I am about to give up...

I agree with @hope4healing , sounds like he doesn't want to give it up. Overcoming an addiction is the hardest thing to do, but if you don't even want to overcome it, there is no chance. He needs motivation in my opinion.

I believe in therapy, if it's a good therapist and if it's done regularly and for a long time. The brain doesn't change much after one session. We don't know how long he tried, though.

Good luck on your journey, I'm sure you will figure this out, I believe in you

 

I remember sitting with my husband for 2 years listening to the "I will always be this way" and "I can never change". I remember feeling so trapped and so suffocated when he would tell me that. I would wonder what I ever did to deserve someone who would rather look elsewhere for sexual pleasure than to his own wife, the one he promised to be faithful to. It was very discouraging to stay in the marriage but at the same time, I didnt want to leave him. It was so hard. He would tell me he was doing all the stuff he needed to do for recovery, however, he was still fantasizing, seeking, still not doing whatever he possibly could. The main factor needed is his own commitment to quit. Even the prospect of me leaving him wasn't enough for him to get himself into recovery. His last relapse was August of last year and that one actually propelled him into recovery for himself. He finally saw the damage he did to his own brain and it was enough to get him to commit to recovery.

He realized how wrong he was, that he actually could change. Similar to your husband, mine also started in early teens. Also similar to your husband, my husbands brain was wired to the screen for sexual stimulation not to a person. I mean, yes, we could have sex and everything seemed okay in that department as far as no PIED no PE, etc. He just didn't enjoy it the way he enjoyed porn. Because they get more dopamine when they MO to porn, real person sex cant compete. He would chose porn over me every day even if I was available. It hurts to know that, it really does.

There is hope providing he is willing to get into recovery. He has to want it and it has to be for himself. If he gets to that point, he can change. It will take a lot of work, but it can be done.

 

It's easy... we choose the people we want to be around us. The quality of our life in this earth is totally in relation to the people we share it with.
He already show how amazing he is as a person, father, provider for the family, etc.. but he also show you that he is a porn addict and is probably not going to change... ever.. So it's your choice.. accept him the way he is and enjoy the other stuff of the relationship.. or move on with your life and look for a man that have his shot together.. is a hard choice but you have to made one.

Personally.. if I'm not happy with my partner and I it's clear that she is not going to change.. I would definitevely move on. And every single time I did, years later I met someone better.

 

You are allowed to leave your partner, you know. Maybe that would even help him.

 

The only thing you can do, and that is to focus on your own healing. This part of the relationship has to become a priority. A lot of us are in therapy ourselves for betrayal trauma, which is a form of PTSD. You can't control what he does, but you absolutely can control what you do. This is a very difficult step to make as it somewhat feels as though you're stepping away from the marriage. In a sense, you are, but to be fair, he's stepped away from it as well.

Once I started to focus on my own healing, he started focusing even more on his own. I'm not saying this will be the case in your marriage, but perhaps the step in that direction can help him see the damage he's caused, which may help him.

I started going to therapy, started meditation, started exercising, all for my own healing. It was a message of "either keep up or get left behind cause I'm going this way with or without you".

My husband doesn't do therapy because he went to 3 that saw no problem with porn. The second one even told him that my objection to it was due to my insecurities about sexuality and told him him and I should watch it together because it would help me *insert eye roll. He does meditate, does yoga, journals on here, has an AP, etc. He would do therapy if we could find someone that actually saw what we saw, but have not located one so far.

I used to tell my husband this all the time. That he was just using my body for his own needs and wasn't trying to connect with me. It took him several months into his real recovery for him to see that it was true. We now go for long periods of time without sex because it helps him. It does hurt to know that sex doesn't mean to them what it means to us.

I also want to express that none of this is your fault. None of it has anything to do with how you look. It is so hard to come to the true realization of that because of how they are and because they fantasize about other women. I had to remind myself over and over again that it is the dopamine, not an attraction. That to them, this other person is no different than what a bottle of alcohol would be to a recovering alcoholic. The brain is wired towards the stimulus, but is not wired towards genuine connection. He doesn't want a relationship with this person, it is only the high he is seeking.
It isnt easy, and I still struggle with it from time to time. However, it has helped me a lot in my own healing to be able to reason with his actions in that way rather than to see it as my fault or my shortcomings.

 

How do you know this though? I struggle a lot with this particular question.

When men talk about women to their friends, it's an attraction that they want to pursue, but when men explain it to their wives, it's suddenly an addiction that they don't want to pursue.

I've been lied to so much that I wonder what's real and what is not.

 

I know because I gave him the opportunity to pursue these other women. Once the opportunity was there, he suddenly found reality and started to see flaws in the person and realized he actually wasn't attracted to them. It was just the "rush" he wanted, not an actual encounter. My husband was literally "attracted" to just about every woman we came across. His "attraction" grew if he knew they were single. I removed myself from the equation and told him to go be with them. Told him to go talk to them. So, he would then imagine that happening and realize that if he were single, these women wouldn't interest him.

Not something I would recommend doing in a relationship. I had just got to the point that I had enough. I was hurting so much that after weighing the pros and cons, it was just better for me if he left. So I gave him an out. Many times. He never took it.

Now, one may say he didn't do it because he loved me and was denying his attraction because he didn't want to leave. No, that wasn't it. I won't go into too many details about it but I will say that this was during a time where he was sure he didnt love me anymore (or ever given how he was) so he could have left and I made it very clear that it would be better for me if he did. After he decided he didn't actually feel attracted to those women, we would go through a whole thing where we would break down bit by bit on what it was that made him feel the way he did towards them to begin with. Once this was done, he himself realized it was never an attraction, he never wanted to be with any of these women, and being around them only made him "high" which was what he liked. He said if he left and got with any of them, the cycle of seeking would be there again after a short time, once the novelty wore off. I dont know if this makes any sense?

 

For me, it is about the chase, but also more about my fears of intimacy. When it comes to actually acting on the attraction, it’s not their flaws as a person that stops me, it’s my fears of all that comes with acting on infidelity: being vulnerable, being judged, consequences, not being able to stop when I start, knowing that its like porn and once the act is done it and the person becomes boring.

 

My husband also had that fear. He was so afraid of how someone would perceive him that it kept him single for a long time.
I took away the prospect of infidelity, sorta speak, by telling him what i did. Granted, had he acted on that and actually slept with someone else, and there's no doubt in my mind that he would have given the chance to do so, that we would have been completely done at that point. He was aware of that. What it allowed him to do, however, was to think more clearly. What is it about this other person, besides sex, that you feel would make you fulfilled and happy? That was where the reality set in. He knew it would be a surface relationship with sex at the center. He didn't want that. He wanted a deeper connection with someone in a relationship, which was also another reason he stayed single for so long. When him and I met, we shared a very deep connection that went beyond sex. That was the type of relationship he wanted. Someone who could understand him completely, someone with whom he could talk with about any subject that came to mind, someone who continued to have new things to say and a relationship that didn't get stuck where everyday was just going through the motions on the surface while finding various escapes just to "feel something". When he would consider the types of relationships he would have with these other women, he understood that beyond sex, there was nothing there that was of interest. That the relationship would be filled with anxiety, a feeling of being trapped, and depression. He knew his porn use would pick back up as would all his other escapes. Then he would be in a mode of seeking another person again and again looking for that deeper connection.

It was at that point he could separate what he wanted from what porn made him out to be. He was able to separate that "high" from reality. It wasn't the women he wanted, it was the dopamine.

 

I agree and disagree. If it were just the dopamine they want, they can switch to alcoholic, drugs, gambling, gaming. However, their drug of choice is the high caused by lust. We all get that bit of dopamine when we get our first “ crush”, or while dating. We get it when we fantasize about someone we find attractive when we think about kissing, touching, etc. most of us understand that feeling. We also understand it’s just a fantasy and know that once in a relationship that dopamine spike drops dramatically. I absolutely know my husband never wanted to be “ with” the women he saw/sought out in porn. He wanted the high they provide. But he has to “ want, desire, lust” for them to get the high. He wasn’t seeking out 90 yr olds

 

I see what you're saying. When an addict quits one thing, they generally go for another, much like the smoker who gives up cigarettes for doughnuts. They didn't actively seek to replace one with the other, they may not even see the connection between the two, but in that moment of craving a cigarette, they found temporary relief in a doughnut. This could create other problems as we know.
What I'm saying is that given the chance to switch one addiction for another, someone giving up porn would likely replace it with gaming or gambling or something similar. You see that on these forums among men who look for another escape to help them through their withdrawals. So in a sense, the dopamine is replaced in that way.
I remember growing up with a father that was a SA and how he would curb his "urges" with alcohol. In his mind, if he were passed out drunk then he couldn't cheat on my mom. He would try and replace his lust for women with a lust for alcohol, which in the end once chat rooms became a thing, allowed him to do both at the same time (drink while talking to other women) and never solved anything.
From case studies i have read about SA's is that, it doesn't matter who the person is, what they look like, or in some cases, what gender they are. All that mattered to them is the pleasure they would receive. My dad would talk to any woman willing to speak with him sexually, even if they happened to be 90 years old. If they were willing, that was all that mattered.
My dad did have certain boundaries that he didn't cross, such as that of underage girls. I think, however, if there wasn't the possibility of serving a jail sentence for it, then he would have went for that all the same. The wants, needs, lust, desire, etc, was all about the high from the pleasure, not the person. He didn't want to be in a relationship with any of these people and he didn't want to leave my mom. To him, there was nothing beyond the genitals. To an SA, it is all about the sex.

Similarly, to a PA, it is about the dopamine high when it comes to the outside world. There is an understanding that what they watch on the screen, they are not participating in. The brain crosses those wires and on an unconscious level, they actually are, but consciously, they know they're not. So if they see a certain woman in public that they have seen on the screen that they've MO'd to, then there becomes an expectation that this woman will "preform" in the same manner in real life, hence the high. That is why I've said that on a conscious level there is a separation (the one they talk about with compartmentalizing) but on an unconscious level there is no separation. They can't separate the two because the brain functions as one unit.
For example, my husband had a "thing" for tall women. In porn, this is what he was drawn to. So whenever he saw a tall woman in real life, he would get a spike in dopamine. Was it a real attraction? No. The reason being is he could not see himself in a relationship with a woman taller than him because it would make him feel insecure. But, because his brain was wired towards "the tall women do this" his reaction to them in real life was based on that wiring.

So I get what you're saying about the want, desire, lust aspect. Your husband didn't seek out 90 year olds, but, if he happened to stumble upon that, would he not feel that dopamine rush all the same? He would because it was a sexual act taking place at that point in time, and his brain was wired towards that stimulus.

But, this is where it gets a little more complex. We read about dopamine and automatically associate it with sex, lust, etc. Dopamine is a motivation chemical, which means it is produced to either move us toward a stimulus or away from one. My husband didn't seek out 90 year old women either, however, he would still get dopamine from watching it should he happen to stumble on it. He would feel uncomfortable about it and wonder what the heck he was doing. He may even feel so ashamed that he would never bring this up to anyone. The dopamine that is being produced at that point is the one that is supposed to direct him away from the stimulus. However, because of the structural changes in the brain, it would travel along a similar pathway as the "toward the stimulus", which would then bring about that sense of shame and guilt for having watched it. On a conscious level he would know it was wrong and he should turn away. However, because of the perceived high he was getting, it would be very difficult for him to do so, but not impossible.

Our brains wire to how we program them. If there is a "type" of woman in pornography that induces those chemicals in them, then these same chemicals will be produced by the same "type" when they see them in real life. It isnt about attraction, it is because of how their brains become wired sexually toward that particular person. I dont look anything like my husbands "type" yet he still decided I was the one for him. That was closer to what real attraction is because it was based on other non-sexual characteristics that produced chemicals and thoughts on an unconscious and conscious level. When we can see it from that perspective then we can take back a big part of what is lost in the trauma of all this.

I hope I'm making sense because I feel like I'm just rambling.

 

Sometimes it's not the high - but the escape. That's why, with help from therapist/saa/wife, I have added gambling and video games to my inner circle.

 

This is very true, same for my husband. He’s quit gaming

 

Can I just say that it makes me angry? Lol. When my husband has said it’s the need to escape all I can think is “ From what?!” “ Is your life so horrible you have to escape it?”. I told him t” that’s almost worse because I’m left feeling like he needs to escape me? Our family? What is so awful he had to escape? Of course he always says stress, anxiety, himself. But it makes me angry, I feel like we have a great life and I’m grateful for being blessed beyond measure. I really don’t understand.

 

You are valid having any emotions you have.

For me it was literally anxiety and inadequacy. I have an amazing wife and two toddlers who are toddlers. But my escapism went into over drive when presented with hard/stressful situations that I didn't have any other coping mechanism to utilize. Those situations could be anything from feeling lonely and inadequate in high school or in my fraternity, it could be moving to new cities for my profession and not knowing anyone, it could be planning a wedding or having a newborn or being fired or changing careers, etc. It could even be as little as traveling with kids on a plane or having an annual report due at work from my boss.

I didn't know how to talk about it, I was afraid to admit those feelings and looking inside, I was, and still am sometimes, consumed by negative self talk and catastrophizing thoughts that I can't get out of my brain. It's going to take a LONG time to fix these defects. Removing my was of numbing/escaping in some ways has made it worse. I now sit with these feelings and thoughts and can't get away. I've become crankier and easier to anger - but I am more honest and can now work on the underlying issues instead of applying a hurtful bandaid.

My life was never horrible. I had no rougher patches than anyone else. Some people can talk to their parents when they're overwhelmed, some people have friends, some people have tv shows that comfort them or exercise or hobbies or read. I had porn. And when i tried to get off porn previous I went to video games and back when it was legal, online poker.

Now I'm relearning skills and I'm focusing on gratitude and positivity and I'll be eternally grateful for my wife for being there for me along the way.

As long as I continue on the path and keep working and don't become complacent, I have the ability to one day become the husband and father my family deserves.

 

I found Doug Weiss to be most helpful. There is a test on his website that you can take. I am curious if your husband fits this scenario.

 

One of the main attractions of porn is the novelty. Again and again that theme resurfaces here in the discussions. One mistake many married people make is to reduce their own modesty and/or attractiveness while at home. What in the beginning of a relationship might have looked like a risque and provocative outfit becomes something ho-hum as desensitization occurs. The novelty is lost.

As one world leader once quipped regarding public modesty: "People like to receive their candy wrapped." Let the unwrapping be reserved for that moment of intimacy!

If your husband truly desires to change--and that desire is key to the equation, as others have pointed out already--some of the tips linked in my signature may be helpful to both of you.