Are my boyfriend's sexual urges normal/acceptable?

Thanks for sharing. I believe most people are already aware and acknowledged that men are visual 'creatures' and will feel stimulated by novel/attractive/sexy/hot woman <you can fill in the blanks haha>. While I am not a biology or Anthropology expert, such behavior will probably stick with us until we die - like it or not.

The important part is how we react or respond to those external or internal stimuli. Long story short, you can perhaps learn to focus your attention on the bright spots? For example, he has been porn free for a year and you guys have a healthy sexual relationship etc. Of course, it is difficult for you to accept the fact that he has mentioned his urges for other woman so on and so forth.

But I would think the both of you have to sit down and really be honest with each other - then decide an 'approach or mental model' to address this issue. Otherwise, it will likely continue to affect the both of you in the long run.

Just my ten cents. All the best!

 

I'm sharing in this post for the OP the message by @janewhite in another subforum, just in case you might wanna know a female point of view similar to your boyfriend's on the matter.

https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?t...ion-to-other-women.335617/page-2#post-3408792

 

A lot of that is not accurate. We in fact know that statistically, male-reported attractiveness of women only decreases with age. Sure it's possible you're doing this or that to artificially enhance your appearance for a while, and that's great! But that's not going to last long. Your clock is indeed and has already been ticking. It's easy to find that data. He might well just be telling you sweet little lies, whereas Try33's guy is being brutally honest.

My female professor in Molecular Biotechniques shows us the graph of child birth defects based on age of the mother. At 38, you're already in dangerous (but not terrible) territory for any future kids.

You're setting this poor girl up to have unreasonable and even stupid expectations, and as a result, she who is living in the real world may waste her quickly ticking time chasing after phantoms. As a result, she will pass up the the right guy, and another right guy, and still another, because she's following the whims of an irrational heart. I don't want that for her. I want her to find a good, stable guy and not die surrounded by hungry house cats.

 

You are basing a woman's worth solely on her looks which is disgusting. There is more to a woman than looks and many woman in their 30s, 40s, and 50s find terrific men that love them for them and not just for some childlike looks.

This woman is 27yrs old. She isn't anywhere near 38. She has plenty of years to have children and more and more women are safely having children well into their 40s. She could freeze her eggs now if she wanted to or she could even adopt. To tell her to get married and settle for any guy just so she can have kids by the time she is 30 is setting her for unhappiness. According to research the most unhappy demographic of women are married women with children...why do you think that is? The happiest are single women without children. So actually those women that "die with hungry house cats" live happier lives than women with a husband and a bunch of kids. She has options and I'm tired of people especially men telling women they better marry up now before it's too late. That's antiquated and dripping in misogyny. Women have rights now. They have options. If she wants to wait till she finds a man that absolutely adores her and finds her to be the sexiest and most attractive women in his eyes then more power to her. She knows her worth.

I would not willfully marry a disrespectful man and have children with him. Those marriages end in divorce. Just look on this forum and you will find plenty of divorced people because of p addiction. Many of these men/women will admit it was their addiction that drove their spouse away. So if she can save herself the heartbreak now that would be great. I'm not saying he isn't on the right track. I don't know. I know he hurt her with his words and she's now doubting things. Since you brought up biology it has been scientifically proven that women have a very strong intuition and when something feels off there is usually a very real reason. She may not be able to put her finger on it at the moment but something has alerted her to something. Hence why she came here looking for help and possible answers.

He could be a great guy that just has trouble explaining what he's trying to say. He could absolutely adore her and find her sexy af and he's just trying his hardest to be honest that he does find other women attractive (which yes is normal). I don't know. All I am saying is telling a woman she's getting older so she better just marry him and stop thinking too hard about it is very toxic and gets women in unhappy marriages and all too often abusive ones.

 

Now there's too many problems there to even address half of them. Some highlights:

I did no such thing. I only implied a woman's tendency to give a man sexual urges is based on her appearance (and "this or that"). It was you who assumed being considered sexy equates to a woman's value, not me.

Actually, fertilizing frozen eggs has a high failure rate. One quick stat showing a measly 2% result in pregnancy, and only 0.7% result in live birth. That's yet another way your ideology is potentially harmful to women, not that you probably knew the failure rate was so bad. They lied to you just like they lied to her.

Who are you talking to? Why would you ever equate finding a "good and stable man"(what I recommended) to "marrying a disrespectful man"?? I have no idea if the guy she's with is disrespectful or not. I'm giving an actually reasonable standard to seek.

Apparently not in this case, since she's told us she's been having sex with this guy for 3 years, yet now she says she would refuse to marry him.

Cliché feminist buzzwords. Tell us, why are you actually here? Are you a sex negative feminist now, against women empowering themselves through making money via pornography?

 

"male-reported attractiveness of women only decreases with age. Sure it's possible you're doing this or that to artificially enhance your appearance for a while, and that's great! But that's not going to last long."
"your looks are likely declining soon, so securing such a guy (if one exists) would be increasingly more difficult."

Direct quotes from you that are basing a woman's worth and ability to "secure a guy" on her looks.

Actually a recent study showed 70% of women who froze eggs when they were younger than 38 and thawed at least 20 eggs at a later date had a baby.
Women under 35 who freeze 10-20 eggs have a 70-90% chance of at least one live birth

You don't know that he is a good a stable man. But what we do know is he has a problem lusting after other women which is in fact disrespectful to his partner. Otherwise we know nothing about him yet you are pushing her towards marrying him and questioning why she isn't sure right now. He needs to be in a very good place in his recovery before she should consider marrying him. Too many men/women on here are divorced because of this addiction.

How does anything I have said have anything to do with being sex negative? Telling her to not just up and marry any dude is sex negative? Because I feel it's toxic for men to tell women they aren't worth more than their young looks is sex negative? Women are so much more than a body for you to stick your d in and many want more out of life than kids. She deserves to be happy and if he isn't making her happy than she needs to move on it doesn't matter how "old" she is or how her "looks are declining". My god what horrible things to say to a person like she has nothing more in life to offer than a pretty face and a hole.

 

Why would you think she’s sex negative? I would tell anyone dating a porn addict to run. Run and thank god you escaped a relationship full of misery. I agree, that if having your own biological child is very important then, as a woman you will have to acknowledge that. I had my first at 32, second at 35. But you don’t need a husband for that. I had a friend choose that route. Cost her a bit, but she has no messy ties and a child of her own at 45! No one should marry because the “ clock is ticking”.

 

I found this the most disturbing part of your post. It seems fault lines and codependent behaviors lay on both sides, something that need acknowledging and addressing if this relationship will ever work out long term.

.

 

I find the most disturbing is that he’s lied so much to her she feels the need to question him at all, much less a million times. That’s what hiding this addiction does to your partner. Makes them question everything!

 

Except, here, he was admitting and volunteering for once. And, yes, regardless, codependence holds the whole mess together on and on. Like you said, perhaps she should have run a long time ago. Why didn't she? Like any relationship with an addict (of any kind), and this may not be her first, she'll need some "al-anon" (analogous for any addiction) counseling, too, perhaps, just as the addict needs help.

 

Except here’s the conundrum -because he’s lied in the past HOW in the world does she know he’s being truthful now? You( like her) just accept that he’s being honest, about a year clean from porn, she believes him. I doubt he’s being honest.maybe it’s not about his porn use now or maybe it’s about something he lied about in that past and never confessed to her, but I believe that’s why she continues to question. I base this belief on the multitudes of women I work with. They don’t listen to their gut, they listen to their partner but then feel compelled to question everything. This is almost always the case. Once the partner is really honest about everything, that need to question fades away rapidly! I agree she needs counseling to figure out how his addiction and the lies that go with it have changed her brain. It’s too bad we as a society don’t work harder at getting the mental health help people need. We could really change the world if we did. Everything starts with a thought. Not trying to argue with you, lol. Just a different perspective from the other side

 

It’s a dog, lol.

 

Extra points if u can tell me the breed…. Lol no idea how you thought that was a cat.

 

First off, let me apologize to you for the ugly pain and trauma you've experienced as a result of his addiction. (If you haven't already, it might be a good idea to look into betrayal trauma, or BT as its often referred to. Its actual trauma caused by the discovery of a loved one's lust addiction.)

Second, people who do not have addictions can't understand the mental thought processes of addicts. For me, I have an addiction that was caused by rejection and emotional (and some physical) abuse when I was a kid. My mind formed this fantasy world of beautiful women who would never reject me (because it wasn't a physical relationship, it was only online.) I had no clue how it formed for me until I'd been in therapy for awhile with a CSAT. (Certified Sex Addiction Therapist) Please, please, PLEASE don't EVER feel sorry for trying to force it out of him by asking questions! For Heaven's sake, this is NOT something you should have to firce out of him. Whether he is consciously or unconsciously keeping it from you, doesn't have any impact on the pain you feel because of it. This is NOT about you. It never has been and it never will be. This has all been caused by his addiction and you can't do anything to fight it for him. This is a full-on addiction that he must take care of by fighting it tooth and nail, every second of every single day for the rest of his life. And if, for whatever reason, he decides at some point to stop fighting it, you can either stay and expect complete pain and trauma constantly, or you can walk away from him.

I suspect there's something traumatic from his childhood that gave him this addiction in a similar way I got my addiction. Something probably happened to him that made him feel like he has a right to think this way about women. I don't think it will ever be completely understandable by people who've never gone through it. So unfortunately, I don't have much to offer you on this, other than this is the mind of an addict.

While these thoughts may be subconscious, he's clearly looking at other women in public, and possibly other places, which is never a subconscious decision. EVER. If you two are out to dinner together, having an intimate discussion about something and some attractive woman walks by, he will know that you are going to notice what he's doing by glaring at her and he will obviously (hopefully) make a conscious decision to not look at her. The desire to look at her may be instinctive or subconscious, but actually doing it is not, in my opinion.

Again, this is an addiction for him, not you, which means it is HIS fight, not yours. This is something that he needs to be working on, because no one else can do it for him. So clearly, if he doesn't work on it, things will never improve, period. But in the mind of an addict, everything is so secretive, lies are more common than sand in the desert. So unless you can somehow prove that he's not actually fantasizing in his mind about actually being with another woman sexually, you can't be sure he's not. And since there's no device other than maybe a lie detector, its impossible to be positive that he's not actually fantasizing about these women he's having such a hard time not gawking at. And this strikes me especially hard as being the case with your bf because you said he quickly moves onto something else, which means he's clearly trying to get you off the topic. Someone who's truly fighting this addiction will be open about it with their spouse/partner and tell them whatever they want to know, to the partner's total and complete satisfaction. Anything less, to me, is a total sign of deceipt.

This is about as faulty as a woman telling her husband that she constantly drains their bank account by going out shopping and telling him that its just in her DNA because women, by nature, are natural born shoppers. True, men are visual by nature. But that does NOT mean that everyone who isn't that way should just blindly accept it and never question it, which is usually what is implied by people who say it, and that goes TRIPLE when any addict says it!

As an addict, I can tell you that YES, his sexual urges and desires will absolutely increase unless he fights this addiction. How could addiction urges NOT increase if he isn't actively fighting it? THEY WON'T. And Im VERY curious as to what makes him think they will decrease over time. Have they decreased since you two started your relationship? If so, YOU will see evidence of that FAR BEYOND his word that he feels they have.

If the urges were truly meaningless to him, he would never have them. He would never look lustfully at anyone on the planet other than you, EVER. No exceptions, EVER.

You should know that you should NEVER have to fight to be priority in your partner's life. EVER. I want you to know that your feelings if being hurt and minimized are absolutely valid and important. I hope you NEVER feel like you're just being paranoid or stupid, or that you should just shut up and stop being a nag about this. He has an addiction and its power, as well as its affects should never be minimized in any way by anyone, especially tits affects on you since you're completely innocent in all this.

NO, NO, and HELL NO!!! Absolutely not! This is NEVER too much for someone in a relationship to ask of their partner, EVER.

You may have some significant trauma from being with more than one addict, but that never means that you shouldn't be happy in a relationship, or that you don't have every right to have certain expectations of your partner and demand that they be met or there will be an ultimatum. You absolutely have every right in the world to do that at any time you want. In fact, I'd suggest making a list of expectations for him and if he can't or won't meet them, then the ball is completely in your court as far as where you go from there.

NO!! The way he feels is NOT normal or acceptable. Even if society somehow did think it was acceptable, it isn't acceptable to YOU and that's what matters most in your relationship! And if he can't get on board with that, then you'll clearly never be his first priority. Ever.

This absolutely breaks my heart for you. I am so sorry you're going through this. I hope the trauma from these addicts hasn't decreased the value you place on yourself, although I fear it has done exactly that, significantly. For addicts, these urges may be normal, but their not impossible to beat. The best tool for fighting this addiction is the 12 step Sexaholics Anonymous program. The SA website (SA.org/f2f) has information on worldwide local meetings where he can go and join to talk with other addicts, get a sponsor to call daily and ask questions to and get advice from. Also, the S-Anon website (sanon.org/find-a-meeting) is for spouses/partners of sex addicts to find healing and help for their journey of recovery.

Yes. They are out there, but they're like diamonds in the rough. You have to look hard and be VERY careful about selecting them, but I truly believe that they are out there.


I truly hope this helps and that you find happiness in whatever relationship you choose to be in. God bless you.

 

The only thing I addressed here, including all those quotes, is attractiveness and sexual market value. Why are you not able to see the difference?

Human value is inherent no matter how old, how young, etc. Whereas sexual market value varies wildly, and decreases with age for women starting in their twenties. Whereas men peak much later and not based as much on appearance.

You can follow this link to see a real women's story who froze her eggs and they all failed. She gives honest numbers and costs and the invasive, potentially dangerous process of "freezing your eggs." It's a shallow, very often false hope. And in most cases, that's only a hope of getting one single child.
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/egg-freezing-risks/

You didn't answer the question. Why are you actually here, feminist?

 

Lol

 

That 'fear' I expressed was for your sake. God didn't give one iota about your sexual market value when He sent his son to die that you, one who bears his image, might be saved. That's what determines your intrinsic value, not your fading sexual market value.

But the fear I expressed, a month back was temporal, not eternal. So, no. I don't see any kind of contradiction there. And you don't seem like you respect men unless they bow to whatever you prefer to be true. Agree to disagree I guess.

 

I am going to share my thoughts on this subject, however I am not a recovered addict or SO. I have however been in a relationship where this phenomenon was a major wedge.

Is it it normal for men to experience this attraction to other women? I think to a fair extent yes. I think the kind of attraction that you develop to a person in a committed relationship is a separate drive than the drive of a man's attraction to sexually stimulating women. The former I believe involves the later, but is refined and developed over time. It is developed by conscious effort to bond with the woman, learn her thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and emotions, and to try and be a uplifting force to and with her as much as possible. The later alone, however is not something that goes away. It's just put in it's place. Every man's brain is hard wired to give his conscious experience an input as towards the attractiveness of the women he encounters. It's deep in their neurology. It's been a factor in animal biology as far back as jellyfish. I don't think it's reasonable for him to not experience those urges.

The fact that he is an addict and has abused that drive for a large part of his life is absolutely a factor in this. That doesn't heal over night. There can be several factors in that. To give a brief personal account, in my relationship I had been free of porn for a year, but not masturbation, and were having sex(which can effect recovery) and from my personal experience, my attraction to other women was the worst it had ever been at that point. Women I saw around me were like lighthouses beaming at me. I struggled at that point, I didn't know what was going on and why it was so hard for me to deal with that part of myself. She had been hurt by this, and for many reason beyond just that, the relationship ended. I have since gone to therapy and groups, and in this course I've spoken to many man who've been in sobriety for long term. Not one of them had those urges vanish. Reduced to an extent, but more importantly was that they had learned to manage those feelings and urges and connect with their significant others.

So I want to say, from what I've experienced, if you obsess over an idea of mental purity at the level of urges, you will likely just slowly drive in a wedge that (in my estimation) will end the relationship. Instead you should evaluate him on if he desires you romantically and in his commitment more than any woman in his life. Those are two things he has far more control over, and if they are genuine, you will see him make efforts in the areas of life that are under his control to better the relationship that you two share.

If you want to really see this relationships for what it is, keep up with the honest communication. Give him room to be where he is at, let him know when that hurts you, but don't vilify him for things that aren't under his control. Explore ways that you can assure one another that you are committed to one another and that you love each other. If that works and improves then you will have an ever greater relationship, if it doesn't than you will be able to be sure that you let him go for right and true reasons.


P.S. It is worth noting that you should continue to talk to him about these sexual topics, but understand that what are ultimately under his control are his actions. If he is oggling women, that's an action. If he is looking at women on the internet, tv, or other media, that's an action. Flirting, an action. However, things like being at the grocery store and seeing a attractive woman wearing triggering clothing and being effected by it for some time, that's not an action, and not something you should count against him. You may have an emotional reaction to hearing it, but that doesn't mean it's his fault, or that he is a bad partner.

 

Even without a porn addiction issue, most guys at 30 are not prepared to settle down with just one woman for the rest of their lives, no matter how much they say they love the woman, how attractive she is. This has been an issue among couples even before the internet.

After awhile, a woman's attractiveness will pale compared to the multitude of women out there ie the LAW of diminishing returns. This doesnt have to be love, just attraction on a surface/sexual level. Trying33, please stop dreaming in your disney-created world to think that after being years together the man will still put you on top of the attraction list rather than what he cannot get, "the forbidden apple". Stop with the insecure/inadequate thnking because if he's staying with you over the years, it's because he loves you, finds comfort with you and not necessarily because you are most attractive to him. Of course he's lying when he says "the only person he actually WANTS to have sex with is me". The last thing he wants is another million questions from your insecure self. You are special and important to him, just that men don't have to equate sex/attraction with love and you don't seem to accept the nature of men. We can hate a women, yet wanna f**k her brains out. Too many women grow up with this disney idea of what love is supposed to be.

"Should I just give up and find a man who can actually fully focus on the woman he's with?" - yes you can, and then be bored after 6 months with a guy who's gonna dote over you all the time (cause he's got no life of his own), you gonna be tired of being his boss and being able to step all over him.