Sex / Pornography Addiction Support Group
Sexual addiction, also sometimes called sexual compulsion, is a form of psychological addiction to sexual intercourse and other sexual behavior.
I am the wife of a sex/ pornography addict. I have a specific question, but bear with me while I offer some background. He was exposed to pornography at 6 years old. We married young and within a year, he was having affairs. We've been married for 16 years now. After 7 years of marriage, he confessed that he had had several affairs and that they were meaningless. Within a year, he said he wasn't sure he still loved me, he moved out for a month or two then decided that he was wrong and he wanted to be married. Fast forward about 6 years. He was actively involved in an affair, said he didn't love me, and then there was the build-up and he moved out for a few hours. Then realized he had made a mistake and was home before dark. During this time, I found out he was a sex addict. He was texting/ sexting many women. He had slept with a few of them. He was watching pornography constantly. I've tried to be understanding. He has admitted that the idea of seeing me with someone else turns him on (sometimes, depending on his mood). He has tried to do better. I think he has. But I know he has relapses every few months as I caught him as recently as last summer/fall trying to hook up with random strangers. I know that he doesn't like this part of himself and he doesn't want to be this way and I do he means it. But once again the restlessness and confusion is rearing it's ugly hear. He admits that he is self-centered. He tells me that he loves me and cares for me, but he doesn't feel what he thinks he should. This is how it always starts and he goes through this cycle. How, in your experience, has sex/pornography addiction affected your emotional stability? How has it affected your ability to maintain long-term healthy relationships? Have you ever been in a situation where you just don't feel what you want to be able to feel? What did you do? This time is different, he recognizes the cycle, but I don't want to put our children through the pain of "I'm leaving, no I'm not" again. It's time for something to change. I will share your comments with him so if there's any advice that you can offer him directly, that would be great. Maybe I can even get him to see the benefit of online support groups (maybe).
Perhaps what I am going to write here as reply may rattle you a bit but that is not the intention. I have been sober for 5 years now and I learned a lot about myself in the process perhaps my lessons may be of help to you. So I will enumerate them for you for easy reference
1) Does porn/ sex addiction affect emotional stability?Yes, for me when I was not indulging, I was irritable all the time and having to wait to get my fix amounted to torture. Now since I was using porn to deal with my unwanted emotions, there was no emotional depth to me whatsoever, since men are not allowed to show emotions, porn seemed to be a good way to channel them. In time, this became a very unhealthy pattern where I could not feel anything whatsoever, leaving me to a machine like existence, only to get up indulge, go to work solely to indulge again. This went on for 30 some years.
2) This led me to realize that my claims of loving others were lies, since I did not even loved myself because people who love, accept and care about themselves do not engage in self destructive behaviors.
3) I had a partner who also loved porn and not suprisingly it escalated to orgies, and polyamorous behavior. That relationship ended after a year. I view this period of my life as the lowest actually. I am glad it ended but it took me years before I was able to actually seek help for the porn addiction
4) The only way for me to recover was to own all of my unhealthy behavior, become responsible for all of my actions and start a new life as someone who never saw porn. I entered a recovery program, asked God to heal me (I am not religious) and followed a strict schedule which I have to this day. It took me 2 years to feel somewhat normal, that is where an entire day would go by without intrusive images.
5) I went close to 2 years without any sexual behavior whatsoever to give my brain a chance to reboot. It worked.
6) During recovery I had to learn to name and feel all my unwanted emotions, instead of using porn as a band aid. I also had to learn to accept myself exactly as I was at the beginning of the recovery period, if I could not do it then, there was no other time to do it. I learned that I am whole, complete and perfect as I am. As God does not create anything imperfect. That was crucial for me because it meant that I did not need anything external to feel complete, all I ever need I already have within me but that did not mean that I could not grow spiritually or keep improving myself
7) That brings me to loving myself, this was the hardest but in a way the easiest, if God loved me as I was, as imperfect as I was, then who on Earth was I to usurp that assertion. If my cats loved me no matter what, then they knew something I did not which was that love is unconditional and that I am never separated from the source that created me and it only feels that way when I do unloving things towards myself or others.
8) If I was going fully recover from this, I had to purge everything related to my old life, stop going to peep shows, hang out with toxic folks.
9) I also stopped cursing and started to change my vocabulary towards the positive. I also stopped talking about the addiction or complain about how I felt, I only spoke of what I was doing in terms of recovery action plans with my mentor. There was no reason for me to allow it anymore time that I had allowed it to steal from me.
10) Last but not least, my recovery took as long as it took, I gave it no time table because doing so was counter productive, to me every day was a day closer to freedom. Every time I saw that the 90 day moratorium was still not quite where I'd like it to be I added 90 more days
All and all, I had to tweak it many times, every time I saw something was not working. It takes creativity and resilience to persist but it pays off
Most important, I learned something very valuable. The addiction though by all means it was self induced, it happened for me, I would not know all that I do now if it were not for it. It is true that I had to overhaul all my beliefs and assumptions and let go of a lot of things I thought were true but it was well worth it.
Last, recovery has to be all you know for a long time, your life revolves around it 24/7. It requires commitment and accountability but mostly maturity. But it also requires something most of us refuse to do: an open mind so that we are willing to change for the better.
Hope this helps,
Wolf
This is a traumatic situation for the both of you. I hope that at the very least you can find a support system/therapy so you can begin to heal and create a space for yourself that is free from the addiction, with or without him, but if he is willing to commit to a program, he can recover.
If you want to learn about the impact of this addiction on the brain, then I suggest you look here. It might help him too to understand how this is impacting him. This website helped me a lot and made sense to my husband as well.
www.yourbrainonporn.com