My (17M) boyfriend consumes adult content, I (17F) don’t know what I should do.
My boyfriend (17M) and I (17F) have been together for about a year and a half. Until recently, I genuinely believed we had a really loving and honest relationship. We even have a holiday to Bulgaria booked with his family this summer, and I already paid around £700 toward it.
A few days ago, I found out he had been hiding a lot from me throughout the relationship. For a long time I would ask him directly about things like adult content, fantasies, and whether he was honest with me, and he always reassured me that he was. He even swore on my life, his bloodline and other things to convince me.
When we became intimate, I always felt something was a bit off. He rarely initiated anything, often seemed emotionally distant, and I ended up thinking he just had low confidence or low libido.
Recently I discovered he had actually been consuming explicit content very frequently for a long time and hiding it from me. Some of the content/fantasies he admitted to were quite extreme (tying women up, unconsensual intimacy, dehumanising, degrading and dominating women etc.) , and he told me that normal intimacy didn’t stimulate him as much anymore. He also admitted he would sometimes go home afterwards and still rely on that content instead after we were intimate as it didn’t fulfill his desires.
The main thing hurting me isn’t just the content itself, it’s the constant lying, hiding things, and hearing that I wasn’t enough for him in that way. It completely destroyed my confidence because I genuinely loved him and trusted him.
I suggested therapy because some of the things he described sounded unhealthy to me and honestly worried me, but his mum thinks I’m attacking or shaming him for watching adult content. She’s mostly focused on how upset he is, while I feel like nobody has acknowledged how much this has hurt me too.
Now I feel stuck because:
- I still love him
- Part of me thinks he could change (since he said he’ll stop watching it at all now)
- Another part of me feels deeply betrayed
- We have this expensive holiday booked together with his family
I honestly don’t know what to do anymore.
Is therapy an unreasonable suggestion?
And what would you do about the holiday situation?
I need advice on how to tackle this.
I also understand boys have needs but I always offered.