Journal Portion 5

I can't remember everything that I talked to my husband's father about.  Most of it was just about the specific details of my husband's pornography addiction and patterns in his behavior.  But then he told me something that is very true.  I was lied to before I was married and did not have the full truth to base a decision on.  He said that I now have the truth and that the time to decide whether or not to stay married is now.  Not in two years and definitely not in ten years when children are likely to be involved.  The truth of that hit me hard.  My husband's father emphasized that this is not just something that my husband will deal with and get over now.  As a result of his past choices, my husband will deal with this addiction his entire life.  I feel strongly that this is the truth.  It is up to my husband to decide whether he will let this addiction drive him to view pornography, but it is likely that he will always be tempted.

His dad also believes that my husband will relapse in this behavior, be dishonest, and try to hide it every time.  My husband doesn't agree with that, but his track record sure seems to indicate that it is accurate.  I believe that my husband can overcome this.  I don't think he will necessarily succumb to this addiction his whole life even though it will always be an addiction.  So I don't know if what his dad said about about him slipping again and again and lying about it will necessarily be true, but it seems to be the pattern in his life so far and that definitely concerns me.  His parents had found ways to monitor him and recognize signals for when they suspected that he had reverted to pornography.  The thought of having to almost babysit a husband and make sure to watch for signals of pornography is overwhelming to me and almost too much to bear.  

The fact is that my heart has been so torn and broken by this, I just know I couldn't survive if a second chance became a third chance and so on.  I cannot go through this again.  I have literally had a taste of hell this week.  I know that a relapse does not have to occur, but I just don't know if my husband is willing to do what it will take to prevent it.  I question his sincerity.  The fact is, he did not come forward or try to repent--he was caught.  I can see the sorrow he is experiencing now, but I truly question if he is only sorry that he got caught.

I should also note that I have given a lot of thought to being able to tolerate a relapse of some kind.  I am very aware that most people struggling with pornography addictions suffer occasional small relapses.  This does not mean that they should give up or be discouraged.  Even though a small relapse would be difficult, I think I might be able to handle it if my husband was honest about it.  There is a huge distinction between a small slip up and being fully immersed in pornography for great amounts of time with no resolve to be clean again.  I have no tolerance for pornography, but I will have to grapple with the possibility of some small relapses because I want my husband to be honest about them if they do occur.

During the time with my husband's father, I began to be skeptical that this had only been occurring for the month that my husband had originally said.  After I talked to my husband's father alone, we all spoke together for a few moments.  I asked my husband how long he had really been looking at pornography again and told him I felt strongly that he had lied to me at first.  He admitted that it did not just start in January and that it had really started last October.  It had been close to six months that he had been looking at pornography almost daily.  My worst suspicions were confirmed--he had been looking at pornography for over half of our marriage!  I had been lied to and deceived for over half of the time we had spent together married.  I felt like my entire marriage was a fraud and it killed me.

Journal Portion 3

My thoughts are all over the place when I try to write.  I feel like I have a strong hold on my thoughts and convictions, its just hard to write it all.  I guess I will start again where I left off before the fireside the other day.  Sunday night, after my friends left, I told my husband I wanted to talk to him about something.  I was very calm about it and all I said was, "I found some files on the computer and wondered if you could explain them."  He knew exactly what I was talking about and immediately jumped into an explanation about how Friday night he had wanted to stream an NBA game online, but that he had chanced upon some links that were not right.  Earlier in the week we had been doing a search for the TV show The Office and had accidentally stumbled upon an inappropriate link.  Of course, we didn't click on it and just hit back on the browser so we didn't see anything inappropriate.  I guess he was making an attempt to conveniently use the same concept.  But of course that was different because these weren't just links, they were downloaded windows media files.  

He then looked at me and said, "You know I love you and I would never do anything to hurt you."  I wanted to believe him, but I sensed that I wasn't getting the whole truth.  Because of the explicit nature of the file names, he would have had to known what he was downloading before he opened them.  Plus there were numerous files, not just one.  I told him that I believed him, but asked him if he would show me what he was talking about for my own benefit.  He said there was a website with a bunch of different internet "stations" that allowed you to watch sports games and that one of them just must not have been what it claimed to be.  He then appeared to be "searching" for the supposed website that he had "been using to try to get an NBA game" and it became pretty evident that he was not telling the truth.  Even then, I still believed him.  It truly scared me what a good liar he is.  Finally after a few minutes of pointless "searching" I got up to brush my teeth.  I looked at him and all I said was "that doesn't make sense."

When I walked out of the bathroom, he met me with a face and disposition that said it all.  He quickly spilled, "I don't want this to become an issue.  I've had a problem with pornography since high school  It has started again-since last month."  I just sat on the couch, stunned.  I was so hurt that he had lied to my face.  I quickly reflected on a time when we were dating that I had asked him if he had ever had a problem with pornography.   It was after a priesthood session near General Conference and the prophet had addressed the problem of pornography.  I can sort of understand why he did, but he had lied to me then too.  It was hard to take in.

I asked him exactly when he started viewing pornography again and when he did it.  He told me it was a few weeks into January and that he had been accessing it on the internet during the day when he came home for lunch between school and work.  The part that killed me the most then was that I knew he had probably frequently been texting me while he was looking at pornography.  It blew my mind.  

I asked him if he just thought I would never find out and he said, "No it always comes out."  Then I said, "So you knew that I would find out.  What did you think that would do to me?"  He answered that he knew it would destroy me.  I was so upset and then replied, "So you knew I would find out and that it would absolutely destroy me, but you still did it?"  It really hurts that he consciously put pornography above me.  He always says "you are the most important thing to me" but that is obviously not true.  It hurts me so much how selfish he is.