You Are Not Alone

If you are reading this, chances are you feel very alone. And probably lost, ashamed and scared.  You are not alone. I don’t know your exact story, but let me share mine.

When I met my husband in college, we fell hard for one another. He was the peanut butter to my jelly. We just got each other. We made one another laugh, think and dream. We shared a common faith in Jesus, a love of books and beautiful things, and a vision for a life we wanted. We were in love.

So, naturally, we married young. Just a few months into marriage it became clear that T.’s struggle with pornography, which he had been somewhat honest about while we were dating, didn’t magically disappear once we said, “I do” (contrary to our unfounded belief). I was devastated and scared. I felt betrayed and insecure. We struggled mostly alone and in the dark. T. sought out accountability with a friend and installed computer accountability software and, according to him, that seemed to “do the trick”.

But then a year later, something showed up on the accountability report. He lied about it at first and then confessed he had been looking again. Again I was heartbroken and terrified. Was this going to be my life? I didn’t sign up for this. It didn’t feel like the faithfulness I was promised. But he cried tears and promised with new resolve to never look again.

I wanted so badly to believe him. I didn’t know about healthy boundaries so instead I just created rules to try to manage him and his time and whereabouts so I would feel safe. Which I didn’t. I struggled with lots of anxiety. I struggled with shame. He assured me his struggle with pornography didn’t have to do with me not being enough, but I couldn’t really buy that. I looked in the mirror and compared myself to the ultra-sexy images I imagined he was indulging in and I knew I could NEVER measure up to that. But I tried.

At the time, I wondered if we should go to counseling, but he assured me that he really felt like he had it under control. And I wanted to believe that. Months and years passed uneventfully with regards to pornography and it began to feel like it was in our rear view mirror.  We enjoyed adventuring together around the world, making dear friends and happy memories.  We had just settled down back near our families and started a family of our own. Having a baby with my best friend was sweeter than I imagined. I loved watching him become a father.

And then, just six weeks after welcoming our 2nd child into the world, the life I thought we had unraveled. It was a Sunday afternoon. He had been outside on the phone and came inside visibly distressed. He sat down beside me at the dining table where I was writing thank you notes for baby gifts we’d been given. He told me his name was on “the Ashley Madison list” which meant nothing to me at the time as I had never heard of the website or “the list”—I had gotten off Facebook a year or two prior, plus at this particular moment I was sleep deprived and my world revolved around nursing schedules. I did a quick search on my laptop… “Life is short. Have an affair.”

WTF.

I think I laughed. It seemed ridiculous that such a website existed, and I knew my husband (of all people!) wouldn’t have registered for such a thing.

He assured me it was a fraud, which I heartily believed. But, he seemed very unsettled and as I sensed his unease, I gradually began to feel my assurance slipping. The next morning the anxiety in our house was heavy, and I prayed that God would bring to light anything that T. was hiding in the darkness.

He heard me.

Only an hour or so after leaving for work that morning, T. called and said he was coming back home to talk to me. I was playing with my toddler at the time, and I hit my knees in his bedroom. I begged God that what I somehow knew was coming would not be coming. But it came. T. walked in with a pastor from our church and dropped a bomb that shattered everything I thought was real. He told me his struggle with pornography had never ended, and that it had escalated to visiting strip clubs to meeting up with women he found on the internet for sex. He had been living a double life. He had been lying to me for years.

I laughed a nervous, disbelieving laugh. I was shaking. I looked at this man I loved so dearly, and my heart broke for him and the darkness he was in. I asked a couple of random questions, though thousands more would be tormenting in the days and nights ahead. And then I packed up my babies and my bags and left him. And that was the beginning of my journey, following the pillar through indescribable pain toward what I could not imagine at the time—freedom and healing.