Husband is a sex addict....questions about his recovery.

Welcome to the forums. I will direct some of the men to this post since they can better answer your questions from a male point of view. I encourage you to post in any of the forums. I will be praying for you and your husband.

Hi Michele, I also am addicted to sexual sin. I started as a young boy about 10, heavily involved in my teens but not so much when I got married at 19. During the first 20 years of marriage I occasionally watched porn and had several affairs. I became a Christian at 40 and was sober from sexual sin for 18 years. Looking back it seemed much more under control before I was a Christian then it has since I relapsed 3 years ago.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but your husband's behavior seems a little bizarre. My gut instinct says he is still heavily using in some shape or form. I talk a lot when I feel guilty and am hiding something. He has negative thoughts about your appearance because he needs new excitement to get aroused. Porn takes over from normal sexual relations with your wife and Erectile Dysfunction can become a problem during sex with the spouse. I believe his nervous need to talk all about it again comes from acting like he is clean when he is not. His response after sex is because his heart is hardened to intimacy not only with you but with God and people. He is running on dopamine when he has sex not intimacy and love. When it's over he goes into a bit of depression then within a day or 2 will be craving sex again for that dopamine fix.

I am sorry if this seems like all bad news but it's not if your hubby is really ready to do business. He needs a complete reset from all sexual sin and maybe even marital sex for awhile. If he is over 50 marital sex doesn't seem to affect the reset process like it does for younger men. I would suggest you find a good SA counselor (Christian if possible) to deal with unprocessed pain and shame. He needs filters on all his devices and must avoid as many triggers as possible. Again this will only work if he has hit bottom and cries out to God for help. Look around the forum for some of the videos about porn addiction such as the Great Porn Experiment on Ted Talks on YouTube. May the Lord give you strength as you support your husband in this.

Michelle try posting about boundary help in the wives section. I would tell you to pray about it. You know your husband and you know what you can and can't handle. Start there. You will find that your boundary list will change depending on your relationship.

Hi everyone.  Hi Michelle.  Welcome.

First off, Let me address some of these questions.

He has stopped all masterbation and stimulation that goes along with it but he is experiencing anxiety when we go places in fear of seeing any and all women,is this normal?

Yes.  But as an addict matures in his thinking, his spiritual life, and his boundaries, the obsession with temptation avoidance reduces.

He is having negative thoughts about me and how I look and dwelling on them,normal?

Yes.

He is so consumed with his old behavior and what he did wrong that he wants to talk to me and everyone else constantly about it over and over with details about these events,which I have asked him to stop...normal?

Yes.  Secrecy fuels the addiction.  So it's not unusual for an addict to pursue recovery by telling everyone and everything.  This, unfortunately, is not always appropriate.  I did it myself to give my recovery a boost.  But I don't think it was an effective strategy.  Not everyone can be trusted.

Please note that these are just my opinions.

Some other thoughts:

Accountability groups can be hard to establish.  For me, I was never able to establish that perfect set of 5 guys that would check up on me regularly and always be available and always have the right answers.  For me, I had to modify this broken tool to something that worked better for me.  I'm more careful of who I share my addiction with.  And I don't have a lot of expectation in these men that I know.  I would have to say that I have at least a dozen phone buddies between friends at BG, church, and friends that I talk to and pray with.  And they know about my PA and my involvement with BG.  And guess who knows more about PA and recovering from it.  That would be myself.  So instead of trying to draw strength from my phone buddies, who I consider to be the best accountability group that I've ever had, I look to them as instruments of the Lord to help draw me out of my social anorexia, to practice communal prayer, and to build friendships.  Checking in with people on how my recovery from PA is going is not the priority.  Besides, after an extended time of sobriety, avoiding P by itself gets to be a little boring.  And accountability partners or phone buddies simply don't have all the magic answers or formulas that some PA could possibly desire for enlightenment.  This is just a thought to help reset any loftly expectations.

As far as the Conquer series, I might value a church offered course to help jumpstart a new direction, but it's not a permanent, longlasting plan for recovery in my experience.  I need much, much more.  I may not have all the answers, but I have a purposeful plan of daily action in my life.  For me, it involves having good boundaries in place, and it involves practicing daily specific behaviors in my life to develop my relationship with God, others, and my wife and family.  Blessings to both of you.  I hope and pray that you'll both find your way through this.  If you do, you'll share an intimacy that 9 out of 10 couples do not experience.

Have things gotten any better for you two?