Confessions of a Pornography Addict

So originally my idea to write this story came from my anger for my now ex husband spreading nasty lies about me & blaming me for our divorce. Then it turned into an outlet for me, for me to explore my feelings & figure out where it all went wrong. Then it evolved into me hoping that by sharing my story it might help other women avoid, overcome and/or make decisions concerning pornography in relationships. So here it goes-oh & if you just want the actual confession, thats the second half of this post.

One important fact, I am LDS & this is about an LDS relationship. Our church strongly cautions us about porn & its purely negative nature & instructs us not to view it. But no matter what your religion I believe the result is always similar & destructive to individuals, couples & families. You can look up all the professional research you want, but I know it is one of the darkest & most harmful things we face today & is what led to my divorce.

I met Jo when I was still very young & fresh out of my parents home. I had left to go to a far away school where I had never been & had no familiar faces. Jo & I met pretty quick & immediately hit it off. He became my best friend there, we did everything together & had a similar taste for adventure & exploring. At first when I met him I thought he was shy, just not good at talking to girls…or anyone really. Then I started to realize he really was pretty awkward around people & just didn’t show much emotion at all. He never seemed to get angry or frustrated, but he didn’t laugh with me much either.

We began steady dating, he was easy to be with-not the passionate, crazy sort of love-but the simple kind. In the back of my mind I questioned if I wanted more laughter & emotion in my relationship. Someone who would challenge me intellectually, even if it meant some arguing. I was so young & naïve, I should not have settled for anything that wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. But he seemed like a nice guy, mellow, easygoing…& he was a returned missionary. At the time in my eyes, & I’m afraid a lot of other LDS womens eyes, that meant he was a worthy & honest man…It doesn’t, by the way. I wish I would have noticed that his easiness & awkwardness was really just him being emotionally numb. Him not having the capability to communicate & express himself eventually made him seem quite lifeless, but I didn’t see it like that until after we were married & then I still had no idea what was causing it.

As we became more serious in our dating we of course became more physically involved (side note, Mormons believe in having no sexual relations before marriage.) He began pushing me out of my comfort zone & trying to make it seem like no big deal. He would keep pushing until I would look him dead in the eyes & say “NO” & then he would make me feel bad about it. I already had self worth issues & let me tell you, this did not help. He would say things like “I’m just trying to show you how much you mean to me, trying to make you feel loved” while he was pushing obvious boundaries. I began feeling like my body was the only valuable trait I had & he made me feel like he was the only one who could ever love me in any way. He also seemed to believe that physical touch was the only way to show love-& it wasn’t usually a huggy, cuddly touch.

Eventually I opened up to some things from my past that made me feel vulnerable. I guess he felt like he needed to reciprocate the action so he told me he had had a slight problem with porn before his mission. I questioned him a bit about it & he assured me it was no big deal & hadn’t been a problem since before his mission.

I guess I just really wanted to believe him, so I did. But I should have gotten more details, questioned more & realized how strong of an addiction porn is-that would have saved me a lot of heartache. If I could have only seen the effect & grip porn had on him, the numbness & confusion of how to show true love. But I didn’t.

A few months later we were engaged & eventually married. The first couple months were fine, but then things just started feeling wrong. Jo became more distant & even more numb to my verbal & physical affections. I started to feel depressed & question what I had done wrong- I wasn’t perfect, but I had followed the rules-yet something was pulling us apart. Our relationship weakened, my faith weakened & darkness took over our house. I could not figure out why I felt so detached from Jo & why he took hardly any interest in me other than the occasional round of quite rough sex. It tore me down & made me feel completely worthless.

We went on for a little over a year, filled with tears on my part & unknown lies coming from him. Finally after a particularly heartbreaking comment about my body image & me not knowing what else to do I straight out asked him when the last time he had viewed porn was…he told me not since before his mission. I then cried myself to sleep & it wasn’t until atleast an hour later he woke me up, obviously upset & admitted to me he was still viewing pornography on a regular basis. I was shocked, embarrassed & all of a sudden everything started making sense. He told me I couldn’t leave, I had to fix him, & that he still loved me but somewhere in the last year those three words had lost their meaning. So the next morning I left for a few days to have some time to clear my head, think & determine what to do next. He would contact me saying he couldn’t be happy without me, that “your happiness is my happiness,” & that I needed to come back & help fix him. But he had just been feeding off of my happiness, my passions, my strength & now he expected me to fix him. I decided that was not my job, it is our personal job to take care of ourselves, love ourselves & make ourselves worthy for a partner in life & love. He had abused the right to be taken care of by me, had manipulated me into believing I hardly deserved him & then lied to me throughout our dating, engagement & marriage. So I left him. It hasn’t been easy but for me it has been so much better. I’m learning to love myself all over again& have come to realize that I always deserved more than he had to give because his addiction took away his ability to truly love me.

A little while after I signed the divorce papers Jo sent me this email, apparently he is trying to overcome his addiction & I truly hope he can-it still makes me so sad how he lied to me, & how it took me leaving him for him to realize just how bad his addiction was & to start making changes in himself & our relationship. Anyway, here is the confession of a pornography addict…

I know that I am probably annoying you with contacting you, but I can't help but fight for you. I can't just let you go. I know you feel absolutely betrayed and used because of what I have done. But, trust me, through all of this, my love for you has grown immensely. The thought of losing you terrifies me. 

I wanted to share with you my full story. I have no idea if you even care at this point, but I feel that I owe it to you after everything that I've put you through. I have not shared the full story with anyone up to this point in my life. This is the story:

When I was 5 or 6 we had a family reunion at a beach house in ***. I was just a young energetic little kid and I would hang out with my cousin S****, who was just a few months younger than me. From what I remember we would play in little play houses, and goof around together. On this particular trip for some reason she exposed herself to me. I remember her pulling her shorts down and showing me her female parts. I was so young that I didn't have any sexual thought or anything, I was just very curious. I knew what I had down there, and wondered why she was different than me. I do not remember if I showed her what I had, I don't remember if I touched her in any way, I just remember being very interested in her body. This happened a few times throughout the week that we were together. When we were doing it, I remember that we were sneaking around and doing it in secrecy. Somehow in our innocent minds we still knew what we were doing was wrong. 

The first time that I experienced a sexual ejaculation (sorry for the terms, I just don't know how else to put it) I was about 10 years old. I was in the TV room watching the travel channel. From a young age I was intrigued with going to cool places, so I would watch shows like "top 10 vacation destinations" and others like that. So I remember it being late, everyone else had gone to bed, one of the shows had just ended and the next one to come on was the "top 10 spring break destinations". This was really the first time that I was exposed to girls taking their tops off and things like that. Given, it was on TV so the girls would whip off their tops, but they would blur all the details out. Anyways, I was instantly turned on. I was completely unfamiliar with the feeling, but it felt good. I flipped on my stomach and just rubbed against the couch, until all of a sudden the most amazing feeling came over me, and it ended. I had no idea what had happened. I looked and saw that some kind of liquid had come out, but I was completely confused. From then on I had those mental images in my head. Before I would go to bed I would recall those images, rub myself on the bed and it would happen. Thus my addiction was born. I did not ever touch myself, I would just rub, and it would happen. 

Growing up I did see some internet porn, but my parents did a good job putting filters on computers. i would try, and a few times my dad, or mom caught me. I remember my mom getting very emotional and mad, and she hit me in the head with a hard back book. I was startled, but then she never came back to me again asking if I had stopped. All through middle school and high school, I was masturbating 1 or 2 times a day. It evolved to be the highlight of my day. It was the biggest thing for me to look forward to. I knew it was wrong, but I did not think that I had the ability to stop. When I attempted to stop, it would last a few days, then I would give in again and just accept that I was a slave to my desires, and had nothing better to live for. I eventually started earning money, so I would go buy r rated movies and stash them in my room. Movies like "American Pie" and other raunchy movies with nudity in them. At my worst, I bought a few playboy dvds also. I always knew that I would have to give these movies up if I wanted to be a missionary like my brother were. So at 18, I threw them all away, and tried to quit on my own. If i remember right I had enough determination to go maybe a week or two before acting out again. When I went in to get my temple recommend I think I had not masturbated for a month or so. When the stake president asked me if there was any sin or misdeed in my life that had not been resolved, instantly my heart started pounding. I said no. I did this because I did not want to let my family down, and in my mind, I had quit. As I went into the temple, I was extremely confused, and I would have very disturbing flashbacks to porn I had seen as I was making sacred covenants. This was terrifying to me.

I went on my mission. I want to say 3 or 4 months in I gave in and started masturbating again. I felt like the biggest hypocrite in the world. But I still justified staying out on the mission, because I didn't want to let my family down again. I would last maybe a month, and then it would happen again. About 6 months into my mission I got the laziest companion in the mission. All he wanted to do was go to internet cafes in the middle of the day. I was so mellow, and desensitized because I had fallen into my addiction again that I went with him. Now these internet cafes were a recipe for disaster. All the computers were enclosed in their own little rooms. Nobody could see what you were looking at or doing. I fell deeper into pornography. Satan grabbed a hold of me, and I gave in fully. I let go. Up to this point this is the darkest point of my life. I was serving the lord as a missionary, looking up porn in an internet cafe. Then we would have to run out and teach a lesson to an investigator, and testify that the church is true. I was like dr jeckel and mr hyde. I had a double life.

By the end of my mission I started to clean up and repent. For the last few months I was clean. I came home, moved to ***, got an iPhone, and fell back into porn. It was the only thing that would bring me comfort. It was the only thing that would make me feel like I was alive for those few seconds, then push me into further depression. Sure, I went to see my bishop, but it didn't help anything. I was hopeless.

Then I met you ****, in my mind you were more beautiful than any girl I had lusted upon on the computer. You were my dream girl. And not just your looks, but how you saw life. You showed me that I had hope connecting with someone real. Not through a screen. My life changed forever. ****, you cured me, at that point of time in my mind. I'm sure a lot of the strong feelings that I had for you in the beginning were lust, but I know that I eventually developed a true love for you as a beautiful daughter of God. I wanted to see you happy. I felt that you deserved to be the most loved girl in the whole world, and I wanted to be that person. 

The 4 month engagement was sooooo hard for me. I knew how much I loved you, and I was extremely excited to marry the girl of my dreams. I would fantasize about you, showing up in my room at night, and then it happened, I had done it again. Masturbation. I was alone, depressed, and just wanted you. right then and there. you. Do you remember when you called and I was at the skatepark and for some reason I was in an irritable, and bad mood. I was being pessimistic about our future and all of that. That was after I had fallen. I could not break it to you. I thought I would crush you, and you would call the marriage off. I was terrified. Depression hit harder than ever before. I fell back into pornography. I saw the bishop, and cleaned myself up for the last few months, and we got married. 

I will always remember kneeling in front of you at the altar. You were so beautiful. I was completely ecstatic that you loved me and I loved you. In my mind, I had gone through the repentance process again, and I was worthy to kneel in the temple with you. It was a dream come true. The Lord truly blessed us by allowing us by allowing us to enter the temple and be sealed together. I do not feel in any way that our marriage is not valid in the eyes of God. Do not get that impression. He saw the desires of our hearts, and they were righteous. 

The first time I fell into pornography during our marriage was after I got the  job. I was so stressed out with my classes and the new job, that I needed an escape. An escape from reality. I had a strong selfish desire that I needed to feel good for myself. You stayed late at work, and I had a small bit of free time, so out of frustration with my situation I fell back into it. It was not in any way your fault ****. It was all internal feeling within me. I highly contemplated telling you. But you already were showing signs of depression, so I didn't tell you, and it ate at me. I made the justification that it had happened already, so might as well do it again, so I viewed it again and again.

When you asked my when the last time was that I saw porn, and I lied to you. That cut me to my core. My heart did not stop pounding for an hour straight until I broke the news to you. You did not deserve this. Most of the time now I do not feel like I deserve you. 

I am going to 2 12 step programs, seeing my counselor, talking with bishop, I have told my whole family, and ***. I talk to my mom and *** every night to let them know how my day went and if i resisted. 

Every other time I tried to stop I thought, "if I'm going to quit, I will have to do it on my own, just like it started". I had no idea how bad my addiction had gotten, and how much it had affected me. I am reading books and trying to attain as much information on how I can fight this. I cannot do it alone. Morning and night, I plead with the Lord to help me with this. I submit my will unto him, because the only way I am going to get through this is with His help, through the Atonement of His son. 

Sorry for such a long email. I really wanted to give you the full story of me, and my weakness. I am not your prince charming. I wish I was. I thought I could be. I was in denial that I had an addiction. I am a sex addict. I will be for the rest of my life. This is me. This is what I have to deal with.

Know that I still love you. You are a daughter of God. He loves you. You will get through this tough time. I wish I was there to comfort you, but I realize that I have forfeited my ability to be there for you. 

I would just like to finish by saying to any woman out there who is reading this, please do not settle for anything less than you want, in life & love. Please be aware of the effect porn has on men (& women) & do not give in to thinking of yourself as a mere sex object. & never let any person make you feel like one.