Guilt over Bad Hentai

I've tried to do this before but deleted from anxiety and crippling depression but I want to try again.

To start out, I've been looking at porn since my mid teens, along with having joined chat channels for sex but also for fantasy role play of actually fantasy type setting (to those unfamiliar think elves and lord of the rings or warcraft) but also doing dirty stuff in that. And when I say porn, I also mean hentai (cartoon porn and this will be relevant eventually).

I met my wife online and cheated on her online, on and off, for most of our marriage. I would eventually come clean to her of the things I did 8 years later with other women but would relapse later. I'd tell her again. But again I did small things that lead to big problems. One of the big things I would do in games and online is look at people's profiles who wrote dirty, naughty things. I would do this often and tell myself I'm not talking to them so it was fine. There were so many I looked up and went back to over and over. However one of them I came across was unsettling for sure.

It was a woman who was into age play. She liked to play from like age 6 or so, up to 12. I even remember thinking to myself that this was weird but I didn't look away yet because she had very dirty things written in her profile. I ignored the things I didn't like, like all the daddy talk ( I have kids so that's never been my thing) but focused on the good stuff. I was sexually confused by the hentai (again to be clear, all cartoons and drawings) because it was very short but was drawn to have huge breasts and full curves, though still in a school uniform. I love large breasts but the thing still just confused me, though I got past it and ignored that to return to the profile and still read updated dirty comments she made, still ignoring stuff I didn't like but focusing on on stuff that wasn't about age. I remember wishing she would just do normal stuff as that would be hot.

This isn't the only profile I visited or the only one I revisited. I liked profiles of people who updated stuff often as it let me pretend I was talking to them and fix that craving. I even ignored other stuff like women only wanting horses or animals with hentai pictures of all of that, and doing the same thing where I ignored the pieces I didn't like and just looked at the hot woman drawing doing something bad. I've seen plenty with monsters too.

I even messaged her on her Tumblr ama to ask why she did it or something like that, where I had convinced myself if I wrote to her and she replied back that it didn't count but it would still give me that hit I was craving of direct response while also pretending I was good for being fake outraged even though I was still visiting the site.

I'm the end I would stop going to that profile and focused on other ones as I think I remember it eventually being too much for me.

Down the line I would confess to my wife that I had looked up profiles to cheat myself around not talking to people by just reading them say dirty things and pretend it was at me. I didn't bring this instance (or the other gross animal stuff) up to her because it didn't register to me that I needed to. It's all drawings and fake and the pictures had big breasts and fully adult features like that, that it wasn't the same to me in my head then.

Fast forward 4 or 5 years. The past two years have been great. I came clean about other ways I was getting around my rules and been actively living a good life and finally happy with myself. I kept looking at porn which I figure everyone does so whatever, but that's it besides dirty thoughts. Then it hits me out of nowhere, remembering that I had done this. That I had ignored it. And suddenly my brain hasn't seen a distinction since. I don't know how I kept going back to that profile or how I found any enjoyment at all in the picture. That's never been my thing. And I definitely in the real world have never been into that kind of stuff or animals or any of it. But suddenly it feels very real and I'm disgusted with myself.

I told my wife and she's disgusted too for good reason. She was a little worried at first what it meant and I don't blame her. I feel like I'm that person even though if I try and bring reasonable in my own head I know I'm not. But I can't currently get past it fully.

We talked to a therapist the other day and the helped but we're both still finding ourselves falling into funks, feeling like this is all new even though it's old that I'm just finally acknowledging how messed up it was.

Hentai is full of younger looking drawings but I almost always tend towards curvy stuff unless the drawing or animation catches my attention, but nothing ever like THAT. And I try and remind myself that I didn't go there for that or that I didn't ever think of it as real life or anything. But it's hard to forgive myself as it feels worse than I hope it is.

***trigger warnings***

Hello, and welcome to the forums

I'll set aside the debate over when is online behaviour 'cheating'... that gets argued back and forth a lot and well if she's gonna be mad that you do it, well, there you go.

The Hentai. is.. well to me it's just hentai, as long as it's not outright illegal. There are no real people involved. It's not expressly simulated CP (child porn) as far as I know so it's kind of in a fuzzy grey area.

I'm like you- the idea of age-play makes me a bit uneasy. Between consenting adults, it's my understanding that age-play doesn't in any way accurately determine someone's predilection towards being genuinely attracted to underage children. It's fantasy; play. Someone wants to play the part of a child in a sexual roleplay, someone else is willing to accommodate them. Still, it's something that I'd have to be sweet-talked into doing, especially online. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it, no matter how much I've read that it can be and often is harmless. Not to mention I'm sure lots of virtual venues probably have a clause against age-play in their Terms of Service.

I know you're feeling remorse and I'm not trying to trivialise it. I just think that if there's any remorse to be had, it's what you did that your wife is unhappy with (being sexual online with others) and the specifics don't seem to me as if they deserve begin so torn up over. In the OCD forum, we have a number of members who have what's informally called POCD- Pedophile Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Now, OCD is OCD, is OCD- but it's a common thing for folks who are prone to obsess, to obsess over the fear they're a pedo of one sort or another. I'm OCD myself, and I can tell you with OCD we will overthink anything, including how much we overthink. A lot of times in this forum, folks exhibit a good little bit of overlap with folks that have a pathological tendency to obsessively fear of being one thing or another. Try not to fall into that trap. No kids were harmed by you and it's not as if you were viewing CP.

As for the rest of it, well, it's the past- if you're not doing dodgy things online any more, try to let it go and move on.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I guess I just feel so much shame for being able to ignore it, even if it wasn't drawn to look like a normal child would. Hindsight it eats me up because I knew reading the profile that's what she was into, and even though I never participated with it, I still feel like I did for going back times after to get my fix with whatever new dirty things she (or he as people lie online)had written that I could ignore, or just re read the other things. I had your attitude enough of not treating it like real because the drawings obviously weren't, but a part of me just feels the same.

I get that's just my head but it's hard to make it quiet down. Because I didn't seek out more art like it, I didn't ONLY go to this person's profile, as I spent even more time on more tame stuff, and I didn't have any fears at the time of feeling gross. And I'm not worried that I'm a P ... but I still feel as gross as one should. Maybe because it's so bad that I don't feel like I could tell anyone in person about it beside my wife. Like for some reason we're both prone to anxiety and both worry it would cost me my job or our friends. So if it's not that bad, I focus on that and it makes it feel bad.

Does that make sense? Because that's what is eating her up too is the fear and unknowing of I'm into that stuff, which I'm not. Not even in hentai form am I into it, but sadly I can look past it and see things I can enough in itlike large breasts or height differences. I just don't see how I could be so uncaring for so long and then it all hits me and I connect it.

But then we've also been reading a lot and even or therapist said I have a porn addiction and maybe even a sex one too. And I've looked at it all so long that I can ignore cartoon stuff now that makes me uncomfortable, even if I don't seek it out. But then that round of thinking brings me back to I did seek it out by returning, but rational brain me knows that's now why I returned, but Anxiety me has been driving the car for the last 3 days off and on, and in her to