Can a woman forgive her partner for PMO habits?

Porsupuesto que puedes perdonar a tu pareja , solo imaginate lo que puede sentir esa persona que tiene problemas con el porn, te sientes humillado , avergonzado , debil, vulnerable . Sin embargo cuando tienes a alguien que te apoya y no te juzga sobre tus acciones, y que trata de que sigas adelante en esta lucha , todos esos sentimientos de culpa y verguenza comienzan a desaparecer poco a poco . A veces las personas que caemos en este vicio , lo hacemos por soledad, por falta de comprension, por tratar de llenar un vacio enorme que alguien dejo. Es por eso que si conoces a alguien que este luchando contra esta droga, lo mejor es apoyarlo y escucharlo y lo mas importante , no lo juzgues

 

I'm no expert, nor for that matter a woman, but I reckon you can forgive anyone for anything that you want to forgive. If someone says "I can't forgive", they're effectively saying "I won't forgive". I'm not saying it's always (ever?) easy on the forgiver, or that the forgivee necessarily deserves it, but I'm pretty sure it can be done. (And before this comes across too self-serving, I'm not just talking about a wife forgiving her husband's porn addiction, the same principle applies across the board of course.)

 

This is my understanding of forgiveness in betrayal from our personal experience. So I hope it makes sense.
Forgiveness serves two purposes. #1 yourself, by letting go of anger and resentment. #2 the other person. It’s also truly difficult to forgive and forget it’s usually only one or the other not both especially for a significant betrayal. Forgiveness doesn’t mean continuing the relationship, a person can forgive and also move on or choose to stay.
You have self forgiveness, where you forgive yourself for your actions/feelings and let go of the shame, guilt and anger towards yourself.
I forgave my husband and chose to stay. The big personal question is as someone who was betrayed is if you feel the relationship is worth it. For some it’s the never being able to forget part that can be overwhelming and leads to never being able to trust them again. I also lost trust in myself in many ways, my intuition, thoughts and memories, that I may not be able to walk away if I needed to.
What was the hardest for me was my self forgiveness as I was truly angry and had more resentment at myself for allowing him to treat me the way he did, for not standing up to him. I was angry at myself as the thought that would go through my mind was I was more scared in allowing him to continue to hurt me further and destroy what I felt was left of me.
It’s a difficult emotional battle and takes a lot time to get through either by continuing the relationship or choosing not to.

 

I am working on forgiveness now.
but as far as why i chose to stay for now....
i think of it like this
If his addiction were to alcohol i wouldn't leave him for it. So why leave because of this one. Thats honestly one main reason i haven't left yet.
I am not sure when ill forgive him.
there might be stuff i have forgiven for, but i am not sure yet.

 

I’m a true believer in if you don’t have Love, respect and trust in yourself it’s impossible to have it for someone else.
I needed to forgive me first so I could truly feel the forgiveness for him even though I had believed I had forgive him.
I decided our relationship was worth it to continue but I also needed him to match it or I most Likely would have decided differently. Why someone decides to stay is so personal I don’t think anyone could give examples other than their own.
With running the risk of sounding nuts or cheesy I knew the reason it hurt so bad, feeling utterly gutted as I would say, was because I believe the hurt I felt can only run as deep as my love for him. In a weird way that was almost comforting for me at the time. I knew my love for him was real, deep and true. It wasn’t just familiarity, I never fell out of love or any of the “wrong reasons” as they say for staying. With the overwhelming roller coaster of emotions this was the first thing I could make sense of in myself.

 

Can they? Yes, sure, they can. But actually doing it is proving a lot harder than I thought it would be.
I chose to stay with my PA husband because of my kids. With the way our home life is structured, if we split, it would change *everything* about my kids' lives and I couldn't do that to them without giving it every chance I had in me. I couldn't look at them and say I tried everything to make it work, because I hadn't. I know that is often viewed as the wrong reason to stay, but I'm not going to ruin more lives because of the shit he has done. My initial reaction was to leave because his actions were a deal breaker for me, but thinking of them made me stay and try to figure this out. In the meantime, I'm trying to forgive and if I'm going to be here anyway for my kids, I'm trying really hard to work on moving on from this and build a better relationship with him. He is, too, but it is so difficult. I go in cycles. Sometimes I am in a really good place and can see our relationship as better than ever and sometimes I am just plain hopeless about it. It comes and goes.

 

I sincerely hope you didn’t take my post as looking down on the possible “wrong reasons”? That wasn’t my intention and I’m sorry if came accross that way.

 

Oh no, not at all! I just mean I've heard that a million times. Don't stay in a relationship because of the kids. It wasn't anything you said at all, sorry if it came off that way.

 

You didn’t come off that way, I just wanted to make sure. I’m sure you have as I have had many friends (and my parents for years) who were actually told the opposite. “You must stay together for kids” while in incredibly unhealthy abusive relationships. It’s such a personal choice on why you (people in general) stay or don’t. My husband and I don’t have children of our own (hopefully yet), my daughter is 24 and he is her stepdad so its a different situation for us.

 

I realize i need to do this as well. Very well said

i am a firm believer in not staying together FOR THE KIDS.
HOWEVER when i say that i simply mean just that. Not to stay with your SO because you made babies together. (if there is any ounce of hope that things can work i would keep trying, for the some of the same reasons as you.Especially if you ARE BOTH TRYING

 

Hope does play a major roll in answering the “big question” as it did for me. With committed progress the hope, security and trust started to build from that and I had discovered more reasons to stay through it all.

 

PMO is just as bad as physically cheating, in my book, except the physical act adds an additional layer of potential medical issues to pass on to the spouse (i.e. STDs). Choosing to stay or leave in either situation depends on too many factors to sum up in a few sentences. I can't say right now if I would or I wouldn't if he physically cheated. I would have to wait to cross that bridge if I ever got to it, I'm praying I never do. All I know is that right now, at this moment in time, I am choosing to forgive and not to leave him over his PMO. What the future holds remains to be seen and is solely dependent on his dedication to sobriety and our relationship/family.

 

Wow. I'm not arguing, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But I have to say I am astonished to read that.

If I try to imagine my wife confessing to me that she's been unfaithful, versus confessing that she's been masturbating to internet porn or some pictures of the bloody Chippendales (or whatever, I dunno!), I would consider those two things entirely different, the former being worse by several orders of magnitude. (Granted, if she said she had been regularly masturbating to the mental image of, say, her boss or my brother, that would admittedly be too close to home and indeed hurt a lot, and be much closer to the unfaithful end of the scale. So clearly it's not entirely black-and-white issue, either.)

Things like this, BTW, for me is one of the unexpected benefits of hanging around this site - getting exposure to views and experiences so completely different from mine, that I occasionally have to go 'wow'. So thanks for that.

 

Here's something else I don't think alot of PAs consider.
When you have a affair
(not including prostitution in this... That's a whole other mess)
But you get a Actual Live person/s to blame.
Compare.
Look at.
It's obtainable.
Real.
Its faulted....
Even with whatever perfection it seems to have superficially.
It/she all of them can be blamed.
They exist in space before you.
You can go to them, if you want to try that hard.
The problem with porn is that it's not one....
It's thousands of unobtainable fantasies that we, the real women can never catch.
We have nowhere to place the blame, except on ourselves.
I'm not a fantasy. I'm not perfect. I'e not beautiful. You didn't want to be with me or look at me. You chose, essentially, everyone else on the web... It's like a 1/10th of the world
Because so often the men (PAs) don't stand up and say "I'm sorry" "this is my fault" "I'm responsible" "it's Not you".
You don't take the weight...
And it weighs us down.
You want forgiveness, but not responsibility.
For me... It doesn't work like that.
I only forgave once he accepted responsibility.
I needed that to move forward.
I very well might have preferred a real woman.
I don't know.
I just don't know anymore.
Those are my thoughts.
But... I don't even know if that's straight right now.

 

i am in the boat where my husband did both. Internet P and mental images of someone at work. ( he says he pictured P stars parts on her though)
but still
it feels unfaithful and hurts alot. the oogling hurts as well.

and i was blamed at first. until the lies melted and unfolded, i could only base truths off a lie. it was horrible.

but i am choosing to try and stay.

 

So I believe the psychology behind this is pretty straight forward. For one, PMO addiction is an addiction. Physical cheating is cheating.

I personally believe porn in a relationship is cheating and set that boundary prior to the relationship. So if my husband used porn on occasion with no addictive qualities he would be choosing to cheat on me and that would be unacceptable. I stayed because he has an addiction (i.e. more conditioned than choice) and because i also understand the psychology of addiction from personal experience, I was able to put my pain aside for a bit to get him on his feet. If my husband had had sex with another woman that would be cheating not an addiction. My husband is addicted to porn not sex (some believe porn addiction and sex addiction are different or they believe one is an escalation of the other). So him physically being with another women is cheating since he is only addicted to porn. If he was a sex addict it would be addiction (as well as cheating) and would be murkier territory to navigate.

Have I explained this well or have I just made it more confusing?

 

It's Not jjust blaming the partner tho.
It's simply avoiding responsibility.
If more addicts were responsible, I think the SOs would be better on their journeys.
But that's my opinion.

 

Lying to your partner is still lying.
It doesn't really matter about what.
The party should still say "I did it, here's why" accept responsibility, so the couple can either move forward or break up.
No Gaslighting or BS.
Forgiveness and healing can take place.
That's the magic.
End of story.

 

I am more confused @AnonymousAnnaXOXO