I have been married for 12 years. I have recently found porn on my husbands phone. Since the beginning of our relationship we had problems. Every thing else was perfect but there was no intimacy there. He was not interested in sex. I have to beg him for it. He was happy if we only did it every three or four months. We had loads of talks about it and every time he said he will try but after few days he forgets about every thing I said. It happened so many times that I stopped asking him. There was a time we did have sex for two years. He was not slightly bothered. He said he will go doctor to say why he has low libido. I didn't have any clue that he was addicted to masturbation and porn. I found out accidentally. When I asked him he totally denied watching it. When given proof he admitted he wanted to watch it. I explained to him all my feelings: how it hurts me, I feel ugly, I don't trust him, and I feel very disrespected. He promised he will stop, but he didn't. He was constantly lying to me. Now I wonder if he may have finally stopped watching porn, but I am sure he still masturbates. I don't know what to do. He won't go counselling. To this day he has never said sorry to me. He has a very cold heart. I just don't know how can i make him open up to me. Can you believe that for last 12 years we've had same routine for sex? He just wanted to do it quickly. I wanted him to be more open up to me. I have said and done every thing i can think of. We have three beautiful kids. I am slim and good looking. I feel he just not interested in me. I feel like leaving him. The worst thing is that he has been doing it for long, long time with out me realizing it. That entire time I was blaming myself. Can you please help me? I am depressed and very lost. I don't know what to do.
--Najat
Hi Najat,
I'm so glad you reached out. Sorry I was slow in responding. Your heartache was hard to read about. I feel bad that you're suffering because of sex, when what you really want is to have sex be something fulfilling, gratifying, and something that brings the two of you close. Because you said "everything else is good," I suspect that your husband's hesitation to talk more openly about this is due to shame, and not out of ill intent. I would encourage you to extend an invitation to him along these lines:
"I know sex and porn have been painful topics for us to discuss, but I'm so glad I know more about you now than I did before I discovered you were into porn. Although it's been a hard thing for me to discover, I would always choose knowing you more rather than less because I care so much about you and we have so much in our relationship that's good. I don't want unknown wedges or walls to stay between us, I want to understand whatever the issues are. Even though I'm sure you can tell this is a difficult issue for me, I think it gives us a great opportunity to work through something and be closer together as a result of working on it together rather than separately. I can tell that part of you wants to draw away from me and deal with this on your own and let me deal with my feelings about it on my own. But we do have another option. We can draw together and work through it as a couple. Would you be willing to do that? To not let this stay a wedge, but be something that we connect over? The biggest hurt to me isn't that you've been into porn, it's that we've been disconnected and distant. Now, you may be off porn but I still feel so far apart from you. Can we connect and work through this together so that I don't have to feel so separate and alone? After all, you're the most important person in my life and more than anything I long to feel close to you."
If you're willing to try that, let us know how it goes and then our readers and I can offer more suggestions.
--Mark