It wasn't always an addiction.

[maggie]

I am sorry to be so negative, but pretending to be a family during Thanksgiving has been more than difficult.

It wasn't always an addiction. So how can a husband and life partner of 20+ years explain the first weeks or months that he knowingly chose to sneak into an empty room to excite himself and masturbate to porn ?

He wasn't " addicted " then. What is the " excuse ? " in the beginning ? I'm beginning to suspect that it's all just excuses for poor/selfish choices,

[WifeOfNewLifeMan]

maggieliz-

I am with you. Yesterday was the worst Thanksgiving ever.

The first time he logged onto an adult chat site, that was not an addiction, compulsion, nothing. It was his choice. And he liked it and kept going back.

I think I am going to post in questions to PAs about how is this an addiction. I need it explained to me.

good luck to you, I hope it gets better.

[Mefree]

Mmm...

IMO that's exactly what it is, maggieliz. Porn is the epitome of selfishness. There is no excuse for that. Only recovery- and even if you do, the scars remain.
Alcoholics became alcoholics after their first binge on alcohol. Nicotine addicts become nicotine addicts after they willingly smoke their first pack of cigarettes. Every PA is here because we acted boorishly, selfishly, and willingly continued to do so. That's the bottom line.

Being an SO is a challenge I couldn't even begin to fathom.

[maggie]

Thank you for being honest and being strong enough to admit that p/a begin by choosingto act selfishly and boorishly pleasuring themselves.

My p/a husband was ( is ) a good man. Never did mean or hurtful things to others and he was always fair to his co workers and friends.

But he always had a laughable interest in boobs. We laughed about Steve Martins's skit on " big american breasts " and Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole Smith's targeting of rich old fools with her plastic water bags, so I never thought he would end up mstrbtg to photos of women with huge implants. He acted like he thought they were ridiculous.

[Mefree]

Haha, if I hadn't already admitted that to myself I'd be way behind on this entire process. :)

I know what you mean about those "chest-cannons" though. They still gross me out.

Have you ever seen a silicon implant before some whacko puts it in her chest? It's this clear, puss-filled, ooze-covered gelatin donut that makes you wanna hurl. I was haunted after seeing one on a medical special (still am). Most un-attractive thing I've ever seen. You show your H one of those and he might change his mind about a couple things.

[Vorlan]

I think that like most addictions PA can start in an innocent way or in a selfish way. The average age for a person to be first exposed to pornography statistically is 12 years old. I know I first saw it at a similar time. Now ususally this is either by accident or by being shown it by a friend. I think the first P I ever saw was probably something explicit coming up in a search engine. I was young and at first I was simply curious about what I saw, the curiosity led to a liking which led to an obsession which became an addiction spanning almost half of my life. In my case I don't think the beginnings of the addiction were nearly as bad.

I don't know your partners and every story is different but I would be very suprised if their first use of P was when with you. I suspect that they would have probably used P before that. Therefore they could already have been in the addictive cycle. For a while (could be a long time) their relationship with you would have been enough for them without P and full of hope they may have thought even then. "I don't need P now". But as time goes on relationships settle down a bit and the P urge comes back until we get a relapse into the addictive cycle.

This is just speculation from the perspective of a former PA. I was never in a relationship during my addiction so the loyalty factor never really affected me. I hope this helps you see how it could stem from more innocent sources. I don't know your partners though so you could be right and it could be pure selfishness.

I hope this helps,

Ben

[maggie]

Thank you Ben,

Yes, I agree for young men, in their early teens, porn starts out quite innocently and randomly, and until this past month, I never realized it could become addictive and control a large part of their development and character.

I appreciate your explanation and I agree with you, as far as my husband's recent use, it is an unknown. We honestly had a good marriage, we were happy, up until 3 years ago. We enjoyed being together and we laughed and shared the same sense of humor. Most of our friends called us the " the party couple in a box ", they'd invite us because we always had fun and we'd try to get everyone laughing......suddenly this is beginning to sound sad ! The clown couple, crying on the inside !!

Anyway, I can't believe it after so long, but I accept the fact that I cannot trust him, so when you said he may have been involved with porn before, and then suppressed it or didn't need to do it for a long time, I very sadly must agree that you may be right.

However, at our age, if he did, it was thru magazines or cable channels, because we didn't even have access to a computer for many years, and a p/a without internet access, isn't as easy or convenient as it is now with the net. So, if he did, it must have been infrequently, like when he traveled on business, because we were always together and happy at night when he was home.

I see that as I write, this is so confusing, I doubt you can follow my logic....if I even have any left ! I am completely shocked and confused and I have to hold my anger and disgust inside, because he has 2 sons that love and respect him, he was a good father to them.

[lightseeker]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to add some thought to this post, i will write and see what comes out!

Yeh i agree with Vorlan here and i wanted to bring to attention again the deception factor of porn. One of the biggest issues i beleive with porn is that it is so deceptive and with complete ease it sneaks its way into our lives and slowly drags us into an addiction.
In the society we live in porn has always been on a totaly different level to say alcohol and drugs, - everyone knows the effects of other addcitions and are aware of where they can lead and what they can do to us before we even get involved with them, the fact that porn has never even been considered harmful let alone an addiction is what has fooled most of us into ending up where we are, while looking at porn our brains are telling us that porn is ok, i will just releive some stress here and there and no problem, why?, because society has taught us this. Of course, it is down to us to have self control in the first place, but our perceptions are shaped by what society and what our up-bringings have taught us. If we had know long ago how porn would effect us in this way then maybe it would have made us think twice about looking at it. When smoking first came out, it was advertised as a good thing to help with stress, no one seemed to realise at first how addictive that was (maybe im wrong) but look where that has ended up. Why i never started smoking? - because i new in my lifetime that it was unhealthy and highly addictive, if people were telling me it was good for stress and i didnt see any negative effects then yeh i probably would have started that too! Anyways think i gone off track a bit, I do agree with you- it is selfish and of course we made choices to look at porn in the first place, but like Vorlan says for many of us it starts when we are curious teens and we are completely unaware of where it will lead to in future. I think the companies that push the porn over the internet have a hugh part to play in making this problem worse, due to this, it makes it so hard to stop once your hooked, you can chuck out all your porn or decide not to go into a shop to buy dirty mags or videos but, almost all of us cant live without internet in our lives now so the temptation is always right infront of us. I think all it takes is that you feel down one day or bored or whatever, you take one look at porn and you feel temporarily better, after that you know that whenever you want to feel better or escape from any problems it takes 2 minutes to switch on the pc! So i think one look at porn can lead to an addiction, but it depends on the person and circumstances, it is not a simple matter and i believe that i need to seek counselling for myself to understand what is causing me to turn to porn so much. We need to educate ourselves, i think its only recently that people are starting to realise what is happening with this porn, man sex is everwhere, the future holds more and more advances in technology and porn is going to become easier and easier to access wherever you are, generations down the line are we going to all be zombified sex addicts in our virtual worlds!? Where porn is at now compared to a few decades ago, man the future scares me!

[boris]

Teenage addiction is very different that adult addiction for a few reasons. The young teenage brain is not full developed, and there is a huge difference in the way a 14 year old's brain thinks versus an 18 year old's. The biggest difference is in the ability to process the long term effects of one's actions. So while there is still no justification for bad behavior, it gives us some insight into why stupid/harmful choices may have been made.

With the adult mind it's a very different story. It is about selfishness. We made the choice to open that link, or click on that pop-up, knowing full well what we were going to see. Debased curiosity is no excuse. There is no excuse. We shouldn't be excused. The addiction comes from deciding to return to something that most of us were probably shocked, if not repulsed by at first glance.

We begin to equate the adrenaline rush of doing bad with the rush of normal, clean sexual excitement. We stop differentiating what is giving us the rush. We stop caring. Until it's over. Then we sort it out and have our regrets. It's pathetic.

The longer I'm clean, the clearer it all is. Most likely because I'm not lying to myself. It's easier to sort it all out now that I've stepped away from it. That's the only kind of looking back I want to do.

[dave42]

Selfishness: hmmmm. I guess I think of my addiction to porn and other forms of sexual acting out as a disease. I think of it as a disease. I've tried so many times to quit. So many promises to myself and my partner and to God. Sincere promises. Heartfelt promises. Each time I've gone back. I have 2 months sobriety, thanks to God. I want to stay clean. I need help. I'm 44 and I've been looking at porn since I was, what?, I guess 12ish. I need your prayers and support. Thanks!