Advice please! (Detox/not alcohol or substance)

Life in Recovery
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I know the title of this post might make some think WTH am I doing here, but there’s no apps for my husband’s addiction. Which is sad because the subject doesn’t get talked about like street drugs, alcohol or gambling and it really should.

My husband is struggling with sex/porn addiction. It’s gotten so bad that despite the progress WE’VE made in repairing our relationship he had tried to sleep with a coworker and lost his whole career because of it. I say WE because though he’s the one with the addiction, we signed up to be partners in life, so we’re BOTH going through this TOGETHER. He’s been porn free for a long time, longer than we thought after going through timelines together. The coworker was at the beginning of August. I’m counting that as a relapse since he’s been otherwise clean. I’m also a recovering alcoholic (clean since 2013!!! Yay me, though I do still have a drink with dinner in social settings. I don’t let myself go overboard, I don’t get drunk, I just enjoy the flavors. Took a long time to get to this point.) I remember the detox. At home, cold turkey, only myself, my husband and my sister knew anything about it. It suuuuucked.

That being said, I’m pretty sure my husband is at the hard part of detoxing. He’s been snappy, angry, impatient, in denial again. More than he usually is, something else he’s been working on. He’s always driven like he’s practicing for NASCAR. It used to scare me, but after 15 years I got used to it. Last night on the way to my sister’s for dinner (15 minutes away, lots of dirt road, we have a Chevy Cruze with front wheel drive. Not made for dirt to begin with.) was the first time in a long time he was scaring me with the way he was driving. Yesterday when we were getting out of the car to see our marriage therapist I mentioned that I wish I could find a necklace that didn’t feel weird because I don’t wear my anniversary necklace anymore. I took my rings and necklace off and literally took his ring off his finger when I found out about the coworker. He took a jab at me saying he was still wearing his. And I had asked him to stop by the corner store so I could get a pop to make a drink at dinner. I asked if he wanted me to grab some beer for him and he took a jab at me saying HE didn’t need to drink. And said it again when my sister offered to make him a drink. He’s been hot and cold tward me for days. One time I tried to initiate and he turned it down. Which I felt like fine, you suck then. I didn’t say anything but I pouted a little. He said how does it feel to get rejected. I’ve never outright rejected him, I’ve held back and he knows why and most of it is his choices.

I’m 100% willing to stand beside him and support him through this. But maybe it’s my brains way to protect me in some way, I really don’t remember being this shitty to anyone when I was detoxing! I might have said things I didn’t mean but not like he’s been. I know detoxing is different for everyone. I’ve only recently gotten to the point in my PTSD recovery to be able to stand up to people, especially my partner, and during the inevitable arguments it increases my anxiety so much to stand up to someone who is yelling at me and screaming at me and trying to intimidate me. He may be shorter than me but if he were to lay hands on me he could really hurt me because I’m very slim, I also have MS so I’m not very strong anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER AM CONCERNED ABOUT MY PHYSICAL SAFETY!!! He’d rather die than resort to hitting a woman. But because of my past when he behaves like that it brings back the fight or flight response. He knows all this, it’s part of the reason why I spend all my time at home. It’s quiet. I do everything I can think of to help him with this. We talk, go to therapy together, work on each other’s projects, try to keep things as normal as possible.

I just don’t know what else to do.

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There are loads of porn/sex addicts on here. I do not share this particular addiction myself, but so many on this forum do. I don’t want to tag/call out anyone in particular but I have no doubt you’ll get some great advice very shortly!

I will say that same as any addiction, the drive to actually change will need to come from within him. You and any external factors can only do so much.

Welcome!

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@TMAC I completely understand that the ball is in his court right now. And it does seem like he wants to make this change. And knowing there’s not much more I can do than I’ve always done doesn’t stop the want to help him. I hate seeing him suffer, even if I know it’s for his own good. Same as it hurts him to see me suffer with MS flares.

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Maybe not, but there is a podcast :innocent:

He may be. It sucks a lot. There’s a list of common withdrawal symptoms for sex addicts here:

Everyone’s withdrawal is different but a common factor is this: do whatever needs to be done to stay sober and clean. For me that included regular meetings and lots and lots of phone calls and texts with people in the fellowship (meeting attendees). It does not include anything that feeds the addiction. He needs to be vigilant about that. In my case I have the apps on my phone controlled and my wife has the password to release the controls. I can use the phone like normal for all the legitimate websites I need.

That :arrow_up: is the only way I have my wife actively involved in any part of my recovery. For us we decided that her emotional journey was hers and mine was mine, and that we both needed to do our own recovery and emotional work so that both of us could be present in our marriage. For us it works.

It is a lot of work, but it is the same as any true recovery: it is always one day at a time, one step at a time.

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@Faugxh thank you so much for your support. This has been a problem for me for much longer than when I said no to him in the first place. I’d put up with so much because that was how I was raised and been made to feel I deserved. I started therapy, at his insistence, years before I got the guts to put a stop to it. He’s not a bad person by any means. Just a shitty husband on occasion. I’ve only ever turned him down when my repeated requests were ignored for his selfishness, he became unattractive to me (and I had been going through a medical issue at the same time that I didn’t clue him in on because of the loss of trust). After all the fracas yesterday he was calmed down enough to talk without fighting and we were able to reconcile. For now at least.

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Your husband is likely grieving the loss of his trusted buddy (his addiction) that has kept him company for a long time and has been a reliable friend. Might it be that he is going through the 5 commonly accepted stages of grief?

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Bargaining
  • Depression
  • Acceptance

For these stages, it’s important to remember that they may appear in random order and more than once. Hope that helps!

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@Dirk he’s been bouncing around between the denial, anger, depression and acceptance. I think he figured out some time ago that bargaining wasn’t going to get him anywhere. I AM trying to be patient with him. I’m just afraid that the other woman isn’t going to be the last relapse and I’m going to get a call sometime saying he’s been killed in an accident because he was driving and using again. I JUST found out about it getting to that point. I’m sure there will be other relapses, just hoping they don’t get worse than what they have already been. I literally just confronted him because he was on his phone and whatever he was doing was more important than taking the dog out and he kept yelling at the dog to quit whining and he’d do it when he was ready, only taking the dog after I got the leash and was going to do it myself. And he wonders why I was fine five minutes ago and I’m irritated now.

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Just popping in to say, check in with yourself from time to time. You matter too. I too was married to someone with a porn/sex addiction. Today we aren’t together and he’s still the same person. It took co-dependency therapy and years post divorce to recover from his addiction. Be good to yourself too 🩷. Don’t leave yourself behind in the process, Queen!

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@Matt if I can get him to actually listen to a podcast I’ll have him check it out. His new job allows earbuds in place of earplugs so we’re going to get him some good ones this weekend. I can try to encourage him to listen while he’s at work sometimes. Our kids ruined podcasts for him with their annoying gamers blasting on their TV’s lol. I’ve mostly been trying to stay out of his way with his own recovery, other than to make sure he’s holding up his end of the deal and reminding him when he’s acting in a way that makes me question his desire to actually do this. He’d never let me put restrictions like that on his phone but when I run into something on my phone that concerns me he’ll go through his phone and delete apps or pages on his social media that I point out. We’re both members of the same pages (except movie franchises that I feel are overrated or music/artists) the ones we’re not AI thinks I want to know so I’ll still see what kind of content he’s able to see. I’ve been in therapy for years before this came to this point, we’re working on his insurance so he can get back with his therapist who’s also a CSAT. And we’re seeing a couples therapist. He doesn’t get overly nosey in mine, and I don’t get nosey in his. If we want to share something we will. There’s a lot we both want to be able to talk to each other about but we’re not ready yet. He punked out on his meeting earlier this week and it did end up with an argument about it. He’d said he had a hard day and couples therapy took a lot of mental toll on him and he just wanted to spend time with me that night. I said okay because we were kid free for the night and I thought we could use the time to talk and work on emotionally connecting and whatever happened… You know. But he ended up just avoiding conversation and wasting time until we went to bed and I told him if he’d just done his meeting (via zoom, we live in the country and in person is the city) he’d have still made it to bed at the same time. I was handling dinner and cleaning up and the farm chores by myself anyway. To tell you the truth he does have content of ME on his phone, and because he’s not using it for masturbating when I’m available to him I’m not concerned about it. If he’s out of town for any reason why would I get upset with him looking at me? That’s the point we’re at with his addiction and why it upsets me so much. Because he’s consistently been choosing other people before me when I’ve always been there. It just got worse and worse. He’s been caught trying to get hookups many times but this last one was way too close. As much as he swears he wouldn’t have gone through with it I don’t trust him enough at this point to really believe that if she had said yes he wouldn’t have. And that happened right when I thought things were improving. Now he needs to buckle down and earn the right to wear his wedding ring, the symbol of his place in my life (which I had just bought the matching silicone set for us for Christmas, apparently at the same time as he was courting the other woman). And as for these other women… How messed up is it that they all looked just like me? At the times I found out about them their hair was the same cut and color, our body types are the same, our fashion choices are the same. He had the same thing at home but was looking elsewhere for it. At the times with the other women involved he hadn’t been looking at random porn either. Just what he’d gotten from them.

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This is all the madness of the addiction. The sexaholic - the sex addict - lives a double life, constantly seeking the “thrill” of the forbidden, the “excitement” of crossing boundaries. That is part of the insanity of the addiction. As long as he is caught in the addict mindset, he will continue to maintain this double life: the surface appearance, and the hidden, secret life underneath it.

I know it’s hard. It’s not fair or right for spouses to have to go through this.

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I’ve recently read “your brain on porn” and “the easypeasy method” both which I have found helpful (although they focus more on porn addiction than sex addiction).
I’m still in my first year of recovery, so by no means an expert, but I’ve picked up a few things so far…

@Matt is absolutely right above, your husband is chasing thrills and excitement aka dopamine. I would ask if he’s at the stage where he really wants to quit or if he’s just going through the motions? I was certainly a motion-goer at the start of my recovery, I was going to therapy for the first time and talking about my issues but expecting a silver bullet from the therapist, it led to a lot of slip ups and relapses because my heart wasn’t in it and realistically it had to come from me.

I would be careful about him having content of you on his phone, if he starts to categorise you in the same way as the rest of his porn that’s not gonna go well because porn addicts generally build up a tolerance to soft core or “safe” porn and in search of more dopamine look to more risqué, kinky, and problematic material which may not align with their values.

I’d suggest both of you reading easypeasy: (https://read.easypeasymethod.org/)

A couple of snippets that I saved in my notes from easypeasy because they resonated with me:

“The optimist sees the bottle as half-full and the pessimist sees it as half-empty. In the case of pornography, the bottle is empty and the user sees it as full.”

“Porn provides no genuine pleasure or crutch and you aren’t making a sacrifice. There’s nothing to give up and no reason to feel deprived.”

Hope this helps, and good luck on your journey!

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@rich13693 ty for your insight. I know that he’s on the dopamine hunt, I’ve talked about it with him (I figured that part out on my own, I took college level introduction courses in my highschool days. So I at least have a leg up, tho like you I’m not an expert, just enough to recognize the issue. Thanks Mr. O!) and our marriage therapist told him the same thing. I’ve tried so hard to get him to understand that therapy isn’t like a magic wand that will fix everything on it’s own, he has to put in the work. i can’t take away my content, not without a fight at this point, most of it he’s had since before this was an issue (that I knew of, apparently it’s always been an issue for him). He has ADHD and reading isn’t his forte but I will check out the ones you mentioned myself and take notes to bring to him. Small snippets stick better with him. As for him going to something more problematic and not aligning with his values, he’s already gone too far trying to get in his coworkers pants. Right now the thing with her that hurts the most is the emotional connection he admitted to developing for her. Throwing away 15 years of loyalty from me for the 6 months of “support” with her. As if I haven’t been here the whole time. Something happened last night that I wasn’t expecting and really threw me off (I haven’t talked to him about it yet, it’s 6:45am here, I have to get started on my farm work soon, I don’t get a day off. I’ll be waking him up soon and I’ll talk with him after our kids leave for the day. All adults and we’ve been keeping them out of it the best we can.). We were getting physical, and it was about her. He works really hard to make sure I know that he’s not thinking about anything else during those times. It really was my own broken brain and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it without putting those thoughts in his head again. Things have been so much like a rollercoaster lately… Stop the ride, I want off! It doesn’t help my mental health, but I don’t know how I could “abandon” him to save myself. I’m not on chemical medication, I hate the way they make me feel. But I do use mmj for my anxiety and depression. I’ve been smoking ALOT lately. He’s been at his new job during the day so I know he doesn’t see it thankfully. I’m really just at my wits end. I have a solo appointment early next week and I will mention all of the advice I’ve been getting here to her.
Again ty. I’m going to go visit my “emotional support” chickens. My anxiety is at like a 9 right now. How does my heart stay in my chest, beating this hard?

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I know you’ve mentioned couple’s
Therapy, but gave you considered individual therapy to help you through this?

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Why are you responsible for his thoughts?

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That sounds really heavy. I am very much not qualified to respond to most of what you’ve written, it must be cathartic to get it out of your head and shared with the community though.

So I do kinda get this, I had never been to therapy before seeing a therapist for the addiction. I imagine some are different and I’ve only seen two therapists so again, not an expert, but I was definitely initially expecting more of a magic wand scenario.
My current therapist after a couple of sessions asked if I really wanted to be there, and at this point I felt that I was properly committed to kicking the addiction, so I think it’s something you have to really go for 100%, no holding back. It’s easy to say, harder to do. I think for me I’ve just tried to change my mindset about the process. Full honesty with the therapist, throw yourself into it, don’t expect them to fix it for you, they’re there to help you organise your thoughts, provide a safe space where you can talk about the addiction (and life in general) and try to help make sense of it all.
My current therapist said that the best results are achieved by a combination of therapy and SAA meetings. I’m yet to attend SAA, but it’s certainly something I’m considering and would like to do at some point.

Yeah, I struggle to concentrate and focus on stuff too, porn will not be helping with that, I would say that “your brain on porn” was the more difficult read, 75% of it is fairly statistic heavy and negative, and the remaining 25% is more solution focussed and positive. Definitely took me a while to get through it.

Easypeasy I smashed out in about 3 days, it’s on a screen so a good replacement for the nasty stuff he spends hours looking at on a screen…
I’d recommend having a read of it yourself too, it’s a fairly easy read and there’s a section for partners of porn addicts.
Oh and there’s also an audiobook if he prefers to just stick it on and listen.

You sound like an incredibly understanding wife, just be careful that you don’t burn out. Emotional support chickens sound awesome, stay positive and stay strong. :slight_smile:

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@Serena10 we both have individual therapists. He can’t see his until November because of insurance issues, but my insurance pays for my individual therapy and the couples. I get the problem he’s having with that and I’ve said many times to him that as long as he’s putting in effort elsewhere that I can accept it and do what I can to help him at least find a stopgap.

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Honestly, your posts are such a hard read and I’m so so sorry you’re going through this. It seems like the only person fighting for your marriage here is you. Your husband cheated (emotionally, at least), lost his job because of it, is angry, and letting his frustrations out on you through verbal abuse. There’s no point where he’s showing to take responsibility for his actions nor does he seem half as interested in his recovery as you are.

Recovery from any addiction starts with accountability and a genuine desire to improve. Verbally abusing your spouse and using addiction-related buzzwords like relapse and detox to excuse unexcusable behavior ain’t it. You deserve so much better. No one blames spouses of alcoholics for setting boundaries and eventually leaving when things get too much. And no one blames spouses who got cheated on for doing the same. Why is your husband getting away with constantly trampling on those vows?

Also, I would like to note that this is an abstinence community. If you’re still drinking and smoking weed… are you really in recovery? That’s not a question you need to answer, just something you might find helpful to ask yourself.

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@Amy30 aaaactualy… I was about to post on this thread something that went down yesterday concerning his behavior since this whole thing started this month. He kept insisting that there was yardwork to do and I made him stay inside and talk with me. He started to get pissy about it but once I got him talking his attitude changed. After a long talk he broke down and even if he didn’t actually apologize for the last week of being a jerk to me I did see real remorse for everything he’s been doing. He’s agreed he needs help. He just didn’t want to admit it or know how to ask. I’ve been trying to get him to quit hiding things from his mom who never got the whole story of his job and operating with minimal information. There’s things I have known at least a little about and I can’t tell anyone here, let’s just say it’s mind blowing and makes me murderous thinking about. We had to go to her house anyway so I convinced him that he needed to tell her, she has the right to know. I was present for the work talk, I know how much it hurts him to see her so disappointed in him, I could see it. They went in another room and talked about the things I can’t say so his sisters couldn’t hear. I talked with them a little, their adults and they can handle what I was telling them. I did get more information from them about his past actions I didn’t know that I confronted him about later, he admitted to everything. Between his discussion with his mom and my talk with the girls everyone agrees he needs help. And he now agrees. I’ve already told him that I need to see actual effort, not just going through the motions if he wants to prove he’s serious about recovering. I’m going to have some faith in him right now. This gives me some hope for him. Even if we split I still would want him to be happy and free of this.

As for the drinking and smoking, I know I don’t have to defend myself to anyone but I think that I should clear things up on that. I only ever have one or two drinks with friends, and I always have someone to make sure that’s where it stops if I don’t do it myself, which has not been a problem for me. I don’t drink every day, and I don’t get drunk. There’s copious amounts of alcohol in my house. Most of the bottles are covered in dust because we don’t have it more than once or twice a year.
And the weed is a medication for me, it’s prescribed by my Dr. I did start taking too much of it when I realized it was just making me sick instead of making me feel better like it’s supposed to I toned it down to the therapeutic level.
Not everyone is an addict just because they don’t live a life of “purity and abstinence”. I’m cognizant of my limits and for my own health and self respect that’s something I can handle. Your bringing that up feels very confrontational to me. Almost like you think I shouldn’t be here.

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I have also been reading your 2 posts and understand you are trying to help your husband with his issue and it’s sound like you are genuinely wanting to help but if you are as you identify yourself a recovering alcoholic you will realise people who love you can talk till their blue in the face, monitor you, force you etc and none of it will work until you are ready yourself (of course you can say yes I’m ready and pretend but it only lasts so long)

Being on the same pages, apps as him and syncing information is all controlling behaviour and while it is understandable you would like to know what’s going on it may create more secrecy and lying.

You can’t micro manage someone into recovery but you can put in boundaries of what you will and won’t accept and sometimes you have to let people drown to save themselves.
It sounds harsh but am currently doing this in my own life.

As for @Amy30 comment, I agree as your comment below contradicts itself, anyone is welcome but please remember we are ultimately an abstinence group, so refraining from talking about using is appreciated.

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@BJM my apologies for healing myself and trying to help others. I’m out. It was nice to meet you all. Good luck.