Hi, I have posted here before. But I don’t think I have mentioned that I worked as an escort for about a year in my early 20’s and also briefly worked as a porn performer mostly for small local producers. I’m now 34, married and have two kids.
Last year I went through a personal crisis, which caused an extremely high libido and I got addicted to porn and masturbation. It kept getting worse until I completely gave in and had a one night stand with a stranger. I went against every principle of safe sex and every personal boundary that I’ve stuck to my entire life and had a completely unhinged and unprotected sexual encounter with this random person, fueled by my sex addiction. Afterwards, I felt immense guilt about it and after a couple weeks of deliberation I informed my husband. Since then we’ve been going back and forth on either reconciling or divorcing, but leaning more towards staying together. I am totally committed to healing and managing my addiction in the long term and I never want to cheat again. I am in CSAT therapy as well as attending SLAA.
My husband has been through a lot and I have done my part in reading about betrayal trauma and I recognize it sometimes manifests in unexpected ways. One of those has been an intense need for him to “reclaim” me, he wants to reclaim everything I did during my affair, which can be sometimes healthy and sometimes very damaging to his healing. But I do whatever he needs me to do. I do very much enjoy sex with him but his self worth has taken a hit and I can’t do much about that other than be available for him sexually and let him talk process it in his own therapy.
But a totally unexpected response to being betrayed that my husband has been exhibiting, for honestly quite a while but I was hoping it goes away, has been exposing himself to what he calls my “sexual debauchery.” In effect, this means he asks me a lot about my past sexual encounters and recently I also got to know he watches my porn quite obsessively and gets upset about it. He says it is about simply “accepting the truth” for what it is, that he has to understand me fully and he can only understand my desires by fully knowing my entire past in sex work and porn.
His big idea is that he can only fully understand me in a sexual sense by emulating what I enjoyed in my past, and I acknowledge that this is a trust issue arising because of my betrayal. When I tell him my kinks aren’t a deal breaker for me, that I have lived without them for 12 years and I can live without them for the rest of my life, he doesn’t trust me. He was never like this before, and I never really asked him to be. I admit that I was scared, as a young woman I already carried a lot of shame about my past in sex work, and while my husband accepted me despite it, he never expressed any interest in my past relationships or my background, and I failed to realise that it was not out of disgust but out of respect for me. I internalised what I felt and ended up hiding my kinks from him, and I admit that was entirely my fault. I was too scared he would judge me for them, hate me for them.
And when my sex addiction resurfaced, I kept holding on to these secrets and ended up cheating. But now I don’t like where my husband is headed. I don’t want him to obsessively see the pornography I did like he is now. Knowing I had sex with another person is one thing, but seeing it on screen is gonna be deeply damaging to his self image and our intimacy. I don’t know if he sees that. It doesn’t help that the kinks I engaged in with my affair partner are also a part of those videos. It is all a performance, a show, and he already struggles with feeling less valued and less desired, and I know him obsessing the over the top acting and smiling and moaning is gonna put him in an unrealistic competition, on top of all the issues we are facing today.
So I wanted to post this here for anyone to answer. I can’t be the first person whose partner feels insecurity and unhealthy competition with their sexual past. Have you ever faced a similar situation with your partner, whether or not it involved infidelity, and what helped? I want to center my husband sexually and I want him to see that despite everything from my past and despite my recent short sighted choices I am going to do everything moving forward to stay healthy and loyal to him and that I don’t want him to compete with anyone else I just want us both to enjoy each other. Any tips or perspectives will he appreciated.
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