I've been with my boyfriend for a little over a year now. We've had our ups and downs, and we're still doing good for the most part, but there has been an issue about porn for about 5 months now, and I'm afraid that eventually it's going to tear us apart.

He lives and goes college in PA, I live in IN. About 5 months ago for his birthday, I surprised him by taking a bus there to stay with him for a week at school. Everything was good until I woke up one morning and saw him sitting at the end of the bed getting off to online porn. We had talked at the beginning of our relationship about our views on porn. I told him I didn't have a problem with him looking at it. I even looked at it once in a while. It honestly didn't bother me up until then. But that morning, something caved inside of me and I felt horrible. I started to get those "I'm not good enough" feelings, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I wanted to cry, and I wanted him to stop, but I didn't know what to say. I lay there for a while, trying to go back to sleep but I couldn't. When he was done, he cuddled up next to me and still I pretended to sleep, but I felt so bad that I didn't want him to touch me and I wanted to disappear. I didn't say anything to him then, or for the rest of the week I was there. I didn't know how to bring it up, and frankly I didn't know why I felt so bad about it in the first place.

A few days after I got home I brought it up, having thought about it a bit, and told him that it made me feel bad. He said he would let it go, but I didn't want him to think I was banning him for it. I hadn't had a problem before. So I tried to let it go. I was feeling really bad, and I couldn't really eat anything. He came to visit for a week during his spring break, and I didn't say anything then about it, but I still felt horrible. After that, I brought it up a few times and we tried working it out. We tried compromises. Then we started fighting a lot because we couldn't see the other person's side of the situation. He didn't see the big deal, and I couldn't understand why he didn't pay attention to the way I felt. Eventually he said that he could try to give up porn, but eventually he would look again and feel like caca about it. I misunderstood that and took it as him saying that regardless of what he told me, he was going to look at porn. I didn't know what to do, but I didn't want to lose him. Finally, it was decided that he would give it up, and I told him that if he slipped and looked that I just wanted him to be honest about it. He said he would. A few days later I asked him if he'd looked at anything, and he said no and that he had just been removing the porn he had on his computer. I had known that he had a bunch of Yahoo porn groups (he'd mentioned before that he belonged to about 30, to get the videos they posted every few months). I told him that night that I would go in and delete those to help him out if he wanted me to, and that maybe I could get some ideas as to what he liked so that I would be better able to satisfy him. He said okay, and I went in to get rid of stuff. I deleted some, and completely by accident clicked on something in one of them that took me to a page that said when members signed up. His screen name was there on the first page, and his sign up date was that very same day. I confronted him about it, and he lied. He said that he remembered that one because he remembered deleting it. I told him it was there and the group info said differently. He broke down and told the truth. That he slipped and signed up, but couldn't go past the first page. I had told him to be honest and still he hid it from me, then lied twice to me about it. So that made me not trust him.

That night he said he was giving porn up, because he hated that he lied to me about it. He apologized. Eventually I forgave him for it, but even now I'm still trying to rebuild that trust. I've known that before all of this I didn't have a problem with porn, so I've tried to be okay with it. But I can't, and I don't know why. It makes me cry a lot, and I never used to cry. I just can't handle it anymore. I've tried all that I can to change these feelings I have, and it's useless. I tried a few weeks ago to force myself to like it. We shared some stuff, but he never really seemed into sharing it with me. I told him that I was trying to be okay with him looking at it again, but that didn't stick either. Even when I've felt horrible about it, I've opened myself up to it and tried to see the good again. I've left a lot out of the story here, because it's really long. But now I've accepted that regardless of how I felt before, now I just can't handle it. We've been talking about it again, and he said that he didn't listen to me before, but that he chooses me above porn and will any day. He says he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. My problem now, is that my mind is still trying to pull me two different ways. I know that in my heart, porn hurts me. I've tried all I can to change that, and it won't. But I know also that porn isn't bad, and he's not addicted to it. It feels selfish to ask him to not look, but I'm afraid that if I don't, my feelings will wear me down and we won't make it. He says he doesn't need it and isn't going to look, but I still feel bad about asking. There's still a bit of the trust issue hindering us. I have a hard time trusting people in the first place, but to have had someone I love break that trust that I naively counted on always being there damaged us a lot. It's hard to get that back, and it's been better, but it's still not all there. One part of me doesn't trust him, and another part says that he hasn't done anything since then so I have no reason not to trust him now. One part says that him looking at other naked women hurts so bad, and another part says it's normal for guys to do. How do I get through these conflicting feelings?