Calamity - so sorry you are here, but you came to the right place! I am hesitant to say too much on here since you said your WH is the one who showed it to you, but I felt like sharing some info that might be helpful to you.
Do not let him get away with working through this on his own. I know you said he mentioned IC, and that is a great first step, but often after a few sessions they will think they can handle it on their own, and trust me, sex addiction is insidious. Alcohol and drugs are not needed for your body to function, so as long as an alcoholic or drug addict can avoid triggers, they are able to stay sober. I’m not trying to downplay alcoholism or drug addiction, as they are both huge issues in and of themselves, but sex is supposed to be a healthy part of a good relationship, so in a way, for a sex addict to have a sex life with their spouse is like asking an alcoholic to have just one drink, or a cocaine addict to only do one line. They need a LOT of guidance to navigate such a tricky addiction, it’s really not something they can will away on their own.
I discovered approximately 2 years in to my relationship with my husband that he had an extreme masturbation addiction. I should have known when the first night we moved in together he tried to put porn on the TV in our bedroom as we were going to sleep. Then again when every door knob felt greasy. Or again when my underwear and lotion kept going missing.
I ended up going through months of finding gnarly stuff - my own underwear constantly found mutilated, torn and tied up in knots and covered in oil, fishnets, pantyhose, porn DVDs in weird places on bookshelves or in couch cushions, but then also sometimes just left in the DVD player, dildos in random places throughout the house including under book shelves, on top of kitchen cupboards, in the trunk of his car, and even shoved in a hole he cut in our mattress, catching him in our living room in the middle of the night even while his daughters were asleep in the room with just a curtain to divide from the living room - The WORKS. Have you found anything at all over the years that you initially wrote off but now would consider to be suspicious? I suspect since you have mentioned to him that he is a narcissist that you have some examples of that stored away in your brain - you might find that the timing of when he was being particularly self-centered might coincide with some of these activities. Write anything like that down and address it with him.
He refused to go to therapy or join a 12 step program, in fact he wouldn’t even admit that he had a sex addiction. So I tried to work through it with him just he and I. I thought we had made a ton of progress, and I essentially viewed it as a non issue. We had great communication about it, and the destructive behavior surrounding masturbation had stopped or so I thought.
I then came to discover 2 months ago that he had been having an affair for At least a couple of months. I have also since found out that he has a meth habit. And now after checking our phone records and finding multiple random Google Voice calls over the years, and at least 2 confirmed escorts phone numbers in the two weeks post D Day, and 3 in the years leading up to it, I am convinced he has been calling escorts for years. Have you checked your husband’s phone records to discover if there are any unusual calls or texts?
I’m giving you all of these nitty gritty details to emphasize that with sex addiction, it almost always goes much deeper than you would even imagine. I second everything that crumbs said regarding how porn/sex/masturbation addiction rewires the brain.
Also, in regards to your husband saying how much he despises social media - I have found it to be true that pretty much every statement my husband made that he was so vehement about, the truth tends to be the opposite of what he was saying.
“I would never cheat on you, I could never let my daughters down by doing something like that” turned into him sneaking her into our house under their noses, and then him immediately moving her into our apartment as soon as I left.
Also “I don’t understand how anyone could do meth, it is so addictive and it completely ruins people, I saw what it did to my ex wife, I would never” - cut to me finding crystals all over the book shelf along with a bunch of empty pens (which another BS on here pointed out to me is a sign of use) and I had them tested and BOOM, meth. I realized I had been finding empty pens around the house for years, and just never knew why they were there.
My husband was also similarly against social media - he had accounts, but was notorious for barely posting anything, so I never paid much attention to what he posted or didn’t post. Turns out he was using Instagram to view slutty cam girl accounts... I would have never known because he didn’t follow them, all he had to do was search sexy hashtags and he could find whatever he needed. If I were you, I would check for all different apps and forms of social media. What’s App is a common one for cheaters, I’m also finding that Instagram has seen a huge rise - my boss’s husband had several ongoing Instagram affairs with videos and photos sent back and forth. Also Facebook has “secret” messages - I’m still not even sure how they work, but I know they exist. And also, on iPhones you can go into incognito/secret mode when searching on the internet as well. Have you been able to thoroughly go through his phone and email? What about bank statements? You mentioned that they were trying to get him to pay for additional time, are you sure he never did?
Also, I know a lot of people on here say that sudden secrecy surrounding electronic devices is a sign of cheating, but with my husband I think he got a thrill knowing that I could find something at any time. We both password protect our phones for the purposes of keeping classified work info private in the case of loss or theft, but we both had each other’s passwords and were allowed to look at the phone at any time. Because I knew I could, I very rarely did. I have since found out that he was using Tinder, then just deleting the app after he had chatted with people and gotten their number. If you get Dr Fine you might be able to recover data from his phone and see if he had similarly deleted any apps or messages.
Also, just know that it is normal for the things he is saying and the videos he is sending to not in any way resemble his sex life with you. In a lot of sex addicts mind, they have a twisted view where their SO is on a pedestal, and their desires are really excessive and messed up, and they would only talk to other women like that because they are just objects to them. Not to say that is an excuse, and it is still incredibly hard to see all of that, but just so you can gain some kind of understanding on the possibility of why.
I know when I found the porn my husband would watch, I questioned why he was so turned on by things that he had never asked me to do, and he said he didn’t know. I also asked how he felt about the fact that these women look super trashy and fake, from their hair and nails to their outfits and the noises they would make, and he said it was just a means to an end. The problem is, their brains have been wired to find those things enticing and arousing.
SAs tend to have a lot of self loathing (like your husband saying he is disgusted with himself). There is a LOT of shame surrounding the act for them, which is another reason why they do whatever they can to hide it. Your husband needs to dig deep and examine why he has so much shame surrounding it, and why he felt it appropriate to do these things behind your back.
Do you know if he was exposed to sex and/or porn at a young age? I know my STBX told me he watched pretty hard core porn for the first time at age 10 or 11, he and his brothers had found his dad’s stash, and in my research I’ve found that exposure at a young age, especially while they are going through early puberty, is a huge factor in SA. Because porn itself is very unrealistic, they develop unrealistic expectations for what sex should be like, and when they don’t get all of the outfits and over the top moaning and screaming in real life, they substitute it with porn, because they know it will get the job done.
Of course any choice on whether to stay in your marriage or not is completely up to you. This type of choice is made all the more difficult by the fact that you have an infant. I did not get such a choice, as after DDay my husband decided to shack up with the AP and we have not spoken since other than to handle logistics, but I definitely do not envy the position you are in. I can’t imagine having a christening and going through the holidays with something like this looming.
I too loved my husband beyond words. I worked through all of these behaviors for years because I thought that we loved each other so much that we could work through anything, and that it was my duty as his partner to see him through this and to help him get better. I put a ban on porn after I found it one too many times, and unfortunately all that did was make him better at keeping it in places where I wouldn’t find it. He did not want to get better, so he didn’t, he just got better at hiding it from me. And when I would find it anyway, I did not stand up for myself and lay down any ground rules on what would happen next, at least not any that I stuck to. I was not good at setting boundaries and sticking to them, because I was afraid of making him feel bad about it because he seemed so ashamed of it. I thought I could love him out of his addiction - that my support and telling him it was ok to talk to me about it would make it magically disappear. But it didn’t, and it progressed to a point that I could never have imagined. Please, please, please, whatever you do, don’t think that you can love this away - you both need serious counseling to get through this!
If I could go back in time to when these behaviors were first discovered, I would have taken a radically different approach. I would have insisted on individual therapy as well as a 12 step program, with no promise of staying in the relationship, just the promise that I would think about it if he did a TON of work on himself. If I had done that, I might be in a very different position now. Even if he didn’t do the work, I would have at least gotten out before we got married, and splitting up would not be so damn hard. Being in your position, seeing him do the real work would help you see his remorse and begin to move forward.
You may get some TT, as a lot of times with SAs the porn/masturbation is not enough and it advances to something physical. I truly hope that is not the case for you, but it might be a good idea to get yourself tested just in case. Also, even if it was not physical, remember that the discovery of all of this is a trauma. I hope that you are able to get into counseling sooner rather than later and begin to work through this. Don’t let anyone minimize your pain just because it was all virtual - the betrayal is real, and everything you are feeling is valid!
[This message edited by HeHadADoubleLife at 11:44 PM, December 31st (Monday)]
