Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

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

DH addicted to porn - help!

78 replies

lostincornwall · 16/02/2007 18:19

I am really struggling to come to terms with the fact that my DH seems to be spending increasing amounts of time (he thinks without my knowledge) looking at internet porn. Admittedly, since DS was born 2 years ago I haven't been exactly game but as he now seems to prefer "working late" in our study to coming to bed with me, I am starting to panic. I can't get this image of him - sad, pathetic man - and these porn images out of my mind. I caught him last week (at 2pm for god's sake!) looking at a site but he refused to discuss it, saying someone from work had sent it through. Does anyone have any advice as I am struggling to get past "yuck" and make something of our otherwise perfectly happy life?

OP posts:
postingatlast · 19/02/2008 10:37

firstly, I'm really sorry for the OP that she is having such a tough time with this issue.

without wishing to hijack her thread, can I sound a note of caution about the term "addicted" to porn. At the moment, there is a lot of talk of porn addiction - and without a shadow of doubt, there are increasing numbers of men who are genuinely addicted. But I think it is important to look at what addiction really means. By my understanding, it means an activity which someone simply cannot do without, that they systematically return to on a daily, even hourly basis and, above all, that the activity has rendered their life unmanageable - like in the case of lostincornwall where her DH had replaced her with porn.

There are various levels of addiction. Taking the example of coke, someone who does coke recreationally would not generally be classed as an addict. We would probably say they have a habit.

If I may say, I think it might help to make the same distinction with porn because the term porn addict is so loaded, IYSWIM. Of course, none of these semantics take away from the reality of the distress to the OP and I don't mean in any way to do that. But like all habits and addictions, it is the level of the habit or addiction which dictates the necessary treatment and course of action.

I suspect that a lot of men who are bracketed here as having a porn addiction possibly have something more approaching a porn habit. I am not saying that is right either but it is less loaded and, I reckon, easier to confront.

Looking at porn two or three times a week is no more an addiction than having a glass of red two or three times a week (and both, depending on where you stand on the moral scale, can be considered to be vices). Looking at porn every day, often several times a day, and needing to masturbate every time - that is an addiction i.e. the person's life could not get past the need to look at porn at that moment.

I hope that makes sense and, above all, that the OP finds the right solutions for both her and her DP.

hk78 · 19/02/2008 13:05

hello, just seen this thread and thought i'd throw in my bit
i have posted before about my dh and his porn habit/addiction.
to me, it's a choice he makes, as an adult. he has other issues as well, which all seem to be based around 'not communicating'. he is extremely 'careless' as to the time and the place he looks at it:
it came to a crisis a few months ago when he was actually looking at it while we had visitors including a houseful of kids.
personally i think this carelessness is a deliberate cry for attention:
but whenever you try and talk, he will explode and say he's leaving (making sure dc's hear him as well, pathetic bastard)so that gives him chance to run off.(he's still here though, strangely enough)
even if you get net nanny or any other blocker software, there are other ways of getting porn: getting it sent to your mobile for one, which i dont think he thinks i know about.
my method of getting through this for the moment is the blind eye treatment,pathetic i know, don't know how long i can do that for, but i am thinking of the dc's.
i recognise that knot in the chest/stomach. at the moment that' s ok for me, as it's been quite a while, but i know there will be something else before long, there always is.
just offering sympathies to the op and others,oh well at least we're not alone eh? ironic isn't it, before we all had computers in the home, this sort of porn addiction didn't exist, yet without the computer giving us places like mumsnet, we would all probably think we were the only ones suffering this crap!
fwiw, i was never anti-porn, i looked at bits of it when it used to be mags/vids as part of sex life, with dh and previous bf's., but it's when your face is being pushed in it, when it's being used to hurt you and avoid communication, and it's in the family home, youre worried about the dc's finding anything etc.etc., it puts a different light on it, iyswim.
sorry it'a bit long , just some thoughts.

scaredwife · 19/02/2008 13:45

A porn habit may not be an addiction but it may be part of a sex addiction. If someone is looking at it for 2 years, gradually increasing their usage and becoming desensitised to it so that they need to look at it more and the images are more hardcore then an addiction is underway. In the case of dh, he went on to have sex with a female colleague for a year - experimental sex as he called it. I think had he not been looking at the porn, he would not have so easily strayed - but I know that is just my opinion.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page