Talking to my SO about this

This is my 1st post, though I have been viewing these forums for quite some time now.
I`d like to solicit some opinions from the SOs on here.

I (51M) have been married for 29 years, and have been using PMO off and on since before my marriage. Last Fall I stumbled across YBOP and this forum, and decided to stop PMO and immediately began what turned into a 90+ day streak. I went back to PMO for a couple of months, but continued reading posts here, particularly from SOs to try to get a better sense of how PMO was impacting my wife and our relationship. I decided to stop PMO for good in April.

My wife is fairly open minded. And while she says she doesn't really understand MO, she does read adult novels and we have watched P together (not the tube sites, think more Outlander and GOT). I have had many discussions regarding PMO with my wife over the years and we even watched Fireproof your Marriage which some friends of ours passed on to us. Those discussions, though, have been fairly shallow. She is more of a "don't ask, don't tell" type when it comes to this. When I do try to go deeper, she tells me that it is natural and that I'm being too hard on myself.

When she talks about PMO outside the context of me (e.g. friends calling her with similar spousal issues), she seems quite a bit more judgemental. Should I be concerned that her response to me seems different than her response outside the context of me? My concern stems from the fact that she is also a "choose your battles" type of person. I fear that she has just chosen not to engage on this, while under the surface she is despising me.

 

Appreciate your response! I will give it another go, maybe using a different approach focusing on my desire to cease PMO and journey toward that decision.

The thing is, I am not convinced that I am an addict...more of a habit really. The reason I say that is, while I used PMO on and off throughout my life, until this past Fall I had never made a concerted effort not to do it. It was really just a matter if it fit in my life at the moment. I did have what I thought was a reason to stop in the Fall (brain fog), so stopped. But after some testing, it turned out there was a medical reason for that, which has since been taken care of. So PMO fit back in my life again. This latest effort was once I realized the potential relationship damage that could occur + all the negative societal impacts of P that I had never really thought of before reading the stuff here. So P was not negatively affecting my life and neither time that I actually tried to stop did I experience any difficulty doing so--no dopamine withdrawal, no chaser effect, no flatline, basically none of the ill affects I see other members on here posting about during recovery. At least not yet anyway. If I find that I ever need to reset from this point forward, then that will be a different matter.

Probably won't be discussing tonight though. SO is coming off 3 12hr shifts, and she is never in the mood for deep discussion afer that.

 

Exactly why I decided to stop P for good. One I got educated about this, I could not support this industry any longer.

 

First thing, I have an incredible wife!

Thank you all for the feedback. Your comments helped add to our conversation in ways we hadn't discussed this before.

Empathy with her friends is definitely part of her response. But she also has definite lines not to cross. They were more implied before, so it was good to clearly get those defined.

What we figured out is that my wife has been focused on the long term, me the short. Overall I'd say that has worked mediocre over the years. PMO is a very short term mindset. I am going to try to focus more on the long term, giving her a break from that so she can experience more short term benefits for herself.

Yes, I have wasted a lot of time that could have been better spent, focused on my wife, or anything else productive really.