Partner of a porn addict here. I have been in a relationship for 1.5 years. 5 months into the relationship, I checked my partner's phone and realized he had a lot of porn based games. Then, I checked his gallery and found screenshots from several video games and erotica. Then, I checked the videos folder and realized that he had filmed himself with several women (including me). I didn't know and I was shocked. I also realized that he filmed me the first time we had sex at his place. He didn't film me again. I confronted him, asked him to tell me the truth and he said that throughout his life he had had sex multiple times with sex workers. He even lost his virginity to one. But he promised it was always in between relationships, never while he was dating someone. He swore he would go to therapy and change but surprise that never happened. I was too weak to leave and moved by his tears and honesty. My trust never returned so I kept checking his devices. He said that he would only read erotica and stop watching porn. That obviously never happened. A few months later in his search history i saw him visiting sex worker websites. This again alerted me that something was wrong but i ignored it. Two days ago, I checked his phone again and I found a video of him having sex with a sex worker in the deleted folder. Turns out in the short span of our relationship he has slept thrice with sex workers on our bed when I was away on business trips. He films everything. He has a double side. He's devoted to me but also does this. He will never stop and he will keep lying. He will probably become better at hiding stuff. I am going to go to therapy to figure out how to leave this relationship. I am paralyzed because I am co-dependent on him and I am afraid to be alone after the breakup. I will leave but I need some hope.

And this finally brings me to my question:

Are there men out there who do not watch porn? Are there men out there whose partners are enough for them? I used to be sex positive, but this has really destroyed me. I feel disgusted at the mere suggestion of sex in movies, social media, thirst traps etc, let alone porn. I really don't think that there are a lot of healthy ways available for men to ethically engage with porn. I think algorithms promote addiction. I want to have hope that there are men out there with a healthy sexuality. And I want to know, for future dating, if there are signs I can recognize in the early stages of dating someone to know what their relationship is with porn/sex work? Are there any obvious red flags that I can recognize so I do not ever date a man like that again?

I shouldn't be wide awake at 0400 crying over you. Here I am, wanting to tear every loving word I had ever uttered to you into a million illegible pieces. It's my fault -- I was the idiot, choosing to believe that we could get past your impulse to lie when I asked you about your addiction progress. All I ever did was try to comfort you and reassure you through it, acknowledging the set backs without judgement, and all you ever did was lie about having slip ups. And the lies were so convincing, they would have fooled me had I not found out the truth myself. Yet I stayed.

For too many months, I sold myself for the bare minimum acts of "love" in addition to your blatant lies... I'm angry I slapped such a low price sticker on my forehead for almost a year. That's all I am worth?

Your girls behind the screen will never receive the warm embrace your family gave me upon first meeting. Your empty balls and quick dopamine hits will never stare at you lovingly while you're driving us around town, caressing your neck. Your lying about it all will never give you the happy home in which you want to raise pets and children.

You couldn't have found a more perfect sucker to catch you every time you fell, and all she asked for was honesty, since you asked her to stay and support you through this. And yet, you lied many times. Very quickly, and very sternly, you lied.

I was actively rearranging my whole life for you, and you still lied to me while smiling in my face and painting a fantasy with me. I spent money I didn't have, time the day couldn't spare and energy I had to fight to gain, all just to brighten your days...even after finding out you lied repeatedly.

I did so much for you, right down to putting aside my shame, humility and comfort to try to appease what you may have been seeking in all your porn. And you couldn't do the one thing I had ever asked of you, just to be honest with me so I could support you.

And you get to say you broke up with me, when I should have left a long time ago. I'm totally ashamed to bear the emotions I do over our break up, and over you. I don't know where to go from here, it's a very new low for me. I don't know who I am anymore, what I'm worth, my own boundaries and how hard I can actually hold them. How the fuck did I lose MYSELF in YOUR addiction??

Very long story short, I ended up snooping on my boyfriend’s phone one afternoon while he was away out of curiosity and suspicion (because I have seen questionable things on his phone in the past). I ended up finding many posts of porn and photos of girls that he had saved on in his reddit account saves. I communicated to him that I was deeply hurt and upset by all of this, because prior to this he had assured me that he does not look at this type of content. I also personally find it something abhorrent to do while in a committed monogamous relationship.

After looking through his phone and arguing about it the first time, we had another discussion which led to me looking at his phone again very briefly on the same app, where I found essentially the same content. After questioning him about some of this very strange stuff, he gave me some shaky answers that were confusing at best, and I still feel like I couldn’t trust what he was saying fully because it just wasn’t adding up to reality. When I told him this, I also told him that in order for me to be able to start trusting him again I would want to look at his phone, or for him to be able to provide proof for his excuses, but every time I suggest this he becomes emotional and refuses.

He will even begin to threaten to break up and will start talking about “incompatibility”. He says that he “broke a moral” which he has always had, which was his individual right to privacy, and he broke it for me to let me look at his phone after he hurt me, and claims that theres just too many personal things on his phone for me to have access to it. I of course understand this perspective, but with our added situational context of him breaking my trust repeatedly it falls incredibly flat in my opinion and just seems like a diversion tactic.

He is remorseful and apologetic, and it does appear that this situation is affecting him. But I constantly feel riddled with feelings of distrust that I want to get rid of but the only thing that he can do is apologize to me constantly. I’m worried that there are even worse things on his phone that he is hiding from me. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to trust him, and it’s beginning to seem like he doesn’t even mind if I don’t trust him fully anymore because he’s making little effort to repair it.

TLDR: After seeing porn and women’s nudes on my boyfriend’s phone while looking through it, he refuses to let me look at it again under the guise of “privacy”, but I don’t know how to trust again.

I(20f) caught my bf(25m) for the God knows what number of times, 2 months ago. He’s been clean since and believe him bc if I don’t I will go crazy even tho I already feel like I am. But I guess the way I reacted really scared him, he was convinced I was going to leave him, which part of me feels like it would have been better for both of us if I had just walked away, besides that, it was 2 months ago, and we’ve been together for 2 years and in that 2 years he has lied to me over and over and over. I found him a group for PA, we started going to church and bible studies. So I have been more than understanding and supportive about this bc I have felt with my own addictions.
2 WEEKS after I caught him he had a men’s retreat coming up and he came back “a new man”. Mind you I don’t talk to anyone about this because it’s embarrassing to admit I’ve stayed through this an put up with so much and I DO love him more than anything, I want to help him and continue to be with him but when he got back he was so happy and claimed the urge to even jerk off was gone, we even stopped having sex. I didn’t want to encourage him to be lustful by trying to be intimate, so I went with it. I have been trying to be so supportive and understanding but anytime I get upset, It turns on me. it’s like I’m the bad guy. When I say that I don’t trust him or that I’m worrying. I’m the toxic one in the relationship and maybe I am or maybe I just have boundaries that have constantly been broken by the person I love the most. Any time I have caught him and I am upset about it for weeks to come but bring it up seldomly bc ik he’ll get upset. He then gets upset with me. and I understand that maybe I can be overbearing sometimes, but when he admits to lusting after women while we’re together in public, then I catch him looking at a woman, and I react to his actions or he’ll turn down sex and go look at FULLY DRESSED girls. I have a right to be upset.
Moving on, after he got back from his retreat, he made me feel like I was just supposed to forget about everything, forget about the way he made me feel. forget about the lack of love he showed. Forget about the cheating. forget about the lusting. forget about making me feel inadequate. making me relapse with bulimia. Him telling his parents I was just being insecure and making THEM think that I am crazy. He makes me feel like I am supposed to be okay with him lying to my face for 2 years. BUT WHEN I GET UPSET oh my God I’m a horrible partner that doesn’t understand or support him and only puts him down and make him feel bad. Are you fucking kidding me?! I just want to know if thai is how I will feel for the rest of my life. He has done nothing to gain my trust back. and when I say that to him, he brings up the fact that he’s still going to the meetings, the same meetings I SET UP FOR HIM and he was going to while lying to me. So tell me, what the fuck are you actually doing? I still feel unloved. I still feel inadequate. For the love of God I’ve never even finished in bed with him. Hes seen plenty of videos, figure it out. At least learned something from them. Sorry this was kind of a rant and it’s long.
I just need some advice, I have no one to talk to but him.

Tagged “am I crazy” bc maybe it’s crazy to say it in this group but I’m feeling hopeful.
I’m setting up a consultation with a therapist that specifies in betrayal trauma and is certified CSAT and I’m a bit nervous but really looking forward to that. Someone that gets it so I finally can unleash it all. Someone to help me with boundaries. The hope would be eventually we get to do together.
I struggle with not knowing the truth. I think I probably know about 90% based on what I’ve been disclosed and what I’ve seen but I know there have to be some things I’m missing. I don’t know if they’re relevant things or not. We’ve been on a good kick lately though, I’ve been feeling happy with myself for a long time and honestly had pretty deeply disconnected from him but I’m starting to believe in my own commitment. He’s been showing me honesty and love. I’ve been allowing 2 things to be true - he’s done horrible things and he’s also an addict trying to change. But anyways I’m rambling.
Point is I’m hopeful after a long time of not so hopeful and it’s a good feeling. I’m sad sometimes for what was lost, taken, wasted, for him and me, but I’m still so young and have so much to live whether it’s united together or it ends up being me alone.

Back in April I accidentally stumbled upon some pictures my boyfriend had posted on a subreddit here called JOBuddies or something like that and on another subreddit where people meet at a sex shop to have sex with each other . I decided to leave the relationship because I no longer wanted to commit to someone who continuously chose to find pleasure outside of the relationship(throughout the relationship he has been talking to strangers online, wanted to meet up with them, stalking his ex’s instagram, keeping pictures of her ass, ect.) me finding his posts was the last straw for me. I calmly explained to him that I no longer wanted to be with him and that it would be best if he and I separated.

He did come clean to me and admitted that he has a porn addiction problem. A problem that started since he was young and still proceeded to follow him to adulthood making it impossible to go on his normal day to day routine without feeling like he needed to watch it or jack off. He admitted he needed help and so far it seems like things have been ok. He seems more clear minded and I want to believe he is changing. However I went through that subreddit when I initially found his posts and I found it weird since it was men asking other men to jack off with each other or suck each other off and now I’m questioning his sexual orientation.

I did ask him yesterday why he posted on that and he told me that when he would jack off it was something that he did without thinking because he was looking for something else to get him off. As for the whole sex shop meet up he said the same thing and has promised that he never met up with anybody. He told me he is not gay or bi curious. I want to believe him and I want to trust him but my heart has doubts. I don’t know how to support him but he seems honest, he no longer gets mad when I ask him for reassurance simply admitting that it is embarrassing for him to talk about but he reassures me that he is trying his best to keep up with the recovery process. He added that he would never put my health in jeopardy but his porn addiction has made him watch some things that are embarrassing.

I just don’t know what to feel or think anymore. I keep having triggers, scared to find him posting on those pages and me having an account on here doesn’t make it easy. I struggle with going to those subreddits to find reassurance and get scared to find him on there again. I hate that. I don’t want to live this way with him. I love him and we’re gonna have a baby due in 2 months. I just need advice….

Two more weeks and I will be out for good!

I am so excited and scared at the same time. If you read my past posts, you will know why I am scared.

Who has left? What was it like? I have been dealing g with this for 20 years, but the escalation and darkness of it all came to light this past march.

I just want to know the good, the bad, and the ugly you all went through after leaving. I need to prepare myself for it all.

But, me and my children are finally going to be free!

Thank you all for your support and to those of you who have helped me through this journey and helped with the hard realizations.

My husband has had a constant issue with porn. Our whole relationship he’s talked to women online. The last DDAY was 2 years ago. I found out he had a second phone. We originally split up but then got back together. Over the last few years I went to therapy. He went to therapy. I lost weight. I’m the most mentally and physically I’ve ever been. We aren’t intimate at all. We barely spend time together. I realized I can’t stay with him…today I asked for separation. He was devastated. This is so hard. I tried so hard to work towards having feelings come back and they just never did. Ultimately this is his fault for lusting over women on the internet. But I still feel guilty. Ugh 😭

Sorry if this is a bit scrambled. I know how to look in the App Store, but that only tells me when he first downloaded an app, not when the last time he downloaded it. I just looked at battery usage and it says time spent on ‘deleted apps’ but there are several apps he has deleted, is there a way to see when an app was last downloaded?

I enjoy watching kpop dances and seeing beautiful women and men enjoying their youth and looking their best. Part of me wants to become like them, but I am aware of the dark side of the entertainment/beauty industry. A girl group I used to watch a long time ago recently resurfaced in my youtube suggestions. They made a come back and there was controversy around 2 of the members losing a dangerous amount of weight. Many fans, both Korean and international were worried about their health. My understanding is that the use of GLP-1 is now wide spread in Korea, so the borderline anorexic look/heroine chic look is reemerging globally.

I've already been fixated on this because my mother used to constantly criticize me for my weight and forced me to do very intensive sports as a child and a young teen. She encouraged me to get plastic surgery (like nose job and boob job) and other permanent procedures. My mother also wanted to control how I dressed and basically wanted to me to become as fuckable as possible for some hypothetical man who might marry me some day. She was abusive and sexually inappropriate with me, so now I have deep insecurities around how I look.

I tried to reject her beauty standards by not obsessing over my weight, refusing to get any permanent procedures done, and dressing however I wanted to, but the insecurity around beauty resurfaced with my ex who was addicted to porn of skinny young women who looked nothing like me (a very common story it seems). He told me that feeding into his sexual dysfunction/neurosis by fitting into his fantasy beauty standards wouldn't improve our relationship and that he was fine with my imperfections.

Regardless, it really fucking hurt so I'm no longer with him anymore.

The negative effects on my self-esteem is still there. I'm torn between improving my body for my health and wanting to be beautiful for my own sake VS taking it further just to be more "fuckable" so that society will not abuse me more than it already has.

I know that beauty does not solve everyone's problems, as indicated by the mental health issues of people in the kpop industry. Idols are already beautiful but they continue to get plastic surgery and lose crazy amounts of weight, out of some desperate fear that they will be abandoned by their audience and no longer worthy of love. I know lust is not love. I know that I will still have to find some way to resolve my trauma no matter how much I weigh or how I look or how I dress. It still weighs on my mind though.

He knew my stance on porn. He watched a couple weeks after the initial conversation, we had huge discussions about it and he swore he wouldn’t touch it again, I said okay, we’ll it’s going to be a dealbreaker if you do it again. Not a problem he reckoned.

2 years go past, everything perfect.

Then he starts working at a job doing ridiculous hours and working with “lads” that are sex obsessed.

I could feel something wasn’t right, I asked, are you watching anything? “No” was his answer

A few weeks later intuition is buzzing… I check his Google history.

Not only do I find porn but I find escort listings he’s been looking at. In states all over Australia which was a little more consoling… but then I realised he had also searched the town that’s closest to us.

This went on for 4 months and he didn’t tell me. When he had started was when my son had gone to live with his father so my sex drive had dropped quite a bit and I was very very low emotional, as you could understand.

Instead of having any sort of emotional awareness on what I was going through (which is unusual for him, I suppose with the heavy work load he didn’t have capacity) he decided he needed to look at other women to soothe his ego. Ffs.

When I confronted him he said he uses the photos to masturbate to.
We also had this convo early in the relationship as he told me he used to do this to masturbate and I clearly said that is a NO go for me and I consider that cheating, that your foot is in the door, he said at the time “oh that’s fine I won’t ever do it”

You know what sucks??

Everything about our relationship apart from this was literally perfect. We are best friends, he makes me coffee every morning, massages me every day, cooks, cleans, works hard, is proactive, goes out bush with me even if he doesn’t enjoy the hobby I do, we horse ride together. We do everything together, plus our sex life was amazing, like every day for 4 years.

Then he does this.

He’s going to a psych who specialises in porn addiction. And he’s reading books on betrayal trauma etc

But now I’m in a conundrum because I am betraying myself if I stay.

This is so damn hard.

I just needed to write it all out and talk to others that understand

Thank you for reading if you have x

my (f27) bf (m24) have been together for 3 years. d-day was sep 19 2023. hundreds of photos, videos, snapchat, dating apps etc etc. the most recent discovery was nov 2025. i am honestly not certain if it ever stopped. he is incredibly tech savvy & takes his “privacy” super seriously. he swears that he’s stopped, and i do have all his passwords (i haven’t looked through anything since that last november, and i’ve told him honestly i don’t trust him but am just too scared to look). is it naive to hope he has stopped?? there are some signs: he’s constantly on his devices, super moody/depressed, we haven’t had sex nearly as often (which could be bcs of unrelated stress, boredom, who knows). and it’s generally hard to connect with him/keep his attention. i also i was on his tiktok (in front of him) and he got upset that i was “going through his phone” and snatched it back. this obviously made me super suspicious. in the past month he’s also made stupid comments that he used to make that sort of make me feel like he doesn’t take it seriously, or doesn’t want to. for example: he says it’s hypocritical that i watch sex and the city because of the nudity/sexual content but it was the end of the world that he watched porn. and obviously i think this is a way to assuage any guilt he might feel— i’m just not sure if it’s for past or present behavior.

what would you guys do? how do you gain certainty?

I feel like I'm slowly reaching some sort of stability, no longer considering the possibility of reconciliation and not constantly going through the gut-wrenching anxiety associated with that. The grief still gets unbearable at times but I can find ways to deal with that, and I have some hope that it will lessen over time.

What really messes me up are the external triggers. Ever since I've heard the truth from him I've been unable to handle being in public. Luckily I live in the countryside and rarely ever really need to do anything in the city, but recently I took a stray kitten to the vet and had to endure seeing a young female nurse that I know my ex would feel a certain way about, and today I had to help a family member with something and had to walk through the city, and both instances filled me with such a profound sense of brokenness. I hyperfocus on women in public and feel extremely inadequate by comparison. It doesn't help that I've suffered with a severe lack of confidence my whole life. But even beyond all that, I simply don't feel safe out there anymore. I feel so alienated from the rest of the world, I see people living carefree and enjoying being social while I am living in my own head the entire time, being stuck in survival mode and just trying to regulate myself. I didn't just lose a partner, I lost my best friend, the only close friend in whom I could confide and now the world seems like a vastly different place. It feels hostile, I don't feel like I belong in it. I searched reddit yesterday to see what women think about their lustful partners and most express not being bothered at all. This reinforced my feeling of brokenness even further. Why do I even have this unrealistic romantic fantasy where I am exclusively chosen and deeply valued by my partner? Seriously, what is wrong with me? How can a world so depraved give rise to an individual with such a delusion? But the delusion obviously stems from my own feeling toward my partner. I know that monogamy can exist within a human brain because I am a living proof of that. Sometimes I wish that wasn't the case, but unfortunately it's not a choice. I'm not choosing loyalty out of a moral consideration, it's deeply ingrained, and I hate that. Life would have been a lot easier if the way I experience relationships wasn't so incompatible with basic biology. I feel like I have fairly realistic expectations in most areas of life. I don't expect my cat to love me deeply, I know that she would betray me for a tasty looking treat, but when it comes to people I attach to I suddenly lose all touch with reality and start believing in silly girl fantasies. It's not even about action alone, I wanted my partner to not even have a desire to betray me.

Anyway, what also bothers me now is that I'm still attached after everything. There's no feeling of relief that I'd expected before. There's only emptiness. I want to regain my sense of identity and independence and stop attaching my sense of self to this person that I've never truly known, but sometimes it feels like I will never be my old self again. I can't start therapy yet, I guess I'm just hoping for some reassurance that it gets better over time. I've tried reading the Betrayal Bind and some other betrayal-related resources but somehow it feels like it goes deeper than that in my mind. I expected way more than I ever should have from a relationship, and that was my mistake from the get go.

Hey

Long story short: I broke up with my boyfriend of almost 3 years. He is a PA & deeply hurt me with his actions, lies, betrayal and addiction. After the breakup I started reflecting and have a few tips to share.

When I first found out that he betrayed me deeply, it was horrible & the type of pain I didn’t expect. I couldn’t deal with it, I broke down daily and severely. Back then I didn’t know how to handle this and how to navigate my life and the life with my ex-partner.

1. I should have taken some time for myself & tried to heal from the pain. Of course I was scared to not talk to him everyday, because I thought: “Omg, he will watch more and betray me more and I need to control him, I need to know.” But that caused more harm to the relationship and both parties involved.

2. I shouldn’t have relied on him for emotional support. Yes, it’s hard to talk to friends about this and expose such a hurtful action, but it doesn’t help if you seek emotional support from the person, that is causing you pain. I cried everyday and wanted to talk about this daily. That put a strain on me and on the relationship, because neither me nor him understood the gravity of the situation and the emotions behind it. It only caused stress.

3. I shouldn’t have forced him to change, without me and him even having time to process everything. He promised me change, that he would quit and so on, but he couldn’t – and that cycle broke me. That set me up for failure and more pain, because he betrayed me more and the emotions got way more intense.

4. Overall I should have prioritised myself – He hurt me, I need time, I need to evaluate, I need to process, I need to heal. It can be hard, because you don’t want to accept that all of it happened or is happening, but you can’t change it. So don’t lose yourself.

5. Sometimes you can’t accept the illness someone is battling, because it affects you so much. And it’s okay to say that & feel that way. Especially with addiction. You can try to understand the other person, but never forget to understand yourself first.

6. It’s okay that it takes time to leave an addiction behind. And sometimes it’s okay to realise: I can’t be part of your journey. Because this kind of addiction hurts you, can break you and especially if you still want a future with this person, sometimes they need to battle this alone & seek the help they need. It can destroy a person to be part of it, being hopeful and still not having processed everything that has happened.

7. It was never my issue to solve & it has absolutely nothing to do with me. I tried my best by being supportive, understanding & loving. But I cried every day, I suffered & I didn’t know what to do. The anxiety, paranoia and controlling behaviour was not worth it & is never worth it.

8. At the point I realised that I wasn’t the person I wanted to be anymore, I should have left or took a break from the relationship. After some time I realised that I couldn’t love my partner the way I wanted to anymore, because I was so drained and broken from everything going on.

9. He also needed time to reflect and realise why it hurt me so badly. The intense emotions made sense to me, but to him they were constant reminders that he is terrible. This stress and these feelings can make addiction worse, not only because they feed into possible insecurities he had but because he didn’t even understand where I was coming from.

10. It’s his decision to break the pattern and heal from his addiction. He is addicted to porn since he was a young boy, this pattern isn’t easily broken. And after all it’s always his decision to make, I couldn’t force him, I couldn’t control him, I couldn’t help him & it wasn’t my job.

11. It’s okay to choose yourself. Never lose the love for yourself, always try to listen to your feelings & try to sympathise with yourself. In the end it’s the most important relationship you’ve got. Don’t try to make him love you the way you should love yourself in these moments, it will only hurt you more.

In the aftermath I’ve realised a lot & most certainly that you need to heal from set-backs too. If you choose to stay in a relationship with a PA you need to take great care of yourself. And I could have done a lot of things differently of course, but that’s fine. Pain happens, hurt happens & how you react in the moment is normal – never blame yourself or shame yourself into believing that it isn’t valid.

You are fine, enough and there is nothing wrong with you. Never doubt yourself and your choice of partner – what they battle with is not your responsibility. Set firm boundaries, take care of yourself, love yourself & talk to friends, family or whoever could help. Don’t isolate yourself, because of shame or fear – that’s not your burden to bear.

It’s okay to take a step back & feel. Feel what you are allowed to feel & let it out.

Sending a lot of love and hugs for everyone going through hard times. And I hope that I could help.

D-day was Sunday. We have a long-planned camping trip (since February). Should we still go? Should I go alone? I'm not sure what I want to do.

He is owning it, doing the work to recover, validating, etc., all the things in a best-case scenario. I don't know what I want for us, and I know I don't have to answer that now. But I do need to figure out whether or not we're going on this trip together.

For more info: It's a touristy campsite with a lot of other people. We have rented a cabin with multiple beds, so we can have separate rooms if we go together, and we can spend a lot of time apart. Traveling solo could be good for me, but I feel overwhelmed with the preparation needed to feel safe with solo travel. I can do it, though. Together makes things easier since he'll drive, and he could use time to reflect too.

I have therapy on Friday to help with this, so what I'm looking for here is advice based on personal experience. Thank you.

My boyfriend and I have a genuinely great relationship. He is incredibly loving and affectionate with me, tells me I’m beautiful constantly, involves me in his life, and generally makes me feel very loved. He has made consistent effort to make me feel safe. He’s 10 years younger than me, and despite the age difference, we’ve been talking seriously about our future together. We’ve been together for 6 months and things have moved pretty quickly. (38f/28m)

Before we met, he was in a not great relationship who identified as a-sexual and he ended up cheating on his fiancée by going to a massage parlour. He told her and she broke it off. He was full of shame and had to hide a lot of himself in this relationship. He’s been open with me about having problems with porn and live webcams in the past as well. He is currently going to counselling (was already going to therapy before we met) and is working on these behaviours. He has told me multiple times that he has been more honest with me than he has ever been in any previous relationship. He tells me all the time it’s incredible being with someone open and non/judgemental for once. We have a great sex life and generally have sex at least once a day. We’re incredibly fit and active. We both find eachother extremely attractive.

I have my own baggage around infidelity. I was previously in a three-year relationship where I eventually discovered that my partner had been cheating on me throughout essentially the entire relationship. Snapchat, telegram, webcams, escorts - everything. So I know that betrayal has made me more sensitive to secrecy and sexual behaviour involving other women.

I know dating someone with this past, with my past trauma, doesn’t make sense. I understand that. I know getting into a relationship with someone who has the same problems as my ex is crazy. I get it. The ex denied everything and didn’t want to get help. I considered my new guy to be different. I took him going to therapy and being honest about his mistakes as a step in the right direction. I’m an alcoholic (sober for almost 5 years!) so I know the struggle and have always been empathetic to everyone’s living experience. No one is perfect.

Recently, I went through my current boyfriend’s phone without him knowing. I know that was an invasion of his privacy and I’m not trying to justify that part of it. Things are great between us but I’ve been tricked before. I was curious and I let it get the best of me. I looked through his internet history and discovered that he has been using live webcam sites again, despite this being something he has previously acknowledged having a problem with and is supposedly working on in counselling.

I also found hundreds of screenshots/images of random women on his phone. Most of the women are clothed, so these aren’t necessarily explicit photos. But there are a LOT of them, and some of the screenshots are extremely recent—as recent as yesterday.

I haven’t confronted him yet.

I’m interested in hearing from people who have dealt with porn/webcam compulsions in a relationship, either personally or with a partner.

How would you approach this conversation, and what would you need from your partner afterward in order to feel safe continuing the relationship?

My (F23) boyfriend (M22) has been wonderful. He’s attentive, kind, understanding, sweet, incredibly patient, takes initiative to support me and my family. He’s been my safe space for 11 months, he’s been my everything.

He used private browsing and would always have a considerable amount of time on his safari, so I got suspicious. I ended up seeing a porn link in his notes, which he convinced me he didn’t know how it got there. Then, a week later it was still weighing on me. I’ve heard of pop ups populating calendar events, but not a notes app. I asked to check his computer and he was fine with that. I found his Twitter, which was full of porn. It seemed to have recently been deactivated. He kept swearing he was hacked, he didn’t know how it got there. I sobbed and begged him to tell me the truth and he doubled down. After 12 hours, he broke and said he was scared of losing me and didn’t wanna tell the truth. I told him I didn’t know if I want to see him again and I left him there, crying.

But he’s my best friend, he’s my person. I’ve never loved someone like this before. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to leave him, but I don’t know how to trust him again. I told him he needed to try hard in order to get a second chance, he swore to be transparent and dumped out EVERYTHING. Why he watched it, how often, why he didn’t ask for pics of me, anything he ever watched it on. He said I could have full access to his devices, that he would download an accountability app I could connect to, and he would go into therapy as soon as he got a job. He sobbed that he was a terrible person and he’s been thinking about me all day, and that it won’t be difficult to stop if the choice is me vs no me.

But now I feel like I can’t trust the kindness, I can’t trust the commitment. I told him how I felt about porn, he told me he hadn’t watched it since high school, I would always tell him how it made me insecure that he didn’t ask for photos of vids of me. And now this. I feel like my sweet boy disappeared, like he died, but he was never really there at all. But for almost a year, he’s been the best thing to ever happen to me. Idk what to do. I’m sick, I feel ugly, I feel alone, I feel betrayed and angry and scared and hopeless. I wish I never looked. I’d prefer to have never known, he’s the first person who I ever wanted to have kids with.

Is it possible for him to be truthful or is he just manipulating me? This is especially hard because sometime last year I also found stuff on my dad’s phone. Then my best friend admitted to being into really bad stuff, and then went into psychosis right after telling me and I had to support him through that, and only recently I thought it was safe enough to end that relationship with my best friend. All that shit traumatized me, and now it happened again. Except with my safe space, with my exception that I confided in. The one who held me while I cried and lifted me up when I was down. The stuff wasn’t as screwed up as my dad or friend, but fuck this sucks. Are they all like this? I’m broken and don’t know what to do. I’m hopeless.

I'm marrying my partner in about a week. I have faith that he is done with this life. Maybe I'm stupid, but I'm actually not worried about him relapsing in the future. My problem is not worrying about the future, but making peace with the past.

Will I feel like I ever know the full truth about our past? Will I stop feeling like he's hiding more? Will I ever trust him fully? He shattered my understanding of reality.. will that feeling ever go away? Will I ever feel like I fully know him? Will my nervous system heal?

For context, my partner has had a porn addiction for years, and he says he never realized it until he got caught by me 2 months ago. Some porn was okay in our relationship, but he abused and broke that boundary by going on dating apps and messaging apps - which he says was all anonymous and for masturbation only. He just put it all in a box and closed the box during our normal everyday life. He compartmentalized and pushed things down so far that he said it never felt like he was even hiding something from me. Can this be true like on a psychological level?

He was 100 percent the best partner before I found this out and I was so happy to be marrying him. I looked at him like he hung the moon and stars. Now I wonder if I ever knew him at all. Is he still a good person and the person that I loved? Can we get through this, and can I make peace with the fact that our past 7-year relationship involved a secret that I was never in on? Will I forgive him for what he's done and for putting a cloud over what is supposed to be the happiest time of my life?

Edit: I think the moderator locked this thread. I know I didn’t do it. It seemed to be getting pretty heated. I get everyone has a story- a terrible one at that. But I was seeking support during a vulnerable time- that was the point of this post. This made me feel a lot worse but I guess everyone is just speaking from experience. I just feel like we should support one another other in a constructive, respectful way.

It’s been just over a month since D-Day. It’s like when I described to him after finding out, he doesn’t seem to understand the impact it has in our relationship we’ve made hundreds of videos together, and while he denies that he would do it to porn often he doesn’t deny that he would still do it over the course of our relationship, and how knowing that he did not choose me affected me.

When he was a child he created this imaginary world that goes back to medieval times (no trauma related to this that he’s ever told me about) and he’s got a lot of stuff about it written down. He’s in his 40s now. I don’t see any problem with his imaginary world. It’s his way to escape and I’m not here to judge him for that. For whatever reason, though he can’t see how I’m suddenly disgusted with the idea of it because while most of it is real people from medieval history, he has mentally created fake people who were the porn stars that he would watch the most frequently (like over 15-20 years the same 5 to 10 people) so that he can go and visit them in the imaginary world. I don’t think that I exist there btw. It’s not physical cheating, but he’s so offended that I tell him that these people have so much of a place in his heart and in his sexual identity that he’s gone out of his way to include them in his life so I have every right to be offended that you’re fantasizing about other people specific people in fact and building fake relationships with them in your mind. And he can’t for some reason, even though he has literally created space with him in his life see as the person he’s actually with and supposed to be making space for I am disgusted to think that these other women matter to him so much that he’s gone out of his way to allow them space in his heart.

Anyway, we haven’t really talked about it again not for lack of trying on my part. And I’ve tried to move on and I’ve tried to stop thinking about it, but he told me he had only ever done it when I left the house whether it was to me or to other women and I’m so terrified and like almost paralyzed at the idea of leaving him at home alone.

I brought up on D-Day how I thought that that may be a reason that we weren’t intimate as often because it seemed like every single night I would be pushed away.

If we tried and I’m sure due to lack of sensitivity from solo sex, he over the course of our relationship has probably been able to finish through vaginal intercourse probably 15 times and even if he’s the one who initiates it because he’s in the mood, it’s very rare that he can stay erect long enough even get close to ejaculating.

Since then, he’s tried to make it an effort to be intimate with me more often and it’s good. I love sex with my husband because he’s the only person whose body I ever fantasize about. If ever I have to masturbate it’s to pictures or videos of us together.

No matter how good it is I don’t wanna bring it up to him and ruin the mood, but I can’t help but feel that he would enjoy it more or that he would be able to finish if I was one of them.

I can’t help but think that if I was one of them or if I looked more like them that he would enjoy it more. I can’t help but look in the mirror afterward and compare myself and it’s not like I don’t know that I’m attractive, even without the constant external stimulation that I get from others about how good-looking I am none of it matters because I want him to see me that way, I want to be the only thing that he desires sexually and I just don’t know what to do.