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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

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:
animula · 30/12/2010 23:05

TattyAnna - well done for calling time - that takes backbone, and self-belief.

Massive sympathy to you - it sounds as though you've been carrying a heavy weight for a good two years now. The thing about addictions is that they intervene between the addict and real life, and real people. I sometimes wonder if that, in fact, is their primary function for addicts. But I'm no psychologist.

I know you say he's a good father, loving husband but ... this isn't good fathering, or good husbanding.

My guess is that, after the initial grief (which is going to be for what might have been, what you deserved, rather than what you have, right now,) it will get a lot easier. My guess is that it will feel as though a big weight is lifted from you r life.

It is awful. It's not even fair. You've clearly done you absolute best, and put so much effort into trying to keep your family together. but the thing is, it shouldn't be that much effort. Imagine if both of you had been able to put all that energy into going forwards, rather than paddling frantically to keep it afloat. It's not on that you've had to do so much paddling.

As others will say, he can be a good father as a separated father. And he can continue loving the children if you separate. And you can be a good, loving mother. You can still have a loving, happy family.

The sad truth is, until you make it really clear that this is utterly incompatible with your vision of what a family life is, and a relationship is, on it will go. You do have the right to insist this isn't good enough.

All the best to you. I hope he sorts himself out at some point in the future, and gets to the bottom of what compels him to addictive behaviour.

I hope that you find life much easier when you're not negotiating it for two of you.

good luck.

emmyloulou · 30/12/2010 23:18

SGB she said it was an addiction in her first post.....it's just you ignored it and went on rant thinking she was being another whingy wife bossing her DH about, telling him not to use porn as she didn't love him enough and was dragging him off to counselling.

Missed the key word in the opening sentence, she didn't need to explain. An addiction is an addiction whatever level it's at.

2rebecca · 31/12/2010 08:29

It is extremely contentious in medical and psychological fields as to whether or not things that don't cause physical changes in your body through their use and a physical withdrawal syndrome when you stop are really addictions or just habits with a compulsion element.
Alcohol, opiates, tobacco definitely cause a physical addiction.
Eating sweet stuff and chocolate, having sex alot "sex addiction", gambling, watching alot of porn, spending excessive time on mumsnet etc are felt by many to be just bad habits that people with compulsive personalities and poor self control take to excess.
Just because you choose to call someones bad habit an addiction does not make it one.
If people who enjoy watching porn were put on a desert island they wouldn't get withdrawal effects in the same way someone with alcoholism or a heroin habit would.

StuffingGoldBrass · 31/12/2010 09:39

People chuck the term 'addiction' round pretty casually when they mean 'something I want someone else to stop doing'. The fact that the OP then went on to describe her H having lost his job over compulsive behaviour made it clear that in this case she was using the term correctly or at least (bearing in mind 2rebecca's comments) not unreasonably.

TDada · 31/12/2010 09:46

Sorry to hear about this.

Haven't read the thread but I find it difficult to be hasty in saying leave addict husband without more, deeper consideration. There must be so much more colour and refection needed on your relationship before breaking up?

dittany · 31/12/2010 10:20

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Lydwatt · 31/12/2010 11:20

2rebecca, i get what you are saying but the compulsive behaviour op has described has had a devastating effect on his life. He may not be physically addicated as in substance abuse but his behvioural addiction is having the same impact on their lives.

2rebecca · 31/12/2010 11:56

I agree it has an effect on his life, but only he can stop it having an effect and sometimes people use the word "addiction" to legitimise their problem as an illness that needs an army of health and psychology professionals to sort it out rather than a behaviour pattern that they have to control.
It's not a coincidence that most of these compulsive problems from gambling to "workaholicism" are more common in men. Men tend to have more obsessive natures than women, and more opportunity to indulge obsessions as they are less likely to be running around after children.

Lydwatt · 31/12/2010 12:26

yes, true. I think we are both agreeing that the behaviour is unacceptable, out of control and entirely down to the husband to sort out. He is putting this behaviour ahead of his wife.

susiedaisy · 31/12/2010 20:13

my ex had a porn addiction, and when i looked for help ands advice online about porn in a marriage etc one thing that did stick in my mind that it said was that the chemical high the brain gives a person when they are using porn is similar to using cocaine and is one of the hardest addictions to control, particularly if a person has been using porn regularly for many years, i was married for over 15 years and porn was like the 3rd person in our marriage, and after many years of trying to encourage my H to reduce his usage of porn( he absolutely refused to go to any sort of counselling at all) it became one of the reasons i left him, and yes he is still wanking using it frequently,IMO like alcohol, gambling drugs etc a person has to really really want to quit and for the rest of their life is at risk of falling off the wagon and going straight back to it,

emmyloulou · 31/12/2010 20:21

Yes I have read this too, some chemicals or what not your brain releases makes it addicive. The rush, the hormones or whatever it is.

Is similar to having a beer, fag, line whatever although you don't have the physical substance it stimualtes your brain to relaease a chemical which becomes the physical addiction.

Some people buy it, some don't, I do.

HerBeatitude · 01/01/2011 17:01

Bit of a diversion here, but that's interesting about the difference between a medically defined addiction and the way addiction is used colloquially.

Is the definition of an addiction a behaviour which causes withdrawal symptoms if you don't do it then? Because presumably it can't be just behaviour which chemical changes, as gambling, sex, etc. cause that. Actually thinking about it, practically every behaviour causes chemical changes -driving, shopping, running etc.

K12Mom · 02/01/2011 10:27

I couldn't cope with this, sorry. I had the same problem with my DH a few years ago. I agree with you, it's the lying that's the problem. My DH swore blind he'd only looked at it a couple of times, so I forgave him. However, curiosity got the better of me, and a few weeks later I did a detailed History search. What I found shocked me. Not only had he been looking at it for around 5 hours a day, but a lot of the girls were so young. Barely 16, maybe even younger.

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