[Littlelostkitten17]

Hi,
I’ve been married to my husband for almost three years now. About six months after being married I discovered his secret, porn addiction, and not just watching porn and masturbating, but also sexting and online webcam sessions… I confronted him and he told me he would stop. A few months later I got pregnant and he still hadnt stopped so I was extremely close to getting an abortion because I did not want to bring a baby into our relationship when we were obviously having issues. But I didn’t get an abortion and we saw a church marriage counselor and he started gettin help from an addiction group at our church and I honestly thought things were getting better. He would slip up here and there. But now our daughter is just over a year old and he is still going at it. About a week ago I asked to look at his phone in the morning and he told me no so I shrugge it off and when I got home that night I asked again and he let me, he had deleted a lot of text messages and signed out of all his social networks so I couldn’t view them. However I checked his browser history and discovered he was still doing it and full on flat out lied to me about it.
I’m so tired of trying and so tired of feeling like crap every time I discover he’s at it again. I’ve told him several times how it makes me feel. He says he understands, he says he will stop, he says he just needs time, but its like its been two years and you’re still at it and you’re even lieing to me about it. I have to do what’s best for my little girl, I work with children day in and day out I’ve seen what an unstable relationship does to a child and I cant let that happen to mine. And after everything I don’t even know if I still really love him, I say it but I don’t even know if its real. Please help me.

[AskApril Masini]

Your husband appears to be an addict, and you discovered his addiction six months into your marriage — I don’t know how long you knew him before marriage, but apparently you didn’t know about it while you were dating, or you saw clues and didn’t recognize them at the time. Now, he won’t give up his “substance”, which in this case, is porn and sexual internet relationships with other women. You can continue to confront him with this, but it won’t help. You can’t get him to stop — he has to want to stop, and right now he doesn’t. The lying and dishonesty goes hand in hand with addiction. Addicts, regardless of the “substance” they choose — alcohol, porn, shopping, drugs — always choose their relationship with their substance over relationships with people. I know it’s hard for you to understand this because you’re not an addict, but you might start seeing clues in his family history of addiction.

So, now you have some tough choices to make. You can’t change him, but you can change your own behavior. That’s the tough reality for people who are in relationships with addicts, whether they’re spouses, children, parents or friends of the addict. I feel badly saying this to you, because I can tell you’re devastated about the possible failure of your marriage, but unless he decides to address his addiction and put his health first, then you and his family life, this is going to continue and escalate. Your first priority has to be the safety of your daughter, so my advice is to address this concern with her pediatrician. It’s important that you are not endangering her because you care about him. She has to come first here because she can’t make choices that you can and you are responsible for her welfare and safety. Work with your pediatrician to develop a safety plan for your daughter. If your pediatrician isn’t helpful, get a new one who is.

I don’t think that if you stay with him, he will change. Addicts have to hit a “bottom” in order to decide to change. Sometimes the bottom is losing a job. Sometimes it’s losing a string of jobs. Sometimes it’s losing family. Sometimes it’s losing their own health. Sometimes it’s going to jail. I don’t know what his bottom is that will get him to make changes in his life.

But for you, the motivation has to be 1) The safety of your daughter and 2) The reality that he will continue to cheat on you with this addiction and it is going to get worse unless he chooses to change, and this isn’t a good life for you as long as he doesn’t.

I hope that that helps. Let me know how things go.

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