Recovering from the brink, one year later

I’m a 21 year old female student, and it has been almost one year since my boyfriend of four years has gone cold turkey off porn after a crisis-level situation which left our relationship on the brink.

Here’s the story:

We had been together for nearly three years, and I had expressed my negative feelings from him being so heavily into porn. It was at the point where he couldn’t maintain an erection or finish with me, and I felt hurt and inadequate.

I had gone travelling for two months in my gap year before university and had given him nudes myself, since I was lead to believe that he had stopped masturbating to/ watching porn. I thought the pictures would help while I was gone. I was sitting on his lap at the computer one night while he was pulling up a file to show me, and I saw a nude picture of a girl that definitely was not me. He deleted the folder I saw on his computer right away, but I recovered and was shocked and devastated at what I found.

It was a folder containing revenge-porn obtained through a male peer of girls he had been acquainted with from high school and nudes he had kept of ex girlfriends. The worst thing though, was that the folder contained the same pictures I had given him. He had just stashed them away in this little hoard. As his long-term girlfriend and intimate lover, my pictures were given no special consideration. I was reduced to another sexual prop in his little harem.

This event was devastating for both of us. It caused a cascade of confessions on his part, admitting that on the night of my high school grad when I got drunk and went to sleep in the spare bedroom, he came in, took my clothes off, molested me and filmed it on his phone to keep as porn. We are familiar with how porn desensitizes its users—how it requires them to seek more and more extreme forms to maintain the same level of arousal achieved prior to desensitization. Basically, the only thing that was attractive to him anymore was coercion and voyeurism, so I had to be exploited somehow for him to find me appealing. The sexual distortions caused by such prolific porn usage caused him to believe that non-consensually filming and using that video was somehow a better option, since he knew that porn was significantly upsetting to me. Continuing these habits and deceiving me into believing he had stopped made him feel extremely guilty. He also admitted to using the facebook pictures of colleagues and peers as porn, girls he saw every day. At this time, our relationship only allowed us to be together once a week. In his head, he was fucking them more than me. He admitted that he had to imagine other women in order to actually have sex with me. He was fired from two jobs because he couldn’t show up on time. He was staying up all night finding the perfect porn.

He was emotionally and intimately estranged from me. He wouldn’t initiate sex because of the anxiety over being unable to physically perform. Drawing a connection between porn and emotional accountability and general affectionate behaviors seems a bit over-zealous, but I strongly believe that his addiction was pathological to the point where he was experiencing cognitive dissonance between love and intimacy, which was leading to a host of other issues holding accountability to himself and relationships in general. A year from his quitting, I am now able to contrast between these past patterns and how he now seems fully present and engaged in the world and relationships around him.

To put this into context, I had issues with body dysmorphia and eating disorders which I had tried to address with professional help in the past, and my boyfriend’s porn carved away at my feelings of self worth even further. I just wanted to be enough for someone, and to know that I didn’t have to compete with porn or any other people for his intimacy. It was an endless conquest of self-improvement for me, of expensive chemical peels and dermabrasion to “fix” nonexistent, perceived dermatological defects, and extreme weight loss. I thought he couldn’t orgasm or stay hard because I was physically defective (I actually objectively fall into the realm of what our society perceives to be conventionally attractive). I had addressed this with him, and he said he stopped. Evidently, he thoroughly lied to me.

Since, we have both gone to therapists and worked through things both independently and together. From that night of the “crisis event” he has expressed total remorse. After several past failed attempts to quit altogether, this crisis gave him the leverage to quit once and for all. From the beginning took accountability—acknowledging an addiction to porn as the root of these problems. I’m actually humbled by how he has expressed his commitment to me through his efforts, and he has even made other significant lifestyle changes which would otherwise provide “triggers” into relapse such as quitting smoking and video games. Sex has improved a thousand fold, and it is intimate, profound and the attention is focused exclusively on each other. I know that things are entirely different, and that I no longer have to “compete” with anything for his intimacy and attention. We lead a wonderful, loving and purely trusting and transparent relationship now with many shared interests and values, and things couldn’t be more perfect…..

Except the first three years of our relationship still irk me. They still make me upset. It’s like I just can’t get over this. I want porn to end, to be made illegal and wiped off the face of the planet. It’s everywhere I look, and even seeing a raunchy Guess add in the mall still causes me anxiety and some kind of emotional disregulation. Pornography pervades our society and it’s attitudes express a preference towards it. I just want to purge it and make it disappear, because I don’t know if I will every simply “get over” the distresses it caused to me, my sense of safety in my intimate relationship and my self-worth. Resentment and contempt is noxious in a relationship, and I don't want to resent him and stay angry forever. I’m so glad that this community exists, and I can have somewhere to share my story and express my sadness and anger.

 

Thanks so much for your sincere reply! I think the biggest challenge is recognizing a problem in the first place. Especially in a world where we're so desensitized to pornification and it is seen as normal. Its so sad because I know so many people are going through the same challenges, but many will write it off as something we just have to get over or accept, because guys will be guys right? But attitudes can change, hence this community, which is why i'm loving it so much so far! but obviously even with this positive outcome it is something that will affect me personally and our relationship even now and probably for a while yet, which is why i'm turning to this community for support.

 

Ya is if P isn't enough of a breach of intimacy on its own. Just shows how distorted his concept of sexuality was because of P, since it was about power, voyeurism, and coercion instead of a genuine connection between two people. The really painful part too is that he admitted to eventually deleting the videos because they "got old" instead of because he realized it was a disgusting thing to do and he wasn't entitled to them

 

Its really amazing hearing from men who are taking the right steps and who are fully committed to changing. I actually hated men for awhile thinking they were all perverse traitors but hearing from men who share the same perspective and frustrations as me and my partner and are committed to changing has been so good for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you! thats crazy and so frustrating about those adds too, it must be so hard for you being immersed in a world with so many triggers and trying to heal. Don't give up though! Sending so many supporting vibes to you and your wife the best of luck on healing your relationship!

 

Hey about a girl! your story breaks my heart. First please, please recognize that his issue problem is not you. This is something I'm still trying to accept myself and I know that it is really hard, especially when we are dealing with perceptual distortions of our own bodies. It's purely about novelty. My bf told me he could only watch p for about 30 seconds before having to switch videos because the need for novelty was so high! It is not about us being physically defective.

If your relationship is causing you so much long term stress, and your boyfriend isn’t making any efforts to change, impossible as it sounds, you may have to pick yourself up and move on.

I know because of poor self esteem, we think that how much our partners love and desire us defines how innately lovable and worthy we are as people. However, realize that you are intrinsically lovable!!! And you can find someone who treats you as such!

My feelings of self worth were based on my ability to get my bf to want me intimately and for him to think I was beautiful. If I failed to achieve this, than I was essentially worthless. This is why I was on an endless conquest for “improvement” and weight loss, because I thought that if I just tried hard enough to make myself beautiful, I could win over porn one day and things would be better. Of course, I failed over and over again, and it was so crushing. His problem was his, and was something beyond my control. He had to take responsibility to change, not me.

I suspect you are going through something similar with your eating disorder, and if this relationship is carving away at your self-esteem (and your body, literally) over and over with your bf expressing no intention of changing, it may not be healthy to stay. It is so hard, being in that kind of relationship and feeling so inadequate all the time. Especially because we think that how much our partners love and desire us defines how lovable and worthwhile we are as people. And honestly, if he doesn’t recognize a problem in the first place, he likely won’t change at all :'(

 

Oh my gosh we are so similar, I was separated from my biological family and was adopted. And also, my bf had was obsessed with a certain p actress too, so I know how that feels. I looked her up and watched some videos and sobbed the whole time. Its insane how it distorts real sex, seriously. It's not like people have to be exclusively vanilla or anything, and i'm down for exploring new horizons, but p is no more than a parody and a distortion of the real thing. And unless that's something that has been specifically requested by a partner that they are genuinely into, there is no reason why a person should have to tolerate that degrading language while trying to be intimate. I'm going to give you my 2 cents girl, if he isn't interested in changing, then he won't. Dump his ass.