Another female perspective part 1

Hi, I’ve been reading here for quite a while and am now at a stage where I really need some support and so I decided I would gather all my courage and write my own personal porn addiction story. This is going to be very long and I hope someone has the patience to read it ....
Thanks very much for putting up the forum, it's helped me a lot.

I’ve been with my husband for 10 years and we’ve been married for 7. He’s 15 years younger than I am. When we met he had been living on his own for 2 years. When we got together he told me that he had been watching a lot of pornography. I had never had any contact with pornography before and so I was interested to see what he was looking at and we tried watching some of it together. I thought he had been using it as a substitute as he had been living alone. I must admit I was pretty shocked at some of the things I saw – he seems to have a predilection for extremely large penises – for example, some of the girls were what I can only describe as subjected to what I felt could only be quite painful anal penetration. I didn’t find it at all arousing and it actually made me cringe. My husband was extremely irritated by my reactions and got almost angry with me for “spoiling” his fun as he wasn’t able to get an erection when I was with him. So after a few attempts at watching it together we gave up and he went back to doing it on his own behind locked doors – I felt really alone sitting there knowing that he was masturbating with some DVDs instead of being with me and didn’t really understand why he needed to watch it. We managed to carry on talking about it, and it became apparent at some point that he felt somehow quite ambiguous about it himself and to cut a long story short in the end he got a big rubbish bag and threw his DVDs away. And that, I naively thought, was that.

During the course of our relationship there have always been times when my husband didn’t want to sleep with me and this often went on for a number of weeks. I didn’t put any pressure on him at all during these times, I thought it was just best to leave him to decide when he wanted to come to me but I always felt really miserable and it started to affect my self-confidence. These phases normally ended by me collapsing in tears and sobbing my heart out, after which he comforted me, acted all surprised and we talked about it and then we slept together and everything was alright again – until the next time. We had some phases where everything seemed to be normal and he was loving and attentive towards me but with time the phases when he didn’t want to sleep with me grew more frequent and the “normal” times grew less. When we did sleep together it was very fulfilling and enjoyable and I just didn’t understand why it wasn’t happening more often. I did find it strange that he couldn’t have an orgasm by normal penetration and generally found it difficult to orgasm but thought that it had something to do with the fact that he had been circumcised quite late in life and that this had somehow affected his sensitivity. I now obviously know better ... I tried many times to talk about our lack of sexuality and he told me that I should initiate sex - but if I made any move towards him he blew me off and this made me feel absolutely desperate – I can’t remember anything in my life before that made me feel so terrible. I even tried at one point to simply give up on it and just carry on living with him without sex but that obviously didn’t work either and I became very frustrated and resentful towards him. Last year everything had deteriorated to such an extent that it was affecting me really badly and I decided to separate from him.

This was a really difficult decision for me to make as it was obviously going to affect my whole life, I have a 14-year-old son who has been living with us since he was just 4 and he regards my husband as his father. We own a house together and I had to make the decision that we would have to sell the house as I would not be able to keep it on my own etc. etc. However, this lack of sexuality in our marriage was having such a negative effect on me that I felt I simply didn’t have a choice. I felt abandoned, unfeminine, unloved and neglected and very, very alone. After I moved out for the weekend after another row my husband asked me to reconsider and asked me to do couple’s therapy together which we have now been doing since last September.

On a lot of levels our relationship has improved and we find it easier to communicate but the basic structure of phases of sexual neglect, big row (at some stage I stopped sobbing as it was so emotionally draining and I just started to get angry), then a short phase of normality and so on and so on hadn’t changed. Sometime this year in the spring I asked my husband if he still “enjoyed erotica” and he said yes, and although I basically then already felt that this must be having a negative effect on our relationship I thought that everyone should have the personal freedom in their own lives to do what they want to and if this was his decision then so be it. Then, during one session of our therapy my husband said “It’s not as if I’m cheating on her or anything” and I think that was when the penny finally dropped. I didn’t say anything at the time – I wish I had – but at the end of October I went to our therapist on my own and told him that my husband was using pornography and that it was worrying me as he still wasn’t coming to me for sex and whether he would be willing to help us talk about it as I didn’t think I could do it on my own.

Just then the whole Channel 4 “Campaign for real sex” programmes were broadcast and I recorded a number of them. I was watching the “Your brain on porn” programme while my husband was in the same room watching over the top of his laptop and he became really aggressive about the young boy who was suffering with compulsive porn use – “He doesn’t have a clue, what a load of rubbish” etc. and that’s when I told him that I thought that his use of pornography was causing a lot of problems in our marriage. It wasn’t possible then to talk to him about it as he was completely closed off and so I left it. After that I asked my husband to watch some of the programmes with me as sex had become something in our lives that we couldn’t talk about and I wanted to get it out in the open again. So we did and we tried again to talk about it. All my husband could say was that he didn’t understand why everyone thought pornography was bad, as he thought it was “fantastic”. He then asked me if I never felt I wanted to look at it and when I said no he raised his eyebrows in disbelief and at that particular moment I actually felt incredibly stupid for not wanting to watch pornography and being content with just being with a real human being. Well, then we had another row and my husband slept in the spare room.

By the next morning I was really angry and upset and went over to force a talk about the issue. That’s when he came out with the fact that he had been using online pornography all the time we had been together. Although I think that inside I must have known, this still came as a great shock to me and now I ask myself how I could have been so naive. It didn’t help that this was actually my birthday and I don’t think I’ve ever had such a terrible birthday in my entire life. I felt lied to and cheated on and the agony of all the weeks and months of suffering that I had endured in our marriage because he had been neglecting me and how alone and abandoned I had felt washed over me. I also felt completely made a fool of because all the time he had been comforting me while he was the one that was making me feel bad in the first place.

I kept away from him for a few days and went out as much as possible. He then wrote me a long e-mail explaining that he had basically been using pornography since his early teens, first with some mags he had found, progressing to videos, then DVDs and then obviously the internet. He told me that he had always been very ashamed of enjoying pornography and had never admitted it to anyone before, not even his friends who had told him that they used it. It was for him a very private thing and my reactions at the beginning of our relationship to pornography had “hurt” him.

He wrote “So this whole thing was a dilemma for me from the very start. I felt drawn to it, got aroused by it and masturbated to it and was very ashamed of it. I kept it secret and never advertised the fact that I actually do that, neither to my male friends nor to any of my girlfriends … ever! ....... So I really hope that all of this starts to make it clear to you that I have very ambiguous thoughts and feelings about pornography … and no – I don't really think it's „fantastic“ - only a small part of me thinks it's fantastic (the same part that thinks drinking too much beer is fantastic, I guess). Another part of me worries about its consequences to my mental health and my sexuality and now it looks like the consequences of it could ultimately destroy our relationship, as the communication about that whole topic seems to be impossible and whenever we do talk about it I seem to end up in a position where I feel I have to defend myself and I end up saying stupid things that let you draw conclusions that are having a devastating effect on you.”


After I read his mail I really dug deep and asked myself how I really felt about him and came to the conclusion that in spite of everything he still means an awful lot to me and I wanted to try again to see if this time we would be able to resolve the problems we were having. Part 2 in the next thread...

 

Part 2
I then asked him if he would be willing to talk to our therapist about it and made an appointment for us both to go. This talk was in a number of ways positive as I repeated that my problem was that we weren’t sleeping together, and that basically as long as our sex life is OK it’s up to him what he does. He told me that he just liked watching people enjoying sex and on some level I told him I can understand this although I don’t need it myself. This seemed to untie some knot that he had from the time at the beginning of our relationship when I must have condemned pornography and that must have really upset him – now I’m asking myself why it upset him so much. Anyway after this session with our therapist he felt he was able to talk to me about it and we talked about it a lot.

By then I had found this forum and he told me that this spring he had found the reddit site and was asking himself some questions about his porn consumption. He told me that he didn’t use it as much as he used to and he even said that maybe he should try to stop it all together. A few days later he backpedalled and said that he would “cut it down” and then I had another breakdown – by then I was convinced that the pornography was causing the problems in our marriage and I was so afraid that if he carried on watching porn then our sex life would continue to be as disastrous as it had been before.

But I still didn’t want to put any pressure on him and decided that if I really wanted to try to continue our relationship I would just have to trust him to do the right thing, whether that meant he carried on with the porn or not. I had another session with our therapist on my own and told him what I had read here and on the other critical sites and he didn’t really seem to understand the addictive effect online pornography apparently can have. He said that if we continued to explore our sex life together openly that with time the porn would recede into the background.

So I started to ask questions about what my husband had been watching online. He told me that he enjoyed the “point of view” genre which I hadn’t heard of before and that he was also into black males and even found some transsexual content arousing. Well, if I felt inadequate before then I felt even more inadequate then – how on earth can one woman ever hope in a million years to be able to satisfy her husband’s sexual needs if this is what they are??

So then I was up against another wall and just felt like throwing in the towel again. However, being open about the pornography made my husband generally more open and he said it was a great relief to him to be able to talk about all this. We started having sex again and as usual it was very fulfilling and enjoyable and we had fun online together ordering some more nice underwear for me and also some sex toys and I thought that maybe we could start over now he could be honest with me and maybe things would work out after all. I thought that this could now be a good opportunity for me to explore my own sexuality further. But when the toys arrived we tried to use them and for some reason half way through he somehow “retreated” emotionally and I felt the whole thing went wrong somehow and ended up thinking I had done something wrong – again.

This in combination with another thoughtless comment from him when I showed him a book I had bought just sent me into another downward spiral that ended rock bottom yesterday when I looked up “point of view” genre on the internet. I realised that from my “point of view” there isn’t much difference in this kind of pornography than actually doing it with another woman – you are the person having the sex, it’s “your” penis being used and manipulated and I was absolutely devastated – again. My husband has told me time and time again that he has not ever chosen porn over sleeping with me but all I can say is that he is definitely lying to himself if this is the kind of thing that he is watching. I’m very open when it comes to sex, I’m willing to give anything a go and if either of us is prude, it’s my husband – in fact he only said that to me recently.

So why for the love of God is he having a blow job done on a virtual penis if he has a loving wife waiting for him in the bedroom who would be more than willing to do it for real? I feel like he has been betraying me since we have known one another with an army of other women and it’s making me feel completely inadequate and desperate – I will never be able to satisfy him and if he continues with the pornography then I’m afraid that things won’t change for us. If he carries on putting his sexual energy into online pornography then I have absolutely no idea how our relationship is supposed to go on. He seems determined to carry on with it despite the misgivings he’s voiced and I am the last one to try to force anything on him or tell him that it’s either me or the porn because a) he’s old enough to make his own decisions and b) he would still carry on and start lying to me anyway so now I just don’t know what to do.

Yesterday I moved out of the bedroom (again). I felt so cheated and hurt that he has been basically having sex with other women for all this time, that’s how it seems to me anyway. I “confronted” him with the POV yesterday and all he could say was that that wasn’t what he mainly looked at and he doesn’t use pornography “to the extent he used to” anyway. When I asked him what extent that was he didn’t answer so obviously he doesn’t want me to know. So I told him that as it seems so important to him and he seems so intent on carrying on with it I’ll just leave him to it.

And so here I am. I feel like going to a big city and some clubs and getting chatted up by men who at least regard me as a woman and grabbing someone for a one-night stand just to rebuild my confidence. I told him that I wanted to go to Ireland for a month and what would he say if I wanted to have sex with someone else. He replied that he didn’t own me and it’s up to me what I do. In the meantime I wouldn’t even feel the slightest trace of guilt as from my perspective he has been having sex with other people for over 10 years and maybe now I should be the one that tries it out.

I’ve poured so much love into this man, I’ve always helped him and was there for him, I trusted him completely and even supported him for the three and a half years when he went back to university. I’ve done everything I can think of to try to solve our problems, we’ve paid thousands for this therapy and ultimately I feel it was all for nothing. I have another session booked with our therapist tomorrow but I don’t even know how he can help me.

Yesterday I my husband if he had been using pornography on our honeymoon and he didn’t say anything. I was devastated to think that while I had been working my fingers to the bone supporting the family while he was studying he had been neglecting me and complaining that he was tired and didn’t have any energy for sex with me – well yes, I can now see why! Yesterday he said the most ridiculous thing ever – “I didn’t connect the two things” – mind boggling! Yes, it’s really difficult to understand how masturbating regularly to pornography can affect your sex life, isn’t it!!

I really think he is pulling the wool over his own eyes as he doesn’t want to give it up and is completely in denial, while for me it’s as plain as the nose on your face. I’m so angry with myself for being so naive and can’t see any way that our relationship can go on .... After we had the session at the therapist he told me he would try not to use porn until the end of the year. Recently he told me that he was still looking at it “It’s everywhere, you can’t avoid it!” (Funny I never bump into any of it) and so I have to come to the conclusion that he isn’t at all interested in stopping or simply can’t.

Thanks for reading this outpouring – it helped me to structure my thoughts and I actually feel better and it’s made me realise what an absolute idiot I’ve been. Although I still love him in spite of everything and I’m even actually sure he loves me too, maybe love just isn’t enough and we will have to go our separate ways after all .... I feel that my whole life is dominated by our lack of sexuality that I feel is in turn dominated by pornography and to be quite honest I’ve really had enough ....

 

Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this post, sorry about the block of text, because it was such a lot I wrote in an editor so I wouldn’t lose it. I’ve put in some line breaks now to make it easier to read.

Yes, I have always thought myself very lucky to have found him and this is exactly the thing that’s killing me because he’s the one that’s making me feel hurt. Sex with him is a very rewarding experience and it is very fulfilling FOR ME – but obviously it can’t be very fulfilling for him otherwise he would want to sleep with me more often. It’s very difficult for me at the moment to pretend to my son that everything is fine, when you feel so bad inside it’s a real effort and I don’t feel that I’m being authentic towards him. My son is one of the many reasons I would love this relationship to succeed – they get on well and basically we have a good family life.
As far as I know my husband has never lied to me about his pornography consumption but he has kept it secret over the past 10 years and I consider him to have been untruthful in all the talks we have had about our lack of sexuality because he wasn’t open about it.

The very frustrating thing for me is that he denies choosing porn over me while I feel it’s perfectly obvious what is happening. An important thing is also that although he may not feel he’s cheating, I feel cheated on and that’s a big difference. If I lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling and he stays up late it makes no real difference to me if he is with an actual woman or masturbating to porn. It may even be easier if it were a real woman – at least I would have someone to face but as it is it’s a sea of faces .. and other body parts ...

On the one hand I think he is but on the other I think he doesn’t want to stop ...

Well this is how I feel too and it’s interesting you should see it the same way. What makes you think he is very addicted exactly?

I’ve watched the The Great Porn Experiment and read the Your Brain on Porn site and so has he. I’ve read most of the information out there and the more I read the clearer it became to me that there is a big problem with the porn. He’s read it all but still can’t really admit there’s a problem.

I know that some couples use porn together and that’s fine – everyone should be able to do what is right for them but it’s definitely not good for our relationship in this case.

I don’t know how many times over the past 2 years I’ve tried to leave him but he won’t let me go – I know this sounds odd but as soon as I decide to leave he fights for me to stay. The problem is that I am so exhausted from this constant emotional upheaval all I want is the porn out of my life and as long as he is sticking to the porn maybe he has to leave with it ... at the moment the last thing I want is another relationship, I want inner peace ..

I’m fully aware that I can’t do a thing to make him overcome it. I even think if I were to try it would be completely counterproductive – it has to come from him as you so rightly point out.

I really appreciate your reply and your time and thanks very much for your friendly offer – I’m sure I’ll take you up on it 

 

Also here many thanks for your time.

If I didn’t feel like I do about him I would have left him a long time ago. I really love him and I think he is a very kind and caring man. Apart from these problems we have a good life and that makes me even angrier about it. I feel like we are wasting our lives arguing when we could be doing something much more constructive with our time.

This is very interesting for me, thank you

I’m very grateful for your input. I find it so difficult to imagine that he wasn’t able to link the porn with the lack of interest in me – for me it’s so glaringly obvious and it’s good for me to see that you think this is a positive step – I just found it ridiculous to be quite honest.

He is definitely a very deserving man in a lot of other respects and I am more than willing to help him in any way I can. But before I can help him he has to want to help himself and at the moment I don’t think he wants to change his behaviour because a) it gives him too much momentary pleasure and b) he doesn’t see any need to do so.

We live in Germany and communicate in English (I’m English and he’s German with native level English skills). Unfortunately there isn’t much online in German that I can refer our therapist to and although he’s helped us a lot on a lot of other levels I think with this problem we’re on our own and totally reliant on online resources - which is another reason I’m so glad for your input. It’s very difficult for me to put myself in his shoes and also obviously difficult for him the other way around

I don’t want to say that what he is doing is wrong because I think that puts a moralistic slant on it and I’m not judgemental. All I can say is that it’s causing havoc in our relationship. He seems to always have had problems himself with this and I think he realises that it’s not doing him any good but the momentary pleasure he gets out of it seems to be stronger than the long-term concerns.

Thank you for the recommendation, I’ll look into it. Today I read about a book called The Porn Trap and wondered if you had heard anything about it.
Once more thank you for your insights

 

Hi Discipline, I'm having trouble posting my reply to you and it has to be moderated for some reason so just thanks very much for your time and I'll try to message you my reply

 

Hi Ezra,
Thanks very much for reading through my saga

It's interesting that you too think he is in denial as this is my gut feeling but obviously I'm new to the topic and feel very insecure about it. As I've already written I don't want to be moralistic or judgemental and would personally like to avoid the word "wrong" - basically I feel that everyone should be able to do with their sexuality what they want as long as they don't harm themselves or others. The problem here is that harm is being done in our relationship and I'm suffering (a lot) and to be quite honest I don't think in the long term it's doing my husband any good either. We've both watched the Great Porn Experiment and read the articles on yourbrainonporn but for a long time I've had the impression that my husband would just like to carry on as he is. Over the past few weeks I did feel that we have made some progress and we were much closer and slept together again but for my feeling there is an underlying problem and until this is resolved I just feel helpless..

 

Hi William, I just want to say thank you very much for replying to my post and that I'm in the middle of replying and will post tomorrow Goodnight for now

 

Thank you William part 1

Hi William,
To you also many thanks for taking the time to read through my long post and for your on the one hand encouraging but also very sad story (thinking of your wife here too).

Without wanting to sound condescending I just want to congratulate you on that – I can’t really imagine what control and commitment that must have taken.

Well I grew up in internet-free times and I lost my virginity in a cornfield in summer in a truly traditional manner My teenage experiences took place with real boys in the dunes at the beach, at clubs and anywhere else we weren’t exposed to the elements.

When we had sex it was always really rewarding for me but obviously it wasn’t that rewarding for him otherwise he would have wanted to sleep with me more often. Also he sometimes has had difficulties reaching orgasm and it wasn’t hardly ever possible just by penetration alone. My husband only ever had problems with erectile dysfunction once and that was when I initiated sex and was quite insistent. Needless to say I didn’t try this again ...

I feel so sorry for the both of you, being as you were completely unaware of what was happening as was I, not having had any insight into pornography at all (I was just never attracted to it). If we tried to talk about it my husband always became extremely defensive and quite often aggressive. I still don’t know how often my husband masturbated to porn. Recently he told me that he was just watching the porn and masturbating separately and I think he is trying in his own way to control it but still doesn’t want to give it up completely. After everything I’ve read I think he is overestimating himself.

Well it’s only logical really that you have to find something ever more exciting to reach the same level of stimulation – desensitisation is the key word here. I found this article very interesting on this topic:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cupids-poisoned-arrow/201109/are-you-hooked-porn-ask-asam
My husband has delved very deep into this whole thing. Even he knows that I don’t really want to hear what he’s looked at as he knows it would shock me – in fact I don’t think there is very much that he hasn’t looked at. I’m so glad I don’t have any of this in my head, I really don’t want it in there. When I was watching the Channel 4 documentaries there was one programme that I recorded called “Dating a porn star”. I asked my husband if he had already watched it and he said “Of course, if there is anything to do with porn on there obviously I’m going to watch it”. Well of course he watched it when I wasn’t there ... anyway there was one scene that made me realise how warped some of this stuff is – it was an “incest scene” between two women, one older, one younger and the “mother” was telling the “daughter” how oral sex with her was much better than with the “father”. Who thinks of this?? And I’m pretty sure that that was pretty harmless although it actually made me feel quite sick.

I left for a few days last year and this is when my husband asked me to do a therapy together. I left because I couldn’t cope with the situation, lack of change and constant arguments any more. I don’t want to try to make him quit, as you and Discipline rightly pointed out he has to want to do it for himself. All I can do is decide for myself what is acceptable for me and what not. Yesterday I told him that I personally do not want POV pornography to be part of my relationship. I think this is quite an important thing; although he may see it differently - to me – when I am in bed alone staring at the ceiling – there’s no difference between my husband masturbating while having a blow job with a virtual penis by an onscreen woman than with a real woman; the porn is designed to make him think he is actually with her and his brain really does think he is. In fact if it were a real woman I would at least be able to confront her personally which would make it almost easier but with online pornography it’s just a sea of anonymous faces and other body parts – and of course it’s all now socially acceptable. The other night I asked my husband why on earth he expected me to think that this POV porn would be acceptable – for me it really is tantamount to cheating, especially in light of the fact that he is neglecting me to do so. Why on earth didn’t he come to me?? I just can’t get my head around it ...

This is a very important insight for me, thank you

I actually feel quite sorry for my husband that he has been hijacked by this stuff. It makes me sound really naive but all I need is the man that I love and I’m happy – but now when I say that it makes me feel that I am boring ... at the moment I can hardly imagine that my husband would ever be satisfied with me and just me. At the moment I can’t see a way forward and it’s very upsetting...

Cont'd

 

I’ve read the articles and seen the videos and every time I read something new it confirms to me even more that my husband is addicted and doesn’t want to admit it. My husband also knows about the yourbrainonporn.com site and yesterday he told me that when I moved out of the bedroom the other night he couldn’t sleep and he had watched The Demise of Guys and looked up arousal addiction. So he is looking at the topic ...

This passage from the above article said a lot to me:

There seemed to me something unseemly about getting off to something I was watching only out of a car crash rubber-necking, morbid curiosity. But then one day, I actually started masturbating to these kinds of videos. That's when I knew I'd crossed the line. I was getting off to something I found repellent, not sexually arousing in the conventional sense. I could easily become aroused and orgasm via masturbation, but not when having sex with my wife. When you have difficulty being aroused or ejaculating with real partners, you know you've got an addiction.

I had to look up BDSM I think at the moment my husband is confused about his own sexuality – due to the porn. He says he is straight but then wants to see large male genitalia and finds the transsexual thing arousing. I suppose he is in so deep that normal sex is boring now ...

It’s funny you should say that because once he said to me “Just face it, I’m broken and you can’t fix me”. It nearly broke my heart to hear him say that and I don’t think he’s broken – he’s just helpless and I don’t know how to help him. But as you all say he has to want to do it himself. Until that day arrives all I can do is try to protect myself and the trouble is at the moment I feel quite revengeful which isn’t like me at all – I’m just so fed up with being hurt all the time, I’m really reeling from all the knocks to my self-confidence. I never used to have any body issues, I always felt comfortable in my own skin but these past few years have made me feel totally inadequate. I just want a man to see me as a woman he finds attractive and arousing and wants to sleep with – I’m fed up with having to feel grateful if my husband sleeps with me and then wondering when the next time will be.

I’m very sure he was.

My husband is 41 and has been hooked up to the internet as soon as it was possible. He had three relationships before me but has been watching pornography since he could. It’s not looking good, is it ...

That’s something only he can decide.

I’ve told my husband about this thread and yesterday evening he read it. I don’t know whether he read your reply yet but I will point it out to him. This afternoon we are both going to our therapist so I’ll see what happens then.

I think this is very true of my husband. He told me once that he panicked at the thought of not having it. I think it’s had a lot of negative effects on him and his life. When I met him he had a lot of body confidence issues and general confidence problems. He always used the porn to feel better about himself but basically I think it can only make such problems worse. If you are constantly comparing your penis with a whopper on the internet, for example, of course it’s going to make you feel bad about yourself. It’s clear to me that he is using it for a lot of emotional reasons and I think he’s starting to realise this.

Thank you so much William, peace is really the one thing I am really longing for....

 

Hi JFC,
Thank you for your time and the sympathy - it really hasn't been easy for me but again I don't think it's been easy for my husband either. I don't think he realises that the sexuality is artificial - he says things like "It's part of me" and then carries on that if I love him this is part of him and therefore I should accept it. Reading all these articles has really opened my eyes and now I'll just have to see how things carry on. I think it's great that you guys have the courage to turn around and face all this and I'm sure it's not easy.

I do worry about my son. He's 14 and the other day I had a talk with him about internet pornography and the risks it involves, I told him that if he ever feels that he has any problems with compulsive behaviour he shouldn't be afraid or embarrassed but come to me and I'll help him or find help. As a responsible parent I think it's essential to be open about these things and talk to your kids. I'm also in the parent-teacher association and they have an addiction officer at the school so I'll be contacting him and trying to get the word out. I even asked my son if he would be embarrassed if I talked to his class about it and he even suggested I should come to one of their biology lessons in the spring as they will be having sex education lessons. I'll just contact the school and see what happens.

I really hope that you succeed in overcoming it yourself and can have a fulfilling and rewarding relationship in the future

 

Hi Jason, yes, I was married to the father of my son and our relationship lasted 10 years. It ended when my current husband came into my life. It was a very difficult separation.

 

My husband has now joined the forum

Yesterday my husband told me he had joined the forum.

http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?2472-Checking-in

http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?2493-NotInDenial-s-diary

I can't tell you how relieved and moved I feel that he has taken this step and how much I admire him for making a stand for our relationship. Yesterday he told me he found this whole experience very humiliating and that made me admire him even more for overcoming that feeling and making this decision in spite of it. I really hope that he will be able to stay open and honest towards me and I think he knows that I will do anything I can to be supportive. I really appreciate that this is a very difficult thing for him to do and it makes me love him even more for it.

 

Hi Jason,

I was married to the father of my son and we divorced 10 years ago. Since then I have been with my current husband - we got married 7 years ago.