SOs feelings and thoughts through their partners Addiction/Recovery

I think that Paul urging early churches to resolve disputes amongst themselves in peaceful manner rather than to take each other to court over property and land rights is totally different than a spouse who already broke the marriage agreement by being regularly unfaithful. The unfaithful spouse initiated and concreted the divorce. The betrayed partner just filled out the paperwork.

 

It is not sefish to say that or to feel that. That is the truth. The addict does that to the SO. She is a victim of choises of the addict. If you as an addict feel like a victim, you are just a victim of your own choises. We didnt choose this. The addict might not mean to hurt the SO, but he definitely did. Repeatedly. Deeply. And, at least after the woman said that it hurts her, every one single "slip" was done consciously.

Here I might be in a minority with this opinion, but I think that even the boys at a young age (say 10-12), that might get accidentally exposed to porn, might know that it is wrong to watch that. Reading posts of men here in nofap, their stories are similar. Got exposed at a young age and got hooked. First seeing that, might feel weird, disgusted. But still that didnt stop them. According to what I have read, almost everybody feels shame about what he is doing. Afraid someone might find out, parents or later girlfriend, wife, friends, whoever. Why all the shame, when the society promotes porn and masturbation as healthy and ok and everybody does that. If its that ok, why not tell your girlfriend? I guess, because even the little boys KNOW that it is not qiute ok. Something tells them that. I believe in Gods voice that tells us what is good and wrong, the conscience. You might not know the consequences, I guess no one knew 20 years ago, when a lot of addicts first got addicted, but I guess there was at least some vague feeling that this is not right.
And, even if you would argue that you didnt know, I believe later, you must have found out that it is hurting people around you. A lot of boys here think that when they find a girlfriend, they will stop watching porn. I guess, at the beginning of a relationship a lot of them know, that if they continue watching porn while in a relationship, their girlfriend might feel cheated on, or sad at least. Very many are afraid she could find out, because they know, what they are doing, is wrong. But, they cant stop watching porn. In this moment, I guess, everyone knows, he is hurting his SO. But still the majority chooses to keep the porn and also the relationship and hurt their SO and their relationship. Again and again.

Agreed. I know my husband is not that evil to hurt me on purpose. In fact, he did all he could to prevent me from finding out and being hurt. But he still did things, that would hurt me if I knew.
After I discovered he was watching porn, he told me, that he didnt want to hurt me. That he didnt know it would hurt me. And he really believed that. But later, when he was sober for about a year, he admitted, that deep down he knew the whole time that he was hurting me, cheating on me and what he did was wrong. He just didnt want to admit that even to himself. To not feel guilty, he even blamed me, for his porn addiction. Never said anything like that, but when I asked him, he said he did. When I asked him how was that my fault, he didnt know.

 

Hats off to @Warfman for stepping out of his comfort zone and embracing conflict. This is awesome man! By letting go of the desire for validation from others, your demonstrating that you're a person of value. You don't have to be perfect. You don't always have to be right. This is healing. Good job!

And I see that you've picked up on some of the shame dumping. Yes, I agree. I see a lot of shame dumping from wives. I don't think they're consciously aware of that. Shame based behavior is very subconscious. I wasn't aware of mine for decades.

I use shame dumping to make the other person look bad so that I can look good. And the validation seeking behavior is rooted in my toxic shame, this inner belief that I'm a worthless piece of garbage. Again, I've not been consciously aware of what I was doing. And what's bad is not the behavior itself, but the motivation behind it. To get validation because of the toxic shame. Shame-based behavior hurts primarily myself because it reinforces the root. This root is nasty; far more destructive than my PMO. And men are not the only ones carrying it. Women carry toxic shame too.

If fact, because my toxic shame festers throughout all of my being and character, a healthy person would recognize my brokenness , at least on a subconscious level. Even if I keep my PMO hidden. Thus, healthy people don't go about attaching themselves to broken people. Only broken people attach themselves to broken people. So when you're dealing with one broken person in a relationship (the addict), there's never just one broken person, there's always two (the spouse). And both people carried this brokenness well before the relationship started. And if it's not identified and dealt with, toxic shame will continue to lead each partner on a destructive path well after a relationship is over.

 

I don't think you realize how tone deaf it is to tell the person who was cheated on almost daily from the beginning of the relationship to have empathy and compassion.

And again, forgiveness does not mean you still maintain emotional intimacy. You can truly forgive someone and still not want to be with them anymore. Biblical forgiveness is giving up any right to be repaid or reimbursed for the loss caused by the actions of another. It absolutely does not mean staying in emotional or physical intimacy with someone who tricked you into relationship by misrepresenting themselves. What you're advocating is not forgiveness, it's restoration. The standard for "true forgiveness" by a betrayed partner is NOT and will never be the restoration of the relationship to the satisfaction of the cheating partner.

 

If this gets me banned, I just accept that. You're a disgusting person.

"Healthy people don't go attaching themselves to broken people".
Go fuck yourself. It's totally disgusting that you would come on here and basically tell spouses "if you weren't broken, you wouldn't have been cheated on". Total piece of horseshit.

 

Hi, my name is Kevin. And I'm a nice guy. But not anymore.

Now I'm a bad bad bad bad boy

 

This has actually been debunked in many betrayal trauma groups. The fact that the partner must be just as damaged as the addict. I, for one have never in my life thought I was a worthless piece of garbage. I’ve never thought I was unloveable or a terrible person. In fact quite the opposite. The sheer number of men who look at porn suggests it’s far harder to weed out a pmo addict than an alcoholic for instance. I would not date anyone who drank, smoked, or used drugs. I would not be with someone who was abusive. My husband for instance, although an addict before he met me, it was mainly magazines and the addiction just wasn’t as progressed. Although he was stuck emotionally at 15, we marred at 23 and I was very immature so the emotional age of both of us was pretty close. I knew on our honeymoon though that something was wrong. But didn’t know what or that having sex changed my husbands way of relating to me. Byb 35 it was intolerable,I had continued to grow and mature while his addiction grew but he stayed “ 15”. Some partners may feel toxic shame, especially if their family of origin had a lot of trauma/abuse or there is molestation or sexual assault. Just because they are with a sex addict does not necessarily mean they have this same shame or brokenness. While everyone has issues, not everyone is near the same level as an addict. Do you know what my first thought was on dday? My first thought was “ I knew I wasn’t crazy, he is totally screwed up”.
maybe you use shame dumping to make yourself look better, but I cannot fathom that. I do not need to tear another person down to feel good about myself, in fact that would make me feel shitty not good. Telling someone their actions have serious consequences and this is how those actions make us feel is not shame dumping. Telling someone they are horrible person that doesn’t ever deserve love or kids and can never change is different than telling them what you did was horrible and it can cost you the love of your life. Telling someone that what they are doing is wrong, is not shaming even if the person hearing it feels shame.

 

I don’t really know what to say. I could never get rid of the feeling of rejection because as my counselor pointed out, it is rejection. They are rejecting you in the moment. So what I had to do, was not let the rejection make me feel like I was not good enough. Not let his rejection drive me to feel validated by being with someone else. Just because he rejected me does not mean I’m not good enough, it means something is going on with him . One thing I did, I quit fantasizing about sex with him. I used to think about things we could do, try seduce him while out hiking, I quit trying to get him interested. I quit telling myself that he had no right to tell me no because he married me and that’s a part of marriage. I filled my days with kids, farm work, heavy, hard, cross fit workouts, friends, family, and God. I prayed from the minute I married him that God would make me the wife he needed. Not the one he wanted, not the one I thought I should be, the one God knew he needed. I thanked God for everything I did have. I tried to be grateful for the good I saw in my husband. The longer he remained in his addiction though, the harder this became, until he was intolerable to be around. When that happened, I just left whenever he was home. I don’t initiate sex. Ever. It’s on him. He has said he will never tell me no again and my response is I’ll never give you the opportunity again. Honestly it’s only easy because of menopause, my libido is gone. Lol, so that won’t help you. Just know it never got easier for me.

 

I know for myself, it is almost impossible to believe someone who has lied to protect his addiction. We are left trying to decide if this is a lie that you believe, but still a lie, or a lie that you know is a lie but are trying to convince us it’s not, or could it be true? So we are now put in a position of trying to understand how it can possibly be true when we read what so many write and when we weigh how much we have been lied to vs how often we got the truth. This may not be you, but our experience and our exposure on sites like this, show us that many do not want to give up their harem. They talk about the sheer pleasures of all that beauty and never getting to look at that again. They talk about how much they miss it. It’s common for the men to get on here and talk about how unattractive their wife is now that she’s had 4 kids and gained 30 pounds. I mean come on, several occasions I’ve read about guys wanting sex dolls or hookers over their partner! Sex dolls . That’s how screwed up porn addiction can get. I understand that’s not all or even a majority, but it’s crazy there is more than one, lol. My husband says “ I do not want to do that” I believe him. But I also believe that he does want to do that. Both can be true. Honestly, it doesn’t matter anymore if he thinks I’m the most beautiful person, most important person, on earth, he destroyed the ability to make me feel like he sees me as the most beautiful person on earth or the most important to him. Which is sad, because I do think he’s the most beautiful person, but I don’t think he will ever be the most important again. I can only half love him. The girl who loved him recklessly and fearlessly died a long time ago. The woman who loves him today is reserved, cautious, suspicious, always ready to retreat and much like an abused animal, ready to bite first if threatened. I acknowledge that I am jaded and distrustful. I work hard not to paint all men with the same brush, but many times I fall short. I work hard to extend grace and forgiveness. I work hard to believe in people. What used to come naturally, now I have to go to counseling to learn again, now I have to work at what use to just be second nature to me.

 

I’m my husbands biggest trigger. He’s terrified I’ll leave him. He has a hard time understanding you can disagree without it meaning the relationship is over. He will get triggered if I’m just having an off day and want to go riding or hiking alone, because he immediately goes to “ she’s leaving me” . I’m very much ok with being alone but he has a hard time with it. I joking tell him “ I’ll just leave and that way you’ll never be triggered!”