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Relationships

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

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Original poster

I think I'm going to have to leave dh

88 replies

TattyAnna · 30/12/2010 16:36

He has a problem with porn addiction, has done for years. We've done the councilling, together and apart, 2 years worth in total. He has lied and lied and tbh it's the lying that upsets me more than anything. I borrowed his phone just now to come online and he starts looking nervous, I ask him is there anything he needs to tell me and he promises there isn't. Then I see he has been googling porn. My marriage is dead isn't it?

OP posts:

allgonebellyup · 30/12/2010 16:39

No, i dont think that's necessarily true.
Lots of men are "addicted" to porn. The lying is another matter but that doesnt mean your marriage is over?

expatinscotland · 30/12/2010 16:40

Why on Earth should she stay with someone who continually lies, allgone?

rubyslippers · 30/12/2010 16:43

Agree with expat

expatinscotland · 30/12/2010 16:44

The lying isn't a separate matter. It's part of an 'addiction' that is unacceptable to the OP and that he refuses to give up.

emmyloulou · 30/12/2010 16:48

No lots if men aren't addicted to porn. What a ludicrous comment.

I'd say yes it was op in all honesty. The lying from an addict if any kind is awful.

spidookly · 30/12/2010 16:50

Do you still fancy him?

I would find that very unattractive.

WhenwillIfeelnormal · 30/12/2010 16:53

Only you can decide whether it is time to call it a day. I know what Expat means and I agree with her, but like another thread at the moment about sex addiction, it's tempting to pathologise deal-breaking behaviour such as constant lying and tie it up with the "addiction".

Given that you have been to counselling for 2 years, it sounds as though you have given this your best shot and yet your H continues to put porn before his relationship with you. If he knew what the consequences were of that, then any like any other negotiated deal-breakers, if you relent yet again, this will probably continue.

I hope you don't get a flurry of the usual porn apologist posts and implications that men have some biological imperative to use porn, or any that patronise you by suggesting you are over-reacting. You know what efforts you have made and the principles you hold in relationships.

Original poster

TattyAnna · 30/12/2010 16:53

I did still fancy him, I thought we were passed all this, tbh I feel like smashing his face in atm!

I can't stand being lied to over and over again. What else is he lying about? Maybe this is just the tip of the iceberg!

OP posts:

ValiumTinselton · 30/12/2010 16:54

I agree with spidookly, I'd find it very hard to respect this man. I need to respect a man to want to be with him. He's lied to you and is addicted to porn.

The hardest thing about being single is the first few months. Telling everybody, sorting everything out, adjusting to the change. After that it isn't as bad as you might think. Don't stay with him for ever because you can't cope with a few hard months.

Original poster

TattyAnna · 30/12/2010 16:55

I love him though

Although he clearly doesn't love or respect me emough to give up the porn and to stop lying to me

OP posts:

TheFeministParent · 30/12/2010 17:05

TA I guess if you stay you can be sure that this will rear it's ugly head again and again. Leaving gives you control of your own happiness. Addiction is deceitful and entirely egocentric, but if he's not willing to give up the porn despite all the effort you've put in then what's left?

Original poster

TattyAnna · 30/12/2010 17:07

Theres nothing left is there. Trust is a huge part of a relationship for me and with that gone it all just feels so empty

OP posts:

StuffingGoldBrass · 30/12/2010 17:13

Maybe he thinks that if you really loved him you wouldn't feel entitled to forbid him to look at porn and drag him off to counselling as though there's something wrong with him.
WIthout rehashing yet again the arguments about the rights and wrongs of porn, it's not possible to compel another person to change his/her behaviour just because you don't like it. Not all men look at porn, he's not doing it 'because all men do', but not all women hate and fear porn and the men who look at it, either.
Your point of view is that he is being selfish and dishonest by looking at pictures that you disapprove of; his point of view may well be that you are being controlling and selfish in telling him that he mustn't do, in private, something which he likes doing, simply because you disapprove.

TheFeministParent · 30/12/2010 17:16

Erm, SGB what if it were weed or booze, not porn?

Original poster

TattyAnna · 30/12/2010 17:22

SGB, I never had a problem with him looking at porn, infact we use to view it together. But it became a problem when he was sitting at home viewing it for 12 hours a day after losing his job for downloading it at work.

He has an addiciton that is destroying our lives, the fact that it is porn is irrelevant.

OP posts:

Alouiseg · 30/12/2010 17:22

These threads bug me...if you don't use porn what do use for wanking purposes?

I'm serious btw.

ChippingIn · 30/12/2010 17:24

I'd agree with SGB totally if this was your first discussion re porn.

However, this should all have come out in your counselling and you should have agreed what would happen going forward - which it seems like you did and he agreed to 'no more porn' - which he shouldn't have agreed to if he felt it was unreasonable.

To me now, this is all about the lying. It doesn't matter what the 'issue' is, try substituting shopping addiction. The outcome is the same - he's lying to you and by doing so there is no trust. No trust, no relationship in my mind.

TheFeministParent · 30/12/2010 17:24

Al....your imagination?

Original poster

TattyAnna · 30/12/2010 17:24

This is not an anti-porn thread!!!

OP posts:

HerBeatitude · 30/12/2010 17:30

Alouisreg - what on earth do you think the whole of the human race did to wank before the existence of widely available, widely distributed porn?

Masturbation has existed as long as human beings have. We don't need porn to wank. Only people whose sexuality has been shaped by porn, need it to wank.

WhenwillIfeelnormal · 30/12/2010 17:32

If he'd said to you 2 years ago that he intended to continue using porn and that "if you loved him" you wouldn't try to forbid it, then presumably you would have voted with your feet at that point and not wasted 2 years of expensive counselling and repeated deceit?

I imagine you're a perfectly intelligent woman who understands that none of us can compel another adult to do anything, but that if his response to that request had been transparent, the choice would have reverted to you about what you would do in consequence? In effect he denied you that choice by lying.

I'm going on what you've said in your posts and it sounds as though he agreed to stop doing something that you felt was having a negative impact on your relationship, all the while doing precisely the opposite and lying and deceiving you?

AnnieOnAMapleLeaf · 30/12/2010 17:32

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

HerBeatitude · 30/12/2010 17:32

I agree with others, it isn't about the porn per se, it's about the lying.

My xp used to lie about money and hiding my post. I just lost all trust in him - couldn't believe a word and he said. Lying is corrosive to a relationship, if you don't have trust, you don't have one of the building blocks of a relationship IMO.

AnnieOnAMapleLeaf · 30/12/2010 17:33

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Alouiseg · 30/12/2010 17:35

He has to lie because he's been "told" not to use porn. He still wants to use it.

Id be furious if my husband told me what I could or couldn't look at.

Porns been around for centuries!! Cave paintings anyone? It's not a modern phenomenon, the availability of it is a modern phenomenon.

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