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My husband and I used to watch porn together occasionally when we dated in college, and I thought it was just a dumb and stupid thing all guys did, so I figured he was no different than the rest of the college guys I knew. We dated in a long-distance relationship for five years before getting married. We continued to watch porn occasionally after we were married. However, by the second year of our marriage, I realized watching a man ejaculate on a woman’s face with her looking like she was on cloud nine was no longer funny. I saw it as degrading, and it didn’t turn me on one bit. I expressed this to my husband, and I told him he could keep watching porn if he wanted to, but I wouldn’t be watching it anymore. I think there was a part of me that thought, Surely, he will stop watching this trash, we haven’t been married long, and we could be having sex!
My husband continued to watch it for hours in our living room while I amused myself with television, reading, or talking on the phone. I just figured watching porn was my husband’s thing. Besides, I knew where he was, and he wasn’t out with some other woman. He even purchased another VHS recorder so he could dub the tapes. I know this sounds crazy, and it sounds crazy as I am typing it, but I am not the same woman I was then, which is why this seems so crazy writing this now as I reflect on the past, and the sad part is this story only gets crazier.
By year three of our marriage, I discovered he had spent $150 at a place where the women strip behind a glass window. I found out about this because I saw a strange credit card charge on our bank statement. I called the place and pretended I wanted information on their services for a party I wanted to have there. The lady told me they didn’t offer parties; they strip.
I confronted my husband about it, and he admitted the truth, which confirmed what the lady told me when I called the place my husband visited. The idea that my husband would pay to see a naked woman strip behind a glass window didn’t make any sense to me because I already knew about the porn and figured that was enough to satisfy his “just a man thing” fetish. This particular incident felt like a betrayal, and I couldn’t understand why he would pay money to see a woman strip when he had me, a young wife who wanted to have sex with him. I found myself pondering maybe there was something I wasn’t doing in the bedroom. Perhaps I didn’t satisfy him. I started to question whether there was something about me that was deficient. I even bought a book to help me get some answers.
However, he never indicated he was unhappy sexually in the five years we dated before getting married, so none of this made any sense. I needed to process this with someone because cussing my husband out and crying wasn’t giving me any relief.
I started seeing a graduate Christian counseling student who was seeing clients through the church we attended. However, I got frustrated with the therapist because she was a “no show” for an appointment, I was still miserable, but I wasn’t ready to divorce my husband over the incident. I told myself to move on because he didn’t physically cheat on me. My husband apologized, and that was about it. I know, crazy!
THEN COMES THE AFFAIR
Shortly after this time, I discovered he cheated on me. I was looking for a television remote control, and I found it in a drawer; as I reached for the remote control, I saw a $1000 wire transfer on a bank statement. The wire transfer caught my eye for two reasons: One, we had just bought a house, and money was tight, so the $1,000 wire seemed odd, plus it left our account low. Two, we didn’t transfer money to people. That’s just something we didn’t do.
My husband gave me a sob story about needing to help someone. However, something didn’t sit right with me. Then I looked at the phone bill to track phone calls from the woman he claimed he sent the money to help her out. I met the woman previously at a class reunion and didn’t think anything of it. She had been on the phone with him a couple of times after the reunion. However, my husband was on the phone with a couple of other males and females. I was happy to see my husband connect with his friends because that wasn’t something he did so, I thought connecting with high school friends was good for him.
I went to work the next day, so upset that I couldn’t concentrate. I ended up leaving work early. I called my husband while I was driving home, and he told me the truth. I was hysterical, and I attempted to stab him when he got home.
The truth was he had sex with the woman twice. She lived in his hometown, where he had visited twice after the reunion, having sex with her on both occasions.
I called the woman to let her know I knew what was going on, she denied it; I told her she was an uneducated whore and my husband would never leave me for her. She was married with kids, and I just figured he wouldn’t leave our marriage to be with a married woman with three kids.
My husband called her back with me in the room and asked her again if she was ever pregnant (the real reason he wired her the money), and she seemed very offended. He told her they would never see each other again, and she told him she knew that. She also indicated the sex wasn’t that good anyway. She could hear me crying in the background, and I remember her commenting she knew how I felt because her husband cheated on her. I remember thinking, Is that her way of saying sorry or justifying what she did?
Here I am, young and utterly clueless up until this point. Even with the porn and the private strip room, I never thought my husband would have sex with another woman. In hindsight, his porn activity and the private strip room were infidelities, but I didn’t see them that way at the time. The sick part is I thought it was because of the porn and the strip room that he wouldn’t cheat (have intercourse with someone) because he was already getting his fix.
I started seeing a therapist because I didn’t know how to deal with the rage and PTSD symptoms. I distinctly remember my therapist repeatedly asking me about a support system. She wanted to know who I had for support. I said I had my mom and one good friend, but that was it. My close friend listened to me, but she couldn’t relate to my situation.
I did visit two close friends who insisted I connect with them. So although they both lived out of state, I went away for a short visit. My sister lived in the same city, but she understood my visit was about support and connection, so she didn’t mind that I spent most of the time with my girlfriends instead of her. Besides, she knew there wasn’t much comfort she could give me. The getaway was nice, but I was the first person out of my college girlfriends to get married, so I didn’t have a group of any kind for support to share my pain with who could genuinely relate to what I was going through.
However, I can see why the therapist asked me about support. I didn’t at the time; this wasn’t something you wanted to share with a bunch of women, or so I thought. I had always been self-reliant, so getting a therapist and reading the books she suggested to me was my way of dealing with the problem.
My husband eventually started seeing a therapist. My therapist thought my husband might be a sex addict based on the history I shared with her. My husband discussed it with his therapist and even took a questionnaire, but he was adamant that he wasn’t a sex addict. I had never even heard of sex addiction and didn’t fully understand what it was. Finally, my husband told me the questionnaire showed he wasn’t an addict, and I was relieved.
We started attending Couples therapy shortly, facilitated by both of our therapists. However, my husband’s company relocated us to a different state, so we ended the counseling. One good thing was I would be closer to my family, which I figured would be great, especially if I ended up divorcing him. I started researching therapists as soon as we got to the new state, but my husband didn’t have any interest in it, so I got mad and decided, Well, since you are the one who cheated and you don’t want to go to therapy then I sure as hell ain’t going.
KEEP MOVING ON
The next couple of years, we tried to start a new chapter in our marriage; since we were in a new city, we continued to work on our marriage and build our life together. We occasionally talked about the infidelity; the sentiment was his behavior, which he apologized for and regretted, was a mistake. I forgave him. We both wanted to move forward, not wallow in the past.
We had two children, and they became our focus, but porn was still in the background. Finally, I would get upset and confront him; sometimes, he would apologize or give me a blank stare. He even made a production about throwing out his VHS tapes to prove a new commitment to ending the porn use.
I also prided myself as a strong woman; I wasn’t going to become undone over his “fetish. “I would often tell myself, Hell, I don’t care he can have the porn. I had two children to raise.
THE PORN WAS BECOMING AN ISSUE
After years of having porn in the background, I no longer yelled at my husband or gave him the silent treatment when I discovered him watching porn. I told myself I was above the situation, above him, and I didn’t care anymore. My respect for my husband began to dwindle but so did my sexual self-esteem. I started telling myself I wasn’t enough for him, so I had to tolerate the porn; this was my punishment, and I was a strong woman, so I would accept it and move on. Besides, he wasn’t cheating on me with a live person; I figured he would never cheat again and risk losing his family this time. I didn’t realize it at the time. Still, now I can see where I rationalized, justified, minimized, and denied the effects of his behavior on the marriage, the family, and most importantly myself.
My husband’s employer moved us thousands of miles away, this time to an area I never had any desire to visit, much less live. I was not happy about this or the way my husband handled the move. I felt blind-sighted and angry. So I started seeing a therapist about my struggles with the relocation. I wanted to be there for my children, and I wanted to be a positive example of handling change. Not to mention I wanted to help them manage the move, which they weren’t happy about either.
One day I heard strange noises from the computer, which I suspected was porn. It took what seemed forever to pull the porn up on the screen. When I saw the porn, I was disturbed by what I saw, but I figured my kids could have pulled this up in a few minutes with no problem if they had heard the noise I heard. They were old enough to operate a computer.
Ironically, I had an appointment with the therapist that same day. Although the porn wasn’t why I saw her, I shared the incident and the porn history with her. The therapist just about fell out of her chair; as I rattled on. My therapist’s reaction was the first time a professional therapist had reacted to the mention of my husband’s porn use this way. I talked about the porn like I would rattle off a “to do” list, and she was disturbed. It was the first time someone made me realize this was not an excellent backdrop to be living in.
The therapist told me I should look into a support group. I was shocked because I thought, “seriously, you mean there are support groups for this stuff – you got to be kidding me.” Besides, I hadn’t even shared the whole story with her. If she knew everything, she might have had a heart attack.
IT’S A GOD THING HONEY
I had been attending a church as a visitor at the time. A week later, I saw a church bulletin posting about a support group for women in relationships with men who struggle with sexual integrity issues called Every Woman’s Battle. I knew it was a God thing because I hadn’t started looking into a support group. I had no idea where to begin finding that type of support group. It took me a few weeks to go to my first meeting because of childcare issues, but I finally went.
By this time, my husband admitted to being addicted to porn, and he started attending a support group for all types of addictions. However, I found out about a group that dealt more specifically with my husband’s issue, which he chose to attend instead. We also started seeing a marriage counselor.
I also started reading My Husband Has A Secret: Finding Healing for the Betrayal of Sexual Addiction by Molly Ann Miller about her story of being married to a Sex Addict. This book was intriguing, but I told myself This book doesn’t apply to me because my husband was addicted to porn, not a sex addict like the author’s husband. Mrs. Miller’s book left me questioning some of her choices and saying to myself; I am so glad my husband isn’t that bad. I can’t imagine what I would do if my situation were like hers.
The group facilitator suggested I consider attending S-ANON meetings, but I figured S-ANON was for wives of the real sickos. So I politely declined the invitation.
We worked out of a workbook in Every Woman’s Battle, which covered a chapter on disclosure. I read the material and realized I never received a disclosure; my husband confessed to the affair in the past, but he would put his head down or apologize every time I would catch him with porn. So I started to wonder if there was more to my husband’s story.
Not soon after that realization, I found my husband in the bedroom, masturbating in the bed. The television wasn’t even on; he didn’t even need porn at this point. I slept in the other room to process what I had just witnessed. I had been to enough Every Woman’s Battle meetings now to realize my husband had a real problem, and it wasn’t about me. I asked for disclosure the next day.
I had to wait about three weeks before I received one. My husband sought his therapist’s help at the time to write a complete disclosure detailing information that stemmed back to his childhood.
Someone in my support group offered to be present with me while receiving the disclosure, and I declined the offer, so she told me she would be around that day if I felt like I needed to talk to someone; rejecting her request was a mistake.
#BetrayedNotBroken