My husband was addicted to pornography before I ever met him. When he told me about it either when we were engaged, or within a couple months of being married, he also told me he wouldn’t view it any more now that he was married. I thought this made sense. It was just a phase single guys go through because they are curious or something. Well, later when I was pregnant with our first child he started viewing it again. This time when he got around to telling me, I thought it was my fault. I was fat and pregnant and often too tired to have sex, so of course he would rather look at skinny sexy women than me. We worked past it and I forgave him, and learned it wasn’t my fault.
The next time he viewed pornography was several months postpartum. He was staying up to care for the baby at night, and other people helped me during the day. We were almost never spending time together. He said he was watching hulu all night, but in between hulu shows he would watch some porn too. He said he was staying up at night to help with the baby but he stopped expressing love to me and I often went to bed alone without a hug, kiss, or cuddle. This sent me into some postpartum depression. I was extremely unhappy, but I couldn’t figure out why till he told me he had been viewing porn again. It all made sense, his neglecting me, his late nights, his lack of affection toward me. We went to some counseling and overcame it once again. I forgave him again, and he tried to assure me this would be the end of it. And I thought that I would know what to look for if he did do it again. The neglect and lack of affection would be dead give aways.
The next incident was about a year later. When my husband went on a trip to Las Vegas for business without me, he escalated from porn to a strip club. I was one or two months pregnant with our second child, and my emotions were going crazy with my hormones. When he returned from the trip he knew it would just shatter me if he told me all the things he’d done while in Vagas. Now I’m almost to the end of my second trimester and was feeling particularly happy and normal when he got up the courage to tell me. When he finally admitted to me what he did I’ve never felt so betrayed.
For us this really is a very complex issue because he has Tourette Syndrome, and with it for him anyway, comes a lack of impulse control. Most people think about their actions before they do them. For him this doesn’t always happen. He’ll do something, then after it’s over he can’t believe he did it and he will be so completely sorry that it’s hard to be mad or punish him, because he tortures himself over it so much. I am torn between my love and empathy for him and his condition, and the hurt and betrayal from what he did. He was just sobbing when he explained what he did. Because of what happened last time he said, “but I’ve still been a good husband and father.” As we talked more however he realized that his actions did affect his role as husband and father and he hadn’t been as good as he could have been, and he apologized. The hardest thing is trying to trust him again. I don’t know how much I can trust him any more, and I know trust is an essential element of marriage. We believe strongly in the sanctity of marriage and that divorce should only be considered in cases of abuse or something like that, where the whole family is better off without the marriage. We are seeking counseling once again to work through our problems.
I tried to seek help through facebook, but couldn’t find any private groups for families of porn addicts, only public pages where anyone could see anything I post as a comment. I didn’t want to share so publicly with no way of even being anonymous. I created a fake profile just for this purpose, and then created my own group for others seeking a private place to gain empathy and support as they work to keep their family together. http://www.facebook.com/groups/264595853556691/
