Women who gave porn-addicted partners another chance, how did it turn out?
December 16, 2025
I’m not talking the occasional use of porn. Instead, someone who was genuinely addicted to it and it impacted their lives/relationships.
39 comments
I terminated the relationship. Therapy didn’t even help him, he was too far gone. It affected our relationship in every single way you could possibly think of. I deserved better so I ended things.
Edit: I guess I should put a TW for SA
I was forced to marry my ex husband at a very young age. Everything was perfect until I found out his secrets and lies. One of them being porn addiction. He got angry with me for finding out, blaming me and saying that he was trying to give me the perfect life and make it good for me, but I thought “How could it be good? How could I have been happy while being lied to? Everything I believed is a lie.” I couldn’t be happy anymore, and he started doing it openly or while he held me down in bed and used me. At one point during one of his clarity moments, he realized how bad of a person he was for it. He tried to make it better, and I think he did actually try for at least a few days. But when I got suspicious again because he wasn’t touching me, I was horrified that it had only intensified his addiction. And then it intensified the abuse. He got even more mad, saying that he was trying to give us a second chance and that I ruined everything. I didn’t believe it was me, because I’m a very confident person. I’m safe now, with a loving partner who doesn’t like it, so no worries. I escaped as soon as I was able to.
Tldr; I was blamed for everything and it only got worse, and so did the lies.
I’ll never trust a man who is into it, but I will never judge a woman for trusting her own partner. Not every man is like my ex. I’m sure my experience is considered more extreme than most, as well.
My personal take is that men who watch it will always find a way to justify it, because most of them know it’s sex trafficking and how harmful it is to emotional and sexual relationships they’re in, they just don’t care.
When my husband proposed to me in the early 90s I asked him what were the skeletons in his closet, was there anything I needed to know.
He told me it was porn, he had magazines and VHS tapes of various porn.
I walked away, I didnt want that in my life or my children’s lives.
He swore to me he didnt need it anymore and that he sold his entire collection.
I never saw his collection, but the money he made from it paid for entire Honeymoon.
My now husband used to follow about 50+ girls on IG and send photos back and forth between friends of girls practically naked. We went over multiple times how inappropriate this was and how I do not want this in a relationship. Probably about 3 times I caught in his boys group chat sending photos, not him but the friends after he said he stopped or left the chat
He stopped being friends with them because he finally realized they’re all 30 year olds acting like 13 year old and going nowhere in life.
We unexpectedly got pregnant and I told him if I’d ever catch him doing things like that again I’d leave him. We moved also at the time and I haven’t noticed him doing it anymore. I really think it was the people he was around.
And in 3 years I haven’t noticed anything. I know he occasionally watches porn but nothing on the scale of addicted anymore.
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Tried to work through it for another two years while falling out of love until eventually he blamed the addiction on not being attracted to the way I “present” myself (goofy, not trying super hard in the makeup etc departments, open about the times I wasn’t feeling confident in my body) and we broke up. It was a relief. Thanks to EMDR I no longer have a strong bodily reaction to phrases like “I have to tell you something,” but it took a long time to rebuild general trust in other people and enjoy sex again. My current partner helped a lot by being so patient, consistent, and accepting of everything about me. I don’t regret trying, as I know I did everything I could, but the trying was painful and the mental and emotional impact took a long time to fully heal from. If I was single I would never date someone with any kind of addiction again.
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We’re divorced now, I went after half the assets we built together. In process of divorce, I unearthed undocumented income he tried to hide (like he hid the porn addiction for so many years) and a judge made him pay for his actions. No clue where he is now or what he’s doing, don’t care. I’ve since bought a house, got a super low stress job, got a dog and am now really happy and stress free. Leave the porn addicts, they’re idiots.
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I dated someone who claimed to have watched every video on pornhub and couldn’t find anything else that was interesting. Every time he went to the bathroom to take a shit, he had his phone and was watching videos. He never did anything vile to me sexually, but knowing that I was never “enough” took a huge mental toll. I left him years ago but my relationships after and being cheated on just reiterated to me that I will still, never be enough. I struggle with that today actually. I hate that my current bf watches it.. it throws me into that same mental state. He’ll never understand that but it’s true. I feel so closed off and ugly when I know it’s used instead of me. Like I’m second best compared to someone else that isn’t even real
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I had an ex who was a sex addict/ porn addict. He tried therapy briefly, but at the end of the day, they can only change if they really want to change. And he didn’t really want to 🤷🏼♀️
He ended up cheating on me, lots of lies and trying to cover things up. Honestly at that point I wasn’t even surprised anymore, just tired.
I got a divorce. He had a false sense of entitlement from it, thinking that women wanted him. He told me he was following neighbors, trying to look down women’s blouses at work or church, all kinds of disgusting things. I couldn’t see him any other way after that.
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Divorced. lol
We broke up. It wasn’t the sole reason for the break-up, but it was definitely a contributing factor. He would sit on the couch scrolling through PornHub like it was a newsfeed. He was obsessed with very large women and would get mad at me for not looking like them. He wanted to watch porn on the TV while we had sex and I found it so degrading so I refused and he kicked me out of the hotel room in my towel and wouldn’t let me back in. He fancied himself a socialist and champion for the working class and would say I was a bad feminist for not supporting women in the workplace (mind you, never once did this man say a word about other female-dominated jobs like teaching and nursing).
Cheated with online dommes, in person ones, kept engaging with people into crazy things.
Mind you I’m super kinky myself, more than 99% of the population so it’s not like he was deprived. But he was SO addicted to the stuff he consumes. He’s gunna die alone.
I left obviously
It’s slowly destroying me from the inside out. It triggered a relapse of my eating disorder, and it has turned me into a completely sexually-averse person. I can’t unsee some of the shit he was watching, and it’s disturbing. I miss who I was before I was with him.
Destroyed my self confidence and gave me relationship ptsd.
I would say my bf was borderline addicted. He has a history of addiction in other areas and unfortunately that shit can transfer to other areas especially when you stop one. He was not to the insane point where he would watch with me around or miss work or something, but he was watching every single day the second I left the house and the second he got home before me. He also paid for online stuff before we got together which is a total red flag imo. Do not go near a man who would do that. I told him how I felt and he was resistant at first. He said it was a me problem, I’m insecure, and my opinion is “silly”. Very disrespectful. If I compared examples of “would you feel loved and respected if I did ___?” of course there was a double standard. Over time he seems to have come to understand a little better. I do not have any reason to believe he’s lying to me but terrified that he could be, as he lied about other stuff at one time. Honestly he let me block adult content on his phone which is the only thing that has helped give me some peace of mind. I understand there are ways around it but it helps. Anyone reading this, just know you do NOT have to accept porn in your relationship. There truly are real men out there who won’t engage in this behavior either because they’re better than that or because you’ve shared your feelings and they understand.
Not a partner, but a boyfriend of three years. I broke up with him. Our chemistry and intimacy were great, but there was always something off about it. We tried everything, but nothing worked. He used to say that when he was stressed out, he consumed porn to relax, but that wasn’t true. He was using it to procrastinate and escape the reality of life. I mean, come on, you can’t be stressed out every single day. The time he wasted on porn could have been used to address the issues he was facing.
Now, I’m with a man who hasn’t used porn for decades, and it’s really different.
Oh he raped me when I was drunk…till I gave in & I guess it got boring cause I was using alcohol to numb myself, so he started raping me in my sleep. And the emotional abuse was worse. He would actually go to therapy usually when I would cry or something but do it again. He was trying to force me to get a huge tattoo of his name on my ass with like a whole of his hand and he tried to force me to marry him. I would even find little washcloths of cum all around the house. The only time he complemented me was when he was talking about my body and his jokes turned to sex. Crazy part while all of this was happening he was complaining to his military friends(mostly females) that I was not being affectionate. So when I broke up with him, I became one of his villains and he still remains a perfect victim.
I hope he has a very unpleasant death✨that man traumatized me😭💔
Erectile dysfunction’d
He told me he resented for wanting him to get help. He hoped I wouldn’t find out until we were married and living together, but all I heard is he hoped I would never leave him. I cried and cried. I apologized for having a small chest and butt. I felt like I wasn’t enough. I tried making it worse until I started to dread his presence because it meant my nervous system was going to kick in.
So I left. I hate that it took so long.
For me, it never really worked out. I did give him another chance, but to this day I honestly can’t tell whether it was because he didn’t want recovery badly enough, or whether the addiction itself was just that deep. Either way, we’re no longer together (for a really long time).
For a long time after giving him that chance, the relationship kind of just… existed. Sex eventually stopped being a real part of it, mostly because I was so turned off and disconnected from my own body. Knowing what he was consuming made it impossible for me to feel safe, desired, or present. And as many people here probably know, porn addiction often escalates..the content gets more extreme over time. Some of what I found wasn’t even something I could fully process or make sense of…that alone did a lot of damage.
I left. Every now and then, out of boredom or curiosity, I check his social media. He’s married now and has several kids. And honestly, from the outside, it doesn’t look like much has changed. I still occasionally see him follow OnlyFans models or women clearly tied to that kind of industry and then unfollowing them again later. To me, that just signals the same cycle repeating itself.
Never get why men prefer pron over a partner
Porn was just scratching the surface of what he was doing behind closed doors, he was terrible to me and was cheating and I found out by going through his phone one day. I left and never looked back and now I’m with a real good man. 10x the man
The constant porn consumption made him believe he could take what he wanted from me without my consent. We’re divorcing.
He cheated, run far away
My husband is almost 4 months sober. I am learning to love him again. Things are getting better. I still have hard times, but with professional help and willingness to recover we are doing better.
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Have him watch Don Jon the movie!
is anyone actually ok with their partner dabbling in this stuff? I’m a fella, & hand on heart I don’t access ‘porn’, i’ve had partners & discovered their search history… Some of it has blown me away to be honest. I’ve had discussions about it, but feel it’s human nature, unless of course it’s bothering your relationship (which for me it hasn’t).
I also had a mild porn addiction and he showed up for me in every single way other than that. We talked through it. We got a couples therapist for a bit. But actually the biggest thing that helped us was living together to hold him accountable. Our sex life got much much better and we are much happier now. But we are the EXCEPTION after a lot of tears, hard work, and CHOOSING each other. We are a team. Sometimes you need a different player on your team and that’s okay. But because everything else was so good and he had shown me he could consistently show up in other ways I decided to work with him on it.
Look at how he treats you in every other aspect and HE HAS TO BE WILLING TO DO THE WORK FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP. You will never fix a man who doesn’t want to fix himself. No amount of love can do that
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I know you asked about women who gave them another chance…but I left my porn-addicted cheating ex. A couple years later after he remarried, he got arrested and sent to federal prison for the kind of porn he ended up getting into. Totally destroyed her life.
I’ve been in two serious relationships and both of them were/are extremely dependent on porn. I don’t want to use the word addicted because I don’t think it was to that point exactly, but maybe I am lying to myself.
With my ex, I caught him subscribing to OF girls, making a ton of burner accounts on different apps to follow porn accounts and porn stars, casually scrolling through porn every time he went to the bathroom, etc. I really don’t even have an issue with moderate porn use, but he would compare me to porn, want me to look/act like porn, and would make me feel like shit if I didn’t live up to the standard in his head. I begged him for years to stop with the porn but he just found new ways to hide it. Eventually I found out he was actually cheating on me as well, and the relationship ended. The damage to my self esteem over those years was immense.
Fast forward to my relationship now. At first I didn’t notice and believed him when he said he didn’t watch porn much. But after a couple years together I have connected all the dots. He purposely avoids having sex with me so that he can watch porn instead, almost never orgasms with me, gets really upset if I don’t act a very specific way or say certain things that I know align with what he likes in porn, and rarely can stay hard with me. The other night I saw him casually strolling through porn images while we were on the couch watching tv together. It’s exhausting, it hurts, it destroys my confidence and self esteem, and it makes me feel like I’m not good enough. I have no idea what to do because I love him more than anything and I know he loves me, but sometimes it truly feels like he loves porn more than me.
I wouldn’t recommend anyone be in a relationship with someone who is a heavy porn consumer, but at the same time, I really don’t think there are any men who aren’t these days.
It got out of hand.
/s
In one now, I dissociate. He cheated on me early in the relationship (first few months) so I tell myself at least it’s not someone and it’s “just online” though it is super emotionally cheating it feels. Ya I know I should leave him, but I’m in a tricky relationship and situation… don’t judge me.
He also is a A 1 gaslighter when being called out on things, it’ll literally say x videos… etc on screentime on the iPad and he’ll still say no.. this no that. He won’t admit that it’s a crucial reason why he has ED, it’s evident. I used to be very promiscuous and each guy I dated or slept with who couldn’t keep it up the whole time were those with either drug addiction or porn addiction (yes each male in my life would be super communicative and open with me) of when no strings attached… all healthy dudes would be rock solid hard. My partner ed pills don’t even help fully because his addiction, which he hides and pretends he doesn’t take them? What is it embarrassment or shame? Or secretive ?
I tell him all the time you expect me to fuck like a porn star 24/7 that’s not realistic.. people have “lazy sex” all the time… ( we live together) I’ll be tired asf or something I have health issues and inflammation flares and my body hurts and feels pain at barely being touched… not to mention my pelvic pain from fibroids.. I’m not in the mood I’m not in the mood, then he’ll be passive asf and be like you’re never in the mood when we literally had great sex a night or two before, just a child, he doesn’t realize the damage it’s done to our relationship, because I constantly think “why even try” so ya I put low effort into sex most of the time because I am not excited… not only that he only wants to do porn moves like fingering hard which yuck. don’t turn me on… and not only that he’s so predictable… . It makes me feel like my love languages aren’t met. I like sensuality and quality time…and emotional intimacy… he only sees intimacy as in fucking etc…. I’m bored honestly and yes it has subconsciously fucked with my confidence in the bed room… mostly bc of ED I can’t help but think “I can’t turn you on” but deep down I know I’ve been a awesome fuck buddy to some and had other great sex in past relationships and I try not to let it get to my head. If I’m before my period and extra emotional I will bring this stuff up and it’ll be a huge fight. I’m like you need to stop watching porn then u can’t expect me to be this and that it’s not reasonable… for instance we’ll be having a great “session” for a LONG time then he’ll get soft and need me to go down on him again…. Over and over it’s exhausting and a turn off for me personally. By then I’m not in the mood anymore and yes it seems like a chore. Venting here obviously lol. Anyways it’s not great I don’t recommend. Though no one is perfect and idk everyone’s relationships are different but if you aren’t entangled with them early on I’d say break up, it’s depressing to be unfulfilled… I’ll say that…
39 comments
I terminated the relationship. Therapy didn’t even help him, he was too far gone. It affected our relationship in every single way you could possibly think of. I deserved better so I ended things.
Edit: I guess I should put a TW for SA
I was forced to marry my ex husband at a very young age. Everything was perfect until I found out his secrets and lies. One of them being porn addiction. He got angry with me for finding out, blaming me and saying that he was trying to give me the perfect life and make it good for me, but I thought “How could it be good? How could I have been happy while being lied to? Everything I believed is a lie.” I couldn’t be happy anymore, and he started doing it openly or while he held me down in bed and used me. At one point during one of his clarity moments, he realized how bad of a person he was for it. He tried to make it better, and I think he did actually try for at least a few days. But when I got suspicious again because he wasn’t touching me, I was horrified that it had only intensified his addiction. And then it intensified the abuse. He got even more mad, saying that he was trying to give us a second chance and that I ruined everything. I didn’t believe it was me, because I’m a very confident person. I’m safe now, with a loving partner who doesn’t like it, so no worries. I escaped as soon as I was able to.
Tldr; I was blamed for everything and it only got worse, and so did the lies.
I’ll never trust a man who is into it, but I will never judge a woman for trusting her own partner. Not every man is like my ex. I’m sure my experience is considered more extreme than most, as well.
My personal take is that men who watch it will always find a way to justify it, because most of them know it’s sex trafficking and how harmful it is to emotional and sexual relationships they’re in, they just don’t care.
When my husband proposed to me in the early 90s I asked him what were the skeletons in his closet, was there anything I needed to know.
He told me it was porn, he had magazines and VHS tapes of various porn.
I walked away, I didnt want that in my life or my children’s lives.
He swore to me he didnt need it anymore and that he sold his entire collection.
I never saw his collection, but the money he made from it paid for entire Honeymoon.
My now husband used to follow about 50+ girls on IG and send photos back and forth between friends of girls practically naked. We went over multiple times how inappropriate this was and how I do not want this in a relationship. Probably about 3 times I caught in his boys group chat sending photos, not him but the friends after he said he stopped or left the chat
He stopped being friends with them because he finally realized they’re all 30 year olds acting like 13 year old and going nowhere in life.
We unexpectedly got pregnant and I told him if I’d ever catch him doing things like that again I’d leave him. We moved also at the time and I haven’t noticed him doing it anymore. I really think it was the people he was around.
And in 3 years I haven’t noticed anything. I know he occasionally watches porn but nothing on the scale of addicted anymore.
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Tried to work through it for another two years while falling out of love until eventually he blamed the addiction on not being attracted to the way I “present” myself (goofy, not trying super hard in the makeup etc departments, open about the times I wasn’t feeling confident in my body) and we broke up. It was a relief. Thanks to EMDR I no longer have a strong bodily reaction to phrases like “I have to tell you something,” but it took a long time to rebuild general trust in other people and enjoy sex again. My current partner helped a lot by being so patient, consistent, and accepting of everything about me. I don’t regret trying, as I know I did everything I could, but the trying was painful and the mental and emotional impact took a long time to fully heal from. If I was single I would never date someone with any kind of addiction again.
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We’re divorced now, I went after half the assets we built together. In process of divorce, I unearthed undocumented income he tried to hide (like he hid the porn addiction for so many years) and a judge made him pay for his actions. No clue where he is now or what he’s doing, don’t care. I’ve since bought a house, got a super low stress job, got a dog and am now really happy and stress free. Leave the porn addicts, they’re idiots.
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I dated someone who claimed to have watched every video on pornhub and couldn’t find anything else that was interesting. Every time he went to the bathroom to take a shit, he had his phone and was watching videos. He never did anything vile to me sexually, but knowing that I was never “enough” took a huge mental toll. I left him years ago but my relationships after and being cheated on just reiterated to me that I will still, never be enough. I struggle with that today actually. I hate that my current bf watches it.. it throws me into that same mental state. He’ll never understand that but it’s true. I feel so closed off and ugly when I know it’s used instead of me. Like I’m second best compared to someone else that isn’t even real
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I had an ex who was a sex addict/ porn addict. He tried therapy briefly, but at the end of the day, they can only change if they really want to change. And he didn’t really want to 🤷🏼♀️
He ended up cheating on me, lots of lies and trying to cover things up. Honestly at that point I wasn’t even surprised anymore, just tired.
I got a divorce. He had a false sense of entitlement from it, thinking that women wanted him. He told me he was following neighbors, trying to look down women’s blouses at work or church, all kinds of disgusting things. I couldn’t see him any other way after that.
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Divorced. lol
We broke up. It wasn’t the sole reason for the break-up, but it was definitely a contributing factor. He would sit on the couch scrolling through PornHub like it was a newsfeed. He was obsessed with very large women and would get mad at me for not looking like them. He wanted to watch porn on the TV while we had sex and I found it so degrading so I refused and he kicked me out of the hotel room in my towel and wouldn’t let me back in. He fancied himself a socialist and champion for the working class and would say I was a bad feminist for not supporting women in the workplace (mind you, never once did this man say a word about other female-dominated jobs like teaching and nursing).
Cheated with online dommes, in person ones, kept engaging with people into crazy things.
Mind you I’m super kinky myself, more than 99% of the population so it’s not like he was deprived. But he was SO addicted to the stuff he consumes. He’s gunna die alone.
I left obviously
It’s slowly destroying me from the inside out. It triggered a relapse of my eating disorder, and it has turned me into a completely sexually-averse person. I can’t unsee some of the shit he was watching, and it’s disturbing. I miss who I was before I was with him.
Destroyed my self confidence and gave me relationship ptsd.
I would say my bf was borderline addicted. He has a history of addiction in other areas and unfortunately that shit can transfer to other areas especially when you stop one. He was not to the insane point where he would watch with me around or miss work or something, but he was watching every single day the second I left the house and the second he got home before me. He also paid for online stuff before we got together which is a total red flag imo. Do not go near a man who would do that. I told him how I felt and he was resistant at first. He said it was a me problem, I’m insecure, and my opinion is “silly”. Very disrespectful. If I compared examples of “would you feel loved and respected if I did ___?” of course there was a double standard. Over time he seems to have come to understand a little better. I do not have any reason to believe he’s lying to me but terrified that he could be, as he lied about other stuff at one time. Honestly he let me block adult content on his phone which is the only thing that has helped give me some peace of mind. I understand there are ways around it but it helps. Anyone reading this, just know you do NOT have to accept porn in your relationship. There truly are real men out there who won’t engage in this behavior either because they’re better than that or because you’ve shared your feelings and they understand.
Not a partner, but a boyfriend of three years. I broke up with him. Our chemistry and intimacy were great, but there was always something off about it. We tried everything, but nothing worked. He used to say that when he was stressed out, he consumed porn to relax, but that wasn’t true. He was using it to procrastinate and escape the reality of life. I mean, come on, you can’t be stressed out every single day. The time he wasted on porn could have been used to address the issues he was facing.
Now, I’m with a man who hasn’t used porn for decades, and it’s really different.
Oh he raped me when I was drunk…till I gave in & I guess it got boring cause I was using alcohol to numb myself, so he started raping me in my sleep. And the emotional abuse was worse. He would actually go to therapy usually when I would cry or something but do it again. He was trying to force me to get a huge tattoo of his name on my ass with like a whole of his hand and he tried to force me to marry him. I would even find little washcloths of cum all around the house. The only time he complemented me was when he was talking about my body and his jokes turned to sex. Crazy part while all of this was happening he was complaining to his military friends(mostly females) that I was not being affectionate. So when I broke up with him, I became one of his villains and he still remains a perfect victim.
I hope he has a very unpleasant death✨that man traumatized me😭💔
Erectile dysfunction’d
He told me he resented for wanting him to get help. He hoped I wouldn’t find out until we were married and living together, but all I heard is he hoped I would never leave him. I cried and cried. I apologized for having a small chest and butt. I felt like I wasn’t enough. I tried making it worse until I started to dread his presence because it meant my nervous system was going to kick in.
So I left. I hate that it took so long.
For me, it never really worked out. I did give him another chance, but to this day I honestly can’t tell whether it was because he didn’t want recovery badly enough, or whether the addiction itself was just that deep. Either way, we’re no longer together (for a really long time).
For a long time after giving him that chance, the relationship kind of just… existed. Sex eventually stopped being a real part of it, mostly because I was so turned off and disconnected from my own body. Knowing what he was consuming made it impossible for me to feel safe, desired, or present. And as many people here probably know, porn addiction often escalates..the content gets more extreme over time. Some of what I found wasn’t even something I could fully process or make sense of…that alone did a lot of damage.
I left. Every now and then, out of boredom or curiosity, I check his social media. He’s married now and has several kids. And honestly, from the outside, it doesn’t look like much has changed. I still occasionally see him follow OnlyFans models or women clearly tied to that kind of industry and then unfollowing them again later. To me, that just signals the same cycle repeating itself.
Never get why men prefer pron over a partner
Porn was just scratching the surface of what he was doing behind closed doors, he was terrible to me and was cheating and I found out by going through his phone one day. I left and never looked back and now I’m with a real good man. 10x the man
The constant porn consumption made him believe he could take what he wanted from me without my consent. We’re divorcing.
He cheated, run far away
My husband is almost 4 months sober. I am learning to love him again. Things are getting better. I still have hard times, but with professional help and willingness to recover we are doing better.
[removed]
Have him watch Don Jon the movie!
is anyone actually ok with their partner dabbling in this stuff? I’m a fella, & hand on heart I don’t access ‘porn’, i’ve had partners & discovered their search history… Some of it has blown me away to be honest. I’ve had discussions about it, but feel it’s human nature, unless of course it’s bothering your relationship (which for me it hasn’t).
I also had a mild porn addiction and he showed up for me in every single way other than that. We talked through it. We got a couples therapist for a bit. But actually the biggest thing that helped us was living together to hold him accountable. Our sex life got much much better and we are much happier now. But we are the EXCEPTION after a lot of tears, hard work, and CHOOSING each other. We are a team. Sometimes you need a different player on your team and that’s okay. But because everything else was so good and he had shown me he could consistently show up in other ways I decided to work with him on it.
Look at how he treats you in every other aspect and HE HAS TO BE WILLING TO DO THE WORK FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP. You will never fix a man who doesn’t want to fix himself. No amount of love can do that
[removed]
I know you asked about women who gave them another chance…but I left my porn-addicted cheating ex. A couple years later after he remarried, he got arrested and sent to federal prison for the kind of porn he ended up getting into. Totally destroyed her life.
I’ve been in two serious relationships and both of them were/are extremely dependent on porn. I don’t want to use the word addicted because I don’t think it was to that point exactly, but maybe I am lying to myself.
With my ex, I caught him subscribing to OF girls, making a ton of burner accounts on different apps to follow porn accounts and porn stars, casually scrolling through porn every time he went to the bathroom, etc. I really don’t even have an issue with moderate porn use, but he would compare me to porn, want me to look/act like porn, and would make me feel like shit if I didn’t live up to the standard in his head. I begged him for years to stop with the porn but he just found new ways to hide it. Eventually I found out he was actually cheating on me as well, and the relationship ended. The damage to my self esteem over those years was immense.
Fast forward to my relationship now. At first I didn’t notice and believed him when he said he didn’t watch porn much. But after a couple years together I have connected all the dots. He purposely avoids having sex with me so that he can watch porn instead, almost never orgasms with me, gets really upset if I don’t act a very specific way or say certain things that I know align with what he likes in porn, and rarely can stay hard with me. The other night I saw him casually strolling through porn images while we were on the couch watching tv together. It’s exhausting, it hurts, it destroys my confidence and self esteem, and it makes me feel like I’m not good enough. I have no idea what to do because I love him more than anything and I know he loves me, but sometimes it truly feels like he loves porn more than me.
I wouldn’t recommend anyone be in a relationship with someone who is a heavy porn consumer, but at the same time, I really don’t think there are any men who aren’t these days.
It got out of hand.
/s
In one now, I dissociate. He cheated on me early in the relationship (first few months) so I tell myself at least it’s not someone and it’s “just online” though it is super emotionally cheating it feels. Ya I know I should leave him, but I’m in a tricky relationship and situation… don’t judge me.
He also is a A 1 gaslighter when being called out on things, it’ll literally say x videos… etc on screentime on the iPad and he’ll still say no.. this no that. He won’t admit that it’s a crucial reason why he has ED, it’s evident. I used to be very promiscuous and each guy I dated or slept with who couldn’t keep it up the whole time were those with either drug addiction or porn addiction (yes each male in my life would be super communicative and open with me) of when no strings attached… all healthy dudes would be rock solid hard. My partner ed pills don’t even help fully because his addiction, which he hides and pretends he doesn’t take them? What is it embarrassment or shame? Or secretive ?
I tell him all the time you expect me to fuck like a porn star 24/7 that’s not realistic.. people have “lazy sex” all the time… ( we live together) I’ll be tired asf or something I have health issues and inflammation flares and my body hurts and feels pain at barely being touched… not to mention my pelvic pain from fibroids.. I’m not in the mood I’m not in the mood, then he’ll be passive asf and be like you’re never in the mood when we literally had great sex a night or two before, just a child, he doesn’t realize the damage it’s done to our relationship, because I constantly think “why even try” so ya I put low effort into sex most of the time because I am not excited… not only that he only wants to do porn moves like fingering hard which yuck. don’t turn me on… and not only that he’s so predictable… . It makes me feel like my love languages aren’t met. I like sensuality and quality time…and emotional intimacy… he only sees intimacy as in fucking etc…. I’m bored honestly and yes it has subconsciously fucked with my confidence in the bed room… mostly bc of ED I can’t help but think “I can’t turn you on” but deep down I know I’ve been a awesome fuck buddy to some and had other great sex in past relationships and I try not to let it get to my head. If I’m before my period and extra emotional I will bring this stuff up and it’ll be a huge fight. I’m like you need to stop watching porn then u can’t expect me to be this and that it’s not reasonable… for instance we’ll be having a great “session” for a LONG time then he’ll get soft and need me to go down on him again…. Over and over it’s exhausting and a turn off for me personally. By then I’m not in the mood anymore and yes it seems like a chore. Venting here obviously lol. Anyways it’s not great I don’t recommend. Though no one is perfect and idk everyone’s relationships are different but if you aren’t entangled with them early on I’d say break up, it’s depressing to be unfulfilled… I’ll say that…