Porn addiction and pregnancy

[Feelingsick12]

Hi all

Never posted in this board and changed my username as main username too traceable. I really hope someone can give me some advice as I am lost.

I am 18 weeks pregnant with our first child and have been feeling really rotten today so fell asleep on sofa at abt 8pm! Woke up and walked into the kitchen to find OH desperately trying to hide laptop from me as he was looking at porn.

The problem is, this is not the first time this has happened by a long way. I have quite strong feelings about porn usage and have asked my husband not to look at it repeatedly. I always end up finding sites in the history or whatever again. Last year was the final straw when I found out he was paying £20/month to a porn site when we are struggling a bit for £. We separated for a short while because of it but he promised he would change this time etc and I took him back.

He also has a history of very severe depression which he ended up in hospital for last year which I supported him through.

The thing is I really don't know what I can do. He has promised to stop and hasn't but now there is going to be a child involved. I hate him looking at porn but I hate the lies and deceit even more- as far as I know he has never contacted anyone directly but it's all amateur stuff where sometimes the possibility is there.

To add insult to injury we only had sex yesterday and I at least thought it was good!

Have just gone to bed and am just trying to stay calm for baby's sake.

Oh although I said he has never contacted anyone directly, he did join a dating website for people having affairs but he swore it was just out if curiosity and he never contacted anyone-I believed him at the time.

Any advice? Am at work and can't concentrate on anything due to turmoil!

I think you have to escalate this and ask him to leave. His past/present response says that he doesn't take you seriously enough to keep a promise to you, doesn't respect your views and thinks it's OK to lie about his behaviour. So you have to up the ante and tell him to go while you think about the future of your relationship. This should give him a bit of a fright but -more important - it lets you think calmly about what you want from a relationship without him in your face making excuses, more lies and so on.

He said he was going to change.

He lied.

He said he joined a dating site (was this the £20 a month thing?) but never contacted anyone.

He lied.

Of most urgency is to ask your midwives to arrange sexual health screening and explain that you cannot be sure the man you're still having sex with is free of infections that could transmit to your unborn baby and cause grievous harm.

Then spend some time deciding whether you really want to bring up this child with a depressive, sexually incontinent liar.

Thanks for your responses. The thing is, if I ask him for time apart I don't know if it will give him a fright - that's what happened last year and it gave him a fright for about six months and then he 'had a slip up' again.

The dating website was a few yrs ago- the £20 was for porn last year.

The thing is that our relationship has been really good for ages now apart from the porn thing, which is big deal to me as I am strongly morally against it due to exploitation etc. He has been very supportive so far during my pregnancy especially as I have been having problems with it and is really looking forward to the baby arriving. We wouldn't have planned to get pregnant if I hadn't thought all that was behind us.

This is why this has knocked me for six- I thought things were going great between us but actually he is still lying.

Do you not think counselling is worth trying, especially now there will be a child to consider ?

No.

IMO neither counselling nor 'giving him a fright' will sort this one.

Having time apart didn't work before, so it's not going to work now.

At counselling, he'll just say that he'll give up porn, trying to hook up with other women and lying, but that will be a lie itself.

He won't admit that he wants to get his sexual thrills elsewhere or as an additional extra because of his own inadequacies and so because he won't admit to those character faults, there's no hope of changing them.

Your relationship is good now and so you've discovered that regardless of how much sex you're having or how well everything's going, he still feels the need to lie to you and use porn. It's actually a realy good thing that you can hopefully see now that it's not about you or the quality of your relationship. It's about him.

If you stay put and the inevitable happens when your relationship is going through the usual hell of a newborn baby - and he's on dating or porn sites again whinging about not getting enough attention at home, at least you can call bullshit.

Not that I'd wait around for that to happen, mind you.

Just because time apart didn't fix things last time, doesn't mean it's not a valid response this time. The only difference is that the time apart becomes a more permanent thing rather than a temporary thing. Counselling might help OP but I think the onus is on him to prove that he is worthy of being part of the family again and earning his place rather than you giving him the benefit of the doubt or falling for more excuses.