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LinkedIN as porn Substitute?? Is this possible?

Discussion in 'Rebooting in a Relationship' started by 21yearsin, Dec 28, 2019.

  1. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    My husband CLAIMS he hasn't looked at porn in 2 years but really who knows? But he does check out women on LinkedIN?? I mean why? I had to go in and clear a ton of inappropriate connections he's 63 connected to young 20 somethings that had NOTHING to do with his industry.
    He sees nothing wrong with looking at women's profiles on a business platform. Is this a porn substitute? He says ALL MEN DO IT. I disagree.
    Thanks in advance
     
    +TenPercent likes this.
  2. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    I don't want to offend you or anything like that, but ... you're acting like a ...mother

    Look I've been with him for 27 years married for 22 if he acted like a MAN and not a child... well you get the gist.
     
  3. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    Yes he quits counseling every time. He gave me permission to delete the women off his account only to find new additions. I am trying to figure out if this is his porn substitute
     
    +TenPercent likes this.
  4. anewhope

    anewhope Fapstronaut

    Yes, it is a porn substitute. His addict brain is trying to fill the gap left by porn.
    This will drive him to do some or all of the following:
    • Ogle women in the streets
    • Scan news articles for any relating to attractive women or sex
    • Watch women's sports
    • Watch music videos
    • Look through google images of attractive women
    • Search you-tube for near-porn clips
    • Scan twitter, instagram, tumblr etc. for any pictures that match his preferences
    • Connect with women on platforms such as LinkedIn
    • Likewise search e-bay listings, linked-in for anything of a sexual nature
    It is the equivalent of a man denied a glass of water licking condensation off the windows.
    Take an addict and give him time on his own with a computer and this is what will happen.

    If he doesn't want to quit he will actively seek such loopholes. If he does want to quit, he will continue to fail by using such substitutes to feed the addiction until he fills the void with other more wholesome activities - ideally with you, but failing that outdoors and/or involving physical activity (gardening, long walks, sports, gym etc.)

    Hope this helps.

    ANH
     
  5. Brilliant post by @anewhope and spot on :cool:

    And I will also concur that what your husband is doing is a porn substitute. It's giving him some little "hit" in his brain that he is somehow connecting with (and looking at) those attractive young women.

    Even if nothing ever comes of it (most likely he will never actually meet or even exchange messages with these women) but adding a young woman on that site means that it will then suggest her other friends as well.

    Personally I have to be careful and very self aware about anything that I am doing online or on my phone. I'll even search for new articles that have photos of attractive women and I am constantly derailed by online advertisements for women's clothing :rolleyes:

    Lastly, I think it's great that you are deleting those women from his account - you are sending a clear message to your husband that it is not okay with you.
     
    21yearsin likes this.
  6. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    Thank you- This is very helpful, he denies having any problem at all and feels the LinkedIN thing is quite normal. He is destroying our marriage and I don't believe a word he says and he gets mad at me but how can I? He has lied to me over 700 x in 22 years of marriage.

     
    +TenPercent likes this.
  7. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    Thank you, I know there is a chance he will just open a fake account just for his pleasure but I can't control that, I wish he could just be open about his problem This is not new. In the past 22 years he has gone to strip clubs, watched porn, hired a hooker, etc. This is a long time problem yet he claims he has cured himself and hasn't watched porn in 2 years now.
    I told him i thought LinkedIN was a porn substitute he said they're not naked!!


     
    +TenPercent likes this.
  8. LinkedIn is for professional contacts . . . what he is doing is actually unprofessional. What would his professional colleagues think if they saw that half of his contacts were young women in completely unrelated fields?? Maybe a few male colleagues out there will think that he's pretty cool, but most people would see that this guy has a problem.

    Has he tried 12 step programs like SA, SAA or SLAA? If he's unwilling to stay in counselling, maybe hearing other people describe their addiction might help him to recognise that he has a problem.

    Conversely, if he's unwilling to make any changes, maybe you can find support in S-anon or CoSA (12 step programs for partners of sex addicts)
     
  9. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    He actually did the LinkedIN thing while also watching P. and still does it now. He has done the LinkedIN thing for the past 10 years. I did not know until recently. Should I believe he's been clean from P for 2 years and NEVER relapsed? I will get help from S-ANON for myself I can't live like this.
     
    +TenPercent likes this.
  10. Joe1023

    Joe1023 Fapstronaut

    Wow. That came off as extremely judgmental, especially from someone who knows only what the OP gave us.

    1. NO, this is absolutely NOT normal behavior.

    2. Yes, this is definitely a way to dabble in porn without actually looking at technical porn. It is a way of getting as close as possible to it without being able to be proven guilty of looking at porn. Its like an alcoholic who doesn't drink any alcohol, but hangs out in bars a lot, drinks non-alcoholic beer with other people getting drunk on his favorite drinks, smelling the beer, and holding mugs full of beer. Its just not smart. There is (or at least there WAS) a movie on Netflix called the Heart of Man depicting a man who is tempted by lust portrayed as a cliff. He's safe from the edge, playing music with his father, when he suddenly stands up, stops playing, and goes over just to stand near the edge and look and see what's out there. He accidentally slips off and is basically enslaved by his own lust, powerless to save himself. When someone does something like look online, whether its facebook, LinkedIN, Google Images, Craig's List, or whatever, we addicts can and will tell ourselves (and anyone else who finds out about it) that we're not doing anything wrong. Except that it IS wrong, otherwise we wouldn't be trying to hide it, END OF STORY.

    3. Sometimes the SO's literally HAVE to play the role of a mother sometimes because we men are acting like children, lying, deceiving, hiding, and manipulating to cover up our addict behavior. And in my opinion, without any exception that I can think of, anyone who argues these points are either in total and complete denial, or are hiding their own addictive behavior.

    Just my opinion, though.
     
  11. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    Thank you for your insight. I always feel that he is lying to me and it's driving me batshit crazy. I don't deserve this. Yes I know he has a problem so fine let's deal with it and be done.
    He swears he has done NOTHING as far as PMO in 2 years. I don't think it's possible to quit cold turkey, have a substitute and not relapse. Can anyone answer that?
     
    Trappist likes this.
  12. I think that it is possible, but it really depends on what you define as a relapse.

    I have technically not MO'd to P in 2 years, yet I have had about 50 relapses during that time. And even I myself have a hard time determining what really counts as a relapse.

    What matters most is that you don't trust him. Maybe if you are willing to hear the hard truths he will be willing to be completely honest about exactly what he has and has not been doing. (My girlfriend says she'd rather not know, which is sometimes a tough boundary for me to respect, because I really think that I want her to know when I am struggling sometimes . . . sometimes. Sometimes I'd rather not tell her either :rolleyes:)

    Yes!! Do that. I really hope that you find some great support there!
     
    21yearsin likes this.
  13. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    To have not watched porn at all. Just up one day said Nope no more porn and just stopped and settled for looking at LinkedIN. I don't trust him because of all the lies. I just want the truth!!
     
    +TenPercent likes this.
  14. Joe1023

    Joe1023 Fapstronaut


    So I would say that it probably is POSSIBLE, but EXTREMELY unlikely. Like powerball lottery TWICE in a row unlikely. To say that an addict has quit PMO completely, at least to most of us, means that the addict has not only quit hardcore pornography, but also any and all P-subs as well, and that just never seems to happen. So my guess is either 1.) he never had an actual addiction to begin with, or 2.) the more likely scenario is that he's hiding something or some things.

    I've been working on my recovery for about 3 years now, and I've personally never seen or heard of anyone who stopped EVERYTHING cold turkey with zero resets or relapses. Anything that an addict looks at or uses for the same reason he/she would look at or use porn is a p-sub. If he clearly has no reason to be looking at the accounts of these young ladies (for potential career opportunities or whatever) then he really has no business looking at them at all. And if that is the case, then my question to him would be why is he looking at them at all, if there's no lust involved in it, and no jobs for them or for him. Why wouldn't he be looking at the accounts of young men, older men, or anything else besides attractive young women? If he knows that you're hurt by his addiction, what POSSIBLE reason could he have for doing that OTHER than engaging in his addiction in some way?
     
  15. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    The women for the most part have no connection to his industry, his male connections do. Of course he is engaging in his addiction. He is very calculating though. Yesterday on his PC I found 2 entries from March and yes I know he knows about his private browser on his phone. One was a video of girls on the beach playing in their bikinis eyeing the camera seductively. And the other was a snapchat "story" but when confronted he says "I don't remember ever even seeing that!!" Just like when I found he has signed up for a free 5 day trial of a dating site "It wasn't me" The lies are what get me.
     
  16. 21yearsin

    21yearsin Fapstronaut

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    Sorry this part got cut off
    I think 25 years of use and use prior to meeting me 15+ years additionally shows an addiction, I could be wrong.
     
  17. I agree that Linked in can substitute for Porn as others so well note.

    It is another portal to get a fix.
    SAA has been my buoy in a deep ocean these last two years, sober for 22 months straight.

    Since a couple of slips of mine after two years,
    my wife wanted support, too, so I looked up and found Al-Anon and S-Anon.
    Tonight is her 3rd meeting.

    She is doing the daily reading and finds it helpful to understand PA/SA
    and for her family of origin issues. Seeing her get all teary eyed is hard,
    but that is also good for her in feeling her emotions and feeling better.

    Call the S-Anon number on-line. I did and they got back to me in a couple of days.
    The nice lady said, we cant talk to a third party and I said sure and handed the wife my phone.
    I just support and encourage her to go. She has used the phone list to find talk to others by phone, too.

    Addicts going to addict.
    If so, spouses gonna take care of themselves.

    regards,
    Trappist
     
    AngelofDarkness and anewhope like this.
  18. SAA says that the 'lust of the mind will fade away'.

    But SAA also says that you should understand and classify your addiction into avoided or slip "inner circle" behavior
    and borderline "middle circle" behavior. "Middle Circle" is the preoccupation stuff that can move into ritualization, then acting out.
    If you are hanging out in middle circle behavior like LinkedIn, that can move one further towards acting out.

    The middle circle is there for times in life where things are presented to you that trigger;
    it is my job to move away from them by thought and deed. Leaving a starbucks,
    looking away at the movie, avoiding ogling, you name it. Even have to sit in church in a way that is safe for me.

    Hanging out in inner circle areas is not a safe place for me and I read it here from the SO's,
    it is not the place I should hang out. Just as I listen to both sides of politics, listening to the men and women here gives me a better understanding of the societal swing towards too much freedom and it's big consequences.
     
  19. ahighertruth

    ahighertruth Fapstronaut

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    stop being so concerned about your husbands professional connections. just because he has young hot connections, doesn't mean he's cheating on you. plus hes right, everyone does do it.
     

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