What Is Being the Significant Other of a Porn Addict Like?

by: tootrue

What is it like being the significant other of a porn addict?

It might be nearly impossible for someone who has not been affected by living with an addict to fully understand that porn addiction is like any other addiction. And that it affects the people around the addict in significant ways. It eats time, energy, compassion, money, trust and creates enormous chaos and damage to families of addicts. It leads to divorce, tumultuous situations for children, direct and indirect neglect of children by addicts and mothers who are forced into dealing with the addict, accidental and even purposeful exposure to children in the home, sexually transmitted disease for the spouse whose own personal porn addict escalates to acting out in real life, and mental and physical stress on the significant other that can become an obsession all its own.

Internet porn isn't your father's Playboy. Or even today's Penthouse. It's available in enormous quantities right from your home pc. No one has to get up the nerve to buy it in a seedy store or risk being seen by neighbors or friends walking out of an adult video or book store. And it is highly addictive.

To a porn addict, what might start as seemingly harmless entertainment or diversion becomes obsession. Porn addiction is an escalating progressive addiction. What is at first taboo later becomes sought after as an addict builds tolerance, much like with any other addiction, and then seeks out increasingly stimulating material for gratification leading to often increasingly violent porn, subjects that include younger and younger age girls and children, incest, bestiality, rape, and what most might consider just downright not sexually stimulating but repelling.

Recently comments were posted on this blog (which we've deleted) by someone stating that this site is a joke, some raunchy commentary followed by high schoolish degrading of recovered porn addicts' posts to this board, and that for that commenter, "porn is my reason for getting up in the morning."

Well, that pretty much sadly sums up a serious case of porn addiction.

Not very many women find the sight of a man sitting in a dark room by himself in front of a computer masturbating to computer images with pants around ankles very compellingly sexy or manly. It's disturbing. It's the image that gets stuck in the mind of the significant others of porn addicts. And unfortunately for many, their children may have this same image of their fathers permanently fused in their minds.

Escalation of porn addiction can and does lead to acting out in real life. Many SOs of porn addicts report finding their husband's profiles on sex sites, dating sites, phone sex sites, webcam sites, etc.

But beyond the image of the porn puppet in front of the computer, SOs of porn addicts have other images etched in their heads. Maybe most frequently and most disturbing in the long run is the image of someone you love and trust lying in countless conversations to cover up the amount of time being spent, type of porn being viewed, hiding places for porn, and crazy making behavior.

I remember once finding porn tapes and teen porn magazines in my husband's closet. Our toddler was following behind me while I was gathering up dirty laundry in baskets and came upon yet another of her father's many stashes. When I asked him about it his reply was that he did not put it there. They were not his magazines. Maybe, he said, "you put them there."

Me: Yeah, I put them there. I put them there? How could you think I put them there? Nobody else comes into your closet except for you, me, and perhaps our children. So one of us, here in this house, either me or you, put them in the closet. And it wasn't me so of course it was you.

Him: Well, it wasn't me.

Multiply these crazy, crazy making kinds of conversations times a thousand. And add in another hundred that aren't obvious until well after they happen. Being subject to these kinds of responses, lack of simple accountability, blatant lying, blameshifting, and exposure to unwanted and shocking images, and it begins to take a toll on the wife or significant other of an addict. Sometimes this is referred to as "gaslighting."

In my own experience, and through reading so many experiences of other wives, ex-wives, and significant others of porn addicts, some of the most memorable situations that women have had to deal with from porn addicted spouses or boyfriends include being told that a neighbor must have come into the house and been looking at porn on their home computer, blaming the computer history on their own teenage child, hiding porn in the trunk of the car.....

To me it seems that one of the single most quoted responses our MAPA members report from husbands is "there's nothing wrong with it. All men do it."

And another most quoted thought is that SOs of porn addicts are often most troubled and affected by the lying that goes hand in hand with addiction in general.....often even more so than the porn itself.

I would imagine that many SOs of porn addicts start out believing that to be a truth: Men like porn. So getting to the point of believing ourselves that this is more than men liking porn, that this feels inherently wrong, that this is really an addiction, can sometimes be a battle in ourselves that has its own toll. Learning to trust your intuition, feel validated in personal boundaries, have healthy expectations, is a part time job when an addict's converse part time job is to erode those very things to protect his addiction and normalize his behavior and choices. Addiction to anything is not healthy. Addiction isn't something that is normal and beneficial to anyone. Addiction affects people around the addict.

Whatever a person's beliefs on porn, or right to free speech, etc......porn addiction is real and damaging to addicts and their families, and the symptoms of addiction and its effect on families go far beyond the reaction to images viewed or moral standings on porn.

Some of the many symptoms mentioned by SOs of porn addicts include need for personal counseling involving time, expense, and their own recoveries, anti depressant medication, loss of trust in a general sense, feelings of hopelessness, lack of interest in their own lives and appearances, weight gain or weight loss, hair falling out, inability to concentrate or focus, isolation from friends and family, lack of focus on children, lack of joy, anger, bitterness, consideration of separation and divorce, suicidal thoughts, treatment for depression, lack of interest in sex, sense of betrayal, avoiding social situations, decrease in self esteem, concern for children, lack of motivation, feeling stuck in a marriage, obsession with finding porn stashes, fear of financial consequences resulting from job loss of the addict due to porn use on work computers, fear of legal consequences resulting from addict's use of illegal porn, self doubt, covering up for the addict to friends and family, sense of living a dual public and secret private life, heightened sense that it is their fault, feeling worthless or stupid, sexually transmitted diseases.

Our latest trolling commenter stated that the women of MAPA are "middle aged cows." Light bulb moment: Objectively and ironically women affected by porn addiction are from all age groups and all levels of attractiveness. But most ironic is that many are extremely attractive and some are drop dead gorgeous. Does this matter? NO of course not. But to me what is significant is that this addiction, like any other, is about the addict. It has nothing to do with the looks of the significant other. Our MAPA support board relates the stories of many significant others' experiences. Here again it is ironic that so many stories are expressed with a bright, articulate ability to express thoughts. Members of MAPA make up women from all walks of life, from many different faiths, backgrounds, educations, political beliefs, etc. We have many things in common and many differences. One common ground we share is our concern for someone addicted to pornography, our concern for how that has affected us and our families.

Porn addiction treatment is available. It is most successful reportedly when it is sought by the addict. As in treatment for any addiction, the recovery success rate is higher for those who are self motivated.

Leaving the secret life of living with a porn addict behind in seeking out validation, support, information, and individual counseling in real life and in communities online such as this one can be very helpful for sigificant others of porn addicts in their own recoveries.