Wife looking for perspective

Sarah1

New Member
Hi everyone,
I am looking for some male perspective. The short version is that a year ago I discovered my husband's porn use. I am a very sexual person and over the years sex became less and less until over a 10 year period he didn't have sex with me for 5 of those years. No ED but absolutely zero interest and any lie or behaviour he could use to push me away but would masturbate to his fav porn 15 times a week. Said he looked for girls that looked like me (WTH??). I asked him all the time about porn use and he denied denied denied.
He is going to SA, sees a CSAT and is fully commited to keeping our marriage BUT we have had a year of staggered disclosure which has been hell. His latest admission is that for years he found me "unattractive"- this really stung because I am actually quite attractive (former model) and have a great body esp for a woman in her 30's.
Anyhow, I am curious how on earth a woman is EVER supposed to feel good with a man who basically dumped her for porn and thought she was ugly for years. How can a woman grow older gracefully when her husband didn't even want her when she was fit and beautiful.
Help me understand all of this please. Please?
 

AppleJack

Active Member
I'm almost 2 years from d-day, I had staggered discovery/disclosure too. We'll be married 15 years on Monday and he did it the whole time even before marriage and regularly turned me down for sex.
Self esteem, I was there, felt like the ugliest piece of crap on the planet finding out how I had been betrayed and what I had been betrayed for (pixels and fantasy, not even another real person).
Any way the thing is I am beautiful, I'm also genuine, trustworthy, funny, compassionate, intelligent etc. I don't need him to validate that, I have been, am and will be those things in the future regardless of whether he notices or not, because ive learnt how to validate myself. Trully it is 100% their issue, they are the ones who have behaved in ugly ways, and carried darkness inside and infected everything around them with it. It feels 100% about you, I get it the pain is 100% real, addicts on here will say it's not about you etc and it comes off as flippant and defensive and uncaring, and frankly too I thinks shows immaturity and lack of seeing the bigger picture, what would be better is if they were to say the problem is 100% theirs, the damage caused is 100% theirs and the responsibility to sort themselves out and earn forgiveness from those they've hurt is 100% theirs. Nothing about how you look, what youve said or done has anything to do with it. If he found you unattractive during his addiction induced porn fog that's his issue, cos you're attractiveness didn't change, he just fucked his brain up, if he starts finding you attractive now is it because you've changed? no its cos he's stopped drugging his brain and has started seeing reality again.
 

Gracie

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Well, I was told the same things.  Initially I had physical shortcomings of all sorts.  I am mid sixties and get guessed at late 40s.  But that tidbit does not make a bit of difference in the pain level you feel when you are told that.  Because to a wife, what matters is how he sees you.  It was tough at the beginning. Different people have different ways of dealing.  I set boundries and rules that made me feel secure.  (There was a lot of crying and loud discussion taking place.  Please know, I was the lowest emotionally that I had been in my entire life.)

My healing rules:

We sleep together all night every night naked.  (Several of these are getting used to his touch again. As the only time he touched while addicted was for sex)

We had full body hugs before we went to sleep and right before we got out of bed.  We kissed good night and good morning.  Real kisses!

We kissed hello and good bye every time.  Real kisses.  (Yes even grocery, walk dog etc)

We sat by each other on the couch all the time.

We held hands in public.

If he ogled, I told him immediately.

We read Love You hate the Porn separately underling important things to us and then read it together out loud and discussed under lines.

We read Sue Johnson book Hold Me Tight. Farther in.

Of course we talked, cried but we did it together. 

We are rooting for you!!  I am 7 years after d-day.  We are still married.  And doing great.  If you want you can pm me.

Gracie
 

PE30

Well-Known Member
Hey, 38 year old male recovering porn and chat room addiction here. Sorry to hear your situation- it always feels hard to read this from a partner's perspective.

I think the key thing is that porn is an addiction. And with all addiction, it causes a huge distortion of reality. My experience is that it's taken several stages to recover, and I've had a number of false starts. I am now nearly five months clean. The addiction tells me that it's just a bit of fun, that the thrill is worth it, that my wife won't know and that I can hide it. All of this is nonsense.

In terms of getting things back: it's all about spending time with my wife and just enjoying her company. Porn sets up a standard of physical allure that will never be the same as real life. But in terms of my attraction to my wife, it's so much more than liking the way she looks (which I do). It's about holding, being held, being close, being vulnerable, acting together in a way that we're both comfortable with. Where we're not trying to copy anyone else in any aspect of our relationship.

We've just celebrated my wife's birthday and she was just so happy with the effort I made for her and the thought I put in. This is what happens when I'm fully present and dedicated to making things work. Restoration takes hard work, sacrifice and risk. It's not easy but it's possible. Hope you get on okay and feel free to ask more questions.
 

yesyes1234

Active Member
It's a weird thing that you probably cant expect people to understand expect if they go through it themselves.

You have an almost constant feeling of deadness inside that makes it uncomfortable to be intimate with other people.

At some point you even develop kind of a feeling of grossness and hostility towards other people, even very attractive ones. I think it's a type of projection of how the addict feels inside and sees himself on the one hand and a feeling of inadecuacy and isolation for not being able to return the feelings of their partner.

Its difficult to really compare to normal experiences since normally you always have a sense of presense of feelings whereas for an addict it's just grey and dead. It's not on a conscious level, it's more on the level on the impulse. The addict doesn't get all the impulses you normally would. There is more a feeling of a void, joylessness, incompetence and impotense. Plus on a more conscious level the mind keeps wandering to places you dont want it to go, disgusting places.

It's a downward spiral that just keeps adding to the frustration and loneliness on the addict, who will often lash out in terms of pushing away the people around them or pulling away themselves.


Most get hooked without knowing about the consequences - both in terms of changing brain patterns that will boost the pleasure of P in the beginning and later pull them down in an addiction.

But it's not an excuse either. He still overused porn untill it triggered the addiction and that's not fair to you. If you happen to become an addict, it's also your responsibility to get clean and hurt the people around you as little as possible.

I hope it made some sense. Best of luck
 

Emerald Blue

Well-Known Member
Sarah1, I went through a similar experience in that my husband replaced our sexual relationship with porn completely. He says he was always attracted to me, which makes no sense, but throughout his porn addiction I believed that I had no sexual attraction which slowly eroded my sense of self worth, and I ended up with depression, disordered eating and a poor body image. One thing I know now is that I?m never going to put up with that again. The price I paid just so he could masturbate in front of a screen was too high.

Partners have their own recovery process and it almost always involves repairing our self esteem and sexual confidence. It?s something we need to learn to nurture within ourselves. To some extent we have to let go of external validation. Unfortunately that?s the way the culture sets us up, that our value as a woman comes from satisfying the male gaze against a backdrop of messages (from ads etc) that tell us we?re never going to be good enough as we are.

When our partners dump us for porn, its tough when your identity has been defined by you physical characteristics, and especially you?ve made at least some of your living at some point because of your looks. In this context, all women are going to age out of their youthful ?hotness? but that is only one very narrow definition of attractiveness. We are worth more than our looks. We need our partners to accept the whole of our being, not just the good-looking exterior.

There are many ways that I have re-learned how to love and honour my body again. The first and most fundamental realisation was to acknowledge that my body isn?t something detached from me, like an object that exists somewhere below my neck. Objectification is the ultimate mind-body disconnect. I realised that my body was what makes me exist in this world, and to reject my body is to reject my physical existence ? and I?m just not going to do that to myself. We owe it to ourselves to eat well, do some exercise, dress well, adorn ourselves as we please. We only have one body and we only have one life on this earth.

My sexuality was damaged by my husband?s lack of interest in me after he became hooked on porn. Prior to that we had enjoyed fantastic sex, and I still don?t understand why he?d neglect our sexual relationship in preference to masturbating to images on a screen. Unfortunately porn hijacked then distorted his sexuality. He says he was always attracted to me but his total lack of interest tells me something else.

Reconnecting with my sexuality has been a very important part of my recovery. I do not impersonate porn or act out any of those those cliches. Too often female sexuality is defined very much in relation to pleasing men, and it?s often a pornified version of what sex ?should? be. Thankfully my husband doesn?t want all that porny crap in our relationship, which is just as well because I?ve never bought into that stuff. For me, sexuality is a sensual experience that involves the whole body, it?s about touch and physical warmth, breath and the heightened sensation that an only occur when two people are present. On the other hand, I accept that we all have our own sexual wants and needs and preferences, so what on individual or couple find irresistible can be a complete turn off to others. It?s worth paying attention to this part of your recovery. We hear a lot about hard reboots, and PIED etc, but we never read much about the partner?s sexual healing process. I had to make it up as I went along. Never forget that your sexuality belongs to you and you alone, not to your partner, not to your relationship, not to some random guy on the street. It belongs to you, and only you get to decide if and when you want to share it.

Good luck on your journey to recovery.
 
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