SOs feelings and thoughts through their partners Addiction/Recovery

[Deleted Account]

Many addicts were addicted before they reached an age where they could be held responsible for that. None of you started relationships at an age where you didn't know it was wrong to lie and hide your sexual activity from your romantic partner.

 

[Deleted Account]

I haven't put value on the looks of the p star or ever compared my wife to them. I've never craved the physical appearance of that instead of my wife.

My husband says the same and you're both absurdly lying to yourselves, if you actually believe that at all.

 

[Deleted Account]

If you didn't crave their physical appearance, you could have just masturbated to soothe yourselves without the visual stimulus and it would have been all the same to you.

 

[Warfman]

FYI-I wasn’t saying you “ were the worst kind of man” the first sentence was really the part that struck me. In no way do I think my husband is a bad person, he is not. In fact he’s amazing in his own unique way, he has several life saving awards where he risked his own life to save another, he is brave, he is kind, so kind, he has a heart like my father. Addiction gradually stole that. Recovery is finding it again.

I definitely agree with that.

I though historically have thought I was inherently bad. I posted that mostly to affirm that I'm not. I think it's hard for me to express this. That I have become so good at using that in a defensive way to hide what I think was bad about me.

I really think many of the married men here struggling over and over deal with this. We feel shamed by our partner and for good reason. We resort to the same drug to fix that same problem in an endless loop.

 

[Warfman]

If you didn't crave their physical appearance, you could have just masturbated to soothe yourselves without the visual stimulus and it would have been all the same to you.

I definitely disagree. For me it's not the look of the person on the screen. It's the acceptance I felt. Or that I have fantasized about being the guy that the girl is so turned on by. It's not the fake acting they do. It's the feeling that I'm "such a stud". What I'm seeing is it's been my way of protecting my own self from my own insecurities. Especially when my wife isn't in the mood. I've put so much value on my wife's approval that even when she rightly so, didn't want sex, I took it as rejection that I am not worthy of her love. I subbed that feeling with a cheap substitute of PMO that I thought worked. I realize it doesn't.

I've posted before that I'm not one to really want to naturally do wild things in the bedroom. My wife isn't either. But there are things about experimenting that I do enjoy. There are things I know my wife has done sexually with others that she refused to do with me. It hurts me badly. P didn't hurt me in that way because I could on demand get whatever experiment I wanted.

I'm realizing now how much damage I've done disassociating sex and intimacy even though I do understand it and desire it with and only with my wife. IDK I'm having a hard time expressing this.

 

[Warfman]

I definitely disagree. For me it's not the look of the person on the screen. It's the acceptance I felt. Or that I have fantasized about being the guy that the girl is so turned on by. It's not the fake acting they do. It's the feeling that I'm "such a stud". What I'm seeing is it's been my way of protecting my own self from my own insecurities. Especially when my wife isn't in the mood. I've put so much value on my wife's approval that even when she rightly so, didn't want sex, I took it as rejection that I am not worthy of her love. I subbed that feeling with a cheap substitute of PMO that I thought worked. I realize it doesn't.

I've posted before that I'm not one to really want to naturally do wild things in the bedroom. My wife isn't either. But there are things about experimenting that I do enjoy. There are things I know my wife has done sexually with others that she refused to do with me. It hurts me badly. P didn't hurt me in that way because I could on demand get whatever experiment I wanted.

I'm realizing now how much damage I've done disassociating sex and intimacy even though I do understand it and desire it with and only with my wife. IDK I'm having a hard time expressing this.

I also want to admit that I realize that I most definitely screwed this up because of what porn did to me. That it did in fact alter what I thought was sexual approval. I'm just trying to also express my deepest feeling and desire that I want my wife and always have.

She was the girl in the neighboring town. Every guy liked her. She was older than me and wouldn't have even turned her eye my way in high school. First time I saw her I was a freshman she was a junior. I wouldn't say it was love at first sight it was more. Wow, that girl is the most beautiful creature I've ever seen. It was like a movie when the girl walks in.

Fate I guess played it's role and 10 years later we ran into each other. We hit it off instantly. I guess in a way I still feel like that 14 year old boy.

 

[Warfman]

After establishing that I have never believed there was any intent to harm me with his PA, I could still reasonably ask this question. It's actually a simply-worded, straight-forward question that doesn't require adding a bunch of hidden meanings to it, and it doesn't imply any particular level of culpability. If you feel that it does imply that, I think it's because of the toxic shame you talked about, not because it's asked under the notion that you had malice aforethought

I think, at at least, that is that I'm trying to suggest. That I have felt historically that statement as if it is selfish. Because I didn't do that to hurt her. And even though I didn't mean to. I feel as though i did, because I did in fact hurt her. In that moment of shame I feel a certain disassociation because it's not my perception. The reactions of the SO, that you laid out well reinforce the fact that it did in fact hurt my SO and generates it's own level of shame for her. I think this really complicates the feelings and emotions for the addict. The addict has a hard time understanding that it isn't the SO being wrongly selfish. It's a hard pill to swallow. Because I think most of us didn't know it would happen and are stuck.

I think to how my wife would say "how could you do this to me"? I hear and feel that as if I meant to. My inner most being says I don't want that at all, but it's like he's under lock and key in the deepest dungeon of my soul. I'm not trying to suggest it's selfish and wrong in any way for the SO to feel that way. It's that I think many other addicts like me don't realize that we were doing something wrong until it was too late. We cling to the one hopefully reedeemable part of us.

That we didn't mean to do it.

 

[kropo82]

you can say all you want how attracted you are to her, but I do not believe you. If you were capable of fantasizing about having sex with hundreds of other people, you just don't feel that strongly about her. My husband says the same, says he can't get enough of me, is incredibly attracted to me, blah blah blah.

My husband says the same and you're both absurdly lying to yourselves, if you actually believe that at all.

I say something similar, and I am honestly not lying.

This came up in a discussion with @Sadgirl and @anewhope.

The research is pretty clear that men rate their wives as less attractive after they view porn, so I think really all of us SOs are in the same boat with you regardless if our partners admit it or not.

@Sadgirl is right that men find their partners less attractive after viewing porn, but this effect is not permanent.

and here's how I summed up my own experience:

when I claim that my pornography use did not affect how attractive I found my wife am I being honest with myself?

I think that, with me, there were two things at play. Let me do the bad one first: hypocrisy.

[…]

It feels like the stereotype I have of Victorian men: they insisted on very high standards of morality from their wives in their homes but practised very low levels of morality when they were out at night.

It is a double standard, a hypocrisy, but it is one that came easily to me. I found it easy to compartmentalise how I viewed my wife from how I viewed pornography. Perhaps I’m kidding myself, but I think I am telling the truth as I experienced it.

The second thing at play is the notion of looking at someone. When you meet someone you form an opinion of them very quickly. Some of that is based on what they look like, some on their clothes, some on their manner, some on the context in which you meet them, etc., etc. That “opinion” is a kind of feedback loop: what you think of someone affects how you see them, even what they look like. This was proved to me most forcibly years and years ago. I had an office job for a year and there was a lovely older woman worked there. We were all friends with her because she was such a fun, kind, and interesting person. A few months after I started there we were chatting and she mentioned that she was ugly because her nose had been damaged in the womb by her twin brother. I was startled, and carefully looked at her again. She was right, she did have a damaged nose, and it did make her ugly, but for the past two months I had not noticed that at all. When I saw her, I saw her through the lens of my mind’s understanding of her: she wasn’t ugly.

When I look at my wife I don’t just see a beautiful 52 year old woman, I also see the 18 year old I started dating, the amazing mother of our children, and the woman I am hoping to get old with. I see her strengths and weaknesses, I see her beauty and her frailty, I see her love of me and my love of her. Pornography did not eat away at the richness of shared experiences that form the lens my mind uses when I look at my wife. She is beautiful, you would think so if you saw her, but she is even more beautiful and even more visually arresting for me.

I don’t know if my experience is shared with other married porn addicts here, but pornography did not change how I viewed my wife; the women in porn were never a yardstick by which I judged her appearance.

 

[Warfman]

However, there comes a time when you are aware...you know that what you're doing is wrong and that it is hurting people, including yourself, and from that point I believe it is no longer about what happened that you had no control over. Instead, it is about what you do to make things right, and the longer you choose to do nothing but continue in the addiction because you "didn't mean for it to happen," the more it becomes a product of your choices.

Perhaps this is exactly where I am in my life.

I think it's essentially what I was infering when I said I was a 12 year old boy who was hooked. And woke up a 34 year old man married with kids asking myself how did I get here.

Maybe there's some disconnect here. Maybe the SO thinks that the dummy should have realized this much sooner. I think that's definitely a reasonable thought.

For me though it hasn't been my reality. And now I'm battling the subconscious habits I've clung to my entire life.

In this I think we need way more grace than we deserve.

 

[Psalm27:1my light]

I definitely disagree. For me it's not the look of the person on the screen. It's the acceptance I felt. Or that I have fantasized about being the guy that the girl is so turned on by. It's not the fake acting they do. It's the feeling that I'm "such a stud". What I'm seeing is it's been my way of protecting my own self from my own insecurities. Especially when my wife isn't in the mood. I've put so much value on my wife's approval that even when she rightly so, didn't want sex, I took it as rejection that I am not worthy of her love. I subbed that feeling with a cheap substitute of PMO that I thought worked. I realize it doesn't.

I've posted before that I'm not one to really want to naturally do wild things in the bedroom. My wife isn't either. But there are things about experimenting that I do enjoy. There are things I know my wife has done sexually with others that she refused to do with me. It hurts me badly. P didn't hurt me in that way because I could on demand get whatever experiment I wanted.

I'm realizing now how much damage I've done disassociating sex and intimacy even though I do understand it and desire it with and only with my wife. IDK I'm having a hard time expressing this.

I think this is where the disconnect is. You think ( believe) it’s not about how they look, except part of it is, because you place a value base solely on their looks. You feel “ like such a stud” because a beautiful woman “ accepts” you. I’m guessing you didn’t search out “ugliest woman” or such. Why not just fantasize about your wife as the one accepting you and making you feel like a stud? I never once, not ever, turned my husband down for sex. In fact there were times he asked and I apologized and said yes, but I was exhausted so I might not be that into it and wanted him to understand it wasn’t him! He still used. You are addicted to the high that is wrapped up in pmo. In the same way an alcoholic is addicted. It affects your partner differently because unlike alcohol you use other women and it tears her down at her core. Now she has to share you with other women and because it’s an addiction she needs to be “ understanding and forgiving” .

 

[Warfman]

I say something similar, and I am honestly not lying.

This came up in a discussion with @Sadgirl and @anewhope.





and here's how I summed up my own experience:

I love this!

 

[Deleted Account]

Psalm said it. You weren't just looking for women. You were looking for women you found super attractive. You would not have felt like a stud turning on a woman your brain did not label as "high sexual value". Also, yes, you could easily have fantasized about your wife wanting you. In fact, she was way closer to wanting you than any of those women on the screen.

 

[Warfman]

Why not just fantasize about your wife as the one accepting you and making you feel like a stud? I never once, not ever, turned my husband down for sex.

I can't speak for you and your husband. For me though in the moment if rejection I can't just imagine my wife and get that acceptance. She just rejected me. Very Hard and often multiple times. Sometimes for months. I'm not saying it's right it's just how I felt.

You are addicted to the high that is wrapped up in pmo. In the same way an alcoholic is addicted.

I'm not denying this truth. I think it's an over simplified example though of what's truly going on.

You think ( believe) it’s not about how they look, except part of it is, because you place a value base solely on their looks. You feel “ like such a stud” because a beautiful woman “ accepts” you. I’m guessing you didn’t search out “ugliest woman” or such.

I'm not going to deny that novelty is a real thing. Nor that physical attraction is needed. What I think many SOs misinterpret is that it isn't always the base impulse. It's not the look of the woman it's how it made me feel. Loved, wanted, and accepted.

 

[Psalm27:1my light]

I say something similar, and I am honestly not lying.

This came up in a discussion with @Sadgirl and @anewhope.





and here's how I summed up my own experience:

My husband has said the very same thing. But from my perspective , he still chose to hurt me based solely on feeling good JUST on someone’s looks. He rejected everything I offered, he risked losing everything I offered, just to chase the fantasy of a woman who only offers how she looks. That’s it. No love. No affection. No laughter. No tears. No friendship. No desire. No loyalty. No sex. Nothing. Except her 20 yr old, surgically enhanced, airbrushed perfection that makes him feel worthy and like a stud. Because everything I offered fell short of what she offered. Everything. I offered everything and he traded it for a strangers looks.

 

[Deleted Account]

Also, I think a major part of you blames your addiction on your wife's sexual unavailability, but I would posit that your addiction would have been the same regardless.

 

[Warfman]

Psalm said it. You weren't just looking for women. You were looking for women you found super attractive. You would not have felt like a stud turning on a woman your brain did not label as "high sexual value". Also, yes, you could easily have fantasized about your wife wanting you. In fact, she was way closer to wanting you than any of those women on the screen.

I hate to be so direct. But this is exactly what shame dumping us. You are telling me something about myself that you can't possibly know. There are actually multiple men here expressing the same feelings. Maybe it's worth thinking about a little.

Maybe I'm not most men IDK but this is most definitely my truth.

 

[Deleted Account]

My husband has said the very same thing. But from my perspective , he still chose to hurt me based solely on feeling good JUST on someone’s looks. He rejected everything I offered, he risked losing everything I offered, just to chase the fantasy of a woman who only offers how she looks. That’s it. No love. No affection. No laughter. No tears. No friendship. No desire. No loyalty. No sex. Nothing. Except her 20 yr old, surgically enhanced, airbrushed perfection that makes him feel worthy and like a stud. Because everything I offered fell short of what she offered. Everything. I offered everything and he traded it for a strangers looks.

This exactly. My husband didn't just reject how I looked. Their looks were worth more than literally everything I offered combined together. Their looks were worth more than my friendship, our future, our children, our history. He did the math and looking at their body parts were worth more than every piece of our relationship, both the relationship we had that was strained from his habit and the relationship we could have had if he had chosen us instead.

 

[Warfman]

JUST on someone’s looks

I can't speak for your husband. But I can say for me this is ignoring very much of my experiences.

Feeling needed, wanted, accepted were the main forces at play. What I didn't realize is that it was me that was not meeting my needs. I used to blame my wife because of my toxic shame.

At the very least I see that clearly now.

 

[Deleted Account]

I hate to be so direct. But this is exactly what shame dumping us. You are telling me something about myself that you can't possibly know. There are actually multiple men here expressing the same feelings. Maybe it's worth thinking about a little.

Maybe I'm not most men IDK but this is most definitely my truth.

You asked how it makes spouses feel. I'm telling you honestly how I feel and my reactions when you express yourself, because that's what it sounded like you wanted from this thread.

 

[Warfman]

This exactly. My husband didn't just reject how I looked. Their looks were worth more than literally everything I offered combined together. Their looks were worth more than my friendship, our future, our children, our history. He did the math and looking at their body parts were worth more than every piece of our relationship, both the relationship we had that was strained from his habit and the relationship we could have had if he had chosen us instead.

I don't want to assume here either. But.. your husband has expressed similar sentiments as I. Maybe he's being honest? At least a little?