I (37f) trying to work through my 20 year relationship with 41M need advice?

:SeekingSupport: sᴇᴇᴋɪɴɢ sᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛ

I recently posted this reply to someone’s post, however it made me realize I have no one to talk to & need advice on how to make relationship work because I’m still having a hard time 6 weeks later.

“Making him understand it is a form of cheating. Especially since I voiced that many times in the beginning of our relationship. Then come to find out he had been using it since 2017 secretly & lying about it for almost a decade. I’m trying to move past it but I’m having a difficult time @ random times. As far as I know he hasn’t been watching it since I found out in Feb, however I can’t get past the point where he choose that above me so many times & it never gave him any guilt knowing how I’d react & feel. I can’t understand how he could be so lustful, he just isn’t the person I thought he was. I’ve been with him since I was 17, so I didn’t have much sex experience so I was really naive to think that this was something special we shared. It took me a while to get fully comfortable with him & that’s all been taken away. I haven’t felt this bad about myself in a really long time & it hurts that it’s because of the only person I’ve ever loved more than anyone. Don’t get me wrong he is really trying, I have access to all the devices but there is time when he is a work or home before me that makes me nervous. We also just celebrated our 20 year anniversary. We are having a lot of sex, however I just cannot orgasm no matter how hard I try because of this. He is saying all the right things.. I love you, sending flowers, you’re so sexy. But I don’t feel like it’s how he really feels… if he loved me so much how could he choose to do this behind my back for so long, if he was really attracted to me why would he choose porn over & over again when I was always here anytime I never turned him down. He was even using porn right before we would have sex saying “I would jerk off real quick to last longer”.. I don’t believe it I feel like he needed the arousal that porn brought to just have “job sex” with me about 3 times a month. If he had to do this during our prime years how are the next 20 years going to go as we age???

I just don’t know if I can recover from this & it sucks he put me in this spot because he is selfish. He knew I’d want to leave, & im so mad he didn’t give me that option when he started using it behind my back when I was younger. I had all intentions to stay with him forever & now I feel like I’m looking into the future with& without him.

Any advice at all to help recover & work through keeping relationship together? I thought about monitoring apps but it just makes me angry that I have to force him to choose me & our relationship. I think that makes me the angriest at times is that this isn’t his choice necessarily, i feel like it’s me forcing him to make a choice I thought was easy.

If I do decide monitoring apps, what are the best ones to use?

Posted Apr 6, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

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