I like my spouse, however I’m hooked on paying £500 every week for on-line porn

Charlie is a happily-married father of three who owns a successful business and has a healthy sex life. Yet, until recently, the 55 year old had a guilty secret: he wasted hours every day watching porn.

Such was his addiction to OnlyFans — the online video hosting site that allows people to upload X-rated content and charge others to view it — he was spending upwards of £500 a week on his habit.

The wellness centre owner, from Leeds, struggles to explain his behaviour, even to himself. Each three to four-minute video he watched — and sometimes still watches — could cost up to £50.

‘There is the adrenaline rush when you’re in the pleasure zone, but afterwards there is the guilt. I think, “Why did I do that? I could have taken my wife out with the same amount of money instead”.’

But it is not just the money. As figures show an increase in middle-aged men becoming addicted to online porn, experts warn of the far wider damage it can do — not just to the lives of the people he watches online, but also, more immediately, to his relationship with his wife.

It’s often presumed that sites such as subscription-based OnlyFans or Pornhub are destinations for over-excitable young males, yet if the figures are to be believed, increasing numbers of middle-aged men like Charlie are getting hooked on pornography. UK Addiction Treatment’s (UKAT) London centre says it gets two new patients a week aged 50 plus, while more than 20 per cent of OnlyFans’ subscribers are men aged over 45.

The same goes for Pornhub, the UK’s most popular porn website — 44 per cent of the men who visited the site in the past month were aged 50-64 and 26 per cent who watched during the same time frame were 65 and older.

These are men, say experts, who would never have dreamt of buying printed pornographic material in the same obsessive way, but have become drawn into a sordid world by the ease of online access.

Fuelled at first by a combination of curiosity, middle-aged loneliness and boredom, it’s a habit that can fast spiral out of control and leave men feeling a deep sense of shame.

Charlie says he knows plenty of other 50-something married men like him who’ve become dependent on the dopamine rush of watching pornography. He also says watching gay porn as a ‘straight married man’ is commonplace.

As extraordinary as it sounds, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) psychotherapist Susie Masterson agrees that this is indeed the case.

‘The Gen X generation, those who are now in their mid-40s to late 50s, didn’t have the opportunity to explore this aspect of their sexuality when they were younger. Doing so online in a virtual world permits them to do so without taking any risks or raising question marks over their heterosexual identity in the real world.’

This, too, is how Charlie justifies his addiction to himself.

‘I love my wife, we’ve been happily married for 25 years. Yet online I don’t class myself as straight, more bisexual,’ he says.

‘My eyes were opened by the extra services on offer on OnlyFans over lockdown. I found one on which other men rated my body. It was a total ego boost to be complimented in a way I never would be by my wife — although I now realise they were being nice to me because I was paying them. It really is another world online.’

Today Charlie, who still hasn’t told his wife about his addiction, is trying to ‘rein it in’.

He goes through cycles when he will successfully avoid online pornography for a month, but then finds himself home alone and starts watching on the ‘odd evening’. He says he can avoid thinking about it by not spending time on his own.

But, as with other addictions, going cold turkey is not straightforward.

Lee Fernandes, lead therapist at UKAT, explains: ‘Dopamine addiction stems from anything that gives a feeling of pleasure, and we are seeing that in a lot of people who watch porn. This natural high is chased in the same way a heroin user chases the feeling they get after their first hit.’

Charlie admits to feeling ‘seedy’ about his habit of watching videos on his phone alone in bed.

‘When things were out of control I’d actively look out for opportunities when my wife was occupied,’ he says. ‘I’d only do it if she was in the bath, out with her girlfriends or at the gym. That way, my thinking went, I could relax having pleasure with someone else online.

‘I do feel a bit of shame when I’m not in the zone of looking for it online and I definitely don’t dwell on why the women who are doing this have had to go down this route. Do they want to or is it because they have limited options to earn an income? I don’t like thinking about it.’

Susie says in the past traditional porn, such as that on top shelves or videos, involved ‘paid individuals’, while today many men justify OnlyFans accounts on the grounds the ‘performers’ are making a good income, even getting rich.

But, she emphasises, the reality is very different.

‘We see celebrities with OnlyFans accounts raking it in and we hear users trumpeting the democratisation of porn. But the reality isn’t like this at all. In all likelihood, users are going to be your next door neighbour’s daughter or someone who needs the money to feed her children. And let’s not forget: there are online videos which are more explicit where it’s clear the individuals involved are being coerced.

‘The truth is a lot of men don’t like to think about the realities for the women and men they are watching. They will square it off as virtual, meaning it’s justifiable as something that isn’t real.’

But the damage created by porn addiction is also closer to home. Cat Etherington, of the Naked Truth Project, says: ‘Compulsive porn use can tear relationships and families apart.’

That was indeed the case for teacher Alice, 42, who was married for ten years to someone she claims was her ‘ideal man’. ‘We met online and just clicked. Our families got to know one another pretty quickly, and we moved in together after six months. A year later we were married.

‘We’d never wanted children, and that meant there were never those highs and lows in our sex life. I assumed it was satisfactory because we’d always enjoyed it at least twice a week.

‘It was during lockdown when I noticed things weren’t quite right between us. My husband was distant and kept finding an excuse to work in our study into all hours of the night.’

Alice is convinced that while working from home, her husband Joe’s online porn addiction intensified.

‘I had no idea about it until we were forced to be around each other all the time. It was halfway through 2020 and there were odd things going on. Weird spending patterns on our credit cards which he explained away as card fraud and something he’d handle.

‘The red flag went up when he started introducing all sorts of kinky things into the bedroom.’

Then, one evening Joe tried to choke her during sex.

‘I had no idea that this was a thing, or something that men in porn do to women,’ she says. ‘There was a point while he was on top of me, strangling me really, when he was so lost in the moment that I thought that I was about to meet my maker.’

According to Alice, Joe confessed that his porn addiction had been building up over five years. But his once-a-month habit became a nightly routine over lockdown and the types of porn he watched became increasingly violent. As remorseful as he was, for Alice a line had been crossed and she ended their relationship.

‘It’s made me question every aspect of our marriage. Was he thinking about other women, or acting out fantasies in his mind?’ she says.

‘Unfortunately porn normalises things that are taboo,’ says therapist Susie. ‘The trust has gone when you discover that this has been going on behind closed doors, not least because they are no longer the person you thought they were.

‘An addiction to porn means that person is not available and not present in the relationship. For some women it will feel like a betrayal. The trust they thought was there has been broken.’

She believes there are straight-forward steps to take when it comes to porn addiction: ‘The first is to get professional help from a therapist. There are lots of self-help techniques too. I suggest addicts start an “urge diary”: write down when you get an urge, noting what it is, where you are and if it’s at a certain time of the day. You’ll recognise patterns and then you need to come up with alternatives to disrupt the brain urge.

‘Our brains have been tremendously rewired by the digital world and, when it comes to online porn, they need to be shocked out of it.

‘My list includes very immediate alternatives, such as a very strong or sweet taste — something to shock the system. Fizzy cola sweets, or gum with a strong minty taste. The other option is to think about how you’ll feel after you have given in to the urge. Also tell yourself how you would feel if a loved one walked in on you. Ask yourself how they would feel? It might be brutal — but it works.’

Charlie says he has certainly noticed the impact porn is having on his sex life with his wife. ‘I do understand the argument that online porn is ruining marriages,’ he admits. ‘The expectations you have when your wife does decide to have sex with you are incredibly high, and when you compare it with what you see online, it’s inevitable that the sex you have in real life is going to be a disappointment.’

While Charlie’s marriage still survives, 51-year-old Tom says his online porn addiction has wrecked all real-life intimacy because ‘no woman my age ever meets up to my expectations’.

‘Those online images of incredible bodies are forever ingrained in my psyche,’ the transport manager, from Kingston-upon-Thames, says. ‘I don’t think about the women I’m watching as anything other than sexual beings. There is no relationship between us and the screen affords me psychological and emotional distance. It probably explains why I haven’t had a long-term relationship since I split with my ex-wife 15 years ago.’

The single father of two teenage girls can pinpoint the exact moment when his addiction to online porn began.

‘I was 36 and working away while my mum was looking after the girls. My wife had left a year ago and things had been chaotic during the day and desperately lonely at night. I was on my own but the sexual urges never went away.

‘I was working away from home with a friend and over a couple of drinks he mentioned Pornhub, a website he used when he wasn’t with his girlfriend. It’s free.

‘I thought, “Why not give it a go?” But now I am addicted to it and easily use it once a day. I don’t want to risk being disturbed by my daughters so it’s usually when they’ve gone to bed.

‘I try not to think about the lives of the women I am watching. I know it’s wrong and I’d be deeply ashamed if my girls found out.’

Tom, who describes his libido as ‘one of a 20-something’, says he was left ‘distraught’ when his wife left him, dashing his confidence.

‘As I have sole custody, I was focused on getting the girls out to school and then myself to work. I had no time for dating,’ he says.

‘I have no doubt at some point in my life I will crave emotional companionship, but I am living day-to-day right now.’

That doesn’t mean he has given up having sex with women in real life, though it’s a rare occurrence. What he has found, he admits, is that his own performance is much less reliable than it once was, almost certainly as a result of his porn addiction. He also finds it hard to ‘deal with the feelings’ of women he meets.

Susie believes it’s common for men to fall into this trap.

‘A lot of people, and certainly clients I have seen, are watching a certain type of porn and they can’t get past that to enjoy what we’d recognise as more regular or “normal” sex. If they are in a sexual relationship, it often means they can’t get aroused.’

For Tom, it’s a vicious circle. ‘It means that I don’t get to sleep with a woman a second time because they assume the problem is them, when I’m not brave enough to admit the issue is with me,’ he says.

Unable to have the healthy and intimate relationship he craves because of his addiction, he knows he should give up his porn habit, but finds it almost impossible to do.

‘My reliance on porn has meant that in everyday life, I am used to being on my own,’ he adds. ‘It’s provided me with a completely false reality. But if I was forced to choose between porn and a relationship with a woman, then I’m afraid porn would win.’

All names have been changed to protect identities.