I just busted my husband talking to a woman on a porn website

[Katyev]

Hi

1st time poster here just looking for a little advice.

Just caught my husband out asking a lady to do things for him on a live porn website. He says it's only the 2nd (or 3rd) time he's ever done it and he's guilty and ashamed and wont do it again - as I'm sure anyone would!

Since we had our baby (6 months ago) our sex life has been pretty rubbish and I'm not dumb - I know men look at porn. But I just feel that talking to someone online makes it that bit more personal (almost like he's cheating on me). - although I realise I'm doing the same thing here!

I'm not sure how to respond. I've always had 100% trust in him and I feel like this opens a can of worms - can I trust him. I'm thinking has he really done this 2 or 3 times and is there more to it than he says. Should I be hurt / angry ... or should I accept that he needed an outlet from elsewhere?!

He's my best pal and I don't want this to become a major issue but I feel it could.

What do you advise?

So sorry, OP, that this has happened to you; hope that you can get through it for the sake of your baby.

I hate porn! My beloved XP told me, after we were quite a few months into our relationship and after he had told me that he loved me and wanted us to get married, that he was heavily into S & M. Asked me to look at DVD's, read his books (he had written a story for "The Academy"). Didn't work for me - he told me about his visits to a dominatrix before he knew me!

I tried to understand and join in with his fixation but really could not please him as he said that I was "not administering" properly as a dom. Btw, he also had ED; could only sustain an erection whilst being spanked. He used to get extremely tearful if I did not carry out the punishment to his exact wishes. Suggested that maybe he should go to a real dominatrix.

He did; behind my back! Believe that they now have quite a successful business together in the porn industry (he's a photographer) earning an amazing amount of money from idiots like your husband!

So sorry - seem to have gone off at a tangent. They also both broke my heart! Good luck, OP, tell him that he has to stop viewing porn

It's not cheating per se. An affair to me is where you emotionally or intentionally cheat. This is neither. Just interactive porn really.

I think whether it's cheating is a really interesting question, and one where the possibilities of the digital age really blow all accepted definitions of such things out of the water.

I personally would agree with niceguy2 - the real point about cheating, even if it's expressed sexually, is the emotional betrayal. With someone on the other side of the world on a webcam that he's never going to see again, there can't really be any. Another, more pragmatic problem with even purely sexual cheating is STDs - and again, that's not going to be a problem here.

The OP may well not like it and feel it's beyond what's acceptable in the relationship, in which case fine. Tell him that, discuss it and sort it out. But I wonder if it's also worth taking a step back and seeing that, from the POV of what actually means anything in your relationship, it's not really that big a deal. If you're not or hardly shagging, as is often the case after having kids, then he's going to wank. Doing it in front of a bunch of pixels on a screen may seem to personalise it, but it's hardly like he's going to run off and marry them.

niceguy2 and confidence - it's cheating! Absolutely soul-destroying, ruins self-esteem, confidence in oneself, harms the relationship ... need I go on?

"If you're not or hardly shagging, as is often the case after having kids, then he's going to wank"

Have you made an assumption there confidence that the H in this case wanted to have sex, the OP didn't and so he just had to have a wank to interactive web porn?

Have you considered that it is equally possible that the OP wanted sex more than her H, but he has been preferring a sexual experience with strangers?

As for the OP, don't you think she might also have sexual needs and the need to masturbate? Yet she doesn't appear to need to turn to porn or webcam sex to do that.

Why is that, do you think?

I really hate this assumption that the lack of sex is because of the woman's low desire - and that men cannot possibly wank without porn.

More women than you can imagine are deprived of a decent sex life because of men's obsession with wanking to porn.

I'm speechless really - whether it's cheating or not is irrelevant.
It's sleazy, disrespectful, damaging, hurtful, underhand...
Yes men wank - but Jeez there are ways and means!
I'm really sorry for you OP and I'm afraid I don't know what to advise. If it were me, I'd sit him down and just say how utterly deflated and worried and angry and upset I was and make it as clear as possible that I couldn't accept this.

Last night I posted a really long reply but it doesn't seem to have been posted. Just trying this to see if it works!

"you have been conditioned to believe that all men view porn and that their partners should accept it and not worry about it?"

what a load of rubbish, what about women who enjoy it, partners who enjoy it openly and together. Hello, its not just men, or are we back in the 1950s :)

Carantala. As I said before in my opinion this is not cheating. Your opinion may differ, i accept that.

My logic is as follows:

1. There was no physical contact of any description
2. There was no emotional connection

I agree that his behaviour is destructive to the relationship and would lower OP's self esteem but that does not equal cheating.

@Dawnofthedumb. Yes of course he could have but it doesn't really fufil the excitement does it? I'm not saying what he did was right. But we all do stupid things, some more than others. But when deciding what to do next we need to put things into context and not rush into any knee jerk reactionary measures.

windsorTides -

You have a very valid point in general, and in fact one thing I've learnt from this website is the large number of women frustrated by marriages with men who don't want sex with them - and not to for granted that it must be the other way around.

I suppose what made me leap to the conclusion I did in this instance was that the OP describe their sex life being rubbish "since we had our baby 6 months ago". That dip in the sexual relationship of a couple that occurs in the period after childbirth usually has more to do with the woman's drive falling than the man's, from those I've known anyway. But I'm happy to admit I could be wrong and would take it back if the OP confirms that it's actually as you describe.

Carantala - it's cheating! Absolutely soul-destroying, ruins self-esteem, confidence in oneself, harms the relationship ... need I go on?

Sure, please do.

It's interesting because attitudes to partners using porn seem to vary widely. There are people on here who feel much as you do, and others who don't care at all, or enjoy using it as well, and everything in between. So whatever "problem" exists surrounding it must be all tied up with the particular individuals and the agreements, assumptions and expectations of their relationship - not an innate problem that must occur in every case.

Things like "self-esteem" and "confidence in oneself" are highly personal; everyone has different levels of sensitivity and different areas of difficulty with such things, and what is devastating to one individual might be irrelevant to another. For my part, I think the tendency of some women to see their partner using porn this way is connected with a whole clutch of fallacies about men and sex.

The point here of course is how the OP feels about it. She's clearly quite disturbed and needs to sort out what it means to her. She hasn't said anything about it ruining her self-esteem and confidence, although it may have done. I don't think we can presume anything because everybody's different.

Have nothing to add - let's hope OP returns!

What Doha said.

Oh yes.

niceguy2 and confidence

It's cheating and soul destroying for OP

Carantala - stop putting words in the OP's mouth. Not every individual has such low self confidence that porn is a 'soul destroying' activity.

Every couple have different boundaries as to what is unacceptable and what is cheating. Clearly in the OP's she doesn't know how to feel about this, or she wouldn't have asked and you are just scare mongering.

OP - in my opinion the issue doesn't seem to be about porn per say. It's that he did this in secret and that makes it and act of betrayal. If he'd approached you and asked if you'd been willing to watch some porn with him, would you have been open to trying? Is this just an issue of not communicating about your sex life?

Granted this goes a little deeper in that he has web cammed. Which suggests it's not porn he is craving - rather sexual contact. It's not your fault in any way he has done this - but in the average mans mind - porn/web cam is a much less controversial thing than to a woman and I doubt very much that he was aware just how much it would hurt you and rather was more concerned with settling his 'needs'

Selfish. Not communicating.yep. But cheating? Not on your nelly.

I like porn as much as any man but the interactive/ paying for it kind is over stepping the mark in my opinion but I guess that's only the boundaries I have set in my own mind. You may feel completely different. For me, DH can look at porn all he wants, as can I, but it woild bother me if he was performing for other women or talking to other women in a sexual way. It's just too much.

The important thing here is surely how the OP feels about this, not a bunch of randoms on a website.

OP, you say in your post that it feels "almost like he's cheating on me" but you seem to need reassurance that this is not an OTT reaction.

There is no right reaction here, there are only feelings. You obviously felt upset about it enough to post on here, so it doesn't look like you fall into the 'totally cool with porn' camp. You also feel he has overstepped the mark with this live chat thing.

FWIW there is absolutely no need to be accepting of any porn in your life if you aren't 100% comfortable with it. You say 'I know men look at porn' but in actual fact there are an awful lot of men out there who don't.

So you need to work out how this situation and porn use affects you in general and talk to your husband about it, and if it is not acceptable to you, and you feel cheated on, he needs to know and respect that. Tell him that this is affecting your trust in him, which surely has to be the basis for any relationship.

the real point about cheating, even if it's expressed sexually, is the emotional betrayal

So seeing a prostitute, whom you personally may never see again, is not cheating?

Hi all
It's been a few days since my initial post, and having seen the ongoing debate, I felt I should update you all on what's happened.

On reflection, the main reason for me posting on here was that I needed some kind of validation that I was right to be hurt / offended / insulted for having caught my DH doing something that he was trying to hide from me. These feelings arose for 2 reasons; firstly - I felt that actual interaction with someone online most definitely overstepped the mark from merely being a "passive" observe of porn; and secondly - he tried to hide it from me.

He says he has never paid for this and his justification for doing this echoed the argument that niceguy2 put forward - doesn't know why he did it / was bored.

I guess for me - it was a bit of a wake up call that I was maybe not as relaxed about such issues as I might have imagined. I think becoming a mummy and also being more sensitive about my post pregnancy body have played a role here.

So - we've talked lots (which, in itself, can be a great healer) and he's also agreed to me asking him not to visit these sites any more. I accept that we're all guilty of f**k ups! And now - we're getting on with being a family.

Thanks so much for having kept this debate going though - it's helped me tremendously not just to feel emotionally validated but also to see perhaps where my DH was coming from.

I'm glad you resolved this Katyev - porn is so ubiquitous and normalised now that some generally really nice men get involved in the sort of thing your DP has done (two of my friends have had similar issues with their generally very decent partners, and both got through them). I'm not saying that makes it 'right', but it certainly happens.

I guess whereas we are normally clear with our partners/ourselves about what 'real life' fidelity looks like, we don't always clarify in our own minds about online behaviour till this happens. But it sounds like you have done so now.

Gosh, that's just brilliant that you have addressed your issues and err, he hasn't

he is just doing what you tell him (for now)

Classic

Little woman throws a tantrum, he promises never to do it again, so she STFU

Did he acknowledge in any way that what he did does not belong in a mutually monogamous relationship, because your happy update doesn't appear to suggest he did at all

beatenbyayellowteacup -

These things are obviously very personal and ultimately, come down to the agreements and understandings that the individual relationship is based on.

But for me, the answer to your question is yes. It wouldn't bother me, from a relationship point of view, if my DW for some reason wanted to go to a prostitute. (That's leaving aside the question of diseases, which is a separate issue.) I've been in relationships where my partner has had a one night stand and it didn't worry me.

I really don't understand all this stuff about how sex must always, by definition, be so significant. Sometimes it isn't, it's just sex. It's certainly not the essence of a relationship, for me. I'm in a happy LTR with my wife because we have deep levels of love, understanding and shared values, which are continually renewed by the life we make with our children as its focus. Not because it's some enormous big deal that we don't sleep with anyone else.

That sounds good katyev. I'm glad you've resolved things and seem to have an agreed way forward.

@niceguy2 I've sent you a pm

Do not let him off the hook if you are unhappy about this. It’s emotionally cheating on you at the most vulnerable time of your life - right as you’ve had a baby.

I am afraid this has happen to me - not the interactive bit but OH has flicked through links that have been sent by friends. He didn’t stop as soon as he saw what it was he carried on so there’s obviously more to it from his side. I’ve gone on to find more content which should not be happening & honestly, the marriage has been rocky since.

I have zero want for him physically mentally emotionally and he’s made his bed he can lay in it now. My baby has just turned 9 months but I’m not happy in the marriage & have said I want to separate.

Something like this imo messes up relationships and marriages beyond repair and men don’t seem to understand the damage it causes.

Don’t know what to suggest really but do not let him get away with it.