Bigidiot. I am a BS with a non-success story and I would like to share my perspective with you, with the understanding that this is MY perspective only, because there are some parallels. My actual situation is different from yours (my stbx is a serial-cheater) but the long-term lying about an issue (who you are) is the same. And also, a lot of your clean-up work looks the same.....which is not a good harbinger since I'm divorcing him and want nothing at all to do with him.
You did betray you wife, but the fact that there wasn't any physical contact is a big step-up for you. At least she doesn't have the mind-movies of you actually *being* with someone else or invading *her* privacy by sharing *who SHE is* with someone else. From what I understand from your posts, your betrayal was strictly limited to *viewing.*
BUT. The fact is that you portrayed yourself to be someone that you weren't. And she has a problem with that and you are discounting and minimizing her concerns.
I felt the need to lie because I didn't want to hurt her because we both share the same view of pornography
This statement is very troubling to me. My thoughts piggy-back onto what UO expressed in one of your other threads. She talked about your *shadow self*.
The bottom line is that you and your wife do NOT share the same view of porn. Your *public* self may claim that porn is the *devil's work* and whatnot....but your *shadow self* LOVES it. It's a dichotomy. A cognitive dissonance. You are *telling* yourself that you don't condone porn....but you do, kwim? If you honestly shared your wife's view of it, then looking at it would not even be an option for you, it wouldn't have even been on your radar...... Accept that and own it.
IMO, you didn't lie about your porn viewing in order to *protect* your wife, you lied about it to protect yourself because you knew what her stance on it was and if she knew about your usage, then you would have to stop and you didn't want to.
I'll bet that your BW DID mean it when she said that she wouldn't have married you if she had known. While my stbx and I were dating, I flat-out told him "I'm not gonna be with a guy that goes to strip clubs" and I meant it. He told me that he had gotten enough of *that* while he was in the Navy. I believed him. Well guess what he's been doing for the last 20 years? Going to strip clubs and lying about it. If he had been honest with me about *who* he was and what his proclivities were....I would NOT have married him. But for whatever reasons at the time (FOO, PD, whatever), he didn't. He *shined* me on for his own self-serving reasons.
Here's what I wanted as a BS who had a long-term con pulled on her: I wanted my stbx to actually BE that guy that he had portrayed himself to be. I wanted to see him giving 1000% to become THAT guy.
If you truly want to salvage your relationship, pleasepleaseplease STOP trying to convince your BW that your memories of the marriage are awesome and that it was *authentic*. Because to her, that just isn't true. You were lying about yourself to her. When my stbx would *wax poetic* about our marriage and send me *remember when* pictures....all it did was push me that much further away.
You need to understand that in your BW's eyes, right now the marriage is NOT so much bigger than the porn and the lies. You are a total stranger to her right now. Sure she might *know* that you like butter instead of jelly on your toast and which sports teams that you like, and that you'll get upset if she says <x>, so she better say <y>....but to her, right now, you are someone that she doesn't even know.
I think that I read in another of your posts that you are not in IC? Drop the idea of MC right now. I'm getting the feeling that you BW is gonna have NONE of that.
I will guarantee you that your BW wants to see you shake your tail to IC in order to figure out how to reconcile who you *think* you are with who you *really* are and to see you making forward steps into melding the two.
Right now I think you are white-knuckling it. And I'll bet that your BW is just waiting for you to *mess up* again. There's a post in the Wayward Forum titled 'Dry Adultery'....I'm not sure which page it is on....but you should find it and read it.
The TL/DR version of my message is: Fix YOU. Carry your own water. Stop trying to *convince* your BW of something that she knows isn't really true.