Has the discovery of your husband’s pornography addiction turned your life upside down? The chaos that it causes extends to all areas of your life and affects you personally, affects your household, affects your social activities, and the list goes on. It doesn’t seem fair that his addiction hurts you in so many ways.
Learning about pornography addiction and healing the trauma that is has caused will help tame the chaos. As you make decisions that are in your best interest and lessen the impact that his addiction has in your life, you will notice a calming effect.
What addicts don’t want you to know
Porn addicts are master manipulators and they can even use this problem of addiction as a reason why you, their partner, have to help them. You learn all you can about porn addiction so you can help him stop acting out and ultimately recover. You give him extra time and attention trying desperately to help him. Additionally, you run around trying to keep every aspect of life under control to minimize any stressors that might impact his ability to kick this addiction. He creates the chaos and you get to do all the work.
At the end of the day, he chose to hide his addiction from you, to lie directly to your face, and to masturbate and reach sexual release with pornography. He never wanted you to know anything about his use of pornography. That is why he lied, kept secrets, and gaslighted you. Discovery day was terrible for both of you. You had your reality ripped to shreds and he had to fess up.
Your point of reference has changed from thinking that you were dealing with a loving husband to now knowing that you are dealing with an addict. He will take everything that you give from your time to your understanding to your participation in things that you don’t want to do. You can’t make sense of his addiction to pornography and you can’t fix it. He cannot be a source of support for you while his addiction is still active and really not for a very long time after he recovers.
Here are some things that you can do to protect yourself:
- Accept the reality that you are married to an addict who has lied and manipulated you in the past. Make your decisions from this reality.
- Learn about pornography addiction. You need to know the basics about his addiction. More importantly, you need to know how it has impacted you and what you need to do to heal.
- Create boundaries that support your wants and needs. Follow through when boundaries are broken.
- Recognize what is in your control and acknowledge the things that you are responsible for. You can control only you, your decisions, and your responses. You cannot control him or his decisions or his addiction.
- Get support through support groups, therapy and/or coaching.
- Engage in self-care and rebuild trust in yourself.
- Stop hiding the addiction for him and allowing him to play the victim role. He has to take responsibility for his choices…he can choose to continue acting out or he can choose recovery.
- Believe his actions and not his words.
- Prepare for the possibility that you may need to leave the relationship if that ends up being the safest option for you. Continuing to act out and refusing to engage in recovery activities threaten your emotional safety and hold you back from living the life that you deserve.
How discovering his porn addiction creates chaos in your life
Discovery is a very chaotic time for partners. Finding out about his pornography use can make life feel unmanageable. Nothing makes sense anymore. What you thought was your truth – isn’t. His explanations and disclosures sound like a foreign language to you. You might feel like you are going crazy as you try to sort through information, truth and lies, and ride the emotional roller coaster of discovery.
The emotional pain is unbearable and you are experiencing trauma in a way that you never have before. You feel unsafe in your most intimate relationship. There is so much fear and it can leave you feeling helpless. You are afraid of what you’ve learned about your husband, what it means for him as an addict, and most importantly – afraid of where all of this leave you.
Discovering his porn addiction raises so many questions. At the core, you might question if he ever really loved you at all. Our brains cannot figure out how he could do something that causes us so much pain. As partners, we blame ourselves for not knowing what was going on in our marriage and for not looking like the women in the images he was seeking out. Again…internal chaos results.
After discovery it is common to want the details about his acting out. We are constantly trying to get answers to our questions about his addiction. You might also try to monitor all of his activities to see if he continues to act out or not. So much time is spent on trying to control his life, his actions, and his addiction. None of which is really in your control at all. The chaotic thoughts and feelings are so unbearable though…you have to try.
How does the chaos impact you
As the security of your marriage is lost and you can no longer predict anything related to your life or relationship… chaos is the only constant. Coming to the realization of what he has done and how he has betrayed you adds to the trauma you are experiencing. The impact on your physical and emotional health can be devastating.
Nothing about his addiction make sense to your logical brain. His lies about pornography opens the door to question everything that he says now. The situation replays over and over in your mind and makes it challenging to concentrate on anything else. There are so many ways that his porn addiction has created chaos in your life.
For sure the shock and negative emotions that you felt when you discovered his addiction created internal chaos. You also shouldered so many things that he could have been doing to make life easier. Instead, he neglected those activities so he could act out. He chose to spend his time masturbating to pornography instead of working to keep calmness and stability in your life together.
The lies that he told and all of the ways that he hid his acting out were betrayal and abuse. Most partners spend time and energy trying to fix it and trying to seek answers to the endless questions about trust, about the future, and about his recovery. The constant worry about his sobriety is draining. All of this is at the expense to yourself. While you are focused on him, you are not focused on you and what you need.
One of the key things that all partners need to know is that his acting out has nothing to do with them. This seems so counterintuitive and is so hard to believe…but it is the truth. It feels like this is about you as a woman and a wife. Unfortunately, we may want to think it is about us because we can change ourselves and then we can fix the problem. Again, this is not true. You cannot compete with the porn. You don’t need to compete with the porn. He has to take control of his decisions and his actions. You need to deicide what is best for you. Both are steps to taming the chaos.
Chaos and confusion go hand in hand
The chaos that comes along with discovering his addiction and secret life leads to confusion and the confusion also adds to the chaos. The constant questions that we ask ourselves can be overwhelming.
- Why am I not good enough for him?
- Why does he need to masturbate to porn when he has me?
- Can I ever trust him again?
- What part of our relationship was actually real?
- How could he hide an entire part of his life from me?
- Did our intimate times together mean anything to him?
- How can I be caring one minute and so angry at him the next minute?
- Is it really an addiction or just an excuse?
- Why can’t he just stop?
Although you try, it is difficult to make sense of the situation and to regain a sense of control in your life. You become confused about who you are, what the right decisions are, and what your future will look like. Focus on getting back to your true self and rebuilding your best life to tame the chaos. Let him worry about his recovery and his own decisions while you take care of yourself.
Do some self-exploration to remind yourself about the things you enjoy and what is important to you. Figure out how to get back to those things. Gather the information that you need to make sound decisions. Get out of chaos and confusion.