I'm so angry, so hurt but I want to help him. Help me?

Is he doing anything to recover from his addiction?

 

With lots and lots of patients, grace, and love. It isn't easy, but coming from someone who can relate to the addiction part, he is just as ashamed of it. It is honestly just like any addiction, we don't want to admit we have a problem. I will be praying for you guys.

 

It isn't easy, but please remember the one golden rule I tell everyone.

Change, no matter what kind, is only self inspired. If you force him to go to counseling, he wont change, if he wants to go to counseling, he will change. If you force him to make you breakfast, he might do it... under protest, but if he wants to make you breakfast, he will do it, and probably continue to do it. See what I am getting at? If he wants to change, nothing will stop him. If he doesn't want to change, everything will stop him.

 

He's going to have to do the heavy lifting on his own recovery. You can't be responsible for that.

He needs to do more than say he's willing to do what is necessary. He needs to do what is necessary. He needs to give you as many details as you want to know about exactly what that involves, and he needs to give you whatever access you need to be satisfied that he's doing what he said he'd do. But you can't make him recover, and you can't be the enforcer. If he's not doing this for himself, if he's doing it so he doesn't get in trouble with you, then he's not going to succeed.

At the end of the day, you have to take care of you. He's lied to you, hurt your feelings and undermined your self-esteem. You'll have plenty of work trying to repair that damage without having to worry about fixing him, too.

Go read the journals by @Blondewife and @Haggis. They've done a beautiful job of working through this together, with each of them doing what they need to do to manage their own recovery, while also being patient and supportive of each other.

 

I'll be honest with you, he's not worthy of you.

But then again neither am I worthy of my girlfriend who I love and have been with for 2 years.

The feeling of failure for a man when he fails at recovery or relapses over and over is not an easy blow but he nor I will ever understand the true effect our actions have on our loved ones.

I agree with the others on here and saying that of he really wants to change only he can change himself. The road is not easy in anyway and it May be easier fighting it with the support of your loved one.

I've told me girlfriend but she can not grasp the feeling of my struggle and is to immature to be hurt by my betrayal.

Thank you for sharpening and I really do hope the best for you and your husband. What I just really wanted to get through to you is that you do deserve better. That doesn't mean leave him but I would encourage you not to settle for that. You deserve better and he should know that And if he doesn't, I wouldn't want anyone to settle or accept that side of a man or even myself.

Thanks again.and god bless

 

Eleven said it well, Red. Change must be his idea, and it must be for him. As much as you may like to, you cannot force him to change his way of thinking. You can lead him to water, but you can't make him drink.

And a porn addiction requires radical changes to the way you think, act, feel, and live. It's not a simple, throwaway decision to be made lightly. It requires every fiber of commitment you can muster and even then can be incredibly difficult.

But at the end of the day, you've got to take of yourself. To continue quoting Eleven, you've got a lot of work ahead to repair the damage he's done to you, with or without him. And he's got a lot of work ahead of him to fix himself and your relationship.

This site is full of wonderful support for both of you, and I highly encourage him to begin his own journal, that would certainly be at least one tangible thing he can do to prove that he's trying. That's how I ended up here and it is literally one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Keep your head up, and remember that he watched porn not because of a deficiency in you, but a deficiency in himself.

Stay the course, girl, and do what you need to do to help yourself. He's an incidental at this point.

 

I agree with the other posters here. He needs to summon the will to change. It cannot just be a reaction to temporary guilt otherwise he will relapse. I am guessing that you caught him out rather than he admitted it to you.
As a guy, I cannot really comprehend the full scope of what you feel. But you have every right to feel betrayed and angry. I think you need to let him know how much damage he has caused. Without mincing any words. Especially if he admitted to it only after you found him out. Otherwise if you stay silent and stew in your own anger, you are hurting yourself. Like Haggis said, concentrate on healing yourself. The PMO battle is his to fight. You can cheer him from the sidelines if you feel upto it but he is the one who needs to do the fighting. Challenge him to admit to his addiction and actually work his way out of it.

 

When did his porn use start?

For most of us, it started when we were still children. Now try to imagine if he had started smoking as a child and couldn't stop the addiction throughout his life.

I understand it may not be the same to you cos porn is "sex stuff" and you are his sex partner, but its actually the same and probably not his fault.

I think you would be hard pushed to find a man who doesn't look at porn regularly. Most of them don't even know they are addicts.

Your husband is one of the few who knows and want to stop. That is good.

 

"And all the years he said cruel things to me, about me, and my body leading me to believe this was "me" and not "him"'


I'd punch him in the nuts. I don't see porn addiction as any reason or excuse for that behaviour.

 

How he takes it is up to him, not you, but there don't appear to be a lot of options:

(1) He can recognize what an asshole he's been and how much damage he's caused. Then he can commit to cleaning up his act, formulate a concrete plan for doing so and then follow through on that plan while being completely honest with you along the way. Meanwhile, he can be patient and supportive to you as you try to recover from everything he's put you through.

(2) He can try to reflect this back at you, deflect blame elsewhere, get angry, resist, minimize the situation....basically anything other than (1). In that case, I hope you leave his sorry ass until he figures out that (2) was a really bad choice and gets with the program, or forever.

You deserve better. Maybe he can be better, maybe he can't. But that's mostly up to him now. You shouldn't settle for less.

 

To be fair to your husband. He probably did not know that his porn addiction led to his ED. And... even if he had some idea, he probably wasn't (and probably still isn't) 100% sure that porn caused his ED. There are many other sources on the internet (that I believe are incorrect) that claim that porn does not cause ED, that ED is caused by other things. His ED causes him a ton of frustration and it is only human of him to think about every possible cause of the ED. During a moment of weakness he might blame you out of frustration.

Still though... it is his fault he watches porn. He should not blame you for his ED. He should not expect you to behave like porn actress he finds attractive today.

I am not trying to make light of your husbands problem. I just want to remind you that you have been married for 8 years and have kids and your husband is a human being with flaws. He needs to own up to those flaws, but, he won't change over night and he will make mistakes along the way. Expect nonsensical and stupid things like...

• Blaming you for his problems
• Relapsing
• Denial
• etc. etc.

As everyone else has said, the most important thing is that your husband acknowledges his problem and he does the work to fix it. If he wants to quit and you love him, then, that might be enough. The best thing you can do is make a decision (you can always change your decision later), and if your decision is to stick with your husband, try as hard as you can to show him love and support without condoning the behavior. I realize that is extremely difficult, and, maybe you will need some time to cool off, that is ok and expected.

 

I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. I grappled with ED for years. YEARS. I felt horrible about it. I tried everything under the sun to fix it. I cried, I raged, I prayed, I went to doctors, I went to therapy, I considered leaving the marriage, I considered killing myself. But the one thing I never, ever did was to blame my wife for it. To the contrary, she would ask if it was something she had done, and I repeatedly assured her that it was strictly my problem.

There is no acceptable excuse for it. In any event, the time for excuses and explanations is past. He did what he did, and now he has to decide whether he wants to try to save his marriage by doing everything possible to repair the damage he's done to himself and his wife, or whether he wants to make excuses and argue about it.

 

I agree the behavior is bullcrap, but, everyone is different and everyone is imperfect. I blame my wife for things she doesn't deserve, I am a dick that way, and my behavior is horrible, but do moments of horrible behavior make me a horrible person who doesn't deserve redemption? Does that make me unworthy of another person's love?

Like you said, @The Eleven, there is no excuse for it. I was not trying to say his behavior was acceptable, I was trying to show that doing things like that don't mean the person is a lost cause, but rather, they might be confused and grasping at straws.

 

I guess that depends, @JustADude. If you repeated those "moments of horrible behavior" over the course of years like Red's husband has, and you refused to accept responsibility for that behavior now, then yes, I think you might be a horrible person who doesn't deserve redemption.