Day 303 – How my wife / partner and I walked through my pornography addiction, from my point of view. Part I

I started watching porn consistently at the age of 22 in the year 1995.  Before then, my first time that I recall seeing porn was at about the age of 9 or 10 at my father’s coworker’s house in a TV room that we kids were consigned to while the elders mingled elsewhere.  After that, the next time I saw porn was my friend’s father’s secret stash at about the age of 11 or 12.  From there, I developed a bit of a taste for porn and liked it, but because it was hard to get, I rarely looked at it and never master-bated to it.  I actually didn’t master-bate at all until I was about 20 or so. 

So, one day it occurred to me that there were Adult Video shops where I could simply walk in and buy or rent a video (back in the day).  At that moment of 'realization', a light went on in my mind, where it occurred to me that through watching porn that I can see what it’s like to simply have the power to have sex when I want with whom I want and in the way I want with like no consequences and no effort!  Now, I was having difficulty with relationships with women at the time.  I couldn’t open myself up.  So, like, after a while of not being able to form relationships with women, suddenly this idea about porn that I created sounded just like a great solution.  Now of course, I also had my reservations.  I also knew that this couldn’t be good.  But I did it anyway. 

From there, I was like instantly addicted to porn.  I was constantly going back searching for the hottest girl to watch.  I became very satisfied sexually, without any actual sex.  Now, you may think that I sound pretty ‘bad’; but, actually, most of my guy friends at the time were also watching porn already before me.  Porn was like ‘normal’ to us guys.  It is what ‘healthy’ males do. 

So anyway, years went by and my addiction to porn just grew stronger with time.  I would get mind possessed to just go master-bate at times where it felt like I just had to do it no matter what.  Then of course, this addiction to porn became my ‘dirty little secret life’ that no one really knew about other than me because of being ashamed and also because of the cultural ‘taboos’.  So, like, I was living as split personality – my porn personality where I couldn’t wait to see the next hottest female get fucked in the most perfect way, and then also my ‘normal’ personality where no one would ever suspect, but of course my guy friends. 

And somehow, with this inter-personally debilitating condition AKA a pornography addiction, I managed to meet my partner of whom I am with today, years later.  Now, she was no angel too.  At first, we both shared our porn addiction together.  Then, out of a tremendous amount of guilt that I had had over the years of using porn all suppressed within me, I just felt like I had to quit, and that my partner should too.  She agreed and stopped using porn ever since then. 

I, however, fell back into the addiction, not on purpose, but because I couldn’t help myself.  So, in this, I fucked myself because I actually had an open relationship within regards to porn.  I could have worked out more of a support scenario between us where we just helped each other eventually stop.  But, because I had this need to end porn all at once, per decree, and my partner held her end of the bargain, I trapped myself into a point of having to hide my addiction from her.  This was made even more so, because she was so happy with her decision (and our decision) to quit.  She would say ‘how wonderful it was that we decided to quit porn together’, and I would just feel awful, and scared to tell her the reality of the situation.

Now, I would sneak porn every now and then, until a couple of years later, after having our first child.   A few months after my partner got pregnant, our sex life took a dive due partly to my lack of being prepared to know how to handle myself in such a situation.   So, I started watching even more porn to relieve my stress and to fulfill my sexual desires of which were on hold with her.  Finally one day, she caught me, and from that point she formed a hatred and a resentment to me. 

She was seriously hurt.  You see, she felt as if I had conned her, in a way, as if I tricked her into quitting porn while I still watched it.  Plus, looked at it as if I was lying to her about the addiction for years on end, especially within the point that I was doing it while she was under the impression that I had quit.  Plus, she felt as if I was cheating on her.  Plus, if that weren’t enough, she was very much not happy with me on other fronts as well.  She almost immediately wanted a divorce. 

At that time, I had a 6 month-old son.  I couldn’t accept and allow a divorce while my son is only 6 months.  I ‘loved’ my wife, but keeping us together for the sake of my son, was of greater importance.  Thus, I did everything in my power to ‘save’ the ‘marriage’.  I will pick up from here, in part II.