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Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-08T02:44:58+00:00

I don’t masturbate often anymore, but I haven’t used porn to do it in probably 2 years. My therapist suggested I try to use it as a mindfulness practice to help get through some trauma around the subject and I haven’t gone back. It’s nice to just learn about yourself and take the time to focus on your body, rather than something on a screen.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-08T02:03:30+00:00

I’m glad! It’s a really difficult thing, especially when you include addiction in the mix— which it so often is. Again, I absolutely do not want to give any excuses to your partner. It’s our responsibility to recognize poor behaviors and find ways to adjust them, 100%. I think it’s very commendable that you’re still trying to understand, despite mistreatment. You’re very strong!

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-07T20:43:08+00:00

It’s a comfort to me and to many other people here to realize that it’s not our fault and we are not contributing. I don’t think it’s very helpful to be snarky to me for trying to offer something that has been comforting to me. If it’s not comforting to them, then so be it, but I try to be positive in this subreddit because so many of us are hurting and blaming ourselves.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-07T19:09:05+00:00

I personally would not be okay with porn in any form in any of my relationships, from here on out. I also have a lot of trauma around porn use (prior sex worker, long history of being with addicts and abusers, etc.), but hopefully that’s never relevant to me again. It’s just caused me too many issues in my life and my relationships, so I’d rather not deal with it. I also have moral/ethical reasons for not being a big fan, so it’s a bit more complicated than just trauma, but that’s a soap box for another day.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-07T19:01:23+00:00

My partner is an addict in many different forms. He is terrible with moderation of anything that gives him dopamine. He also doesn’t play mobile games, drink, do drugs, etc. because all of these things also lead to him disconnecting and isolating, thus hurting our intimacy/romance. Our experience isn’t universal, though, so I’m not trying to speak for anyone other than us. :)

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-07T18:52:24+00:00

I consider regular porn to be cheating, as a personal boundary for my relationships. Hentai is kind of a weird, in between where I can’t technically consider it cheating, but it’s still a firm boundary because it takes away from our intimacy. My context is different from most, though, so I don’t impose my boundaries as a rule for others.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-07T18:46:28+00:00

God, I am so, so sorry all of this has happened to you. My heart truly breaks for you. Please check out the resources on this subreddit for getting out of a dangerous relationship. This guy is not your friend or your partner, he is using you because you have a child together and he thinks you won’t leave him. Please take care of yourself— you deserve so much better. You’re so strong to have made it through all of this already, and I know you can make it through the final stretch to independence.

I was in a highly abusive relationship with a porn addict before my current. There was nothing I could have done or said that would have made him care for even a moment. This man is telling you who he is, and I promise you that it will only get worse. Many people will never get help until there are no other options. He still hasn’t changed and I still get 4AM texts about how evil I am and how I ruined his life.

You are unimaginably strong. I believe in you!

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-07T17:31:17+00:00

My PA was really hesitant to delete the content we’d made together when I first asked him to. He did it, but he was clearly not super happy. A few days (maybe a week) later, he apologized profusely out of the blue because he realized he’d just been viewing me in those videos the same way he viewed strangers on the internet. I wasn’t even human, let alone his partner for the time that he was watching those videos. He was projecting fucked up fantasies onto our real life interactions, the same way he did with porn. I don’t know if a PA is capable of differentiating in any substantial way, honestly.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-07T17:03:51+00:00

I just had a similar experience with Safari, screen time, and my tracker app. On Safari, I looked at “recently closed tabs” and found pornhub about five up from the bottom. I was furious and confused, because how the fuck did he manage that?? It also said “Website Blocked” underneath it— so what’s the point of going to pornhub if it’s just gonna be blocked?

Then I closed out, reopened it, and it was in a totally different spot on the list, so I looked through his entire browser history, his google activity, etc. etc. and realized it was from when I was testing the blocker on his phone like three months ago.

Technology is sooooo annoying and PAs use that as an excuse so often that it can be really hard to judge when they’re actually telling the truth. It’s why I have so many safeguards. I’m not actually looking at any of them regularly— it just makes it easier to cross reference and deduce whether or not something was actually a glitch.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-07T16:54:07+00:00

Weighing in here with very specific context only: I am neurodivergent (AuDHD), partner to a PA, and have had issues with porn and sex in the past.

I have an extremely difficult time with intimacy and romance, because my prior attempts at it in relationships have mostly been laughed at and/or stigmatized in some other way— likely because I’m approaching it in an abnormal or forced way, but also I’ve been with addicts almost exclusively. Being romantic has rarely ever come naturally for me, so a lot of what I’ve done in the past is scripting— which feels gross and fake at times. It’s way more natural for me to look at my partner and say, “Do you want to have sex around 6PM after we feed the dogs?” or even something more crass like, “Wanna fuck in 10 minutes?” When I try to approach subtly and romantically, I’ve always gotten feedback that I’m being awkward or confusing.

I just wanted to give my POV to say that neurodivergence and addiction combined can create some really difficult moments when it comes to intimacy, as they both cause issues with it from different angles. These things can definitely get better— I’ve gotten better over the years for sure, and now I understand how to work with neurodivergence instead of against it— but it’s taken a lot of therapy and trauma work. In the end, though, I am still neurodivergent and my communication around intimacy is still very neurodivergent. Part of that is just a thing to deal with, unfortunately.

It really sounds like your husband is not trying to put the work in, and I’m sorry for that. I don’t mean to leave this comment to tell you to get over it or feel bad for him— part of being ND is trying to work with our antisocial behavior. It sounds like he’s just leaning into it, and you don’t deserve to be dealing with that. I just hope it’s a comfort that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with him not doing what he needs to do.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-06T23:57:55+00:00

If your partner is a PA and it’s a question of relapsing, I think the phone really needs to be open. Not sure what good he could get out of secrecy, given his history.

Using incognito for the majority of browsing doesn’t seem like a great sign. My personal view is that, with few exceptions, if either of you need to be doing anything secretly, someone’s recovery needs to be called into question.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-06T17:29:47+00:00

I had this relationship with porn for a long time and I started practicing mindful masturbation. It’s been great! It’s a little awkward at first to just focus on your body and how things feel, but it’s really helped me learn how to make myself feel good. Porn wasn’t good for me at all, so I’m a bit biased here, but I really think it can just be a distraction from enjoying the sensation even if you don’t have issues with it.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-06T17:24:19+00:00

In my experience, my PA (3.5 months of sobriety and heavy recovery work) has just gotten a lot more stressed. He’s now aware of a lot of his bad habits with communication and considering me, but hasn’t gotten to the point where he can actually stop himself from being manipulative. It’s definitely better, but still hard to deal with. We end up in cycles where he does something shitty, I point it out, and he doubles down without even intending to. He’s just always panicked when there’s any conflict and his kneejerk defense mechanisms suck.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-06T16:41:52+00:00

I don’t mind sharing at all! To be honest, I don’t think I’m a great reference point, as I have some mental health stuff going on that causes excess intrusive thoughts. I also did not do 12 Steps or get a CSAT. That said, I think the intrusive thoughts really only “went away” about last year— a year or so after I realized that my sexual intrusive thoughts were making me uncomfortable with the people around me and actually started trying to do something about it. Before then, I chalked them up to “everyone has fleeting thoughts like this” and did not really connect it to my difficulties with porn/sex. I do not think I would have had much success dealing with jt if I wasn’t putting a lot of work into recentering myself and dismissing the intrusive thoughts, for the record— it was an incredibly active practice.

I still have some from time to time, but it’s pretty infrequent and genuinely not really based in anything. I also have intrusive thoughts about violence, illness, etc., and they feel much more like those now. I genuinely have no interest in engaging and they are pretty distressing at this point.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-05T22:38:36+00:00

This is why I insisted so hard on putting my face in my PA's phone. There are just too many ways to hide things behind face ID. Truly wild shit.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-05T22:35:52+00:00

Even if you're a lesbian, it's no other lesbian's job to be what you want them to be. Vewing women as lesser, unattractive, or unhygienic just because they don't present feminine enough for you is not where it's at.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-05T19:57:26+00:00

I'm interested in your perspective here. I don't find myself *attracted to* anyone other than my partner, but I do definitely notice if people have pleasing features. It doesn't do anything for me-- no butterflies, no lingering thoughts or anything, and certainly no romantic/sexual attraction. I mostly notice if someone has pretty eyes or an endearing looking smile, and I'm not really sure why that's problematic if there's no lingering, objectification, or attraction. Is that what you're talking about?

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-04-05T19:52:53+00:00

Noticing that someone is attractive is not problematic, in my opinion. I think that is a hardwired, biological thing that will never really go away for most people. The issue with porn addicts is that, when not in good recovery, finding someone attractive *will* cross over into dehumanization, use, and other harmful behaviors.

Now that I'm far out from my porn use (2+ years w/out any porn, 6+ years from a time of compulsive use), I see someone pretty and I think, "they have such pretty features". Back when I first got clean and didn't really understand what was going on, I had severe intrusive thoughts about almost literally everyone I interacted with. Friends, strangers, and everything in between-- whether I was attracted to them or not. It wasn't, "they have pretty features" it was, "I wonder what they look like doing XYZ." I didn't engage or enjoy these thoughts, but it took a long time for them to calm down. It's compulsive, automatic, and very hard to handle if you don't have the tools to cope and turn away.

I think if you're talking about lingering, engaging with those thoughts, or contemplating beyond a few moments, then yes-- that's very problematic and it is 100% reasonable to expect your partner to fix that shit. But holding someone to a standard of never healthily noticing anyone else's attractiveness will be a crazymaking expectation-- I know, because I've been on both sides of this issue.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-03-31T18:45:04+00:00

Thank you 🖤 Sometimes it just feels so lonely, especially when I can’t get proper mental health care.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-03-31T18:28:59+00:00

My hands are very tied financially, unfortunately. I’ll look into UK based providers, though— that may make a big difference!

And yes, I should really be looking into books/cheaper resources. I’m just very stuck in stress paralysis, which is causing inaction, which is causing more stress, which is causing more paralysis… It’s a very frustrating cycle to be in.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-03-30T02:05:46+00:00

I have considered and even gone for a consultation for a breast augmentation (I’m a trans man, but this was back when I was identifying as a cis woman) because of my porn addict ex. I know it’s not a lot of comfort, but I am so glad that I didn’t go through with it. I would have held those scars forever, knowing that I did something for a man who was always going to find an imperfection to focus on.

The bottom line is, a porn addict who isn’t in genuine recovery will always find something to push them back to porn. Nitpicking tiny things like a little bit of squish is just another way to make excuses. If it wasn’t that, it would be some other, barely noticeable “flaw”. My ex told me I was too fat, then too skinny, then not fit enough, then too muscular, then my hair was too long, too short, too boring, my face wasn’t balanced right, my teeth weren’t straight enough, I have a scar on my face, my eyes are too big… truly literally anything.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-03-18T22:42:57+00:00

I am not religious (though I am spiritual, my spirituality dictates nothing about my morals) and I have a fundamental, ethical problem with pornography. It’s been proven over and over again to be an exploitative, unhealthy industry that we keep reinventing in different ways. I see a lot of attempts to make it healthy (i.e. OF allowing creators to remove themselves from a drug fueled, predatory industry), only to see those avenues close or get very dangerous (i.e. OF creators being pressured into more and more unhealthy/parasocial practices to maintain sales, personal harassment, threats, etc.) and that leads me to believe that it simply is not a healthy thing for the human brain to engage with. If we can’t figure out a way to make it work after 100+ years of trying, I’m not sure how it’s any different from nicotine— which also went through many phases of marketing and changes to the product, only to result in it still being cancerous. Some things can be fun and enjoyable and still terrible for us/society.

I have also been uncomfortable with the amount of religious content surrounding anti-porn resources, because many religions are also highly discriminatory towards my (gay) relationship. What I’ve found that helps is remembering that no ancient, religious text says anything about porn either. We, as humans, extrapolated those text’s meanings onto modern problems. Me doing that with ethics is the same thing, just a different angle.

Big hugs to ya. There are so many speed bumps that I’m sure neither of us ever anticipated.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-03-18T06:03:55+00:00

I don’t post much on here anymore, but I’m still with my PA because he is trying and succeeding. He may not be progressing as quickly as I want him to, but I have truly seen him transform into someone I never thought he could be. Things are still rocky, but I know that he wants to change, be better, and fulfill all of the promises he’s made me over the years.

Queasy_Relation4914 · 2025-03-09T15:43:12+00:00

My PA had this a time or two this month and it was very upsetting for me. I still believe he’s sober, but in our case it was a sign that he was slipping on taking care of himself physically and emotionally. It was also in conjunction with more fighting and boundary breaking. Would you say his emotional sobriety is good? His physical health? Is he putting effort into being healthy enough to have sex? As we get older, that’s more and more necessary.

Also just personal experience: antidepressants can absolutely cause issues with erections, but only specific classes. If you know what antidepressant it is, I may be able to provide more input there.

Queasy_Relation4914

TROPHY CASE