Claiming that porn celibacy is hard is – to me – like saying that not drowning kittens is hard.
Bigger going in for the kill!
When you look at all the things Bigger mentions - how extreme porn is now, how many lives it negatively effects etc. - it shouldn’t be hard to see why being “sober” from porn is a positive choice to make.
But, Bigger, I have to say, you are a rare breed. Not sure if you've noticed, but anytime porn is brought up in any of the forums here on SI, most of the men jump in to defend its' regular use. It seems perfectly logical to me that anyone could go without it, I simply can't understand the appeal. But it seems that 99% of men view it as perfectly normal, so it is very hard to argue your point when it feels as if almost an entire gender has united together to say "nope, we're doing it anyway."
I know a very small number of women who enjoy porn. Until seeing Bigger's post, I have never met/heard of a man who does not watch it, other than sex addicts in recovery, or maybe some monks.
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Know in advance that this will be a long response. I apparently don't know how to NOT write an essay when I respond. If it's too much, don't read it, 'nuff said.
Also, in the rest of my post I’ll use a ton of language about addiction. I’m no expert, just giving you my perspective from years of experience with my brother who is an addict, as well as experiences with my XH. I’ve met and had many discussions with others in the program, but my most detailed experience with the 12-step program is definitely with my brother and his alcoholism, so you will see me reference that a ton. I think it’s an easy metaphor to draw parallels with, and one that definitely helped me understand my XH’s behaviors surrounding porn/masturbation better, so hopefully it is helpful here.
I’m anticipating that some men will jump in to say that I am vilifying anyone who uses porn, as I’ve seen often on this forum whenever the topic of porn is brought up, however that is not my intention.
I’m using the language of addiction simply because you yourself seem to identify those types of behaviors in your husband, and pretty much every poster here has agreed that his relationship with porn is problematic. I’m not a CSAT who could definitively diagnose him as an addict, but for the purposes of this post, I’m going to treat him as one, as it’s just easier than having to hem and haw over semantics.
Take what you want and leave the rest as they say. I just felt personally compelled to respond because I could have written your OP word for word back when I was struggling with my XH’s addictions, and I wish back then I had had a site like this, or the advice of a trusted counselor to help me through it.
Figuring it out as I went along really sucked, and I felt incredibly alone. Nobody else I knew had boyfriends or husbands who exhibited behavior like this, so I was driving blindfolded, trying to stay on the road to keep our relationship on track. Hopefully on this site you can find a few people who have been there who can help you see a bit better as you navigate this.
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So, a lot of the things Bigger brings up are really important here. When I first discovered the depth of my XH’s masturbation/porn addiction, I had an in depth talk with him about exactly what he mentioned.
What if in a few years you are browsing this stuff and one of our daughters ends up being in one of these films?
Do you realize how degrading all of this is?
Are you also aware of the completely unrealistic expectations you are setting for your/our sex life by watching this stuff? I mean I enjoy a small number of things that could be considered "kinky," I guess, but the grand majority of what I've seen in porn I would NEVER be okay with under any circumstances.
You do realize I'm never going to do any of this, right?
He still didn’t view it as that big of a deal.
I even made a point to ask my male friends about it, as well as my brothers, to get male perspectives. They all agreed that my husband’s use was excessive, but they also all immediately jumped to defend their own use of it as “normal.”
I conceded that I guess that makes sense. If you look at other addictions, like alcoholism - some people can have a few drinks and be fine, others are alcoholics and have to abstain. I don’t drink anymore, not because I’m an alcoholic, but because I just don’t want to. But who am I to judge someone who goes out and has a few drinks with friends responsibly? You have to look at it as to each his own, right?
That sentiment is true, but only to the extent that the other person’s actions aren’t negatively affecting you. I'll admit, when I thought about how porn completely skews your view of reality, like how over the top it is, and how people, especially women, just don't generally have sex like that, I did still have a hard time wrapping my head around it.
I guess somewhere down the line as part of the CoD shit sandwich of living with an addict, as well as talking to many men - all who thought that giving up porn altogether was completely unreasonable - I gave in to the idea that there was no way he could just not watch it at all. Like you said WorstClubEver, I too did not want "to impose limits that would set any guy up for failure." I really wanted to be understanding, and to make sure my expectations were realistic.
But given that unicorns like Bigger exist, I see that the idea that “you can’t expect celibacy” is probably my own enabler mentality talking. As I did feel very strongly that porn was wrong for our relationship, especially when it involved so much lying and taking away from the marriage, but I let myself be convinced that it was unreasonable to expect that any man should never watch it.
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So I tried really hard to listen and to take into consideration that although I do not personally like to watch it, that it is a normal thing for some people. Instead I re-nogotiated the boundaries so that he could watch it, but it couldn’t affect our sex life or our quality time together, and he couldn’t lie about it when I found it.
Long story not so short, the placation only worked for a little while, and like ChamomileTea said, I believe porn was the gateway drug that led to much worse things down the line. This isn’t meant to attack those who manage to use porn responsibly. Again, like with most drugs, some people can handle use in moderation, and some just can’t.
My XH seemed to be someone who could handle it at the time, as my discoveries became less and less, and he was more forthcoming, or so I thought. But the lies abated for a short period, maybe a few months, only to continue after he felt he had "passed the test" and proven that he could go without it for a bit.
After his “sober” period, I would find:
- DVDs hidden around, I even found one in the DVD player in his car on several different occasions. He always insisted that he “didn’t know how they got there” or that they were “a gag gift” from a friend.
- search history on my computer, which he would use when his own computer died, and then he would tell me that he was just “testing to see if I was monitoring him.”
- Then came the giant dildos hidden everywhere - which were also deemed “gag gifts” or “gifts with purchase” from other purchases. Or my personal favorite, that he "didn't know where it came from." Ummm, well I am certainly not buying them, and I can guarantee that your daughters do not have the money to or the interest in buying dildos the size of your forearm and hiding them around the house, so unless you are trying to suggest that our cats have somehow garnered an interest in giant human male genitalia, the only person left is YOU.
-The most violating by far was my personal underwear stolen and torn up, which he always tried to claim was not mine. But then when I wouldn’t back down, he would give in but would only say “it’s old,” or that “I don’t know how that got there,” never owning up to the more recent transgressions, even when confronted with indisputable evidence.
I joked with him that given all of the things he “couldn’t remember” he might be the first ever case of masturbatory amnesia! 
The cam girls and escorts etc. came later when I really cracked down on his ability to get his fix in other ways i.e. refusing to buy lacy underwear anymore. I did not even discover these things until after his exit A, as I had decided to rug sweep and just choose to trust him rather than stress myself out over “just a little masturbation." That, coupled with the fact that he had decided to go seriously underground with his addiction, as he did not want to deal with the conflict.
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Again, the behavior of using porn and masturbating in and of themselves was not the problem, the lying about it was. Then of course the subsequent behaviors like destruction of property, straying outside of the marriage etc. But it is easy to see how if they can lie about this one tiny thing, why would they not lie about other, bigger things?
Look, you've said that you haven't noticed any "extreme" behaviors that would be of particular concern. But the timeline above is the "slippery slope" you're worried about in action. Not every addict slides down the same slope, but it is always slippery, and it is wet with their lies.
The lying continued to make me incredibly uncomfortable, as it seems to be doing to you. That's really where I should have been confident enough to draw that line, when I noticed that it was a compulsion combined with a lot of lying, and that the lying violated my basic understanding of how love is shown in a relationship.
I remember on many occasions feeling stuck, as I would think “If there is nothing wrong with your actions, why are you working so diligently to hide them?” Not that every encounter with porn needed to be announced, but if he was going to be careless enough to leave the DVDs in the DVD player, or to have it playing on his phone while I was sleeping which would then wake me up, or at his worst to leave my torn up underwear in the shower where I would of course find it, then why not own up to it when it was discovered, rather than come up with a bunch of lies to try to cover it up?
The best answer I could come up with was that, just like with an affair, he wanted to. He wanted to continue to use porn/masturbation/my underwear/toys in whatever way he saw fit, and he did not want to change the behavior even when I made it clear that it was a violation of my trust, privacy, personal boundaries etc. His want to use it was more important to him than breaching my trust.
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He wants to adjust the boundary, to allow for pictures at least. I don’t have a huge problem with pictures per se, but I don’t think he will be able to honor a new boundary any better than he honored the old one. It still won’t feel like “enough,” when he’s having the continuing urge to go to a livecam site. Eventually, he’ll cross the next line, and the next. He is oh-so-confident that he would have NO problem if he could just look at some pictures “whenever” (this will be every day, guaranteed). I can see him refusing to even think seriously about whether moving this boundary would do anything more than move his urge to trangress. That is the stuff that really makes me nervous. I feel he is not being honest with himself.
You're right WCE. Based on everything you laid out here, he is absolutely NOT being honest with himself. If you ask me, your husband trying to claim that porn has nothing to do with his multiple affairs, or even nothing to do with the cam girls etc. is like an alcoholic saying it's fine if he has a wine cooler, because it's not like it's a "real" drink.
Your fear that he will not be able to honor the new boundaries and that he will eventually just keep crossing each line are the classic fears that spouses of any addicts have. Your fears stem from experience, and you have every right to try to anticipate potential problems based on prior actions. Even his phrasing is the same... you can easily see how "It's just pictures" rings the same as "it's just one drink."
It’s actually very common for addicts to go through a bargaining period where they insist that eventually they will be able to use their substance of choice in a more normal manner. My brother used to say all the time, when he was in false recovery, “Well, I’m just doing this for now until I can get to a place where I can just have a few beers.” Cut to him passed out on the bathroom floor at his workplace, or being carted away to have his stomach pumped etc.
It seems your husband has already proven that he does not have control over himself when it comes to this “substance.” If he had control, he would be able to hold himself to your agreement, which he hasn't. So now there is no such thing as “just a ______” anymore. Don't let your instincts be overridden here, because these feelings you have in your gut are spot on.
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I mean, you say he refuses to admit that he has a compulsion/addiction, but all he needs to do to prove that to himself is to listen to his own words:
He admits that he still thinks about it and wishes he could go there. He said he did not think the urge to do so would ever go away.
These sound like the words of an addict if I've ever heard any. Go to an AA or NA meeting, you'll hear this exact same thing over and over again.
It's why complete sobriety is the only way - once you've identified addictive behavior towards a substance (in your husband's case, porn), it's all or nothing. You will never hear an alcoholic who is truly in recovery say "I'm ___ amount of years sober, but I'm just gonna grab a beer." It just doesn't work that way.
The point is, those feelings likely won't ever go away. It's his ability to deal with them when they come up that is most important. You don't just throw your hands up and say "well, the feeling is never going to go away, so I guess that means I should just keep doing it." If all addicts did that, there would be nobody in recovery, and they would all be dying of overdoses.
Elimination of the desire is often impossible, but redirection is. You’ll often hear addicts admit that they are jonesing for a hit, especially in a particularly stressful time, or when they encounter one of their triggers, which is why you’ll often hear them say “I need a meeting.” They have trained themselves to recognize when they have a craving and to replace it with a positive habit instead.
But, other than the A’s, porn has been the only other thing WH has proven willing to lie, hide, and break promises to me for. What am I supposed to make of that??
It's common knowledge that an active addict will say/do anything to protect their addiction, often going to great extremes to lie their way out of a situation rather than expose the addiction. In contrast, an addict in recovery will say/do anything to protect their sobriety, which often involves brutal honesty. So what does his willingness to consistently deceive you when it comes to porn say to you?
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To RideItOut's point:
I really feel that "no porn, ever" is a standard and a line that lots of men simply will not be able to hold onto long term. Some will, no doubt about it, and some do, but I don't think that most do/will, no matter how strong their motivation, because it's just too ubiquitous.
Given porn's ubiquity, celibacy is hard, in the same way battling any addiction is hard - because all addictions are ubiquitous to the user/addict, whether it's an alcoholic or a binge eater or a sex addict. Like most addictions, these items are fine for others in moderation, but are toxic to the addict at any level. And just because they are bad for you as an addict doesn't mean you want them any less. It does mean you have to work a hell of a lot harder to cut them out of your life, though.
But suggesting that porn's ubiquity makes it impossible to hold men to the standard of not using it, is like saying that free will does not exist. That we cannot expect alcoholics not to drink, or heroin users not to shoot up. Every day, there are addicts in recovery who prove otherwise. Honestly, it's like saying that the rape victim was "asking for it," not that the rapist chose to rape her. Or to draw parallels with the one thing we can all relate to - did your spouse have an affair because he was just so inundated with compliments by this beautiful woman that he couldn't help himself? Or was it because he has weak boundaries and used some BS about how he couldn't help himself to justify the choice that he made?
Just like an alcoholic has to talk themselves down every time they go to a grocery story because it would be so easy to just head down the liquor aisle and grab a few bottles. Just like with a heroin addict, admittedly it's a little bit more difficult to get hard drugs, but any active user will tell you, if you want it, you can find a way to get it, no matter which seedy motel or back alley you have to go to. Similarly, if a porn addict wants a “hit,” all it takes is a quick search on his/her phone. It’s all about whether they choose to seek it out when a craving hits, or if they make a healthier choice instead.
Any addiction is an ever-present want that addicts have to actively curb their desire for. My alcoholic brother still wants to drink every single day, and he's been sober for almost a year and a half. Some days are harder, some easier, but no matter what he works extremely hard to stay sober. He goes to three meetings a week, meets with his sponsor once a week, meets with his sponsee once a week, volunteers at the step house, and does a daily inventory. Even then he still might go to an extra meeting if he feels he needs it, and his sponsor is only a text or phone call away if temptation comes calling. He does all of this because as much as he would love to drink, the consequences are too dire. That's what we call "doing the work."
So, no matter the substance, that's really what it comes down to. Do you want to use it? Absolutely. But you have a choice. So, do you choose to use it, or not?
Don't get me wrong, it's super f%$*ing hard, and temptation is around every corner. But a choice is a choice, not a need. A choice does not magically become a need just because somebody says it does.
No matter what, ubiquity does not translate to necessity of use, only availability to use, if you so choose.
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He has not yet discussed this issue/question much with his IC, and personally feels he is just a normal guy (where porn is concerned) and firmly believes he doesn’t have a problem.
This is absolutely something you could encourage him to address in IC. Since he thinks of himself as “normal,” convincing him to see a CSAT (certified sex addiction therapist) might be next to impossible. I get it, no matter how hard I tried, I could not convince my XH to see a therapist about it either. They are in denial. The person who has the problem is the least qualified to say whether they have a problem, because they are unable to see it objectively. To them, their own behavior is normal. But they then won’t see a professional about it, so their opinion can’t technically be denied, so around and around it goes.
But I agree with sunwillshine, S-Anon would likely be very helpful to you. Even if you cannot get yourself to an in person meeting, the literature is readily available online, and there are even call-in and online meetings now! Had I recognized how my CoD behavior including weak boundaries was enabling him, and instead chosen to draw a hard line in the sand, things would be a LOT different.
Would he have been motivated to truly change? Possibly. It's also possible he would have told me to go f%&* myself. But choosing to keep re-drawing the line instead of holding him to it most definitely did NOT help anything. Based on what you've written, your instincts are already telling you that moving the line won't help, trust them.
And if you absolutely can’t get your husband to agree to meet with a CSAT or go to an SA meeting, you could leave some of the literature around, or even ask him to watch some youtube videos or something to get the wheels turning in his head. Like sunwillshine mentioned, just type “your brain on porn” into the youtube search and you’ll find quite a lot of interesting material.
I will say that one of my brothers did mention to me a few months after my discussions with them on the subject that my comment about it potentially being our daughters (so my brother’s nieces) did stick with him and turned him off to porn for quite a while. Granted, he was in recovery at this point, and had been working the 12 steps, so he already had a good groundwork for how to change habits and the benefit of doing a behavioral inventory. But it does show that a man’s opinion on this particular matter isn’t completely steadfast as many would suggest, it's not just some "biological need," so there is hope and potential for habits to change when the other party is receptive to opening a dialogue about it. He was also probably more receptive to it because I wasn't actually accusing him of anything, it was just something he came to on his own after thinking over what we had discussed re: my XH.
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Re: The Spouses of SA thread in the I Can Relate forum
Unfortunately, most instances there seem a lot more extreme/ cut and dry than mine. I felt a bit out of place there, if that makes any sense.
WCE, I have to agree, I often felt like my story wasn't "bad enough" to warrant being in that group. There were so many women whose husbands had squandered their entire life savings to pay for sex workers, had been caught frequenting massage parlors, had done some pretty illicit things to get their high etc. It doesn't help that porn has been so normalized that you are often shamed for questioning it.
But severity really doesn’t matter. When I discuss all of this with my IC, she is confident that my XH is a masturbation addict at the very least, with porn potentially thrown in there as well, possibly even a sex addict as well now that we've found out about the escorts, though many just use the blanket term SA to describe everyone under that umbrella.
It seems as if your MC has considered an SA diagnosis of some type, but she is first and foremost there to help you guys work through your M, and an evaluation for SA diagnosis is best handled by his IC, preferably a CSAT.
Ultimately what mattered more to my IC than the severity of my XH’s addiction was the severity with which it affected ME. Funnily enough, that's actually the major defining factor for how a sex/porn/masturbation addict is diagnosed - when it starts negatively affecting their partner/normal sex life, or any other day to day functions. But in the end, the behavior and how it makes you feel matters WAY more than the actual diagnosis.
It seems based on your OP like you have a pretty good grasp on how his porn habits make you feel. I agree wholeheartedly, the lies and gas lighting surrounding the porn/masturbation were the ultimate in betrayal to me, not the masturbation/porn use itself. And because of this, I could no longer see porn as an innocent outlet for his sexual expression. Porn and Masturbation became the names of my husband’s first two mistresses.
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there's something exceptionally hurtful about THIS seeming to be the hill he's willing to let his M die on. Like, I get that the urge is very strong. But with your M and the gift of R literally on the line, is it really not possible?
Yes, this is an incredibly hard pill to swallow - that they would defend their use of the substance so vehemently that they would be willing to lose your M over it. Your instincts are right though, it’s not that it’s impossible, it’s that he’s choosing not to change. The reason this is so hurtful, or at least why it was for me, is because you know deep down that it is in fact a choice, and he is showing you over and over again that he is choosing this substance over you. It is of course his choice to make, and you can’t control him. But that doesn’t make it any less hurtful when he chooses something else over you, much like he chose someone else during his As.
You’ve mentioned that you are afraid to lose your marriage over porn. But your marriage as you knew it has already been lost, and based on what you’ve described porn/live cam was a major part of that. It’s now up to you to decide if you are comfortable with porn being part of the new marriage you are trying to build. It’s ok either way, as long as YOU are ok with it.
If you keep going to MC and your husband makes some changes, you may find that you stop worrying about porn. However, it does seem from everything you’ve said that you are pretty uncomfortable with it, so I would encourage you not to let this be the thing that your own personal convictions die on. Remember that you are under no obligation to indulge his behavior if it makes you uncomfortable, no matter what society says about porn use for men being “normal.”
It also seems like you are feeling bad that you might be setting a boundary you don’t think he can live up to, or that might not be considered “fair.” Just remember that the boundaries are there for you, to express what you are willing to tolerate. Then, just like with an affair, whether he lives up to the boundaries or not says nothing about you, and everything about him. Only he can make those choices for himself. It is your job to decide what you can/cannot live with, and then he reacts accordingly to make his own decisions about whether or not your boundaries are things he can live with.
Also, If you lay down the law and he truly chooses porn over you, then that is his loss. But if it is truly a deal breaker for you and you continue to allow behavior that makes you uncomfortable, you are effectively choosing placating your husband’s porn habit over your own feelings. I did it for years, and I can tell you from experience that I told myself I felt good about it, that I was sooooo good at “compromising.” In reality, I knew that what I had really compromised were my own morals, I just pushed those feelings down in order to "save" my marriage. And that has been a tough pill to swallow post the demise of our marriage. That I spent years compromising my own values.
You are standing strong. You are not rug sweeping. You are asking all of the right questions. Stay the course! If porn is in fact the hill your M dies on, you will not be the first, and won't be the last, but no matter what, it will not be your fault.
TL; DR
Like whodidimarry said:
If he fails, you certainly didn't set him up for it. It will be because he can't be the man you need him to be.
I completely agree with what whodidimarry said above, except that it won’t be because he can’t, it will be because he chose not to be.
