Feeling a Little Isolated

First time posting on any forum that I can remember, so this feels a little strange. But I think it's time to stop feeling so alone in this journey when so many others face the same problem.

I am the supporting partner of a sweet and lovely man with a serious sex addiction, and we are both learning as best we can as we go. I will take some time in this introduction to write a brief summary of where we are right now, and perhaps write more in a journal later.

My husband and I met on our very first week of University (we are both born and bred in England), at a classic 'freshers' party in some grimy student accommodation, when I was 18 and he was 21. I actually ended up bunking in his apartment, and in four weeks I'd left my boyfriend at the time and we had started dating.

We moved into our first flat then, after a couple more moves, bought a home of our own. We got married 5 years later, and have now been married for a year.

Of course, like many people, I had no idea that sex addiction was a 'thing', and for much or our relationship we had another problem to deal with; his mother is an abusive woman with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). It has caused both my husband and his sister a great deal of pain, and left behind a whole host of problems.

He finally went 'no contact' with his mum, and things started to dramatically improve. His could at last tackle his commitment issues and proposed to me in November of 2017, and it was some time around April 2018, about three months before our wedding that things really came to a head. Cue "D-Day".

Of course I knew things were 'off'. I knew our sex life felt forced at times, and he would get extremely anxious if more than a few days went by without sex. He was never aggressive, just sad and anxious, but there were times that he would get angry for no particular reason. I also knew that he has watched a lot of porn in his teens, but then "that's just what men do", and I assumed that he wasn't watching it any more.

I can't quite recall the events that led to D-Day. We were in bed and he was struggling to keep an erection, something that was an infrequent but recurring problem, and I don't know why on that occasion but I burst into tears. I left the room, and when he convinced me to come back he had a look on his face I'd never seen before, and that's when years of lies and addiction suddenly started flowing.

I think once he started, he couldn't stop, he just needed to get it all out. He masturbated at home, at work, in public toilets, everywhere. Porn videos, sex chats, women on chat apps that he would message. Every spare minute, and it was clear how keeping up such a lifestyle had completely exhausted him, and he had no time or emotion left by the time it came to me.

Of course I went through all the normal stages of shock and trauma, betrayal, anger, the works. I spent about 48 hours in numb shock, thought about cancelling our wedding, and imagined telling my family that my fiancé was some kind of sexual pervert.

Before any of this happened, because of the work around his NPD mum, we'd actually promised that if anything ever happened to our relationship, we would agree to go to counselling before we made a decision. I am so grateful we made that rule. After two days of living in a fog, we sat down and googled his 'symptoms' and found the secret world of sex addiction, including NoFap.

We went to counselling, read Paula Hall's books on sex addiction, and he started his first reboot immediately. We got married, moved to Germany, and overall things are 1000% better than they were before.

Recently he's started edging again, and when I flew back to the UK to my family for a couple of weeks his addiction completely took over again. He's devastated, and I'm much better equipped this time around for a new reboot.

My only problem is that I feel so isolated. My family is quite judgemental, so I can't ask them for any support. We are making new friends in Germany, but of course no-one close enough to discuss your husband's sex addiction. I don't work, so I spend the majority of my time alone at home, which is also lonely.

I'm reading books, helping him set new boundaries, and trying to generally play wife, life coach and psychotherapist at the same time. I absolutely believe in him. I just think it's time to reach out.

 

Thank you! I have now posted in the journal section and sent a request to the SOS too.

 

Thank you @CookyMonster, your reply is very thoughtful and encouraging - something I have never been able to have before, so thank you for making me feel like I am not alone. You're so right about having to be the one saying "what one needs to hear", and having that courage can be the scariest thing in the world.

Congratulations on your second meeting and being so supportive to others while you go through something this difficult at the same time. I was looking for new books to read, so will most certainly be checking out Patrick Carnes' work today, as I've not heard of him yet.

Have a great day too, and thanks for taking the time to help and encourage some random on the internet, it makes such a difference ☺️