Stories as told to me, all names used have been changed to protect the identity of the participants. Do you feel you have an interesting real-life story to tell? Would you like to receive my advice via email? 
| His porn addiction is ruining their relationship |
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Martha has been with her partner, Steve, for sixteen months now. They are both in their twenties in well-paid jobs which, however, may go if the economy gets any worse, and they are both worried about the future. The stress level in their lives has, over the past year, certainly escalated and it has made their lives, at a personal level, harder.
“We have had our share of problems in such a short time,” says Martha, “all couples do but what really causes me to worry is that I am beginning to think that Steve is now addicted to internet porn. After we started living together we experimented watching some porn together and I must admit that in the beginning I found it enjoyable. Then, after a while, I started to feel a little uncomfortable with the frequency of our watching. What had started as a little game to spice up our love lives had suddenly become a necessity in order to initiate any kind of sex at all.” Martha decided they needed to talk about it then and both she and Steve agreed to cut back. “Then the recession happened, I have taken a second job bar-tending in the evenings and sex is something that has had to take a back-seat in our lives as both Steve and I work long hours.” That’s when Martha noticed a change in their love life when they found the time to have sex. “It was hard to say exactly what it was at first but it seemed that Steve was a little detached. Then things started getting a little rougher.” She was not too worried until one day by accident she found a massive BDSM porn collection on Steve’s laptop. “I was looking for some photographs we had downloaded and I came across the directory in his laptop’s hard drive,” she explains, “I watched a few and I was horrified. They were all about forced sex and simulated rape with women bound and gagged and used, sometimes by more than one male.” Martha confronted Steve about this and he admitted that he had a predilection for rough sex and that indulging his fantasies was harmless. “Our lovemaking became less frequent and he started to spend more time up late at night, at his computer. He has a Facebook account and many of his friends are women with really explicit pictures in their profiles. He has also joined groups which are about sex, casual sex and the domination of women.” The thing, this time, is that when Martha tried to talk to him about it Steve refused to admit that there was any problem. He ascribed his extensive use of porn to a natural male sex drive and suggested that the reason they were having so little sex was partly to blame. “Things have changed between us in a way which I do not understand,” admits Martha, “I try very hard to be the perfect woman for him. Most of the time he is great. He is intelligent, charming and has a really nice sense of humour, yet when it comes to sex it seems that he is transformed. If he has spent hours at his computer, alone, late at night, the next day he is quiet, distant but otherwise normal. If he hasn’t he is tense, gets angry really quickly and can blow up at the slightest thing. I wonder if there is something I can do. I know that the increased stress in our lives is partly to blame but I wonder if something I did made things worse. I really love him and want this to work out between us.” 
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