Hi all,

I am new to this forum, and new to the idea of seeking group support for my pornography addiction. Below is my story, I have tried to stick to the key points without going into an auto-biography.

I am at the early stages of understanding and recognizing that I have had a pornography addiction for many years. I am in my mid thirties, married, with two children. I would love to say that I am here purely out of self-awareness, but I was caught red handed.

In the summer of 2013 my wife openned my laptop and found a host of porn videos that I had downloaded to my hardrive and a trail of websites. I was getting more and more sloppy at "covering my tracks" and she only had to open the laptop before she was confronted with something that on some level she was expecting to see.

Since that day I have continued to lie, I have rejected the idea that I have a problem, I have downplayed my addiction. But I was aware that my relationship was now falling apart, and that even the downplayed version of what I had done was enough to end it. No matter how much I pretended that this was no big deal or that it was somehow my wife's fault, she had facts - the evidence of my porn usage in that small space between "delete all internet history" was enough to confirm to her that this was the tip of an iceberg - she knew that I was doing this while she was in the house, while I was supposed to be working, while her mother was visiting. The truth is I was no longer (if ever) in control of my behaviour and I was only ever going to get caught.

Since then my wife and I started to see a relationship therapist, soon enough I opened up enough to be able to admit I needed to see a specialist. I have been seeing him, an additcion-experienced psychotherapist, for two bouts (he is very expensive). I saw him weekly for about 3 months and most recently I am on the 9th session of a new series of weeklies after seeing a less experience counsellor in between.

I have a big problem with intimacy. I put walls up and only my wife has gotten close enough to experience them - family, friends, they would all gladly support my falacy - that I was a perfectly normal person. My issues with intimacy run all the way back to my adolescence and I have been a habitual porn user since about 14. It used to be a nightly routine to help me sleep, then it became more of a passion and the internet boom coincided with my own freefall into using porn whenever i was bored, stressed, alone, aroused, etc etc. I think my fear of intimacy may have prevented me from taking it into the real world - but I did use webcam strip-sites and this information most recently shared with my wife has been incredibly painful for her - I was sharing something of myself and giving sexual compliments to these strangers, when my wife was ignored and made to feel repulsive.

One of the worst things that I have done is, shortly after the "honeymoon" period of our relationship I started to let porn back in the door, having spent much of the first few months quite rightly channeling my energy into our growing relationship. But soon my issues, and my inability to cope with life's stress - of which I had a decent helping of - led me to choose porn over being intimate with my wife.

During those early days it would have been such a subtle change that my wife found it much easier to assume that she was loosing her charm or her attractiveness to me. She had no reason to believe that I had these issues, I hid them very well and talked the talk of a fully healthy and happy man. Shutting that door to her in those earlier months was the worst thing I could have done to her and for myself. I began to assume two lifestyles, the outward "happy family man" and the secretive porn user that was only interested in self serving. It was like a cancer in my relationship, to my wife's self esteem. By the time it started to materialise in her depression and general unhappiness I was in such denial about my role, so consumed by the hard work that I felt I was putting in, that I genuinely took no responsibility for her, prefering to assume that she was simply that way inclined. The awful obvious truth is very painful for me to admit now; that I had promised her everything, gotten her pregnant, taken her out of her career, away from her old life, and dumped her to fend for herself.

I had a high-travel job from the 3rd to 8th year of our relationship, during which we struggled to make ends meet and brought two wonderful kids into the world. I loved the job - it enabled me to physically escape to different countries and hotels where I could use porn every single night and justify it to myself as a consequence of travel - I never reconciled it to the fact that I continued to do it on my return, albeit less frequently.

Two years ago my wife was at rock bottom and armed with very little knowledge of what I was doing, she at least knew that she was miserable and she gave me an ultimatum - change the job or we are in big trouble. Somewhere behind my lies and addiction I knew that this would be a good thing. So I made a half-assed effort to change our lifestyle, without talking any real responsibility for what was wrong with it in the first place.

So I took a new job, we moved to a different country, and I just kept on using porn. 6 months later, and about 8 years ito our relationship, my wife opens the laptop.

The last year has been a horrible mess. We have fought, said awful things to eachother, I have been a total dick - only conceding what she knew as fact, and still holding back. I had become so used to hiding from her that I was doing it with everything - I lost all boundaries and would simply hide things from her as a default, even if there was nothing wrong with it - I simply had guilt seeping out of my pores. The progress has been agonizingly slow, but as this has been going on for over a year I can at least see the progress - and this brings me to where I am today:

I am finally being accountable for what I have done, and how it has systematically destroyed my relationship with my wife and deeply hurt and damaged her. I still struggle to deal with my anxieties and in withdrawing from porn I feel the pull of alcohol, cigarettes (I gave up 10 yrs ago but am back onto them whenever I get too stressed). I get panicky and anxious in situations at work. But I have a great therapist and my wife has shown such profound strength to not run away. I dramatically reduced my porn usage over the last year, but I never really was prepared to stop, just hold back until "this crap" died down. It was only in September that I checked back in with my therapist and made the statement that I wanted to change. Nevertheless there is still a part of me that wants back in and that scares me.

I have not used porn since then. I can go for several days without needing to, but typically I get stressed about something or my wife and I argue, and I feel it calling. It is getting less powerful, and the more I am learning about the "why" the less I am attached to it. But I really feel as though I am still in abstenance, rather than recovery. I still find it hard to communicate with my wife about these things, to be truly intimate with her, I have stopped porn but it obviously hasn't "fixed" me. And it is made harder by the fact that she has a very real rage right now that I have prevented her from feeling as I drip-fed her the truth. She finally sent me a number of very specific questions, I answered them, I felt great to put the lies behind me, but my wife is obviously not there - she is only seeing this for it's true extent now - and only now is she able to start processing how she feels and what this means. So we are in a very tough place.

My therapist mentioned support groups, I went to google, I avoided the ones that complicated the matter with religious subscription, and found this place.

I look forward to reading more of the post here, sharing my struggle with you bunch of strangers, and hopefully saving my marriage and myself from the downard spiral.