EVAN has agreed to collaborate from time to time with Porn Recovery UK about his process of working with a 30-year porn habit. Here’s his eleventh blog post.
Recently, as Jessica and I have moved back together sexually, something quite fundamental for us has been understood and recognised – our sexual drives and outlooks are quite different. While mine has changed a lot since I started my work in therapy, I do still want to be sexually active much more often than Jessica does. We have become very honest with each other since our holiday and have found that we can talk about my porn issues now in detail and at last, without arguing. I think because I’m not asking Jessica to accept my porn habit, ‘hands down’ and because she understands that it is not a threat to our relationship (I don’t want porn more than I want her), we have found a place to discuss our issues between us.
In this whole process I’ve been perhaps most surprised to find out that Jessica sometimes masturbates as well, when she is alone, and I think talking about that has helped us both understand each other a lot more. There is an understanding between us about our sexual drives for the first time in all our married years. At the moment our love making is quite high for us (three times last week) and I can get by on that quite well but I do still want to use images when I’m on my own and Jessica and I have sorted something between us. I am promising her and myself (and my therapy space) that I’ll not use the Internet for images at any point now. The Internet is unpoliced, uncensored and unlimited in supply, and I clearly can’t handle that. However, I do have a small number of 18 and R18 DVDs. I do not use them every time I masturbate and there is now nothing secret about them. I keep the discs in the top drawer of Jessica’s bedside cabinet. I don’t know that this is my final position on porn, or Jessica’s. I’m still actually working on lowering my use much further but I find that having to go to Jessica’s side of the bed and taking out a disc really makes me think about what and why I’m using it, and it makes me consider us as a couple, even when my focus is on myself. For the moment I’m very happy with where I’ve got to. Therapy has helped both of us a lot so far.
NB It was agreed that blogs wouldn’t be posted until at least three months after they had been written.
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