Hi ar2020, I took the steps to tell my family about my problem and it was a huge relief! I’m not saying it was easy but it definitely helped! I have gone back and forth with my porn addiction but having someone there to help is invaluable. It takes real men to take ownership and to get help! Good on you man! I have made up my mind to really kick it this time. I used to quit out of fear of others finding out but this time is different. I realize the fear and shame and general brain deadness I cause to myself and the way it makes me treat others. Let’s do this bro!

Thanks for the encouragement! I'm working with my counselor now on a plan for disclosure. I'm a nervous wreck but it definitely helped to hear a bit of your story. Hoping for better days ahead.

ar2020,

Congratulations on getting this far with your recovery. I am going to be direct in hopes that it will help you both have some courage and perspective about the process and aftermath of disclosure.

First "I'm married to a wonderful woman" - AND your wife is married to a wonderful man. AND you are married to a woman who brought a very closely matched level of dysfunction to the marriage or you would not have been compatible. Healthy people do not marry addicts.

I say this to encourage you to do what the bible says and not "Treat your wife treacherously" during your disclosure.

I would suggest this. LONG before you arrange the disclosure in the presence of a counselor, find a picture of your wife when she was about 5 to 10 years old. Meditate on that picture and understand that along with the brilliant, kind dutiful mother and wife you are looking at now, you will be talking to a sweet, gentle, wounded 10 year old girl. It is crucial that you are in a place to speak gently to this young child.

Disclosing is necessary to restore trust and intimacy to your marriage, and a big part of that is to allow her to KNOW you, all of you, even the massage parlor, porn addicted parts. (which are really a small child using small child strategies to COPE with adult pain.) (Ill address coping with pain later)

It is also important to be careful. Over and over I hear men in the SA 12 step group meetings who did a full disclosure of everything they have ever done to their wives, and regretted it because it set up imaginations, and resentments that never went away.

My initial disclosure was to tell my wife in one sentence what I was doing. I am happy and grateful that I did this voluntarily rather than getting caught.
It was huge for reestablishing some form of trust. I already arranged for counseling to be available for both of us. (I was already going).

My wife is not the "snoopy" type that wanted to know every little detail, but as we trickled information out over the next few weeks or so, I noticed she would regret asking me about stuff after I completely honestly responded. I spoke to my counselor and we agreed that my response would be, " I will be 100% totally honest in my answer to that question if you ask me again tomorrow." This was not to avoid sharing the details on my part, but rather to protect the 10 year old girl, while giving her full control of how much information she got. i.e. it eliminated the compulsiveness of her curiosity about my behavior.

Ultimately she needed me to be fully honest about everything, but did not NEED to know all the details. She tested the approach a few times, and asked me about stuff after the 24 hour cooling down period a few times, and when she realized she was getting the truth, and could trust that result, she decided she did not want to know the gore.

While saying this, there is the element of intimacy anorexia going on. 39% of SA spouses have IA, along with my wife. So there is probably an element of actively keeping emotional, sexual and spiritual distance going on. It is always 2 people dancing. And Always 100% your responsibility for what you Believe, think feel say and do, especially when YOU choose to act out to cope with pain. However, it may not be you that is causing the pain that puts you in a place where you re-act by acting out. ( or re-enact your childhood approach to coping with the pain by acting out.)

You are at the beginning of the process, so I know I am talking about something that will be important later, I am sort of talking out of my own autobiography here. But it is gruelingly painful to have the distance creating strategies of your spouse (actively withholding emotionally, spiritual and sex from the spouse.) I know that most of the times that I have acted out were my terrible responses to those times of rejection by my wife. This is hard to parse without thinking that I am blaming her for my choice to act out, and it falls out like this. I am 100% responsible for my choice to act out, but I am 0% responsible for my wife actively withholding the intimacy that was causing the pain. Now I am growing and understanding that she needed me to respond stoically to the pain she caused. A 10 year old abused child is not capable of saying "Wow, so that is how this feels." but a 54 year old man is capable.

I know I am bloviating so I will stop. My message to you is to be careful ( Full of care) for your wife as to how you disclose. It will free you and her to rebuild intimacy, or it will cost you years of pain. The actions you take will be almost identical, but your motives (especially to do it out of love for yourself, her and you both together) will show up in your tone, body language, and responses and behavior in the future.

You deserve to have a close, pleasurable, intimate, fulfilling, ugly drag each other through the mud, and come out the other side together more capable of loving other people kind of marriage. I hope you experience that gift, and realize you are a gift to those in your life, partly because you are going through this mud right now.

God speed.

Thanks for sharing your experience in this. My counselor and I are working through some of my denial issues, and that opened up the pathway to my working toward a plan for disclosure. We are going to work through details over the coming weeks. Internally, I'm still coming to terms with the shift from working on my issues privately with my counselor to disclosing to my wife and potentially others.

I'm honestly struggling with the logistics of it all quite a bit too. My wife and I both work, and we have very little time alone other than late in the evening after the kids are in bed. Ideally we could find a time during a weekday where a counselor could be present and the kids aren't around but those times are hard to come by. It seems like every potential opportunity has a downside, either that the window would be small to discuss, it would be right before bedtime which isn't ideal for a lot of reasons, or I would have to ask my wife to skip work or some other commitment which would raise major red flags prior to disclosure. Hopefully I can come up with something.

I told my wife everything, all the sordid parts. I was afraid she would look at me with the disgust i feel for myself, but she still loves me and told me so. She helped me pray about it, and has been really supportive. I strongly recommend you tell her and ask her to help you be accountable.

My current plan is to initiate the initial disclosure with my wife on Saturday, after a family gathering, so we will have a few days where we don't have commitments to see friends and family. I am struggling so terribly right now and feel so ashamed and paralyzed. In my heart I know the only way forward is to tell my wife but I am so weak that I don't think I can handle the repercussions. I can't believe I have put myself in this position and that I have done these hurtful things. Thoughts and prayers appreciated over the next few days.