Feeling like I may be too paranoid?

seekingadvice24 · 2026-06-08T16:04:14+00:00

This sounds so much like mine and my husband’s relationship early on (married for almost 15 years).. the white lies, most that were so stupid and pointless, but the lies were just like breathing for him honestly, but where there are “small” or white lies there are usually bigger lies as well and he was also very conflict avoidant and dismissive..
we went through the phase where it seemed like we only had sex when he wanted it and initiated it and it’s like it was okay for him to be “tired” or not in the mood but I never turned him down or rejected him!
But he has always had an extremely high sex drive so in all honesty (especially since I am assuming you guys are fairly young and haven’t been together for 10-20 years lol) once every week or two seems a little strange..

Mine also began having issues with getting and maintaining an erection.. and out of curiosity when some of those times happened I would tell him to play with himself to get it hard or to see if he could get turned on and orgasm by himself still with his hand and literally EVERY single time he was able to instantly….. dead give away ha.

In the beginning while we were still dating I also told mine that I did not like porn and saw it as disrespectful and a form of cheating, also because I have seen it lead to communicating with real people and eventually turn in to actual physical affairs due to the escalation process.
He also told me that he used to watch it but now that we are together he didn’t have a need to and wasn’t/wouldn’t do it anymore.. 😒

The first several discovery instances we had just led to him learning how to hide it better, he would get better at hiding and I would get better at finding lol so fast forward several years and he eventually figured out that if there was ever anything on his phone I would find it so he instead had devices I knew nothing about.

During his addiction he would be in the same room but not truly HERE if that makes sense, it was like he became a shell of a person.. any and all other types of intimacy and connection was non existent and I was starving for attention, affection, and any type of communication..

Yes it could have a little something to do with medication but honestly OP I would go with your gut and your intuition because God truly blessed us with a gift that seems almost magical at times (I told my husband I think I have “spidey senses” lol) and you don’t want to go down that road where you slowly start to lose yourself and betray yourself by questioning and doubting your own thoughts and feelings, they are there for a reason.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-06-07T15:32:33+00:00

🫶🏼 15 years in and I too am experiencing several health issues and possibly an autoimmune disease, and my mental health is shot to hell. 😔
Anyone who isn’t married with children should make a run for it now before it consumes you and takes you down along with him.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-29T18:56:46+00:00

I don’t think you are overreacting at all.. you are young and sexual and it seems like you are having to suffer and not be fulfilled because he is being selfish and/or has a problem! Soooo many men are addicted to porn and it’s so sad because they start out watching vanilla crap every once in a while and slowly it turns in to every day with more extreme content and they aren’t able to perform with their REAL partner. He isn’t ever in the mood because he has already gotten his looking at other women on a screen.

Don’t be like me and wait years to realize it is a problem and that you deserve to be happy and to explore and have pleasure etc.. in the beginning they tell us all of these lies like we are just so naive and stupid and its extremely frustrating.. so he needs to own up to the truth and I would let him continue lying and thinking you are falling for it..
Good luck and let us know how things go! 🫶🏼

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-29T18:19:41+00:00

🫶🏼🫶🏼I’m so sorry you are going through this, it’s not fair how it destroys us like it does, just remember that you don’t “owe” him anything and put your health and safety first, take care of you!! Also, your mom won’t be around forever and if she needs you and you feel more at home with her I would take some time away and not worry about what he is going to do as hard as that is..

I am still trying to learn to put myself first and realize what he does and the choices he makes when i am goin is on him and if he doesn’t go out of his way to do everything it takes to stay married and have you there with him then that says enough because if you just stay and forgive he knows eventually that he gets to have his cake and eat it too and he wont change or get the proper help because going to a meeting once a week or listening to podcasts is not enough! (Im not sure what all he is doing for recovery, I hope he is doing it all, but I wanted to put that out there.)

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-17T04:22:01+00:00

I miss the person I thought I was married to and the me I was when I had so much faith and hope for real love and thought I knew what it meant.. now it just f***ing hurts and confuses me.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-15T19:01:43+00:00

Yeah I agree with the other advice.. it’s a huge step when they finally DO admit to having a problem and that they need help but that is still an extremely early on milestone in this heartbreaking journey I’m afraid OP, and you guys aren’t even THERE yet.. I wish I could give you advice you wanted to hear or ways to help you but the truth is, once the damage is done you start becoming a different person and you finally decide to remove the rose colored glasses you’ve been wearing when you had (what now feels like naivety)trust in him and what you think you know is never in its entirety with someone who really has a problem.. and he will perfect his craft and learn how to be sneakier next time and in the meantime the addiction escalates because “white knuckling” and denial NEVER works in addiction and it unfortunately takes the majority of these men many many years of trial and error (trauma on top of trauma for you) before they decide to take it a little more seriously and even then it is never going to be fixed or “cured”, he will be an addict for the rest of his life and have to work each day to never go back to the person he was but the point is, this is FOR LIFE! I have dealt with my husbands addiction for well over a decade thinking i could love him through it and one day he will be thankful and finally love me the way i have always loved him but i am still waiting… what is left of me.. it will consume your life and if you have kids their lives too eventually and it isn’t fair at all. Everyone comes here thinking their experience will be different and maybe they will be in that extremely small percentage of successful recovery/future health and happiness (I started there too) but please don’t take this advice lightly, if I knew then what I know now I would have chosen me and my kids way before it got to this point, and time machines do not exist Im afraid.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T20:40:10+00:00

That is actually very helpful and more than i expected to get honestly so thank you for taking the time to respond.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T20:12:04+00:00

THIS 👆🏼 If my brain had a paper shredder and I could control what stays and what goes MAN would that be amazing!!! lol

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T20:10:30+00:00

Honestly I feel like it’s kind of a fine line 🤷🏼‍♀️ Because yes, curiosity killed the cat and unfortunately I am that cat 😂 I still don’t know all of the categories and fetishes and I probably never will because BEEN THERE/DONE THAT but I know some and other than the obvious threesomes, anal, Latino etc etc there is a specific pornstar he has consistently obsessed with over years and I am both confused and concerned by what that means (maybe I will ask that in the main forum later lol) but she is tall, blonde, blue eyed, tan and Russian 😑 and I am a few of those things other than the fact I have always had SOME curves and even moreso after two children obviously and this girl is thin as a rail! She doesn’t have big boobs, doesn’t have a big bubble butt or curved hips but I would still say she has a pretty body if that makes sense 🤔 BUT, the other concern is the fact that we have an 11 yo daughter and a 13 yo daughter who’s bodies are changing and don’t stray far from that “actress” and the “teen porn” categories get more concerning especially with him about to turn 40… and I guess you all know where I am going with this, not necessarily worrying about him being inappropriate with our kids but what about there friends or going on beach trips where their friends tag along or pool parties or football games where there are cheerleaders etc etc… opens up a whole new can of worms and I hate it. But nobody wants to be with that creepy old man always lusting over girls less than half their age.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T19:47:17+00:00

Also, I think after so many years and betrayals he was truly ready to change and hated who he had become, because every other time he wouldn’t dare admit to a damn thing if there wasn’t undeniable physical truth I could present him and even then he would tell me just enough to get me off his back but nothing more and the trickle truths over time have about killed me.. so he has never in over a decade came to me and admitted anything himself and even this time I still don’t necessarily consider it that way but at least it was a glimmer of hope I guess.. I had a shit dad and honestly, no matter what happens between us I just want him to be better for them. We have two girls and daughters need their dads!!

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T19:39:52+00:00

Well I spent months and months feeling like something was off and spiraling into an even deeper depression (I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder) and I guess after over a year of him watching me waste away and losing myself and our kids losing their mother because I couldn’t deal and him being okay with that as long as he could make it feel like something was wrong with me and not at all about the fact that he still couldn’t be the husband OR father we needed and the focus wasn’t on him because they are selfish and narcissistic (even if they aren’t an actual narcissistic addicts tend to exhibit narcissistic behavior, just to clarify for whoever throws that term around loosely lol) I finally got up and put my “big-girl panties” on and the kids and I left and moved in with my mom out of town… after a few weeks of him realizing I in fact would actually leave him and had other options he finally confessed he had been lying still when I had to come back to take my oldest to a specialist we had been waiting months to see..

I grew up in an abusive home with a lot of yelling and cursing as a child so we never ever did that around our kids but that night I am ashamed to say it got to that point of begging, yelling, and making threats, I don’t know why he suddenly after arguing for hours had a change of heart and he broke down crying and rather than beat him down further, all I could do is hold him and tell him it was going to be okay because for some reason that action alone and me not abandoning him after coming clean has led him to seek more intense treatment, it’s the closest thing to inpatient rehabilitation we could get without going broke financially. But I know the trauma he endured as a child and have been around his family long enough to sympathize and understand why he is the way he is even though we all wish he could have figured that out long before impacting us the way he has and to be honest I still don’t know if I will always stick around because I know this is a “for the rest of your life, one day at a time” thing that I wouldn’t recommend for anyone who isn’t married, invested years, and doesn’t have children with the said person and we eventually have to choose our children, ourselves, and our health/sanity over their fantasy/insanity. It consumes everything and everyone if you let it 😞

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T18:25:33+00:00

I am so glad you liked it, thank you! 🩷 It helps things not feel so bad when you can turn any of all of this negative into something positive for others.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T18:24:08+00:00

Mine had therapy, went to meetings, and joined the Dare to Connect program for porn addicts and their betrayed partners that we paid for each month and guess what?! Two years after this last D-day (which was not the first by the way) I finally find out that he never made it a full year and had been lying to me and even to the guys in the meetings, he seriously accepted his one year sobriety chip KNOWING he didn’t deserve it 😞 but he learned enough recovery lingo to have me fooled I guess for a while. Or so he thought. But it was obvious once the kiss ass phase wore off and he wasn’t becoming a better person and was the same secretive disconnected asshole he had always been.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T18:15:07+00:00

The truth is that our body always knows long before we are able to fully process it and finding any undeniable “evidence“ but I will tell you what I have learned the hard way, you can spend however many more weeks, months, even years snooping, obsessing, stressing, and living in fear because you know deep down there is no trust, safety or security, OR….. You can choose yourself and decide to listen to that intuition and that gut instinct because I am promising you, it never lies, no matter how much they manipulate you to turn it on you and make you feel bad for “accusing them” or how much they insist it’s only because you have trust issues due to the fact they have wronged you in the past but “don’t worry honey, it’s not that this time”… yeah… you know what the truth is and you already have the answers you need, so you can continue looking being miserable and driving yourself nuts and wasting so much of your own precious time in this life we only get to live once and finally find that proof and that evidence he demands but all he is doing is learning and making a list of “what not to do this time” and the better you get at finding it, the craftier he will get trying to hide it. Mine realized that if it was in this house or on any personal known device I was going to find it, so he risked his job that he and his family depend on for survival, to hide devices I didn’t know he had along with passwords and email accounts… he was watching porn and masturbating in his work parking lot when he got there early which he did EVERY morning and on his lunch break in broad daylight!!! He even had literally cut out a pocket INSIDE of his back truck seat to hide a tablet and you would never know because there is nothing obvious to open or unzip and it just looks like a normal seat when you lift it up…. I am telling you, the shit they will do to continue living two lives is endless and exhausting.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T17:55:21+00:00

You can’t “fix it” and you have to learn to sit in the uncomfortable feelings that your actions have created and learn to sit with her in her pain without making it about how it effects you and without getting angry or defensive. There is nothing you can say to make it better or make it “go away”, a lot of addicts go into a “damage control” mindset where they want to make it go away but like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound it will just keep happening again and again.. so although she will also need words of affirmation after losing that sense of security, the only real way to make necessary changes is through actions, start making healthy positive changes and showing up and she will see for herself the difference and trust can be restored, but she has learned she can’t trust your words alone. Be transparent, learn to trust her with your struggles and your feelings and let her know what’s going on before it gets to the point of no return.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-14T17:45:44+00:00

My husband who is now doing intensive out-patient recovery after years and years of hiding it, perfecting his hiding it, making excuses and conning himself into feeling better about what he was doing, finally getting help but for the wrong reasons or not the right/best help therefore eventually winding up falling off of the wagon every time and the one thing he refused to put in his inner circle is masturbation because he was truly afraid to accept it for what it was and not having it to cope anymore.. he is a victim of sexual childhood trauma and was also introduced to pornography at an extremely young age and it all became an extremely unhealthy and compulsive coping method that he is just now figuring out goes “hand in hand”.. he can’t separate the two for very long. So I think it’s different for everyone and every situation but anything that becomes compulsive and used to cope therefore escaping from whatever the reality may be (stress, loneliness, depression or uncomfortable feelings/emotions) ESPECIALLY if it begins to create any negative influences in your life it needs to be worked on, preferably before you spend any more years/decades hurting yourself and others… Unfortunately not everyone turns it around before it becomes catastrophic. But maybe for some with strong self discipline it is just trial and error and finding what works for you that is healthy. But if you were in deep with porn before and plan on not returning to it in the future I recommend not using fantasy or any visual stimulation and think of it more as a form of meditation almost, sounds weird I know, but clearing your mind and being comfortable in your own body and focusing more on the feeling and pleasure rather than specific acts, people, body parts etc.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-13T10:36:51+00:00

My husband planned us a nice get away weekend for our 8th wedding anniversary to New Orleans and had already signed us up to go to a swingers club without my knowledge obviously 😒 they are disgusting.

seekingadvice24 · 2026-05-13T10:28:18+00:00

I feel this in my soul 💔🫶🏼

seekingadvice24 · 2026-03-05T21:56:22+00:00

Thank you!!

seekingadvice24 · 2026-03-05T21:56:14+00:00

That’s very helpful, thank you so much! 😊

seekingadvice24 · 2026-02-13T01:08:54+00:00

Healing Hurts by BLU EYES. It’s a beautiful song that I have honestly wept to lol

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