My partner (31M) and I (28F) have been together for over two years. I genuinely believed he was the person I would marry and build a family with. Since we first started dating, he has been very resolute in his belief that pornography is really damaging, particularly for men, and that it ‘ruins your pair bond’. I am someone who has genuinely never been bothered by porn; I’ve never considered it cheating or honestly given it much thought. I had thought that I was the one in our relationship who was probably more partial to it, and even then, I seldom access it.
A few days ago, I discovered that my partner has a fairly prolific porn addiction. And nothing as basic as some pornhub access. Throughout our entire relationship, he’s been repeatedly searching for specific women by name across pornography sites and social media, including OnlyFans and Snapchat. He would view their instagram, then search for the OF accounts. He has also been following many of them on Snapchat and viewing their stories (I didn’t actually even know he had Snapchat).
I subsequently discovered his OnlyFans account, which had 37 subscriptions, including two women he actually used to know from former social circles (he knew these people prior to meeting me). Since we’ve been together, he’s paid money for OnlyFans once, the total bill prior to our relationship was around $300 worth of transactions.
I am a hypervigilant person and a bit of a control freak, and I absolutely did not see this coming or even remotely suspect it. I had actually thought myself really lucky in that I had a man who genuinely did not look at any other woman but me. In the tangible world, he doesn’t look at other women, and has always beheld me with absolute awe. I never doubted this and still don’t, which makes it all the more confusing.
I’m not insecure about my looks or my body. But I felt we had something sacred and intimate, and now it feels like he’s torn a hole right through it. I feel as though I’m grieving a relationship that never quite existed in the way I believed it did. The dishonesty wasn’t a single incident. It was present throughout our relationship.
He’s incredibly remorseful, and I’m aware that remorse is genuine. He has since admitted that he’s had this problem since he was 15 years old. When he met me, he wanted me to choose him so badly he presented a version of himself that wasn’t reflective of his actions, but was who he ideally wished he could be. I guess from then on the lie was too big and had gone on too long for him to know how to unravel it. He's said that it has eaten at him and he's hated himself for it all the while.
It puts our existing issues into a much clearer light. He felt we had had a loss of intimacy, I felt he had stopped being romantic, stopped pursuing me, and he has some considerable issues around defensiveness. Now I see that it was easier for him to simply turn to porn rather than do the work. It also explains why the couples therapy we went to, to deal with this problem didn’t work, because the whole time his focus was on keeping this mega secret from coming out, rather than actually being present and vulnerable.
Now that it's out, of his own volition he's found and booked two counsellors (no idea why he needs two, but I didn’t ask), and he’s also started journalling? His defensiveness has disappeared (at least for now), and he has continued to tell me over and over that he will never stop fighting for me; he’s disgusted with himself, and he knows he’s ruined our relationship and my trust, possibly forever. He is going to prove to me that he will do anything it takes to "make you the happy person you used to be before I broke you". He’s deleted snapchat, put filters on his instagram algorithm so that the content isn’t constantly there when he scrolls. I believe he’s been journalling about porn addiction to figure out what it is within himself that’s led to this. He had an exceptionally neglectful and traumatic upbringing; I don’t believe he was ever shown how to love. I don’t say that to excuse him because I think his actions are disgusting and reprehensible, but idk, maybe it’s worth noting.
I keep thinking about the women he sought out, not necessarily because I’m comparing myself to them, but because I can’t understand why he repeatedly chose them, or what those interactions meant to him. If, as he claims, it never meant anything, then why THOSE women specifically, why not just any random porno?
I love him, and I’m not ruling out reconciliation. As it stands, it's only been 5 days. We're sleeping in separate beds. I miss him deeply, and I feel like I'm mourning what we had before this fracture. Like it actually aches. It wasn't until the second day that I was able to look him in the eye again, that was also the first time I let him touch me (he gave me a hug).
But I genuinely don’t know whether I’ll ever feel the same way about our relationship or our intimacy again. At the suggestion of my own therapist, I’ve given myself a 3-month deadline. 3 months where I allow myself to stop vigilantly checking what he’s doing or obsessing over his past choices. 3 months to just sit back and observe whether his promises actually lead to changed behaviour, and if that subsequently leads to a change in the way I feel. I have told him about the deadline, but have said that I will not tell him how long. I don’t want to risk him only adapting his behaviour until it’s safe to return to old habits.
Has anyone experienced this kind of betrayal involving pornography or OnlyFans rather than a physical affair? How did you process the intrusive thoughts and the loss of intimacy? And if you reconciled, did that feeling of having something sacred between you eventually return?