Our Story, Part 2 (D-Day)

Over 8 years ago, late one evening, at the end of a deep and connected conversation, my husband told me that he needed to tell me something.  I could tell it was important.  He stopped and breathed heavily, not making eye contact for at least 60 seconds.  It's a good thing I have had practice in waiting to hear what he would say.

In those moments between finding out that there something big that I would soon know, and actually knowing what it was, I felt my pulse quicken and the hairs on my scalp raise.  My mind raced.  What could it be?  I was unaware that there were any secrets between us.  What about him did I not know?  I could only think of two things: either he was gay (and in love with a specific man?) or he was into porn.  What else would inspire this momentous disclosure?  Of the two, honestly I believed that homosexuality was more likely.  They both seemed nearly equally absurd, but attraction to his own gender seemed slightly less preposterous.

He started by reframing my understanding of his history.  He told me that as a teenager, he had had a friend with a huge stash of pornographic magazines.  He and another friend had made this first buddy their personal library.  They would check out a few magazines at a time, and exchange them for more a few days later.  Over time it had progressed to occasional movies and become more and more of an engrained habit. 

Eventually, Cyrus had left for college at BYU (an LDS Church-owned school).  He spent his first year there preparing to be a missionary, and had been largely successful in giving up his habit.  He then became a missionary for two years and was able to stay away from pornography entirely.

[At this point in the conversation, I sincerely believed that he had permanently given up his porn habit entirely when he was a missionary.  I could not imagine living cleanly and spiritually for two years and coming home with new knowledge and zeal for religion, and then getting sucked back into disgusting and degrading behaviors.  Maybe some pervy guys, but not my husband.  Cyrus had been an exemplary missionary.  He was who I looked to as an example of righteousness and closeness with the Lord.  He got it.  I knew he did, at least in those first several post-mission years.]

He told me that within a few months of being home, he had found himself returning to his old habits, but that in the years he had been away from it, internet pornography had sprung from its depraved origins.  He had successfully stayed away from it during the months between the time that I had returned from my missionary service and the time we had gotten married.  He had never told me about his old problem during our courtship because he had honestly believed that it was in his past and that he would never go back, especially once we were married and he would have a legitimate outlet for his sexual energy.

But then.  He told me that he had again slipped into old habits within a few months of our wedding.  His use had been sporadic, but like a dog to his vomit, he had found himself going back to it over and over. [Hint: Cyrus did not use the "dog to his vomit" phrase.  I found that analogy all on my own later.]  

I was dismayed and stunned to hear that there had been any incidences of pornography use during our marriage.  And then my heart sank as his story continued to progress toward the present.  There had been increased use, peaking during the out-of-control period of extreme video gaming while he had been in graduate school.  I felt utterly raw when he said that he had been unsuccessful in his many many attempts to stay away from it forever, and that in fact his last exposure had been within the last few weeks.

Cyrus told me that he had been feeling for months more and more desire to finally boot it out of his life, and that he had come to believe that the next step in moving toward that goal would be to inform me of his real situation.  In other words, his disclosure was entirely voluntary, with absolutely no prompting from me.

This is the part of the story that makes me feel fortunate, if fortunate is a word that can be used in such a desperate and scary scenario.  He chose to tell me.

But.   BUT.   If you had asked me the day before Disclosure Day what were the chances that my husband was addicted to pornography, I would have said, "Zero."  I honestly believed (because it had never occurred to me to wonder otherwise) that my husband had never once sought out pornography in our nearly 8 years of marriage.

I felt so much compassion for him that night, and so much gratitude that he had decided to tell me.  I wondered out loud that he had been bearing this burden for half of his life, and that he had been bearing it alone.  I told him that I wasn't even feeling sorry for myself, but that I felt sorry for him that he had been suffering silently for so long.  I think Cyrus appreciated my empathy, but he wisely warned me that I probably wouldn't feel the same way in the coming days.  And he was right.