This past week, someone sent me a recent advice column from the successful online magazine Slate. In the Sept. 16th issue, a woman who is married to a sex addict submits to their advice columnist a question all of us no doubt have struggled with. The response from the advice columnist, Dear Prudence, will leave you dumbstruck.
Here is a direct reprint of Slate's Sept. 16th Dear Prudence column so you can read it for yourself:
Q. For Better or for Worse?: My husband and I have been married for almost two years. We are deeply in love and have a passionate sex life. He's amazing and I'm incredibly blessed. There's one point of tension that pops up that I need your help with. Before we got married, he told me about his struggle with pornography. He recognized its negative influence in his life and our relationship. It was our understanding that he would work through it. There have been several "relapses," if you will, throughout our relationship, but he keeps promising to do better. Recently, I discovered he'd been lying about his progress for months. He'd been looking every few days and would even look while lying right next to me in bed as I slept. I support him as best I can, while dealing with my own negative emotions. I do believe that he does want to conquer this, but the lies and, to me, what feels like betrayal are wrecking an otherwise wonderful marriage. Do you have any suggestions on what to do from here?
A: I was waiting for you to say your husband's struggled with viewing child pornography, or that his obsession with pornography was such that he downloaded it at work, thus jeopardizing his job. But your objection appears to be that he views pornography. You don't in any way explain its insidious effect on your marriage. If a husband's erotic life is pulled away from his partner and replaced with a masturbatory response to images on his computer, that's a problem. But you say you two have a passionate sex life. Some women believe looking at pornography is the equivalent of cheating. It's not. You complain he looks at it in bed, after you have fallen asleep. But if you're asleep, how do you know what he's looking at? If your objection is that his viewing porn hurts your feelings, get over it. You went into this marriage knowing he had this proclivity. As long as it's not actually affecting your life, ignore it.
Breathe, readers, b-r-e-a-t-h-e!
I know, it's infuriating and makes me want to pull my hair out considering the columnist's lack of knowledge and her utter lack of heart. No empathy there, nope. Just the usual "get over it" we have all heard hundreds of times before, only it especially hurts when it comes from another woman, I find.
The comment thread that followed is nothing short of a public pummeling of the wife who wrote her question in. She's trounced in the most humiliating manner by a porn-loving commenting public, which is what almost always happens when we dare to publicly question pornography use. Our tender vulnerability as POSAs usually meets the scorn and derision of those who get enraged that we call into question their beloved porn habits. It's high time to change this and one reader did just that:
An astute PoSARC reader saw the column and the subsequent comment thread, and got outraged enough that she decided to write to Dear Prudence herself. Then she wrote to me and included the article and her e-mail response.
Here's that response, verbatim:
~ ~ ~
Dear Prudence
You could not have given worse advice to the woman whose porn viewing husband, someone who admittedly struggled with his use of pornography in the past, was lying and hiding continued use and very concerned that he was "relapsing".
Her "gut" is telling her something is wrong and you are telling her to ignore it. I have my own personal experience with this behavior. My husband is a sex addict. It took him 35 years to recognize it and get treatment. Throughout our 30 year marriage he would always have a stash of porn somewhere. In the beginning it was magazines, then videos and then the internet. My gut was always telling me something was not right, something was very wrong, but when I tried to tell him how I felt he told me I was crazy, was a prude, there wasn't a problem, etc., etc. He pointed to our sex life which was very active and which I thoroughly enjoyed. But still the nagging gut feeling remained that there was a problem. At one point I even told his mother about his porn use who said "what's the big deal, everyone does it". Unfortunately, I didn't have my own family or support network to validate my concerns. For a time, conceding defeat of a sort, I tried to share porn with him as one of the other readers suggested, but the secrecy was a part of the drug for him and that didn't last for long after I still found him viewing without me. So I tried to look the other way...for 30 years. And then one day he came home early from work. He had been fired. He admitted it was for watching porn at work. He had finally hit bottom.
That was two years ago. Since then he has come clean on everything he has done through a lot of therapy and SAA meetings. It turns out that the most recent termination was actually the 4th time he had been fired for porn use at work. He managed to hide the other three times from me by saying better opportunities came up in other firms. And there have been affairs, some that ran the entire length of our marriage. He admitted his porn use escalated dramatically with the introduction of the internet to hours upon hours everyday -- at home and at work. He had thousands of hours stored on secret hard drives.
I am now trying to make sense of a past that was a complete falsehood. I have made friends with other partners of sex addicts and they all have similar stories: something gnawing at them telling them something was wrong and desperately trying to ignore the signs (and being told by others to do just that, Prudence): "what's the big deal It's only a little porn and your sex life is fine!"
I would give anything to turn back the clock and act on the feelings I was told to ignore. My marriage was a sham. I made decisions about having a family and career moves that were based on the lies of an addict. I've spent the last two years in my own therapy trying to figure out why I was so willing to look the other way, to be manipulated and how to go forward with a new sense of self. I am trying to support my husband in his journey and we are working on starting a new relationship, but there are many obstacles and challenges.
I cannot imagine that you would have given the same advice to the wife if you substituted the word alcohol or drugs for porn: "sure he says he struggled with alcohol in the past, and now he's being dishonest about drinking again and drinking in secret, but everyone drinks so why are you making such a big deal of it! you should try drinking with him and make it a fun activity!" There is quite a bit of literature out there now about how porn/sex creates changes in the brain that are similar to chemical abuse. The woman who wrote that letter should educate herself. The fact that she used the word "relapse" tells me that he may have a 12 step history and should start attending meetings again. There are many SA, SCA, SAA meetings out there. She needs to know that she is not alone, she is not to blame and she should TRUST HER GUT!!!
Been there, done that.
~LH
~ ~ ~
Amen, and Right on, LH-
Thank you for taking a stand against being silenced or shamed by a pornography-accepting society.
Now, dear readers—what's the worst advice you ever received around your attempting to live with a SAC (sex addict/compulsive)?
And what would you tell this wife who wrote in to Slate? What's your best advice to her?
Leave comments below:
Image by Brad Oliphant
Commenting Anonymously
Note that you must enter a name and email below in order to submit a comment. The name you enter will show up along with your comment (your email will not), so if you'd like to comment anonymously, please enter a name such as "guest" or use your initials.