"He used me like a blow-up doll." The moment my husband chose porn over me.

Content warning: This story includes descriptions of abuse that may be distressing to some readers.

I was with my partner for a little over 10 years, and married for seven with two daughters, before separating due to his treatment of me.

The man I once knew, who deeply cared for me and invested in our intimacy and the emotional well-being of our relationship, faded away and another man took his place. One who lied, cheated, was hostile, broke promises, and drove erratically. He became a narcissist who neglected his wife and children and controlled his wife with money.

I’d found porn videos in the house when I first moved in.

He said they belonged to his roommates, and he’d throw them out. A few weeks later, I found him watching them. “It was just a pop-up ad,” he said. We had a big fight – I said it felt like he was cheating on me. He didn’t realise I would “feel so strongly about it” and promised to never do it again. 

I didn’t notice any more porn-watching for years – not until after our first baby was born.

Watch: What are people searching for on porn sites? Post continues after video. 

The problems emerged after our daughter was born. He was very jealous of the attention I gave her. It was like he resented his own baby. He withdrew and regressed in maturity, just when we both entered parenthood – a time requiring emotional growth.

I could no longer give him the attention and admiration I once did. So he sought a sense of power and domination elsewhere – at work, with other women and by watching porn.

He worked late and stayed up late from then on. I now know that was so he could watch porn. He ignored our daughter when she cried; there was no bond until she was older and he could start getting love, attention and admiration from her.

I see now how he withdrew his love from me and discarded me. He felt betrayed that I dared love another human, our daughter, even though she was the beautiful child we made together. With his narcissism he couldn’t comprehend that I had the capacity to love our daughter and him as well, and that the needy newborn phase was just temporary and my ability to give more to him would return.

I’d go to bed early to be able to handle the demands of being a new mother. He stayed up late watching porn. Towards the end of our marriage, he got sloppy in hiding it. I’d wake to him watching it beside me on his phone. Or he’d fall asleep and his device would still be playing and I’d wake and see it.

I didn’t enjoy our sex life – it was no longer loving. It had become distant, aggressive and scary. He only wanted to play out fantasies on me and ended up using me like a blow-up doll while verbalising what he’d like to do with someone else. I had to endure hearing this while he had sex with me.

He was consuming violent porn, domination-type porn, and rape porn. I know he fantasised about rape, and I later warned his therapist about the threat he possibly posed, because I feared his potential to rape women.

I’d wake to him trying to insert his fingers or penis inside me.

He began getting rougher, which I told him I didn’t like. One time he shoved my face into the pillow and began – I don’t like to use the word ‘strangling’ because that sounds worse than what it was – but he definitely squeezed my neck from behind. The combination of him squeezing my neck and bearing all his 90kg worth of body weight on my 50kg body, and keeping my face firmly shoved in the pillow, made it almost impossible to breathe.

I froze in terror, fearing I was going to die, but I couldn’t speak. I just froze. It was like I had left my body. I couldn’t move. I just lay there limp, hoping it would stop. 

Finally it did, and I took a deep gasp for air. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the desperation I felt to breathe. I confronted him to see if he had seen what he just did to me in porn. He denied it.

I’d come to see our marriage like a business partnership. We were in an unspoken arrangement to raise our kids and meet our financial goals. So I turned a blind eye to the occasional porn watching because that is all I thought it was. I had no idea what a mammoth monster habit it had become, and the dark path it would lead me and my daughters down. I discovered he had to watch porn daily and even had to leave his worksites to go to public toilets just to watch porn and masturbate. He dated other women, got naked lap dances at strip clubs, and received ‘happy endings’ at massage parlours.

After D-Day when I found messages between him and another woman, I kicked him out. He confessed he had a problem; he confessed he was a porn and sex addict.

It took him losing his family and living with his parents for almost a year before he did anything to stop watching porn by joining Sex Addicts (SA). He couldn’t sleep because, when he closed his eyes, the porn replayed in his mind. He will never be free from his compulsive behaviour because he has watched thousands of porn videos and they are all in his memory.

He didn’t stay in the SA group. He then tried Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. It made him feel less perverted that he was addicted to ‘love’ rather than ‘sex’. But it wasn’t love he was addicted to; it was porn. He sought any fantasy that made him feel desired and powerful, all fuelling his narcissism. He didn’t stick with the new group either.

As for me, I found myself in a weird place: in a 12-step support program for partners of sex addicts called S-Anon. I also found a certified Sex Addictions Therapist who works with partners.

Every woman I’ve met who is married to a porn and/or sex addict is in a relationship with an abuser. Some just take longer to wake up to it. And you have to fight for your life trying to recover from it.

I was unknowingly in an abusive relationship. When I realised that, I was swiftly out. 

I did not want to 'save' my marriage. I felt sick to my stomach that he had been living a double life. I never gave him a second chance to come back and have my two beautiful baby girls grow up thinking that’s how a man treats his wife.

My girls and I deserve better.

Florence, 37, lives in Brisbane, Queensland, with her two daughters. She works as a child counsellor and enjoys going to the local markets for fresh produce, wining and dining with her friends, having mummy-daughter dates, meditating, journaling, dancing, listening to audiobooks and podcasts, hiking and lazing on the beach.

Published with kind permission from Spinifex Press from “He Chose Me Over Porn”: Women Harmed by Men Who Use Porn, edited by Melinda Tankard Reist.  

If this has raised any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. 

Feature Image: Getty.