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Copyright 2007-2008. Porn Addict Hubby. All rights reserved.
| PornAddictHubby.com |
| Relationship Rescue for Wives and Girlfriends of Internet Pornography Addicts |
This site is for informational purposes and is not meant to be a substitute for professional counseling.
A Life Ended Too Soon
The following article was written by a widow of a porn addict. It is a thought provoking read for
a number of reasons. It shows you how porn addiction played itself out to the end in one family.
It illustrates how an addictive personality can start off with one vice (porn) and make the switch
to another (alcohol). It also highlights the sad reality of our society. There are socially accepted
support systems for spouses of alcoholics. Resources and social support for spouses of porn
addicts are still few and far between. Most importantly, it warns of the long term ramifications
of turning a blind eye to a partner's problem of impotence. It is a story worth sharing if it can
help prevent another family from facing a similar fate.
I was married for over 30 years to someone who craved pictures of naked women during the entire time we were married. As crazy as this might sound, I
blame, at least in part, his porn addiction and his underlying emotional problems for his death from prostate cancer a few months ago. In his mid-50s, my
husband ignored the one symptom of prostate cancer he had, impotence. The cancer was only diagnosed when he developed pain in his hips – the cancer
was already at Stage IV, metastasized through most of his bones. Yes, he had regular PSA tests, but those tests can be very unreliable. My husband had a
little over a year between diagnosis and his death. Porn addiction deeply harmed us both emotionally, and it was one of the diseases that killed him, along
with depression, obesity, workaholism, alcoholism, and cancer.
I realized recently that, more than 25 years ago when my husband he was in his early 30s and I in my late 20s, I was embarrassed at just how little sex we
had. Early in our marriage, when sex still seemed important to both of us, my husband was only interested in initiating sex once every week or two, and
he would never initiate sex if anything was wrong. Sex could only happen if everything was perfect, so that translated into almost never. Any problem was
reason enough to shelve sex indefinitely.
In those early years, I let my husband know I wanted a more active sexual relationship, but he told me on more than one occasion that sex was not really
interesting because I was selfish in bed, particularly because I didn’t care for variety like he did. (Even though I had very little sexual experience when we
met, I soon found it very easy to be satisfied.) Ten or fifteen years ago, I just gave up on initiating sex because I found the rejections just too humiliating. I
chose to live essentially a celibate life than face another rejection.
My husband convinced himself that his need for different forms of porn had nothing to do with the ever-decreasing amount of sex we had. When we met,
his interest in porn seemed limited to the ‘mainstream’ publications, Playboy and Penthouse, with maybe an occasional Hustler magazine. He had an ever-
growing collection of photographs he saved from the magazines, and his excuse was that he was saving those photos to use in his artwork (something that
somehow never happened). Over the years, I found that he moved into different media of porn: videos; 900 phone lines; porn over the Internet; and
eventually chat rooms. I didn't have the will or means to monitor his Internet use constantly -- I usually came across the telltale signs by accident: a
massive phone bill with many 900-phone line charges or stumbling into the TV room in the middle of the night to find him watching some video with
unbelievable close-up views of genitalia colliding. (The videos were certainly no depiction of anything one might call ‘making love.’) During our marriage, I
doubt my husband ever had an extramarital sexual relationship that included physical contact, but I do know that he pursued on-line affairs.
I repeatedly tried to convince my husband that his use of porn deeply wounded me, but he was always dismissive of my feelings about the porn. I couldn’t
get him to accept in any way that his use of porn was tantamount to marital infidelity. I worried over the years at the impact his use of porn would have
on our daughters, and I’ve never shared any of this with them. In recent years, I found out that our daughters spent many nights of their childhood
frightened because they could hear us fighting. I don’t know whether they ever realized that those fights in the middle of the night always started the
same way – I would go downstairs to find my husband, once again, watching a porn video or visiting Internet porn sites.
Sex between us became even rarer. At one point, I refused to keep up with when we had last made love, because knowing how long it had been made
accepting the sexless reality so much harder to deal with. Fifteen years ago, we might have had sex four or five times a year. Later on, a year or more
would go by in between our trying to make love. I have no idea how many years it’s been since we had intercourse. Impotence became a bigger and bigger
issue, so intercourse was practically impossible. I resented the fact that, even though Viagra had helped him have become aroused on one or two occasions,
he refused to take it because it made him “see funny” the next day. On very rare occasions, usually in the middle of the night, one of us might stumble
into each other’s arms and make love after a fashion. At some point, my husband confessed to me that nothing could arouse him. I quickly assume that he
meant he could no longer masturbate successfully, but later I realized that he had discovered porn could no longer arouse him.
Along with the porn, my husband worked in high-stress jobs, jobs dealing with the worst of human suffering. He brought the work home with him, into
dinner conversations overheard by our children and into his dreams at night. After he quit smoking, he became addicted to eating. My husband developed
serious health problems because of obesity; it was very difficult to get him to get regular, consistent medical treatment. The problems on the job, coupled
with the health problems, triggered years of clinical depression.
Several years ago, my husband was fired from his job, largely because the health problems had made it impossible to work impossibly long work weeks. For
the next four to five months, we tried to cope as best we could with the changes brought about by his losing his job that seemed to be his for life. I was
relieved that we had little to fight about in those months, because he seemed so mellow. I denied to myself just how much liquor he was bringing into the
house; one of our children told me he was spending a good portion of each day alone in his study with a drink. I did ask him repeatedly to stop drinking.
Less than a week after a huge crisis with one of our children, my husband went to an emergency room with what seemed to be the symptoms of a stroke.
Two days later, a physician informed us both that the tests instead had shown alcohol abuse. A couple of weeks later I went to an Al-Anon meeting. I found
some degree of sanity in Al-Anon, but my husband never became an AA regular. In the next almost-two years, he may have drunk alone – he did continue to
have one or two glasses of wine when we were with friends. As with the porn addiction, he refused to acknowledge that his use of alcohol was alcoholism.
Through the three decades, I never felt comfortable sharing what was going on with someone who might help me confront him. Three women friends did
know that he was impotent for much of our marriage and know that he looked at porn through all those years. We did have different kinds of counseling
over the years and went through about two years of rather intense marital counseling. The porn addiction was never addressed directly, probably because
we were both so reluctant to expose the dirty little secret, and I certainly wasn’t ready to name my husband’s use. Because of the magnitude of our
financial problems at the time, we did not look for counseling to cope with the alcoholism during the rather short period it was in our lives.
Why do I believe that porn addiction led to my husband’s death? My husband refused to seek out solutions for his impotence during those years. I believe
that his continuing use of porn through a variety of media made it easy for him to get some kind of satisfaction, with no need for the kind of emotional
intimacy required for sex with me. My husband's internist gave him regular PSA tests, which varied from the low-normal to the higher end of the
borderline-danger level. The only symptom of possible prostate cancer that my husband had was the ongoing impotence. If he had seriously sought out
help for the impotence, as opposed to closeting himself all those years with the computer and the 900 numbers, I believe that a good urologist would have
noticed what was behind the impotence.
All this would sound like water under the bridge, but for my realization at just how damaged I am from years of being rejected sexually. To the rest of the
world, my husband seemed like the most gracious, kindest man imaginable, but his obsession with porn made him a lousy husband and sent him to an early
grave. After realizing how hurt I’ve been by his porn addiction, I've joined a co-dependents' group in my area for people affected by their partners' sex
addictions. I was damaged a lot more by my husband’s porn addiction than by the alcohol addiction, which only affected us in the last years of his life.
Since I joined Al-Anon, I’ve learned enough about addiction to realize that my husband turned to porn because he could control that in a way he couldn't
control me or other people in his life. He had a large cesspool of anger and hurt about many things, but he believed than any manifestations of anger, no
matter how justified, were wrong. Porn eventually deadened him to all joy in the bedroom, especially as he required more and more to become aroused. If
he had cared more about having sex with me for all these years, that prostate gland of his would have been checked out a lot sooner. Back when we were
having those fights, I wish I'd known more about addictions. Forcing an intervention might have given back a lot to our marriage and may have given him
more years of life.
Impotence is one of the first possible signs of several serious health problems. I accepted for too long the idea that his impotence was his emotional
problem or our relationship problem. A man who enjoys a good sex life with his wife isn't going to accept impotence as "just one of
those things," and his wife can be instrumental in helping him get to a doctor who can help. I feel like our resignation to no sex life cheated us both of a
lot of joy. I was very involved in other parts of his health care, but I didn't know enough about the part of his body that killed him. In the end, the porn
deadened both of us, in more ways than one.
PAH
The following article was written by a widow of a porn addict. It is a thought provoking read for
a number of reasons. It shows you how porn addiction played itself out to the end in one family.
It illustrates how an addictive personality can start off with one vice (porn) and make the switch
to another (alcohol). It also highlights the sad reality of our society. There are socially accepted
support systems for spouses of alcoholics. Resources and social support for spouses of porn
addicts are still few and far between. Most importantly, it warns of the long term ramifications
of turning a blind eye to a partner's problem of impotence. It is a story worth sharing if it can
help prevent another family from facing a similar fate.
I was married for over 30 years to someone who craved pictures of naked women during the entire time we were married. As crazy as this might sound, I
blame, at least in part, his porn addiction and his underlying emotional problems for his death from prostate cancer a few months ago. In his mid-50s, my
husband ignored the one symptom of prostate cancer he had, impotence. The cancer was only diagnosed when he developed pain in his hips – the cancer
was already at Stage IV, metastasized through most of his bones. Yes, he had regular PSA tests, but those tests can be very unreliable. My husband had a
little over a year between diagnosis and his death. Porn addiction deeply harmed us both emotionally, and it was one of the diseases that killed him, along
with depression, obesity, workaholism, alcoholism, and cancer.
I realized recently that, more than 25 years ago when my husband he was in his early 30s and I in my late 20s, I was embarrassed at just how little sex we
had. Early in our marriage, when sex still seemed important to both of us, my husband was only interested in initiating sex once every week or two, and
he would never initiate sex if anything was wrong. Sex could only happen if everything was perfect, so that translated into almost never. Any problem was
reason enough to shelve sex indefinitely.
In those early years, I let my husband know I wanted a more active sexual relationship, but he told me on more than one occasion that sex was not really
interesting because I was selfish in bed, particularly because I didn’t care for variety like he did. (Even though I had very little sexual experience when we
met, I soon found it very easy to be satisfied.) Ten or fifteen years ago, I just gave up on initiating sex because I found the rejections just too humiliating. I
chose to live essentially a celibate life than face another rejection.
My husband convinced himself that his need for different forms of porn had nothing to do with the ever-decreasing amount of sex we had. When we met,
his interest in porn seemed limited to the ‘mainstream’ publications, Playboy and Penthouse, with maybe an occasional Hustler magazine. He had an ever-
growing collection of photographs he saved from the magazines, and his excuse was that he was saving those photos to use in his artwork (something that
somehow never happened). Over the years, I found that he moved into different media of porn: videos; 900 phone lines; porn over the Internet; and
eventually chat rooms. I didn't have the will or means to monitor his Internet use constantly -- I usually came across the telltale signs by accident: a
massive phone bill with many 900-phone line charges or stumbling into the TV room in the middle of the night to find him watching some video with
unbelievable close-up views of genitalia colliding. (The videos were certainly no depiction of anything one might call ‘making love.’) During our marriage, I
doubt my husband ever had an extramarital sexual relationship that included physical contact, but I do know that he pursued on-line affairs.
I repeatedly tried to convince my husband that his use of porn deeply wounded me, but he was always dismissive of my feelings about the porn. I couldn’t
get him to accept in any way that his use of porn was tantamount to marital infidelity. I worried over the years at the impact his use of porn would have
on our daughters, and I’ve never shared any of this with them. In recent years, I found out that our daughters spent many nights of their childhood
frightened because they could hear us fighting. I don’t know whether they ever realized that those fights in the middle of the night always started the
same way – I would go downstairs to find my husband, once again, watching a porn video or visiting Internet porn sites.
Sex between us became even rarer. At one point, I refused to keep up with when we had last made love, because knowing how long it had been made
accepting the sexless reality so much harder to deal with. Fifteen years ago, we might have had sex four or five times a year. Later on, a year or more
would go by in between our trying to make love. I have no idea how many years it’s been since we had intercourse. Impotence became a bigger and bigger
issue, so intercourse was practically impossible. I resented the fact that, even though Viagra had helped him have become aroused on one or two occasions,
he refused to take it because it made him “see funny” the next day. On very rare occasions, usually in the middle of the night, one of us might stumble
into each other’s arms and make love after a fashion. At some point, my husband confessed to me that nothing could arouse him. I quickly assume that he
meant he could no longer masturbate successfully, but later I realized that he had discovered porn could no longer arouse him.
Along with the porn, my husband worked in high-stress jobs, jobs dealing with the worst of human suffering. He brought the work home with him, into
dinner conversations overheard by our children and into his dreams at night. After he quit smoking, he became addicted to eating. My husband developed
serious health problems because of obesity; it was very difficult to get him to get regular, consistent medical treatment. The problems on the job, coupled
with the health problems, triggered years of clinical depression.
Several years ago, my husband was fired from his job, largely because the health problems had made it impossible to work impossibly long work weeks. For
the next four to five months, we tried to cope as best we could with the changes brought about by his losing his job that seemed to be his for life. I was
relieved that we had little to fight about in those months, because he seemed so mellow. I denied to myself just how much liquor he was bringing into the
house; one of our children told me he was spending a good portion of each day alone in his study with a drink. I did ask him repeatedly to stop drinking.
Less than a week after a huge crisis with one of our children, my husband went to an emergency room with what seemed to be the symptoms of a stroke.
Two days later, a physician informed us both that the tests instead had shown alcohol abuse. A couple of weeks later I went to an Al-Anon meeting. I found
some degree of sanity in Al-Anon, but my husband never became an AA regular. In the next almost-two years, he may have drunk alone – he did continue to
have one or two glasses of wine when we were with friends. As with the porn addiction, he refused to acknowledge that his use of alcohol was alcoholism.
Through the three decades, I never felt comfortable sharing what was going on with someone who might help me confront him. Three women friends did
know that he was impotent for much of our marriage and know that he looked at porn through all those years. We did have different kinds of counseling
over the years and went through about two years of rather intense marital counseling. The porn addiction was never addressed directly, probably because
we were both so reluctant to expose the dirty little secret, and I certainly wasn’t ready to name my husband’s use. Because of the magnitude of our
financial problems at the time, we did not look for counseling to cope with the alcoholism during the rather short period it was in our lives.
Why do I believe that porn addiction led to my husband’s death? My husband refused to seek out solutions for his impotence during those years. I believe
that his continuing use of porn through a variety of media made it easy for him to get some kind of satisfaction, with no need for the kind of emotional
intimacy required for sex with me. My husband's internist gave him regular PSA tests, which varied from the low-normal to the higher end of the
borderline-danger level. The only symptom of possible prostate cancer that my husband had was the ongoing impotence. If he had seriously sought out
help for the impotence, as opposed to closeting himself all those years with the computer and the 900 numbers, I believe that a good urologist would have
noticed what was behind the impotence.
All this would sound like water under the bridge, but for my realization at just how damaged I am from years of being rejected sexually. To the rest of the
world, my husband seemed like the most gracious, kindest man imaginable, but his obsession with porn made him a lousy husband and sent him to an early
grave. After realizing how hurt I’ve been by his porn addiction, I've joined a co-dependents' group in my area for people affected by their partners' sex
addictions. I was damaged a lot more by my husband’s porn addiction than by the alcohol addiction, which only affected us in the last years of his life.
Since I joined Al-Anon, I’ve learned enough about addiction to realize that my husband turned to porn because he could control that in a way he couldn't
control me or other people in his life. He had a large cesspool of anger and hurt about many things, but he believed than any manifestations of anger, no
matter how justified, were wrong. Porn eventually deadened him to all joy in the bedroom, especially as he required more and more to become aroused. If
he had cared more about having sex with me for all these years, that prostate gland of his would have been checked out a lot sooner. Back when we were
having those fights, I wish I'd known more about addictions. Forcing an intervention might have given back a lot to our marriage and may have given him
more years of life.
Impotence is one of the first possible signs of several serious health problems. I accepted for too long the idea that his impotence was his emotional
problem or our relationship problem. A man who enjoys a good sex life with his wife isn't going to accept impotence as "just one of
those things," and his wife can be instrumental in helping him get to a doctor who can help. I feel like our resignation to no sex life cheated us both of a
lot of joy. I was very involved in other parts of his health care, but I didn't know enough about the part of his body that killed him. In the end, the porn
deadened both of us, in more ways than one.
PAH
