Porn ruined my ex-husband. Porn ruined me. I was married for 6.5 years. My husband was already addicted to porn before we got married. Ever since I got married, I realized something was completely off. My husband constantly criticized me and put me down. I was not pretty enough, sexy enough, and attractive enough. He never liked any of my clothes. Sex felt awkward, took place seldom and far between and often I felt like I was being punished.

It was hard for him to have an erection. I was young and naive. I knew our relationship is off but I could not put my finger on what exactly was so wrong. Mikvah nights meant nothing to my husband; he would not be interested, excited, and often we would not have intimacy after I went to the mikvah. The criticisms became more and more frequent. He would talk about breast implants and hormonal growth shots. I can't describe the amount of verbal abuse he put me through; he made me feel like I am the ugliest person in the world, worthless, and incompetent in every area of life. And when I told him that we need to talk to a Ruv about our situation, he refused. Yet, he found it in himself to confess that he's been watching porn and is constantly masturbating.

He told me he was going to stop watching porn and would like to make this marriage work. He agreed to go for help. For 6 years, while he was getting help, he never stopped watching porn nor did he ever stop putting me down and abusing me verbally and emotionally. It's indescribable all that he did to me. He was as if in a coma, completely self-absorbed, selfish, and emotionally distant. I was so alone all these years.

I was his perfect maid. I was the kind of wife that treated him like a king: took care of all his needs, cooked his favorite foods, did his laundry to perfection, bought him gifts and pushed him to help himself and was very supportive and tried helping him to let go of his lust addiction and all that mattered to him is that I did not measure up to his FANTASY WORLD OF PORN.

We had a boy together, but he was not a father to this child. He had no relationship with him at all. He had a relationship with PORN, not with people. Needless to say, he was not a Yid when we lived together. He had worked with many therapists over all these years. Nothing helped. I would continually find him watching porn. He grew more distant and sunk so low in Yiddishkeit. He never went to shul and stopped going on Shabbos, too. After living like this for over 6 years, I came to realize I can't put up with it any longer, and our marriage collapsed.

The separation shook my ex-husband strongly. He gave up his I-phone then and began working the 12-step program and going to a sex therapist. He also started going to shul. He cried a lot over the damage he had caused and acknowledged that he had sinned so much and treated me badly due to his addiction.

I am writing to you guys: don't wait up until it's too late, up until the damage is irreversible. You have the power to change if you want to. My ex-husband had to hit rock bottom to help himself. Do you really want to be split up from your loved ones? Do you want to go through separation and divorce to start developing real relationships with people and your own flesh and blood?

Get help right now and right here! You need to go for help, but you need to be determined to help yourself! I am writing to you because I care. I care for you, your wife, and your children. And I don't want anyone to experience the pain the way I did.

As former world heavyweight champion boxer David Haye said on the topic of sperm retention:

Find a lion that hasn’t had some food for a while, and you’ve got one dangerous cat. I don’t ejaculate for six weeks before the fight. No sex, no masturbation, no nothing. It releases too much tension. It releases a lot of minerals and nutrients that your body needs, and it releases them cheaply. Releasing weakens the knees and your legs. Find a lion that hasn’t had some food for a while, and you’ve got a dangerous cat. So there won’t bet a drip from me. Even in my sleep — if there are girls all over me in my dream, I say to them, ‘I’ve got a fight next week, I can’t do anything. I can’t do it.’ That’s control. I’ve been doing that since I was fifteen and its part and parcel of my preparation now. That’s why I am who I am today — it’s down to all those little sacrifices. Find me another boxer who makes that sacrifice, and you’ll find another champion.