Does Cold Turkey work

[Freddiebear]

I’ve not posted for a while, life sort of got in the way and to be honest I tend to pretend it’s all ok in the hope that one day it will be.  I’m having a tough day. It’s 8 months now since I found out my husband was a PA, I switched off the WiFi and I know there’s been no viewing as I can access everything. We had one session of therapy with a schoolmarm therapist who treat my husband as if he were a naughty schoolboy. My husband has gone cold turkey but assures me he has no cravings and all is well. Is this possible after viewing prolifically fir at where between 5 and 8 years? 

[A_struggling_partner]

Hi Freddiebear, sorry to hear that you’ve been having a tough time.  I can empathise with the tendency to pretend that it’s all ok in the hope that it will be.  I do the same thing sometimes - I just get so tired of the whole thing being my reality and when there’s loads else going on (as has been for me in the last few months) I don’t feel I always have the capacity to keep it in my mind!

Re. your question as to whether it’s possible to go cold turkey and not have cravings, I’m no therapist but it does sound easier than I would imagine it to be stopping after 5-8 years of frequent porn use?

I don’t think it has to mean that your partner is still watching and keeping it from you.  It could also be that he doesn’t want to worry you by telling you if he has been struggling.  But I do think I would be the same as you in questioning the situation.  Would it be worth asking him if the two of you can find some more time to talk?

[Freddiebear]

Thank you so much for your reply. He physically can’t watch as I control everything and we spend 24 hrs together. We are both devastated and he swears he wouldn’t watch even if he could but I will never take the WiFi filters down so it’s not going to be tested. I can’t see how therapy will help, even if he finds out why he was hooked in to it, it won’t wipe our memories.  I take comfort in  fact we love each other intensely and we are moving forward slowly with the bad days becoming further apart. I consider myself lucky that he didn’t do anything other than watch because that would be a different outcome.  Stay safe and thank you for this forum and confidential support, it is invaluable. Xx

[Kaykay]

Hiya. 

I thought my input may help here. My partner has not acted out in over 2 years. But the lies leaked out over the 4 years of our relationship. A therapist at the Laurel Centre told me it takes 3 months for the dopamine to stop so the craving stops. Or something along those lines. I chose not to ask if my now husband struggled when he initially stopped. I've asked so many questions so many times about stuff I didn't need to know, especially at the start and it just hurt me. If he's at the start of his journey, it's likely he still wants to act out. The important thing is that he's not. Sorry, that's howI feel, I don't mean to put my feelings on you. I hope that helps x

[Freddiebear]

Hi Kaykay

its really hard isn’t it? At times I feel overwhelmed that this is my reality and he’s lied so much I have no idea if he ever tells me the truth. Consequently I believe nothing and question everything including compliments he pays me. How can he go from indifference towards me to besotted overnight after I discovered his dirty little secret.? Sometimes I comfort myself by thinking he was only watching movies but - they weren’t movies of  me or anyone who looked like me;  it was done in a cloak and dagger fashion including watching while lying next to me in bed while I slept. I’m having awful panic attacks and I’m so stressed most days. His answers change each time incorporating things I’ve said previously such as reasons it may have happened, whether he ever tried to stop, if he considered the consequences. We go round and round considering therapy but nothing is resolved. It’s always me raising the addiction, looking for solutions and burying my feelings. I can’t see any end to it, I pretend to be happy but I’m not fooling myself. 

[Cowslip]

I thought it might be helpful if I told you my experience of this situation.  I don't have any answers, but I have found some things to be useful.

My partner was a lifelong porn user (we're talking over 50 years fo use here, including more than 40 years while we were together), starting with magazines, and then moving on to videos and then, in the last 15 years or so, to on-line stuff.  I was aware that he was a 'user', but turned a blind eye, as our life together was in all other ways absolutely wonderful, and also because I grew up in the era when it was thought that all men did it.   However, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the whole situation, and also became aware that his porn use was escalating.  Over maybe twenty years, I confronted him half a dozen times, and each time he said he would stop (and I think he believed that he would and that he could).   But he was essentially trying to go cold turkey each time.

Five years ago we had a major bust up over it, and I threatened to leave him.  He did a bit of research and read the on-line material available on this site.  This time he was clean for three years, and then fell off the wagon again.  

I don't need to describe how I felt - everyone on here knows how completely devastating and overwhelming the feeling of betrayal and hurt is.  But this time I insisted that he and/or we got some outside help.  The first step was getting himn to admit to himself that he was an addict.  He did one of Paula's one day courses, which he found incredibly helpful.  More helpful for me was that we found a couples counsellor who followed the same approach as Paula.  We used Paula's books as a basis for understanding the issues that we were facing.

This was really a game changer for me.  We didn't focus on why my partner had become so fixated on pornography, but focussed on how we could deal with the situation we found ourselves in.  There was a lot of discussion about what triggered him to look at porn, and how he could deal with those triggers, so that he had a toolbox of strategies to use whenever he felt tempted. We discovered that he used porn to help with feelings of anger, stress, and sadness, which was not something he had ever really understood, and which I had no idea about.  We did a lot of work on communication and on trust (although trust is still an ongoing problem for me!).  I liked the fact that we were able to develop practical solutions that were based on how we lived our lives and how our relationship worked.  I felt supported by the counsellor and was able to say things in our sessions that I would never have been able to say at home.  

It hasn't wiped away the hurt and the pain, but it has helped me understand the situation, and the pressures my partner was under that made it easy for him to become addicted.

Perhaps the most useful thing the counsellor told us was not to think of this addiction as something to be cured, but as something to be managed.  The addiction will always be there, so the challenge is to make sure that the addict does not act on it.  Two years on from his last relapse, we still revisit what we learnt.  My partner says he feels more confident that he can avoid viewing porn again.  I still struggle quite often, but now we are able to talk about how I feel and what my worries are, and I feel my partner understands my position much better.  Most importantly, if he relapses again, we know how to deal with it and what to do, so I am able to feel much more confident about the future.

I'm not sure if any of this will be helpful for you, but I do hope you find a way through this.  I wish I had been braver early on in our relationship and confronted this awful thing, but I had no idea the occasional magazine would lead to such an overwhelming addiction.  

[Kaykay]

Freddie bear

 

You're exactly where I was. Questioning everything. Me bringing it up, trying to fix it. Thinking about the women he was looking at etc it's an absolute mind fuck. As for the answers he's giving you I've been there too. My husbsnd said he would just give me any answer to make it better and make me feel better, because he didn't know the answers half the time. That's where therapy would really help him. 

 

Even now I periodically check his phone to see if he's back at it. Once an addict, always an addict. And 3 weeks ago I found more stuff from the past. It seems like it will never go away. 

 

Id suggest you get therapy with someone through the Laurel Centre in your own, regardless. You will feel understand, validated and able to see things more clearly. Then you can make a decision as to how you move forward with or without your partner. I hope that helps.