# Considering divorce/ husband's porn addiction / sex deprived



## MellyGizelly

Im 33 year old married for 2 years now but together since high school (15+ years).. We now have two young children and have been trying to make things work for years now. I am reaching a breaking point and I see no effort on his part. It's getting to the point where I'm falling out of love and realizing that this may not ever get better. Desperately seeking advice and just an outlet as I literally have never spoke to anyone about this before.


----------



## BioFury

MellyGizelly said:


> Im 33 year old married for 2 years now but together since high school (15+ years).. We now have two young children and have been trying to make things work for years now. I am reaching a breaking point and I see no effort on his part. It's getting to the point where I'm falling out of love and realizing that this may not ever get better. Desperately seeking advice and just an outlet as I literally have never spoke to anyone about this before.


I'm sorry you're going through this :frown2:

Is the lack of sex, and his porn use, the only serious issue you are experiencing as a couple?

How long have you been dissatisfied with the sex? In what ways have you attempted to resolve the issue in the past?


----------



## Spicy

Please tell us what the issues are, and what you have said/done/tried to improve things. What you think his side of the story is.

The more info you can provide on what you are going through, the much better our replies will be. 

Welcome to TAM. Sorry for your current struggles. We want to help.


----------



## MellyGizelly

Thanks for the quick response... Just a little background on us- we got together in high school but he was a couple of years older than me. He was my first boyfriend, first sexual partner but he was much more experienced than I. I always felt insecure because I was not confident and inexperienced but I have always had a high sex drive and was willing to try and do whatever to satisfy him. After years I realized that I was always worrying about his pleasure, always initiating sex and I had never even orgasmed. Sometimes he would turn me down and sometimes it only lasted 10 minutes. So as I got older, I always felt like I wanted more sexually. We would talk about it but no action would ever be taken... 

Fast forward to the past 5ish years, we got pregnant and it changed me a lot. I wanted to accomplish serious goals in my career, buy a home, save money for the future and I don't enjoy going out and drinking like we used to. He seems to not have grown out of these things. We can't see eye to eye on goal planning, he still has a hard time disciplining himself financially and doesn't like to help take care of the house. Although he's a great father, he is not as involved as I want him to be. Aside from that, our intimacy issues have gotten worse. I feel SO insecure since he seems to never want to have sex with me that I refuse to initiate sex because it feels like I'm forcing him which is a major turn off. We've had so many conversations about this and he always has an excuse. Sometimes he seems remorseful and admits he's addicted to porn/masturbating and that he can't keep a hard on during regular sex (true story) and sometimes he's very defensive and tells me he doesn't want to have sex with me. It's so hurtful and my confidence is at an all time low. I have been supportive and told him I'll help him and be understanding that this is a real "addiction".. I've suggested therapy.. I've put the effort he wants from me.. but nothing has changed. He doesn't put any effort. I feel like I'm constantly willing to help him, please him, give him chances but I get nothing in return at all. I really feel like I've taken so many different approaches in hopes that something will help but I just can't do it if he refuses to put an ounce of effort.

Now, I am sexually frustrated and really finding myself seeking attention from men, hoping to meet someone, and just really longing for a "relationship" because I don't feel like I have one. These are new feelings that I've never allowed myself to feel before but I'm finding it harder to push these needs to the side...


----------



## farsidejunky

You deserve better.

This board is littered with men who wish they had a wife that was as interested in sex as you.

That said please, PLEASE do not have an affair. End your marriage before doing so.

Your integrity is too important to give away.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk


----------



## Cynthia

MellyGizelly said:


> Now, I am sexually frustrated and really finding myself seeking attention from men, hoping to meet someone, and just really longing for a "relationship" because I don't feel like I have one. These are new feelings that I've never allowed myself to feel before but I'm finding it harder to push these needs to the side...


This is called an exit affair. You don't need an affair to exit.

Adultery makes you a less than ideal partner for a good man. If a man will cheat with you, he will cheat on you. Don't go that route. If you are done, be an adult and take care of business. Start the process and get a divorce.


----------



## Diana7

I would ask him to chose, you or the porn. Sometimes it takes the risk of loosing their family for men to stop. Nothing will get better until he stops. This is one of the many dangers of porn use, that men cant have normal sex with a real person. 
Generally it sounds as if you have grown up but he hasn't. I do feel for the children though and I have to wonder why you married and had children with this man knowing what he was like.

AS others have said though, please don't cheat, it solves nothing.


----------



## MellyGizelly

Diana7 said:


> I would ask him to chose, you or the porn. Sometimes it takes the risk of loosing their family for men to stop. Nothing will get better until he stops. This is one of the many dangers of porn use, that men cant have normal sex with a real person.
> Generally it sounds as if you have grown up but he hasn't. I do feel for the children though and I have to wonder why you married and had children with this man knowing what he was like.
> 
> AS others have said though, please don't cheat, it solves nothing.



Thank you. I agree with you all, that having an affair is definitely not the route to take. I think I desperately have been wanting to believe the promises he has made to change and fix everything. I guess I also was thinking that he will grow up soon and maybe getting married would help? In hindsight it definitely just made our situation more difficult. 

I have taken the approach of an ultimatum in the past, threatening to leave him if he continues to watch porn and not work on our relationship. It has not worked because after about a week or two of him "trying" we always get back in the same routine and I have never left like I have said I would. I think a huge part of me is afraid to take the next step and actually attempt to end things. Since he's never put any effort, I always felt like he didn't care for my feelings or cared for our relationship. I believe that if I did choose to divorce him he would easily accept it and not try to fight for us. I fear of how painful that reality would be for me especially since I have been desperately fighting for this to work for years. It is just painful to feel like I would do anything for this man who would not even lift a finger to save our marriage.


----------



## BioFury

MellyGizelly said:


> Thanks for the quick response... Just a little background on us- we got together in high school but he was a couple of years older than me. He was my first boyfriend, first sexual partner but he was much more experienced than I. I always felt insecure because I was not confident and inexperienced but I have always had a high sex drive and was willing to try and do whatever to satisfy him. After years I realized that I was always worrying about his pleasure, always initiating sex and I had never even orgasmed. Sometimes he would turn me down and sometimes it only lasted 10 minutes. So as I got older, I always felt like I wanted more sexually. We would talk about it but no action would ever be taken...
> 
> Fast forward to the past 5ish years, we got pregnant and it changed me a lot. I wanted to accomplish serious goals in my career, buy a home, save money for the future and I don't enjoy going out and drinking like we used to. He seems to not have grown out of these things. We can't see eye to eye on goal planning, he still has a hard time disciplining himself financially and doesn't like to help take care of the house. Although he's a great father, he is not as involved as I want him to be. Aside from that, our intimacy issues have gotten worse. I feel SO insecure since he seems to never want to have sex with me that I refuse to initiate sex because it feels like I'm forcing him which is a major turn off. We've had so many conversations about this and he always has an excuse. Sometimes he seems remorseful and admits he's addicted to porn/masturbating and that he can't keep a hard on during regular sex (true story) and sometimes he's very defensive and tells me he doesn't want to have sex with me. It's so hurtful and my confidence is at an all time low. I have been supportive and told him I'll help him and be understanding that this is a real "addiction".. I've suggested therapy.. I've put the effort he wants from me.. but nothing has changed. He doesn't put any effort. I feel like I'm constantly willing to help him, please him, give him chances but I get nothing in return at all. I really feel like I've taken so many different approaches in hopes that something will help but I just can't do it if he refuses to put an ounce of effort.
> 
> Now, I am sexually frustrated and really finding myself seeking attention from men, hoping to meet someone, and just really longing for a "relationship" because I don't feel like I have one. These are new feelings that I've never allowed myself to feel before but I'm finding it harder to push these needs to the side...


It sounds like he's a lazy and selfish lover. Sitting in a chair and looking at porn requires no effort on his part, so he just does that, regardless of it's effect on you.

In my mind, the only real play you have is giving him an ultimatum. You're already thinking about divorce, so why not drop the bomb on him? If you're serious, and ready to act, then you could have him served with divorce papers. When he asks in a panic what's going on, you can tell him you're not willing to put up with his porn addiction, and lack of sexual interest in you, any longer.

If he doesn't respond with positive changes, then you know where you stand, and have already taken the necessary steps. If he turns himself around, then you can always not proceed with the divorce.


----------



## farsidejunky

Stop watching what he says.

Start watching what he does.

Intent is cheap...and easy...sort of like an affair.

Results...results matter. Measure him by them.

If he isn't measuring up, and you have done all you feel you can, then be done. 



Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk


----------



## Adelais

Ask him to go to the website called "Your Brain On Porn" and to get back to you with what he has learned about how porn changes the body.

If he were to get off porn and stop masturbating, his body would go back to "normal" meaning how it was before he was addicted.

https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/

He can also research "No Fapping" videos on You Tube and learn from other men how their libidos leveled out and that sex improved when the stopped masturbating. It takes a bit of time (weeks) but some men prefer sex over masturbating once they quit. They would rather wait for a good session with their wife, than take matters into their own hands. (pun intended)


----------



## Personal

MellyGizelly said:


> After years I realized that I was always worrying about his pleasure, always initiating sex and I had never even orgasmed. Sometimes he would turn me down and sometimes it only lasted 10 minutes. So as I got older, I always felt like I wanted more sexually. We would talk about it but no action would ever be taken...


Some men just aren't good at sex and aren't particularly interested in doing what they can to help their partners enjoy the sex they share.



> We've had so many conversations about this and he always has an excuse. Sometimes he seems remorseful and admits he's addicted to porn/masturbating and that he can't keep a hard on during regular sex (true story) and sometimes he's very defensive and tells me he doesn't want to have sex with me.


For what it's worth, you would likely be in the same boat, if he had no access to pornography.

Erectile disfunction is not caused by pornography. Sure it would be nice if it was caused by that, since that would offer an easy solution yet that isn't the reality of it all.

Depression, anxiety, a lack of attraction/desire, medication or a medical problem like prostate issues etc would be the issue.



> Grubbs, J. B., & Gola, M. (2019). *Is pornography use related to erectile functioning?* Results from cross-sectional and latent growth curve analyses. The journal of sexual medicine, 16(1), 111-125.
> 
> *Design:* Longitudinal, within-subject
> *Population:* Sexually active US men
> *Sample Size:* 433
> 
> *Summary:* Latent growth curve analyses demonstrated no significant relationships between any pornography-related variables and trajectories of ED.





> Prause, N., & Pfaus, J. (2015). *Viewing sexual stimuli associated with greater sexual responsiveness, not erectile dysfunction.* Sexual medicine, 3(2), 90-98.
> 
> *Design:* Experiment
> *Population:* Adult males
> *Sample Size:* 280
> 
> *Summary:* VSS use within the range of hours tested is unlikely to negatively impact sexual functioning, given that responses actually were stronger in those who viewed more VSS.





> Landripet, I., & Štulhofer, A. (2015). *Is pornography use associated with sexual difficulties and dysfunctions among younger heterosexual men?.* The journal of sexual medicine, 12(5), 1136-1139.
> 
> *Design:* Online survey
> *Population:* Croatian, Norwegian, and Portuguese men
> *Sample Size:* 3,948
> 
> *Summary:* We found little evidence of the association between pornography use and male sexual health disturbances. Contrary to raising public concerns, pornography does not seem to be a significant risk factor for younger men's desire, erectile, or orgasmic difficulties.





> De Graaf, H., & Wijsen, C. (2017). Seksuele gezondheid in Nederland 2017. *Sexual health in the Netherlands 2017*.
> 
> *Design:* Nationally -representative survey
> *Population:* Age 18-80
> *Sample Size:* 17,000
> 
> *Summary:* For most people, watching porn does not replace or hinder sex with a partner. In fact, people who watch porn more often also have sex with a partner more often. Porn viewing in the last six months was not related to sexual problems.





> Prause, N., Steele, V. R., Staley, C., Sabatinelli, D., & Hajcak, G. (2016). Prause et al.(2015) *the latest falsification of addiction predictions*. Biological psychology, 120, 159-161.
> 
> *Design:* Letter to the editor/Review
> *Population:* Not applicable
> *Sample Size:* Not applicable
> 
> *Summary:* Taken together, our choice to use sexual images as cues is appropriate, because they do not constitute the consummatory phase. We agree that the failure of this literature in general to recognize that sex film viewing is almost always occurring with masturbation remains a major oversight and likely indicates a doubly inaccurate misnaming of “porn addiction”. Since sexual desire was a predictor in the study, it was not appropriate to segment the sexual arousal reports by the known confound: gender. Appropriately, we predicted that, to be consistent with other studies of addiction, cue reactivity should be enhanced to sex cues in those who claim to struggle with problems regulating their use. Instead, it was associated with decreased reactivity. The discussion should move from testing the addiction model of sex film viewing, which has had multiple predictionsfalsified by independent laboratory replications, to identifying a better fitting model of those behaviors.





> Droubay, B. A., & Butters, R. P. (2019). *Pornography, religiosity, and social work.* Journal of Social Work, 1468017319852599.
> 
> *Population:* Social work students
> *Sample Size:* 136
> 
> *Summary:* Highly religious students rated pornography more addictive on average. Of particular concern is that practitioners’ values might lead to over-pathologizing behavior & labeling it as addictive. This is significant in that addiction is a heavy label that may harm clients.





> Prause, N., Steele, V. R., Staley, C., Sabatinelli, D., & Hajcak, G. (2015). *Modulation of late positive potentials by sexual images in problem users and controls inconsistent with “porn addiction”*. Biological psychology, 109, 192-199.
> 
> *Design:* Experiment
> *Population:* Men and women with/out problem use
> *Sample Size:* 122
> 
> *Summary:* Specifically, those reporting problems regulating their VSS use who also reported higher sexual desire had lower LPP in response to VSS. This pattern appears different from substance addiction models.





> Ley, D. J. (2018). *The pseudoscience behind public health crisis legislation.* Porn Studies, 5(2), 208-212.
> 
> *Design:* Commentary
> *Population:* Not applicable
> *Sample Size:* Not applicable
> 
> *Summary:* Unfortunately, the label of porn addiction is commonly thrown at these individuals in a manner which feeds moral panic, diverts attention and resources from effective, evidence-based strategies to support these individuals, pathologizes otherwise-benign behaviours, serves a profit-driven, exploitative industry, and confuses cause and effect.





MellyGizelly said:


> I've put the effort he wants from me.. but nothing has changed. He doesn't put any effort. I feel like I'm constantly willing to help him, please him, give him chances but I get nothing in return at all. I really feel like I've taken so many different approaches in hopes that something will help but I just can't do it if he refuses to put an ounce of effort.


This is what it boils down to, if your husband is unwilling to try to meet your sexual desires you are left with the choice of acceptance of the status quo or stop bashing your head against the wall to no end.

You might consider affording him a last opportunity to address this, by telling him that you will divorce unless things change for the better. Or instead you may as well accept that he is unlikely to do anything to change, since he is evidently okay with how things are and let him go now.

At the end of the day if he really wanted to address these issues, he would already be doing something about it.

I hope that whatever you choose moving forward, you can both kind to each other.


----------



## Diana7

Personal said:


> Some men just aren't good at sex and aren't particularly interested in doing what they can to help their partners enjoy the sex they share.
> 
> 
> 
> For what it's worth, you would likely be in the same boat, if he had no access to pornography.
> 
> Erectile disfunction is not caused by pornography. Sure it would be nice if it was caused by that, since that would offer an easy solution yet that isn't the reality of it all.
> 
> Depression, anxiety, a lack of attraction/desire, medication or a medical problem like prostate issues etc would be the issue.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is what it boils down to, if your husband is unwilling to try to meet your sexual desires you are left with the choice of acceptance of the status quo or stop bashing your head against the wall to no end.
> 
> You might consider affording him a last opportunity to address this, by telling him that you will divorce unless things change for the better. Or instead you may as well accept that he is unlikely to do anything to change, since he is evidently okay with how things are and let him go now.
> 
> At the end of the day if he really wanted to address these issues, he would already be doing something about it.
> 
> I hope that whatever you choose moving forward, you can both kind to each other.


Must has been written and researched that shows regular porn use does indeed cause erectile dysfunction where the man can no longer have normal sex with a normal woman.


----------



## MellyGizelly

Thanks for all the great responses. It is eye opening for me to read a lot of these responses since I guess I am always blaming myself and trying to figure out what I can do to trigger more effort from him. It's more clear to me now, that counseling would be my only option from here other than divorce.

So his issue with ED is that it is difficult to get an erection in the first place.. Unless I go down on him, and we start having sex if for any reason we have to stop, or switch, or do some kind of foreplay for me... He loses his erection and then we have to start all over again which kills it for me. On the other hand, if we keep going to avoid that from happening.. he ejaculates really quickly. For a woman who has a high sex drive and sometimes goes weeks/months with no sex. It's SO dissapointing to finally do it and literally get no pleasure except maybe 10 minutes of penetration. So I don't know if his issue qualifies as "ED" but that's basically what our sex has been like for years now. Wow, it's so frustrating just thinking about it lol...


----------



## Personal

For what it's worth @MellyGizelly there was a Chinese neuroscience study from 2018. That has noted an abnormal brain control network, versus non-sufferers in the brains of patients with lifelong premature ejaculation issues.

In other words, they may not be able to help having that problem at all.

All the best.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5972200/


----------



## She'sStillGotIt

I think his 'addiction' story is a whole lot of horse****.

He's just lost interest and let's be frank - he's a *lousy selfish lover *anyway so you're not missing out on much. Never ONCE in all these years did he_ ever_ take the time to educate himself (or give a rat's ass) about how to a please you. It's been ALL about him and the selfish ass was just fine with that. He's yet another of those fools who seems to think sex is all about HIS climax and then it's over. You expect that type of ignorance in high school boys, not grown men. Why on earth you put up with this degenerate for years boggles the mind.

And here's a newsflash for Mr. Selfish - he doesn't need to have an erection to spend time on *you* sexually. Yes, I know it's ALL about him and ALL about his erection, but this utter nonsense about denying YOU foreplay or spending time giving YOU a climax because "he'll lose his erection" just proves what I typed above. Who gives a **** whether he has one or not while he's spending some time on you? Who cares? Is he so damned selfish that it's never occurred to him to think about you FIRST before everyone bows down to him and his precious genitals? Ugh. Sex is ALL ABOUT HIM. 

Change the way you _*think*_, OP. This guy has the sexual maturity and knowledge of a 15 year old teenage boy.


----------



## Ragnar Ragnasson

Do you and he not like him to do oral on you? 

Just looking for a way you can tell him to spend time on you before any PIV positions. 

He sounds selfish, inconsiderate, are there any activities you and he SANS baby enjoy together? Not sexual but spending time together outside or even at home.

There are more is6than the sex likely at play here.

Where do you see yourself in 3 more years?

Best wishes.


----------



## Rocky Mountain Yeti

She'sStillGotIt said:


> And here's a newsflash for Mr. Selfish - he doesn't need to have an erection to spend time on *you* sexually.


TRUTH!!!

And oh, by the way, barring serious medical issues, if a guy really cares and his wife is enjoying this... guess what? 

Mr. Woody's gonna' make an appearance at that point. 

The irony is that if he wasn't so selfish, he'd get a lot more out of it for himself!

Some dudes are so freakin' clueless.


----------

