I’m out of order, He’s out of order, This whole courts out of order! But seriously… Support for a porn addicts partner??

Right so, with a recovering porn addict we give them time, love, support and we stand by them, but what do the partners get?

By the time you realize there is a problem there has been so much self doubt on your side, are you overreacting? Is it because your not sexy enough, maybe your not womanly enough, are you too annoying so he doesn’t get turned on by you? Add to this the feelings of self doubt because you don’t truly know who you are any more, I mean, didn’t you always say you’d ever take the kind of crap you have taken, didn’t you think you were a strong woman who would walk away? Yet here you are.
You are ashamed of the person his porn addiction has made you, you find yourself cynical, bitter, easily angered and easily brought to tears, you feel weak.

So who do you turn to for support? Your friends? Well yes if you can face them, show them how weak you have become. Your family?? ha ha ha, yes great…mum, dad, the boyfriend you love, he’s addicted to porn and I’m still with him. Hmmm… yeh that’s not going to look good for either of you., even if you have the most understanding and fair parents in the world, sex difficulties are not generally discussed, especially here in the UK. Do you confide in strangers via the internet? Like me? There is some relief from expressing your deepest thoughts unashamedly and also hoping you might be helping others in this situation. Sure, go for it. The one thing that you know, the one thing you learn and probably the saddest part of all is knowing you can’t turn to your partner. The one person you were always so close to, your soul mate and you have to hide how bad you feel.

Don’t get me wrong they have to know the hurt they caused, but if you let it out, like really let it out you just shame them, you guilt them and you make them close down to you. They are having such a hard time dealing with their addiction, the last thing they need in the weight of all your crazy, and that’s mostly what it is. You know they love you, yet you doubt it at every turn, you know they didn’t mean that in a certain way but your going to obsess about it until you have decided they are:
A: going to leave you because your crazy and emotional
B: Back on the porn and are lying and betraying you…as you speak…as you type these very words
C:Signs that you have finally lost your mind and how the hell are you every going to get through this!

Of course, you are in this together, this recover lark. You share thoughts and emotions at the appropriate times, but funny enough your emotions don’t do appropriate timing very well and often spring up unannounced to both you and your partner, not only that but its subconsios a lot of the time, you have no idea your being unreasonale or feeling sorry for yourself, its only in retrospect you see… you even set yourself up for these things, make situations you know deep down will not go well.

Take today for instance. Lately my parnter and I have been together ALOT, after him feeling he needs to breathe without me at his side, and me feeling like I could do with seeing friends I don’t partially hate for hurting me, we decide to spend a night apart. Ba ba baaaaam!

So I stayed home last night, he stayed at his home and this morning after work I thought, I shall do the understanding girlfriend thing and offer to spend another night at home, how fantastic a girlfriend I am. Problem was, he didn’t get he message, I went shopping, killed some time still no reply so I decided id go to his, seeing as that’s what was planned anyway (we each live in opposite directions to my work, about half hour each way).

Upon getting almost there he replies to say great, stay at home I will see my cousin. Well of course i’m almost there by then and I rage. Now I an see it was because I felt annoyed I had driven all that way and THEN to be rejected. OK so I know I offered, its not rejection but I felt stupid, I made the choice to go there anyway assuming he wanted to see me as he hadn’t mentioned any other plans when we spoke before work and then I was wrong. He said to go there anyway, no matter.

But it was a matter, I knew he’d rather I wasn’t there. How could I go there now? How could I not? What was I to do? It doesn’t help matters, he’s obviously dealing with issues of his own so his lashing back out at me when I got mad swearing and me and telling me not to come, he doesn’t want to see me now…Well I suddenly plummeted, a day looking so positive turned upside down in the space of about 10 facebook messages!

Was it me, was it him? He demanded an apology, which I gave through gritted teeth and then apologize himself but I still felt so stupid, and patronised, he said he’d see me when I got there, but I still sat in my car for another 40 minutes, thinking. What do I do, how do I process all these feelings, what does it all mean???

So here I am, I am at his house, he seems fine now. Greeted me with a kiss and is doing a workout but here I am still stuck in a negative place, I’m not sure I ever even leave it, I’m always on the edge of an emotional breakdown. Aren’t I? Am I? Or am I overreacting now?

Do you see the circles? We partners aren’t the porn addicts but it seems to bugger us up as if we were, maybe more so. Yet were supposed to be strong, a pillar of support for our struggling loved ones. How do we cope??

Well we write blogs, we do talk to one or two select friends we can trust not to judge, we write journals and talk to groups online specifically for Porn addicts partners and we survive…the best we can. We hope the crazy will pass, that we will trust and feel secure again soon because, quite frankly, there is nothing else we can do. We have chosen to stay with our partner and so have taken on the burden but to be honest, even if we didn’t, even if we left and moved on…we’d take these problems with us. We will always be tainted by our past experience and would have to deal with them, now with your current partner or another day with another partner.

Today I feel I made the right choice, why not tackle it together with a partner who, although snaps and has issues of his own, at least understands your issues too, to some degree. You are weak together but you are working on strength, your support each other through the hardest times, taking it in turns to break down, to rage and to be strong. You look to the future and think ‘ if we can make it through this, there’s nothing we can’t handle’ and you find strength in that.