To My Husband Reading This Forum

[kindle]

you probably thought i wouldn't notice you'd visited here, but i did, and i'm glad. i just hope that you read long enough to get a broader understanding and realize that this is more than a place for men-hating women to bash their husbands. please, read long enough to see all the hurt and tears. and whether or not you think you have 'a problem' is irrelevant. i have a problem - i'm still so crushed. you expect things to 'get better' with time... and it is, but it's going much slower than i think either one of us would like... i still don't trust you much, and that sucks - i want to, and i'm trying.

please, read long enough to understand that even the 'innocent' flirting you do now isn't ok. i know you think i'm unaware of it, and that hurts too, especially on the occassions that it's right in my face. but i'm not mad. i don't know if i have it in me to be angry right now. i just want to shrivel up and die. i keep spiraling downward and the smallest things feel like huge weights pulling me under.

my hopes for how you'll respond to things are always so far off... for once, i would love for you to completely break down at the thought of losing me. that sounds horrible and i know it... but i'm just not sure i matter to you at all. i want you to make promises to do anything it takes to make us work... and far more importantly, i want you to keep those promises... i want to feel like you would move mountains, if that's what it took.

and what i would really, really like... is to feel like you find me irresistable. only me. asking a lot, i know... 'cause i'm not sure i'll ever believe it again. but an effort would mean a lot... though i'm not sure you understand that has nothing at all to do with your sex drive.

anyway, i love you. hope you keep reading.

[LookingUp]

Hi kindle's husband. I hope you keep reading, too. May I suggest starting reading some of the journals of both PAs and their partners? Those seldom have any male-bashing and it's where many members here pour their hearts out at their frustration of either having PA or living with a loved one who is PA.

The most-read PA journal, in my opinion, is "Hopes and Dreams - Black Spiral's Journal" at lightwave.proboards48.com/index.cgi?board=journal&action=display&thread=1111004899

LookingUp

[buffalosgirl]

For Kindle's husband. First off, thank you for reading. I hope you feel welcome here - there is no 'bashing' here... one of the reasons I like coming here. Don't feel put off by the significant others' venting - sometimes we have to blow off steam, and this is our safe haven to do so. A lot of us here have some pretty raw emotions.

Please take into consideration that Kindle does feel there is a 'problem.' Whether you agree with that or not, she is hurting - it's a fact. And just by being here, she's taking a huge step for both of you and your relationship because she cares and she's looking for resolution. A lesser woman would jump ship - it's a lot easier than fixing something.

[completelydone]

((((((((Kindle))))))))))))))))

That made me cry.

[nina]

buffalosgirl said:

For Kindle's husband. First off, thank you for reading. I hope you feel welcome here - there is no 'bashing' here... one of the reasons I like coming here. Don't feel put off by the significant others' venting - sometimes we have to blow off steam, and this is our safe haven to do so. A lot of us here have some pretty raw emotions.

Please take into consideration that Kindle does feel there is a 'problem.' Whether you agree with that or not, she is hurting - it's a fact. And just by being here, she's taking a huge step for both of you and your relationship because she cares and she's looking for resolution. A lesser woman would jump ship - it's a lot easier than fixing something.

to kindle's husband. welcome to this forum and what buffalosgirl said is right on the money! keep on reading and chewing on everything you take in. and realize that you're VERY lucky that you have a wife who loves you and who is being PATIENT with you on this! take care and show her today how much you love her. don't tell her. SHOW HER!

[stillnshock]

Hey, if her husband is reading this, I am going to say what I wish someone would say to MY husband.

I eventually had enough of the touchy feely stuff, hearing things like"your husband is so LUCKY to have an UNDERSTANDING SO who still loves him" I am gonna tell you like it is. Just keepin' it real.

Patience? She WILL run out of it eventually. You can't expect her to be perfect and for things to fall back into place magically.

She is now giving you a chance. But six, eight, ten months from now she will still be hurting. No matter WHAT you do. You keep doing the porn, your relationship is done. That's reality. Whether she stays or goes, it will be done.

But even if you stop the PA, you still have months, years, of restoration ahead of you. This is a pain a woman feels for a very long time. Are you up for it? Six months from now, when she has a trigger and feels like crap because something you did or said jarred a memory, are you gonna be ANGRY at her, or are you going to HOLD her, and love her like she SHOULD be loved?Are you going to accept what she feels or are you going to BLAME her? What is it going to be? It isn't up to her, it is up to YOU. It is how you CHOOSE to handle it.

So, you should keep trying to make it better or she WILL fall out of love with you. And then where will your relationship be? Don't EVER blame her for the way she is feeling at ANY time.

I strongly suggest you get some qualified professional help.

[hurting]

stillinshock, you rock!

[helstone]

I agree with stillnshock.

Kindle's husband - if you are reading this, I want you to know that it's possible to wait too long.

I tried everything I could think of to fix my husband's addiction, for many years. After 15 years of marriage, his addiction escalated to the point that he no longer wanted to have sex with me. He just - lost interest. The types of images he was looking at had changed as well - this was no longer just the Playboy stuff. He is ashamed of the places his addiction took him.

I had a baby and hit very serious postpartum depression. I was seriously losing my mind. I could no longer think - I would do something and forget 2 minutes later that I had done it. I would dwell on thoughts of suicide - I would plan it in my mind, ways to kill myself so the kids wouldn't be the ones to discover my body. At one point my husband told me he had not seen me smile for over a month. Not once.

He finally realized how bad things were, and he did finally quit using p. 10 years ago, if he had just quit using, I might sometimes feel hurt and resentment when I thought of what he had spent so many years doing. But I still believed in love, I still believed in magic. We could have built a real marriage - we could have had a dream come true. I was so in love with him.

But he waited too long.

He's now been p-free for a year and a half. I used to LOVE having sex with him. I mean - 5 times a week would have suited me just fine. Now he's finally willing - now he wants me. And I can't bear it more than once a month. For a year, anytime we were intimate we had to stop in the middle of it as I'd start crying. That happens sometimes still.

I KNOW he doesn't think I'm attractive. There is nothing that will ever change that for me. A year without my husband once initiating sex, and with him rejecting me almost every time I did, pretty much convinced me of that for good.

The thing is - it can get worse. Wherever you are with this addiction, and your marriage, if you don't quit, it WILL get worse. You may not realize how - but if you push and push and push your wife away with the p, you can build up a momentum. So when you finally stop pushing, she's moving that direction - away from you - all on her own. And you won't be able to get her back.

I am still married. But I am no longer in love with my husband. I don't even want to be - and that's what has changed, and changed our marriage permanently. There is no dream I am going for here. I'm here while we have a lot of young kids, and it's too hard financially to do it alone. I don't know that I won't leave in 5 - 10 years. I actually think growing old with this guy would be a big mistake. I am here - married - and daydream about what it will be like in a few years when I'm on my own. I'm planning a divorce a few years down the line. He knows it.

We can be friends - but there is no getting the true intimacy back. (Not that we ever had it - but I'm no longer trying.)

Women can bring a real beauty to life, they can create something wonderful in a relationship. Think about how much nicer it is to be living with a woman than with a male roommate. There is a magic that women bring to men. But when you've killed that - it's just gone. You can't get it back.

That's what my husband didn't realize. He thought that he could, at any time, quit the p when he was "finished" with it, and restore a real marriage with me. What he didn't realize, was that it wasn't up to him. He killed the magic. And I can't get it back. And I wouldn't, even if I could.

If you wait too long, you can't fix it.

Ask the PA's here - there are plenty of them that waited too long. Their wives and girlfriends are gone. They are now getting clean - but it was too late to keep what was most important to them.

Don't do this to your wife. It sounds like she's still in love with you. Don't waste it.

[cindyandben]

My husband is the light of my life, and my "earthly god", as Sir Richard Burton's wife put it; come to think of it, he might have been considered a pornography or sex addict, had he lived today rather than in the last century, what with all his "research" into the exotic sexual customs of the near and far east. His works were banned all over the place (The Perfumed Garden??). I have not been reading this forum for very long, but I can certainly tell that there are a lot of loving women posting here. If you are reading, dear husband of Kindle, keep that in mind.

[realthing]

(The Perfumed Garden??).

god - i remember reading this when i was about 20yrs - on the commute home from uni - i used to make a mad dash for home to make love with my boyfriend. i never knew that had been banned - didn't view it as pornographic either - erotica yes (can't remember anything about it other than it made me horny) - thinking about the difference in definition between erotic / pornographic- looks like a matter of obscenity pertaining to the former???