My boyfriend’s porn addiction (that I just found out about) has been escalating, and I honestly don’t know what to do anymore.
psa. we’ve been living together for 2+ years and together for 3.
It’s all happened over the span of just a month. In the first week of September, I caught him watching it on his phone. He apologized, but by the second week he was hiding it and I caught him again. Instead of stopping, he got sneakier—by the third week, I discovered he was using a second phone I didn’t even know existed. I thought that was his breaking point, but now, today, I’ve found out he never actually stopped after the Android incident. He just switched over to watching it on our Xbox.
Every time I catch him, he makes promises. Every time, I want to believe him. When I found out about the secret phone, I completely broke down crying, unable to speak, just falling apart. He made it seem like that was his “wake-up call,” saying things like “I thank God you found out, now I can really stop” and days later when brought up in conversation he says “May God strike me down tomorrow if i ever watch it again” and “If it happens again, I’ll take initiative and leave.” But he said all that while already watching it on the Xbox. He was lying to me as he literally said it.
On top of that, he basically took sex away from us. One time when he asked me to do a certain position, I told him it made me uncomfortable because I knew he had searched it on porn. Instead of talking it through, he just stopped being intimate with me at all. And what did he do during that time? Watched porn on the Xbox.
I followed up with him about everything today, and while he apologized, he flipped things on me. He gave me the ultimatum of whether I wanted him to stay or leave. I never even brought that up. I told him I never wanted him to leave, I want him to actually respect how I feel and understand how his choices are affecting me.
After that, he reached out to his family, who are very religious. Their advice to him was to lean on the Bible. And while that might help him personally, when I suggested that we go to couples therapy together to work on the deeper issues like the porn, the sneaking around, and the lying he was clearly upset i asked and declined.
So now I’m stuck with this weird situation where he’s willing to “fix things” by following his family’s advice, but not willing to actually do the work with me in therapy to rebuild trust.
TLDR- BF apologized for his porn use but gave me a stay/leave ultimatum. He’s choosing to “fix it” with the Bible (per his family’s advice) but refused therapy with me to actually address the porn, lying, and sneaking.