Fiancé rebooting?

I posted this thread somewhere else earlier, but would love to get the thoughts and advice from the PA and SO in this forum too.

So I discovered my fiancé has been addicted to P for at least 10 years (possibly longer), and started using Omegle and other online webcam chats a few months after we got engaged to be married. I had so many questions and he lied through most of them at first.... I felt so hurt, betrayed, cheated on, used, shamed and sick to my stomach at the thought of him. He was doing this right under my nose and even spent money on it. I thought I was his girl, but it killed me to discover he was sharing himself with lots of other girls online ouch

He said he had been trying to stop for about a year but couldn’t. He knew he had to tell me if he ever had any chance of being with me. He did confess, although only because he had used my laptop and was afraid I would find it. He only told me part truths and flat out lied about other things. The truth came out is stages and even now, I doubt I know all of it. It’s the lack of honesty that really worries me the most. Will he ever be able to be honest with me through life?

Since then, he asked me to install porn blockers on his phone, change the passwords on the laptops, started to see a therapist and even changed his job so he didn’t have as much time on his own. I think he has been totally genuine and sincere in his remorse and for wanting to get better. He is not on this forum, but had a friend who told him about the ways that P changes your brain. The therapist gave him some good tools on changing his behaviour and giving the power back to his adult self. He has also had a lot of prayer.

Now, after what has effectively been no P for about 4 months, I notice he is depressed. My guess is that the dopamine levels in his brain are much lower than they have ever been, and he has not learned good coping mechanisms to deal with negative emotions. This is so tough, because I am trying to support him and I can see he is so unsatisfied with life in general. He started with a few new hobbies, but he gets bored of them fairly quickly and just complains about life a lot. I try my best to help him focus on the many positives in life, even doing a lot of prayer and meditation with him. It works for a time, but he is clearly avoiding the emotional issues that brought him to P in the first place.

We are still having sex (have always had a healthy sex life), but there are definitely times when I feel detached like he is fantastizing about some girl on a webcam and not really in it with me. I have told him that I don’t want him to fantasise about any P memories when he is with me, but I guess you can’t ever know what another person is thinking. We have never had any issues in the bedroom, but now he has been struggling to maintain a a full erection during normal, “love making” unless we do something quite hardcore. I feel empty like we won’t ever be able to have true intimacy in the true love kind of way. I want to be able to connect and kiss and feel close during sex. I’m also not sure if he is still masturbating either. I am afraid to ask because I don’t want to hear anymore lies.

We postponed our wedding because my trust has been completely broken. I just don’t know if I can trust him to be honest and truthful with me. That’s what I want in marriage. I did seriously consider leaving him since what he was doing was cheating. Many of my friends have pushed me to leave him and run, run, run. But I believe that he is sincere, that his heart is in the right place and he wants to get better. I have an opportunity here to help someone in need. I believe he loves me very much and doesn’t want to ruin our lives. God told me to be strong and hang in there with him. I might not trust my fiancé anymore, but I do trust my God.

We are doing better and the betrayal trauma has subsided a lot. We have a lot of fun together and things are pretty good. But I still wonder if he has relapsed and if he would tell me. I don’t want to be one of those woman who are fooled and find out later that all the trusting and supporting was in vein. He has stopped going to therapy now and says he hasn’t looked at porn at all since D-day. He probably can’t since we have P blockers on everything, but I worry that he still masturbates or thinks about P, which will keep those old neural pathways alive. I am hanging in there in the hopes that his brain is rebooting at the moment and new neural pathways are taking the place of the old.

I am at a cross roads where I think things are going really well, but I also living with so many insecurities and paranoia. I find myself worrying about all kinds of things that he may be going on that i’m in the dark about. I hate this feeling of broken trust.

If I leave him, chances are that the next guy will also have a problem with P! It’s rife and I am so angry with the Internet at the moment. At least he had the guts to be honest (mostly) and come clean. Maybe we have a real chance of getting through this?? Is true recovery even possible? I would love to hear from a SO who has seen the other side of all this.

I can’t really talk about it with him anymore. He says that talking about it makes it worse for him because he is forced to think about P. The therapist taught him to immediately put any fantasies away into the “messy box” in his head as soon as they come up. He just puts it out of his mind as soon as possible. Which I suppose is a very good thing, but I also don’t know if this is his way of avoiding dealing with it or even hiding it. Not talking about it certainly doesn’t help me when I need to talk about it. He gets so frustrated when I bring it up because he feels so much shame and guilt about it. He just wants to move forward and not dwell on the past.

My friends don’t understand this problem and I don’t feel like I have anyone to talk to. I feel like I need practical and tangible advice; what can I do, how long will this take, how can I know if he is really in recovery, etc. All questions I struggle with daily.

Thanks for reading.

 

Thank you all for your feedback.
I did thoroughly believe he had hit rock bottom. He nearly lost me, and ruined his whole life. Cancelling the wedding forced him to confess his problem to the 40 guests we had invited. He wanted full disclosure. If he hasn’t hit rock bottom yet, then I don’t know what rock bottom would even look like for him? But now I have doubts...

I have parental controls on his phone where I control the passwords and even specifically blocked over 300 porn and webcam sites. I haven’t asked to look at his phone history, but I don’t see how he could be looking at anything explicit?

In a way, his depression makes me think he isn’t looking at P, because it tells me he’s not getting his dopamine hit. But I could be wrong here.

I want to believe the best of him, but I also don’t want to be lied to again. I got to a point where I realised I can’t influence or control what he does or thinks. I can only support him by keeping the sex as intimate and “real” as possible and being encouraging about being 4 months P free. If he isn’t, well, let that be heaping goals onto his head. Let the shame and guilt eat him up. Because I have done everything within my power to help him. I have to look at his heart and his intentions... I know he doesn’t want to be addicted anymore. He is not in denial and he wants to be free.