While ready a post on Recovery last night things clicked & I realized my husband has a serious problem with porn. I guess I just wasn't ready to put the pieces together until now. Now I need help on how to proceed. I'm not ready to jump straight to divorce, but I do know I won't live with this any longer unless he starts treatment. Before I start that conversation with him I need input from others who have been down this road.

Bump.

jos, a few folks on these boards have experience of this issue. JavaPrincess, from recovery,is one of them.

Have patience and keep bumping until an experienced person replies. You're not being ignored, this is a specialist area, 'k?

How serious would you say your husbands problem is? Is this a problem that affects him to the point that you would say he is addicted? Does it affect him where he cannot control himself? Porn addiction affects a lot of men and it is possible to control it, but it takes counseling, accountability and a willingness to work through the problems. Porn addiction, like any addiction is about emotional problems that are being medicated. If you want to review some information www.recoverynation.com has some good information on sex addiction. Also, Patrick Carnes book Out of The Shadows explains sex addiction and the cycles people find themselves in. The one thing a spouse has to remember, this problem existed before the marriage. The emotional problems were there for a long time and the porn is just a medication for those deep rooted problems. This is not about the spouses issues, but about the person who is addicted to the porn.

Thanks, AskMe. I'm so glad to have a website to go to to learn more. I'd searched Google and Yahoo and all I found were bits & pieces of information, not enough to really be helpful.

Thank you for being so thoughtful to assure me it isn't my fault. As I was reading a response Bob Pure sent to Java Princess on the Recovery board the realization of what has been going on hit me and it was as if the pain and anguish turned from a huge lump into a stream that flowed out of my heart and off my shoulders. All these years I'd accepted the majority of the blame for sexual issues is our marriage. Immediately I knew that it wasn't so.

You asked how serious the problem is. On a scale of 1 to 10 I know it isn't a nine or ten and I also know it isn't a one or two either. I've been in denial so long I'll check out Recovery Nation to hopefully learn more to have a better idea.

Mentally I'm applying the basics of alcohol or drug addiction recovery. The first step is for him to admit there is a problem.

For me for now I need to take a few days to absorb. I look forward to hearing from those of you who've experienced this. I really need your input and wisdowm from hard lessons learned.

I had a serious sexual addiction problem. Fortunately I have gotten a hold on it and understand the problem now. I just wish I could have understood it when I was 20 versus 45.

As I did want to reassure you, the problem was there for him probably since childhood. Mine started when I was about 10 years old. And it just developed from there.

Now it doesn't mean there can't be other problems that can be worked on to strengthen the marriage. Every marriage has two people and usually if there are two people, there are two sets of problems. It's just that one person will have a greater set of problems that the other person to deal with. But each person has their own problems to own and correct. My problems are sex addiction, my wifes problems are low self esteem and feelings of inadequacy. And you put the two together and it can be a bad mix. So it helps to work on both problems at the same time.

Also, there is www.celebraterecovery.com which is about church support groups for different addictions. There is also www.sa.org which is sex adddict annonymous.

I help groups of men at church, so if I can provide any information I would enjoy helping.

Define a porn addiction please? is simply looking at some porn every now and then an addiction? Here's why I ask.

Throughout our marriage, it seems I would go throughh spells, where I didnt feel my WW was giving me the attention I needed or wanted(basically no sex), so I would look at porn to get that need/want fullfilled so to speak, It might be reading stories or d/l videos.

Addictions are the results of a person trying to cope with a problem in an unhealthy manner. The person with the addiction usually looses control over whatever is being used to cope with the problem. They feel like they can no longer say no, but instead have to seek out the addiction in order to find some type of temporary relief from the stress and emotional buildup they are feeling. Once they act out with their addiction they find themselves in a cycle where the shame of the addiction redrives the cycle and they once again are feeling the emotional pain that brings them full circle again. So once they are retriggered they will once again turn to the addiction and repeat the addictive cycle.

You said, "it seems I would go through spells, where I didnt feel my WW was giving me the attention I needed or wanted(basically no sex)", my question would be were you lacking attention or physical need? Attention is a lot stronger emotional need and it's one that can cause a person to feel empty. The need for sex would then become a symptom, because physical closeness provides attention. I guess I'm trying to say if you then were seeking out porn to fill an emotional void you could have been setting yourself up for an addiction. You have to ask why did you need the porn, to fill an emotional need, or was it just to provide mental stimulation. Only you can answer that question, but the way it was worded, I'm thinking you were looking for something to fill a void in your life. And when you start trying to fill voids, that is when you can run into problems.

Both maybe, lonliness comes to mind, and the fact that I missed the intamacy between us. It's not an issue anymore, as I've just not been interested in it these day's, obviously looking at porn includes some sort of self gratification if you will, but I'm not even interested in that anymore.

Thanks, AskMe, for the SA website. Much more informative than any of the ones I'd found.

If I may ask, what brought you to the point you realized you had this problem? Were you & your wife married at the time?

Based on your description there were signs of this from the beginning of our marriage. Amazing how they've all been there but I didn't see them.

As you can imagine, I'm going through a whole range of emotions. My mind just zips back & forth through the years of our marriage. Snippets from here & there make so much more sense now.

I don't know if you have read some of my other posts, but my sexual addiction really got triggered when I found out my father-in-law had been molesting our daughter. For me it became an issue that the man I had known an trusted since I was young would do this. I became like all the other men in my life who abandoned men. It caused great stress trying to deal with his lies and the hurts it created. My wife completely shutdown and I was left alone to deal with the pain. And so I turned to women on the internet, which ended up leading to affairs, 18 in just a little over 2 years.

I knew that I had a problem before and I had made some attempts to look up counselors, but this hit right in the middle of all of it. And then in the midst, I had some law officials take my computers and question me, which I think it was because I was making searches about child molestation and chatting about it with these women in relationship to my daughter. These other women had been molested and so they were understanding. So I think I must had caught someone's attention and they thought they should check me out in case I might be a perpetrator, which I WAS NOT. They let me go and gave back the computers the same day, but they kept asking me because I told them about my affairs "didn't I think I had a problem". I kept saying, no, because of the problem they were questioning me about, but I finally said, yes, I have a problem, just not what you are talking about.

And so when I left I went and got help that day and started my road to recovery. They I told my wife briefly about the problem and as I got counseling I told her everything.

There were actually two problems. Hers and mine. She was raised thinking sex was dirty and shameful. I grew up exposed to porn and my mom was very open to sex. So we were at opposite ends when it came to sex. My wife did not communicate her feelings and so when I tried things that made her feel dirty and shameful she shutdown. And as I tried harder she pulled away more. And then the only things I knew was the porn I watched, so I tried using everything I saw there trying to create pleasure, but because it was starting to overwhelm her, it became too shameful, too erotic and therefore felt too dirty and she totally shutdown. And all I could see is that she had a problem and I was trying so hard to do something and she wasn't tell me what was wrong.

But when I got that I was a part of the problem I saw how my pushing caused her to shutdown and there were two sets of problems. Her low self esteem, feeling like sex was dirty, not being able to communicate it, and just pushing back leaving me to wonder on my own what was happening. Then me wanting to please her, starting simple, then increasing, and only finding with each new thing I try she was getting worst. So as Dr. Phil would say, "How is that working for you....it wasn't" of course I know that now and would probably do it alll different.

Hey Mike...in answer to your question.

Turn the situation around and answer this...if, in the situation you described, you had turned to drinking instead....just doing it in the cases you had mentioned...would you think you had a problem with drinking?

And something else I want to throw at you. I've not found that viewing porn has helped a marriage. It has introduced another "person" that detracts from the intimacy within the marriage. When your marriage was at a low spot, when you or your wife wasn't happy you turned to porn...who did that help?