u/ElkSmall5096

Hey, so I recently have had not so great thoughts about my Partner, she’s a lovely person and a beautiful girl outside and in, but lately I’ve had to start recovering and it radically changed my perception of how she looks and the relationship as a whole. So at the start I had no issue whatsoever, she was hot and stunning to me, and great to talk to, a genuinely kind person. However, after I started my recovery, I slowly got less and less attracted to her and saw the relationship as more of a burden, this made me question my love and see anything different as a flaw and something that I might resent overtime, I thought about asking other people out (in fairness it’s likely just intrusive thoughts on that one), I oversexualised other people constantly and thought about them in odd facial expressions and imagining there private parts, and worst of all I think that if she isn’t perfect in every way then maybe we aren’t perfect together, which is obviously dumb because it’s wether or not the people in a relationship are perfect together, not wether or not there body’s or personality’s or even little things aren’t perfect.

Anyways, I just wanted to ask wether or not any of what ive said could be considered normal or not all things considered, which is that I’m an addict of sex workers and porn, I’m 13 weeks clean on the porn and got close to a relapse on the sex addiction very recently. is any of this something that is unrelated to the addiction at hand or does this all sound roughly what a warped perception of your partner sounds like. I’ve had these pretty terrible thoughts and I’d like to open the floor and let others talk about their own experiences with partner disconnect, at the very least to try and talk about this feeling so that we may all have a reference to what sort of feelings we can expect to feel or what questions we might ask ourselves in the scary moments of disconnect. Everyone is different and it’s by no means to say that one person will ask all of this or more, but I still think it might be productive to explain our experience.

I’ve been clean now for 12 Weeks, coming up on 13, it has wrecked my relationship and I feel so bad, but it’s stressed me out so much. I just want to leave and it hurts, I love my girlfriend a lot but I stress so much trying to keep her happy and say the right things, I feel so much pressure and it makes me wonder what I should do? Is it too far gone to save or should I hold out knowing how addiction can be?

It feels like she may never be enough, but I’m coming off of not only porn addiction but also sex addiction, I used escorting when I was old enough and I’ve never known a life where sex isn’t transactional and where connection and emotional vulnerability is a part of what I’m doing. It also feels like it’s hard to not see her flaws, but I thought maybe it’s because of the Warped Perception that porn gives you and makes you think all woman should look like that? It makes no sense otherwise to concentrate on it, as she’s quite attractive anyway and if I didn’t know her,
she’d be the type of person I’d be looking at now anyway, which is why I gravitated to the idea of stress, as I’ve heard the brain can be very “Fight or Flight” response when dealing with lots of stress.

And I still think in a very narrow minded way, like body counts, novelty of having done it with someone of a Different height, nationality, breasts etc. I still over-sexualise sometimes, it’s not as often now but the intrusive thoughts still play in my head sometimes. I wonder if any of this goes away as the time goes on and the Distance between porn and Sex Addiction gets bigger? I hope so.

I guess to sum it up, has anyone had these thoughts and urges before? The urge to end things with your partner to relapse or to pursue other people as a way of avoiding the work in the relationship? And how can I better take the pressure away of being with her thinking about these questions and still enjoying myself? And can this negative mindset of Viewing People as Conquests change overtime as I progress in this recovery?

I’ve had 11 weeks so far of porn free existence, I’d gotten pretty close but had stayed strong for awhile, but I’d searched porn addiction on here not expecting to be ambushed with porn content and then I was. I watched for 20 seconds or so before pulling myself away. I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my progress away but I do feel shame for even watching for as long as I did, and I knew I shouldn’t have clicked if it said NSFW, I just thought It would be something that was flagged 18 that was maybe talking about something bad that constituted a NSFW? I feel stupid now, and while I don’t feel like this undoes my progress I feel very bad for even going this direction. Should I consider this the end of my 11 weeks and start anew? And if I do what would be some suggestions for maybe coping better and starting again? Thanks all