How porn changes the way my husband sees makeup

I 100% blame the changes that I saw in my husband on his addiction. I had no clue what was happening to him but his personality changed significantly-probably from frontal lobe atrophy due to his brain pruning his dopamine receptors. Until his addiction really took off, he NEVER would have masturbated in a parking lot, but during his addiction that seemed like a great idea. Initially a wonderful, patient human being, he became critical, oppressive, insulting, and angry. After the addiction took hold the ONLY time he ever seemed truly happy was when I was leaving the house-I had no clue it was because he was happy to act out. I basically became a hinderence towards him getting what he wanted-I was in the way of him and his porn. My husband and I did not "feed off of eachother"- he CHANGED.

 

No because I deserve to know what happened in our marriage. He used to look at me with disgust-at least now I know why.

 

Perhaps you should ask WOMEN who have dealt with their husband's porn addiction wether or not it was an "atomic bomb" on their marriage?
I imagine most men will deny it was because they don't want to feel responsible for destroying their relationship and their wives. Go take a look at the women's journals here and see what a man's insatiable need to enjoy women other than his partner does to a woman. It is called BETRAYAL TRAUMA AND IT IS HELL.

 

This is fascinating to me. My husband was already pretty addicted when I met him. However, he was never critical of me, or oppressive/insulting/angry. In fact quite the opposite. He has always come to me for advice, didn’t always take it, lol, but held my opinion in very high regard. He hated when I would leave the house ( he knew he’d act out and wanted so bad to quit, but to ashamed to talk about it). Even so, he always encouraged me to chase my dreams. He’s never been the angry type. It was more like he was just a shadow. Not good but not bad? If that makes sense. Not motivated? Whereas at work he was highly motivated, hard worker, and confident. At home, not so much. I’m really just now seeing him without addiction. I’m more shocked by the physical changes! His voice has changed! His face has changed and he has more hair, like he never had much hair at all. No more pied or de which he literally had on our honeymoon and I thought was sex supposed to take that long? I could list out the changes. I told my csat, if he had been like this our entire marriage instead of addicted, I would’ve walked through fire for him. If he had invested even half of the amount he is now, I would’ve said he was the love of my life and I couldn’t live without him. Instead, I think about leaving, running, never speaking to him again. His addiction destroyed our marriage. They can’t see it though. Not Until an addict gets clean, it was 6 months before my husband really acknowledged and SAW the damage he’d done. He saw that no, he was not a great husband. He was not the great father he thought. It broke him. He saw how very selfish, self absorbed and disconnected he was. He was so busy living in his head, he missed the joy of real life.

 

Part of the problem JustADude is that you aren’t clean. You’re an addict who is still using. You absolutely cannot view yourself, your relationships, or life in a way that is real/true until you are clean. So even in spite of your research, your view is still skewed. At least you are trying! I give you kudos for that.

 

I agree I am not clean. I also agree that being clean would add to my personal perspective and will likely change how I feel about nofap. Obviously, I don't agree with a lot of the advice given. I am ok with that. I am just trying to be another voice of reason.

I was here 4 years ago. Most of the active couples were different but the advice seems to be about the same. That advice did not help me or my wife back then. Why? because BOTH of us had deeper issues. We both had lost our faith in the goodness of each other, we stopped given the other the benefit of the doubt. We frequently looked for signs of trouble, looked for faults, we frequently had bad arguments, slammed doors, scared our kids during some arguments, and vastly more sad days than happy or neutral days.

Rohini Ross was big part of my marriage turning around. Maybe she can help others.
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/yo...ts-but-you-don-t-have-to-take-them-seriously/

Of course, I realize we are all different and the same approach may not work for everyone. I assume everyone else knows that too and leaves space for alternative opinions.

 

Does your wife know you are currently an active addict?

 

Yes.

 

It's a plus you aren't lying to her. It must be hard to keep your marriage strong while you are actively choosing your addiction. Do you have any research about marriages thriving in that environment?

 

That’s a great link and the advice would help any marriage. However, it cannot address addiction in marriage the same way it addresses “normal” marital problems. It would be like going to the doctor for bronchitis and he prescribes antibiotics which indeed help if you only have an infection, but your cough is actually lung cancer. Your addiction will always be a cancer, it can be an active cancer that slowly eats away and kills your relationships or it can be a cancer in remission and then and only then will your marriage begin to truly get healthy and better. You can deceive yourself Into believing that your addiction is only an infection, but sooner or later you face that it is indeed a cancer. I gave up at 15 years in that I would ever have a truly healthy thriving marriage. My husband thought our marriage was great, that we were great. Until last January, until he strayed to get help any get clean. Every day he stays clean, his eyes are opened a little more. I’d say he really started to see, at 6 months clean.

 

That would be like asking... "do I have any research with marriages thriving within a spouses's video game addiction?". There are plenty of psychologists who assert that porn shouldn't ruin a marriage. But, I don't think anyone claims that addiction helps a marriage thrive. We all have our problems.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/.../201707/husbands-watch-porn-wives-despair-why
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...2/porn-could-ruin-relationship-it-doesnt-have

I think we can all agree that none of this is settled science. We are all here to help each other out.

Our porn problems vary a lot. For example, I have never had ED, even though I started looking at porn at age 13 and have beeing PMOing frequently ever since. The last last 10 years have been on average twice a day. I love having sex with my wife and I find her very attractive. I would have sex with her over porn any day, multiple times a day, in any position, anywhere in the house, upside down, makeup, no makeup, showered or stinky.

Having said that, I am sure there are many subconscious psychological side effects of my porn usage. I'm not sure about their magnitude and I doubt I could identify them all, mainly because I haven't stopping PMOing for longer than 20ish days in probably the past 20 years.

My porn addiction is similar to a video game addiction. Most of what bothers me about my addiction is how much time I spend doing it (5 to 15 hours a week). One of my main motivations for looking at porn is that it is a pleasurable time filler. My wife works night shifts and I am terrible at going to bed at a decent time. I want to quit porn in the same way that I want to live healthier and carry a more healthy body weight.

When I was active on nofap 4 years ago, I had not worked out my anxiety issues and I was attributing a lot of daily anxiety to my porn use. Now that I a fraction of the anxiety I had in the past, I can clearly see that I had attributed many of my problems to PMO, even though in reality they were not due to PMO.

Question for you all... If someone comes to the the nofap forum looking to heal their marriage. But, for them, porn is a symptom of bigger problems. Should we tell them to focus on quitting porn first, or focus on the bigger problems first? A lot of the advice on nofap is 'fix porn first' advice. When we are plagued with bigger issues, advising someone to tackle a porn addiction or require their spouse to tackle porn addiction, is likely bad advice.

 

I think we have a lot of common ground here. Absolutely porn is a symptom of much deeper underlying problems. However, the porn use has now become problematic as well as the original underlying issues. You must tackle both. Sucks, just like an alcoholic must to more that not drink. I thought that most people on here are pretty good about saying “ you can’t just stop watching porn” I see many advising others to seek counsel.

 

First off, thanks for the heartfelt back and forth disagreement. I find it helpful for myself and I hope others do too.

This is your experience and it is a valuable experience and it is useful to share the details for others to learn. But, I don't think this is true for all porn addictions. I think that porn use is like everything else in the world, there is a wide range of how healthily and unhealthily porn can be consumed. Some people fall into the abyss, others don't have an issue, and there is everything in between.

My marriage can be better, my marriage will be better. I see porn as a major obstacle not just to my marriage, but also to me personally. But, walking away from porn was not my first obstacle to overcome. And yes, I have a happy marriage now, could it be better, yes. I am sure that there will be even more opportunities for improving my marriage even after I kick by bad porn habit.

 

True. Across nofap, there is general agreement that the underlying issue needs to be fixed. But, with regards to marriage advice, there is a common theme that if PMO is still happening, the innocent spouse has no responsibility for the marital problems and offending spouse needs to get with the program. That is bad advice if the underlying issue is a shared issue between both people. For example, if a spouse suffers from lots of insecurity, that is an issue that should be addressed within themselves and porn usage by their spouse throws gasoline on that fire, but the root issue lies with the person who is very insecure. Or, if a spouse has severe control issues. There are lots of issues that go on in marriages that lead to strife and may lead to divorce. When a spouse comes looking for support on nofap, we should provide empathy and support, but we would be remiss if we failed to ask that person to look inward too.

I'd even go further and state that asking the hurt person to look inward is a more courageous act of love than being a shoulder to cry on. Having said that, there is a time and place for 'pushing back'. Sometimes, in the moment, being a shoulder to cry on is more appropriate. I'm not sure when in a forum like nofap how to determine when to do one versus the other.

 

It is absolutely different. Porn addiction damages the very soul of the addict and the spouse. It involves betrayal of intimacy and connection. It involves infidelity in multiple ways, at the very least your mind and sexual energy are being spent on images of other women, at the worst, physical cheating.

Porn addiction is the problem. You go right ahead and find all the resources you need to justify betraying your wife. Those excuses won't save your marriage.

There is a common theme for a reason. It's the truth. The porn addict is the only one responsible for his actions. The spouse bears no responsibility for his betrayal of her and the marriage by seeking pleasure from other women. There may be other marital issues going on, and those certainly should be addressed, but responsibility for a porn addiction lies solely on the addict. Even moreso if they have the tools to overcome it but conciously choose to act out anyway.

Your response is filled with a lot of excuses and justifications so that you can attempt to continue using guilt free. See how that turns out in the long run.

 

I have to share .. I told my husband about your husband comment “ you’re attractive now that I’m not looking at 20 year old”. And I asked him if he thought your husband should’ve shared that. His answer was “yes, but he could’ve done it in a way that wasn’t hurtful”. I asked “ how?” He said “ he could’ve said I have a whole new appreciation for you now that I’m not looking at fake unrealistic fantasies “. I thought, no wonder he’s so good at negotiating, lol!

 

That is not a fair representation of what I wrote.

You have obviously decided that your point of view is the correct one and that I am wrong. I think you are wrong. You think I am wrong. We both have done our due diligence to come to our conclusions, we just don't agree. We should just leave it at that. No point in beating a dead horse.

 

I wanted to reply to this part. I don’t know how old you are, however, my husband started pmo at age 11. He did not get pied until he was 46 years old,he thought it was because he was doing long distance bike riding. it took 4 months of being clean and now is rock hard when we are together. I think anyone who uses long enough winds up with sone form of sexual distinction.

 

I agree with Roady that you decided to wear more makeup to feel more attractive, and your husband responded to that. I'm similar to you, I wear makeup to feel more confident, and that is what attracts a man, a confident woman. My husband is not as addicted as yours, he just is a little bit crazy about sex. The other day I was reading some makeup reviews on makeupyes.com and when he saw that I'm looking at new makeup, he instantly switched to another man. I know that he would like to see me wear makeup even when I sleep, but he'll have to deal with it. I know it sounds a little bit crazy, but we love each other despite all the craziness.

 

Maybe it is time for all the (wo)men to get rid of this bad self esteem. Get rid of the addiction to clothes, make up, cars big muscles etc.to feel better and confident.

Everyone is all right. You are not just your body and looks. Build confidence by exploring yourself and finding balance.
Confidence does not come from the outside.

But I know it is difficult as young girls get told from an early age that they are not good enough. They need be pretty, wear nice clothes, look good. And men have it easier hormonally, with testosterone, but still are not thought how to hanlde emotions, they may play rough, because they are men.

It might be clear that I find all men & women with make-up ugly and all people who dress up too much as well.
Taking good care of yourself is something else.