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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Desperate. Dh sex addiction.

138 replies

torninpieces · 29/12/2010 14:38

namechange test

OP posts:
h20 · 29/12/2010 20:05

Hi folks, i am a recovering addict and alcoholic - 10 years sober in AA, and i think that you are underestimating the power of addiction and the way that it makes people behave. His behaviour sounds consistant with a descent into out of control addiction to me, and if he is going to slaa meetings and he identifies with other members stories, and wants to stop, there is every possibility that he will. Op, have you read any of the slaa literature and talked it over with your h?

AnyFucker · 29/12/2010 20:15

congratulations on turning your life around, h2O

I guess a lot depends on whether you believe an addiction to sleazy sex is truly an "addiction" in the true sense of the word or whether you merely think it is the ultimate in selfish and self-entitled behaviour

can I ask...were you also a sex addict ?

Malificence · 29/12/2010 20:41

I'd consider anything he does at this point to be too little, too bloody late.

He has endangered the health of his wife and his children in the very worst way imaginable.

sungirltan · 29/12/2010 21:43

plus also has he not just sought help because he's been discovered - would he have just carried right on if he hadn't?

btw i might have read that bit wrong in the op so apologies if im specualting wrongly

cabbageroses · 29/12/2010 21:47

With respect, so many of you are posting about how you could not accept this man or love him again.

I know that is your opinion, BUT the OP has to make up her own mind.

No one ever really knows what goes on in a marriage and internet strangers are very far removed from the reality.

We can all give opinions and everyone's outrage is predictable- but the OP must decide for herself.

It is obvious this man has huge issues- his behaviour is not remotely "normal" which is why it is pointless trying to rationalise it and say things like he doesn't care etc etc. How do we know he never cared? By your standards, he didn't- but by his he perhaps did.

Many men have affairs and truly love their wives- they just put that part of their life in one category and the cheating in another.

Not justifying what he has done- but I think by fuelling the OP's hurt with your outrage you are not helping her.

OP- you need to find answer and maybe expert counselling would help?

AnyFucker · 29/12/2010 21:51

with respect back, I could not read something like this and not express my outrage that a human being could treat his loving wife (and whom he professes to love back) in such a disgusting way

BenHer · 29/12/2010 22:00

Wise words cabbage.

sungirltan · 29/12/2010 22:29

think i'm with AF on this. the serial cheater i mentioned before didn't love his wife he was just scared to be in the world without her. thats not commitment, its co dependency. the world on your own when you spend all your free time paying for sex probably seems like a pretty bleak place!

i can't help but think of colleen rooney. i read something about her in a mag in the barbers waiting for dh the other day. it said she had taken back wayne with a massive list of conditions including that he must at least hold the door open for her. i don't know which made me sadder.

h20 · 29/12/2010 22:33

Anyfucker - no, i wasn't a sex addict,&but i have also hammered food and shopping(!) so i know that addiction is not about the substance or behaviour, it's the relationship with the substance or behaviour - craving, loss of control, escalation of behaviour and consequences.

melezka · 29/12/2010 22:42

Cabbage I think you are right. I often think with sadness of the post in which a MNetter - since broken up with her husband - said that, though she had at the time valued the support she found here, she wished in retrospect that she had not been drawn in so much to the angry reactions of others - I think I remember she said it had made an already difficult process more difficult than it needed to be for a while.

It is really hard to know how best to frame responses for individual posters.

AnyFucker · 29/12/2010 22:53

of course "sex" addiction is about the behaviour

because the resultant "behaviour" that a grown man should be able to control (like duh not putting your dick into prostitutes) is insulting, degrading, hurtful and dangerous to others ie. his wife and dc

that particular "behaviour" is much more worrying because of the amount of pre-planning, anticipation, build-up, level of deceit etc a family man with responsibilities would have to employ

I imagine the web of deceit would have had to be immense to allow visits to bath-houses, sex with men, registering on sex sites, contacting, grooming and propositioning other women and then using family money to pay them for sex whilst simultaneously photographing the whole shebang must be fucking immense

here is absolutely no excuse for it none

melezka · 29/12/2010 23:29

sungirl how well do you know this man? Do you know his wife? Is that difficult?

AnyFucker · 29/12/2010 23:37

oops, my penultimate paragraph doesn't quite make sense but I think the gist should be clear

moondog · 29/12/2010 23:39

People who took of 'addiction' |like to at least artly absolve themselves of blame.
Part of all pervasive victim culture.

AnyFucker · 29/12/2010 23:48

moondog's is even more unintelligible than mine !

I got the gist though

moondog · 29/12/2010 23:49

I was seconding you I think AF.

I can't be doing with 'addictions', 'complexes' or disorders'.

What a pile of shit.

AnyFucker · 29/12/2010 23:51

well, quite Xmas Grin

FrameyMcFrame · 30/12/2010 00:02

Op I have read your post all the way through and no, no no. A man who has behaved in this way will never be trustable. Sorry but you will be best out of it.

sungirltan · 30/12/2010 10:56

melezka - i know the wife sort of - not really socially though. i dont have contact with the husband any more because it was too uncomfortable although he did contact me when their dc was born.

cabbageroses · 30/12/2010 11:02

OP- I hope you can allow the dut to settle on this and get professional help then decide your future. it is a terrible shock, but I don't think it is helpful to rush into a decision.

I have to disagree withthose of you who say you can't be doing with "addictions and complexes.

Ok, it's a scale, but without naming names, some of you freely admit here that you have a few too many drinks, are a bit overweight, can't help tucking into the food etc. Sure, it's not the same as infidelity, and there is no deceit, but it's still an example, of you not being in control of your behaviour, and carrying on doing something which is not good for you! Long term, being obese etc will harm your health, and this will in turn afect your family!

So- those in glass houses...as they say!

I am trying to show that human behaviour is not as simple as you try to make out.

The OP's DH obviously wanted to be found out- that is clear. I think it was his way of crying for help.

Whether he can change remains to be seen, but it's not our place to be judge and jury.

Support yes. But a baying crowd urging someone to leave- just because we either cannot understand the behaviour, or understand it purely within the limitations of our own lives and morality- that's not the answer.

AnyFucker · 30/12/2010 11:10

So- those in glass houses...as they say!

nope, not having it

I might have eaten too many mince pies over xmas, but that only harms my arteries

there is absolutely no comparison to be made here

violethill · 30/12/2010 12:05

Nonsense. Addictive behaviour harms other people in direct and indirect ways. Is it really ok for a mother to risk her health by continuing to eat when shes obese?? Or to smoke??
Another factor is that there is increasing evidence that addictive behaviour is to a certain degree hereditary. Same as certain physicial and mental illnesses. Yet if a man came on here saying that his wife was terrible to live with because she was suffering from depression (which can and does have a horrible impact on those around the sufferer) you can bet the woman would have every sympathy. As per usual though, theres a terribly predictive aspect to MN, where people bang on with their own personal crusade rather than listen to the pain the op is in and respond to that

LittleMissHootsMon · 30/12/2010 12:22

I think people are post-rationalising here to make a point.

Substance addiction - with the exception of intravenous drug use - do not pose a real and direct risk to anyone else but the addict. Likewise Alcohol, unless the alcoholic is a pregnant woman her addiction will not place at direct physical risk anyone other than herself.

Smoking is addictive, but not so much that it destroys your life in pursuit of the fix. There are no Smokers Anonymous groups as far as I am aware.

Sex addiction, if it exists, has the real potential to directly harm others through STI and if prostitutes are used, organised crime and traffiking.

As for it's veracity as an addiction, I would imagine that a dependence on the rush of a new conquest, and the physical satisfaction following the actual sexual act could be something that an addict could crave and chase.

However I feel that the term sex addiction could be used by many to explain away and avoid responsibility for general feckless behaviour and fuckwittery.

violethill · 30/12/2010 12:26

I think the effects of all sorts of addictions are numerous and wide ranging

TDada · 30/12/2010 12:28

loss for words