"I’m Addicted to Porn" – A Husband’s Confession & My Response

All right, folks, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website and you can submit your own story or question to deardso.com. That is deardso.com. Fill out the form and if your question or your story is a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see or for my podcast listeners. Hello, podcast listeners on the Dad Starting Over podcast available wherever you listen to your podcasts on Spotify, Apple, wherever, check it out. Also, if you are watching this on YouTube, if you could do me a big favor, click on subscribe, click on like, and after you watch this video, if you could leave a comment down below, that would help me out a great deal. Thank you so very much. And this, uh, submission today comes from Robert, and the subject line is Addicted to Porn. Uh-oh. He says, dear Ralph, after years of a sexless marriage I ended up being suckered into the world of porn. I am now full-on addicted to porn. It's humil— it's humiliating to admit it. I think my wife knows of the issue but not the full extent. She has mentioned to me that she caught me once via text, but she nor I have discussed any of my porn addiction in person. It's the giant elephant in the room, and I think we are both purposely keeping it a hidden secret. I don't want to admit it, but I am embarrassed and she doesn't want to admit it because I know that she would absolutely lose her shit if she found out the extent of my addiction. I know she would leave me. God knows I have tried so hard to have a normal relationship with her. I am not a sex-obsessed man. I have never used a woman for sex. My track record does not suggest in any way that I use women for sex. Or look at them purely as sex objects. Let's put that one on the shelf to talk about later. Um, I value companionship, but I expect to be intimate with my wife weekly. I am still in my early 40s. I got into porn in my mid-30s. Before then, I had never seen it. Oh wow. Uh, if we had a more consistent sex life, I would completely drop all the porn. I hate myself for watching it, but I am a man and I have needs that are not being met. I admit I have not been the perfect husband and I have owned up to that. I had major insecurities at the start of our marriage. 20 years later, kids, mortgage, and a busy life, most of those insecurities are gone and I feel satisfied with my personal life and career. She just can't let it all go. She brings up things I said or did over 10 years ago. I wonder what that is. They always leave out these little things in these messages, don't they? It would help to tell us what these things are, dude. He says, I'm a different man after kids. I just see the world in a different way and I have different priorities. We don't have issues with money, infidelity, values, or goals in our life. When I bring up the sex issue, She just shrugs her shoulder like it's not a big deal and tells me to focus on, quote, more important things. How is that not important? And then the last line: should I tell her about my addiction? Let me take the last line first. What is to be gained by going to the wife hat in hand? Suppose, you know, as I often say, the wife, just to let you know, I am addicted to pornography. What you're hoping, Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Anxious Dude, is that she will go, "Oh, what have I done? I've driven my husband to this horrible sinful world of pornography. I haven't, you know, fulfilled his need. I haven't done my wifely duty. Oh, woe is me. Let me get to work and be, you know, the lustful creature that he wants." No, dude, that doesn't work. You have— there's a word here that keeps coming up in mind when I'm reading your story here, and that is one of shame. You have a lot of shame involved with you and sexuality. You make a point here of just saying, um, oh, I have never used a woman for sex. Okay, no one said you did. And you said, my track record does not suggest that I have ever looked at women in that way and used them for sex. Okay, then you're like, I value companionship. Okay, dude, it's okay to be a sexual creature. You know what, it's even okay to lust after women. It's even okay to lust after women outside of a relationship. Now that will drive a lot of the religious people crazy. Guess what? For every man that says that's a sin, that's a man who watches a lot of porn and stares at a lot of women. A healthier way of looking at this is to say, yeah dude, it's okay to recognize when women around you are good-looking, or when that sexy thing walks past you, or when you're flipping through the TV and you go, wow, or Instagram or whatever it is to go nice. The problem is when that becomes too much and it becomes, um, intrusive within your relationship and you pursue relationships outside of you and the wife and it gets in the way of romance between you and the wife and you suddenly look at the wife in a negative way and you're like, yuck, I don't like her, I like this one instead, that's when it goes too far. And admittedly, some men don't know how to put up that, the boundary between those two worlds. They jump right from, oh, that looks nice, to me want. That's not good. Or they jump right from, oh, that looks nice, I want more and more and more of it in the form of pornography. Like, you You say you become addicted to it. I wonder what that means exactly. Um, porn addiction, uh, it's questionable whether that's even a thing. I personally think yes it is because it's tapping into a part of the brain that releases certain dopamine and other chemicals that make you feel good. Anything that has that effect on the human brain is potentially addictive. I want more of it, more of it. Some people are wired in a certain way that when they get something that makes them feel good, they want it 15 times over and over again, while some people go, "Oh, that was nice," and then they forget about it for months. Same with substance abuse, drugs and alcohol. Some people drink a beer and go, "I don't need that for another year, it's no big deal." While other people drink a beer and say, "I want 15 more," and then they become alcoholics. Wish you'd gone more detail. Does this porn interfere with your life? Are you missing work meetings, for example, because you're too busy yanking it to porn? Are you missing time with your family because you're too busy looking at porn? Where did this go into addiction mode? Or is it just that you look on it, look at it on a regular basis, you feel bad about it, you feel shame about it, you feel bad about looking at these girls? Did you come from a very strict religious background? Because you said you got into porn in your mid-30s. Before that, you had never even seen it before. What? Dude, I'm not the most porny dude in the world, um, but even I admit I've seen it back when I was like 12 years of age, maybe. Um, it's always been a thing. I, you know, here's the thing, there's a, there's a lot of stigma around porn, and just as I mentioned, rightfully so, because it can become a problem for some men. Dare I say, probably not most men. Um, but let's back it up. Why does this pornography thing even exist? I think you've just exemplified why. It fills a need. Um, porn wasn't just conjured up by some men in a laboratory somewhere and they crossed their fingers hoping that it you know, become— it takes off with the population of men out there. I hope this catches on. Hope men like this. No, people distinctly saw a need. They recognized human nature for what it is, and they said, I think men would like to look at this. Um, when we invented, um, the talkies— or, or is that what they call them, the talkies? When, when, uh, no, the moving pictures. Talkies are when they, when they started adding audio to movies. Used to be movies were all silent. You know, just people would talk and then they put the text on the screen, you know, those old like Charlie Chaplin kind of things. And then all of a sudden somebody realized how to add audio to the mix and they called those talkies. Even before all of that, even with the advent of photography, let's say photography became a thing so many hundreds of years ago. What's one of the first things people did when they discovered this technology of photography? Still pictures. They started taking pictures of naked women. And selling them to men. Why? Because they saw that men really wanted that. They were hungry for that. They really needed that, and they weren't getting it in real life. Well, here you go, here's a naked woman. Then men drooled over it. And then along came moving pictures, and what's one of the first things they did? Videos and movies of people having sex. Why? Men wanted to see it. Um, all the way to modern-day technology, pornography, You can literally go on the internet and watch an infinite amount of pornographic videos, and you will never ever run out. And if you think you're getting close to running out, they just created a million more video clips for you to watch. It is that plentiful out there. So that should be Exhibit A for us to say, wow, there really is a need for this, isn't there? If there's just so much of this product available, why is there such a need for this? It's just human nature. It's the men. We're visual creatures. We're We're horn dogs. We want more of it. It's very, very rare. I'll say this out loud. A lot of guys don't like to say this because they don't want to get in trouble. It is extremely rare for a man to be in a strict monogamous relationship with one individual. That's what monogamy means. Mo— mono— one, right? Um, uh, it's very rare for him to have his sexual needs met 100% of the time with that one woman. He could be extremely happy if you, you know, uh, quizzed him at the time and said, are you happy with your marriage? He will say— a lot of men say absolutely. And are you happy with your sex life? Most men would say it's fine. And then if you were to hook a machine up to their brain and, you know, see the truth in there, the yeah, it's fine also coincides with viewing things like pornography. In other words, he's getting the need met in real life through the woman, and then he does a little extra on the side to satiate his, his need. Completely. And that's what you're doing because you ain't getting any for how long now? No, you didn't put a timeline. You just said years of a sexless marriage. So years of nothing. That's a lot, my friend. And that points to some— there's some real dysfunction in this marriage, in this relationship. And fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, the society is— the market has said, we recognize guys like you. What was your name again? Robert. And here's this thing called porn. Here you go. That should help satiate you and fill in the void, so to speak. And you're like, woohoo, but then it went too far because it made you feel good, and now you, by your estimation, you're watching it way, way too much. Um, I'm saying all of, all of this to kind of maybe squelch some of the shame involved with this. There are plenty of people out there that will shame you for this, dude, and I disagree with them. There is nothing inherently wrong with your sexuality. There is nothing inherently wrong with sexuality, period, in people. And I would say the same thing to women. If a woman came to me and said, my husband will not touch me, he won't do anything with me, and then she says, and I feel really bad, but I'm using my vibrator and watching porn or reading dirty novels, whatever, I'd say there's nothing wrong with that, woman. You're a human, you have needs, you know. It's, it's time that you two work things out, or else you need— you either submit to the fact that you and the wife will never have a sexual relationship and you are getting that need filled elsewhere via pornography, or even all the way to something like sex workers, affairs, and all this other stuff, which I bet you're not going to go into that world. You have a lot too shame involved to do that. Not necessarily a bad thing to abstain from all that, by the way. I don't condone either. But, or you agree to go your separate ways and you go find somebody that's better suited for you. Or, you know, there's a third option. Have you checked out my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix? DeadBedroomFix.com. Check it out. You can buy the book on our website or go to any of the retailers like Amazon, Apple Books, etc. And Try some things to better become a more secure individual, which will hopefully cultivate an environment— cultivate an environment where sexuality is more apt to happen within your relationship. Now, she sounds very avoidant— get the hell away from me— uh, and you do sound very anxious, very, very anxious in your, in your story here. A lot of shame, like I said. Um, you got a lot of work to do, my friend. Have you been to therapy to talk about your codependence? Have you been to therapy to talk about your pornography problem? Um, He's worked with any men's groups, check out the Brotherhood, help4men.com, go to Brotherhood in the menu, or go right to help4men.com/join. Work with hundreds and hundreds of guys from around the world, some of whom have kicked the old pornography habit, many of whom have worked on their relationship and made their marriage better, many of whom have ended a destructive, dysfunctional relationship and moved on to healthier relationships. There's no wrong or right here. We don't know the full extent of your story. There's a lot of detail that you're leaving out here. And frankly, we don't know her side of the story. She could have some very valid reasons why she wants nothing to do with you, dude. Don't know. Um, so my advice: check out the Brotherhood. From there, you can join and book time with yours truly or anybody else on our team. The cost to you to book time with me for mentorship and coaching is way cheaper if you're a member of our group than if you don't join our group. In fact, it's cheaper just to join the group, hang on for like 6 months, and book coaching. That comes out to be cheaper than if you just buy the coaching by itself. So check it out, the Brotherhood. Um, you got a lot of stuff you need to work on here, my friend. This is not such a simple situation, all right? But I do appreciate you reaching out. Thank you so very much.