Can't tell if it's an “as a Black man” situation, or if things have just truly got this dire, it’s now the default Self-ID
TLDR: caught husband messaging other women on an app, having previously done similar and visited a sex worker. Our relationship has been difficult due to my PTSD following an assault, and he says he uses it as porn.
Looking to get some advice because I’m really struggling with my current situation. I (30F) found my husband (33M) messaging other women on an app and sharing porn with them. Please can you let me know what your advice would be for me in this situation?
It’s not a simple situation, so I’m going to try and set out the facts below. And I would be very grateful if you could read them all and then give me your honest take.
I have been with my husband about seven years, six years married for one. We had a very difficult start because we met and started our relationship around the same time that I suffered a sexual assault. As a result, our sex life and physical intimacy has always been difficult.
I’ve had multiple rounds of therapy and I’m actively working on dealing with my trauma, but it would be a lie to say that it didn’t affect us. Having said that, my husband has been incredibly supportive. He’s cared for me, helped me access therapy, and has generally been my rock throughout the last few years. It got to the point where we weren’t having sex that often because of my PTSD. I know this affected him a lot, but he said he didn’t want to pressure me and that I could move at my own pace, and I really appreciated that.
Fast forward to three years ago and my husband’s mum passed away very suddenly. It really rocked him and his family. I found out that he was doing online porn roleplaying and that he had visited a sex worker (and was planning to do so again). I confronted him about these two major betrayals. Through a lot of hard work we managed to move past them.
I want to say at this point that I couldn’t really imagine a more caring, kind man who has dedicated so much of his time and effort towards helping me and looking after me, and I think that’s also why I’m having a real issue with this decision.
We moved on from that. Everything was going really well. We got married about a year ago and honestly we’ve been the happiest we’ve ever been, until a few weeks ago when I found that he had been messaging women on an app and sharing porn with them. He’d clearly been messaging these people for a long time and was referring to one of them as his girlfriend (and she was calling him her boyfriend). They were saying things like “I can’t wait to have sex with you” and sharing explicit porn with each other. I know that he hasn’t met this woman in person (she’s across the other side of the world), but the messages were pretty graphic.
I confronted him about it. Initially he tried to deny anything, but when it became clear that I knew exactly what had been happening he confessed. He said that it was his way of coping with everything in his life and that he used it as a coping mechanism. He’s never been good at being emotionally open and I think he hides a lot of how he’s feeling. He’s had counselling, but he says he still struggles to be emotionally open and that this was one of the ways he coped. He said it was purely online and for him was just the equivalent of porn.
So that’s the background, and now I’m completely lost as to what I do. On one hand I have a loving, caring husband who does so much for me. On the other hand this is one of multiple lies and betrayals. I don’t know how to move forward and what to do, and I’m really stuck. I’d really appreciate a neutral / outsider perspective.