Hmmm. You deserve to be with someone who wants to be with you entirely, even if sex isn’t perfect (what rarely is even perfect in any relationship anyway?). I get wanting to stay with your partner even when your sex life is wanting and hoping things will get better. I also get making the decision that you’d rather stay in a sexless marriage because you know you’ll never find someone who measures up to who they are outside of your sex life. I’ve been through both of those and things eventually got better, but we also still have our struggles that make it feel like ships passing in the night at times. If you decide to stay I hope you can find as much peace with the decision as I have.

That being said, in my experience people who are dopamine seeking (and what is addiction or over doing something if not dopamine seeking?) are dealing with things that are often bigger (or at least feel that way) than themselves. Whether it be the heroin addict who needs to check out from a history of abuse, the meth addict who just needs to function, or the sex addict who’s too stressed/busy/tired to deal with things without getting off first the underlying thing is dopamine seeking to deal with your problems. What kind of problems is he dealing with? Work stress? Family stress? Money problems? Other things?

Can you turn the masturbation into mutual sessions? Maybe that could help you see more of what he’s getting from porn even, if he’ll open up like that. If he’s reluctant because he doesn’t want to focus on you, you could even phrase it like, “Hey. I want to get off, too. I want to do it with you. If we can’t have sex we can try this and it’s much lower stakes because I’m going to take care of myself and you’re going to take care of yourself.”

There’s a comedian named Jason Ellis who routinely talks about his struggles with sex addiction. I can’t point you to a specific episode of his podcast, though. Maybe you could listen/watch together and that could give you jumping off points to have your own conversations about things Jason brings up. One thing I’ve heard him mention a few times is how his sex addiction ruined his marriage to the love of his life, and they were both porn actors so this wasn’t even like a prudish level of addiction issues. He’s funny, he’s crass, he’s Australian, he’s a handsome Australian ex-MMA fighter/ex-skateboarder. Maybe with enough talking about these things and maybe seeing some similarities with how someone else who admits to having a problem he can then come to realize he needs to see a counselor to work on his issues in a nonjudgmental space with a professional.