His porn and your relationship are separate

What if the woman watches porn in a relationship?

 

Its very rare. But women in general don't get easily addicted to PMO since it takes much time for them to get aroused reach a peak and then refract unlike men we get aroused very easily and want to reach the peak as soon as possible and then just relax the rest of the time. PMO makes it easier thats why we take the easier way without any effort and that makes it difficult to give up

 

Women who watches porn experience the same problems that men do, and gets just as easily addicted. We are very visual creatures and yes, it takes me about half a second to get aroused, and no, I don't need to "be in love" to have sexual feelings (who came up with that drivel?).

But women have been taught that watching porn is taboo and unacceptable. We learn to deal with our emotions instead (thank God for that!). We are guided to release our sexual power with one special partner, or we would be called all kinds of unflattering things.

 

Obviously. How many colours can you name and how many can I?

Of course not.
But this is how you are supposed to be or you are damaged is what they say.
And you are one in a hundred calling bullshit on that. Everyone else just kind of goes with it and justifies it.

And the drive we are talking about is not just about women. Men experience the same thing.
The drive that you must be in love to want sex, else you're a degenerate, is also applied to men. A man that is caught doing something that is sexual as well as not connected with love in any way is in for a strong backlash.

Seems like everyone has been taught that.
And don't imagine for one moment that a man releasing his power with anyone other than this one special partner wouldn't be called out for it.

It is that somehow a man can be forgiven being a degenerate because reasons. A woman on the other hand is in for a never-ending backlash though.

I knew women, or rather girls, that would watch porn when they were 15 or 14 years old although they were too ashamed of it and pretended that "it was my friend using my phone/they made me watch it, I wasn't interested" and stuff. Even after I told them that I actually don't care because it is no business of mine what they watch, they would insist that "no really, they made me."
I also knew men, or rather boys, in the same age group, that would be proud of watching porn and justify it in this dumb way that "you can't go without it. Your balls would explode" et cetera.

 

Where I live (Sweden) it's ok for a guy to massively watch porn ("experience his sexuality", "all men do it") and while women are encouraged to masturbate, it's believed that she does it in a bed covered with rose petals and to a picture of her fully clothed romantic partner. Yes, we are a liberated country and all that, but even in the most democratic parts of the world, the view on female sexuality is still over-romanticized and flawed.

Another gender difference: sex ed consists of guys learning how to masturbate and girls how to prevent pregnancies.

Anyhow, this is slightly off topic. My point is that men can compartmentalize because our over sexualized culture allows for compartmentalization. And that makes it seemingly okay for men to "separate" their love life from their sexual life.

 

I know the "all men do it". A very common excuse. Because it's not really a fact.

Seems like the view on the sexuality of both is kind of flawed.

And sex ed is average too it looks like. Though the one about preventing pregnancies is good to know so it's not too bad.
I don't really think people talk much about sex in Sweden, do they? Or at least not as candidly as they would like to.

 

I probably won't say much here, because I'm mostly here to learn, but I'll just say I'm in a relationship where my wife is definitely not into porn. I know she could be if there were enabling circumstances because of reactions she's had to something I've said related to it, but she is definitely convinced it is immoral and wants nothing to do with it. That's good for me. She knows about my addiction and supports me in my attempt to rise above it.

As far as all that he and/or she feels this way or that. I don't know. I've heard a fair amount of women say they like it together with their husbands because it enriches their sex life with each other Whether or not that's true I don't know. I do know for a fact that there are females who are addicted to lust. I've been involved with a couple of them before marriage.

I wish you all well in your attempts for recovery in whatever aspect of porn you are involved in.
God bless

 

Seems like a great way to instantly turn yourself into an object so that your partner can really pretend he/she is with whomever is on screen.

I'm already horrified at the realization that since my partner and I have only ever been with each other that my body has probably aided him in being able to imagine what the women in porn or women in his fantasies could feel like. It makes me sick to think about.

 

Used19, I'm sorry you're going through that. It's not the way things are supposed to be between a man and a woman, especially if they have made marriage vows.

Let me clarify my attitude about pmo. Part of me (the part that is currently coming out on top) wants to never pmo again. I have hurt my wife, selfishly wasted many hours of time on pleasing myself and lived a life style at odds with what I believe is morally correct. I never want to pmo again. Still, I'm just being honest when I tell you there is a part of me that yearns for the quick fix of porn and argues loudly against what I am putting myself through.

I have a 4 day streak of no pmo going. My wife is very happy. I'm partly happy because I'm doing what I believe I should be doing. Like I said the other part of me is hurting, but I know that's necessary if I'm going to grab hold of this thing, tie it up and toss it in some corner of my mind. I say toss it in some corner of my mind because I don't think we can risk believing we've totally overcome it and there is no longer any danger of a relapse.

I am still feeling waves of urges (even as I write this) toward giving in and the evil one encourages those feelings with twisted logic engineered to push my buttons (triggers).

Finding the NoFap community has given me renewed hope that I WILL overcome the addiction and my wife and I will enjoy the benefits of freedom from it.

Again, I'm sorry you are going through the circumstances you find yourself in. You are, and will be, in my prayers.
God bless

 

Hi Sir
I’m not good at separating out the quotes........
But, thank you for responding to this. It’s a really good thread. Thanks to anyone to add it opinions.
I want to ask you..about...... your fighting “ urges”

can you be specific about what is causing the urge... ie...... boredom, mood for O, need distraction, stress relief, or just need to see Sex?

and part 2 of question, how come your wife cannot meet that need? Meaning....... I don’t want your wife to be a sex object....... but obviously you “making love” to your wife does not meet your “ need”.

so just curious as to why in your case.
(AND PLEASE ANY OTHER PA/SA chime in)

porn is more kinky? Than your wife....It’s too much work to have sex with a person? Or it’s just become a lot easier to just satisfy yourself because porn is so alluring?

sorry for the 2 part questions. Hope you understand. We know as SO we can’t satisfy that “need/urge”

but it is helpful to hear what it is. Although every case is slightly different

thank you for your time

 

I would say it’s not like a drug, it is a drug that you create by using a super stimulus. The dopamine that floods your system is a drug. Your wife can’t get you high because she isn’t a super stimulus. Maybe in the very beginning of a relationship you might get close, but once the cooledge effect hits then no more rush, so to speak. If you only had one video, that super stimulus effect would deteriorate, hence the reason you escalate.

 

Luvspin68,
My pmo started in adolescence <sp? I remember in the 4th grade having a girl for a friend and learning to play chess at her house with her. It was all innocent, but I began having dreams about us having "take prisoner" type of game where there was a group of boys that I led and a group of girls that she led. I remember being captured and paraded through the streets tied to a pole on a wagon with only my underwear on. I'm not sure why those dreams began, but after many years figuring out my reasons of the need of pmo I've come to the conclusion that what spawned them was childhood trauma from my mothers disciplinary abuse (very angry, spanking with a board that was unbearable pain) when I was 3 years old. My father was always absent more than he was at home for various reason (military, being absorbed in his business pursuits). He never took me aside and gave me instructions on the basics of men and women and what kind of things happen in relationships. I became timid around girls, raising them up on a high pedestal where I could look at them and feel very inferior to their magnificence.

I don't want to make this too long. Their was progression in the pmo for various reasons, feelings of rejection and inferiority, the failure of my extreme desire to just find someone to love forever.

The porn began around 7th grade when I came upon a playboy magazine on the side of the road. This was before internet porn was available. Me and a friend of mine simply devoured his father's playboy and Penthouse magazine stash. When the online stuff became available the pmo escalated quite a bit. I'm not sure when it might have become an addiction. It was my escape from the pain of rejection by girls (largely caused my my behavior I'm sure. I acted pretty weird because of my inferiority complex).

Without writing an entire novel about all the reasons later on I'll just say that it primarily stemmed from my inability to have a normal relationship with a girl while growing up. I still suffer from feelings of inferiority and rejection. My wife has nothing to do with it other than I would like for her to do kinky things with me that she feels are too weird. She has every right to express herself in our relationship the way she thinks things should be with her perspective of what is normal give and take between a man and a woman. I love her, but the excitement that the longtime pmo gives me is something to numb the pain of not being fulfilled sexually due to my distorted view of what is needed for my satisfaction. She lacks nothing. She is pretty, adventurous, playful and very interested in our sexual relationship, but now that the longtime pmo has grabbed hold of me it's not enough for me. It's not her problem. It's mine.

Some things that trigger it now are what you mentioned - boredom, stress, desire for sex, etc., anything that my distorted pleasure seeking can use as an excuse to indulge. And it feeds off itself. Memories of stories, pictures, gifs and the like are floating in my mind most of the time.

I know I haven't given you a complete detailed account of what in involved with my "urges" but I hope it helps you understand a little better. I have been addicted for over 60 years with relatively little recovery from the various methods I've tried to get rid of it. One silver lining in the dark pmo cloud is my fear of my wife discovering if I ever physically cheated on her. There were a couple of encounters early in our marriage, which she found out about from my confession and remorse, asking for her forgiveness. True to my usual lack of success with females (other than my wife) I was rejected in those cheating efforts. Thanks be to God.

My coming to NoFap has given me hope once again that I will conquer this thing and my wife and I will enjoy the benefits of freedom from it.

I didn't review this before I posted it, so if there was anything confusing, or mixed up, let me know if you have any further questions.
God bless

 

I think you agreed with me in one sense. You said it was “ like” a drug, I said it “is” a drug. It’s just that you create the drug ( dopamine) because porn is a super stimulus. I’m not saying you love your wife less or sex isn’t better than porn for you. I’m saying that the novelty creates the super stimulus which creates the high of dopamine. It was me who pointed out that my husband just recognized/learned that many porn addicts mistake anxiety for sexual/porn urges. It’s never about sex for my husband. It’s about stress relief. A wife can not duplicate the dopamine high. She gives her husband an entirely different experience ( in a normal relationship no one would ever turn to pmo on a constant basis). You have a vastly different experience than the majority of men who are addicted to porn- they become less satisfied with their wives, they desire sex less or badger her to become porn. Why do men get pied?

 

I am new to this forum. This might be heavy-handed for a first post here, so I'm sorry for that.

I think there is a critical difference between saying that a PA's desire for P is *different than* their desire for sex in a relationship (which seems to be OP's actual point), and saying that an SO should accept the idea that a PA's addiction to P is *separate from* their relationship to their SO (which is the title of this thread).

These are *very* different assertions.

I can easily accept the idea that a PA is seeking something from P that is qualitatively different from what they are seeking from sex with a partner.

But this does *not* mean that having a relationship with P is naturally compatible with having a monogamous sexual partnership with an SO. People who have casual affairs or hire prostitutes while married are seeking something "different" from those encounters than what they get from their partners. That doesn't make it any less the betrayal that it is, and no betrayed spouse should just accept the rationale that "it wasn't about you," as though that makes it any better. Because in fact, it makes it worse.

If your SO betrays you sexually, by violating whatever the contract of your sexual partnership is, it *is* about you, because your trust has been betrayed, and it becomes part of the relationship, because the relationship contract has now been violated.

So, the "it isn't about you" argument essentially asks a betrayed SO to accept the upside-down logic of the *dysfunctional compartmentalization* that an addict engages in when they tell themselves that their relationship with P is *separate from* their relationship with their SO (sexual or otherwise). Which is to say, it is asking the SO to deny her own reality within the relationship (which is that she has been betrayed), and to accept the invalidation of every perfectly valid feeling the SO is having.

We SO's *know* that addicts compartmentalize and rationalize in this way. We know that for *THEM,* these things are completely separate (and thus, on some level, there is an ever-suppressed belief deep within the PA that we have no right to feel the way we feel). But the point a lot of PA's seem to miss is that *this separation,* far from being a comfort or a relief, is the *whole problem* for us. It is the *primary source of all our pain.*

Because where this addiction is concerned, the people we count on the most to love us and protect us and cherish us...can simply "separate" us from their whole decision-making process. They can erase all thought, feeling, or concern for us, completely and absolutely, in an instant, in order to indulge their own craving for this thing that they have mentally "separated" from us.

Not all of us have the capacity to create that kind of mental "separation." If I am doing something that I know would hurt or damage or betray my husband, that knowledge and the feelings that go with it, are not disposable by me. There is no "mute" button on my love and care for my husband, such that I can just do what I want without actively *feeling* the ways in which I am acting to hurt or betray him. So those feelings stop me from doing those things.

Regardless of what I am doing, my love and concern for my husband is a constant mental and emotional presence in my life. If I am doing something solo that is innocuous (like reading the news), he is in the background of my mind. But if I am doing something with known consequences for him (like considering buying something for myself that is expensive), he is instantly in the foreground. And so I take him, his feelings, his needs, into *conscious consideration* before I act.

My *desire* to buy the thing probably has nothing at all to do with him, nor is it indicative of anything he is failing to provide to me, but the *choice to make the purchase* has *everything* to do with him, because we are financial *partners,* so my financial choices *affect him* and I *know that* and can't just *unknow it* at will because it's inconvenient to my ability to do as I please.

If I buy the thing anyway, and then because of that we can't pay the mortgage, is he supposed to get any comfort or relief from the idea that my choice to buy the thing "wasn't about him"? Of course not! Because it was *supposed to be* about him, and us, and not just me, and that's the whole point. *That's* the *betrayal.*

A marriage is a sexual partnership, just like it is a financial one. When a PA makes sexual choices that damage the partnership, those choices are *only separate* from the partner to the extent that 1) the partner has no *control* over them and; 2) the PA continuously enables those damaging choices by engaging in toxic compartmentalization that allows them to act *within* a partnership as though they are operating in some magical, fictional "separate" space that exists *outside* of it, where it can't or shouldn't hurt the SO.

Point #1 is valid and important, and all SO's should remember it.

As to point #2, there is no help or solace in knowing that for any SO. It is just a reminder that the PA creates a space in your marriage in which your partner is able to mentally "separate" conflicting parts of himself by temporarily deleting his "SO" file, in order to open the "P" file, imagining you out of existence so that he can have his pleasure while denying your reality, and your pain.

 

1000_Cuts, this post is fantastic. I am going to have to share it with my husband, your words just knock it out of the park. Looking forward to reading more of your posts.