerful or of terrible pain for someone to go on covering the real deep issues up. These might be deep issues that the person themselves doesn’t fully rationally understand yet but must be related to their personal history (past).