A Wife in Denial
My life unraveled with an unexpected phone call from my mother: "Do you know what your husband's doing on the computer?" she asked.
"Oh, Mom, Joe* just surfs the sites and looks at new gadgets. It's how he unwinds," I responded.
And then my mother started to cry.
We'd just come back from visiting my parents with our five-year-old son, Jamie. "While Joe was using the computer, he accidentally deleted the bookmark for Dad's favorite financial site," she said. "When Dad went to retrieve the bookmark from the trash, all these porn site addresses came up onscreen."
"Really," I said, trying to sound nonchalant. "I'm sure there's a reason."
When I hung up the phone, I was stunned. It didn't make any sense. What man in his right mind would download porn at his in-laws' house? Mom must have made a mistake, I thought; it just wasn't something my husband would do.
True, Joe spent a lot of time on the computer two to three hours each evening. During the day, his contracting business kept him operating at a dizzying pace, hopscotching across towns and states to meet with clients. After those grueling hours, there was nothing Joe liked more than to come home, wrestle with Jamie, rub my back and crash in front of his computer.
The Confrontation
I had no reason to be suspicious. I knew where my husband was every night. He was right there in our living room, laughing about an email from his brother or looking at a site for new gadgets. Sometimes I would wake up in the dark and find myself alone in bed. Wandering into the next room, I'd see Joe sitting in front of the screen, bathed in a flickering blue light. When I'd ask what he was doing, he would say, "Just surfing," then turn off the computer and come to bed.
But now my parents were suggesting that something serious was going on. After a few days of debating whether to bring the issue up, I told Joe what my father had found. "Is there anything you want to tell me?" I asked gently. Joe chuckled and rolled his eyes. "Your parents have computer confusion," he said. "If someone went to a bunch of porn sites, I don't know anything about it. Maybe it was one of your brothers." Relief. Of course it wasn't him. "Well, okay, maybe you could give them a call," I suggested, eager to clear the air with my parents. I watched as Joe dialed their number and calmly repeated what he'd said to me. But my parents weren't buying it. Furious, they told him he was lying and that he wasn't welcome in their house anymore. Joe seemed unperturbed.
The next day, out of the blue, he said something I'd been waiting years to hear: He was ready to have another baby. During the week that followed, the sting of my parents accusations faded. They could say whatever they wanted, but obviously Joe was a committed family man.
*Names have been changed.
The Truth Unfolds
We spent the next weekend with his family. I had a nice time, but on the drive home, I couldn't stop thinking about what my mother had said after Joe phoned her. "Open your eyes," she warned. "He's lying to you." Turning to my husband, I confessed that I wanted to check out his work computer, so I could reassure my parents they'd made a mistake. Could we swing by his office right now? Joe amiably agreed.
As I turned on his office monitor, Joe was playful, cracking jokes as he relaxed against the wall. I went to his Netscape browser and immediately found a bookmark for a topless site, but he just laughed, saying a colleague had put it there as a joke.
My search continued. With Joe waiting, I scanned the documents he'd saved to his desktop. I was beginning to wonder what exactly I was looking for when I spied an email from Friendfinder.com. I opened it and read: "Dear Niceguy4u4ever, your profile has been approved. You can start making new and exciting friends." I stared at the screen, refusing to understand what I saw.
"Profile?" I asked softly. From Joe's online "name," it was clear that this was a dating site. "I'm sorry," he replied.
When we got home, Joe didn't say much, and I didn't either. We were almost too afraid to speak. That night, I couldn't eat or sleep. Not knowing the truth was driving me crazy. "I'll stay with you," I finally said, breaking the silence. "But I need to know everything." Joe said there was nothing more to tell. "I was just curious and lonely," he shrugged. "It's a fantasy I'm not really cheating on you."
After Joe left for the office the next morning, I got up the nerve to log on to his AOL account (I had made him give me his password). In his file of sent messages, one email address looked unusual, so I opened it. Joe had written: "Dear Heather, I'd love to talk to you about what you can do for me and the rates you charge. How can I arrange to meet you?"
I gasped. Using a different email address and a masculine name, I quickly typed a letter to Heather saying a buddy had recommended her. Later that day, her response arrived: "Sure thing, honey. Just check out my Website. XXXOO." My heart pounding, I logged on. I don't know what I was expecting, but the photo of Heather, a Las Vegas "escort" with an impossibly proportioned body, was a shock. I clicked on her rates: For $750 an hour, Heather could be bought. And, according to her posted itinerary, she would be in our city seeing "clients" the following week.
I felt sick to my stomach. Here I was, digging through my husband's files in an attempt to prove my suspicions wrong, and instead I'd discovered he wasn't just looking at porn, he was actually contacting hookers. Still hoping for an explanation, I called Joe and asked about Heather. At first, he was vague, saying he didn't recall emailing her. I refreshed his memory with details from her Website. That's when he started sobbing. "I'm lost," he said. "I've been really depressed and lonely. I can't work or concentrate." There was a desperation in his voice I'd never noticed before. "I've never paid for anyone," Joe pleaded. "I just flirted in chat rooms and emails."
"But why? Why?" I said.
"The computer is evil," he said, like a little boy looking to dodge the blame. "I wish I'd never gone on it." But Joe wasn't a kid, he was a 37-year-old dad. We had been married for almost eight years. This wasn't how normal men acted, was it? I needed time to think alone. That night, I asked Joe to leave.
Nothing Would Be the Same Again
He stayed away for a week. When he came back, he was contrite but firm: "There's nothing I can do about the past." Which was true, and I wanted to believe Joe's promise to reform. But then he changed his AOL account password. Something that normally would be no big deal now made me so agitated, I couldn't sleep. One night, I took my son, along with some clothes and pillows, to crash in my brother's living room.
Soon after Joe's admission, I went to visit my parents. It was tough to admit they'd been right, but I wanted to see for myself what they had found. My father selected "cookies" from a menu on his Web browser, which listed every site that had been visited. I could see that in the past year, someone had been looking at a lot of porn and all the dates corresponded with our visits. The records also revealed exactly when and for how long each site had been surfed and the dizzying number of return visits that had been made.
The sites had names like Sextracker and SexHunter, and there were numerous escort services. The images were disturbing: not the kind of airbrushed photos you might see in Playboy magazine, but raw and aggressive pictures. Some sites even advertised preteen girls.
I was aghast and ashamed. But when I confided in close friends, some thought I was overreacting. He wasn't having an affair, they pointed out. Others said his behavior was normal all men like looking at naked women. And perhaps the toughest thought that kept coming into my mind: If my parents hadn't discovered his online activities, if I'd never scanned his email, wouldn't our marriage be the same as before, regardless of what Joe was up to?
All of this made me more confused. It's not normal, I assured myself, to spend hours on computer-generated porn when your wife is nearby in bed. It is not normal to be so addicted that you can't do without your fix even while weekending with your in-laws. And it's not normal to visit sites dedicated to sadomasochism and voyeurism not just once out of curiosity, but over and over again. And while our marriage might be okay right now if I didn't know about Joe's secret, the fact was, I did know and nothing would be the same again.
A Sham of a Marriage
At first I blamed myself. I weighed 30 pounds more than I had when we got married. And working part-time while caring for our son often left me tired and stressed. Four years earlier, when our marriage had hit a rough spot, we'd tried therapy. Joe had sat silently through the sessions, saying he didn't see a problem. Now the problem was too big to ignore. I took up temporary residence at my brother's.
Our son was miserable. He had never spent much time alone with his father, so visiting on overnights felt strange. On Jamie's sixth birthday, after he left for a weekend with Joe, I called AOL to separate my email address from our joint account. When the customer service rep asked me why, I burst into tears.
"Listen to me," the wise voice said, "I get calls from nice women like you all week long. Here's what I'm going to do. I'll change the password on your husband's account and give it to you. You read his mail and see what he's been up to. If he's telling you the truth, fine, go back to him. But if he isn't, leave the jerk."
I stayed up all night reading Joe's emails and I descended into the world of a stranger. In his correspondence with three or four women, Joe described his wife me in such hateful terms, it made my skin crawl. So much for love. I realized that I'd always looked at my marriage and seen what it could be, not what it was. I had joked with my girlfriends that my shy, sweet husband didn't know how to put his feelings into words, but I hadn't realized how tragically true that would turn out to be. Porn offered Joe a "relationship" with zero emotional exposure. I was finally forced to see our marriage and our sex life for what it had become: a sham. For the past few years, Joe had been constantly pressuring me for sex. If I objected, he would say, "But you're my wife," and continue. When I did consent, he'd treat me roughly and wouldn't stop, even after I'd protest and push him away. Then, when he began suffering from impotence, he blamed me.
The Cybersex Addict
After three months of indecision, I hired a divorce attorney. As we scheduled court dates, I found myself sinking into despair. I lost 20 pounds in a matter of weeks. I was embarrassed to think what friends were whispering behind my back. I worried hurtful gossip would get back to my son. I was haunted by the dark and desperate pictures I had seen while tracing Joe's porn path, but I had no one to talk to about it. Confiding such details, even to friends, felt wrong, so I kept my pain to myself.
A few people went out of their way to show support. One sent me a newspaper article about cybersex addiction. I was stunned to recognize symptoms that matched Joe to a T for instance, that cybersex addicts are often secretive and pursue their "hobby" to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. Their appetite for real-life sex diminishes or becomes deviant. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd read that article sooner. Would something have clicked? Would I have seen my husband in the description? Would we still be a family, struggling through therapy together?
It's been more than a year since I stumbled upon the secret life of my soon-to-be ex-husband. Over the months, I've worked hard to make a new home for my son and myself. Even though Joe and I are getting divorced, I will be watching him for the rest of my life. I don't want our child to be a witness to his father's obsession. One thing I've learned: In the wrong hands, computers can be dangerous and destructive. But they are undeniably powerful. After all, it was a computer that finally opened my eyes and changed my life.
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