What I knew

Another post answering some questions I was asked in response to my Saturday Night post.

I was curious if you thought your husband's acting out behavior was limited to/exclusively only lust and pornography prior to this most recent disclosure?

Before my husbands' disclosure, two of my friends asked me what my best guess about the extent of my husbands' behavior was. I thought it was extremely likely that he had had an affair with a coworker a few years ago. From what he has told me in the past few weeks, it seems this was not the case. But I would say I was 75% confident that he had engaged in some kind of sex with another woman. I was a bit surprised it ended up being a prostitute, and that apparently the only times it happened were within 2 months of his disclosure (seems fishy, huh? I've asked him about this again and I'm still not trusting that I have full disclosure on the issue). But him having sex with a prostitute rather than having an affair really does fit his Avoidant attachment style better (if you haven't read Attached yet, get your hands on it!).

I also was about 85% confident that he had been to a strip club at least once. On the first D-day, 2.5 years ago, when I found all the porn on his laptop while he was out of state on a business trip, I saw that he had looked up where a strip club was in the town he was visiting. When he got home the next day, I told him I knew about the porn. I spent 3 days doing nothing but trying to drag the truth out of him, and for months after he still maintained that he had driven up to the strip club and then had an agonizing hour of soul searching while sitting in the car, deciding whether or not to go in and had ultimately decided that he "didn't want to be that kind of man/husband." Now I know that he did go into the strip club that night (yep, just hours after I found out about his porn use I spent the night at a friend's house in literal shock and he was in a strip club . . . ugh) and had been in several strip clubs on trips before that experience and went to several on trips after that time. Yeah, my husband has his work cut out for him if he is every going to earn ANY trust back from me.

If the answer is yes, could you share how you 'knew' before he had the courage to more honestly disclose? If the answer is no, that you did know his acting out behavior included more then lust and pornography, could you share how it felt slowly hearing/understanding additional behaviors over time?

Even though my best guesses about the extent of my husbands' acting out weren't correct, what I did know for the past 2.5 years was that what my husband was telling me did not make sense, was too vague, and was not consistent with what I had learned about pornography addiction. For two years my husband maintained that he was not an addict, striving to prove this through direct lies and denial and more indirect minimization  of the information I was aware of. For a while I kind of believed him. Part of me wanted to. But it was unsettling to me that he could not/would not give me more specific information about when he started viewing pornography (it took three days of grilling him for him to change from saying it had only been a few months, to six months, to 3.5 years---turns out it had been an issue for 2.5 years longer than he admitted at that point. I sure hope I've got the right start date now . . .) and how casually he talked about how often and how long he would engage in it. And the ease with which he said he would never look at it again. I tried to reason with him that even if it wasn't an addiction, it was at least a pattern of behavior in times of stress and he would have none of it.

With moving out of state and having another child shortly after the first D-day, I had a lot going on and my capacity for putting emotion into this issue fluctuated, but as I accumulated courage and confidence and sought more support (blogs, the forum, etc.) and learned more (from books and others with experience) I finally got to the point where I was 99.99% sure that my husband was addicted to porn, regardless of what he said or any evidence I had (which was zilch; he's super tech saavy, which is going to be such an issue for the rest of my marriage, however long that is). It was only around the beginning of this calendar year that I reached this point and finally started referring to my husband in my mind, and in my limited communication with others about the situation as an addict. Before that, I would use long and awkward phrases referring to his "use of pornography." What gave me confidence that he was an addict was his classic addict behaviors: lack of openness about important issues in general, but especially related to sex, minimization of his negative behaviors, immediate defensiveness when I brought up any concerns about his behavior in any aspect of daily life (as evidenced by him through withdrawal, as opposed to anger and confrontation like many addicts---it was hard for me to see this right away because I've had to learn to recognize his subtle, passive aggressive style which is in stark contrast to my direct approach to communication, so it has not always been easy for me to recognize), knowing from just a few small, but significant, experiences that he was capable of and comfortable with lying to me. Also things like him never wanting to sleep in bed with me, getting antsy about sharing his laptop with me, quickly closing his computer when I came in the room. Suff like that had made me suspicious about porn for years prior to the first D-day.

      With all that said, it has been difficult to learn the specifics of his behavior, how long they have been a part of his life, and what his behaviors mean in terms of boundaries that must be put into place. To be honest, I really haven't even started processing it all yet. I've been only brushing up against emotion (which is hard enough) and have been focusing on staying in assess mode. I will be having my first post D-day individual therapy appointment in a couple days though, which I plan to use as an official ushering in of the processing stage. I know it's what needs to be done and that no matter what, good will come of it for me personally, but I'm not looking forward to it. Processing emotion is so raw and exhausting.