-- Sorry I don't know if this is a duplicate post, I tried posting it before but I don't know if it went through --
Hello all, I am new here. I am a 39yr old male from Arizona, married (for now) with a daughter. About a year ago my wife found some pics I had been looking at online (underage kids) and has been struggling with how to deal with what she saw. She has caught me before in an online chat room, chatting about kids. The most recent incident, the pics were troubling for her and she has come to the conclusion that she wants a divorce. She is being very supportive in the fact that she is not disclosing the real reason for the divorce to the court or our family & friends, she has just said that she wants to split once we are financially able to do so. She has said that I will still get to see my daughter and things won't be that bad, but I am still very uneasy about what the future will bring. Being on my own isn't something I enjoy thinking about, as I also have anxiety and depression issues.
My downward spiral started many years ago, and my poison of choice as I said before was chat rooms and pictures of underage kids. I felt a need to seek out this type of satisfaction anytime i could be alone and on the computer. I have spent many nights chatting online and looking at pics when i should have been sleeping, only to pay for it the next day dead tired.
The times my wife caught me, I thought I could handle this myself and just stop. I did stop for a while and then gradually got back into it once the desire became too strong to ignore. Now I know I need help and support or I will go back to doing it again and wind up on the news after being arrested for child porn pics. I don't want to be this person or whatever I have become, I just want to be a normal guy that doesn't get aroused by naked kids. This obsession is costing me the most valuable thing to me, my family.
I have never touched a child in any sexual manner, have never tried to. My chatting online with others has always been about "fantasy", not actually committing the acts. I was never abused as a child that I know of. I think my obsession with porn started when I was a teenager, my father always had plenty of nudie mags and videos around (legal ones), and like any teenage boy I was instantly drawn to the naked images. Having no luck with the girls growing up, my sexual desires were fulfilled by fantasy and later the fantasies of younger and younger females and then males.
I am not trying to make excuses for my actions, what I have done is not excusable. I just need to stop and need support to do so. I don't have many people that I would call friends, just some people I know. This is a very difficult struggle and I don't like what is happening.