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Perspectives, understanding and connection; the story of my relationship

Discussion in 'Rebooting in a Relationship' started by Ninjacan, Nov 17, 2015.

  1. Ninjacan

    Ninjacan Fapstronaut

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    I've been in a relationship for over 5 years, 1 year 2months married now, and Porn has always been a big issue for us. I just want to share my experience here (mostly for selfish reasons, to just put my thoughts down and get some things off my chest), and hopefully for any of you guys and gals that take the time to read it, you can learn a little from what we've been through. I'm going to start from the beginning so, disclaimer, this is going to be a long post. (if you want to skip the long elaborate story, skip to the last 2 paragraphs for the moral of the story)

    I was raised in a Catholic family. I didn't have the most religious parents, we didn't really talk much about Jesus in our family and we didn't say grace before meals, but we said a prayer every night before bed, went to church on Sundays, and I went to a Catholic elementary and high school. The first time I was ever exposed to porn that I remember, was at a very early age, maybe 5 - 7 years old, I remember I used to go for drives with my dad running errands, and I'd be waiting in the truck while he was in the bank or wherever, and I found in his glove box a set of playing cards with naked women on them. Big poofy hair, old school, stereotypical kind of "guy thing" right?. A few years later on, I finding a sex game thingy on one of my dad's first laptops with windows 3.0, it was like one of those old text games that you had to choose the right response to progress the story. Basically you were picking up a woman at a bar and then taking her back to your place and taking nude pictures of her, with fantastic 16-bit graphics. I would sneak in and play it, took me a while to figure out what the hell I was doing, and I could barely understand what I was even looking at haha.

    Moving forward in time again a little, I had the very common experience of having young adolescent friends who's older cousins gave them some porn magazines, and another friend who his parents bought satellite tv, so we'd go over to his place and late at night when his parents were in bed we'd watch intently our first porns together. Generally Horny Hospital was the first one I ever saw with my friends when I was probably 11 years old. I remember hearing our friends dad wake up and get out of bed and start quickly making his way down stairs, my friend steve would quickly grab the remote and rush to change the channel to anything else and pretend like we weren't watching porn. And his dad would act kinda mad and say something like "you better not be watching those channels" or whatever, and then he'd go back to bed.

    Anyways, long story short, I grew up in an environment where porn was this thing that it seemed everyone watched it, everyone knew about it, and everyone liked it, but it was wrong! and you're not allowed to look at that because it's immoral! It's a very weird, very hypocritical culture. Me and my friends all wanted to look at naked ladies every chance we could get, and hide it as best we could from our parents. Our parents, most of which were doing the same thing and hiding it from us! So as I grew older, I kinda caught on to this whole sham, and became... I'm not sure.. desensitized, or disenchanted, or maybe a bit of both. But I definitely started to think "screw it, I like porn, everyone just watches it and lies about it, so I have nothing to be ashamed about."

    With my friends and some of my early girlfriends (ages 18 - 25 now), I was always really honest about porn. I never tried to hide it, and I was open about it. It was just something that was part of my life that I enjoyed, part of my routine. I watched porn almost every day.When I was no longer in school and started working, when I had days off work in the middle of the week and nothing to do besides play video games, I would often PMO up to 3 times in a day. I remember one of my first girlfriends also liked porn and watched it, and we talked about it a bit. It wasn't a big deal for us.

    So that is just a bit of my perspective and my background around the issue. Fast forward again to 5 years ago, when I started dating my current partner. At first I felt the same way, I had nothing to hide, I had a folder with porn right on my desktop, right in the open. I'm from Ontario, I met her in Quebec, we lived about 8 hours away from each other when we met and started dating. At first, she never made a big deal about porn, it didn't seem like it bothered her, at least from the information that I had. But really, it disturbed her a lot. She thought it was weird how much porn I watched, excessive. But she didn't say anything about it.

    I think maybe the first time we got in a fight about it, I was over at her apartment visiting for the weekend, maybe only a few months or less into our relationship, and after having sex the night before, when she left for work in the morning, I was alone in the apartment, and I used her computer to go to YouPorn. To me, it meant nothing, it was just part of my routine, I'm alone with nothing to do, lets go look at porn for 5-10 minutes and continue on with my day. For her however, it was completely devastating. When she came back and found out about it, she was crushed. We had JUST had sex the night before. Was she not good enough for me? Was she not sexy enough, pretty enough, was I not satisfied? How could I go look at porn so soon after just being intimate with her? Was I some kind of pervert? Do I prefer being alone and watching porn to having sex with her?

    Needless to say, she was hurt. She was angry, she already had low self-esteem, so she was pretty sad. I tried as best as I could to explain to her that it meant nothing, that of course she's hot enough for me, no I don't prefer porn, etc etc. Tried to reassure her, told her I wouldn't do it again. Eventually, things calmed down. We were both really intensely in love with each other right from the start. So even though I hurt her, we moved on, and stayed together. Back at home, I continued to look at porn, still not thinking it was a big deal, still part of my routine. On her side though, it just started to eat away at her.

    When she visited me, the opposite happened, she looked through my computer and not only saw the porn I was looking at, but she saw nude pictures of my most recent girlfriend (not the same one from before, but a different one which was also a long distance relationship) that was in the "recently opened files" section on my computer. Again, I had made no effort to hide this or hide anything, I was still open about it, and still coming from a place that "it's normal, every guy does it". And again, this was extremely devastating for her. We'd been dating a few months at this point, and all the same arguments came back, the same questions, the same accusations, the same feelings. And I came back with the same defences. She asked me to delete the pictures, and I promised I would.

    A few months later, she came to visit again. I went to work again. Now, I can't say exactly why I did this, but, I had deleted the files she saw, however, there were 2 copies of those files in 2 different places on my hard drive. I deleted the ones she saw, but I left the other ones. When I think back on it and what I was thinking before she visited, I knew that if she found them, it would be a huge fight, and she would be upset, and I knew I said I would delete them.. but I remember thinking (before I went to work and left her alone with my computer), like partly, she had no right to go through my files, and then judge me based on that, and honestly, I guess part of me was not ready to get rid of those files. I know it's an ex-girlfriend, so I guess it had some sentimental connection, so I felt, kinda embarrassed about being exposed for still having those pictures, and I didn't feel comfortable that this new girl I was dating was telling me what to do, and what I should or shouldn't have on my computer. I mean, I was in love with her, but it was still pretty early in our relationship. I don't know.. it's extremely personal. Also though, part of me was hoping that she just wouldn't go digging through the files searching for incriminating evidence. Like I think on some level, it was kinda a test. I wanted to see if she would believe me, and trust me, or if she would go behind my back and spy on me.

    At this point, our fights around the subject of porn at this point had not been too intense. I knew she didn't like it, but we got over the fights really fast, and I thought it wasn't like, a big deal.. So.. I did not expect the catastrophic events that followed. It was a disaster. She was real mad, reaallly hurt, sad, everything. She could not be consoled. We almost broke up. I asked her, do you want to break up with me? And she said no, and she asked me the same thing, and I said no. The pain was huge on both sides. I felt embarrassed, exposed, ashamed.. guilty. We both felt really sad. I told her again and again it meant nothing, I wasn't still in love with my ex, etc. She had already taken the liberty of deleting the files, but I told her I'm going to delete my entire porn collection because it meant nothing to me, and she was the only thing that mattered to me, and I wanted to prove that to me. She basically told me she didn't care about the other pictures and videos, but I did it anyways, kinda an act of desperation to try and prove my commitment and prove my feelings for her.

    So this is kinda the background to our relationship to date. This is almost the only thing we ever fight about, we're a great couple, and we're both crazy about each other, which is why we've made it this far. It's been a long back and forth history of me looking at porn, her being upset, me trying to explain and console her, her not really believing anything I say, me making promises to reduce my porn use, to stop my porn use, me trying over and over to stop looking at porn, her constantly spying on me, looking at my browser history, looking at my emails, looking at my bank information, looking at my personal messages on facebook, looking at the browser history on my cell phone..

    We got in this pattern of her being hurt and feeling betrayed over and over.. But at the same time, I was also hurt over and over. It's really difficult quitting porn when you're so used to it being in your life, it's almost become a part of who you are. It feels absolutely awful having your privacy invaded over and over. Being judged on every little detail. When you looked at porn, how many times you looked at porn, where you were when you looked at porn (cell phone), what porn you looked at.. the girls are usually younger and skinnier. She accused me of looking for girls that looked similar to my Ex (the one she found pictures of). Which of course is not at all true, it's just the most common thing I looked at, the thing I looked at for years and years, so when I went to look at porn, I went to what I liked and what I was used to. I really honestly did not have any feelings or desire for my ex, I never wanted to be with any other girl besides my current wife, but I can't help that I like porn, and I'm attracted to other girls.

    Anyways, kinda getting off track. I had an addiction. Porn was part of my life. Porn gave me a tiny brief escape, where when I'm masturbating to porn, nothing else matters, it's just a moment of pleasure and relief. Of course that is immediately followed by extreme remorse and guilt because not only do I know how it makes my wife feel, but I know that no matter how much I try to hide it, it seems like she knows every time it happens.

    One of the things we tried to do together to help me avoid porn was we took a bunch of pictures of her. She thought that if I had that to turn to, I wouldn't feel the need to go to porn when I want to jerk off. Unfortunately, as much as I absolutely love those pictures we took and enjoy them (and they do help), I still went back to P and P subs from time to time, which just led to more hurt feelings.

    Recently, we had another incident this summer, and another big fight. It felt like we're just banging our heads into a wall over and over, as much as I try not to look at porn, I keep getting drawn back to it, and she keeps finding out and keeps getting hurt. Drastic actions needed to be taken. I needed to do more, we needed to do more. We started couples counselling in.. August or late July, and I've been on nofap for a few months now getting help with my addiction.

    I'm happy to say that today, it's been 123 days since I last looked at porn. That's been my main priority since coming here. It hasn't been the easiest thing I've ever done, I still like porn, I am still attracted to women, I still have desires to look at naked women. My thing has always been masturbation videos, and it still gets into my head sometimes, but lately, it's been getting easier and easier to avoid. I decided though, after the first maybe month - month and a half of being on nofap that just not looking at P was not good enough. I was still masturbating, and when masturbating, I usually had P images in my head, and I still felt all that guilt even though I wasn't looking at P. And when I looked at the pictures of my wife to masturbate, I still feel guilty, I feel like I'm cheating or something.. So I started to try to do a hard-mode 90 day reset. The first few attempts didn't go very far, hard mode is REALLY hard! I made it like 5 days, 7 days, 9 days.. but recently, I was able to make it all the way to 53 days! BUT.. I accidentally jerked off last friday before going to work early in the morning :(. I get these things that I like to call "frustration boners", where I have a boner, and it's just like PUSHING me, like my body is screaming at me to masturbate and I have to fight it, and sometimes I'll like, edge really hard for a few seconds and then let go and take a deep breath and try to move on. So this morning, that happened, I edged out of frustration, and it went a few seconds too long and boom.. there goes my streak :( more than half-way to my goal, and I blew it for nothing.

    So I made this logical decision, I said to myself, "Alright, I miss looking at those pictures of my wife soooo much, I love those pictures, and they're there for me to help avoid porn anyways, so fuck it. Tomorrow I'm going to look at them, M-O, reset my counter, and go again for 90 days, no edging this time!" And I executed that plan. Reset my counters, and here I am, starting the reset again.

    My wife however, in the last few days, spied on me. She saw my counter got reset, and she started going through all the history on the computer, scouring through looking for evidence. I promised in therapy that I would tell her if I ever looked at porn again, and she promised me that she would be understanding. Since I hadn't actually looked at porn, and only just reset my hard-mode counter, I didn't bother to tell her. I felt pretty sad about the whole thing, pretty disappointed in myself, and also I was working all weekend, so I didn't really feel like bringing it up right after it happened.

    Anyways, through her investigation, she found that the morning before I went to work, I was watching TYT (online youtube news channel), and one of the videos was related to sex, ALSO, one of our mutual friends who is a model liked a video of a fashion shoot she did where she was wearing latex lingerie and I had watched that video. In reality, I saw that video come up in the sidebar news ticker on facebook and I watched literally 3 seconds of it and closed it, and the sexy youtube video didn't actually have anything sexy in it at all, was just on the subject. But she, without know the truth, constructed this scenario in her head where I went behind her back again, and betrayed her trust again, and hid it from her again, and broke the promise I made to her. So after coming home from work clearly angry and upset, and everything being awkward and distant between us, and me having no idea why she was so mad at me, she confronted me about it.

    Now, it was my turn to feel devastated. I explained to her what had actually happened. I told her I didn't jerk off to any other girl, and yes I reset my counter, but I didn't look at porn. She made a pseudo-apology for accusing me where she said sorry, but also threw in "I guess I thought we were going to be more honest with each other" into her apology, kinda making it like it's my fault. I was upset all night, I was upset all this morning, I'm still upset.

    So what's the moral of this whole story, where am I going with this... I guess, I just want people to realize that, when it comes to porn and relationships, we have different perspectives. No one is right, no one is wrong, no one wants to hurt their partner. We're just 2 people who care about each other a lot. If you are someone with a partner suffering with a porn problem, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt. You have to trust them. And you also have to expect that they will fail, because chances are, they will. But that doesn't mean you give up, and it doesn't mean they don't love you or respect you. And if you are a guy in a relationship that's suffering from this problem, you need to be honest and open with your partner. You need to share with them everything you're going through. You need to truly be committed, not only for the sake of relationship, but if you want to quit porn, you have to want to for yourself. You need to sincerely want to see a change in yourself.

    Remember, the opposite of addiction is connection. We need to all be understanding of each other if we want to beat this. If you spy on your partner and get angry and punish them every time they fall, you're only hurting them and pushing them away. Constant surveillance doesn't make someone feel loved, and doesn't create an environment of trust, on either side. And if you're going through that like I am.. although it hurts, I guess, you have to expect that it will happen.. it's kinda a normal reaction for a partner to have. Just.. talk to each other. Listen to each other, respect each other. Us guys who are suffering from porn addiction, we're not perverts, we're not criminals, we're not deviants. We're human beings, responding to strong human instincts, sucked in and fooled by the new easy-access technology that's right in front of us. We're always going to make mistakes, but we need to realize, that's normal. Don't focus on the negative, don't get caught up in the details. When we fall, we get back up. And just, please please please, forgive each other. Forgive yourself. I believe sincere forgiveness and understanding is the only path through the pain, to find our ways to happiness and redemption.

    We are all stronger when we are connected. Stay positive, stay strong, move forward.
    Peace.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2015
    CdB likes this.
  2. Ninjacan

    Ninjacan Fapstronaut

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    PS if you actually read that whole thing, thank you! you are awesome. I almost wrote a fricken book there..
     
    CdB likes this.
  3. DireMerl

    DireMerl Fapstronaut

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    I'm seeing a lot of similarities between this and my relationship with my husband. I think the endless cycle of hiding it, being caught out, promising to quit, then being caught again is the really damaging issue. Slip ups can totally be forgiven and moved past. But the lies create a situation where you just can't trust anything anymore. I started to think he was lying just constantly. "I love you" I didn't believe it. "I'm just going for a few drinks with the boys" I didn't believe it. I wondered if he was capable of lying in such a blasé way, to my face, then what else is he lying about? Has it all been a lie? This is why we end up constantly checking histories etc. because often it becomes the only way you can know what is true anymore. It is also this feeling of having NO control over anything in your relationship. For me, checking the history is a way to feel like I had some sort of strategy to cope. It's a way for me to try and regain some of my feelings of safety. If I know when he's watching it or not, then I know where I stand and I can act accordingly. This doesn't mean that this doesn't lessen over time. The longer I continue to find nothing to upset me, the less I feel like I need to look. My husband has told me that he understands this and feels he has lost his right to privacy by all the lying I've put up with for six years. Six years is a lot of trust issues. That isn't going to go away over night. But hopefully it will get easier over time. The trust is slowly coming back. I hope you continue to make progress.
     
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