Looking at P together

[dawn1952]

How many here have tried to get closer to their PA by looking at p together? How do you think it affected the situation, did it make any positive difference at all?

[Hibiscus]

I went down this road once years ago. I think it sprung from desperation. Our physical intimacy was all but non-existent at the time. Our daughter was a toddler and I wondered if his detachment was due to him seeing me more as a mom and that he was no longer attracked to me physically after carrying a child. We were renting a house that came with a giant satellite in the backyard. One day I was flipping channels and a bunch of P channels came in. We weren't subscribed to anything, P or otherwise. It was a fluke and they didn't have sound. I remember wondering if my husband had ever stumbling across them as well. I didn't tell him for a long time. They would come and go inconsistently, so one day I just popped a video tape in the VCR, pressed "record", turned the TV off, and let it record until the tape ran out, not knowing exactly what was recording. I had no desire to watch it myself, so I hid it somewhere, not really knowing what I would do with it or if I would ever do anything with it at all. I don't remember what prompted me to dig out that tape. I don't remember if I planned it or it was more spontaneous. I do remember that alcohol was involved. I remember I was so lonely, it was my lame attempt to get him to want to be physically intimate with me. Another part of it was my attempt at shock value. Kind of, "You want P? Fine - here you go. No hiding and lying - right here in the open with me." The result was physical, but most definitely not intimate. I didn't understand compulsive P use at that time. I didn't even know PA existed. I was still living in a world that continually told me P was not only ok, but healthy and open minded. People around me, including my husband, were telling me "all men did it" and if it upset me, it was my own self esteem issues...my problem. I'm not that naive anymore. I'm more knowledgeable, and so are you! PA is not about open mindedness or wanting to share this with anyone, including SOs. It's an isolating activity, a way to push everyone and everything away. Interestingly, looking at it together never came from my husband and he never asked to see that tape with me again. It did however pop up in our lives later. I hid it again and forgot about it. But he didn't and went looking for it when he was short on supply and didn't have easy access to more. That tape from years ago became part of our last d-day. In his PA soaked brain, he had forgotten the history of that tape. When it came out, he tried to use it to humiliate me. He had recorded clips from it on his cell phone. When I asked him where they came from he said they came from MY "secret stash", like I was using P. It was his attempt at, "It's ok for you, but not me?" Years ago, he had tried to act like there wasn't anything on that tape that particularly appealed to him. Since our last d-day and finding those clips, now I unfortunately know exactly what parts appealed to him. It's yet another layer of hurt since most of them involved things he claimed to not be into, and in fact, claimed were "repulsive" in the past. It makes me ill knowing I'm responsible for bringing that one into our lives. Dawn, viewing it with your SO will not bring you closer. Not only will he not stop viewing it without you, it will just add another layer of addiction to his PA if you start engaging in it together on a regular basis. It will not bring you closer or foster intimacy. Trust me - you will never feel more detached and less intimate then when you are engaging in anything sexual while your SO is being aroused by someone else. On top of that, you will now have images in your head you cannot erase, a new more specific sense of exactly what he wants to view, and your own sense of degradation to live with the rest of your life. He is a PA and you don't recover from addiction by feeding it. If his addiction was to physically having s*x with other woman, would you try to share that with him by bringing other woman into your relationship? This is no different. I know you are trying to find a way to live with him that meets your needs while providing for his. But that is born from desperation and emotion, not logic and common sense. The PAs on TTF often refer to this as their "monster" and talk about not feeding it. Please don't fall for the monster begging you for food, claiming it is starving and that you are the cruel one in depriving it. Monsters are selfish...they lie...they will do anything and say anything to get what they want. Please don't be another one of it's victims.

[dawn1952]

Thanks, Hibiscus. I asked this question because I'm really doubting myself right now. I'm supposed to "go back" tomorrow and I'm not sure I'm ready yet -- or maybe it's even that I don't want to go because I know nothing's going to change except the fact that I've given in and will be giving away something of myself I know in my heart is sacred and necessary to me (s*x, which I call making love).

I'm afraid that when I see him again I'm going to get weak and go straight back to the "desperation and emotion". It's good to know that there are other women here who've been through this and know how harmful it can be because I've been thinking it's really NOT going to be good for me and yet I keep thinking that maybe this is the only way I'm going to save our relationship. Kind of sick, when you think about it, that I have to invite other women -- hundreds, thousands of them over time -- just to keep a man by my side. I know that can't be true and so, for today anyways, what I plan to do is tell him in no uncertain terms that I won't accept any P. I'll do it on Thursday when we go to the counselor together -- IF we last that long.

Please wish me luck because I know that, before I can really say it I'm going to go through a lot of back and forth and confusion. I want to say it, please help me say it.

[Disillusioned]

Hi Dawn and H,
Sorry to see you are still struggling, Dawn. I did try viewing with him, before TTF, when the counselor and all told me this was normal, and perhaps even helped prevent him from having an actual physical relationship with someone else. It made me feel awful, made me pull back when we were intimate, made me feel so ugly inside, outside, everywhere...and more lost than ever.
I finally concluded that if he loved it so much and was so into his damned P, that rather than have him sneak out and buy his mags when he was away, I'd get him his subscription here, so he wouldn't feel deprived. This was a sick way of reacting. I guess I was saying that go ahead, I know I will never be enough. I'm not enough anything for anyone. (Actually, I was no longer enough for me, and that's where the knowledge of his P use took me. Prior to that, I thought the bedroom was the one area in which I pleased him, as he was so critical to my other efforts.)
He recently said he loves to look at naked woman (the first time he said something like that was on d-day and then it was naked "girls".) He added, recently, that he loves me and values our relationship more than he loves looking at other naked women. I just know this got started in college, and he said he didn't do it our first year of marriage, when he was "in love' with me, and he started it again the second year of our marriage when he said he was "no longer in love with me." This didn't come out until year 38 of our marriage. He had been using more and more p as it became available over the years.
Like in every other area of our lives, I tried to adjust and be more what he wanted me to be, but I just felt more and more hopeless and lost. I almost lost myself completely.
You are who you are. You have values and rights, and p doesn't come with them. It didn't help H and it didn't help me. It is disgusting, depraving, and makes you feel less intimate and less connected with the person you love than ever. One night after being together, I looked around our dimly lit bedroom and thought, I wonder how many thousands of other bodies and other women have been here with us all the years we were together. It made me realize, I was making love to him and he was just ........ me! It is the most used and awful feeling.
I told him that I felt like the home appliance, used, not very satisfactory anymore, and he was out window shopping for the newest version with all the bells and whistles. Please, don't settle for less than you are. Please. It just hurts so badly, and it is a long, long way to feeling good about yourself again, Dawn.
disillusioned

[dawn1952]

[QUOTE=Disillusioned;71351]

I did try viewing with him, before TTF, when the counselor and all told me this was normal, and perhaps even helped prevent him from having an actual physical relationship with someone els

He's used that line on me more than once. It makes me sick to my stomach every time I hear it because I'm thinking, "so, if you didn't have a computer or another way to look at naked s*ut# you'd be out getting your "needs" met with another woman????" I'm supposed to trust that he never will do something like that because he has pictures????

He recently said he loves to look at naked woman (the first time he said something like that was on d-day and then it was naked "girls".) He added, recently, that he loves me and values our relationship more than he loves looking at other naked women.

This should have been a huge red flag for me. He also said he loves to look at naked women and that women's bodies are "the most beautiful thing in the world". I took it to mean that, since I have a woman's body, he loved mine, too. What an idiot I was to think that! He meant other women's bodies!!!!

You are who you are. You have values and rights, and p doesn't come with them. It didn't help H and it didn't help me. It is disgusting, depraving, and makes you feel less intimate and less connected with the person you love than ever. One night after being together, I looked around our dimly lit bedroom and thought, I wonder how many thousands of other bodies and other women have been here with us all the years we were together. It made me realize, I was making love to him and he was just ........ me! It is the most used and awful feeling.

I remember when I moved in with him and he had a room full of file drawers stocked with P. I asked him to move them out, put them in the closet at least (I really wanted him to throw them away). I especially wanted the file drawer that was next to my side of the bed out of there. He got totally p*ss^d. He moved them, but he made sure I knew what I "prude" I was.

I told him that I felt like the home appliance, used, not very satisfactory anymore, and he was out window shopping for the newest version with all the bells and whistles.

I know the feeling. It's kind of egotistical on his part, I think, to believe he "needs" that much of a variety of women to satisfy him. To think that I don't come within his "wide range" of body preferences makes me sick, I mean literally sick. He's even said to me: "it doesn't reflect on your self-worth, hon. I've told you before, I'm sure there are lots of men out there who would have s*x with you just the way you are!" He said that to me a couple of nights ago. And, stupid me, I took it because I'm so squashed that I take any crumbs he gives me and I'd begun to believe his BS!

[Disillusioned]

Have you seen the look on his face when he is watching? I had the image in my mind of what he must have looked like while watching the young strippers, girls younger than our daughter. Girls he should have felt protective about because of their age and his....
I imagined the look he would have, and felt that would be all I would need to see to end it all. Then he was watching a stripper on HBO one night, and I saw the look. The look I felt no one else but me would ever see. Such hungry eyes, so lost to everyone and everything around him. I nearly died inside. My h, the man I have tried all my life to please and never rang the bell, and he was giving that wanting look to a total stranger. IF the house had caught fire while this girl was "entertaining," he would not have noticed. He was as gone from me, as if he had never been with me at all and never known me at all. Like I said, something died in me. You don't want to feel that again, Dawn, and he still hasn't agreed to change. You don't want his acting out with you what he has seen him view with lust watching other women. You want and DESERVE something that belongs completely to you. I pray it comes to you. I pray for your peace, but going back and trying to accept what you truly believe is wrong, will not work. I hate that the therapist said it would be like cutting off his right arm, to try to separate him from his P. The Bible does address this with instructions that it would be better for a man to gouge out his own eye than sin with them. I don't know where the passage is, and I don't remember if I even got the quote close to right, but I think the point is made. Even if you are not religious or not a believer, I still feel, and this is a feeling based on time spent and thoughts over a painfully long time, YOU ARE ENTITLED TO A RELATIONSHIP AND LOVE FREE FROM P AND ITS DISASTROUS EFFECTS. Women can and do become addicted too. I just don't want the p purveyors to get one more cent of any money from anyone, so they might just dry up and blow away. They are not interested in anything but making money by increasing sales. I often threatened to get PG or rent a video displaying male hunks (which totally DOES not interest me) to demonstrate to my h what this feels like. I won't spend the money on it, and I won't view it. It is garbage...total garbage. I don't know how they would feel if they watched us "pretending" to be turned on by some other man in a stupid mag or video. I think they should be pushed to watch us feel attracted to someone else, but I just hate going there in order to demonstrate the obvious.
disillusioned

[dawn1952]

]Have you seen the look on his face when he is watching? I had the image in my mind of what he must have looked like while watching the young strippers, girls younger than our daughter. Girls he should have felt protective about because of their age and his....

Disillusioned, I have seen that look and it's something I don't want to see again. I've seen it when I've walked by "his room" and, his computer screen faced away from me on purpose so I can't see what he's doing, his face fairly lights up. We've even been fighting (or at least I'm pouring my heart out to him) and he's doing it at the very same time!!!!

I guess I was hoping that when we looked at it together his eyes would be on me, for me. Fat chance, huh? I'm so naive. But P wasn't ever on my radar until him. I never really thought about it. I just wish I hadn't had to learn about it from the man I love.

As far as girls young enough to be his daughter, I've been thoroughly disgusted by that. I have a 2-year-old granddaughter who's half Japanese and she's absolutely gorgeous already. I thought I was imagining (and I pray I was) him looking at her, trying to sneak a peek when I was changing her diaper. I even heard him tell her "you're soooo pretty!" It made me cringe.

I think about him like he's a dirty old man more and more lately. And he claims he doesn't want these pretty young things, they're two-dimensional and not real, like dolls. He wants a woman who wears her experience on her body (???? sure he does.) He told me just yesterday that "an older woman can be fit, too." He said lots of older women are. I'm about to tell him then go find one because you're not having me!

[Disillusioned]

"I know the feeling. It's kind of egotistical on his part, I think, to believe he "needs" that much of a variety of women to satisfy him. To think that I don't come within his "wide range" of body preferences makes me sick, I mean literally sick. He's even said to me: "it doesn't reflect on your self-worth, hon. I've told you before, I'm sure there are lots of men out there who would have s*x with you just the way you are!" He said that to me a couple of nights ago. And, stupid me, I took it because I'm so squashed that I take any crumbs he gives me and I'd begun to believe his BS!"from Dawn 1952.

That all men need variety is part of p's biggest lies and one which most men have accepted and that has even found its way into many psychologist's advice and therapy. It is a lie. Men have a biologic imperative to note women of reproductive proportion in an effort to spread their genes, but they do not have to have variety. They find variety stimulating and it feeds lust, which is also always there, and can be tamed and controlled or fed and allowed to have free reign. This and the myth about "all men do it," are probably the two biggest lies p tells. I hate it, I truly hate it.
disillusioned

[Disillusioned]

I know the feeling. It's kind of egotistical on his part, I think, to believe he "needs" that much of a variety of women to satisfy him. To think that I don't come within his "wide range" of body preferences makes me sick, I mean literally sick. He's even said to me: "it doesn't reflect on your self-worth, hon. I've told you before, I'm sure there are lots of men out there who would have s*x with you just the way you are!" He said that to me a couple of nights ago. And, stupid me, I took it because I'm so squashed that I take any crumbs he gives me and I'd begun to believe his BS! from Dawn 1952.

Dawn, I believe the need for variety has been sold to most people, including some therapists, by the pornographers who purvey their filth for profit. It is widely accepted as truth. While noting women of reproductive age is a biologic imperative for men who are programmed to spread their genes, it is not necessary for their satisfaction. Variety does not spawn intimacy which is a goal of adulthood. All of us, men and women, have lust driving us, or there would be no future generations. You can control lust, which is so visually stimulated in men, or you can feed it,by constantly stimulating yourself s-xual-y while looking at other women and fantasizing about being with one of them. Controlling lust allows for an intimate relationship with one person. I do not believe you can do both. I think many others feel the same. This lie of needing variety and the lie of "all men do it," are the two most common myths promoted by the p purveyors and it is so common anymore, that it has been accepted. It is not a positive thing at all, and it leads to destruction.
I often threatened to get a PG mag or watch videos with buff, naked men (which is not a turn on, at all for me), in order for my h to see what it feels like to be "in competition" for attention from a mate, with someone who is physically, athletically, and skillfully more "interesting or novel" than he is, to show him what it feels like. I don't though, because I don't have that interest, it is in opposition of my morals, and I hate giving the p promoters one more cent of money to spread their filth.
disllusioned
By the way, my h also told me he was sure I would be able to find someone to sleep with me, if I really wanted that. How lovely?! That someone with lower standards than he has would deign to find me acceptable to have s-x with. Yuck! exponentially!!!

[dawn1952]

By the way, my h also told me he was sure I would be able to find someone to sleep with me, if I really wanted that. How lovely?! That someone with lower standards than he has would deign to find me acceptable to have s-x with. Yuck! exponentially!!!

I'm sorry he said to you, I really am. Don't they understand what a selfish and terrible thing that is for us to hear? To me, he's saying I'm disgusting but someone would f*** me! Well, I've told him I don't want that "someone", I want HIM. But he still won't give in. Tells me it's his "limitation" and that he can't "work" unless I'm within his range.