About to leave him... ANY hope? (Spouse to PA)
I've been reading through these sub Reddit posts for the last couple of days. It's been difficult to see the reality of my situation in comparison.
This is my second marriage I am currently in. Though to start, in my first marriage my husband had an addiction to porn that was about 3 to 4 times a week and resulted in a sex addiction, where our marriage deteriorated until I found out in the end he had about 30 to 60 possible sex partners outside of our monogamous marriage, and he confirmed at least 4+ actual affairs. That marriage ended when he told me he didn't love me, he wouldn't love me, and he would continue to cheat on me.
I was single for a long while (did therapy and spent time healing) and have now been married to a man (who was a widower so there is a whole added dynamic there) for almost 4 years (our 4th anniversary is 2 weeks away). He had 6 kids from his first marriage (oldest one living out of the home) and I had 2 with my first husband. We have no kids together. All of that obviously adds a while different dynamic I won't even get into right now. My current husband told me he had a porn addiction when we were dating, but wanted to work on it and showed progress significantly while we dated. I also felt like I had experience being with somebody who had a porn addiction from my first marriage, and as long as he was wanting to work on it, we could be fine.
We didn't date long, which is probably my first error... I know. Once we got married, I realized his addiction he talked about frequently was waaaayy worse than I thought. He looks at porn 3-5 times a day per his own report and has for decades since his addiction has been going on for about 40 years he says. He's never gone more than 2 weeks without it, but that was about a decade ago. The longest during our own marriage thus fas has been a couple days maybe a handful of times. This man is my best friend. He then started becoming verbally abusive. He knows it and would ask me why I stay with somebody who's so verbally abusive and tell me how stupid I was for doing that. He tells me he becomes abusive when he doesn't want me around anymore to push me away so I'll leave him. He doesn't have the ability to be empathetic, he won't apologize for anything as everything's always perceived as my fault… If I could only approach him differently, if I could only understand him better, if I could only let him figure things out alone, if I could only… And I've done all of those and he will admit that too. I apologize and change and try and do 'better'. He tells me I am too. There's always something more though when something else happens and then that becomes my fault too. Honestly, my heart hurts for him. Everything lately has been resulting in him feeling like a total failure which makes my heart hurt and I'm trying to do everything I can, but I'm getting so burned out and stretched. I don't hardly know myself anymore.
This being said, we've been living in separate houses(I moved out) to try and 're-start' on a healthier page because it became so volatile between us and I did not feel safe. In his perspective, he thinks it's something different and has never acknowledged hearing what I've told him. He doesn't really seem to care to reconcile though unless things are all roses and sunshine. It's like I'm a booty call but most of the time he doesn't even need or care about sex or is even able to engage because he can't perform anymore like he did when we lived together.
He tells me constantly he'll never be able to quit. We've been to couples counseling where he walked out and he's been to personal counseling with a CSAT counselor where again he walked out. He has gone to SA/SAA meetings or other addiction recovery meetings. He's never fully been able to make it through the steps. He struggles with self reflection, apologies, anything that makes him feel like a failure. I see so much good in him, but I don't know if it overrides the fear I feel around him for my own emotional, and sometimes even physical well-being. The sex was great for a while. He has dealt with PI ED for sure though still. He has told me he doesn't want to be married to a real human. Throughout our short four years, I have found him masturbating to porn in various ways, uncovered that he masturbates to pictures of old girlfriends that he refuses to get rid of, he was masturbating to pictures/videos of escorts but doesn't see it as a problem since he never did anything in person with them. With his first wife, he did have an affair, and that was the only time he's ever mentioned his heart being truly broken with that rejection from the woman he was having an affair with. He knows he's an avoidant personality type, and that adds to his inability to see what's going on within him a lot and the ability to bring up any type of hurt that I experience as it leads to massive lash out. So I've had to keep quiet for the most part for the whole four years.
He's still my best friend through all of this. I probably have the problem because I can't seem to just walk away from him when it seems so obvious. He might say he wants to change, but he does not want help from anybody and tries to white knuckle it. It has affected his brain and how he thinks and how he raises his own kids and what he thinks is appropriate accountability and responsibility. I say this as an occupational therapist who has studied the cognitive effects of addiction on the brain and developed coursework to help bridge the gap between people at this depth where they can't even begin to do anything seemingly difficult. He won't even participate in that though. He's made minimal progress in times. He's had apps on his devices, accountability parters helping, but those things don't last long and result in massive blow ups again which all of his blow ups are directed at me, so it's scary and intense.
Am I hanging on for no purpose? Is it hopeless?