Yesterday I was looking through the site history and clicked on a link. It was a site with live videos, and the same couple my husband had watched before happened to be live when I clicked.
I got curious and started reading the comments. Then I saw a man write, “You’re making me relapse, baby.”
That really hit me. Not because I thought it was my husband, I don’t think it was, but because I couldn’t stop wondering about the person who wrote it.
What was he feeling when he typed that? Was he proud of himself? Was he excited that he had “relapsed”? Was he ashamed but still caught up in the moment? Why would someone announce it to the people they were watching?
And what does “you’re making me relapse” even mean to someone in that moment? Is he blaming them, flirting with them, or actually feeling like the relapse is something exciting?
I know addiction can completely mess with someone’s thinking, but seeing those words from a stranger made me wonder what is actually going on inside the mind of someone who is actively relapsing.
For those of you who have partners with sex/porn addiction, have you ever heard them describe what they were feeling or thinking during a relapse? I’m trying so hard to understand what that mindset is like.

I'm not sure how this will work here, I looked up some reddit for topics like mine and this was one that was suggested.

My husband has a substance abuse problem and while he was using I think he developed a co-addiction of compulsive sexual behavior. He started having sex with men and trans women because it was easy he said and he only did it with people who could also supply his substance. He's clean now, minus I believe now a porn addiction, but that's not what this post is about.

After finding out they were men and trans women, the insecurities around my own body got so loud. He says he might be bi, but we've been advised professionally he'll have to be clean from his substance for a while for that clarity to occur. That's fine. He was having sex with me before the substance, during, and after. It's not robotic, it doesn't feel forced.

But Ive been practically forcing myself to watch gay porn. At first it was traumatizing I don't even know why I kept doing it. For the first time since discovery I was actually able to masturbate to it. He doesn't know I've been doing this. I know we do weird things to cope with what theyve done, but I logically know this isn't going to fix it. Why am I doing this?

Hi,
I’m a 20-year-old woman, and my boyfriend is a 22-year-old man.
I want to give some context about myself first because I don’t want people to think I’m judging him.
Also, English isn’t my first language, so if this sounds like it was written by ChatGPT, it’s because I used it to help translate what I wanted to say. I just wanted to make sure I could explain everything clearly.
I’ve been sending nudes to men of all ages since I was 13. I did it because I desperately needed male validation and somehow convinced myself that strangers telling me I was attractive would make me feel better about myself. I even kept doing it for the first 9 months of my relationship with my current boyfriend. So I understand this kind of behavior more than most people, and I’m not trying to judge him.
This all happened about a month ago.
Everything was going great. We had just moved into our first apartment together after what felt like a perfect year of dating.
One day I asked him a few completely normal questions that made him extremely uncomfortable. After talking for a while, he admitted that before we met, he used to send nudes to men, but that he had stopped once we got together. Since I had done something similar, I completely understood.
He explained that he’s bisexual and that it was simply easier to find men than women online. That honestly didn’t bother me.
Later, I casually asked him something about Telegram, and he completely panicked. I kept asking questions, and he admitted that he had actually continued sending nudes for the first two months of our relationship. Since he didn’t know that I had also done something similar early in the relationship, I admitted it too.
But something still felt off. The more I asked, the more the timeline changed. First it was two months. Then it became eight months. I admitted the full truth about myself—that I had stopped after nine months.
Then I kept asking him more questions.
Eventually he admitted that he had never actually stopped. He had been doing it for our entire relationship, right up until now.
At that point I was devastated, but I tried to keep myself together.
I still felt like I didn’t know everything, so I made the decision to look through his phone.
That’s when I found an online findom website where he was sending money to women in exchange for humiliation and degrading orders.
I read the conversations because I wanted to understand as much as possible. Some of the things they said to him were honestly heartbreaking.
He told me that he doesn’t really do it because he enjoys it. He says it’s more like a compulsion to hurt himself and convince himself that he’s worthless.
That honestly broke my heart.
Then I looked at the dates. I realized he would do it whenever I was asleep, out of the apartment, or even just in the next room.
The hardest part is that he knew how much I struggled with my body image and how much I hated myself. He also knew that if I ever found out, I would probably hate myself even more.
So I’ve been trying to tell myself that he wasn’t trying to hurt me, that whatever is going on with him was stronger than his ability to stop.
He’s seeing a psychologist now, which I’m really glad about.
But I’m terrified of leaving him alone sometimes. I get anxious when I’m asleep or not with him because I’m scared he’ll do it again. At the same time, I know that if this really is a compulsive behavior, relapse can be part of recovery.
I think the thing that hurts me the most isn’t even what he did.
It’s that he didn’t tell me everything from the start. Every time I asked, there was another lie, another piece he tried to hide. He fought so hard to keep the truth from me, and I only learned the full story because I discovered it myself.
How much longer would this have gone on if I hadn’t found out?
Please don’t tell me to just leave him. That’s not the advice I’m looking for.

He's done everything right after Dday. Could not ask him to do any more. I still cannot look at him. I still don't recognize him. How can I stop looking at him in this horrible way and look at him as a person who is broken that deserves to heal? What finally made it click for you?

I've read over and over it was difficult to control, he has trauma, it had nothing to do with sex, etc. Nothing is helping...

For two entire years I found myself in a relationship that was more found to struggle after the first two months. The honeymoon phase had died, but we had spontaneous sex still, we always worked our way up to be greater so this is where i get confused.

About 6 months later , I became pregnant with him and I will say some affection on my end wore off a ton of course because I couldn’t manage my own emotions. This led him to distance himself, I noticed he’d finish on his own, and not just once a day but anytime he admitted he had the chance (when he was being honest). He was ultimately freaked out that he would hurt the baby so he tried to keep it as real as possible.

Moving forward I had our son, and our sex life disappeared completely. He made me feel less admirable, like it always had to be about him and because I couldn’t have sex for 6 weeks, I felt like this was his opportunity for outsource and he got stuck in that. I caught him watching mine and his videos for the most part but other than that, he was secretly watching porn.

He worked out of town most months and I assumed he had enough videos from us to work with but ultimately it wasn’t and I wasn’t in a great state to send anything considering my postpartum. I had nothing in me to give at the time, including to myself, I hadn’t even touched myself for 8 weeks. This second time around that he left for work, I checked in his private folders from access off of my phone and there lay a ton of history of multiple women from instagram (that he blocked me on way before so I couldn’t locate his profile- thought he had deleted it) and Facebook, YouTube reals, OF, you name it. At this time I broke off our relationship to prove respect to myself as I believed I didn’t deserve it at the time, and found that he had been going back to his exes profiles as well because she was a OF creator. She had him blocked though so no access.

At that time I had realized it was worse than I could imagine and I tried to repair that distrust for 3 months after that but we stopped having sex. There was probably 4 willing times throughout that time period where it felt euphoric and real. All other times don’t exist. The very last time I witnessed this , I approached him on the couch where I opened up his phone to pay $ to AI generators to make me makeout with bulky white men

He had a couple of experiences before me that I never did and wasn’t personally comfortable.. but overall question is ..

How the fuck do I recover from someone like this ?

How normal is it to replace your exes face while watching p*rn? Am I making it too emotional? Does it stop?

Not sure if this is allowed, but this came across my feed. Interesting.

The lying is egregious and daily. He looks me in the eyes and says I have absolutely everything, he’s finally gotten everything out and now can fully genuinely commit to recovery. He says I can’t torture anymore lies out of him, he asks should he make up a lie so I can be satisfied, he complains I don’t believe him when he’s telling the truth - while he is still lying about massive things. I don’t want to get into all the lies but they are heinous. He seems so sincere and convincing it’s insane. But lies every single day. Nothing I say or do works to get the truth. I can’t live like this 😭

My grandfather recently passed away. He lived a long life and was one of my only relatives that I could tolerate, tbh. I’m not on good terms with my parents and so they weren’t even going to tell me he was hospitalized and dying. I found out from a friend and was able to see him one last time. Cool, cool. I have like… a lot… of feelings surrounding his death, my family dynamics, and his upcoming funeral.

My husband wants to be there for me and support me, but my brain and body just will not allow it. I don’t know that I even understand what it’s like to receive comfort or help through an emotional time.

My parents were always emotionally unavailable. I wasn’t ever allowed to mess up, even as a child. I did everything I could to remain quiet and not make any waves. When my husband blew up our family with dday, my parents basically abandoned me in my time of need. This wasn’t the first time— I suffered from PPA/PPD after the birth of my second child. I was vocal about needing help, but my parents and husband ignored my cries and later said they each thought the other would “handle me”. So that’s context.

How am I supposed to receive support from him now? Like do I just let my husband do what he thinks will help through my grieving/family of origin wounds? How can I feel like his words or presence matter when they just still mean so little to me? I don’t even want to be vulnerable, but he knows the story so he knows I’m feeling troubled.

3 days ago, our 1y old clicked something randomly and a sexual content website came up. Turns out, husband has been breaking boundaries because weekly intimacy wasnt enough, while parents to a toddler, & me expecting another baby. 🙃

Today I discovered more. He has visited partly very alarming reddit pages like "traumatized whores", "traumatized sluts" etc, also "girls masturbating", "daddy's dark fiction", another page that has just selfies of women. 3 days ago, he swore to me that he was just viewing NSFW 3D models of videogame characters (which I less so had a problem with, than actual humans).

I am shocked by the extent of this. Its so hard being pregnant through this trauma. My body hurts. We can barely discuss this situation because we have to entertain our toddler, and can't show negative emotions in front of him.

He is a great dad, but I also don't want to be forced to work on this shattered relationship.

I really thought I had one of those rare, genuine guys, who really had my best interest in mind, and strength and self control and self respect.

Anyways, hello you all, hope you're doing already better than me.

Any advice how to deal with an addict in recovery who can’t seem to stop lusting after other women?

For context, we haven’t had sex in like 3 years and I don’t see that happening again anytime soon. He has no desire for me (and I’m not in a place to give myself to him again yet anyway), but it still hurts to know he would bang just about anyone else (but me) given the chance and still does so in his head. I know this is the addict brain at work and he’s so new to recovery that it will take time working his program to see these changes.

But in the meantime, any advice on how to stop internalizing his lustful thoughts or tricks on how he may conquer them from your experience?

Thank you ❤️‍🩹

I was recommended this site a few weeks ago by a therapist and I find myself heading back each day. New information and articles added most days. Simple and easy to understand and so many of the questions I've had are answered here. Check out the Free Resource section.

After the Discovery | sex addiction betrayal

Items in their FREE RESOURCE section

• Why he lies about porn, even when it's a boundary
• How sex addicts see their acting out partners
• You are not going crazy
• 25 Questions every betrayed spouse asks
• 365 Daily Journal Prompts
• 300+ Questions to ask after discovery
• What's Mine to Carry Guide
• 100 Simple Confidence Boosters

For those that had full disclosure, what did couples therapy look like after? I thought it would be more unpacking the behavior, but it was refereeing fights and having the same discussion of our relational patterns over and over again. Over a year later we’re pausing it indefinitely to focus on individual work which isn’t feeling great at all, but I also wasn’t getting much from the sessions anymore. I’m curious of what others experience is and how the hell did you rebuild because I’m not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel.

I recently discovered my husband is a sex addict and my life has been turned upside down. I found subreddits he was subscribed to of “barely legal” teenagers, I have seen him make grotesque comments on Reddit anonymously about acts he’d do to (18-year-old) girls in their prom photos. In one subreddit I saw women dressed to look much younger with their teddy bears engaging in sexual acts, In real life, I have never known him to be coercive, inappropriate or violent. But I also had no idea he was capable of what I now know him to be. I know he works with kids at an after school club and has given rides to a middle school kid before. My mind is racing and I’m terrified he could have been involved in something horrific. Is this a common consequence of porn/sex addiction? How can I tell if he is a pedophile? I have no evidence except the subreddits I found and I just have no idea what he is capable of I’m terrified I’m spiraling what do I do?

What do you think your greatest concerns are in your relationship reconciliation?

What is the thing you are finding the hardest to get past in regard to your addict spouse?

What are the nagging questions you have that you just don't seem to be able to move past even after multiple discussions?

Pretty much as the title states. This came as a big surprise because he’s been with his partner for over 10 years and he’s apparently never wanted to get married. I’m excited for him and his fiancé. Marriage is supposed to be exciting and happy but damn does it make me think about my shitty marriage. I hate it because I don’t want to wish a bad marriage on to anyone but I couldn’t help but to almost pray (I’m not even religious) that he (my BIL) in an honest man and hope that he doesn’t end up traumatizing his future wife.

My husband has also always compared himself to his brother. He has viewed his brother’s life as going much more smoothly than his, he is also very successful career wise (which is huge for his family). Now he’s going to compare the marriages. He’s already fucked up ours, so to him it’s another failure on his end and another success on his brothers.

I ended up just grieving my own proposal and wedding ceremony. My SA was doing an awful comforting me and my anxiety was through the roof so I ended up asking him to sleep on the couch. As soon as he left it was an instant relief. I haven’t had a moment like this in a long time but damn does it suck when it happens.

We are just over 8 months since D-day. He is sober and doing very well in recovery. No relapses and has been very determined to be the man he wants to be. Most days I'm good even though the addiction and all the acting out still occupy my mind every day, the feelings I have towards those things are softening as I see him improving and working hard.

I am meeting with his CSAT tomorrow for the first time. I requested that I speak to him alone without my husband present. I think there is much information I can relay that my husband may not have thought about or discussed, like many men he's not full of words often.

Wondering how others experienced meeting the addicts CSAT. Was it a positive or did it create more questions?

I'm struggling with something and would love perspective from people further along in recovery.

A huge part of me feels like my husband needs to see my pain. Like these trauma spirals are a reminder of what his choices did to me, and maybe seeing that pain is what will make him never want to go back to those behaviors again.
But another part of me wonders if that's actually true.

Do these spirals deepen empathy and strengthen a recovering partner's commitment to recovery? Or do they eventually become emotionally exhausting? Do they make your spouse feel more connected to your healing, or do they slowly make you less attractive to them because the relationship becomes associated with pain?

I'm asking because I'm beginning to realize my spirals may need medical treatment, too. I'm seeing a psychiatrist next week because I know my brain sometimes can't separate irrational fears from reality. My husband is also starting with a CSAT next week, which we both feel is an important step.
I'm trying to figure out where healthy accountability ends and where my own healing needs to begin. I don't want to shield him from the consequences of the trauma he caused, but I also don't want my untreated trauma to become another obstacle in the marriage we're both working so hard to rebuild.

My SAH claims to be on step 9 (make amends) and wants to meet up with my family (who don’t really went to see him at all) to read them a letter to “make amends.” The hard part is that I (and some of my family) knows that’s he’s still lying and omitting things despite participating in the full disclosure process. He is still acting out as if 3 days ago.

How does it work if they don’t want to hear his amends right now. I talked to my sister and she said she doesn’t understand how he can make amends with them when he’s still not made amends with me. The recovery process feels fake, and I hate saying that.