Hello All,

I was the betrayer in my marriage, and I had to disclose to my wife because I was found out by the husband of my affair partner.

When we went through with a full disclosure, I had admitted to having several affairs and partners, and the timeline extended from while we were still dating, about 20 years ago. I don’t why I’m still favored enough to be at home with my wife and kids, but I’m more than grateful.

It has been a very difficult transition. Realizing that I’m an addict, having to face past trauma I buried deep in my soul, realizing how narcissistic I was, how emotionally unavailable and unstable I was…. There’s so many wounds I had opened while I had to learn how to be empathetic to someone I hurt incredibly.

I’m not going to be able to open my whole story in this post, and I’m not sure I will. But I will say I’ve done a LOT of work on myself. However, I’m still far from the man I’m striving to be.

Some of my character flaws are still evident, and seemed to have been exacerbated since I no longer use my addiction to soothe my pain. Anger, anxiety, eating poorly… and I still desire to watch porn. That has been incredibly hard for me to fight.

In a recovery group I was in this past week, I heard the leader quote someone in saying:

“Freedom IS NOT doing what you want to do.

Freedom IS not having to do what you don’t want to do.”

The fact that porn still clouds my mind is frustrating, and may be affecting any attempts at being sexually intimate with my wife.

I’m grateful for my pursuit of recovery. I’m grateful I have no desire to other women outside of my wife. I just wish I could stop desiring to watch porn.

This is my first post in this group. Thank you for reading. God Bless all my people working on themselves and fighting the good fight.