My partner and I have been dating for 5 years, but I recently found out he told a lie about the content of a racy social media channel he follows and donates to, and also about his porn usage. I emphasized that honesty was very important in the beginning of our relationship, and now I don't know where to go next, and how big of a deal this is in relationships.
My partner (M, 40s) and I have been together for around 5 years. In the early days of dating, I emphasized to him that honesty is very important to me, and we also talked about various viewpoints and boundaries. One of the topics that came up was around porn usage. I tried to approach it from a flexible and positive stance (learned from previous relationships about communicating in a more open way around sensitive topics, and tried extra hard to apply that here), that I understood most people watch porn and there's varying views around it, that my personal preference/boundaries was to not have porn usage in a relationship, and wanted to know what his views were. He had watched porn quite a lot throughout his life, but he said it was fine with him and agreed/promised he would no longer watch it. I said if something ever comes up in the future and he feels like it's an issue, to please tell me and we can talk about it and maybe we can adjust instead of hiding it etc.
Things were mostly fine for a few years but recently there was an incident where I realized he had lied/omitted the truth. There's this social media channel he's always followed. They're borderline explicit, but mostly a comedy channel. Though their content is mostly sexual humor (since their popularity with their users and income is mostly from the sexual stuff around the female cast), just borderline enough to not get banned. It bothered me a bit in the beginning but my partner said he just watches it because it's funny, so I didn't mind too much. Recently, I randomly read up that one of the social media channels I watch was talking about how much money they make (surprisingly a lot), so I was curious about other channels and just googled the ones I knew about (a few of mine and a few of his). In one of the reddit threads about how much the comedy channel makes, there were a ton of comments that were just dudes asking for more explicit content from the female cast, saying they would pay even more for it etc. (the main discussion was also someone curious how much the channel makes, and then went into how the sexual content boosts their earnings). I remembered my partner said he is a tiered subscriber and actually pays money each month, but he had said it was just that he wanted to support creators that he likes. I felt a little uneasy about the reddit comments, so I asked him if there was any inappropriate content for paid subscribers (since the thread mentioned paid ones get special access to certain videos). He said no it's just bloopers and funny things like that and brushed it off. But the way he said it sounded weird. So I ended up looking up online (pretty easy to find) what the special videos were, and turns out it was actually more explicit stuff like the women play games and strip down to their underwear, or things related to sex toys etc. I confronted him, and he admitted he did lie. We had a big argument and I told him if he was lying about anything else it would eventually come out, and whether he had been watching porn. He then finally admitted that yes he had also been watching porn (but he said only a few times a year for stress relief).
Afterwards, he did seem very remorseful, and tried to proactively repair things, but I'm finding it hard to see him and the relationship the same way again. He did say he has issues with communication and talking about things, which I can see from the times I met his family - they pretty much don't even ask or communicate about normal things like "so how many times do you want to come for dinner when you're visiting our city" etc and everyone just makes weird assumptions and then gets resentful. He always had a lot of trouble talking about sex and more recently mentioned there was some shame around masturbation etc growing up. The next day he proactively said he had unsubscribed from the channel and wouldn't watch it again, and since we had talked about therapy before he said he wanted to try getting therapy to find out why he lied and how to work on fixing that.
Though the porn itself wouldn't normally bother me that much and is more a secondary concern (if at all by itself), there's another factor that is relevant in that we haven't had PIV sex in the whole 5 years we've been dating. We've done other things, but without getting into detail (mechanical), we've never been able to have PIV sex. I tried for 3+ years to get things going, and tried to be as positive as I could - I found a funny sex documentary on Netflix that I thought we could watch together, bought a sex book that I thought we could read together, tried to talk about it with him but trying to make it fun and positive experience (and not too often either since I didn't want to overwhelm him, only bring it up once every few months in the beginning and then started to gradually give up). But he never really talked about it back, and it felt like trying to talk to a wall. There's a part of me that thinks, this can't be normal even with maybe an innocent explanation like performance anxiety etc., but after 5 years I guess I feel quite tired from trying and also this porn usage just felt like salt in the wound.
On top of that, the primary thing I am having trouble dealing with is the lying part. The trust is just broken, and now there's always the thought that if he's ok with lying about smaller things, what big things will he lie about. Especially if it feels like the pattern is that if there's something he wants to conflicts with something I want, he'll lie so he can continue to do what he wants. Or he'll lie so I'll stay in a relationship with him or avoid conflict, even when he knows it violates my boundaries/breaks a promise, etc. And my mind starts to think about what other things might've been going on, like a female coworker that he's super close with but says nothing is going on, etc. It's not the specific thing or incident, just that the trust is no longer there. And I don't know if I'm overreacting, is it normal for partners to lie about porn and racy videos? Is this something we just work through or is it a dealbreaker? Can the trust be fully repaired or is the damage too much?
Aside from all this, he has many good qualities. He can be very sweet, we have a stable little life together, and when we have the rare conflict (outside of this incident), he shows that he cares and tries to make things right. A previous ex would just gaslight me whenever I tried to talk about anything, so I had thought this was a healthier relationship. If it's something good, I don't want to throw it away over something small or common. But at the same time, maybe lies like this are reasonable dealbreakers. I just don't know anymore and I've been second guessing myself. I thought I could get over it since he was going to therapy, but I've been having trouble trusting and now whenever something slightly threatening comes up (like female coworker, or racy YouTube feed recommendation etc), my mind starts to wonder. |
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