My husband's porn addiction

I caught my husband watching live videos of women through an app. (Found out because when i went to pee at night, he left it open and bright on my face when he fell asleep) confronted him a year after because i found out he spent around 1k usd to get access to these rooms. (Guilty, for some reason had an urge to check his app subscription this one time, this was after 1 year of finding out) confronted him via a lengthy message since im terrified of confrontation and he apologized and promised never to do it again. Never talked about it after. 2 years after, found out he has a secret instagram account with ig sexual content sellers and found out he paid money again to get "exclusive content" to about 5 or 6 women? Found out about it through the laptop we use for our daighters online class. Confronted him after a month of contemplating if it was normal, was i overreacting, etc. We talked about it personally and i have expressed that i am not comfortable with it. Told him to delete temptation and he promised he will and that it was the least he could do. I told myself ill forgive him. But i cant seem to forget. 4 months into everything, i thought he changed, we decided to get pregnant with our second. I am turning into this spy monster, which i was previously not! I keep checking what he is doing, and im pretty sure he is still accessing his secret ig account and saving videos of these women everyday. He probably watches porn everyday. I am totally fine with watching porn, occasionally, but do men really do it everyday? He is a loving,hands on father and i should say a very nurturing and caring husband. He always cooks for me, does errands, affectionate with me, but he cant shrug off this habit.

He’s definitely addicted.

I’m a bit conflicted with your message. If I interpret correctly - you are not fine if he pays for it, but you are fine if he watches it “occasionally”.

I’m just wondering what message you’ve sent to your husband so that he’s not getting conflicting messages.

Do men watch it every day? I doubt it.

Does he know he’s doing something wrong that will upset you? Of course! That’s why he does it behind your back. For him to use your daughter’s online device …. Omg

He’s got an issue with mutual respect for boundaries.

Hi! Thanks for the reply.

Yup im fine occasionally i guess cause i know even before we started dating he had this "stash" which i thought was normal for men? Didnt really bother me before. I guess the game changer was the watching live and paying for the rooms? Yes i am definitely not fine when he pays for something because it's all over the internet free, i dont see any reason for you to pay? Unless there's emotion involved? Or am i just thinking like a woman, cause that's how it is with us? Geez im like a ping pong ball, going back and forth in my head thinking it's a big deal, then it's not, then it is, then it's not.

I’d not worry about what other men do every day. Mine doesn’t. But it’s neither here nor there. Yours sounds like he really wants to keep doing it. He just hides it better. Him paying money to direct interact with women would fall into cheating for me. Plus using porn on child’s computer falls into child neglect and abuse for me. I’d sure not want more kids with him and him having all this going on in the same house with me.

You have to decide what’s acceptable for you.

Thank you so much for.the reply. Ok sorry, so to clarify, it's his personal laptop. We just use it for our child's online school, so i had to access my gmail there to get the zoom links. I just shared, cause that's how i found the receipts for the payments to the women, while.i was signing in, you know there's this tab/list of accounts signed in, and one was a completely different alias. So apparently that's his other persona. I dont know, i guess im still confused at this point as to accepting/forgiving him. Geez im a complete.mess, one minute im leaving him, the other, thinks im over reacting. This is giving me extreme anxiety and depression. I keep having different scenarios in my head every hour.

Whether or not it's normal is not really what matters. What matters is what the boundaries are in your relationship, and the bigger issues to me would be his lying and hiding the expenses. You need to decide what's acceptable and what the boundaries are for your relationship and deal with that, not what's normal or anything else, because this has to do with what makes you comfortable and safe in the relationship.

It doesn't matter if it's porn or gambling or gaming or something totally benign: He is LYING to you, HIDING things from you, and spending family money on it. IF you want to equate this to a "boys night out", like something he does occasionally, there still wouldn't be lying, cheating, hiding, etc. There would be parameters, right? Something like every Thursday and he spends $100 drinking and eating out with the guys. But see how the boundaries are very clear? You can be okay with him watching porn occasionally, but define what those boundaries are.

It also doesn't sound like the issue to you is the porn either, since you said you're okay with it occasionally. It sounds like you know too the problem is the lying, cheating, and essentially stealing from your family.

You may not be good at confrontation, so maybe you need to write out what you want to discuss in the conversation then try to have a calm, reasonable conversation with him. And remember that a conversation goes two ways. On the one hand, y'all need to compromise and decide boundaries, but he also needs to make amends for his behavior, IMO.

Thank you for your reply. Yes you are absoulutelt right. Thank you so much for giving me a clear realization. What triggered me was the lying and cheating, because during the 2nd confrontation, i did write in a message that i was not ok with it anymore. And he did promised that the LEAST he could do was delete the apps. I was probably so trusting and forgave right away when he didnt even showed me that he did. Because he always tells me he will never be stupid enough to cheat on me. I guess also at the back of my mind, what i am afraid of is, though i know i am ok with occasional UNPAID porn (cause for me paying for it is like paying a prostitute), but he'll eventually escalate to wanting something more? Maybe not now, maybe next month or next year or 5 years from now or 10, who knows.

I did write what i was feeling, and everything i wanted to say to him. That made me feel better. I just havent had the courage to confront again.

QUOTE=seesaw;7171256]Whether or not it's normal is not really what matters. What matters is what the boundaries are in your relationship, and the bigger issues to me would be his lying and hiding the expenses. You need to decide what's acceptable and what the boundaries are for your relationship and deal with that, not what's normal or anything else, because this has to do with what makes you comfortable and safe in the relationship.

It doesn't matter if it's porn or gambling or gaming or something totally benign: He is LYING to you, HIDING things from you, and spending family money on it. IF you want to equate this to a "boys night out", like something he does occasionally, there still wouldn't be lying, cheating, hiding, etc. There would be parameters, right? Something like every Thursday and he spends $100 drinking and eating out with the guys. But see how the boundaries are very clear? You can be okay with him watching porn occasionally, but define what those boundaries are.

It also doesn't sound like the issue to you is the porn either, since you said you're okay with it occasionally. It sounds like you know too the problem is the lying, cheating, and essentially stealing from your family.

You may not be good at confrontation, so maybe you need to write out what you want to discuss in the conversation then try to have a calm, reasonable conversation with him. And remember that a conversation goes two ways. On the one hand, y'all need to compromise and decide boundaries, but he also needs to make amends for his behavior, IMO.[/QUOTE]

We are total strangers on here so we can’t tell you what to accept. You have to decide yourself

It’s not even about forgiveness. He is who he is. Sure people change but most of the time people tell us who they are and we should believe them.

If you want a man who doesn’t pay women for sex then you should be with a man who doesn’t do that. Different type of a man.

It’s not like changing where he puts dirty socks: hamper or laundry room, that kind of thing people can change and compromise on.

Trying to change his fundamental character traits and life style of a man who lies and enjoys to pay for sex (those private rooms with individual women is eventually paying for sex) is entirely difffernt thing.

In addition those women he’s watching might be trafficked, coerced into this line of work, drugged up (most women in sex work industry-and I know a few irl-have to be intoxicated in order to do all this, they also could be minors. He might be contributing to all these potentially criminal activities

It doesn’t matter whose laptop it is. Your child uses it for school. When you say he is a great father., I really question it. Clearly his child doesn’t come first, he or she not above porn on priorities list

I would not say that someone who is a "loving, hands on father". He had to watch that on his child's laptop?! Likewise, I would not call a man who watches porn everyday, splashes so much money on it and keeps lying to his wife - I would not call that a very loving and caring husband. I guess our boundaries are dissimilar.

No.

Anyone can shrug off a habit IF they wanted to. A habit is not an excuse to keep doing whatever one wants.

What does that even mean? I don't understand your logic that because he is a man, it is okay or 'normal' to watch porn & because you are a woman, your thinking is what... irrational?! This is kinda sexist.

Pretty sure emotion is not involved in this scenario.

Whatever extra it is he is getting from the porn that he paid for, it's not about emotions.

But you are right with the concern that it may evolve into paying for actual prostitutes in the end.

My suggestion: Find out what he would need in real life that would satisfy his needs for sex enough, without having to go to prostitutes.

Like, what kind of sex he'd like with you, and if you can find a way to give that to him, if he can also adjust to you to make you comfortable with it and so on.

Unless he's the kind of man that just has to cheat because they like variety that much. Those exist too.

Have you considered speaking with a therapist that specializes in addiction to porn?

Sex addict. He needs therapy. I would not be okay at all with that. It would be grounds for divorce. Personally, not the kind of man I would be married to. The deception. The addiction. The lack of control over an addiction to the point of spending fairly significant money on it. The possible exposure of my children to it. Nope. You don't have to accept that kind of activity in your marriage. But it's going to take more than just talking about it with him to get him to change. He needs professional help.

Typically obsession with porn and going to prostitutes has nothing to do with what kind of sex they get in real life. Woman providing a man with type of sex he watches in porn or has with prostitutes isn’t a solution. Those are two different things.

It’s kind of implying that it’s her fault he does all that.

You misunderstood what I meant.

I didn't suggest to her to do porn sex with her husband.

I said "what kind of sex he'd like *with her*". Not with a prostitute or porn star.

It was an idea for a possible solution, not blaming anyone for anything. Obviously one's addiction cannot be another person's fault.

I understand how you feel. In the very beginning, I caught my fiancee paying for live cam girls. He lied about doing it. Even kept it up to the point that we went to the bank and said someone hacked our computer or got our credit card number. I was on the computer a few days layer and looked in the browser history and found out he had done it. He apologized and said it wouldn't happen again. He did watch porn alot then but slowly gave that up as well. Then I found out he started talking to and pretending to be in relationships with women online. Lots of women. I was crushed. I confronted him and again he said he wouldn't do it anymore and he would for a while but always went back. We went through this for 2 years. He then went out without me to play pool with a friend and met a woman. He started hanging out with her, hid an entire paycheck from me just so he could take her out. I have a lot of health issues and he said that got to be too much and he needed an escape. That the women didn't mean anything to him it was just a way to get out of his head for a while. Well I can't get passed it and he said he wanted to be done and we split up in November but due to financial circumstances still have to live together. I just have such a hard time because he has always treated me so well and became a father to my children. It feels like there are 2 different people. The one I was in a relationship with and the one that does these things behind my back.

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And I forgot one of the most important things. This whole experience has turned me into a very paranoid suspicious person which I never was before and I hate it.

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from a man's point. most men are driven quite a bit by sex. with most of us accessing porn at some point. it can I guess become a habit. or addiction.
maybe you should try and look at it together and see if you can see what his turn on is. get him so into you that he's not got enough energy or time to access it. being sexually compatible is an important thing in a relationship

have you tried watching it with him? find out what is his thing, I think that most men have a higher sex drive than women. are you sexually compatible? have him more into you so he has not the energy or time for the porn. this may seem very black/white as it could be a genuine addiction issue?