Stefanie
Fapstronaut
Are there different levels of addiction? I am the wife of a husband who has been using pornography and masturbation since he was a teen. He used it as a substitute to sex (long story short he grew up in a conservative Christian house and thought premarital sex was really bad. Needless to say he lost his virginity at 25) and when he had Internal negative triggers (depression, loneliness, boredom etc). He said he never had any significant external triggers. Obviously when he would go to a porn site, he would MO, but he wasn’t triggered by something externally that made him PMO, just Internal triggers. He did it for about half of our marriage, and then quit for four years, to return to a P-sub of pictures of near naked women online this year.
We have had a lot of discussions over the last month, and I have been on this forum and read a whole bunch of other people’s posts about their addiction. It seems my husband is not like anyone else that I have come across on here.
He used porn for negative internal triggers. He went to one or two sites and clicked on the first video and was done in less than five minutes. He didn’t search for harder porn. He would stick to the regular girl/guy or two girls/one guy stuff. Nothing terribly unusual. He doesn’t search for hours or stay on the sites for hours. He may go back multiple times in a day (when this was at its worst and he was unemployed), but it would have the same pattern.
We still had fairly regular sex the first time around. I was unaware of it for several years. He had about five incidents where he had problems getting or staying hard. He never seemed to lose interest in me. He would continue to say I was beautiful/sexy/hot, and the best sexual partner he’s ever had. He would tell me he loved me dozens of times a day.
He said he felt shame and hated himself for doing PMO, but when an emotion would overcome him, this is all he knew how to make himself feel better.
He quit through sheer willpower for four years. He said initially he struggled with how to deal with his emotions, and had images pop into his head and made him want to seek out porn (which was different for him, because he never had images pop in his head when he was actively watching porn). Those images went away. He managed to not PMO by basically focusing on NOT focusing on anything sexual and telling himself “don’t go there/don’t look there/don’t let it go down that road”. This impacted our sex life and during the four years he was sober, we went from 3-4 a week (and he was watching porn) to 3-4 a month. He didn’t have an increased libido or anything else I have read should happen.
He came across a Facebook page of girls in sexual poses and strategically covered up body parts (near naked). A friend of his had posted the link. He clicked on it. He kept going back to it over the last six+ months anytime that he would have a negative emotion again. He would feel shame and say to himself he wouldn’t do it again. I work nights and his job doesn’t make a lot of money so I have to be gone four to five nights a week (and to be perfectly honest we’ve been in a quarrelsome place for about a year or so because of his job situation, me having to work so much and I was just diagnosed with cancer and we can’t afford to take the time off for me to have surgery) so stress levels have been extremely high.
I have internet filter on our router (so no device connecting to our WiFi can access anything). The Facebook page did not pop up since it was inbedded in Facebook. I know he didn’t do anything else.
He tells me that he doesn’t have any urges or images popping in his head to tell him to go to this site. He just goes to bed starts scrolling through Facebook, is bored, frustrated with our money situation, mad at me for being mad at him etc. etc. and he types in the group name through Facebook. He knew the consequences were me leaving him. He said in the moment, he didn’t care. He just wanted to feel better. He just wanted to look at the girls.
So is this addiction?
We have had a lot of discussions over the last month, and I have been on this forum and read a whole bunch of other people’s posts about their addiction. It seems my husband is not like anyone else that I have come across on here.
He used porn for negative internal triggers. He went to one or two sites and clicked on the first video and was done in less than five minutes. He didn’t search for harder porn. He would stick to the regular girl/guy or two girls/one guy stuff. Nothing terribly unusual. He doesn’t search for hours or stay on the sites for hours. He may go back multiple times in a day (when this was at its worst and he was unemployed), but it would have the same pattern.
We still had fairly regular sex the first time around. I was unaware of it for several years. He had about five incidents where he had problems getting or staying hard. He never seemed to lose interest in me. He would continue to say I was beautiful/sexy/hot, and the best sexual partner he’s ever had. He would tell me he loved me dozens of times a day.
He said he felt shame and hated himself for doing PMO, but when an emotion would overcome him, this is all he knew how to make himself feel better.
He quit through sheer willpower for four years. He said initially he struggled with how to deal with his emotions, and had images pop into his head and made him want to seek out porn (which was different for him, because he never had images pop in his head when he was actively watching porn). Those images went away. He managed to not PMO by basically focusing on NOT focusing on anything sexual and telling himself “don’t go there/don’t look there/don’t let it go down that road”. This impacted our sex life and during the four years he was sober, we went from 3-4 a week (and he was watching porn) to 3-4 a month. He didn’t have an increased libido or anything else I have read should happen.
He came across a Facebook page of girls in sexual poses and strategically covered up body parts (near naked). A friend of his had posted the link. He clicked on it. He kept going back to it over the last six+ months anytime that he would have a negative emotion again. He would feel shame and say to himself he wouldn’t do it again. I work nights and his job doesn’t make a lot of money so I have to be gone four to five nights a week (and to be perfectly honest we’ve been in a quarrelsome place for about a year or so because of his job situation, me having to work so much and I was just diagnosed with cancer and we can’t afford to take the time off for me to have surgery) so stress levels have been extremely high.
I have internet filter on our router (so no device connecting to our WiFi can access anything). The Facebook page did not pop up since it was inbedded in Facebook. I know he didn’t do anything else.
He tells me that he doesn’t have any urges or images popping in his head to tell him to go to this site. He just goes to bed starts scrolling through Facebook, is bored, frustrated with our money situation, mad at me for being mad at him etc. etc. and he types in the group name through Facebook. He knew the consequences were me leaving him. He said in the moment, he didn’t care. He just wanted to feel better. He just wanted to look at the girls.
So is this addiction?