"I Left My Husband Because He Had Porn Brain"
A mom just like us — comparing prices at the grocery store, cheering at the baseball field three times a week, running PTA meetings — shares her sex story, no matter how “boring” or “shocking” it may be.
This story is an “as told to” and anonymous. The mom in this story is a mother of four, in her 40s, living in the Midwest.
The first time I knew my husband and I weren't going to work out was after the birth of our second child. I convinced myself it was just new mom hormones and that I was having trouble with the switch from a career I loved to being a SAHM of two young kids. All four of our kids were born within 18 months of each other, so every time I felt certain I couldn't spend another moment with my husband, I'd convince myself it was just me being hormonal or weird or angry and that things would get better as our kids grew.
Our kids did grow. Things didn't get better.
My husband had "porn brain," and it was something we talked about in counseling for literal years. That moment after the birth of our second child that told me this marriage wasn't going to last? It was because I was standing in the kitchen, unshowered, my 5-week-old baby in the bouncy seat at my feet as I washed dishes, and my toddler rolling cars up and down the back of my legs, when my husband hinted that he wanted to have sex. I don't even think I responded. I was so grossed out and overstimulated — I hadn't even received the all-clear from my doctor yet.
He said it again. And when I told him to look around and read the room, he told me that sex was the ultimate way to de-stress and that he had heard "postpartum hormones make you hornier" and that "most women want even more sex right after they've had a baby." I asked him where he heard that, and he said he read it on the internet.
That night, I looked at his phone and saw that he had watched an hour-long porn titled "Horny MILF Can't Get Enough."
That was just the start. My husband was addicted to porn, and it completely ruined our sex life. He would get frustrated if I didn't want to perform some sex act he was so sure I'd "love" or if I wasn't as "into it" as he wanted me to be. Sometimes I could pretend just to get it over with, but so many of the things he wanted to do were completely gross to me; I just didn't want them to happen.
I would even ask him to let me choose a porn for us to watch together, but he never wanted to watch the ones I liked. He wanted to watch the ones I thought of as extreme, full of fantasies and sex acts I just couldn't get behind. One of them was literally a woman with, like, four men... and it was all of them just ejaculating on her.
We talked about it in couples counseling a lot. He even went to counseling on his own in an attempt to help his addiction, but it didn't work. Eventually, we were both resentful of each other, and I was craving intimacy. Even a peck on the lips as we went to sleep would end in a fight as he'd start grabbing me, wanting sex when I didn't. The few times we'd try to have sex with me initiating, hoping I could control it a bit more, would end with both of us upset — me because he would try and coerce me into doing something I didn't want to do, and him because he couldn't understand why I wasn't into any of his ideas.
His porn brain ruined sex for me for years. We ended up divorcing when our youngest was 6. It has been hard starting all over, but I'm so glad I did. His addiction gave me a really bad view of porn in general, and I'm working with a therapist to help me feel more comfortable and safe in intimate situations. My ex never assaulted me or forced me to do anything, but coercing me and pouting and begging for me to let him do something he saw in porn? That was traumatic, too.
And I deserve to have intimacy in my life that I actually enjoy.
