I'm the partner of someone with a porn problem...

Please, I need to understand if anyone has been in this situation before and what to expect!

Very very long story short - my husband and I have been together for 12 years. The first two years I complained about porn a lot and he totally minimized my feelings and we ended up just ignoring porn. I got all the excuses - you can't keep up with me 3x a day, everyone does it, you're just insecure and thats not my problem, you can't control my body, etc .. He was discreet and I just pretended it wasn't happening (although it was pretty much daily) - life went on and we were really happy for 10 years. Sex life was what I thought was "normal". Sex 4-6 times a week for 20-45 mins each session BUT he always has to finish with his hand. He told me I was just bad at sex.

I didn't understand at the time, I carried so much shame. There was no specific feedback. I initiated all the time, I was down to try different things, I rarely turned him down...

Then out of nowhere, while I'm pregnant with his 4th baby, he asks me for an open marriage. He says that it's natural, monogamy is ridiculous, most people just have affairs anyway, if I really had a problem with an open marriage then maybe we could just swing, there was no point in trying for anything in life if he wasn't sexually available, etc.

It literally imploded my world and after doing a LOT of research it seems like these feelings can all be caused by porn somewhat? It hypersexualizes everyone, normalizes these really out there promiscuous ideas, etc. I told him to stop poisoning his brain with porn and within a week, sex now lasts 10 minutes and IM able to finish everything up. He thinks I'm suddenly better? I haven't changed a single thing. He says skipping porn hasn't really changed anything and he will likely go back to it soon. We currently have sex about 8 times a week and I'm a tiny bit exhausted but also afraid to turn him down because I don't want to like push him back to porn if I can help him avoid it - he also has the expectation that I be the one to get everything going every night. He doesn't want to pressure me to have sex so he wants me to initiate every night and that means that I have to literally spend like 5-10 mins even getting everything going. This can't be normal right? Like if he was interested in sex, he would be ready to go, I shouldn't have to put in a lot of effort to get it started? It feels basically forced.

How does sex change once you really stop? Does the time decrease, the frequency? Am I right that the daily tapping is likely causing issues in our sex life? Did anyone have these ideas of affairs or open marriages and then that subsided when you stopped watching porn?

Ask me any questions in the comments. Please please help me understand what's going on if you've ever experienced anything like this.

Posted May 2, 2025, 10:56 PM UTC

10
Loading comments…