Long story short: 40 years old... earlier this year my wife had a 6 month long affair with a younger man (well 4 years younger). I am short 5'7 and overweight 210 lbs, had a terrible porn habit and could only maintain an erection and have an orgasm if my wife acted like a porn star. I forced her to have anal sex and called her names... it got pretty ugly. She finally had enough and decided to have this affair... The guy was much taller (like 6'4) did not watch porn and obviously did not have an ED or porn habit. She finally decided to leave him and try to reconcile with me however she is concerned about our sex life - she wants me to stop watching porn and masturbating and to start exercising more to increase testosterone. In intervening 6 months I have lost 42 lbs (now 168), began exercising, stopped watching porn and masturbating (for about 1 week now). I have noticed a lot more stimulation in my penis during the day, something I have not felt in years (reminds me of how I felt in junior high trying to hide my chubby in class!). Now that I have lost weight I have noticed that my ejaculations (up until my decision after reconciliation to abstain from masturbation) were much more forceful and copious. I am severely circumcised so that did not help with sensitivity, but I wear a "**** sock" (have now for about 2 years) which protects the head of my penis and has removed a lot of the keratinizing of my glans. I had the snip so we have unprotected sex. Question: am I on the right track? How long will it take before the ED clears up if I continue with weight loss/exercise/abstaining from porn and masturbation? My wife wants to start having sex again soon.
Congratulations on the weight-loss. When I was in the throes of the addiction I would PMO, drinking eat all at once. I was planetarian sized. Two comments. 1. Unfortunately I can't answer your timeframe question. I've been here for two years and I think consistently have seen that everybody goes through a different set of faces in a different time frame. Hopefully a lot of others will throw in on this. If your wife knows the whole deal that's a huge plus. I wouldn't start writing on sex. But more fooling around to help with the rewiring. You need to talk about it before hand so if things don't work it doesn't become a big issue but it's seen as just part of the process. And remember it's kind a like watching water boil. If you're constantly watching to start rolling it isn't going to happen. Focus and connecting with your wife rather than having sex. Everything will fall into place. 2. Your wife wants you to give up Porn. Your wife want you to lose weight and work out. Your wife wants to go back to having sex. What do you want?
One more thing. You feel betrayed. Lost my girlfriend last summer in part because of ED. I empathize. Don't forget you betrayed her as well. That's a hard pill for us to swallow. But if we're looking at porn and not loving our women like we're supposed to.... Keep picking yourself up! It all works out with time!
It's tough going reconciling. Learning forgiveness, relearning trust.... Very rocky with a lot of set backs. And we're only two weeks in! It's true that in a way I "cheated" on my wife with porn, but honestly, she kinda got me into the harder stuff early on because her previous husband was into it. But he didn't have ED. I went off the deep end. So here's the progress: still have a flatline, "dead dick" at the moment. Not really interested in sex. Not much libido. Not having wet dreams. When I see good looking women on TV or on the street, I know they are good looking but I don't get horny. Jennifer Love Hewitt on screen and... nothing! Very disturbing. I do notice an increase in sensitivity in my groin. When I move around it's very noticeable. But most importantly, this morning for the the first time in YEARS I had morning wood! Very erect, maybe not 100%, maybe 70% but still it was there. Good sign, eh?
don't do it...she'll probably cheat again and again and again if you forgive her...i'm willing to bet she's cheated before this habit is hard enough to worry about without wondering if someone is going to be unfaithful to you...have some self pride and move on edit: congrats on all of the improvement my friend...you have some wife weight to lose though
A lot of times unfortunately it takes something really horrible in our lives to happen before we really work hard to improve ourselves. I think it's safe to say you've achieved more progress in six months than most guys in this forum. The fact that you've experienced any improvement at all should be inspiration that if you stay disciplined things can only get better not worse.
I think the decision to divorce is really something you have to decide for yourself...there is no set rule. Normally, cheating would absolutely be grounds for a divorce however, as others have pointed out, the porn addiction is cheating in its own way. I'm sure some will call it an addiction (therefore a "sickness") but I'm not sure most of us here would agree with that. We know the history of playing with the fire and letting it get out of control. NOT Dealing with it until we HAD to deal with it. So I think it's a situation where the question is, do I love her enough to work this out? CAN we work this out? You've both fucked up ultimately. You both have grounds for divorce. If you are both able to own your failures and you create a new bond of trust and walk the walk in all those ways that you've mentioned she needs and you need, then there's hope. If both parties don't love each other after crises like these, it's probably not going to work.
Your ED relates to a couple of factors: your health and the severity of your porn addiction. Assuming you are relatively healthy, then it's basically a case of reconditioning your brain to be aroused by physical sensation rather than 2D images. It probably took me nine months to a year to be able to have sex without the slightest doubt of ED. . . but don't go thinking it's a year without sex. After month or so I got a semi, and after another few weeks I was able to attempt penetration by holding the base of my penis tightly to keep the blood in place. (Sorry if I'm being over-sharing guy here.) Things gradually improved, as I spent more time without porn. I remember the day, early on in the process, that I woke up with morning wood. . . I knew my body worked, it was just my brain that was messed up! As for your relationship. . . as I read it, she left you for this 6'4 stud guy, but wants to come back. She misses you. This isn't about sex, or else she'd stay with him. She wants your companionship, but not if you are going to be a zombie on porn. . . don't sweat the ED, in other words. Let her know what you are going through, and what she's taking on, and give her an idea that it will take a number of months to get yourself together. Sex, for a while, will be about intimacy - I know the soul crushing feeling when you just can't get it up. But you can make her happy. But you have to ask yourself if you can forgive her for leaving. If you take her back you can't get mad and call her names and throw it all back in her face. Do you miss the companionship? Do you want to spend time with her? Do you forgive?
betrayed, sorry to hear that man. Firstly, think how hard it must have been for your wife to do that which makes her feel betrayed to herself as a result of cheating? Or, how much she had to put up with you until she finally snapped. Trust me, height has nothing to do with a solid connection between two people. To her your 5'7 is the perfect height and 6'4 is too tall. As regards your question. First understand the fundamentals The reason you have ED, is because you have some mental disconnect from real life. There are two reasons why porn disconnects us from reality. 1.) Conditioning ourselves as a child to think porn is that "forbidden fruit", that licentious pleasure filled escape, the nectar of the gods, etc. 2.) Everything you watch in porn is gone through a significant amount of editing which I call "porn formatting". Seeing the same exact pornstar in real life is WAAAy different than seeing her in the videos, right? Why is that? It is because they use special camera equipment and methods, zooming in, out, lighting etc etc to hide certain realities of sex and mask as much of it with music, setting, set story etc etc. Any good video editor would do that. So, accepting those two facts and PMO'ing to porn over a long period of time disconnects us from being aroused to reality. It makes porn and artificial stimuli the source of our sexual identity. So, when your human sexual urges are triggered, your brain thinks porn not reality. Obviously, now you have ED and other symptoms that you don't see. Truthfully, like us, you have a seriously fucked up mental system. Here is how to change and what exactly is happening when we take action to change. You might say, "well I want to be healed how exactly am I gonna do that? And, more importantly how can I expedite the process?". There is an answer to both and I will give them to you. Like I said above, there are some fucked up mental "kinks"(the knot type not the fetish type) in your head. You have to fish them out. One way is to give up the one constant, the source for all of it and let your brain recover or assimilate without that constant. Here, being porn. Let go of it and all the urges, the kinks will show themselves to you. Abstain, and let go, whatever you do, do not watch porn, masturbate and not do porn fantasy. Well now you might ask "Well if it were that easy, I would have never watched porn anymore, so what gives?". Here is the main reason after being addicted why you don't stop it. You are afraid what will happen if you stop it. Remember, it became a part of who you are. So, when the urges hit, it feels like "I have to do this", "I must do it", "There is no other way". That is the conditioning talking, not the real natural you. So, simply by not fearing the outcome of giving up porn you will be at a position to much more easily give up watching porn. What's next? You will remove that part of you, the conditioning which became a part of your sexual identity. So, now it will feel like you no longer have a sexual identity. Fret not, this is known as the flatline. Remember the part I said you brain will now want to assimilate to who you are and your actions without the constant(here being porn). Well, that's exactly what is happening. So, give it time. Good news for you specifically. You are part of the "older" crowd and therefore, studies have shown your crowd heal much faster. You are married with a wife and studies show you will ehal faster on account of that. For the rest of us, a good 90 days is a good number to hope for. But, for you it may just be 30 days. but, then again that depends on you. Don't fantasize of porn, pornstars and your brain will respond, it will assimilate to your sexual identity without porn. 30-50 days is a very good range. You may have sex but do so sparingly. Focus on intimacy and building sexual tension with your wife, so that you feel more. At first you may not feel much but with doing this more, you will start to feel the tension and love again. Summary Sex is like 70% mental, If we screw that up, we screw up our sex lives. As cliche as it may be, sex is supposed to be meaningful. But, rejecting our baseline natural instincts or misusing them, we really screw things up for us and for our partner. However, there is a silver lining. We are living at the age of neuroscience and we are able to medicate ourselves. You have a strong support team here, you have a plethora of testimonials even from people your age, you have scientific community backing you up, you have a lot at your disposal. Use them. But, furthermore, at the crux of this addiction. We teach ourselves and our brains that we can derive pleasure and be happy, living a fulfilling life without porn, without the need to watch something, but from within, from our own actions using our freewill and volition. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety,the opposite of addiction is independence. Be well.
Could you please tell us, why you didn't divorce her? The rest of questions you answered yourself, imo: 1) Going to the gym is a great idea, 2) Giving up porn is the only way to have sex-life ever again, 3) Divorce her asap and find someone worth your time.
wonder how betrayed 1000 made out.. surprised that folks didn't see that his wife came clean and wanted to be with him! that means a lot.. he was getting in shape and doing everything right. i would have suggested a massive rekindling. flirting making the wife feel wanted. getting in shape, dieting for health and pride and - hell even to impress the wife - a bit like when couples meet and they try to show their A gamew and put their best foot forward - not saying to buy into vanity but just to treat the marriage like a courtship. take a PDE-5 , fuck each other like bunnies show her that she's attractive - people / woman love that. if their is an ED performance issue eat her pussy rub oil on your cock until it's hard and fuck her... it'll get things going.... ED is complicated, there are a lot of factors, but success brings more success. that's what i'd try/suggest.
