# She found out I was looking porn



## Adam801

*What happen:
*She found out I was looking porn.

For some relationships it's not big deal. Being religious and all it kind a big deal for us. Not justifying my action but here is why I did it. I have a much higher sex drive than she does. We've been doing ok in the sex and relationship department. I've always wanted more that her. I turn to porn to fill in the times that she wasn't up for sex. This would happen a few times a week, but sometimes I'd do months without view it. I always kind of felt bad wanted sex more than her. It put a lot of pressure on her and sometimes she just can't keep up. She's taking care of a bunch of kids. That takes a lot of energy. I don't expect our sex drive to be equal, or even constant over the years. 

I feel bad more for how it made her feel than feeling bad because it was sinful. She has been going through a mixture of emotions. Slowly she'll work out how she feels. I'd say all very typical and appropriate. She feels betrayed, violated, loss of trust, and at the same time a failure for not meeting my needs. 

*Where we're at:*
Lack of communicating my needs has been a problem. Rather than trying to resolve them myself, I'll do more to communicate to her when I'm feeling lonely, frisky or have a general desire to increase the frequency of various forms of intimacy. We'll then work out a way to meet, fulfill, or suppress, those needs.

*Where I could use some help:*
She has said numerous times she just wasn't to forget about, move on, and or have me do something to make it up to her. I understand that. Other than time and allowing her to set the tempo for us moving forward intimately, what should I be doing.

I'm an artist and a romantic so I'm no slouch when it comes to cards, gifts, homemade this and that's with elaborate meals. But this is different than the typical I'm sorry I shrank your favorite sweater in the dryer. What do I need to do to help her feel loved?


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## delupt

I take the view that porn is healthy and normal in 'moderation', just like drinking alcohol and gambling, etc. However, if you are watching porn rather than having sex with your wife, or if your job is suffering because of porn, if you're running up debt in porn subscriptions, or if your kids aren't getting fed because your busy in the locked study, then and only then do you have a problem with porn (substitute alcohol & gambling and the same applies). 

As an atheist I cannot comment on the 'sin' element of your concerns (other than to suggest they are YOUR interpretations you're placing on this). 

Women watch plenty of porn, and I hardly need to remind you that female media is full of porn, rape-fantasies and BDSM (50SoG, etc.). Shaming men's sexuality has become acceptable, while women's sexuality is celebrated (i.e. protected and privileged). 

As for encouraging your wife into sex with you, I got nuthin' for ya man, but shaming tactics from a woman stink of sh!t-tests.


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## itskaren

Adam801 said:


> *What happen:
> *She found out I was looking porn.
> 
> For some relationships it's not big deal. Being religious and all it kind a big deal for us. Not justifying my action but here is why I did it. I have a much higher sex drive than she does. We've been doing ok in the sex and relationship department. I've always wanted more that her. I turn to porn to fill in the times that she wasn't up for sex. This would happen a few times a week, but sometimes I'd do months without view it. I always kind of felt bad wanted sex more than her. It put a lot of pressure on her and sometimes she just can't keep up. She's taking care of a bunch of kids. That takes a lot of energy. I don't expect our sex drive to be equal, or even constant over the years.
> 
> I feel bad more for how it made her feel than feeling bad because it was sinful. She has been going through a mixture of emotions. Slowly she'll work out how she feels. I'd say all very typical and appropriate. She feels betrayed, violated, loss of trust, and at the same time a failure for not meeting my needs.
> 
> *Where we're at:*
> Lack of communicating my needs has been a problem. Rather than trying to resolve them myself, I'll do more to communicate to her when I'm feeling lonely, frisky or have a general desire to increase the frequency of various forms of intimacy. We'll then work out a way to meet, fulfill, or suppress, those needs.
> 
> *Where I could use some help:*
> She has said numerous times she just wasn't to forget about, move on, and or have me do something to make it up to her. I understand that. Other than time and allowing her to set the tempo for us moving forward intimately, what should I be doing.
> 
> I'm an artist and a romantic so I'm no slouch when it comes to cards, gifts, homemade this and that's with elaborate meals. But this is different than the typical I'm sorry I shrank your favorite sweater in the dryer. What do I need to do to help her feel loved?


It just absolutely baffles me why some women are so against porn? I totally agree that it is just like having a glass of wine/smoke. 

As long as it's not an addiction (like anything) and it does not consume your whole being then I honestly don't see what's wrong with it. I enjoy watching porn with my husband. I know he watches it when I am working nights sometimes. Who the hell cares?

Anyway ... you sound like a nice man. Nothing I can offer you I'm afraid if she is dead against it. I know if it was me I'll tell my husband to p'off.


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## Adam801

So if I was not clear. I understand not everyone has the same thoughts on porn. The basic ideas is, I offended/broke her trust by doing [insert whatever] now I need to help her feel better.


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## QS1

You need to start being completely honest with her. If you had talked with her about it, and told her she wasn't meeting your needs, I think she would find a way to meet them.


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## Flying_Dutchman

Telling her she's not meeting your needs isn't going to cheer her up any.

Besides,, she mostly is. I wouldn't want to bug somebody who was tired or otherwise not in the mood to give it up. It's not like she ain't doing it at all - it's incompatible drives.

Tell her the sex is fine,, but that you still get horny between times and use the porn. You'd feel guilty bugging her for (and getting) 'reluctant' sex and the porn is the alternative.

Try to make her understand that you were, actually, being considerate and that porn is the happy medium.

If she can't accept that, it puts the shoe on the other foot. You're taking care of her needs but she expects you to be Johnny Blue Bàlls when she's tired.

The happy medium between reluctant sex and Johnny BB - both are inconsiderate - is you jèrking off when she ain't up for it,, and porn is no worse than what you'd otherwise be fantasising about.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Adam801

An update:
We have decided that porn should not be in our lives/relationship. For some it fine others it's not. It's a personal/moral decision. I understand both sides.

We had a good long, very heated, and emotional talk about porn, morals inhibitions, any why/how we came to believe what we do. The kind of talk you just feel emotional drained afterwords.

Fast forwarder to this morning when I wanted to have sex. I deiced to try our plan of being more open and communicating my feelings, wants, needs, and desires. I tried hard to put things in a positive light in hopes of having some success. Totally paraphrasing the conversation:

Me: I'm aroused.
Her: Ok... What are my options.
Me: I was going to ask you that... I guess sex, oral, hand job or I masturbate.

We ended up having pretty good sex. It was comforting and satisfying, both emotionally and physically, to be open with her and have a positive result. While I don't expect the same result every time, I hope that the number of positive results will out weigh the negative results. I don't thing a positive result is dependent on having a climax in one form or another. I think it may be more dependent on feeling understood and accepted.


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## WasHappyatOneTime

That won't work long term.

Concentrate on being more attractive.


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## cdbaker

I take the view that pornography is 100% inherently destructive within a relationship. It absolutely reprograms the brain's pleasure center, creates a chemical dependency on dopamine and similar hormones and is extremely addictive. Honestly the spiritual/moral element is just more reason to avoid it.

Here is the thing though, I absolutely don't believe your "strategy" will work, and you'll find yourself right back where you were before soon enough, getting caught with your pants down, or forgetting to clear your browser history or her becoming suspicious and installing a key logger on your phone, etc. I firmly believe that the vast majority of porn users are in fact addicted, but most don't accept that. With that said, simply trying to get your wife to step up to meet your stronger sexual need is not going to suffice. Why?

1. Your wife is going to feel increased pressure to meet your needs. If she doesn't, she knows she will have to worry about you going back to porn. That's fear, and fear can never serve as the primary incentive for doing something in a relationship for very long. It will slowly build stress for her, and cause her to resent you for it.
2. Because of porn, without taking steps to ensure 3rd party accountability, you'll invariably be tempted to return to it, probably sooner than later. Your wife can't possibly meet all of the little fantasies and curiosities that your brain has come up with due to years of exposure to the world wide web of porn. I don't mean that you won't find your wife attractive, or sexy, etc., but she can't be everything.
3. Porn is an incredibly easy addiction to hide and cover up, and everyone knows it. Perhaps you've wondered what cocaine would be like, but you've never tried it for a myriad of reasons. It's incredibly expensive, hard to find, is incredibly illegal, creates both obvious and dangerous side effects, all of which could cost you your job, marriage, children, wealth and freedom. So you probably won't consider trying cocaine. Porn however? It's easy to find, mostly free, very easy to conceal, produces almost zero obvious signs of use, involves no obvious risk of loss of your relationship/kids/freedom, yet produces incredible satisfaction. The reality is that the vast majority of us will have a hard time truly avoiding it for these reasons. Even if you know it's wrong, you also know that the odds are about 99% that you will NOT get caught.

Ultimately the only strategy I have seen that has a chance of working is one where you confess your weakness, create an environment of accounability, and actively take serious steps to remove temptations. In this scenario, that would mean confessing to your wife and close friends that you struggle with it. Then you'd take steps to get rid of as many devices that allow you to access porn as possible. (Selling computers/tablets, maybe even video game consoles or smartphones) Then with what you do choose to keep (say your smartphone or a single family computer) you install strong accountability software and set up a good male friend as your personal accountability partner, or even your wife if you feel confident enough. I say "Accountability" software and not parental controls or blocking software because none of the blocking software out there can work 100% of the time, and it encourages tempted users to constantly try to get around it or find loopholes. Accountability software works totally differently, in that it will actually allow you to do anything you want to do online, but if it detects you trying to access anything it finds questionable, it will make a list of what you have accessed and send it directly to your accountability partner/s. If it snags anything that is totally innocent, then your partner can see that clearly. The value is that you won't know if you're going to get caught or not, so you won't be tempted to try to find holes in the system, and will instead be much more careful about what you do.

Anyhow, I don't need to convince you to admit anything to me, I just want to provide you some food for thought. If you really think you can quit porn cold turkey, and accept that growing resentment that is going to grow in your relationship as a result, then please do prove that to yourself because you're the only one who is going to know if it's true or not. I'm just telling you that the odds are that you are going to go back to porn, in time you'll probably use it as much as you were before, and eventually, someday, somehow, you will get caught again, and the consequences then will likely be much worse than they were this time around.


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## lenzi

Adam801 said:


> An update:
> We have decided that porn should not be in our lives/relationship...


I think there's a typo in your quote above. I think you meant to write 'She has decided that porn should not be in our lives/relationship'.



Adam801 said:


> We had a good long, very heated, and emotional talk about porn, morals inhibitions, any why/how we came to believe what we do. The kind of talk you just feel emotional drained afterwords.


I'm sure you did feel emotionally drained afterwords. She wins, you lose. Let me know how that works out for you long term. 



Adam801 said:


> Fast forwarder to this morning when I wanted to have sex. Totally paraphrasing the conversation:
> 
> Me: I'm aroused.
> Her: Ok... What are my options.
> Me: I was going to ask you that... I guess sex, oral, hand job or I masturbate.


Weird conversation. You tell her "you're aroused" and she says "what are my options". I'm not sensing much in the way of attraction/romance in that whole back and forth. 

You don't know how to build her arousal and she sees the sex as some sort of obligation or "lets make a deal" scenario. 

The two of you need sex therapy or something.


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## tippingpoint

it's 2015, for chrissakes. You made a vow to not have sex with other women. You didn't make a vow to hand over control of your body to her, but here you are, asking for permission to act on a natural urge. 

See you in the 'considering divorce or separation' forum in a few years. 

In moderation, porn can sustain you thru those dry spells when she's unwilling or unavailable to you. Heck, you probably learned a few tricks that she benefitted from as well. She should be thanking porn, not condemning it, because it makes her life that much better.


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## cdbaker

tippingpoint said:


> it's 2015, for chrissakes. You made a vow to not have sex with other women. You didn't make a vow to hand over control of your body to her, but here you are, asking for permission to act on a natural urge.
> 
> See you in the 'considering divorce or separation' forum in a few years.
> 
> In moderation, porn can sustain you thru those dry spells when she's unwilling or unavailable to you. Heck, you probably learned a few tricks that she benefitted from as well. She should be thanking porn, not condemning it, because it makes her life that much better.


I could not possibly disagree with this post more... but I'm also not sure if there is any point in arguing it. Just realize that the vast majority of studies and psychological evidence shows time and again how destructive and addictive porn is within a relationship and even in future relationships.


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## tippingpoint

In a world now flooded with easily accessible porn, how is it that the divorce rate hasn't skyrocketed or that psychiatrist waiting rooms aren't packed with people needing treatment for porn addiction? I don't think you give the average person enough credit for being able to moderate their consumption habits. 

Or better yet, even if what you are positing is true, how would you propose regulating people's consumption? This is America after all---consenting adults and the first amendment and all......


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## itskaren

cdbaker said:


> I take the view that pornography is 100% inherently destructive within a relationship. It absolutely reprograms the brain's pleasure center, creates a chemical dependency on dopamine and similar hormones and is extremely addictive. Honestly the spiritual/moral element is just more reason to avoid it.
> 
> Here is the thing though, I absolutely don't believe your "strategy" will work, and you'll find yourself right back where you were before soon enough, getting caught with your pants down, or forgetting to clear your browser history or her becoming suspicious and installing a key logger on your phone, etc. I firmly believe that the vast majority of porn users are in fact addicted, but most don't accept that. With that said, simply trying to get your wife to step up to meet your stronger sexual need is not going to suffice. Why?
> 
> 1. Your wife is going to feel increased pressure to meet your needs. If she doesn't, she knows she will have to worry about you going back to porn. That's fear, and fear can never serve as the primary incentive for doing something in a relationship for very long. It will slowly build stress for her, and cause her to resent you for it.
> 2. Because of porn, without taking steps to ensure 3rd party accountability, you'll invariably be tempted to return to it, probably sooner than later. Your wife can't possibly meet all of the little fantasies and curiosities that your brain has come up with due to years of exposure to the world wide web of porn. I don't mean that you won't find your wife attractive, or sexy, etc., but she can't be everything.
> 3. Porn is an incredibly easy addiction to hide and cover up, and everyone knows it. Perhaps you've wondered what cocaine would be like, but you've never tried it for a myriad of reasons. It's incredibly expensive, hard to find, is incredibly illegal, creates both obvious and dangerous side effects, all of which could cost you your job, marriage, children, wealth and freedom. So you probably won't consider trying cocaine. Porn however? It's easy to find, mostly free, very easy to conceal, produces almost zero obvious signs of use, involves no obvious risk of loss of your relationship/kids/freedom, yet produces incredible satisfaction. The reality is that the vast majority of us will have a hard time truly avoiding it for these reasons. Even if you know it's wrong, you also know that the odds are about 99% that you will NOT get caught.
> 
> Ultimately the only strategy I have seen that has a chance of working is one where you confess your weakness, create an environment of accounability, and actively take serious steps to remove temptations. In this scenario, that would mean confessing to your wife and close friends that you struggle with it. Then you'd take steps to get rid of as many devices that allow you to access porn as possible. (Selling computers/tablets, maybe even video game consoles or smartphones) Then with what you do choose to keep (say your smartphone or a single family computer) you install strong accountability software and set up a good male friend as your personal accountability partner, or even your wife if you feel confident enough. I say "Accountability" software and not parental controls or blocking software because none of the blocking software out there can work 100% of the time, and it encourages tempted users to constantly try to get around it or find loopholes. Accountability software works totally differently, in that it will actually allow you to do anything you want to do online, but if it detects you trying to access anything it finds questionable, it will make a list of what you have accessed and send it directly to your accountability partner/s. If it snags anything that is totally innocent, then your partner can see that clearly. The value is that you won't know if you're going to get caught or not, so you won't be tempted to try to find holes in the system, and will instead be much more careful about what you do.
> 
> Anyhow, I don't need to convince you to admit anything to me, I just want to provide you some food for thought. If you really think you can quit porn cold turkey, and accept that growing resentment that is going to grow in your relationship as a result, then please do prove that to yourself because you're the only one who is going to know if it's true or not. I'm just telling you that the odds are that you are going to go back to porn, in time you'll probably use it as much as you were before, and eventually, someday, somehow, you will get caught again, and the consequences then will likely be much worse than they were this time around.



I totally disagree with your post on all levels.


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