Okay, so as the title says, I caught my husband looking at porn and I need some advice. My head is all over the place and I cannot think straight.
My husband and I have been married 7 years and we have two children together. We have had a fantastic relationship and have always been able to talk to one another openly about any issues that arise. We have been through a hell of a lot together and have come through it.
However, things started to go downhill when I got pregnant the first time. My husband stopped talking to me. Any time I tried to tell him how I was feeling, ask him what was wrong etc, he would turn it into a fight. Any time he was at home, he would be using his phone in the corner. Whenever I asked if he could spend some time with me, he would tell me that he needed "social time". If I asked who he was talking to, he said I was being paranoid and that I didn't trust him. I would say that I wanted sex and he would point blank refuse to have sex. Sometimes I felt like he would start fights before bed just to ward off any sex. In then end we only had sex once in 12 months. We argued quite a lot and he hit me a few times. I discovered that on our wedding anniversary, when I was 8 and a half months pregnant, he had been messaging another woman trying to arrange to meet up for coffee. He swears nothing else happened.
When our DD was born, things briefly got worse, the violence escalated and I thought about leaving him. Then we gradually started talking again. He told me that he had felt depressed and needed to adjust to the idea of being a new parent. He told me that he understood how he had been a jerk and said that things were going to change.
I was very skeptical but they did change. We started communicating again, he had a renewed interest in our sex life and all the violence stopped. We went back to being how we used to be and I thought we were both very happy. Then we started trying for another baby.
Almost as soon as I got pregnant again, his behaviour started to change. He stopped wanting sex and would fall asleep whenever I tried to have a conversation with him. That sounds like an exaggeration, but I mean he would literally fall asleep 10-20 times during the one conversation and then jerk himself awake. He said to me that he had no sex drive. He said that he wanted to have sex but he was too tired to actually manage it. Whenever we tried stuff, he would just fall asleep before we got round to the main event. I was very frustrated as my sex drive increased when I was pregnant. I felt like a failure as a wife. Also, I missed having conversation with him but couldn't talk to him because whenever I tried he would literally fall asleep on me. I was hugely concerned about his health because he was falling asleep constantly and his lack of sex drive. He was constantly talking about going to the doctors and getting blood tests and I was very worried about him.
I also had moments where I felt very insecure. My body was changing (2 babies in less than 2 years will do that to you) and my husband was not making me feel attractive at all. We went 6 months without having sex. I felt that he was repulsed by the idea of having sex with me but he reassured me it was his sleep problem and not me. At night time, he would stay up to do the dishes, which at the time I thought was a very thoughtful gesture and something to help out.
However, at five months pregnant I discovered that he had exchanged numbers with another woman. It turned out she was a pole dancer and that he had introduced our child to her while I was at home working. This shook my confidence tremendously and I had a hard time trusting him again. I felt so hurt that he couldn't have the energy to have a conversation with me but he was exchanging numbers with another woman. He assured me nothing was going on but I found it difficult to believe.
I also began to have a nagging suspicion that he was looking at porn at night. Generally, I am not a huge fan of the porn industry however I understand that a lot of people watch it and have healthy sex lives. I had even suggested that we watch porn together, but I did tell my husband that I would be very hurt if he was watching porn when I was pregnant or after the baby was born because I was feeling very insecure about how I looked and I was feeling a bit unloved because he wasn't sleeping with me.
He promised me he hadn't been watching porn and told me I had trust issues. He told me I was insecure and that it was all in my head because of my hormones and poor body confidence. He shouted at me a lot about how he feels I don't want him to have friends or go out and how I don't trust him. I think that is very unfair. He works in a largely female environment in the care industry and I have no problem with that. I trust him 100% there. For me the issue wasn't trust, it was that I was feeling completely unloved. I think that I was feeling more troubled by the fact that he was making excuses not to sleep with me and that he stopped being affectionate. I did question whether I could really trust him after he lied to me about the pole dancer. However, I chose to believe him that nothing had gone on and move on with our lives.
When our baby was born, I had a very traumatic experience and ended up being taken into theatre after delivering and I could have died. When I was coming round, I thought about my husband, and when I came round, I said that I had a new perspective, that I was so sad about where we were in our marriage because we weren't talking to one another or sleeping together anymore. He agreed with me and told me a lot of stuff about how much he loved me and he wanted to change it etc.
Our baby is 12 weeks old now and I have been trying so hard to be a better wife. We have been having sex frequently over the last few weeks (several times a week) and we have been working to put the intimacy back into our relationship. I resolved to put the whole pole dancer thing in the past and focus on the here and now. We have had a lot of conversations about being honest with one another and communicating better.
Everything seemed to be getting better, and was only complicated by the fact that I have postnatal depression and feel extremely low a lot of the time. I feel very insecure about my post pregnancy body as well, but generally things were improving between us and I felt that we were being honest with one another and communicating better.
Anyway, last night I was wanting to be intimate with my husband so I got out of bed to find him. I found him looking at porn and touching himself in the kitchen. I was absolutely horrified. He initially denied it all (even although I caught him) before admitting that he had been looking at it all the way through my pregnancy and since I had given birth.
All day I have felt sick to my stomach.
My problem is not the porn itself but the fact that he lied to me:
- He made out that he had a lack of sex drive and withheld all sex for MONTHS;
- He convinced me his lack of sex drive was because he was ill to the point of needing blood tests;
- He looked me in the eye and told me he wasn't looking at porn and wouldn't do that when I was feeling so insecure; and
- He told me it was all in my head and made me feel paranoid.
It's also the fact that this is not something he is doing WITH me or AS WELL AS being intimate with me, he is doing it INSTEAD of being intimate with me.
Also, one time I had googled how to improve my sex life in my marriage and he accused me of looking at "sl*tty" things and having an affair. I was only looking at advice columns. Why is that such a huge problem if he is fine to be looking at porn?
Anyway, am I over reacting? Is this a combination of my hormones and the post natal depression? Or would you be hurt in the same situation? What would you do to try and make it better?
Sorry this is such a long post.
You're not overreacting. If anything you've been underreacting for a long, long time. You don't try to make it better with an abusive man, you get yourself safe and you get shot.
