This is my first time telling my story outside of a counselors office, to my now estranged wife, and a couple close friends who struggled with the same thing. I am a porn addict, I’ve been watching porn since I was 10 and it has destroyed the thing that means the most to me, my marriage to my best friend. I watched for decades until it became a routine that I struggled to break and felt literal withdrawals I didn’t even think we’re possible with videos when I tried to stop for too long. Today I am 26 days, 20 hours sober (or since last viewing if you will) and I live in a borrowed room in a very generous friend’s house. I’ve relapsed 3 times since September 15th, each time getting longer apart, this is the longest I’ve gone so far and funny enough, I have my wife to thank for that too. She’s my accountability partner, I gave her the keys to my computer and my phone, what isn’t blocked, she can see, and for the first time in a long time I feel a little comfort knowing that I cannot escape through another lie or cover up another relapse.
With porn, I broke my wife’s trust repeatedly constantly falling back on it to cope with the things I did not like about me, my shames, my insecurities, and my past traumas that triggered my need for it over and over and over. It caused so many more problems to follow, problems I ignored by escaping into porn even more. I lost sight of how beautiful my wife is, I compared her to women I saw on a screen and destroyed her self worth and self image. I neglected her emotionally and was too spent physically to care about her needs. I was angry and I snapped at her or found time away from her to sneak porn. I became persistently depressed that I tried to solve with more porn to get a moment of good feelings. Now she lives alone in our home trying to repair the 7 years of damage I did to her. I’m the one person who cannot comfort her or give her the affirmations she needs. Now that I’ve regained some semblance of clear mindedness, it tears me apart knowing that no matter how much I want it, I can’t comfort her.
Now, we are just friends, while we maybe, stressed maybe, try to repair us. Right now, I’m the friend she doesn’t trust, the friend that she criticizes herself for even thinking for a moment that she could trust. Hearing that, hearing the word ‘divorce’, hearing that she can’t even touch me, hold my hand, kiss me, it’s the worst feeling I have ever felt in all 32 years of my life I have ever experienced and I’ve experienced a lot of pain no one should. Even still, with the prospect of more pain to come, I’m in it for the haul, but it’s a living hell not having her be sure she can stay to fix it. The porn wasn’t worth this. The cover for my shame wasn’t worth this. The dishonesty was not worth this.
So let me say this, if you can’t choose between your addiction and your loved ones, your spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, personfriend, whatever, because you feel shame and vulnerability choosing the latter…trust in my experience and rip your god damned chest open and give them everything or that addiction will do it anyway and steal everything anyway. None of this is worth losing love, none of it.