Pornography series: Introduction

My first real encounter with pornography was a rude one. It was not, as it is with so many others, a picture in a magazine or on the internet. It wasn’t an “earthy” romance novel.
It happened one fall day, when I came home after several hours of classes and midterms, and found a half-empty house. My husband had left me, with no warning. He had been perfectly pleasant that morning. I remembered laughing about something over breakfast. He had kissed me as I went out the door to classes. I almost couldn’t believe it, looking around at the carpet-notches where furniture had been, at my baby alone in her swing. And then the clincher, as I walked into the master bedroom: his wedding ring, left on the bare mattress, on top of a neat stack of papers: the car title, the rent agreement, and divorce papers printed off of the internet.
Before this last shoe dropped in the ruin of my first marriage, things had been very confusing for me. My husband had proven himself to be utterly unpredictable. He was part amazing, hard-working, loving father, decent man and priesthood holder, and part childish, selfish, petulant, vindictive son-of-a-gun. This second side of him manifested only rarely. The first time it came out was three months into our marriage, when he took a knife with him into the bathroom and threatened suicide because I disagreed with him about how to cook biscuits. It was puzzling, confusing, scary to me. I felt disbelief, disgust, anger, fear, sadness… in that order, and in rapid succession. I could not internalize it or face it. After each of these rare encounters that seemed to occur every few months, we would talk. I would say that we need to get counseling, and he would cry, he would hug me and apologize, we would make up and forget about it. Except for the little remnants of sadness and fear that were left behind for both of us.

How does one deal with a situation like that? You love him, you are utterly bewildered by him, you realize there must be something more to it, and it effectively destroys your trust each time. You need to know what is up, but at the same time you do not want to think about what it might be. You ask him during a period of calm and trust, and he just shrugs you off and says it won’t happen again, so why discuss it further. Why even worry about it.

I’ll tell you how you deal with it: you start to feel that it must be partly your own fault. You start to think that, obviously, you’re not a good spouse or you would be able to forestall these scary outbursts. You’re also starting to wonder if something might be wrong with you, not him, because you’re becoming increasingly more paranoid and untrusting; you are starting to spy on him, to look for ways he might be lying to you. When you find what looks like might be evidence of something, you are sick inside, and also afraid, because you know you have to ask him, which means you have to admit to not trusting him, and the whole house of cards seems like it might come crashing down around you.

My husband finally confessed to the bishop. After being away for a couple of days, he rushed back, moving van and all, completely apologetic and penitent. I found out then that he had been hiding a pornography addiction from me. My feeling was almost relief. I hadn’t asked for this kind of baggage when I knelt across from the kind, soft-spoken, worthy priesthood holder I had come to love and respect. But pornography was better than extramarital sex. It was better than him not loving me anymore. It was better than the prospect of raising my baby daughter all by myself, and having to explain to her that her dad had left us.

But then he confessed to more and more… it started coming out, all the deception. He had dropped out of school and used the tuition for pornography. He had spent every day at home looking at porn instead of playing with, diapering, and feeding our child. He had gone to a strip club while I was away at a friend’s wedding (and then bought roses for me when I came home.) While I was in labor with our daughter, he left my hospital bedside, not to study for a test as I had thought, but to go play video games and look at porn. As the confessions poured out I started to wonder if I really could live with this alter ego of his. It was too much to take in… I had been so successfully deceived. How would I ever trust him again? Was it possible for him to recover? For me, it ended soon after that, when I found out that my husband had tried to poison me, three times. The attempts took place soon after one of the turbulent confrontations we had several months before.
He went to jail, and we were divorced. It was almost the easier solution, in the end, but I am still haunted by it. The only peace I found at the time was a spiritual confirmation that divorce was the right choice. I know now (with 20/20 hindsight) that divorce was the best option for my own well being, as well as my addicted, mentally-unstable husband’s.
But my case was unique. Not many husbands, entrenched as they may be in their addictions, do something so drastic that the marriage ends practically by default. There are countless spouses, fiancées, and girlfriends and boyfriends out there that have to address this issue in a situation that is not nearly so clean cut. The questions that these couples all have to face are, “is it worth it, or should I just walk away? I love her, but is love enough? What can I do to help her?” Also, “What if he never gets over this. Could I live with a spouse that has a pornography addiction?”

An addict or a habitual user often feels helpless. They realize that they are in trouble, because they feel out of control and they do not like the person they have become as a result of deception and addiction. They feel unworthy of trust and love. They feel too full of shame to seek help. Once they have gotten to the point where they realize they have a problem, they sometimes doubt that there really is a way out.

This series is an attempt help people find their own answers to these difficult questions and problems. It is also my way of trying to start a conversation that needs to be started: about pornography and LDS people. As Jodi Hildebrandt from the Lifestar program says, sexual addictions are fed by shame and silence. I hope that, in the few weeks that follow, people will speak up about pornography. I hope that people can offer one another frank feedback and support. Because Pornography is out there, and it is prevalent. Encountering it is pretty much inevitable in today’s world. And if we stay in denial, and let fear keep us from addressing it, the problem will continue to worsen and spread, and good LDS people will continue to feel hopeless and ashamed, rather than empowered, informed, and capable to overcome.