That lovin' feeling is gone, gone, gone

Yes, I did notice that comment from Virgil.

I'm very familiar with the tendency that people have to place blame for the husband's sex addiction onto the wife. When I first confronted him he had a list of my shortcomings and failures that turned him to porn. This list included that I "trusted him too much" and "made it too easy for him". Ok! Lesson learned.
When my own mother found out about my husband's issue (and, no, I didn't out him, it's a separate tangent to the story) the first thing she asked was whether I'd been "neglecting" him. Ha!

Don't worry, I know it's not my fault. He has been addicted to porn since he was a teenager, before I knew him, although it became much worse with the advent of the smart phone and easily accessible online porn. He has been a habitual masturbator for even longer, he thinks it began when he was about 10.
So, yeah, this is a problem that is his to own.

And, no, I didn't list all of his sins. There is more to the story. There are tangents that are related but which I've omitted for the sake of brevity.

I understand he's only a human, as am I. I am far from the perfect wife. I, however, have not done anything to rip his heart out. I have been a solid, faithful, loyal wife to him...and it was all lies from the very beginning. His betrayal has completely leveled our marriage and it will never be the same. I may be able to love him again with time, but I doubt I will ever feel the same way about him that I did before.

I am not open to counseling right now. We did individual and couple counseling and both just seemed to make things worse, honestly.
Right now I'm "blah", but I still have rage boiling just under the surface. The more I talk about it, the more it threatens to erupt. My strategy has been to suppress it as much as possible and just give it time to fizz out. I know this is not what anyone recommends. I know you're supposed to 'talk through it'. BUT time has helped more than any of the counseling did. For instance, I no longer have the urge to run him over with my car. So, progress. (I'm kidding)

He doesn't think he needs any kind of counseling or help. He says the problem was finished the day I found out, and that it that, end of story. I point out that really nothing has changed except that I'm smarter now. He did read Mike's book The Road to Grace, and I know that helped him immensely in getting some perspective on his problem, but I think he views himself as 'different from those other sex addicts'.
He swears he hasn't even wanted to turn to porn since he quit. He says he hasn't even been tempted. I have to question that. I think it's pretty unlikely that he won't at some point stumble again with the porn. I don't want to be the porn police. I'm not going to snoop in his phone or look at his credit card statements. So if/when he stumbles I probably won't know for another 9 years....

And this is where I'm at in life. Trying to salvage the scraps of a sham marriage, wondering if it's even possible. I'm really tired and depressed and it's hard to get motivated to put a ton a work into fixing a problem that I didn't create. I'm sick of cleaning up his messes!

The icing on the cake is that we had planned on having a fourth child, and we started trying to get pregnant just before I discovered the porn. Like I said, it's been 7 months. We conceived our other three children immediately but we are having trouble conceiving now. It's not because of a lack of sex. I think the stress of everything has done something to my body. In the first few months I lost a ton of weight to the point where I stopped having a menstrual cycle. I have since gotten back to a healthy weight but I went to the OB recently and she recommends that we see a fertility specialist if we really want another baby. I'm not sure that we want to go that route, so now I'm afraid that another baby will never happen. That his porn addiction may have robbed us of the child we wanted is just another jab into my heart.

Thank you Amymine.

I am very familiar with the fertility awareness method. That's how we conceived so quickly with the first three...

I've been charting religiously for the last 8 months and still no success.

Unfortunately because of my age it's really now or never for another child. I'll be 37 in a few months. If I was younger I would just relax and wait a couple of years.

I have been determined not to let this interfere with our family planning but I think it has nonetheless. It makes me very sad. I never thought things would end up this way.

I did not conceive for the 3 years of so-called- recovery on the part of my husband. (so-called because he only pretended recovery)
Well, i did, but had two early miscarriages. I charted, we did it at all the right times, and my biological clock ticked away.

I have no doubt the wages of sin are death and there was no way a child was going to be brought into the web of lies that my husband kept me in, while he kept up his demonically driven activity in secret.

he was the best liar. Brought me flowers, paid more attention to the family.....gave his testimony about how God had delivered him from porn addiction..

except the last part of that was not actually true....

There is a book "Dont Call It Love which details stages in an porn users journey. The development stage begins usually when the wife finds out. Its all outed, and he realises he has a problem and starts recovery efforts. Or else he 'doesnt need to do recovery' because he is 'not addicted'. The wife thinks it's all finally going to be over! The husband does make a lot of changes, He becomes a much nicer person. Only, unfortunately, the behaviour continues, only in more secret, because he is too ashamed to admit he cant stop.

We call it false recovery. An addict will stay in development stage for an average of 2 years until he reaches CRISIS/DECISION usually because he has been arrested/ wife hands him divorce papers/ loses his job eg severe consequence. Then and only then, does real recovery start.

I would urge you not to waste time and to get a polygraph to verify his recovery. It sounds extreme but i would not wish on my worst enemy the years of false recoveries i have had, the amount of time I have had to start again with trust shattered. Why wait 9 years to find out its all been fake? Or are you settling for accepting this is likely going to be part of your future with him? If so, no wonder you cant generate any loving feelings.....

When I finally separated from my husband it kicked him into the crisis point and porn lost its appeal in an instant. We did not resume intimacy for 6 months and i fell pregnant after just one incident. I was 40. My baby is now 12 weeks. I believe that the porn activity going was absolutely directly linked to conceiving. It may be whacky to say that but nothing will convince me otherwise.

I hope I am not being out of turn to doubt your husbands recovery. You finding out could have been enough to bring him to crisis/decision, for all i know.

PS totally out of turn for anyone to indicate you should consider your own sins. This particualar crisis has arisen by very specific covenant-breaking sins of your husband, which are the subject of this forum. Your sins, whatever they might be, are completely irrelevant to the support/advice/guidance you need in dealing with a husbands porn use.