If you have a partner, the cost is not abstract. It is the distance between you in bed. The sex that became mechanical or stopped happening. The emotional wall she can feel but cannot name. The fights that are about the dishes but are actually about the fact that you are half-absent and she does not know why.
Partners of men who use porn heavily often describe a feeling they cannot quite articulate: something is off. He is physically present but emotionally checked out. He initiates sex less, or initiates it differently. He seems distracted. She starts to wonder if she is not attractive enough, not interesting enough, not enough. The cruelest part of the cost is that she often blames herself for a problem that has nothing to do with her.
Many men believe that what they do in private does not affect the relationship because she does not know. This is the central lie. She may not know the specific behavior, but she lives inside its consequences every day. The reduced desire. The emotional distance. The way you look at your phone. The fact that you seem to need less from her than she needs from you.
Disclosure is a separate question — the Getting Close to Her Again course handles that. But the cost itself does not require disclosure to be real. It is already being paid, silently, by both of you.
Men in recovery who have partners describe a shift that is difficult to explain but impossible to miss. They start wanting their partner again. Not performing desire. Feeling it. She notices before he says a word.
She lives inside the consequences of the habit whether she knows about it or not. Recovery changes what she feels, not just what you do.
If partnered: tonight, put your phone away and be fully present for 30 minutes. No agenda. Just proximity. Notice what happens.