My husband's interest in porn was our slippery slope. It started out with magazines in high school and college. (he later told me he first found his dad's magazines around 8th grade)
Then it was strippers and phone sex lines in college, along with magazines...at first I didn't know about the phone lines, didn't find the credit card bills till we got married after college and merged household files...However I knew about the stippers, tried to be a 'guys girl' and even went with him and his frat brothers a time or two. I thought the whole thing was silly...little did I know!
Then after marriage, he worked in the meat industry. Very Old Boys Network. Almost every customer that came to town for a visit wanted dinner followed by strip club. So, he took them. Again at the time I didn't care because we had a great sex life at home and I didn't consider it cheating...again, I even went a few times with him and some people from work (mostly guys but a gal or two) because the boss was buying drinks! So I fed into his habit without realizing it.
Well ultimately he confessed that on a business trip to Tokyo 3 years into our marriage, he took a stripper back to his hotel room. The beginning of the end. See, the magazines, phone lines, and strippers stopped being enough. He needed more stimulation, kind of like an alcoholic needs more booze over time to create the same effect...
After that he promised no more porn. Then he'd go on a business trip, I'd find a receipt, he was busted, he'd apologize. More than once this happened...then I found a credit card bill for a sex line. When confronted he wanted to die, he said, he was so ashamed. Out to the dumpster went the hidden pile of magazines and vhs tapes I hadn't known were there...
Fast forward 9 years. We are now divorced, two affairs (that I know of)later. He dropped a suitcase at my house last summer while he was living with his parents, meaning to do laundry. I found magazines and dvds in the suitcase...then just two weeks ago we were at my son's baseball game. He handed me his digital camera to take pictures. I was browsing through pictures of my daughter's recent birthday (he said I could) and found, further back in the camera files, some explicit nakes photos of my H. Or rather, his genitals. So the cycle continues...
My pastor said it is an addiction, that porn is a virus that can infect a man, infect a marriage. It doesn't get better and go away on its own...
The beginning of the end. See, the magazines, phone lines, and strippers stopped being enough. He needed more stimulation, kind of like an alcoholic needs more booze over time to create the same effect...
