Husband porn addiction and live chatting
My husband (38) and I (40 F) have been married for 10 years. I have always known he watched porn and I had always thought that this was normal for men. I did not see at something that could harm us.
I started to notice a decrease in our sex life after 2 years when we moved in together, in hindsight this is when we also got a computer. I noticed it but put it down to work stress or my own attractiveness and never raised the issue.
Over time as we married and had 2 children, sex and intimacy in our relationship continued to decrease. Some years we only had sex once or twice. Again I blamed myself as I had gained weight after children, I now had stretch marks and we were both tired. He would reject my attempts to initiate sex or sometimes even my touch. He worked long hours and I saw that even when he did have "free time" he preferred to spend it alone. I felt very unhappy and lonely and began to raise the problems with our sex life and companionship in general. He would get defensive and say he was repelled by me because I spoke to him in an unpleasant tone and i only spoke to him when I wanted him to do something. He said I seemed unaccepting of his humour and hobbies and that we were not compatible. I do not claim to be perfect but I had always wholeheartedly loved and liked him and strove to show him he was adored. I never rejected him but I did get feel angry and neglected at times and felt his work and hobbies came above me. I can definitely be snappy. He would often say the stress of his job and or the children were causing most of the issues in our relationship.
We went in a cycle of me complaining that I needed more from him and that causing a huge argument where he would often withdraw from me completely and not speak to me. Then we would make up and things would improve temporarily then the sex would drop off again.
I felt despair and eventually decided my weight was the problem so I lost a lot of weight. But saw little improvement in our sex life. I began to suspect he preferred porn and he agreed he "probably" watched too much and would "cut down" but again this didn't improve the sex situation much.
I should say that throughout he would say that he loved me and that I was the best thing in his life but my gut kept telling me something wasn't right and I felt constantly anxious and unsafe in the relationship. Feeling his actions didn't match his words.
Last year he sent a valentines card saying I was his "best friend" and I felt unreasonably devastated because I didn't want him to just be a friend and I felt it was a reflection of this sexless marriage and enforced celibacy I didn't want. I left for my parents for about a week. He was cold and wouldn't speak to me but eventually came and persuaded me to come home. Things would change. We just needed to communicate better.
Of course, they did not and during our most recent argument when I complained that I felt he avoided me and I was lonely he asked me if I even liked myself and again said we are not compatible and maybe a split was best.
I looked at his emails and saw that he had a live jasmin account he had deleted. I asked him about it and he apologised and said he was ashamed and had no excuse. He said it was a "free thing" and when questioned said he had not paid for anything. I became suspicious and asked to look at his credit card statements. He then admitted he had gone on a few times over 5/6 months but hadn't paid much. It took a few days but when he finally gave me the statements they showed he had in fact been on over 30 times in 18 months and paid nearly 1k on it. He had also googled pictures of a female colleague in another office. I accused him of being a porn addict and he admitted it. He said he had been on porn daily for about 10 years or longer and that he had watched so much he needed something more and so went to live jasmin which he was using a few times a week with porn in between as well. He had tried to stop live jasmin multiple times hence why there was an email about deleting the account.
It has been just over a week and the pain is unbearable. He has begged me to stay with him and support his efforts to quit porn. He says he will do anything to keep me. He had given me his iPad and home computer and agreed to leave his phone upstairs in the evenings. He has said he will get counselling and do a program although i don't see him making much effort beyond sending a few emails and listening to some porn addiction recovery podcasts I sent to him.
I am afraid and devastated, I feel my marriage is over but my mother feels I should try to make it work for my children's sakes. I know a split will tear their lives apart. They are in a private school and I am a stay at home mother so they will go from a good life to a poor single mother if I choose to leave him. It feels selfish to not stick it out for them at least until they are older. I honestly love my husband but I will never trust him again and feel cheating is only a matter of time. I don't have faith in him being committed to recovery from what I can see so far. Do I give it more time? I feel like staying would make me an idiot in many ways? I would appreciate support/ opinions from people who have gone through something similar, please be kind