Is it just coincidence?

[Kimba]

Hi all, for the last few years I've had trouble with spam emails, I still get them but nothing like the ones I used to get a lot was penis enlargement and ruskie girls and foreign girls looking for love !! WELL since I have bought his behavior to light and he's quit, I receive none if it, now is it concidence? The thing is I went on a travel site and did not log in or anything was just checking out destinations then about 20 min later I receive an email about the exact country I was looking at, the hotel everything! So now I believe that some of those sites he used to visit tracked our ip and mayb got the email address somehow. He used to blame his ex wife saying she was signing him up etc, mmmmm don't think so ! When the grubby site he used to visit left an icon on our desktop for all to see I said then how dangerous it was to our online presence letting that trash into our lives. So has anyone else had the same experience?

 

[Emerald Blue]

I'm no expert but what I'll share what I do know in response to your observations.

Firstly, IP numbers. You can't obtain anyone's email address from detecting their IP number. You can detect someone's location to their town or city, but not their street address. You can obtain some basic information about the computer or device currently used to access the internet at that particular time ? phone or computer, Mac or Windows, the browser and the like. You can't find out the identity of the person, or age, or their street address or their email address.

There's a myth that people have a fixed IP number, but most home users have a 'dynamic' IP number assigned by their internet provider when they connect to the internet. If you don't disconnect completely from the internet ? that is, switch off the router and/or pull the plug on it as opposed to just shutting down the computer ? your IP number probably won't change, it will just keep renewing. So, if you want to change your IP, unplug from the outside world for a couple of hours or overnight. IP numbers are not like phone numbers. They aren't assigned a particular computer or a particular person. You can pay for a 'static' IP but most home users don't do this, some businesses might.

Tracking cookies are what's responsible for those annoying e-commerce ads that seem to follow you around online. Typically they've come from a site you've been on earlier, and almost always from an online retailer. So, you do a bit of virtual window shopping and then whatever you were looking at shows up later in an ad, on a webpage from some other site. That's tracking cookies in action. The way to stop it is to delete your cookies. You can't really avoid them if you shop online. Some stores are worse than others.

So.... spam email. Yes, I've had emails trying to sell me viagra and all that garbage, Russian brides or whatever. Email programs are so much better at filtering out this stuff automatically so I don't get to see it as much.

Having said all that, blaming the ex partner for suspect emails doesn't seem credible. Many porn and cybersex addicts become pretty adept at covering their tracks to avoid discovery although some may be complacent in the assumption that their wife knows nothing about computers and anything that does look a bit suspect is explained as "it must have been a pop up" or "a virus" or "so-and-so at work sent me a link and I had no idea what it was until I clicked on it". My husband knows he'd never get away with excuses like those.

Yes, there are legitimate reasons why you might get junk email or you get stalked by ads for shopping sites you've previously visited, or travel destinations in your case, but many partners get fobbed off when they do come across something questionable. Remember ? don't be ignorant, knowledge is power.  8)

 

[Kimba]

Thanks EB. 

There is so much they can access if they want to so really it's about commitment integrity and partnership, thing is if he thinks the grass is greener I ain't stopping him we don't have kids together etc but he wants his cake etc and I value myself enough that it's me or the dodgy net.
Xoxo

 

[Emerald Blue]

It's absolutely about integrity. I get that potentially triggering images (triggering to porn addicts, I mean) are everywhere online, in clickbait ads especially but also just from regular shopping sites. It's nigh on impossible to escape sexualised imagery. A few seconds of unintentional exposure to such an image doesn't necessarily mean a recovering porn addict is going to jump right in to the deep end and relapse. I think the relapsing process is far more complex and requires several pre-existing conditions to be in place beforehand. I think it's pretty unusual for relapses to happen out of the blue.

The only preventative strategies we use are to have the default parental controls as provided by the phone/internet company. He knows how to bypass these controls but in order to do so there would have to be a deliberate decision to do so. The key point being 'decision'. HIS decision. The parental controls aren't foolproof though. The way I see it is that he can have online freedom to access whatever he wants with the exception of porn and porn substitutes. The p-subs can't realistically be prevented so that's where trust and integrity comes in. If it turns out he abuses my trust then I'd have to consider stronger content filters and perhaps more accountability. I'm not going to play internet cop though. He's an adult. He is capable of making his own decisions based on what he has learned since quitting porn.

But I also have to say that progress depends on a lot more than either accessing porn or not accessing porn online. The real 'proof' (if you can call it that) is how well a recovering addict is managing his life in other areas too. That's not so straightforward as the self help information implies. In my own situation I've seen a lot of progress in some areas and not much change in others. And of course, progress and 'image management' can be easily confused. Also, some habits and behaviours are so entrenched and are so much part of an addict's modus operandi ? omissions, not being quite straight even about trivial matters, etc ? but aren't indicative of any wrongdoing nor can they be seen as "the start of the slippery slope". It's just that they've operated like that since they were kids, and probably out of necessity.

You're absolutely right about valuing yourself. That's the bottom line. There's some truth in the saying that until you can love/value/respect yourself, nobody else will. My husband didn't respect me when he continued using porn, and I suppose I didn't respect myself enough to believe that I didn't have to accept it. But yes, ultimately they make their choice but so do we, only now it's from a position of knowledge and not ignorance.

 

[Kimba]

Yes totally agree. Its nearly a year for me on this D day and this one is different from the others, I am aware that its not harmless... it has harmed our relationship and our connection, its coming back but at a price, I don't feel as close as before, I feel betrayed still on some level which I push away when I start thinking negatively.  Im absolutely certain that he did not give it all up straight away once he new that I new his little secret. I have found fragments of sites here and there, mainly VPN and storage, the funny thing is like you said, its the process in which they go through to access that stuff now that I know, so its locking doors, turning down sound on the computer, its looking over your shoulder stuff, can't possibly be an enjoyable process...  I believe its a year for me, but its not been a year for him ... I have confronted him a number of times over that year and I would say in the last 4 months I feel he is finally getting it.  Anyway I hope to just be a support on this site and not have to go through the crap I did a year ago. We have a lot riding on him being the Man he can be, we have good friends and a good life, I just hope he thinks we are worth it...otherwise all this has been for nothing...

He will be just another lonely man with his screen and his tissue box ha ha

 

[Emerald Blue]

The first year is the worst, in my experience. Without a doubt. Because it's all coming at you like a landslide of rocks and boulders. I went through the trickle truth experience and most of what I learned I had to find out by searching through every device. I had to question my own beliefs about who I was married to, and questioned what I believed to be true over the years. The lies and deception were pretty hard to take especially as he thought he could lie his way out of any tricky situation and put on his earnest nice guy act. When I asked him a question about something I had evidence for, he could have won an oscar. If I didn't know otherwise I would have fallen for it. So yes, the first year is pretty awful to live through.

I also agree that re establishing a relationship does come at a cost. For a start, we weren't pursuing some dirty little secret and lying our partners. Yet to make the decision to stay requires having to accept it as part of your shared history, as well as something that could recurr again. That's quite a burden. I questioned whether I would have married my husband had I known I was going to be so isolated and lonely, and that I would be replaced by pornography and my feelings ignored. But there I was, in a situation that was actually destroying my self worth, my emotional health and even my identity. I remember seeing my name on a letter, that is my married name which is really his name, and thinking "that isn't me". Nothing summed up the loss of my sense of self than when I looked at that letter. It really isn't easy making the commitment to stay and to recover the relationship with all this additional baggage. It's the realisation that there's no returning to a time of innocence, and that being in a relationship with a recovering porn addict can never be the same as being in a relationship with someone who's never been addicted to porn. That's a huge emotional price to pay for someone else's behaviour that you were deliberately excluded from.

Relationship recovery is an entirely different entity from personal recovery and quitting porn is the least that can be done to put things right. The recovery literature tells us that the best way to 'monitor' your partner is to observe the positive changes they are making in their lives, but that's easier said than done especially with someone who is capable of making good progress in life even with a porn addiction running in the background. If my partner falls into a bit of a depressed mood for a few days it doesn't mean he is relapsing or about to. So it's not straightforward, is it? Not every porn addict is a slobby hermit who eats junk food and never showers, although I would agree that porn addicts divert too much energy not just into the seeking out and using of porn but also maintaining the routines to escape detection, including keeping an emotional distance.

It all comes down to trust. Our partners could find ways of accessing porn and they could confidently avoid detection. That's a possibility. Of course it is. But if they make their decisions on how easy it is to get away with something then they are lacking in integrity. And they can't be trusted. That's why I always think we should be able to make random spot checks of viewing history or have the right to monitor internet traffic from time to time, as a kind of health check. I don't think we should 'snoop' unless we really do suspect something's up, but we should ask outright beforehand and always give our addict partners a chance to disclose. In an ideal world, of course, but who lives in an ideal world?