I’m 31 years old. I’ve been with my wife for 12 years, and we’ve been married for 8. She is genuinely one of the best people I’ve ever known: loyal, caring, supportive, and a truly good human being.
Recently we moved to another country, and since then I’ve been struggling with intrusive thoughts and desires that have become increasingly obsessive. Being in a completely new environment seems to have triggered something in me that I don’t fully understand, and it has started affecting my mental health and the way I see my marriage.
I’m currently in therapy trying to understand where this is coming from. Part of me feels like this could be tied to escapism, idealization, compulsive sexual thoughts, or even years of using adult content as a coping mechanism. But regardless of the cause, I feel deeply guilty about it.
The hardest part is that my wife has done absolutely nothing wrong. She loves me, trusts me, and has always been by my side. Meanwhile, I constantly feel mentally conflicted and ashamed of the thoughts I keep having.
Sometimes I question whether I’m unfairly keeping her in a relationship with someone who is struggling internally this much. Other times I wonder if ending a good marriage over fantasies and impulses would be the biggest mistake of my life.
I feel trapped between protecting something real and meaningful, and chasing desires that might only exist because they are unattainable or idealized in my head.
I honestly don’t know whether this is a temporary psychological spiral, unresolved personal issues, compulsive behavior, or a sign that something fundamental is wrong in me.
I’d really appreciate honest opinions from people who may have experienced something similar or have an outside perspective.
TL;DR; I deeply love my wife and she has done nothing wrong, but after moving to another country I started struggling with obsessive intrusive thoughts and desires that are affecting my mental health and how I view my marriage. I’m in therapy and trying to understand whether this is escapism, compulsive behavior, or a sign that I’m fundamentally unhappy. I don’t know if I should keep fighting these thoughts or if I’m being unfair to her by staying.
30 comments
You are using EMOTION as a guidepost for your thought processing, and not LOGIC and REASON.
You guys got together young. It doesn’t seem crazy to be hitting 30’s and wondering what it might be like with others.
The “years of using adult content as a coping mechanism” is a big issue and I’m glad you’re seeing a therapist about it.
All that said, only you can decide if you want your wife and life more than the though of a random hookup that my never happen the way you’re imagining it.
I want you to face a thought. Say it aloud to yourself when you’re alone (or with your therapist), or write it out on a sheet of paper.
**”I no longer want to be in a relationship with my wife. I want to leave.”**
How does it make you feel? Does it make you feel ashamed? Does it make you feel relieved? Does it brush up against something disturbing and frightening inside you? Or does it make you feel nothing, or “that’s not right. That’s not how I feel. I’m *bored* in my marriage, but I want to stay with her.”
Sometimes intrusive thoughts are a reaction to something else. But sometimes intrusive thoughts are accurate thoughts. I once went through a depressive episode when I was three years into a relationship, and it made me want to leave that boyriend. At the time, I was certain my miserable job was making me depressed, and I went into therapy and felt a little better. Then I changed jobs and felt a LOT better. Except…there were still moments where I’d just cry for no reason. Or times when I felt depressed for no reason.
It turns out that the “no reason” was I was in deep denial about how unhappy I was in my relationship. I’m now with my husband. And there have been times when I’ve been depressed. But I’ve never felt so depressed that I want to leave him or bomb my own life.
It’s possible that you deeply love your wife (whom, as you say, is a wonderful person and has done nothing wrong) and still no longer want to be in a relationship with her. You’ve been with her since you were *nineteen*, and I have no doubt you have both grown and become slightly different people at that time. Does the life you have now resemble what 19yo you or 23yo you thought it would look like?
I think that choosing who you want to marry before you hit your late-twenties is making a choice with incomplete data. I felt very strongly when I met my husband at age 24 “oh this is the guy I want to spend my life with”, but we didn’t get married until I was 30, at which point I was *certain* he was the one for me.
Do some soul-searching. Go deep into yourself and dig out some uncomfortable truths. Forget about how much you love your wife (of course you do) and how good a person she is (of course she is) because those details aren’t relevant. Try “I want to leave my marriage” on for size and see how it feels on you.
Moving to a new country is difficult. You don’t mention if you are working, speak the local language or have friends/family in this new country. Maybe these obsessive thoughts are your brain distracting you from the difficulties of adjusting to a new country or any isolation you might be feeling?
Instrusive thoughts happen, and can be distressing, but you can let them go instead of grabbing onto them and making them apart of you.
Like people with OCD have instrusive thoughts of “If I don’t do X thing, something bad will happen.” Giving into that compulsion just strengthens the need to act on it in the future.
Thoughts can be like dreams. Weird ones can pop into your head. It doesn’t mean anything. You get to decide who you are with your actions, not your thoughts.
This is a normal thing that happens when you commit to a relationship early on in life. Relationships get boring, there’s a day-to-day monotony, and that’s completely normal. But when you marry early on in life and have not experienced other people and other relationships, even if you are in a wonderful relationship like you are, you start fantasizing about other things because you have nothing to contrast against what you have now. Even people that have had many relationships and experiences before they got married experienced this. But they have a balance because they understand that even though things get boring, they’ve had other experiences and realize that boring can be okay, given what they have lived and experience before.
I would strongly encourage you to go to therapy by yourself before you blow up your relationship. You need to figure out if you’re having “Fear Of Missing Out” or if you’re truly unhappy in your relationship
“Other times I wonder if ending a good marriage over fantasies and impulses would be the biggest mistake of my life.”
Literally every story I’ve heard where the man left because they thought the grass was greener… deeply deeply regretted it.
I think when people feel they are stuck, they don’t think incredibly rationally. In my 40s, I’ve learned that nothing is really that big a deal. My husband and I spend time together and apart. We also choose each other because we respect each other’s autonomy. If he were feeling this way, I wouldn’t want him to not be happy. And it’s the same way he feels about me. We don’t want to feel like we’re obligated to stay with each other. I’d be miserable if he was with me but didn’t choose to be with me.
As someone who’s fucked around a lot in his 20s, let me tell you something. I get the appeal, it’s great while it happens. I’ll be damned if I don’t finally settle down with a person I love now. After a while, it’s just sex. Meaningless. Desperately trying to fill a void it will never fill. Connection gets you to the long term. At least for me.
You haven’t been alone for 12 years. I mean alone, alone. Up at night, mind racing. Having to sit up in bed completely panicked because you suddenly realized all the things the two of you have done, accomplished, planned to do, no longer exist.
It’s just you. Wishing you still had her love, loyalty, respect.
It’s just you. Knowing no one will ever know you. The real you; the way she did.
Look man. I get it. We all get the itch. But the way you described her–you already know she’s the one.
It’s nothing but thirsty, social media bred-better have a pre-nup, as it should he’s out there now.
Don’t do it. I have time to respond because I lost the one recently. And life is pretty fucking cold right now.
Hey man. Im almost in the same boat as you. Been together with my gf since 19 and i am 30 now. We are still not married tho, as we have our ups.and down in the relationship and both are not ready for something more but at the same time the though of grass being greener on the other side is getting strength and wish to try something else. Which ptobably would be a mistake. Probably i should start therapy as well, with her as well
Sometimes what can be helpful is changing your mindset about your sex life with your current partner. Many people become complacent about that after a while.But if both parties are willing and interested, there is truly an endless number of different and fun sexual experiences you can discover WITH you partner. You do not HAVE to go outside of a relationship to experience new, exciting things sexually. That’s the mindset shift that can make a big difference. A lot of these sexual things are mostly mental and you can cause yourself a lot less distress by changing your mindset.
You keep saying “intrusive desire”. Unless it’s something insane like killing her and eating her spleen, why not just talk to her? Tell her your fantasies? She might surprise you.
Why not role play your intrusive thoughts with your wife? I mean, I am sure she has her own thoughts and you guys might be able to spice up your relationship.
To me, it seems extremely normal to get to this point in your life, when all your formative years have been in the confinement of a monogamous relationship, to now be wondering and in some ways wanting to explore other people sexually. This is why getting these things out of your system in your 20s and not getting into extremely committed relationship so early in life, makes more sense. You are now realizing potentially how much you haven’t gotten to do now, and now, there will be a lot of collateral damage if you decide you need to leave your relationship behind to do them.
I was in a relationship that started young, and it went beyond just sex. I realized we had really grown into people who were no longer romantically compatible and were just really good friends. There was love and still is, but it had grown into just familial love. It was comfortable, but I wasn’t happy. I think the best thing we did was ending the romantic relationship before we started hating each other. We were able to maintain the friendship and familial love and be better parents to our kids that way.
I would say you need to keep working through this in therapy and trying to figure out if this is some passing fancy, or if you really need to end things so you both can find happiness elsewhere. If you have been using porn to cope for years, then it sound like there may be a big gap in something you aren’t getting out of your sex life and relationship with your wife. Is that something you two can work on together?
In my opinion, I think relationships that start in your early 20s and go long term typically tend to crumble in your 30s and 40s. I encourage my kids not to commit to someone in their 20s when their brains are literally still developing. Recent studies show, actual adulthood doesn’t start until 32, because the brain is still changing and growing until then. Especially your frontal cortex. So making life changing choices like having children and committing your life to someone seems better suited for when your decision making brain is fully developed.
Just a question here, but maybe you could talk to your wife about this? I’m not sure if she has noticed a difference in you, or if you guys have had a discussion before about how you are feeling.
Maybe she would we willing to explore options with you. Maybe she is feeling a similar way about feeling as though she has missed out on some experiences from being in a long term relationship.
Could offer you some clarity and ultimately be the push to either bring you too closer, or bring you closer to what the two of you really need.
You’re only going to torture her if you stay. End your relationship and go explore what it is you want. Even if it does end up being the biggest mistake of your life at least you won’t be responsible for ruining someone else’s life who didn’t deserve it. Sounds like you got a lot of growing up to do yet.
PSYCHIATRIC HELP. It sounds like you have developed OCD. Medication could be a game changer.
If your marriage isn’t the problem, then leaving it isn’t the answer
If you moved to somewhere in South East Asia, whatever you do, don’t fall for the honey trap.
Its male biology to impregnant multiple women, its good youre self aware about it. Maybe therapy could help.
I can tell this is agonizing for you, and you’ve gotten some good advice here in the comments already. I just want to give you credit for trying to figure this out before acting impulsively in a way that causes irreparable damage. Please give yourself some grace. Wishing you luck, OP.
I experienced this when I first started traveling for work… it’s like a fervor that takes on when you arrive in a new territory like a damn wolf,.. it’s normal. You just have to recognize it, mitigate it by controlling your environment and reducing exposure to triggers.
Sounds like you have a p*rn addiction which could escalate soon into s*x addiction and acting out. You are searching for that dopamine hit and want more. Isolation in a new country doesn’t help. I would recommend a CSAT a specialized therapist for this type of addiction and attending a SAA group . Similar to Alcoholics Anonymous where you can find support for this issue with others whom experience the same . Please commit to getting help before crossing the flesh boundary and betraying and causing her ptsd forever
Moving countries is a huge thing for the nervous system, even when nothing looks wrong on paper. Big external change often pulls up internal stuff that was sitting there for years.
The pattern you’re describing, thoughts you don’t want, that feel obsessive, that pull you into shame and make you question everything you love sounds less like what you actually want, and more like a loop your mind has got caught in. The harder you push against it, the louder it gets.
That’s worth saying to your therapist in those exact words, if you haven’t already. Some therapists work specifically with intrusive thoughts and obsessive loops, and the approach is quite different from general talk therapy. If your current sessions are mostly about understanding where it comes from, that’s useful, but on its own that kind of work can sometimes feed the loop rather than settle it. Look up therapists who work with intrusive thoughts or OCD even if you don’t think the OCD label fits, the methods they use tend to help with exactly what you’re describing.
One more thing, intrusive thoughts tend to attach themselves to whatever you care about most, that’s part of why they hurt so much. The guilt and shame you’re feeling is more evidence of how much your marriage matters to you.
You don’t have to make a decision about your wife from inside this loop, decisions made from that place rarely hold. Give it time, get the right kind of support, and don’t trust the thoughts as truth yet.
Hope this helps!
Dude, fight your shit. I’ve been an attractive “popular” guy, in college no less.
Sexual gratification like that in no way compares to the love, support and freedom to be exactly who I am in my marriage. It’s not worth giving up. If you do, I strongly believe you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.
How can you know if it’s something you can get through together, unless you communicate? Are you not choosingto not let your partner, be your partner?
It’s amazing what some couples work through. And if they can’t be by your side with your difficulties, then, together, you can work through separation without the untruths creating trauma.
Stop fking worrying dude
We all feel like this, it’s normal
Just don’t act on the impulses, love your wife, and be the guy that she thinks you are and that you know you are
Thinking “What if” always romanticises the missed opportunity without acknowledging the brutal sacrifices and trade-offs that would have been required to achieve it.
This doesn’t resolve the feelings you have, but we as humans tend to lean towards solving short-term discomfort without considering the potential long-term regret.
I don’t think anyone here can give you an answer, but I think you need to look internally and start asking yourself different questions.
Having thoughts and doubts is normal, trust me. Loyalty is an action, not a thought.
This is extremely distressing as I have gone thru something identical, though my situation was toxic. If there is toxicity in your relationship, that is one thing if there is nothing wrong, except for literal doubts, I personally would find a way through couples therapy to make this work.
If you were to break up and ended up finding no one, would it be worth it? I think that’s a good question to ask yourself a relationship that needs to end you end up, realizing that being alone is better than being in it.
But also, yeah, pornography is destroying my brain as well and I really can’t trust any thoughts when it comes to the opposite sex and attraction when I’m in a relapse.
Happy to chat with you further over DM’s about my personal situation if it would help I think it would