I feel like im going crazy.

[nowheretogo]

I'm looking for a place to vent. I'm not too familiar with this forum, but if this is something that isn't allowed just let me know and I'll delete it. I feel like I can't talk to anyone about this..I don't have a car to get to a therapist, and I've been online all day reading up on partners of porn addiction or sex addiction. I just need to vent. I just need to know that I'm not the only one going through these emotions. I've been crying on and off all day, and I'm so tired.. I guess I should talk about my situation, about what happened.. Me (21f) and my SO (24m) have been dating for a year and a half now. Since August of 2014, that has all been long distance because he is going to school. I've always known about him watching porn, I guess it just wasn't something I was used to from any other relationship. It bothered me at the time, that we lived together and were sexually-almost every day, but he still HAD to watch porn every single day as soon as I went to work. I didn't even know you could be addicted to something like that, I guess I'm pretty naive and a product of the growing culture of normalizing porn. About a month ago, he accidentally attached a picture that he saved to his clipboard (or something like that) while trying to send me a different picture. It was a picture of a girl dressed in a short plaid skirt and tied-up white shirt in the bathroom mirror. It's something I'm sure you could find browsing reddit, but it caused a lot of strong feelings. It wasn't just a porn star anymore, this was someone that was "real" and I feel horrible for not considering the porn as "real" until recently. Flash forward to now, he was seemingly doing well with resisting the urge to watch porn. He accidentally sent me a screen-cap of his computer last night. It was of an email address with an alias and he was asking someone with a craigslist return address where they were located. He says that he has never been physical with anyone and has never been intimate with anyone. I don't know what to believe anymore. He doesn't connect this to infidelity, but I definitely feel like I've been cheated on. I feel like everything has been a lie. I feel like I don't know what I can and can't trust anymore. I don't know where to begin, and I thought I could get some input here.  I'm sorry for the long post.
The only input I've gotten on my emotions and the circumstance, has been to "end it now"...The thing is that I DO understand at the end of the day that it is an addiction. I do understand that it is something that came before me and has little to do with me. I do understand that it is something that will take time to fix. I don't want to just give up, even though I am hurt. Maybe it's the wrong thing to do in someone else's mind, but I don't intend on making him deal with this addiction alone.
I guess I need to know if what I'm feeling is something that someone else has felt to. I feel so alone right now, and I just need input from people who have been there and who are still fighting.

 

[Maxime]

My girlfriend and I have been together for more than 10 years, and it has always been a lot of emotions when she accidentally stumbled upon stuff I was watching (happened two or three times).
She told me she hated it, but in the end, talking to her friends who told her it was normal for guys to watch it, she'd just reluctantly accept it.
I didn't realize how deeply porn was affecting us as a couple until after I had my first difficulty having erections. Might sound self-centered, but addictions work that way: you live in the illusion that what you're doing is fine.

So, my question is: does he know how bad it is affecting you? Does he know he has an addiction that needs to be stopped? Change needs to come from the person concerned. If he's not willing to let go his addiction, it won't happen.
Also, just talk to him. Tell him how you feel. Communication in a couple is key, and if you can't talk about this, I don't believe you can get out of this situation together.