Rebooting within marriage

Being married for 30 years and addicted to MO and to a lesser degree P since I was 11, overcoming this addiction for me has been about learning to become honest. Honest with myself, honest with others about my addiction, and ultimately completely honest with my wife about what her reality has been throughout our marriage. Until that last step happened, relapses were inevitable. Even though I was seeing a csat counselor and in a weekly therapy group for almost 5 years, with other guys, all seeking to break free from this addiction, my unwillingness to be honest about slips and relapses and the full extent of my addiction throughout our marriage, kept me from becoming free and I continued to escalate in my behavior every time I did relapse.

If you're not at the place where you can consider getting honest with yourself or your wife then you don't want to hear this. I sure as heck didn't. In fact I refused to hear it. Here's another thing I didn't want to hear, we protect what we love. When we keep our addiction a secret, especially from the one we've said we are committed to for life, we are protecting it. Yeah, I know, we don't want to hurt them. I said that to myself over and over. Well, we should have considered that every time we acted out with porn or sex chat or other guys or massages or...... That hurt has already happened. And it hurts far deeper than we've been willing to believe or accept. The fact that we've lied about it, over and over, is the rawest form of betrayal. And how about trust? And respect? I used to get so pissed when I felt like my wife wasn't respecting me. Well duh, I wasn't acting respectfully and I wasn't respecting her or my promise to her. Even though she didn't know the half of it, and knew I was working on this recovery stuff, she didn't trust me. I was too reactive, so much of my emotional energy was spent managing the lie that I was protecting in my addiction.
Maybe none of this applies to you and you can just quit pmo and everything will be rosy in your marriage. That's just not how I've seen it work. Ever.

Oh, if you do decide you want to really go for it and get all this out there so you have no secrets with your wife, please don't just puke it out in a tearful confession. There's a process and she needs support and protection around that process. it's called a therapeutic full disclosure, you can look it up. It's not easy or quick, it can get expensive and it's extremely painful. It's cheaper than divorce and you can actually come out of it with a healthier relationship than you would have ever thought possible if you're willing to do the work.

I didn't think it was possible or that I would ever be free from this addiction. The reality is I just didn't want to face what it was going to take to get there.
Again, if you're not there yet, I get it. It's tough and scary and takes a while to get to that point. Don't settle for just acting out less or living with a pile of secrets. Keep pressing forward until all that can get out and you can walk in the light.