Husband's porn habit has shattered my trust - P's story

Submitted by a reader on Thu, 29/10/2009 - 22:46

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I've known for almost a year that my then fiance had an issue with porn. I discovered him on the phone one night to a chat line, and then a whole load of other discoveries happened, credit card bill, phone bills for thousands of pounds at a time for both phone and internet porn.

He has a good job and these bills aren't a problem for him. He wasn't stacking up debt, he pays them each month without hassle. We were at the time planning our wedding and there was a lot of heartache for me. Do I marry him or not. We did get married earlier this year. I at the time thought the chat line calls and internet use had stopped; blocks were put on phones which was the major problem and credit cards were cancelled.

After our wedding/honeymoon my husband went away for work and on his return I discovered more use of internet sites on his pc & laptop. This time not costing anything, they were free sites which I thought was an improvement. Then I made an even worse discovery that he had been looking up STDs. This set alarm bells ringing in my head and when I was able to confront him about my findings he admitted that he had slept with someone while he was away, he says he was out drinking.

His schedule is gruelling when he's away, which is for approx 6 months of the year but not all in one go, and when he's home he doesn't work (it's leave to rest). But I've always thought that made us stronger and we made the most of the time we have together. Now I'm in total distress and don't know what to do. Since me discovering this he has started to see a counsellor, he won't talk to me about his problems so I can try and understand/help so as with many of the blogs on here, I feel useless and I'm questioning everything. My confidence has hit rock bottom. I'm totally against affairs of any kind and I have told him in the past if anyone cheated on me I'd be gone, but I still find myself here because its different when it actually happens and of course I still love him.

It's early days for us now, I don't know where we go from here. I'm very unsure if we can get through this unless he stops. We would both like a family and before this latest discovery we were discussing starting to try but for me now at the moment, starting a family is out of the question.

Where do I/We go from here?

Thank you P for sharing your concerns here.

It's true that the cost of chatlines and porn subscription sites used to help guys keep their behaviour in check. Many could only dabble occasionally because they didn't want tell-tale signs on their credit card bills, or quite rightly knew that porn is a waste of money.

But this isn't the case any more. There are so many free porn and contact sites out there. Free porn community sites encourage and validate the behaviour; if everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I? It would have been tempting for your husband to think he was getting his fix without the risks.

Generally speaking, I would interpret his visits to a counsellor as a positive sign. It suggests that he understands the need to get to the bottom of what drives his compulsive behaviours. We can't guess what this may be, but we can make two safe assumptions. Firstly, his chatline/porn habit developed long before you entered his life, and it is in no way a reaction to you. Secondly, his habit is a coping mechanism; it may be selfish and offensive, but it is an attempt to meet a need. Through counselling and self-honesty, he will hopefully be able to recognise his unmet needs and accept that there are more positive solutions than numbing himself with porn.

Compulsive behaviour can extend to regrettable sexual encounters, and this is the horrible discovery that you are left to deal with. To even begin rebuilding confidence and hope for your relationship, it may help for you to be included in the counselling loop. Couple counselling can enable you to work together on understanding what happened, and plan practical steps for moving forward.

You need to be confident that he fully appreciates just how hurtful his behaviour has been, and that he is fully committed to change. This is your entitlement and he needs to demonstrate it, one day at a time. I wish you both every success.

Hello,
As Jason has already commented your partners porn habit probably started many years before you met him. I can easily understand how you may have thought that his porn usage was just a triffling fad or passing thing & perhaps you naively hoped it would just go away once he married you. Only now have you uncovered the real scope of his problem.

**I would say that its NOT your fault and that its vital that you don't blame yourself here, even though his behaviour hurts or upsets you. Its HIS problem mainly. Its his responsability to sort it out and to try to heal it.

**Sadly, when a partner has a secretive porn habit and its finally discovered the results do ripple outwards like a rock thrown into a pond. It can take a long time to fully come to terms with whats happened.

**Good solid relationships are based on openness of communications & trust. His porn habit may well feel like a betrayal of that trust. You have to have a very very large amount of trust & stability in a realtionship before you can realistically make a major commitment to something like starting a family. A porn habit undermines those foundations of trust in my opinion.

**A long standing porn habit is always a cover up for some other hidden or un-acknowledged emotional problem and porn is used as a pain killer or a way to numb out those difficult feelings. Going and getting help with a counsellor is a very good start but it will only help him or work provided he's genuine and wants to fix the problem deep down. Otherwise you can just go too a counselor & pay a lot of money and completely waste everyones time. If he is serious and wants to heal the problem counseling will help but it may be a long difficult road, counseling or therapy is 100% NOT for the faint hearted talking from personal experience.

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Hello

Being in a very similar situation myself, I just came across this article.

P - I know exactly how crushed you are feeling. We all think that we'd never tolerate this kind of treatment from a man, but then it happens and we still love him and we don't know where to turn.

You are handling this probably better than I did, as I blew up and insisted that my husband left. He moved back to his mother's house and (as I found out later) explained to her exactly why I had thrown him out. She was equally dismayed, but this might have been the first time in his life he was really honest about his pornography addiction.

It's just a pity it took all this for him to wake up and think about someone else for a change.

I have taken him back and he is attending counselling. We have so far been unable to resume any sexual relationship, but he understands that I need to trust first. He is a much humbler man now and we are able to talk about it.

My husband didn't meet another woman (I'm sure of this now) but had been chatting and sending photos to at least two women. I also found the pornography he had collected very unpleasant. Now we have a strict policy of only using the computer for work and moved it to the kitchen table so he can't get up to things in secret.

P it is hard for you to be able to trust your husband when he goes away now. Does he need to be away so much? Could he take a job closer to home? You might need to make some sacrifices like this in order to make things work. My heart goes out to you.

Marie

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Hi Marie,

Thanks for responding.

Its horrible you think you have a good life and its all running smoothly and something like this is uncovered and everything comes crashing down around you.

I've had time on my own now as he's away so many ups and downs, some days I feel so out of control. My husband other than to his cousellor as far as I know has never told anyone, he wouldn't of told me what I no know if I hadn't have found things and questioned them. I still believe there is plenty I don't know and I'm not sure at this point if I want to know or not. Do you now feel that you know all and are ready to move on?

As you say its made even more difficult in my situation because we do spend so much time apart, its his job, its what he's alway done and in the world we life it will be difficult to give that up and find something else. It is something we are discussing but like everything else its not that simple.

In these situations I just wish I had an outlet obviously its not something I really want to discuss with family they love him and I don't want to affect what relationship they do have with him because ultimately it will affect me too if they know and we can work things out.

For me its waiting game, until he's home again nothing really changes just the same things go round in my head over and over. Sounds like you are making progress its all a matter of time I guess, I hope things continue to improve for you both. Stay positive I'm trying too.

P
x

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Thanks for sharing this testimony. This reminds me somewhat of a new video we just put up on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcpotyZ_oSM

I'm also really encouraged how many free/cheap helps are out there for individuals and couples.

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Hi P, as the partner of a sex addict who's been dealing with this for a couple years now, I'd strongly recommend getting some help for yourself. This is a huge trauma for partners and the more we try to deal with it alone, the more we sink into our own quicksand.

You're not just imagining that it's difficult--it *is* difficult. And I'm so sorry that you're going through this pain.

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Hi P

I remember feeling very alone with this, just like you. Apart from my husband's mother (who he opted to tell himself), nobody else in my circle of family and close friends knew just why he had left our home. I had to tell them that we just hadn't been getting along lately. To tell them the truth that it was over pornography just would have sounded so seedy, or make me sound like I was overreacting. Like your husband, they see him as a good man and us as a strong couple, and I didn't want to lose that too.

Jason talks about counselling and I think Margaux is right that getting some for yourself is a good idea. I battled against all this on my own but still feel the need to talk about it and write to websites like this. Anyone neutral that you can talk to helps with the pain.

I'm sure that I know all the details about what he got up to when my back was turned, or enough details anyway. There was a period of weeks where I found out something new every day and had to coax answers out of him and it really hurt me every day. He had so many discs and files all over the place it made me sick. Now I feel that I know enough, but I had to go through it. I also know who the other women are and where they live. I don't go looking for clues now on the computer, which I was obsessed with during those weeks.

I hope that you can keep talking to him, it must be so tough with him away. Could you visit a counsellor? At least websites like this are always here and people are so wonderful.

Marie

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Talking from experience and from a good deal of reflection upon my own past behavior. My opinion strongly remains to this day that using porn is just a form of escapism, or a form of numbing out a situation that is emotionally difficult, or a situation that is emotionally stressful or causes anxieties.

Porn is just a means to an end, in the same sense that getting drunk or getting high with illegal substances is a temporary means of escaping from those feelings or emotions. But all these methods of escapism always eventually ends in a come down, a hang over, or a return to sobriety. In other words sooner or later the difficult feelings come back because we haven't yet dealt with them, we haven't faced them, haven't expressed the emotions whatever they are? As long as we go on using porn and escaping reality we haven't moved on, we remain stuck with those difficulties in our lives. NOT only are those feelings not solved or sorted out but we have paid a price in other ways for our escapism, we have wasted not just money but we have wasted time itself (time we can never get back just like a prisoner doing a sentence), we pay the price in terms of betraying those that we say we love & who trust us. Or sometimes people pay the ultimate price for porn and loose a job, a partner, even their liberty in extreme cases.

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Actually, as amazing as what I am about to say is but a porn habit (porn problem, porn compulsion, porn dependency, porn addiction call it what you like) is NOT the real problem!!.

The habitual use of porn including online porn is a symptom or a sign of something else, porn is NOT the real "core problem" or core pattern. Porn is only a cover up for some other personal issue, porn use might be the avoidance of making a commitment to a partner or relationship for example i.e. fear of entrapment or fear of giving up apparent sexual freedoms. Or porn use might be a way to avoid real intimacy i.e. fear of intimacy. Or Porn use might be a way for a person to avoid there feelings of anger and rage i.e. fear of your own potency, fear of being powerful or of being truly assertive which would seem very paradoxical or ironic.

Whilst porn is many many things its never ever what you expect. In fact in my experience porn is almost always the sheer opposite of what you expect or hoped.

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Its so comforting to read all these messages and know I am not alone. My husband and I have been married for 25 years and in that time I have caught him out with porn 6 times ,the last 3 being in the last 12months with a progression to cybersex. How blind, foolish and stupid to think that he wasn't using it more frequently. I'm devastated and my world has been shattered. All the lies secrets and betrayal. I have objectified myself thinking that would please him only to have left me feeling worse and that I medicate my own horrible feelings with sex. I have tortured myself with questions of when ,where how often who with etc which only leaves me feeling worse. Part of me wants to leave and not deal with this but I am not in a financial position to do so and bottom line is I do love him. Slowly however I am getting that it is nothing to do with me and that he has underlying issues of mother abandonement. Logically I can understand that, but my heart still hurts. Tried to seek help from 2 psychologists one of which prescribed more porn and said it was a healthy part of sexuality!!! Alarm bells and another who proceeded to ask my husband why is it a problem? hello? Isn't that why we are here because its a problem and even my husband admits it loud and clear! Decided to see another councellor who specializes in addiction and wanted to put him into residential rehab for 4 weeks and total abstinence for 8 weeks with drug and alcohol addicts. Tried an EFT person this morning and for the first time in 3 months feel a little more positive. It is a life changing, emotional roller coaster which looms over you like a black cloud. I hope to find peace around it oneday and will not stop searching for the right person to help me. Thank you for sharing everyone as it truly helps.

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Sue - I totally understand what you are saying. Our stories are near identical. I discovered my wonderful husbands dark secret just over a year ago and after exhaustive research I am totally convinced its due to having a mother who has borderline personality disorder and he had an upbringing devoid of approval and lots of withdrawel of love and attention. He still cannot communicate effectively with her and any contact (too frequent) leads to relapsing into porn usage. I will not go on about the hurt and lies as we all know the extent of the damage. We have tried all sorts. One counsellor asked why he admitted to something I couldnt prove! Another just said he would never recover and we should split up. My concern is that he is so used to how he feels (50 years) he cannot understand that his mother's constant verbal abuse is not normal. He is, and he now admits this, afraid of her. We have got that far. I have been urging him to go to a therapist to talk at length about his relationship. He is very slow on the uptake. Like many of your other posters i love him so much and can see the real man through the foggy glass. I am convinced I can get to him but its obviously very very scary for him.

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It is comforting to me also to read all these posts. I thought I was crazy and stupid for making such a big deal about it. I honestly never thought my man had this problem with pornography, but then one day I started finding things. Eventually it lead to finding photos, videos, links, names probably of porn stars and links to porn sites saved on word pad. I also started to snoop (though I know that is probably wrong), and found numbers of links to sites for porn videos and photos in his email. Some of the worst parts of it for me is that he never took responsibility for it, denied it every time or just simply did not say anything about it and dismissed it.
Another thing is is that he did so much of this on what was MY computer, and I would find the times that he was saving that stuff to my computer, which also hurt me. A lot of them were very early in the morning when I went to work, or during the day when I used to work second shift. I cried to him quite a few times from how frustrated I was that this was making me feel less than the porn. He gave me his word that he "doesn't need porn, he can stop, it doesn't matter to him"... until I caught him one night when I woke up with a gut feeling, a gut feeling that I also was having for weeks before this night. I could barely make it through work with the feelings eating away at me.
I walked into the room at least three times before I finally caught exactly what he was looking at, and each time he had closed out the browser before I could see anything. Well when I eventually went up to him and asked him to come to bed, he said "okay give me a minute and I'll be there". Well I wanted to stand by him while he turned off the computer but when I told him he asked me "Why?", which I know he would never question why I want to be next to him for any reason. Well that's when I saw he was viewing again. I was immediately hurt by this because he gave me his word a good number of times, and then this. I asked him what he was looking at and he denied it and lied a few times before I finally pulled the truth out of him. When I thought he was done looking, he admitted also to viewing a few other times earlier that week. I also used to find Adultfriend finder in the cookies and history and I questioned him about that, and he swore that those were pop ups that can automatically save to your history. Which I found that it can, but after all this I wonder if he truly never went onto that site. I also just remembered that he would download videos from a site you can download music and videos from, and I found something about "webcam" in the library where what you download gets saved into. He said he has never done anything with webcam stuff. I pray that's the truth.
Anyway I have felt so foolish that this is such a problem, but now that I read other posts from other women, I realize that it's not foolish for me to feel the way I do about this situation. I had lost trust in him, and at times I have thoughts and concerns that continue to eat away at me. People say to forgive and forget like it's so easy, but trust really is fragile. I still love him very much, and he tells me how guilty he feels about it and swears to me that he IS done with porn, but I still have a hard time believing it. I'm truly working on letting it go and building my trust again, but I know that it is going to be a long road. I wish the best for the rest of you!

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I'm sorry we are all experiencing betrayal. My story is not much different than the others here, although my husband has neglected me physically since early on in our marriage, stating it was all my problem (wanting sex at least once a month). I should have seen that red flag, but I honestly believed it was me, that I needed it too much, that I wasn't good enough - whatever. 18 years and two pity-sex-borne children later, the older son shows me my husband's work laptop history.
That was just over a year ago, and I still feel pretty lost. I see a counselor from time to time when I bottom out, and I'm trying to work through it, and I don't know if I should leave or not (his porn use is after the kids are in bed -- typical pattern is that he stays up late, and then is
exhausted on weekends and short tempered with all of us). When I confronted him, he said he could quit by himself. He will not go to counseling. He is the son of an alcoholic father who has since passed away. He says he doesn't know why he married me. He says he will stay "for the kids" (11 and 14).
I realize it isn't about the addiction -- it is so much more than that -- but what makes me crazy is the "secret". The big secret. Nobody would ever guess. So if that's one secret, what are the others? He denies everything.
I'm just afraid of what will come next. :(

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Those men will never change. Move on and don't waste any time!

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