My (19M) bf has relapsed from a porn addiction that he had before we started dating. I don’t know what to do.
For context, my bf and I have been together for almost 2 years now (since we were 17), and as far as I know, this has been a problem for the last 3 weeks.
Yesterday, I asked to see his phone to look up something, and what I found was utterly shocking, to say the least. From the beginning of our relationship, we’ve both agreed that we did not want porn in our relationship, so to find this was a complete shock to me. When I found it, I obviously confronted him about it, and at first he lied, saying that someone must have his account information. However, with further convincing, I got him to tell me the truth about what he’s been doing and why he’s been doing it.
He told me that ever since college ended in the spring (around 3ish weeks ago), he has been watching it every so often but not to jerk off, just to watch it. I found this to be very interesting and honestly truthful because when it showed the time stamps of when it was watched, it was showing times of like the middle of the day or even one time when he was at work.
He told me that he would go on the website, click the first video he saw, watch 2-5 mins of it, and then leave the website feeling disgusted and guilty and telling himself that he’s never going to do it again (which just turned into a loop). Furthermore, he told me that before we got together, he was an avid porn watcher from the ages of 7 to 17 (right before we got together), and then he had quit it completely when we started dating and is now going through some kind of relapse. I believe him when he says he doesn’t jerk off to it too because I haven't noticed any difference in our sexual relationship, and tbh I wouldn't even know about this/didn’t expect this at all until I saw his phone yesterday.
When I was asking him more questions on why he felt the need to watch it, he said that he doesn’t know and that to him it was kind of like entertainment/extreme boredom. Furthermore, I think what might’ve triggered him to relapse were his college friends that would mess with his computer and put porn on it and leave it there for him to find when he would come back into his room. But honestly the most hurtful part is that he did not come to me/lied about it because he was scared that I would break up with him since it has been one of the boundaries we have set since the start of our relationship.
After some discussion, though, and him seeing me upset, he promised he would never do it again because me crying about it is now engraved in his head, and now whenever he thinks about porn, he thinks about how upset I was when I found it. I don't know if I believe this part because I know if it is truly an addiction like he says it is, you can’t just stop. He did, however, make it so you can’t look up adult content on his phone anymore through his settings, which I guess is a good sign, but he could always turn that off if he wanted to.
So I guess what I'm asking is what should I do about this? How should I move forward? What can I even do to help? Is this break-up worthy if this just adds on to the fact that it feels like he keeps messing up our relationship (unintentionally and through other situations) over the last year?
Posted Jun 8, 2026, 10:22 PM UTC