Rejected by wife

Reading this helps me on my final road to success. As failure just can't be an option for me. MY wife's struggles for the years of marriage are more apparent than ever now that I face the same feelings that I have been piling on her for years. The unfairness of that interaction is sickening to say the least; not to mention the feeling of how effing BLIND I have been.
Success will mean that I will finally shed the PMO, and connected substance abuse that enables me. That all has buried me into a 17 yr section of life driven hyper-sexuality and the increased perversions that really really don't interest or drive me.

I will then hope that I can show my wife that the changes are final, while certainly evolving; in the hopes that she can come to fall back into love with bright side of the shadow of a man she fell in love with.

 

People and marriages recover from infidelity and you can recover from PMO. Stay focused and make it happen!

 

@Metal Bat, just wondering how long you have been married and how many kidsyou have to make the kind of comments you do.... Your profile shows you are only 21, so I accept that the "arrogance of youth" shines brightly, but I really hope you can refrain from bashing the wife of an addict when the truth is laid out.

 

@ParvusSapentia,

Keep the faith brother, all is not lost. I have been where you are, and my wifes depression, anger and hurt increased proportionately opposite to my relief, joy and freedom of getting free from PMO, and telling her about it. Very recently, we were on the verge of divorce, but once my head cleared from the PMO induced fog and stupidity, and I accepted and apologised for my mess without excuses, gave my wife time to process and heal, we got closer. After 6 weeks we are so in love it's scary...

I truly hope you can and will have an ever better outcome than mine!

 

I feel sad for you bro, but don't worry good time will come just don't loose hope. Your wife loves you so much because only that person can hate you that much who truely loves you. I hope everything will be okay after you will stop PMO.

 

This post really drives a resounding note of hope through me; and I'm sure many many others. Thanks for the well written thought and experience.

 

Hey @ParvusSapentia
As a SO, I can tell you my journey has also been long.
Today is my SOs 1 year P&M Free mark.
It took about 6 months of anger and disgust to warm me up to him.
It's definitely a long road.
He did dishes and slept upstairs because I didn't want him close sometimes.
He changed things on his phone and we made a Boundaries List.
He wrote me a Promise List and the more he did, the more it showed me I mattered to him.
He wasn't just healing himself, he was healing US.
Or at least trying to earn my trust back.
The best thing he did was, when he fulfilled the promises, he added new ones to replace the old ones so there are always things he's doing.
Helps him stay busy too.
I hope you also have a good plan.
I know as a SO I didn't just want to hear he was healing but I wanted him to have a plan.
I won't make the plan, I won't police you, but I'd like to know of "The Plan" and have you occasionally tell me how it's going.
Even when I don't want to hear about it.
It helps.
At least it did me.
The honesty.
The communication.
And the honesty.
You just have to have it.
Admitting you have a problem just opens the pathway to honest.
Keeping those lines open is important for healing. Both of you.
You seem sincere and I wish you the best.
Good luck.

 

I'm a little worried about this part. Accepting responsibility does involve helping your wife work through her pain and anger... or giving her the space to deal with her emotions. However, that does not mean she is allowed to beat you until you slink off like a whipped dog. Venting or ranting once in a while is one thing, but I sense real venom coming out of her mouth. Healing a relationship does not mean you have to hurt as much as she hurts. Someone might mistakenly think justice means you have to be punished until you you feel equally destroyed as she does. An 'eye for an eye' leaves both people blind.

My wife and I had this discussion when I was rebooting. She felt it was unfair that I hurt her for 17 years and I didn't have more consequences. I understood her position, but the solution wasn't for me to be punished for the next 17 years. I explained that the goal should be to redeem, not punish the addict. Excessive punishment only drives the addict back to their addiction. (People who aren't trying don't qualify.) The goal is to heal. There needs to be real change and a sincere apology (sometimes multiple ones) on the rebooter's part and true forgiveness from the SO in order to move forward.

I understand you are not anywhere near that point yet. You do deserve to experience the consequence of your actions. However, since you are now on the path to recovery you do not deserve to be continually abused or humiliated. She can talk, she can be angry, she can be frustrated but being mean and insulting is over the line. She will never respect you if you allow yourself to be treated like this. I think there needs to be a limit or a boundary of what is acceptable and what is excessive.

I admire your willingness to to bear the entire burden, but you are running the risk of getting buried in blame and resentment. You might start to believe that you are worthless and unlovable. You might lose motivation to do what is right. Then the hope of reconciling starts to slip away. It's good to stay humble, but you also need to hear and believe that this new version of yourself is worthy of love, honor, and respect. Hopefully your wife will eventually see it and the resentment starts to fade away.

 

Well, it seems that she isn't willing to help you, but she doesn't have the right to do this. You are an human like her. She can't treat you otherwise, because you are an addict. The problem with out society today is people instead of helping the addict. They yell at him and call him the worst names ever. Your wife doesn't know how it feels to be an addict. Well, so what you are gonna do is to not be nervous and to talk to her and tell her how it feels to be an addict and if she were in your position, you wouldn't have treated her that way and tell her that you need help, because what is she doing will just make it worse. Best wishes to you.

 

I'd like to point out that this is an anonymous site and he doesn't know how he would have reacted or treated her.
You also cannot make these assumptions.
The problem with today's society is people making excuses.
Instead of attacking people, we should be supportive.
Instead of making excuses, we should own our mistakes.
We don't need to wallow in regret, we need to keep moving forward.
Learn from the past.
Or be condemned to repeat it.

 

And to further note.... Anyone not married giving relationship advice, who's never truly been committed the same way as someone who took vows, is like a teenager trying to give someone with 3 kids parenting advice.

 

To me it seems you have some underlying issues in your relationship. If you hadn´t, your wife would love you unconditionally. Her current behavior is only pushing you further into addiction.
Believe me, you have taken huge steps in realizing that porn is a problem, committing to change and opening up to someone. For me the last step was the most difficult.
Ask yourself how she would react, if you told her you were addicted to alcohol or drugs, instead of porn. All addictions share the same neurological pathways, so porn is no different from any drugs. Would she help you through with it? If the answer is no, the problem is not the porn but your relationship. If the answer is yes, the problem is your wifes ignorance.
There is plenty of advice on the internet for partners of recovering porn addicts. I would start there.

 

Okay but porn to some women is cheating so porn addiction or sex addiction is a whole different monster than just another addiction. I've told my fiance a million times how much easier it would have been to deal with other addictions. There may be underlying issues, but don't forget that porn addiction is different than being an alcoholic. Betrayal is still there, but with porn addiction, the person went against the "forsake all others", so maybe she is just still extremely hurt. It doesn't give her the right to be verbally abusive but there is pain on both sides. To me and many other women porn addiction wasn't just an addiction it was cheating, a betrayal of their vows, so that makes the knife cut deeper so to speak

 

Yeah I can understand that. Porn addiction is a form of sexual addiction with the addict being secretive about it. So its basically cheating.
But what we all here need to realize: Porn is essentially Pixels on a screen. If these LEDs are lighting up in a certain pattern, neurochemicals are released into the brain.
But these pixels dont love you. You can not have a relationship with them.
This is important for the addict to realize (which he did), now it is important for his wife to realize it.
Its the crack cocaine of the internet age. And its around us everywhere. Even in mainstream media. It is way too easy to fall into its trap.

 

I realize it's pixels on a screen but it's still a real live person. That person exists. And yes they can't have a relationship with them, but it's still incredibly hurtful. I can tell you that aside from being raped, this was one of the most painful experiences I've gone through in my life. When I first found out I didn't act nicely, hell I was horrible with crying all the time, yelling, telling him to give me space, but we worked through it. Everyone is different when it comes to grieving. I assume she is literally grieving the relationship she thought she had. She is grieving the death of a relationship she thought she had, and it's hard to think of how to have a new relationship when all you see is lies and betrayal.

I agree this addiction is one of the worst and easiest to fall to. I sympathize with addicts on here, but I also know that the partner's worlds were destroyed when their husband's addiction came to light. I LOGICALLY know it's pixels, but it's still a person, a woman who is out there in the world, and the emotional part of me is devastated by that. It's been a little over a year since I found out and only now is our relationship healing. So both people involved need to take time to process this, really understand what happened, and of course, with time hopefully, communication will get better.

 

Ohh believe me, I LOGICALLY know this too. But my primitive brain does not. If it would, this forum would not even exist.
This part of the brain still thinks these women are real and desirable.