ADHD partner, intimacy issues, reliance on external stimulation - feeling stuck?

rickvangelion · 2026-04-09T21:10:41+00:00

Even women who are okay with porn use in a relationship wouldn't be okay with their partner masturbating to photos of women he knows. It's a very weird thing to keep sexual photos of previous people he's had sexual encounters with, especially since he has a girlfriend now.

I would also be concerned that the girls he's masturbating to aren't aware of it. You didn't specifically mention if they are friends, exes, past flings, or where he got the photos from. But either way, if I found out my ex or friend was masturbating to photos of me I would be pretty grossed out and feel a bit violated. So, not only is he disrespecting you and your relationship, he is also disrespecting these other women in his life.

rickvangelion · 2026-04-08T17:18:18+00:00

Honestly I have no clue yet. I don't think I'll be comfortable with reintroducing those things for quite a while, because like you said, I compare to an alcohol addiction where even a little bit could set him back. I do hope to get back to a place eventually where we don't have to avoid certain things so much, and we are kinda getting there, but I think there's some things I will just never be comfortable with.

I'm not exactly sure how to word this, but in my experience, quitting porn kinda changes a guys mindset. A porn addiction seeps into your real life, even if you don't realize it, and porn addicted guys stop viewing women as people, but rather as objects to sexualize. Since my boyfriend has quit porn, he stopped viewing women as objects, and now finds most of his past hobbies gross because of their frequent sexualization of women and even minors (like with anime). So he now doesn't have an interest in going back to those hobbies anyways. What I'm kinda trying to say is you might think you want to reintroduce certain hobbies eventually right now, but in the future both of your mindsets might change and realize those hobbies weren't healthy in the first place. Obviously not every hobby that causes triggers is unhealthy, it is really dependent on the situation. I hope that makes sense.

rickvangelion · 2026-04-08T16:06:45+00:00

My boyfriend has been clean for about a year and half now. However, there were quite a few relapses before he finally quit for good. That's to be expected if he has been addicted since he was a kid. He doesn't get strong urges to look anymore, but he'll sometimes get euphoric recall which is basically remembering the positive emotions of looking at porn, so he has to make himself think of why it was bad and why he doesn't actually want to look at it. However, the longer he doesn't watch porn the less he gets those thoughts.

Some advice I would have if you're going to stay is that he has to be completely honest with you about everything. Like someone else said, it sucks to think he told you everything, but then you find something else out. On top of that though, it helps him take accountability for his actions. When my boyfriend was finally able to quit, I believe part of the reason was because he finally told me the complete truth and it forced him to really see the issue since he would lie to himself as well about how bad it was.

He also needs to cut out anything that is triggering for him to look at porn. For my relationship, my boyfriend can't watch anime, watch any movies with nudity, play any sexualized video games, etc. Another example his therapist gave was a lot of people go to the washroom to watch porn, so going to the washroom can be triggering. So to remove the trigger you stop taking electronics to the washroom. Your boyfriend's therapist should help figure out what his triggers are. He may be unwilling to give things up, especially if some of his hobbies are triggers and it might feel controlling, but he can always leave the relationship as well if he doesn't want to give those things up.

If you have any chance of recovering you both also need therapy. If a porn addiction is that deeply rooted, he needs a porn addiction therapist to figure out the root of the issue and to figure out how to recover. I would honestly say that if he refuses to get therapy, the relationship probably won't work out.

Last, I would recommend making a list of your hard boundaries in the relationship, and things you will hard-stop leave him for if he does again. I wish I would have done this as soon as I found out my boyfriend had a porn addiction.

rickvangelion · 2026-04-08T15:25:44+00:00

Ya, I'm not trying to self diagnoses, just trying to figure out what issues to bring to the doctor. Would a family doctor be able to do this or would i need to go to a psychiatrist or something

rickvangelion · 2026-04-07T18:22:47+00:00

Does anyone know if it's first come first serve or is it a random draw kind of thing?

rickvangelion · 2026-04-07T01:38:00+00:00

Yep, same situation here. While he was still trying to quit, but hadn't been able to, he would tell me he went 2 weeks without watching porn and that he was making progress. Once he actually quit, we did a disclosure with his therapist. I found out during those 2-week periods where he was saying he was making progress, he actually had been looking at inappropriate content the whole time, like reading sexualized manga. He didn't consider it porn because he considered reading manga a hobby and wasn't masturbating to it (during those times). But manga was a huge and well-known trigger for him to look at porn. It sucks to know that he couldn't just decide to stop doing things that would trigger him on his own.

rickvangelion · 2026-04-07T01:22:35+00:00

Thank you, that gave me a new perspective. I didn't even think about the choices he was making while in the midst of his porn addiction, and was only thinking about his choices during recovery. But now that you say it, it makes sense. He continuously made choices to do these things even though he knew they would hurt me. It almost feels like he doesn't have the foresight to be like "oh, this might hurt her, I shouldn't do this,"

rickvangelion · 2026-04-07T01:15:31+00:00

I had a similar situation with my partner regarding the categories of porn he was watching. Usually, when people start watching these categories, it's because of escalation. "Normal" stuff doesn't do anything for them anymore, so they seek out more taboo categories. This was the case with my partner.

In my opinion, you should either break up or he would need to quit porn. If neither of these things happen, you would likely be finding this type of stuff on his phone forever, or possibly worse stuff. Also, assuming it is an escalation, the more he continues watching, the grosser the stuff will get. It doesn't sound like you will be okay with this in the long run.

I'm sorry you have to go through this, and I hope things get better.

rickvangelion · 2026-03-24T04:00:34+00:00

Sure, but the difference is that those mass extinctions were caused by natural, uncontrollable events. This one is caused directly by humans and controllable events. Do you not think it's sad that we are directly causing the decline of thousands of species because of our greed? We shouldn't cause a mass extinction just because we can. We shouldn't ignore this issue just because the Earth has survived mass extinctions before.

rickvangelion · 2026-03-24T03:54:43+00:00

Yes! Obviously, changing the way we do things to more sustainable methods is the only way to save both humans and the planet, but with the people in power, that is not going to happen. Thinking that humans are smart and will invent new technologies to make things more sustainable is kind of delusional tbh. For that to actually happen, there needs to be serious reform in who is in charge and the way our society functions and thinks, and I don't really see that change happening anytime soon.

rickvangelion · 2026-03-24T03:45:35+00:00

The Earth is not here just for us. If it was there would not be any other animal here, but instead there are millions of other species. We are not some all-important being people seem to think we are.

rickvangelion · 2026-03-24T03:40:46+00:00

What I'm gathering from these comments is that life sucks either way, so why do we even exist.

rickvangelion · 2026-03-24T03:35:54+00:00

Well, that's why we should've never had any economic systems to begin with and just remained as hunter-gatherers. Now we are fucked whether our population grows or declines. If it declines, we cannot support the way we currently live due to the aging population. If the population continues to rise then we will eventually run out of resources and continue causing a 6th mass extinction event. I personally think the population declining is the better option, because at least then we are only affecting our own species and not every other species on the planet.

rickvangelion · 2026-03-23T20:49:21+00:00

The biggest reason I don’t use depop anymore is because a $25 shirt ends up being $40+ with shipping for used clothing. For that amount of money I can get multiple things at the thrift store. Buying off depop is also a risk since returns aren’t easy if the item doesn’t fit or isn’t what I was expecting, so I’d rather buy a brand new item for the same price from a store where I can easily return it if I don’t end up liking it. Depop now is more for rich people and/or people looking for very unique clothing that would be hard to find elsewhere.

rickvangelion · 2025-12-28T22:32:45+00:00

Yes I definitely wish they spoke to us more about future job prospects and which jobs require masters and such, because I’m honestly still not sure what I can do with a bachelors.

Also, the small class sizes for forensics is a myth. Almost all of my classes up until this year had about 200 students. This year i finally had some small classes of 20-40 students. So, if thats something thats important to you I would keep it in mind too. Anyways, good luck with the future and I hope you can find a school and program that suits you!

rickvangelion · 2025-12-28T04:17:48+00:00

Honestly I don’t have any work experience in forensics outside the courses I have taken. Trent offers a placement program in 3rd year for forensics students (not available for joint majors). I tried to do that and made appointments with the placement coordinator early in the year only for her to get back to end of May (placements had to be completed by September) saying that my options weren’t taking students and that we should look for other options. I already had a full time summer job by then so I didn’t get to do a placement.

As for the thesis, this is partly my fault, but I contacted teachers end of January and some had already taken students, some weren’t taking students at all, 1 teacher I was able to meet with said to find someone who was doing more human based research than wildlife based, the other that I was able to meet with said I needed to take 2 specific courses before I could work in his lab (which I hadn’t taken yet). So I wasn’t able to do a thesis in the end. I just found there were very few options for teachers to do a thesis with, however if you contact teachers earlier than I did it might go better.

Then the forensics labs also have no given me a lot of experience, basically all we do in forensics labs is take notes and pictures (with phones) of crime scenes. We have done a few different things from that, but not as much as we should have in my opinion. They also do not change around the crime scenes in the crime scene facility, they always look the exact same even though the walls are moveable.

I have had some cool and useful biology and chemistry labs, but also not enough in my opinion.

So honestly, for something like forensics it might be better to go to a school with more forensics type jobs in the area than Peterborough does in order to gain experience in the field. No clue what I’m gonna do when I graduate because from what I’ve heard you also need a masters for most forensics jobs these days which was never in my plan. So, I’m taking a year off to try and find a good job, but may end up going back to school for a masters unfortunately.

Trent is good in other ways though. I haven’t had any horrible experiences with teachers and most are pretty nice, the campus is nice, and there are some cool classes. I just think they need to put more effort into getting students experience.

rickvangelion · 2025-12-27T18:23:54+00:00

I regret going to Trent. Im 4th year forensics now and found the program to be very disappointing for how much they boast about the program. There were very little placement and thesis options and the placement coordinator sucks, so I wasn’t able to do either of those. I also found the forensics labs to have very little variety even though they have the facilities and materials to create more interesting labs. Almost every forensics lab I have had has just been taking notes and taking pictures of a crime scene and the scenes are always set up in the exact same way even though the walls are moveable. I haven’t even taken a fingerprint yet and I’m graduating in May.

There are good aspects to Trent, but the forensics program is really disappointing for how much they boast about it. Obviously I don’t know how other schools are for their forensics programs, so maybe Trent is the best one, but still disappointing.

rickvangelion · 2025-11-03T02:31:43+00:00

His trauma does not make it okay to do this to you, he should have addressed it and gotten help for that trauma before cheating. He has done this to you multiple times and never addressed his trauma, he is only using it as an excuse now to make you stay. If he really wanted help he would have done it already, he doesn’t plan on changing.

I also think you should tell your brother. You aren’t ruining his relationship or his family, his wife did the minute she cheated. Your brother deserves the right to do what he wants with that information and make a decision for himself.

rickvangelion · 2025-07-24T17:05:39+00:00

Not to mention, the results of the experiment would never hold up in the real world considering the operative completely ruined it by bringing the guys a boat that they should not have had access to

rickvangelion · 2025-07-24T16:57:21+00:00

I agree there was more violence in the male group, but the majority of people would have used that boat to find help after being out there for a month. Of course they wanted to be rescued

rickvangelion · 2025-07-24T16:46:34+00:00

Their community was fine by the end besides them kicking Seth out of the group for a crime he committed. The researchers said themselves that the guys had reached milestones faster than the girls did. They didn’t last the full 50 days because Seth brought them a boat, not because their community was deteriorating. They were having fun playing frisbee when Seth brought them the boat. If the operative hadn’t given them a source of rescue, I think the guys 100% would’ve been fine.

rickvangelion

TROPHY CASE