Telling my wife about my addiction. Help please
So here's where I am. I'm 38m from the UK, with a wife and two kids I love to the end of the earth.
A week ago I was travelling for business and I got an email saying my cloud account had been suspended. I thought it was a scam at first but within minutes I noticed it has been disabled. The reason they gave was that they found stuff that wasn't legal on there. I can't tell you how sick I felt. Seriously. It felt like I was being stabbed. After all this was the place where I kept 20gb of porn from various websites that I thought were safe and legal. Sites everyone knows about, that are publicly accessible and ones you'd think they moderate and remove any shit that isn't legal.
I have never downloaded or knowingly watched stuff that didn't feature consenting adults. So now I am wondering how many files this affects (there must be hundreds if not thousands of files on there) and what the hell is wrong with me if I can't tell who looks over 18 or not?
I spent the whole of my work trip feeling sick to my stomach. I could barely eat and struggled to interact with my colleagues. All the while thinking what the hell is wrong with me and what do I do about it. I spent the flight home shaking, still feeling stick, especially about having to see my wife and how to tell her. That was 4 days ago and I still haven't told her.
What I have done since though is contact a free counselling service and had a good chat with them. They made me realise I'm addicted to porn. Even though I never want to watch any ever again, I want to make sure that lasts so I started an online course by Pivotal Recovery helping me to understand what I'm suffering from and how to recover from it. I'm looking into in-person support groups too.
I still haven't told my wife. My thinking is that I want to understand this myself first and learn more about the path to recovery. I want to go to her with a solution not a problem. I know she'll have a lot of questions so I want to be in the best place to answer them.
Unfortunately it's a bit more complicated though. In those porn files I'd also been saving pictures of people I know, clothed or beachware taken from Facebook. All those people were over 18 but unfortunately included her sisters, her brother in law, her cousins and my niece. I've come to understand this is part of the collecting compulsion. I was collecting for the sake of it. I'm not sexually attracted to any of those people but I saved their pictures anyway. I don't know why. Maybe with the idea that I would 'use' them in the future but I never did because I never wanted too. At the time it didnt cross my mind that this was morally wrong but in these six days, I've realised: wtf?
So there's that too. .
I need to tell my wife. I don't know how or when yet. Timing is crucial. She has ADHD and anxiety so I need to pick a time when she can focus, when she isn't overwhelmed. I don't know how to structure he conversation. And we're going on a family holiday soon that the kids are looking forward to so I don't want to jeopardise that.
And what do I tell her? Just about the porn addiction? About the potentially problematic content? About collecting pics of our families?
I can't believe I have done this. I just want to draw a line under it, recover from porn addiction, never go near porn again and be a good dad and husband. I really don't want to lose my family, not just for my sake but if we separated and had to live apart, we wouldn't be able to afford to give our kids they life they have now and deserve.
Posted Apr 8, 2025, 9:16 PM UTC