I have never used Reddit for help but I am desperate. I (29f) married my husband (32m) when we were super young at 19 and he was 22. Ever since we were dating I made it very clear that I didn’t want porn in my relationship, especially my marriage. It was because it plagued all my previous relationships, and I watched it destroy other relationships in my family. We have been married for 10 years now, and this disease has never left. It has been the same cycle: catch him in the act, I tell him why this needs to leave our marriage, I try more security measures to prevent it from happening, he finds a loop hole then lies until I find out again. Or his behavior starts feeling off, I feel the distance, confront him, and he gaslights me saying he isn’t watching porn again just to catch him in another lie.
After 10 years, I have had it. I recently went out of town for a few days, and I immediately knew what he would do when I was gone. I came home and didn’t even search for it, I just asked him if he did and he admitted that he did. I broke down and told him I needed to be out of this, I was way past my limit of trying to make him see what he was doing to me. I lost all sense of self-worth, I questioned my sexuality and why I wasn’t enough, I had become so depressed and cycled through all kinds of medications, programs, and therapists over the last 10 years to try and figure out what was wrong with me so I could be a better wife.
After this confrontation, he came home from work the next day and said he needed to come clean because his porn usage was WAY worse than I had known for the last 10 years. His work had him in customers homes to do installs, and he told me he used his work iPad to watch porn and masturbate in hundreds of customers’ homes to hide it from me. He fantasized about my friends and coworkers, or anyone he came across that he wanted to have sex with in his head and masturbate to them in my home. If there was a device that connected to the internet, he found a way to watch porn on it. He created an OnlyFans account to purchase nudes from someone he knew in high school. He traveled for work and would masturbate to hearing other people have sex through the walls. He would lie about going to bed just to stay up for hours watching porn. He even said he would do it next to me while I slept in bed. He said he was out doing DoorDash a few times but he was actually in a parking lot watching porn. The lies just kept growing, and growing, and growing, and the last 10 years of my life came crumbling down around me.
I have EVERYTHING tied to this man. He is all I have known my entire adult life. I quit my job over a year ago because my depression and anxiety started affecting every part of my life and was causing major disruption in my job. I have 5 animas with him. I feel HUMILIATED that I fell for all the lies and trusted him. It’s like the last decade of my life was some game for him, and all I wanted was to grow together. I feel like a joke.
He is now doing all the right things like going to a porn addiction therapist, going to a support group, giving me full transparency, journaling everything he has done and writing down all the lies so he can see it all, going through his childhood to deconstruct where the addiction and lies started, but I can’t get past it. I have been waking up hot and angry with rage for over a month now. WHY NOW. Why after 10 years of seeing my pain. I have moments of empathy where I can see his efforts and understand this has been a lifelong thing for him, but then I go right back to anger and attacking him. I can’t stop ruminating, going back to try and find answers, monitoring everything he does, I am exhausted and don’t know to go on. I don’t recognize anything about myself, I’m so full of anger and hate. I can’t stand the idea of leaving him, but I don’t think I can ever trust him again either. I have no idea what to do, it seems like any option is wrong. Please help.
TLDR: My husband has just come clean about 10 years of lies, porn usage, OF usage, and inappropriate behavior. My anger has taken over, and I don’t know how to move forward even though he is doing everything right now.