I need to hear it from a man

Hello,

I am posting here because I need to hear from a porn addict.

I am a spouse of a porn addict. We have been fighting his battle for 6 years. He says he?s come so far. My response is ?no, you?ve not been honest with me once so you?ve not come far at all?. 
To me it?s the lies, not the porn at this point. He?s in group and one on one.

I?m now sleeping on the couch.

This morning he told me that I?m the only woman he wants. He ?doesn?t know? when I ask him ?then why can?t you stop lusting after 100s of other women??

I?m everything to him and he?s everything to me. I?m getting ready to revenge cheat which I?ve never done but I?m so so low at this point.

Why do you need other women when you have a perfect partner at home?
Can someone here tell me?  I?m so broken, my only answer that I?ve made up since he doesn?t know why  is that I?m not really what he wants and he?s just fooling himself by being with me, he desires our love but needs larger breasts and young women for his sexual needs. He wants the best of 2 worlds and that makes me want to throw up now.
I?ve never had anyone settle for me. I feel like he is so I want to leave because I cannot get one reasonable explanation.  Maybe with a reasonable explanation I can believe that porn is an addiction, but I will never believe that lies are an addiction. 

He?s never once volunteered the truth. I have to verbally beat him up and then he comes clean. I do not raise my voice usually. I?m so so tired of this hamster wheel.

I would love an answer from someone who has this addiction - why it?s an addiction. Do you want these other ladies because your wife isn?t enough? Help me understand.

Sooo coming from a man who was I his shoes. I also see your frustration. My ex and I were married for 5 year together 6 years. She knew about the porn before we got married. I always had issues. But the issue started before we got together.... it was not her fault. She told me time and time again to stop, she would chew my ass out.. but for some reason porn always won. I never knew porb addiction was a thing. I thought porn, masterbation was totally normal. I mean who knew it would cause the brain to react in this way? Anyhow I wish I had know what it was doing and I would have stopped sooner. But right now he may think it's doing no wrong and you are just complaining.  But you are not.... I would get him on the forum. Let him talk to people let him see what the hell it's doing to him. He loved you... I loved my wife... and really I still do. I fucked up real bad. But once I found this forum I was like damn I wish I had known this sooner. But it was to late... damage was done and she cheated with me on multiple men. I understand but also I dont support it at all. Keep to your morals and most of all respect yourself.  Dont cheat... dont "revenge".. dont be that person. Be the better person in the situation.  Help him as much as you can... and if you say you have... help more... give it everything you got till you just are done and lose all hope. Then respectfully sit down and tell him how you feel and that since nothing has changed that you are done. You two need a break. Leave... let him see he can loose you.  But dont go around sleeping with people. Just show him you mean business.  If he doesn't change it's his fault.

Interesting as I just responded to a thread by a married man looking to quit porn, and I'll have some similar things to say...

Porn =/= sex.  Porn can't replace you and you can't replace porn because you aren't the same, in the same way you can't replace a spare tire with grandma's china and vice versa.  This means many, many things, but in reading your heartfelt post, the biggest thing that it makes me think is that, as strange it sounds for him to say he loves you while he's still looking at porn, he is likely telling the truth.  It is hard to wrap your head around, but it all comes down to the fact that porn is not the same as sex, and it certainly isn't the same as a meaningful relationship.  Porn is, among many other things, often about speed, quantity, anticipation, novelty, variety and the adventure of browsing and finding new stuff.  Loving a human being is about going deeper, patience, bonding, and giving of oneself.  No woman could ever compete with porn until a woman can figure out how to shape shift and look like a different woman about every ten seconds on the porn user's command and also have no needs of her own throughout.  Even then... if you're competing on porn's rules, then porn will win.  He likely doesn't "want" those other women.  He's just addicted to the behavior of looking at them.  Porn addicts can sometimes be rather asexual outside of porn... would never have any interest in a woman at the coffee shop, but the same one on a porn site catches his attention, because his addiction has trained him to like that.  It is hard to wrap your head around, but porn use is a whole behavior pattern, not just lust.

As for whether he's being honest when he says he's made progress... I don't know that.  It is just too much conjecture at this point.  I will tell you that I started taking quitting porn seriously around early 2011, and I was finally porn free around late 2017.  I didn't make real progress until late 2016 when I changed a lot of my methods, and even then it took a little less than a year of fits and relapses and restarts to kick it.  So, it isn't implausible that he's been working hard for that long and still stuck.  I read stories on an almost daily basis on these boards from guys like him who are frustrated beyond belief that they can't kick it.  It doesn't mean left on his own doing what he's still doing will eventually bring results - I had to hit a point where I seriously upped my game, otherwise I'd still be stuck.  We're here to help.

As for why porn is an addiction, Gary Wilson's work is the gold standard in the porn recovery community.  His TED talk is a good start: https://youtu.be/wSF82AwSDiU
And, for more in depth stuff that is totally worth watching if you can cozy up and watch a video long enough is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLtSoWrEplM

Also, I'd mention the other board on here for partners of rebooters.  I'm not saying not to post in this one, but I do know there are some very, very smart people who go to that board that I think you'd like to read about.

Hello,
Sorry to hear of the trouble your husband is going through.
The links in the post above are a great place to start. its important to understand this is an addiction, just like heroin or prostitutes. All work on the brain in exactly the same way.
Dont revenge cheat, that will just make you a slut and even less attractive to your husband. How have you appraoched conversations with him about it? It sounds like you reacted angrily and so too did he in return. Do you think thats a good way to confront a junkie?
has he actually told you he wants someone else, or is that just your panicked mind? Im sure he doesnt want anyone else, because (now, write this down), porn has nothing to do with sex or love and thats a FACT.
How about yourself? are you making sure he is sexually satisfied? Are you taking care of your physical appearence to keep him interested in you sexually? Those are also things you and he need to consider.
Thanks, and keep asking questions!

I would really discourage asking yourself how you're performing sexually and if you're up to snuff.  That has nothing to do with anything.  Guys don't get hooked on porn because the women aren't attractive enough.  Search the earth, find the most beautiful woman in her prime, doll her up perfectly, and make her fall in love with a porn addict.  He'll be bored with her very quickly.  No partner is ever to blame for a porn addiction.  When a guy watches porn, he usually has several tabs open, is constantly flipping through search results, thumbnails and posts looking for something new, and even when hitting the "jackpot" of what he's looking for, he likely won't stay on it for very long.  Videos that run 20 minutes will never make it past the 2 minute mark, because it gets paused to switch to a different window.  How on earth can a woman compete with that?  It would need to be like something in the movies where a guy is on a giant bed with ten or more women around him all fawning over him at once, and even then... the internet just has more available.  He likely doesn't even compare you to the women on the porn sites. His brain probably shifts into such a different mode that he can't make the comparisons.

I didn't address the "revenge cheat" in my other post because it seemed to me that you were being hyperbolic, but in case you weren't... just don't.  Can you imagine yourself having an affair and saying to yourself afterward "I am more at peace now"?  Yeah, nothing good will come for either of you.

I agree with DoneAtLast in that a partner cannot ever compete with porn. I wrote a piece expounding on this a couple years back here:https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/news/a30287/an-ex-porn-addicts-message-to-jennifer-lawrence/