Looking Back: Part 3 - The Connects I feel I Could/Should Have Made

This post is going to go a little more into detail about the signs and the begging, and how I felt I probably could have made the connections to porn addiction before the week this blog started. I'm going to reference some of the points I made under each video from the post: Learning About Porn Addiction. When I watched each of these videos, there were instances in which I had "aha"  moments. After the fact, all of these "aha moments" really seem like some obvious signs, and I feel like I either could have or should have made these connections much sooner than eight years down the line.

First things first. Shortly after we first moved in together the rate in which we would have sex dropped. Drastically. I know I'm repeating myself here, but it's just so significant. We were young, not even twenty-one, and our relationship was like that of an old married couple-with grand kids! We would have sex maybe once a week. At first we joked that it was because we were such old souls or something, but eventually it started to bother me. When I would bring it up, he came to the conclusion that we just had different sex drives and that mine was much higher than his.

Not just sex. After a little over a year of living together I began to notice (and complain) that he didn't kiss me the same way anymore. This is reference in Looking Back: Part 1.1. He wouldn't kiss me with any kind of passion, and he said it was because he felt gross after working with raw chicken all day. That was when he had his college job at a fast food chicken chain. After that his excuse was that he didn't want to kiss me because I smelled and tasted like cigarettes. But even after I eventually quit it was still the same. No passion.

Making excuses: From the beginning there was always an excuse: we're old souls, we have different sex drives... Eventually it started to become: I'm too tired, I'm too stressed. Finally it became, I'm just don't feel like it.

Finding excuses: When I finally said, "I don't believe you just don't have a sex drive if you are watching porn and masturbating." He told me, "I just don't find you sexually attractive." No considering I've always been over weight and it was never a problem when we first started having sex, I simply didn't really buy this. Don't get me wrong, this cut me to the quick and greatly effected my mental state, but I still didn't really believe this was why he didn't want to have sex versus looking at porn. After learning about PIED, I see that this is often the excuse men come up with to explain to themselves why they are unable to preform with a real person.

Not hard enough: There are numerous occasions in which he would give in and go to have sex with me, but simply couldn't get his dick hard. Sometimes he could get it hard, but couldn't keep it hard. I think this should have been a blazing sign that there was something wrong, and it was... sort of. He thought it was stress and went to the doctor's. He gave him anxiety pill after anxiety pill. Nothing worked.

Novelty: I noticed a while ago that if I offered anal sex, he would have no problem getting his dick hard, even if we had just tried several times for vanilla sex. When I first noticed, I didn't care because I was always down to try something new, and anal sex did the job for me too just fine. Eventually it did begin to bother be that I had to resort to that just to have sex with my husband. I had also noticed that if I tried wearing something "sexy", there wasn't a problem getting him going. I just couldn't repeat the sexy clothing too often because the novelty wore off. This is a point repeated over and over again in videos listed in the post: Learning About Porn Addiction. Eventually I began introducing bondage into the bedroom because it different enough to keep his attention. I liked it too, so it was OK. I think I mostly liked it because I was on a constant search for something new to try because he eventually started using, "it's kind of boring as an excuse."

Change in taste: more recently I began to notice a pretty drastic change in taste with what he searched out and watched. It wasn't just the vanilla stuff any more, or even the strange bloopers he seemed to find so interesting. He began looking at a lot more anal sex videos and eventually bondage. I thought the last part might have been him looking more into what he thought I was into. I didn't say as much, but I did inquire, and the thought never even crossed his mind. Eventually I started seeing chicks with dicks, and that shit just completely disgusted me, and drove me into a deep depression.

It's a need: I had asked, begged, pleaded, you name it for him to stop watching porn. Several times he agreed, but then he went right back again. He just get better and better at hiding it each time. I really feel like, if nothing else was a screaming sign, this should have been. I really don't believe he did these things to hurt me, and I really don't think he simply disregarded my feelings. But yet he continued. I feel like I should have seen that he felt this was a need, even if he couldn't admit it, and asked him about it.

Other things:

• He started watching porn at a very young age. He even told me stories of when he would go on masturbating binges just because he could. For example; he told me he experimented to see how many times he could ejaculate in one day. 
• Refractory period: this wasn't something that was right off the bat, and I didn't really notice it until pretty recently. But, even in the event "he seemed in the mood" or he would come quickly and feel bad and want to go again, he couldn't. He couldn't get his dick hard after ejaculating for hours. 
• Numb. Sometimes I would try to get him in the mood, and going down on him was usually a sure fire way to get him going. Sometimes though, when I would try nothing happened. This also happened while having sex some times. Even if his dick got hard, it didn't do anything for him. He would tell me he couldn't really feel anything. 
• Overall intimacy. I sort of touched on this when I talked about him not kissing me with passion, but it extends to much more than just that. I'd only started noticing this recently and I think it was one of the biggest driving forces for me. He simply wasn't intimate with me at all. He wouldn't just hold me for the sake of holding me, or touch me for the sake of touching me. The times he would, was only when we were laying down at night, and I honestly think that was more subconscious and out of habit than anything. 
• Willpower erosion: this is from that Gary Wilson TedX video, and touches upon that I said about it being a need. I don't think he had the "this is a bad idea" switch anymore. 
• No will to do other things. He often would complain about not being productive, yet he would waste hour upon hour on the internet. He would also not sleep that well, so he would get up and use the computer. Turns out, he would often go to porn in those times.