Dating a porn addict

This is a topic I've wanted to write about for a while because I've had quite a bit of experience with it. Well, maybe not compared to some of the stories I've read about women who have married men who are addicted to pornography and have had to deal with it for years and years. But I've dated two guys with porn addictions and have heard experiences from other men who had once suffered from the same problem, and I do think that's probably more than the average person.

So yeah, I dated two different men, both living in Utah, who were addicted to porn. One was LDS, but the other was strongly Greek Orthodox. They were both in their early 20s and hadn't had very much experience with relationships. In fact, I'd say that their strongest female relationship throughout their lives was with their mothers.

I'm not an expert on pornography addictions. I've done some research,  but I mainly just have my experiences to go off of. I don't know if having an unusually strong relationship with your mother is a symptom or product of a pornography addiction, but I do know that in these specific examples of the two guys I dated, it was a strong factor in the unhealthy relationships they had with women. I do also know that the rates for pornography addictions are higher in Utah, and that religious beliefs about sexuality can definitely be a big determinant in that.

If you are beginning a relationship with someone who has problems with pornography, my advice to you is to just stop. They are great people, I'm sure, but you do not want to have to deal with that problem if you don't have to. If you don't believe me, just go to any support discussion board and read the stories of these wives who have had their hearts broken so many times.

Here are a few things I've noticed about men with pornography addictions:

1. They usually have another problem that they are treating with pornography. For example, one guy I dated suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts, while the other had severe anxiety. I didn't stick with these guys long enough to know if treating those other problems helped with their pornography addictions.
2. They felt that they were victims. To some degree, I agree with this and sympathize. I've heard stories where a man's first exposure to pornography starts with something tame, like Victoria's Secret ads, or with someone else giving them the porn and not with them seeking it out. It makes sense, with internet ads and pop-ups frequently being very pornographic in nature. But no matter how the addiction starts, it seems to me that the addict could never get out of the "victim" phase. When my exes confided in me that they had pornography addictions, it was usually accompanied with tears and feelings of anguish and regret. They genuinely wished that they did not have an addiction. However, that was as far as they were willing to go. They would ask for my help, and I would waste no time going to the internet and trying to find out how to help them. I found software programs that would report all of their internet activity to them or a sponsor. I found group therapies for this specific addiction (not hard to find in Utah). I found internet chat boards. I bought them journals. I encouraged them to go to therapists and religious leaders. I encouraged them to put their computers in a more public place in the house. But they responded by doing very little. That is their own choice and fine. No one should ever push an addict to recover if they don't want to. But if they act like they want to change, but then employ very few methods or put forth only a little effort, then back out. At some point, they need to move past the victim phase. But they aren't going to do it because of you. It is my belief that, deep down, these addicts did not want to give recovery everything they had, and I think it was because they were afraid of failing and feeling like they really were bad people. Either way, just don't deal with it.
3. They do not have good relationships with women. They have very few female friends. They have been in very few romantic relationships. Some have unhealthily close relationships with their mothers that keep them from forming romantic relationships with women who are not related to them. Neither of the addicts I dated were very into commitment, which I believe is partly due to the places they were in their lives and partly due to their addiction. Both of the addicts I dated eventually went to therapists and talked about me. Though both of them were unwilling to give me up completely even after we broke up, both of them would report back to me that they talked about me in their therapy sessions and discovered that I was often the one to blame. Both of their therapists diagnosed me with borderline personality disorder without ever having met me. So as much as a porn addict may need you and love you, they also will turn on you and use you as a scapegoat if it means lifting some of the blame off of themselves. 
4. Neither of them actually wanted to have sex with me, surprisingly enough. They were both willing to fool around with me and had many sexual desires, but that was as far as it would go. I do not think this is because they already had an outlet and, therefore, didn't "need" me. I think it has more to do with their religious beliefs and with their inability to make that emotional connection.
5. Many porn addicts I have met have confided in me that they have committed some deviant behavior. One admitted to me that he had hired a prostitute. One admitted to me that he had molested a girl in her sleep when they were both young teenagers. One admitted to me that he had previously been in a dominant-submissive relationship, also when they were teenagers (which, regardless of whether or not you are okay with that type of relationship, is way too young to start trying that sort of thing out). They were all secretive about the types of porn that they looked at, but I did hear from them the different types of fetishes that they had watched. I have always believed in the saying "to each his/her own" and so I do not judge those with very specific and unusual sexual preferences. However, it is my understanding that pornography addictions become a problem of constant escalation, of constantly needing newer and more exotic material until the addict becomes unable to have a healthy sexual relationship with a real person. So while having one unusual fetish may be healthy (I really don't know), I do know that an addict getting off on lots of different fetishes is unhealthy. This article from an actual porn addict is very helpful in understanding what I'm saying here: http://www.salon.com/2013/01/13/did_porn_warp_me_forever/.

I think that'll be the end of my thoughts. 

I want to wrap this up by apologizing if I've offended anyone. I do not mean to say that porn addicts are pariahs that we should shun, or that they are bad people. All I want to do is advise women to not date people with this particular problem until they learn how to recover from it. I am clearly not an expert, nor do I believe that every observation I've recorded here must necessarily apply to all persons with a porn addiction.