Decide first whether this conversation is for your relief or for their information, because those produce very different disclosures. Then say it once, completely, at a time neither of you has to leave in twenty minutes, with somebody your partner can call afterwards. The thing that causes lasting damage is rarely the first revelation. It's the fourth one, three weeks later.
Do you actually need to tell them
Not every conversation about porn needs to happen, and starting from "confession is always right" is how people detonate a relationship for reasons that turn out to be about their own guilt.
Some honest questions before you open your mouth.
**Has it involved other people?** Contact with anyone else, paid or otherwise, changes this completely. It's a health question as well as a trust question, and it isn't optional information. So does anything involving money that came out of shared finances.
**Have you been lying to them directly?** There's a difference between never having volunteered something and having answered a direct question falsely. The second one is already an active injury whether they know it or not.
**Would they consider this a betrayal?** You don't get to decide that for them, and different couples genuinely draw the line in different places. If you already know their answer, you already know what you're dealing with.
**Are they about to find out anyway?** Discovery is worse than disclosure, consistently and by a long way. If there's a device, a bank statement or a friend who could surface this, the timing decision has already been partly made for you.
If none of those apply and what you're carrying is private use that hasn't touched them, you may be looking at a shame problem rather than a disclosure problem. [Is my porn use a problem](/guides/pornography/is-my-porn-use-a-problem) separates those two, and it's worth ten minutes before you take a wrecking ball to a Tuesday evening.
The slow drip is the thing that does the damage
Here's the pattern that ruins recoveries. You tell them a version. It's the smallest true version, because you're terrified and you're trying to survive the next hour. They start to settle. Two weeks later something surfaces that contradicts it, so you tell them a bit more. Then again.
Each round teaches them the same lesson: what they've been told is provisional. After the third one, they aren't reacting to the content any more. They're reacting to the fact that reality keeps changing shape, and that's a much harder injury to recover from than the original behaviour.
So the rule is one account, and it needs to be one you'll never have to amend. That means doing the uncomfortable inventory before the conversation, not during it. Write down everything you would need to say for there to be no more surprises. Then decide what of that list they need.
What to include, and what to leave out
Complete is not the same as graphic. Your partner needs the shape of the truth, not a catalogue.
**Include:** how long it's been going on. Roughly how often, in honest terms rather than flattering ones. Whether it involved other people, money, or anything with legal weight. Whether you've lied to them about it directly. What you've already done about it, if anything.
**Leave out, unless they ask:** specific content, specific sites, detailed descriptions. This is the part people get wrong from a sincere motive, thinking that total detail proves total honesty. What detail actually does is hand your partner images they'll carry for years, and it very often serves your need to be absolved rather than their need to understand.
Tell them the door is open. "If you want to ask me anything, at any point, I'll answer it and I won't get defensive." Then keep that promise, including the fifth time they ask the same question at midnight.
Getting the conversation right
Practical, and it matters more than the wording.
**Time it.** Not last thing at night, not before work, not on a birthday, not when children are about to walk in. Give it an evening with nothing after it.
**Say what it is at the start.** Don't build up. "There's something I've been hiding and I need to tell you about it" is kinder than ten minutes of preamble while they work out that something is wrong.
**Own it in plain language.** No passive constructions, no "it happened", no blaming stress, work, or the state of your sex life. Even where those are relevant, this is not the conversation to raise them in. Bringing them up now reads as blame, because it is.
**Then stop talking.** The hardest part. Let them react however they react, including rage, including silence, including questions that feel unfair. Do not manage their reaction. Do not ask them to comfort you.
**Don't ask for a decision.** They don't owe you an answer that night about whether the relationship survives. Say so explicitly.
Your partner needs their own support, not yours
This is the part most people skip, and it's the part that changes outcomes.
A 2024 survey of 297 sexually betrayed partners found ["87% reported self-blame and 43% considered harming themselves"](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38351527/), and that 84% described anger more intense than anything they had experienced before the discovery. It also found that 39% weren't offered any specific help with that anger by the professionals they went to.
Two things follow. First, arrange for them to have someone before you say a word: a friend they can call that night, and if possible their own counsellor, someone who is not also yours. Second, if they say anything at all about not wanting to be here, take it seriously that day. Samaritans is 116 123, free, any hour, and in England 111 then option 2 reaches urgent mental health support. Give them the number rather than assuming they'll look it up.
Be careful, too, about the frameworks you hand them. There's a strand of writing in this field that treats partners as having contributed to the behaviour, or labels them codependent. That label doesn't hold up: a review of the concept found ["the CD concept lacks an empirical basis and lacks consensus about a definition"](https://cdspress.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Kimberly-A.-Calderwood-Anne-Rajesparam.pdf) and that labelling people this way "increases their grief and guilt". Your partner is a person who has had something done to them. That's the whole description.
What comes after
Expect the first week to be worse than the conversation. Expect questions in waves, and expect the calm days to be followed by a hard one for no visible reason. None of that means it's going badly.
The thing that rebuilds trust is not the apology. It's a long stretch of small verifiable actions: blocks that stay on, a passcode held by someone else, appointments actually attended, questions answered without flinching. [Repairing trust after porn use](/guides/pornography/repairing-trust-after-porn-use) goes through what helps and the one habit that reliably makes it worse.
And keep your own work going. Disclosure is not treatment, and a conversation is not a plan. If you haven't already set up the practical side, [how to stop using porn](/guides/pornography/how-to-stop-using-porn) is where to start. If the behaviour has gone beyond screens, [what to tell a partner](/guides/sex/disclosure-what-to-tell-a-partner) covers a harder version of the same conversation.
Common questions
**Should I tell my partner about porn if they never asked?** It depends what "it" is. Private use that hasn't involved other people, money or direct lies is a genuinely open question and some couples never have that conversation. Anything involving contact with other people, shared money, or answers you gave that weren't true is not an open question.
**Will telling them make it better?** Sometimes, eventually, and mostly it depends on how it's done and what you do in the months afterwards. What is fairly consistent is that being found out is worse than telling, and that a series of partial disclosures is worse than one complete one.
**What if they want every detail?** Answer honestly, and say once that you're willing to go into specifics but that in your reading it often makes things harder to live with afterwards. If they still want them, that's their call to make, not yours to overrule.
**Should we do this with a therapist in the room?** If you can, yes, particularly where there's a lot to say or where safety is a concern. It slows everything down and gives your partner someone in the room who isn't you. Check any practitioner's Accredited Register before you book, because these titles aren't protected in the UK.
**They asked if I still find them attractive. What do I say?** Answer the question honestly and don't turn it into a lecture about how porn use isn't about attraction. It usually isn't, and saying so as a defence sounds like a dodge. Say the true thing about them first, then explain the mechanism only if they want it.
Sources
- [Hollenbeck and Steffens, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 2024](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38351527/). A survey of 297 betrayed partners: self-blame, self-harm ideation, and unmet need for support with anger.
- [Calderwood and Rajesparam, on the codependency concept](https://cdspress.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Kimberly-A.-Calderwood-Anne-Rajesparam.pdf). The concept lacks an empirical basis and labelling people with it increases grief and guilt.
- [Assessment and treatment of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, Sexual Medicine Reviews](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11214846/). An expert panel's opposition to approaches that increase stigma and moral incongruence.
