My partner and I have been together about 3 years. We like most couples stayed out with firey dynamic and then our sex life fell off a cliff about 7 months in as he went through a stressful time in his life. I felt very suddenly unwanted, and he eventually confided that he had been watching porn and jerking off often, leaving him no sexual energy for me. This has set off what has been a rough two years for our sex life.
My last partner was addicted to porn, lied about it, and our lack of intimacy ultimately led to a 6 year relationship falling apart where we had a house and dogs together. I tried to leave all this trauma at the door when in this new relationship. Our sexual dynamic was so good, and I imposed no limitations. But when I realized it was happening AGAIN, I think something broke in my brain, and since then I’ve reacted in ways I’m not proud of.
I am hypersensitive to my partner jerking off and watching porn, because I feel consistently unwanted. This has triggered a shame cycle for him – where he has been dishonest about his own sexuality because he doesn’t want to hurt me more, and then hides more and more of his sexuality from me, initiates less, and then I become more suspicious that porn is the issue, even though the issue is me and my bad reaction to a pretty normal activity which is watching some porn and jerking off here and there, not in excess. He is not my ex.
Fast forward to now. Our sexual dynamic has once again been off due to even MORE stress in his life. I have not asked again about porn and if it was affecting his desire for me. To be honest I didn’t want to know. But out of what felt like nowhere, he made a long and pretty in depth reassuring conversation with me in the car. He came to me, and said “I don’t talk to you about this much, but sometimes it can be tempting to view sexual content, when you’re not home out out of town. I’m really proud of not engaging with this stuff. I need you to know that I am committed to not watching porn and would never, ever do that to you”.
It was longer than that, but that was the content. I hadn’t asked him to stop as I feel it’s not my place, but this conversation a couple months ago gave me a lot of comfort. I felt seen, I felt like my trauma was being healed, and I felt more comfortable with myself. Even though I still didn’t really feel very desired, it helped me to know that porn and him looking at other naked girls wasn’t the reason.
Then a couple weeks ago, we got into it about sex again. I was feeling so low, and the topic got brought up. He eventually confessed to me that he does watch porn “one to two times a month” (I am guessing more tbh) and he had been too afraid to tell me, but he has realized that the shame around it is why he hasn’t been initiating sex. He sees to genuinely want to heal our sex life, and is seeing his role in it, and is really trying. I was however, SO confused and hurt by this, because of that long speech and how things went down. During this conversation he promised it was just when I was out of town etc.
A few days ago I was sick for the first time in a year, and got up to ask for his opinion on if my tonsils were too swollen, I was panicking. He seemed weird, and the next day told me that he had jerked off. I am ashamed for asking but asked if he used porn and he said yes. He said that he is genuinely giving everything he has to working on our sex life, but I was sick and unavailable, and he did nothing wrong. I don’t even think he did anything wrong – but also just…it hurt. I’ve been sick one day of this entire year and he immediately went to porn.
I am having a really hard time with all of this. This is what’s so hard – our sex life is really improving. He came to me yesterday, and we had the hottest sex ever. I felt really desired. I see that he is like…really trying. And that being honest with me about this shame is really helping him. I really love and support the journey he’s on. I don’t think he has anything to be embarrassed about. I think my issues with occasional porn use are mine to own. And I feel optimistic that we will move forward, have a better sex life based on more openness, and slowly return to that firey place.
But multiple times a day, I get hit with this nauseous, sick feeling and panic. I still can’t understand why he made that speech to me in the car. I cannot for the life of me understand why he would be so reassuring and kind of fabricate this whole story/promise that wasn’t true, especially because it was unprompted. What he said gave me comfort for a long time, and while I feel optimistic about our sex life, I still feel really lied to and betrayed. I find myself having a hard time trusting loving or reassuring things that he says. It’s kind of eating me alive going over that conversation again and again in my head, but I have no idea how to even bring it up without making it seem like the issue was the porn….in reality the issue was the lie. We are finally going better for the first time in so long, and what good will piling shame on the porn topic do?? But I feel so hurt still.
Tl;dr – my partner are a pretty extreme statement to me about his porn use, and it wasn’t true? How do I communicate with him that the lie is haunting me, without making him feel shame and potentially regress on our intimacy?