Another Wife

Ah. Here it is at last. That place where people really tell how they feel about the presence of porn in their marriages. I, too, am married to a porn abuser. In my case, it really is addiction. He is a sober alcoholic and pill user who's always abused porn as well. It tends to come and go, as he is also bipolar and engages mostly when he's in a manic phase. Only the sheer volume of meds he takes does anything to stem the tide. I've been dealing with this for more than a decade. I can truly say that he doesn't use porn and masturbation as a substitute for me; his desire for me seems to increase in the same cycles. However, I'm having a lot of trouble maintaining my desire for him, despite a rather high libidio of my own. The issue just hurts too much. He has always lied about his porn use, even when I caught him red-handed. Furthermore, he goes in for the teen sites online, and this is especially troubling to me. We have three daughters of our own, one of them being almost 13. I've tried to get him to take the "father" perspective, to imagine someone using his children that way or his children being married to men who use porn as he does. He accuses me of trying to make him feel guilty. No, but if it does make him feel guilty, maybe he should think about why.

As a psychologist and wife of an addict, I can tell all of you wives that you can't try to control your husbands' addiction. That way is a sure path to heartache for you. We all have to be free to make our own decisions, but that also means you are free to make decisions about what you will and will not stand for. Best of luck to all of you; it's a crappy world.