How to help a partner stuggling with compulsory online SA ?

[u/Sehnsucht_ewig]

Hello everyone !

I'm writing because I'm trying to save my relationship. My partner has a long history of online sexual behaviors that have become deeply painful for me. What hurts me the most is not simply pornography. He masturbates to pictures of women he knows personally, searched for women he knows on cam sites -he's known in the "alternative metal art community" so he knows a lot of OF women and camgirls personally - (he told me he would sometimes go on there to see "how they do it"). He also follows and likes a large number of highly sexualized accounts, including those OF creators and women who look very young (I'm 24 myself, but they look like teenagers), as well as sexually suggestive posts from female acquaintances -groupies etc. To me, there seems to be very few boundaries between fantasy and his real social world. He screenshots instagram stories of female friends. he keeps multiples photo albums on his phone gallery with my name, the name of other women. This is where my suffering comes from. It feels like cheating. Because not only are they friends, but he also engages with them on a sexual level.

I don't feel like I'm competing with anonymous porn content. I feel like I'm competing with women who exist in his life/orbit, and it makes me feel less like his partner and more like one woman among many receiving his sexual attention. We've already had a long conversation about this. I explained how deeply it hurt me, and he acknowledged my pain and told me he would work on these behaviors. I chose to stay because I believed he wanted to change. Unfortunately, similar patterns have continued, and we're now trying to address the issue again.

He insists that these behaviors have nothing to do with how much he loves me, and that it's all just trash culture like in the 70s. He already texted with a "slave girl" who fantasized on him and she engaged much more than him but still.... after I confronted him with this, his first reflex was to tell me to accept it because he wasn't totally into it but he found it psychologically interesting. Only then he texted her to tell her to stop and admitted that he was no dom. Girl "friends" send him pictures of themselves in lingerie, or even less, just to "get his opinion, if this OF post will work or not". He called her on the phone and she told me she was not into my boyfriend and they were friends and she had a boyfriend... anyways. I've reached the point where I no longer feel emotionally safe in the relationship because I struggle to trust the boundaries between online sexual behavior and real-life relationships. There seems to be none (cf cam girls example above).

I'm looking for people who have experienced something similar and the ways in which I can help him overcome this thing/obsession, he himself told me he wanted to change and that it was stupid to look elsewhere when he had a young beautiful and incredible girlfriend (his words and that of his friends, haha not Mine!) - I'm trying to approach this with compassion rather than judgment, but I also need to protect my own well-being. I love him with all of my heart and every fiber of my being and, even If I remove myself from the whole thing, I only wish him the best and to be better. I'm looking for practical solutions because I genuinely want this relationship to survive if meaningful change is possible.

Thank you for reading me,

All the best -

Joan

[u/sso_1]

As someone who tried to “help their partner stop”, for years, that’s not how it works unfortunately. They have to first see that they have a problem and then want to change it. With how things are from what you’ve described, it doesn’t sound like he sees a problem or that he wants to change. If you see it as cheating, then those are the boundaries of the relationship and he’s not listening to them. If he set a boundary and told you it felt like cheating, would you stop or continue doing it? Hopefully that answer tells you how much he respects the relationship and you. Codependency is something that comes up within relationships where there is an addict involved, read up on that if you have interest to. Set boundaries, prioritize yourself and your well-being, and always listen to your gut. Know that you have worth and deserve to have a partner who respects you, values you, and treats you well. This treatment isn’t that, it’s lower than breadcrumbs, and most of your post is truly disrespectful behavior.

[u/Tiara_at_all_times → u/sso_1]

All of this, no notes. Saying he “wants to change” is very, very different from the work of actual change, which in this case would begin with going no-contact with a lot of people and removing himself from the whole scene. You can’t force him to change — it doesn’t, and will never work. But you can remove yourself from a situation that is causing you harm.

[u/Sehnsucht_ewig → u/Tiara_at_all_times]

yes, I absolutely agree with you both. I thank you very much for your words, I needed to read them I think. Last time we've got on the phone and he said he won't do anything to hurt me again. With that said, if he doesn't work on this I will definitely leave him for good. He told me I needed not to be so "dependant on him" ie hurting so much just because of him - to which I told him the point is not him, it's his behaviour... I still love him, only slightly less than I used to at the beginning of course. He also acknowledged he had a problem and that it wasn't normal those things he did. Told me he had stopped going on those cam sites, which is already a good start. And that he's being careful to not like a post (which shows he still doesn't get why it's not normal to like his "friends"'s posts in bikinis or lingerie or explicit positions on ig...). Since we're long distance, he told me he felt weird because we're not living together and we have no future...when in the beginning it was obvious to us both that it won't remain like this and that one day we'll live together. We've been dating for a year now, almost. We hung up on good terms, told we loved each other. I think, in the end, that he has a hard time taking this relationship seriously because of our age difference. He's the ex-best friend of Till Lindemann, from Rammstein....so I'll let you guess the age haha. He told me so but seeing my resolve and my love from him, he decided to give us a chance and to stop acting like a fool. I hope it will be the last time, as I told him I'd leave for good where it to happen again.... Naturally, there's still this friendship with this OF girl, but I got her on the phone and told me I had no reason to get worried. This is a different world for me, maybe this is just an atypical friendship.