Help me to help my wonderful husband - HT’s story
Posted by: Jason in Advice for partners, True storiesHT has submitted her story of living with a porn-addicted partner, and the ongoing despair that it has caused:
I am a 23 year old mother of two beautifully wonderful children. I have a wonderful husband of 3 years. When it all started 6 years ago we would watch porn everyday. When things got serious between us I started having issues with him looking at it. (I have self esteem and repressed anger issues of my own) it started after we moved in together and got cable. our cable bill skyrocketed he would rent movies while i was asleep next to him, buy magazines, read erotica, surf the web every chance he got (I even started talking to an ex again with him in the other room and he was too engulfed in his search - he didn’t even know i was on the phone, and i made sure i talked loud enough he could hear me).
When i got pregnant with our son i put my foot down and we split up. we remained apart for 9 months. I never thought he was really a porn addict, so after we got back together i would joke about him being an addict to friends and family. I was hurting him and didn’t know it. i thought things were OK it had been 3 years since he had looked at it or so i thought.
Two days ago it started again, I came home and found out he had not hid his “evidence” very well. So of course i blew up. got divorce papers, tried to kick him out and he would not go. he admitted that all my joking was real and that he really was a porn addict. i was devastated. I know an addict has no idea how it feels from the other side. I felt betrayed, hurt, unworthy, and unloved and unappealing. i felt like i was not good enough to look at so why should I stay. Then he reassured me that he loved me with all his heart and asked me to help him with his addiction so now here i am asking for someone to help me help him because i don’t know what to do. I have never dealt with this before. This is my cry for help because he thinks everything will be OK if we just talk about it every so often but i think it will take more then that.
Thanks HT for sharing your situation and feelings with such openness. It’s certainly not unusual for a partner’s porn habit to cause a series of unhappy rifts in a relationship, often over the course of years. All the time, he’s trying to both protect and avoid his compulsive behaviour, and his partner tries to hold things together in the face of all this conflict, neglect and hurt. This can become a horribly prolonged experience.
Your story higlights two of the factors which are so often present in this situation: blowing up and ridicule. Unfortunately, both are factors that generally serve to compound the problem rather than resolve it. Of course, this is absolutely no criticism of your reactions to your husband’s behaviour. These are a partner’s instinctive reactions to a desperate problem. Every couple who has been through this emotional rollercoaster will recognise them well.
With the devastation of discovering a husband’s secret habit, or his continuing obsession after promising to quit, it’s completely natural to hit out at him with rage and accusation. There’s logic to it too; perhaps he will begin to understand the pain that his habit has caused, and an opportunity for change will open up. Sadly, the addiction is usually too strong; his barriers of denial will come up and he’ll return to his habit for consolation. It’s the only place where he really feels in control - this is the bizarre nature of porn addiction.
Making light of the problem with friends and family is a common reaction too. For the partner, it is an attempt to find some support outside of the relationship. Let’s not forget how lonely and hopeless an addict’s partner can feel. It can also be an attempt to humiliate him into facing reality and changing his ways. Again, this inevitably has the opposite effect. He will return to the oblivion of porn, feeling even more wronged and tormented.
In essence, these reactions are all part of the horrible ‘porn addiction game’. You are forced to be persecutor and he gets to be victim, which is the favourite role of any addict. Through rows, emotional distance and solemn promises to really quit this time, couples become locked into a cycle of despair and hopelessness.
The very hopeful news comes towards the end of your account. Painful as it is for you both, his honest acceptance that he has an addiction is a positive step. By requesting your help and offering real discussion, I would suggest that there is definite potential for you both to move forward. However, you are completely correct - open dialogue between you both is essential, but there is a lot more to be done.
Lasting recovery requires genuine motivation on his part and a clear action plan over the coming weeks and months. For both of you, it is a step-by-step process of rebuilding confidence and intimacy. My recovery plan can certainly help provide these steps, along with clear options for him to understand the drives behind his compulsive behaviour. Also, there are some excellent resources recommended on this site. It’s easier said than done, but my key advice at this stage would be to recognise any sign of ‘persecutor’, and try to channel your frustration into a more supportive role. My guide also expands on the options for partners to achieve this.
I wish you both every success in rebuilding your future together.
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So now it has been a few weeks since the incident. My husband went on like nothing ever happened, like he is pushing it aside and hoping it will go away. As for myself I would love to do the same but, I cannot.
I don’t really know what to do - I want to blow up and yell at him and make everything OK, but I know that will not work. since I came home from the hospital 4 days ago after an operation, he has been very different with me. Jim gets aggravated easy and often. I often feel like he is mad at me for having the surgery but again it was something we agreed on.
We are a couple that shares everything together but this. We love to spend time together. Outside of his addiction everything is perfect. I couldn’t ask for anything more. In closing I am asking how do I approach the issue without him shutting down or getting mad?
I’ve been in a similar situation with my husband of 12 years. I would explode on him every so often and he’d break down with guilt. Even after admitting how bad his problem was, within days he’d be back at it again and trying to ignore what it was doing to our otherwise lovely relationship.
My husband used to get angry too… really tetchy and quite horrible to live with. I thought it was me for a long time, but he was mostly angry with himself and this crappy double life he was making for himself. Me being angry with him always made things a lot worse.
I recommed direct and honest communication with him, but without accusing or getting fired up if that’s possible. Plan what you want to say to him and deliver it sensitively, setting a firm boundary but letting him know that you will be there for him… this is very useful http://www.pornaddicthubby.com/SettingBoundaries2.html
As Jason says, he needs to get real motivation to make changes and that isn’t going to happen through fighting over it… he’ll just break away further from you. There needs to be real change, from little things like where he uses the computer and what time he comes to bed, to how he communicates with you. Things are a lot better for us now but it did take all this work.