Porn use v/s addiction? Also, hello!

[JennyBunny]

Sorry, I'm probably in the wrong place all together!

I'm an American in my 20s living in Europe with my boy. I grew up a little sheltered so didn't really have any exposure to pornography growing up and was pretty shocked when I first encountered it by finding loads of it on my computer (which we both use). I haven't said anything to him about it as I'm not sure it's any of my business. The content was pretty out there and the girls in it are all way better looking than me. Is this is problem? I wasn't too worried till I mentioned it to a friend back home who sent me to a Dr Phil excerpt about porn use which led to some other articles about porn addiction. I didn't even know this existed!

I don't want to seem prudish I like to think of myself as a bit sheltered but sex positive. I'm not sure if I should be (or am allowed to be!) offended.

Really, what I think I'm asking is if just the use of porn is the sign of a problem. I don't think it's something he's looking at all the time as I never noticed it before. It's not addiction if it's just something every now and again? He can't be an addict, can he?

[JenMac]

HI Jenny!
Welcome to TTF! I am glad that you have found us.
Jenny, the fact that you are here speaks volumes to me. If you didn't think this was a problem then I question how you found your way to this site?
Is it a problem for your bf? I can't answer that. If it is not a problem, could it become one. Absolutely.
The P that is available on the internet today is by far waaaay worse than what was available in the past. The ready availablity of such endless P in the privacy of your own home has made this into a huge business and an even bigger problem.
NOt sure this is any of your business? Of course it is your business. Any intimate relationship should be truthful and respectful. Hiding things doesn't bode well in good relationships.
Do you have the right to be offended? No doubt in my mind.
Offended didn't even touch how I felt when I discovered my H's hidden use of P.
The fact that this was kept secret was only part of the problem, albeit a huge part of the problem.
I felt betrayed, degraded, disrespected. I found his use of P to be a betrayal of our wedding vows and of the promises he had made to me. It very nearly ended our marriage.
Jenny, there is much to read here. Many stories that have been shared by wise and wonderful members. I hope you will take the time to listen and learn. There is much to be gained from you being here.
All the best!
Jenn

[JennyBunny]

Yeah, I'm probably in the wrong place then. A lot of the women here seem really, really unhappy with what their partners are going through. I feel really insecure but I think that's just me being prudish. I'll talk to him about finding it and see if there's anything he talks about that would raise scary red flags like some of these stories. I guess I was wondering if any porn use could be considered a problem or a betrayal. But Google shows it brig all over the internet (safesearch, you've kept me in the dark for ages!), so I guess its just the way things are and I'll have to learn to not feel weird about it.

[JenMac]

Yeah, I'm probably in the wrong place then. A lot of the women here seem really, really unhappy with what their partners are going through. I feel really insecure but I think that's just me being prudish. I'll talk to him about finding it and see if there's anything he talks about that would raise scary red flags like some of these stories. I guess I was wondering if any porn use could be considered a problem or a betrayal. But Google shows it brig all over the internet (safesearch, you've kept me in the dark for ages!), so I guess its just the way things are and I'll have to learn to not feel weird about it.

Hi Jenny!
I don't think you are in the wrong place at all. I think you have come to the very best place to learn more about what your guy is into, what your feelings may be all about, and where this may be leading. The fact that you are feeling 'weird' about this says something Jenny. Trust your gut feelings!
Oh yes, this is big all over the internet but that doesn't mean it is a good thing or an acceptable thing. On the contrary really. And the fact that this is kept hidden from partners also shows that there is a lot of deception happening which tells me that most users know this is a huge problem, if not for themselves, then for their partners.
Prudish is not a term that I am comfortable with Jenny. I think that we should always listen to our inner voices, as that truly is our compass for living a healthy life.
All the best!
Jenn

[RMH]

Jenny,
Let me tell you my story. 10 years ago, I was you. 22, living with my then boyfriend. Got up to use the bathroom one night, on the way there I looked in the living room and saw my boyfriend MB to a Porn movie on TV. I was bewildered at first, but immensely turned on as well. I finished using the bathroom, and had every intent to go join him, but by the time I came out o the bathroom less than 2 minutes later, he wasn't doing it anymore and had flipped the channel. It left me confused. Confused because I had been so turned on by it but then he 'hid' himself. So I didn't act. I went back to bed wondering what that was all about. The next night, same thing happened. Then I started making myself get up at the same time every night and every night was the same thing. I confronted him about it. I asked why he did it. He didn't know. I asked if it pleasured him better than I did. He said no. I asked if there was something wrong with our sex life. He said no. I upped the anty and started having sex with him 7 days a week, sometimes multiple times a day, thinking that we just didn't do it enough. I still caught him. That was before internet Porn really took over.

It started to bother me, and I fought within myself. I thought "this is a normal guy thing, I'm being prude, get over myself". I tried but it still bothered me. I felt dirty, unclean, like I was 'competing' for his attention against a girl who looked 100x better than me (And I was in really good shape too, I had the stereotypical Barbies measurements of 36, 26, 34) but I wasn't PERFECT, my chest wasn't perky enough, apparently my booty wasn't big enough, etc... I couldn't compete. I just couldn't. I talked to my brother, asked him if this was normal guy behavior. He said yes sometimes, but not every single day like my BF was doing it... I decided somethin was wrong with me, I just needed to get over it and start being sexier.

We got married. I started wearing trashy lingerie in the bedroom trying to 'be sexier' I hated it. I really felt trampy, I didn't feel 'real' I didn't like the orgasms I had, they felt forced. I didn't feel loved. I felt like all we did was F**, and not make love as two people should. Eventually it led to us having to go to certain positions for him to finish. That made me feel dirty, becuase it was the same positions that the girls of Porn would use. Sometimes my now husband couldn't finish w/o MB, I was not enough for him. He had become so desensitized by Porn that it came to that...

One night, in our marital bed, my husband 'thought' he was trying to come on to me, but it ended up violating me in a way I've never been violated before. And this happened by my husband, the man I married, the man I loved, the man who was SUPPOSED to love me back, and who was SUPPOSED to protect me from the very act that he just committed. It happened another night a few years later. Why I put up with it is beyond the scope of this message, but if you want to know you can PM me. My point is that Porn drove him to that.

Fast forward 5 years, and we come to today. 6 months ago I 'caught' my husband yet again MB to Porn, this time of the internet variety. I've been catching him every 4-5 months I'd say, but I'd always put it out of my head thinking something was wrong with me. I threatened to divorce him, I told him what it did to my self-esteem... He didn't care. He did it anyways. So, 6 months ago I FINALLY got the courage to ask someone publicly, and ASK them if *I* was the problem. Boy was I surprised to find how prominent Porn addiction really is. I was NOT the problem. HE was. PORN was the problem. I found this site (Thank God) and it's been so informative and supportive. I to did not even realize that Porn was considered an addiction until 6 months ago, that's how long I've been living in the dark for....

I'm at the point now of divorcing my husband, becuase he refuses to get help. Just now (within the last week) has he started taking recovery with any kind of seriousness, or even admitting that he has a problem. I can't take it anymore. I've been disrespected, used, objectified to the point that I've considered Plastic Surgery to make my body 'Perfect', neglected... It's been awful Jenny, it really has.

My last comment for you is this: Porn does not have to be an issue for couples. If you are ok with it, then gravy. I was OK with it at first. I WANTED to be involved, I WANTED to bring some 'spice' to our love life. He refused to let me in. He started turning to Porn and MB instead of asking me for Sex, THAT'S when it became a problem. So, unless YOU think it's a problem, then really, it's not. But let me be the voice of experience to you Jenny, I was in your shoes 10 years ago, and now I'm in these shoes. Don't let yourself follow in my footsteps. If you feel 'weird' about it in any way, you need to bring it up to your boyfriend, and you need to seek some couples counseling NOW, early, before it festers into something that you are hearing the rest of us talk about today. You don't have to be a story like us - you can fix the issue while it's still a relatively easy fix to make.

Please don't hesitate to ask questions and get advice. We're not here to sway you one way or the other, or to make you think there's a problem where maybe there isn't. But I hope that my story has some impact on your decision.

-Raichael

[2frustrated]

Obviously I can't speak for all men, but I'm prone to think that chances are that someone who regularly looks at p is developing an addiction. It naturally tends toward addiction.

[JennyBunny]

Hey, quick update!

I talked to him about it and it turned into a massive blowout of a fight. He kept the stance that I can't tell him what to do with his own body or censor his media and I stuck with my point that it made me feel weird, for a reason I couldn't quite articulate. He did make a good point that I couldn't be pissed off about something I didn't even watch.

So we watched it. And it's actually not a big deal. Which I'm really thankful for because some of the steps people talk about going through on here ( drawn out fights, going through their partner's computers and phones, keyloggers! and borderline stalking behaviours) seemed pretty insane to me. I got out and looked at some different sites and found a advice writier, *** ***** (you may not want to view this if you have a sex addiction problem, his coloumn seems to run rather to the explicit) who has a really laid back, hand offs approach to P and partners. And there were some good other articles as well.

I'm sorry to have bothered you all, even sorrier that some of you are having to go through some rather extreme relationship issues and hope everyone comes out of their respective situations as best as is possible.

[HopefulsRock]

Hey JennyBunny... Welcome and I'm glad you turned to Through the Flames for help and advice when you discovered your boyfriends problem. You may have discovered it at an early stage and that's good because you can discuss it openly now and and hopefully at some point realize a little more clearly why it makes you feel weird... trust your intuition, it's a powerful tool you have!

Thanks for your sympathy and well wishes to us all here and I'm sorry for what your dealing with as well and hope you can turn it around and find a more positive direction than P in your life. Maybe get your boyfriend to read a few opening statements in the PA's journals here and he may see some similarities to his story?

Best wishes for strength and confidence in your journey...

[TooSensitive]

Jenny, IMO, it becomes irrelevant whether it is an addiction or not. Plain and simple, if it bothers you that much, it has to go. I do hope you find your own way, and may that way be whatever way feels right for you.

Please don’t sell yourself short. Please don’t try to convince yourself that you are just being insecure and jealous, like I was trying to do, waaay back in the beginning. Please don’t try to justify or minimize what he does, like I did. Please don’t try to keep yourself in a state of denial, like I did. That nagging feeling that it truly bothered me just wouldn’t leave me. And prior to my h, I had always been accepting of p, with the b/f’s I knew were viewing it. Occasionally, I would watch with them, and it never bothered me at all.

It took what I went through with my h for it to start bothering me. I feel it is for the better that it bothers me, b/c I feel strongly that it isn’t right. There are just some things which were meant to be sacred between one man and one woman, not put out there for all the world to see.

There is a distinct difference between lust and love, and also between lust and passion, though it is easy for many people to mix up all of them, thinking that one is the other, or that all of them are one and the same. Each one of the 3 is completely different to me, though passion and love do go together. It is the lust part that doesn’t belong in any of it for me.

I cannot share myself with a man who shares himself with other women in these ways. But that’s just me.

I feel that therapists and writers and anyone professional, who tries to defend p and lust, don’t really know what they are talking about. I also feel that it is the devil at play, trying to paint that which is wrong in a better light, to sway people toward his side of things, leading them to believe it’s okay, acceptable, and normal to do, when I feel strongly that it isn’t.

The only other thing I can say is that I now prescribe to a much more spiritual way of thinking, and with that, there is no room for anything that I feel takes away from one’s soul, p being one of those. It steals like a thief, and before a person realizes that it is even stealing anything, it is too late, and much has already been lost. When a person finally realizes this, so much of their soul is already gone. And it ends up taking too much of their partner’s soul, right along with theirs.

It does not take a full-blown, high-level addiction to do this. My h only “looked” on the Internet a couple of times a week. When I began to get too close to him, that scared him, and he resorted to many other behaviors I had not seen in him before, and things began to escalate. That being said, they never escalated to the point they have with others I’ve read about, though I honestly don’t know all of what my h has done. I am only going by what I do know. But they escalated enough that I noticed the behaviors, and they did bother me. Esp. when prior, it had never been an issue for my h to “finish” when it came to being physically intimate, yet eventually we did go through a cycle when he could not “finish”. In hindsight, this was due to him needing more than I could give him, b/c that which once satisfied him, no longer did, not only in the bedroom, but also in what he was viewing. And our physical intimacy was not “vanilla” by any means. That did not matter – it still was not enough, b/c in reality, I could no longer compete with the screen, and it was becoming more difficult for the screen to even compete with itself. It was b/c he was viewing p, not b/c I no longer had the ability to satisfy him. The p desensitized him in some ways, and oversensitized him in other ways. It was his inadequacies that had developed long before we met, further exacerbated by viewing p and the lusting over other women everywhere we went – and b/c those inadequacies continued to escalate, the more he viewed p, even though he was not viewing it that often – that did not allow him to continue to be satisfied. It was not due to any inadequacies in me.

It also bothered me when he was objectifying me, and all I became was the vehicle, the body, in which he used me to fulfill the fantasy he was having in his head about another woman. Do you think you would like the feeling of being used in this way? B/c I sure didn’t. It was not my own inadequacies. It was not my own insecurities. It was my belief in myself, and the integrity and respect I held for myself, that let me know I had to honor myself and get this out of my life, for good.

In the past, I had always felt I was very confident and secure, b/c p did not bother me. What I failed to realize was that the opposite was actually what was true. It was my insecurity which prevented me from honoring myself and from speaking up, to the point I did not even have a conscious knowledge of this, until much later, in hindsight. My insecurity caused me to bury my true self, when it came to this, and it masked itself as confidence. I thought I was just as good as them, b/c I too was attractive and sexy. No other woman had ever felt like a threat to me. I didn’t realize that was b/c I was behaving just like they were in certain respects, so I had brought myself down to their level, which is exactly what the devil wants you to do. This is how it all perpetuates and feeds upon itself, and affects as many people as it does. The devil counts on women also thinking that this is just the way of the world, and this is how I am supposed to behave, so that I can catch a suitable mate. Oh, you’ll catch a mate all right, but will he really be the mate you should be with? The mate who truly is your soul mate? It isn’t possible to have a soul mate, when your mate has already lost his own soul, and you are on your way too, if you aren’t yet there already. (“You” not necessarily meaning you, per se, Jenny; just a general reference to others, including myself. If the shoe does not fit, please don’t feel as if you need to wear it.)

Jenny, whatever you decide is of course your decision. If this never presents any problems for you, so be it. But it would be a real shame if later on, down the road, you figure out that the decision you made to accept this in your life and in your relationship turns out to be different than the one you make later on, if you figure out that p is, after all, devastating to not only your soul, but also your b/f’s soul, and you decide that it is not all that it is cracked up to be, after all.

I will end by saying that for awhile, I was in denial of what was going on. I did not yet understand what PA/SA was. I found one reason after another why I needed to remain accepting of what my h did. After all, all men do it, right? But eventually, I discovered I could not deny myself any longer, b/c my soul was crying out for help, and my own inner voice was screaming at me to make it all go away, once I eventually discovered that it wasn’t “just p”, but instead, so much more than that, in a very negative way. It “was” a very big deal to me, and it still is. But, as I’ve said, that’s just me (well, and quite a few others out there, who are also here).

[JennyBunny]

That sounds really hard, Toosensitive.

If I'm understanding right the conflict seems to arise from the fact that you've made some spiritual, religious and lifestyle changes which don't match your husband's lifestyle. It's probably really difficult for him, trying to understand why behavior you seemed accepting of and were willing to participate in earlier in your relationship is now a stressor. And for you, it seems very much like your husbands unwillingness or inability to bring his views and lifestyle in line with your new outlook is incredibly difficult for you.

Maybe it might be easier to look at it as part of your changing and evolving as people and place less emphasis on the specific issues, like P? Neither of you are wrong, you've just not changed into the same sort of person at the same time.

When my former partner became a vegetarian we had a conflict that arose from changes he had made in his moral views. Meat was immoral, wrong completely unacceptable. Not only was he unwilling to consume it but I was very forcefully told not to consume it in his presence. This eventually stretched to demands that I similarly adjust my morals and lifestyle to match the progress he had made and not consume animal products at any time. I wasn't comfortable with this and we parted ways.

Maybe sitting down and talking about what specifically has changed for you and why you think it's important.

I think the choices you and your husband have may be to have one person model their spiritual or religious framework around the other person's, to find compromises that you are both willing to live with or to part ways as gracefully and kindly as possible if there is no way to reconcile these changes with your relationship.

It was hard for me in my past relationship with a vegetarian as he had a large group of peers and organizations very firmly telling him that he was 100% correct in his demands and that my reluctance to participate was immoral. Maybe making a space to talk to your husband outside of religious influence that would overly validate your views and without secular influences that might be supporting him in similar ways?

Then again, I'm a bit of a dip. I wouldn't pay much mind to me.