Looking back at myself - then and now

When I look back at my state of mind around the time when the porn issue exploded, I can't believe how shattered my morale was. I had no sense of self worth whatsoever. I was in a marriage where there had been no sexual relationship for several years. felt that I had struggled to compete with his porn habit and lost. Our sexual relationship  was extinguished by his apparent lack of desire. I grew disheartened by being turned down too often and towards the end he was losing his erection, couldn't finish, etc. It destroyed what remained of my desire. I had already been beaten down by his porn use for the previous 9 or 10 years and when it seemed that he could no longer force himself to have sex with me, something died inside me. And what did I do about it? Nothing. I just accepted it. And now? I'm mad as hell that I was prepared to accept my status as a leper, like some sort of untouchable that was banished from my own marriage by all the shit he brought in to our home and into our lives.

I'm having some real problems understanding why I felt as I did and why I believed that I was this deeply unattractive, undesirable woman who didn't deserve to be wanted or touched or even seen. How low was my self esteem that I ended up feeling that way? I'm actually shocked! Shocked at myself and the crazy things I was thinking.

I was and still am a good looking woman. I might be older now, but none of us is exempt from growing older, but even so, I look considerably younger than my real age and I'm still in good shape. I may no longer have a youthful kind of beauty, but I still look very striking. So why did I believe that I was ugly and misshapen? I'm not. I felt that way because the man I made a lifelong commitment to, the man who said he loved me, would far rather masturbate compulsively to thousands of images of naked women. He would rather go to a bar to watch some tawdry strippers flaunting their genitalia to a roomful of strangers than come home and see something better. He would rather watch fake sex on a laptop screen performed by Barbie doll robots doing it for the money than have the real thing with a willing, sexy, orgasmic partner who loved him. WTF is that all about? He behaved like an idiot. What was I to him? Was I last year's hot video that didn't do it for him any more? That's no way to treat someone you love. But even worse, I accepted being treated like that because I loved him and I felt that he had to have what he needed to be happy. But what about how I felt? I never thought about how I felt because I didn't think my feelings mattered! Big mistake!

So there I was in pieces, believing my breasts were too small and face was showing signs of ageing, and my legs were too thin, and this was too that, and that was too this... And now I'm yelling at myself, "WTF was I thinking???!!!" There was no way I should have been thinking like that. It was a symptom of my mental distress. I was thinking irrationally. But it in the context of being the wife of a man who had been addicted to porn for 15 years, a man who wouldn't look at me, wouldn't touch me, it made perfect sense. That's how warped my thinking had become.

In any case, a lifelong commitment should transcend things like looks and youthful attraction. A marriage can't depend on looks and eternal youth. But porn eats away at the most important building blocks in a relationship, like respect and trust for a start. He didn't respect my feelings about his porn use over the years anyway, and I didn't even take heed. I didn't care about myself enough. I carried on believing I had to suck it up. I just carried on suffering in silence because somehow I believed that I was no longer good enough for him and porn was the price I had to pay for his "happiness".

Right now I'm having a bit of trouble with how irrational my thinking became over the years, and how my self esteem was so far below zero I'd lost sight of who I was. I'm angry at how I allowed myself to be duped and disregarded. I refuse to see myself as less than. Somehow the old me will come back and merge with everything that I've learned over the past several months and a new me will emerge. I've had to go through some very ugly shit and I'm sure there's more to come, as getting through this is forever a work in progress. My feelings are strong and often confusing, but there's no way that I can go back to being that broken little creature.

Please add your own experiences here ? about how you ended up feeling about yourself when you were having to deal with your partner's PA, or it's still going on. It seems a universal experience that partners go through devastation and despair, and it sometimes seems impossible to recover our old selves again. Are we ever the same again? Somehow I don't think we can be.

Emerald blue,  there have been many, many feelings in the wake of my husbands issues. What haven't I felt?! Some of the things I've felt are anger and extreme anger at times, extreme hurt, rejection, extreme humiliation - that he did it to me and I didnt notice sooner, that I trusted him, that I didnt even notice when someone was belittle me like he did. I felt belittled, devalued, objectified, used, useless, abandoned, unloved, hated. I felt lonely, VERY lonely, despair, depression. I felt cheated, betrayed, like he "pulled the wool over my eyes" so to speak. Sometimes I hated myself and felt shame. I felt shame, shame that I was married to a man that seemed so broken, shame that I didn't know, shame that my body now felt gross and ugly due to having my babies. Like you, I know and have always known that I am not an ugly women. But when all this happened, I felt so ugly. I still struggle with it. It's like my mind says every time there's an attractive women around, there's something your not. I catch myself doing it all the time And it's not in words, it's more like a feeling. I feel less then, every time there's someone remotely attractive in our or even just my vicinity now. I felt tricked. I felt Stupid. Here I was telling him little things about my sisters men and issues some, especially one, was having in her sex life due to her Hubby to find out he is masturbating to the thoughts of giving her and my other sisters orgasms. Wow. There's no words to describe the way that made me feel. Pain, hurt, humiliation. Hurt, you can say that again. Hurt like I've never felt before. Humiliated, was i ever. Can you imagine of my sisters knew?! Less then my own sisters! When we would talk about what he did in the beginning and he would tell me (his staggered disclosure), my whole body would go cold. I would get literal knots in my stomach. My hands would be clenched and all my muscle tense. I always got strange weak feeling in my stomach and I almost felt Dizzy. I would have nightmares and most times we talked before bed I couldn't sleep. There was often times that my Stomach, hands, arms, butt, leg muscles would be sore like I just worked out. It was from being so tense when he was talking and telling me things. When he would go to work I felt
Like the babysitter at home watching his kids for him. I felt seperate from him. We were no longer "us". It was me and him, not us. I felt like my life was wasted.
I could go on, but I'm pressed for time. I'll write more in a bit.

Confusion...that has been my problem. My husband has always been loving and affectionate. He has always cared about me and our kids and our life together. So I've been completely confused about his porn use.

I'm tired of being angry. I'm tired of second guessing myself and him and my emotions. It's easier to forgive. I choose to forgive him. I choose to be happy.

I've been married probably longer than some of you have been alive. I am not willing to throw away 38 years. My husband is giving his all. He is doing his utmost to be the best man he can be. I choose to believe him. I love him. I hate the porn.

Then - I was already planning a divorce before the shit storm even hit.
I felt like a piece of meat and his mom at the same time, I dont mind the mom part beacause i am old school. i cater to my SO.
But when i " caught " though i knew as i seen it in his phone.
Something told me this just isnt normal behavior for my SO, hes not really the big lieing sneak
He has become.
So i investigated and here we are.

Now - I feel like a detetive 24-7 and a stressed out mess, low self asteem exct.
I will never forgive him or will I forget.
But I will love him and hope for the best.
everyday seems like it could be our last.

but as long as he stays clean Im here, sometimes regretfully. But im so confused
So making huge life descions. im not sure they would be right.
He swears he hates PMO and i believe him.
But i believe its tough to stay away from for life
Where it almost laughable at the fact its even possible.

Time will tell.

I can't say any of this has had impact on my self esteem. It hasn't. And I can't say any of this has had impact on who I thought I was or think I am. It hasn't.

What it's done is deprived me of hope regarding my future with any man. This was the cherry on top of the shit sundae that has been my collective experience with the opposite sex through my whole life, starting with my father.

I'm done with commitment. Done with marriage. Done with trust. For over a year now, my interactions with any male, aside from children, have been superficial and will remain so.

Loleekins  I have been hearing TONS of woman say the same about commitment - They are DONE!
Just out of know where this conversation starts with strangers very often even with my SO right there.
A lot of woman are confused as to why we are losing men.
And men that don't get it wonder why they are losing woman.
Its sad.

And honestly I feel the same as you If my SO deceives me again I'm financially stable and will live out my life being single.
Hope it doesn't come to that, but its not up to me its up to my SO.

There are good days and bad days where i should be calling a suicide hotline- I'm just so tired of everything its been a hard life.
And just when you think you got it  - BOOM!

But Slowly the good is out weighing the bad.

best of luck to you Loleekin.

Loleekins, glad to hear it hasn't had an effect on your self esteem or sense of self, that is rare for a partner of a PA.

I've wondered myself in all of this if I'd be one of the ones that would be in that boat, being done with commitment and too cynical to believe in love again. I'd like to think I'd be able to heal and look for a man who shares my interests and beliefs and fall in love but it's quite possible that I'd not be able to trust and simply stay single or look for a man that I would "use" as much as he'd "use" me. Absolutely horrible to think of marriage as more of a business transaction rather than what two people in love commit to but it's easy to see how you can get to that frame of mind if you've been burned so badly in love. I'm truly hoping things work out for me and my husband but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't pondered this several times since the PA came to light. Things are pretty good right now, we just had a great evening together but we've hit some scary lows in the past few weeks.

Steam rolled, I'm glad you realize when you should be calling a hotline, I really hope you have the courage to call next time you are at a point that low. I just found an app called 7cups that is supposed to be free where you can message them when you are at a low and text with a real person. I haven't tried it yet but I did download it in anticipation of getting to that point since I have been there before several times, I'm actually surprised I haven't gotten that low in the past month with all this since I have had those thoughts in the past about his P issues and how lonely it left me over the years. Anyhow, check it out. The best time to get things lined up for help is when you don't need it so it is there when you do, right? I also find getting some fresh air helps quite a bit, but it's a struggle to get out...like you're wrapped in chains when you are depressed (not that I have to tell you that!)

Trust thanks for the comcern and info you have posted threw out the other threads
I read them last night and the partners one again this morning.

I have been dealing with this most of my life since age 12 when noone believed my moms BF was
Toughing me. As my therspist said the trauma starts there.
And it took a long time to set it aside and befriend my mother after decades over all that.
When in the long run I found out she believed me but was scared and confused,
Its a very long story though i believe without a doubt Porn played a role in his behaviour towards myself and my mother.
She also has been threw life with a gambler and PA.
after she threw him out a computer guy came over to fix all the virus and said it was so inoproprate he suggested she leave the room.
She to is single works 6 days a week owns her own home and loving life now, she wasted her prime years on the wrong men. No surprise!

I have dealt with this depression my whole life. And this inncodent with my SO lit the fuse again.

2 months before i discoved his PMO use - I texted him I cant do this anymore i want to die and i don't know why.
He didnt call me he texted me back its o.k we will go away this weekend.
Then i found out 1 hour and 5 minutes later from the lame text he was on porn at lunch.
When he should have been calling me....him not calling me hurt ,shocked and then ----------
pissed me off and got my mind somewhere else.
Like moving out, so called a lawyer instead.

Thats NOT the man i have known for 16 years , beacuse he changed in 2012 with PMO.
Its just not him, he would have called me or came home. But he didnt.

I have let that eat me up over and over again.
And i cant break the " Chains "

I can i will control it!

I am coming in to this a bit late.  But I felt so deflated and worthless.  The night I discovered, we had just had sex and I went downstairs to get a drink of water.  He was on the couch and had it on the TV.  He had rolled over to sleep but it was on Cinemax so I knew what was going on.  That is what made it super tough for me.  It was right after we made love.  And the next day I left to go see relatives for a week.  I was devastated. 

Like many other women, I had been through sex assault, sex abuse and an abusive husband. (Not this one except that porn is abuse of our relationship)  I am fairly confrontational and when I got home we really talked about it.  I told him I did not know if I could get past this.  All of his comments he had made, the lack of sex, me having to ask for it and him asking if he  missed a signal suddenly made sense.

Then as we started working through it, the gas lighting he did was phenominal.  I was down to nothing.  I was thinking I should apologize for getting older.  I had trouble at work and considered suicide.  We had been married 25 years.  He was the one!  I was so in love and so happy I had a man that loved me for who I was.

Then BAM slammed to earth!  He made fun of women in skimpy clothes.  Ha joke on me.  He made fun of men running around on wives.  (I consider porn unfaithful)  Ha joke on me.  He even made fun of strip clubs. Ha joke on me.  He had even had a wife that was unfaithful to him.  Since he had felt that pain, I thought that our love would keep him from wandering eye.  Ha joke on me.

I felt stupid.  Really stupid.  We thank goodness are now past that.  If I feel rough, I tell him exactly what I am thinking.  I am however hypervigilent in our relationship.  If anything changes, and I mean anything I am questioning and talking.  And sometimes crying.  I hate that.  Because I was not that way before.  I NEVER worried before.  Now I worry a lot.  And he has changed.  And he is not porning, ogling or anything.  It is just that it was so horrible and such a surprise I WILL NOT go through it again.  EVER

Gracie, thanks for your response. I relate to so much of what you are saying. I think I'm in the midst of it but I'm now beginning to realise that so much has changed and that we can NEVER return to an age of innocence that existed before porn. At first we take it out ourselves and then we take it out on porn, but then we realise where the nucleus of the problem resides ? in the mind of the man we love. That's a very unsettling realisation.

I also realised how he used diversionary tactics, like a reverse psychology technique ? whatever he was speaking out against, he was often guilty of being unable to resist. Gaslighting, partial truths, all the convoluted ways of lying and distracting, I've experienced it and it hurts. It really hurts. How can someone who loves you treat you with such disrespect? To be so manipulative without compunction, that's the bit that I really don't get and probably the only thing I have not forgiven.

Funny how you should say "the joke's on me" because I have thought that my partner took me for a complete idiot. I do feel that he laughed at me and what good fun it was to fool me, and how easy he thought it was. I feel like I'm the butt of the joke a lot of the time. It's almost as if I was seen as the enemy to his "fun" and what a laugh it must have been to fool me so easily. I trusted him and he laughed at my trust and took advantage of it. I'm feeling almost tearful as I'm typing this so it's obviously not resolved.

The big difference between the early months of recovery and now is that I realise that I'm very much on my own in trying to come to terms with the damage his behavior did to me. I have to repair my own hurts, but I now relate to him with a stronger sense of self, with better self-knowledge about who I am, what I want and what my values are. I'm through with apologising for being who I am. I'm not going to apologise for my bra size, or growing older, or for being myself. There is plenty that remains unresolved and sometimes I wonder if I will ever know the whole story but there comes a point where I just have to detach myself from all this "stuff" and get on with the business of being me. I wish we really were as united in working through these issues as I hoped we could be at the very beginning but I know that's not how it worked out and perhaps I was too naive about the nature of the addiction and even about him. Recovery is about recovering our core selves from this mess of addiction and avoiding codependency. I guess I'm still learning.

I can relate to how you felt about feeling like a fool and the joke being on you. I can TOTALLY relate to feeling stupid that I never knew, that it was so easy to "fool" me. I also felt laughed at, the butt of the joke. I also felt like I trusted him and he took advantage of it.
I feel now that as a result of being with and married to a "sick" man, I mean mentally and emotionally ill, I have now become mentally and emotionally ill and am working my way out of it. I do believe it will make me stronger. People that have gone through it say that in the long run your relationship will be stronger...I struggle with that. I have a general sense of uneasiness whenever we are with people now because I never know when or IF his thoughts/feelings/reactions etc are geared towards sexual things. I never know if that girl I am talking to might be triggering some sexual thought in his head. I am uncomfortable if we go anywhere where there is women. I also have now became an objectifier. I look at women, not to check them out, but to determine if he might be triggered or checking them out, or something along those lines. So here I am, everywhere I go, evaluating every women I see. I am evaluating their butt, breasts etc. Subconsciously I am seeing them as objects, although not for the same reasons as him. It's like I have to assess the danger/threats every time we are out. I have actually realized lately that I didn't even see some of the women's faces! I am thinking to myself, wow, so this is what he does. Of course to lust instead of what I am doing. He tells me that he doesnt look anymore and he is not tempted to look, doesnt want to etc....but personally I cant even see how he cant look or at least be greatly tempted?! A year is enough to stop a compulsion he has practically owned since he was a young teen?! He is now 38,I don't think so.  Anyway, I have come to realize that I am now ill, as I was saying, and I have to stop looking at him and what he is doing and I have to heal myself. I also feel that a lot of it is in the mind. It's paying attention to my mental dialogue and realizing the things I am saying to myself, about him, other women, other men etc. As well as how I am looking at women and men. I need to master my mind. I cannot let this keep me down. That doesn't mean that I am naive and think that everything is good, but it does mean that it doesn't have to effect me how it has been. I am done with spending my days allowing this to drag me down and waste my life. I know It will take a while and it will be tough but it can be done. His porn and porn use had taken so much ffrom us/me. I'm done allowing it to have control and to take from me. Will I continue to let porn harm me and my life by letting my negative self talk have priority? Nope, I am done.....There will be down times/days, but Ill get right back up, and these times will be further apart and fewer in number as time goes on.

Yes, you're not the first woman to look at the world through porn-tinted spectacles! I think we all go through a phase like this and I agree it's not healthy. I think it's probably a necessary part of the healing process because we're only trying to understand the 'what' and the 'why' of it all. That's why so many partners, myself included, feel the need to actually look at the porn shit our SO's have been looking at. You know, it's like "so what's so great about this shit that you want more than me?" Except we view it through dispassionate eyes, we look at it objectively and can see it's just faked up acting for the sake of making a movie. Unfortunately some women feel they have to emulate it to turn on their partner and keep them away from it, but that's not healthy either. We know when our behavior doesn't feel right though. It's tough because we don't want to be played for a fool all over again.

Your right EB, that's it isn't it... We do the things we do because of the constant fear he will do it again and hide it from us, ultimately making us look like a fool.

My so has completely changed since he has been away from P for so long.
For the longest time when we go out I would make sure he sat with the veiw of everyone
And analized his reactions to women coming and going - so far so good.

We'll one day not long ago The tables got turned I ended up facing a guy who without a doubt has a problem with
Oogling to the point of almost drooling, i would move over so he couldnt see me tried to play it
Off.
After he left i was glad he was gone, my SO must have seen relief the reilief in my face and he asked me if i was o.k, i told him yes im just glad that guy left.
He stated he knew when he went to the bathroom on the way back he could tell, he said he was worried the mintue we sat down that he didnt get to that seat and didnt want to say anything.
But he knew, he just knew and he was trying to not show he was upset.

I confessed and said i dont want to deprieve you from not seeing any woman at all so i sat there and i always make it a point to sit a certain way for that reason.


He had a confused looked and said I dont do that anymore, I don't feel anything its all gone from my mind.
And I ( so ) feels bad he made other woman feel that way like you just did. He said he just didnt know it was that bad.

And that all I AM doing is making this harder on myself by carrying this on beating my self up for no reason.
Though he is right about beating myself up over all this.
It boils down to - I wont be made a fool again!

But i am going to step back even more and let things play out.

Thanks for this thread its helpful.

I agree. I am glad this thread is here.  I am glad this forum is here and I am glad there is a place for SOs that is active and supportive. 

I think we sometimes get discouraged when we read the men's threads and there is so much focus on the physical parts of Porn Addiction.  All of those things are the result of an addiction that has at its core emotions.  Lonely, discouraged, angry, sad, happy, socially awkward, unsure, anxiety, depression, feeling unloved, worried.  Its as if the physical is fixed all is well.  To me, those that think that are most at risk for relapse.

Just looking at my experience, it takes a total redo of the relationship.  I read a great observation about relationships recovering from this.  It was that we as SOs want things to be the way they were before.  But before is before we knew.  The addiction was active then.  We miss what we lost.  What did we lose?  We lost a relationship that was based on secrecy, lies, deceit, emotional infidelity and for some physical infidelity.  Do we really want that back?

As we work through this, we create a new marriage.  One with expectations, boundaries, love tested.  The only way that can happen is for there to be total honesty.  The men have to give up their harem that helped them cope.  The men have to turn to their wives when they feel emotion, good and bad.  The wives have to be willing to change too.  Once my husband gave up porn and changed, we have sex a lot.  We set up a boundary for that it was increased physical intimacy.  I did not like physical closeness. (An ADD thing)  I started taking medicine for that.  I had to learn to share too because we had not done that for so long.  Now he is a better sharer than I am.

We now have a new marriage.  We are different our marriage is different.  We are closer than ever before.  We now know true commitment. 

I still struggle with what he did to himself, me and our marriage.  But now we have the tools, and he truly listens.