Watching Porn

On New Year's Eve, a bunch of my college friends got together to wave goodbye to 2006 with skewers, hunks of bread and veggies, and vats of bubbling cheese. After spending an outrageous amount at an actual fondue restaurant the year before, we were determined to do it better and cheaper on our own.

It was a night of hilarity and laughs. Very few, if any, of the women there were pregnant (we were all married couples ranging from 4-8 years in wedded bliss) and at least one bottle of Hendrick's gin was consumed with small amounts of tonic water and thin slices of cucumber resting on the surface. This in addition to the champagne. And the beer. And the wine. Our host, a who liked to keep parties rolling along, made a play list of classics from our "back in the day" years. "Bust a Move" was one of the songs playing, along with Keith Sweat's "Twisted", and of course, a variety of Michael Jackson's hits. When "P.Y.T." came on, there was a lull in the ferocity of the party and in general people were simply sipping and chatting, but when that song came on, I started dancing in place, glanced across the room and saw my lanky husband bobbing his head in his chair and singing along as well. "See!" I exclaimed, moving across the room to perch on his knee while he rested his hand on the small of my back, "this is why I know we are perfect for each other."

It felt true. It felt like we were two people who danced when no one else was. Because we were so in sync when out on the town, I felt reassured, like the problems I felt drifting into our lives when we were home alone didn't exist, that they must be imagined, something only I felt because I must have a contentment disorder. I must be the type of woman who looks for problems where there are none.

Now, I realize I was looking for reassurance that our lives were fine because they weren't. I wasn't imagining problems. But I just didn't know the truth. I thought it was bad that Shawn looked at porn, but then I could argue against myself. I thought he had an addiction, and even he thought he had one, but he told me he was done, that he had quit. What choice did I have? He looked me in the eye and said it was done. I could choose to believe my husband wouldn't lie to me and ignore the nagging feeling in my gut, or I could choose not to believe him and instead feel crazy worrying about what was true.

All this and we were only three weeks in our new home. I was working full time and going to grad school. I just wanted to have fun at New Year's; I wanted to stop thinking about the problem.

But I couldn't. I would encounter sexual innuendos at every turn. My coworkers who teased me when Shawn and I moved in with my parents, joking that we'd have to put a sock on the door when we wanted to have sex. I blushed fiercely, not because it was true or I was embarrassed my parents might think we were having sex, but because we weren't having much sex. I was pretty sure my husband wasn't attracted to me.

Even this got confusing, though, because he reinforced my self-esteem, told me I was attractive, and clearly enjoyed when his friends flirted with me or told him he was lucky.

At New Year's I was sitting cozy wedged between two of my girlfriends on a couch and we were talking in low tones about sex with the men (our husbands) drinking tonic and gin at the basement bar. Emily was giggling about watching porn with her husband, a woman who was always open about her sexuality and who seemed to me to be the definition of Healthy when it came to sex.

The porn question came seeping back into my mind. If porn was healthy, was Shawn healthy? And if Shawn was healthy, what was I? I thought about the times I had suggested we watch CineMax together as an experiment, one of my many attempts to persuade my husband to want to have sex with me. Could it be he was the normal one? Was I just uptight about his habits?

"Well, what about if one person is watching porn in secret?" I asked, wearing a short-sleeved, body-hugging black sweater lined with silver threads. I felt Emily's arm against mine as we leaned back on the couch.

"Oh, no," she said, without a hint of hesitation. "If it's secret, it's dirty."

I nodded. Relieved. But I didn't explain why I asked. I kept my secret.

What troubles me now, three years past separation and into recovery, is that Emily, wise and healthy as she is, doesn't get to be the judge on what is acceptable and what is not. Emily can decide for herself what is acceptable. I can decide for myself what feels right. There isn't really a quota for what it takes to be a sex addict, there's no rule about how much porn you have to look at before it "counts" as addiction.

"It's like this, I think," said a friend of mine recently at the bar I visit for happy hour about once a week. "Addiction is when something takes away from your life. So, the guy that shows up smashed to work and loses his job is an alcoholic. The guy that drinks every night, gets up in the morning and adds whiskey to his coffee, but shows up every day on time and does his job, has a drinking problem and might not be living his life to the fullest, but he is not an alcoholic."

I don't know that I agree with this definition exactly, but I see his point to a certain extent. Addiction is a slippery topic.

I'm not sure how to handle the subject of pornography. "It's such an interesting topic," said one of my peers from class. "I mean, it is the internet." [Add research later]

The feeling I fought against when waking to the realization that Shawn had a problem with pornography was the feeling that everyone looks at porn. I'd broach the subject tentatively and my girlfriends would dismiss it as something every guy does once in a while. My sister-in-law said she knew there was porn on my brother's computer (ew!), and even my mom told me that my dad used to get Playboy magazines (double ew!). "Of course, I made him get rid of them when I moved in," she added. Both women told me this after finding out about Shawn's addiction. They didn't understand. I had never told them. It was the secret I'd been keeping to myself for three or four years.

Every man I knew in college had at least some porn on his computer, and they would amuse themselves by showing each other images. I still don't understand why guys look at porn together. It is completely beyond me, but I realize there's some sort of amusement factor there, especially, it seems, at the college level.

[Add research about the highly addictive nature of internet porn]

And it is addicting. When I was starting to realize Shawn's compulsion to look at porn happened more frequently than I imagined, I would trace the history files on our computer. When I confronted him, he started erasing the history, and I found the temporary files in our computer still held the downloads and links he'd visited. I would trace his steps through the internet, and I hate to admit it, but I would start to become fascinated myself. And sickened. And not totally unaroused. It is erotic and arousing to look at naked people having sex. It is fascinating to absorb the different links and channels porn took. It is sickening to see how porn reduces people: sex with Asian women, sex with teens, sex with grandmothers, with blonds, with brunettes, with redheads, gang-bangs, big dicks, tight pussies, black women, rape scenes, blow-jobs, cum-on-her face, look-up-her-skirt, watch-her-change, watch-her-beg, give-it-to-her-hard.

One site was just a spreadsheet of choices, and because my husband never told me what he watched, I assumed he watched the worst. I saw the rape scenes and thought about how one time he put his hands on my neck, though not hard. I saw the scenes where she begged and thought about how I would talk dirty to him to try to turn him on. I saw the scenes where men fucked teens and I thought about the girls I taught in high school.

I lost myself in that internet porn for hours, just trying to figure out my husband. Feeling pretty horrified.

I still don't know what he looked at on the internet. I probably never will. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Maybe it was worse. I know he went to one site everyday, Carrie Sweets, teen tease. She would change outfits and dance for her "fans" and tantalize them with her journal of daily events, like sucking on lolli-pops, trying on swim-suits, getting sweaty out in the sun. There was even a birthday club where she would send a birthday wish to her most loyal "fans" (the ones that paid a subscription) on their special day.

I know he purchased porn through cable television and that often the bill would be about $300 a month. I know he also bought dvd's from some company called Adult DVD empire. I know unlisted numbers showed up frequently on our phone. I know one of the other sites he visited frequently was a peep show site where you could chat with the strippers. I only know all of this in hindsight, through my sleuthing. By looking, finally, at the credit card statements he would never show me, the cable bills he hid from me when he got the mail.

I wish I hadn't had to be so sneaky. I wish I wouldn't have had to spy. At the time, I was a good-girl who got married when she was 24 and assumed it would be for life. When things started to feel distant and he wouldn't tell me what was going on, when he would say he wasn't interested in having sex because he was full, or tired, or busy, or whatever, I started to wonder what was going on that would drive so much distance between us. When url addresses popped up unbidden when I searched for grad schools, I began to get concerned.

First, it was the secrecy. "Just put a post-it on the computer when you look at porn," I said. "I hate the secrecy. It makes me feel gross."

But I would still find porn.

"Did you look at porn today?"

He'd confess and look remorseful.

"How come you didn't just put a post-it on the computer?" I would ask.

"It's embarrassing," he'd say, or maybe he'd just shrug.

I'd let him off the hook. We were too happy otherwise. He cooked, he cleaned, he was affectionate in public, he took care of me. He was attractive, he dressed well, he listened to great music, had great taste in books, loved eating at great restaurants, and was a receptacle of interesting though somewhat trivial information. He was generous and bought drinks for other people. He could break dance. People were forever telling me how lucky I was.

Porn shut me out of his life. His compulsion to watch porn caused us financial debt. His absorption in this "hobby" caused him to lie to me daily.

I'd call that an addiction.

In the end it was the lying that drove me away. In a way I thank God that he lied to me. Had he been honest, I would have stayed. I would have "helped" him through his "sickness." (For better or for worse, in sickness and in health...). I would have been the good wife.

But when I found out there was yet another $1400 cable bill in August of 2007, after he had told me weekly that he had quit looking at porn, I knew there was nothing I could do. I knew we were not in it together. I knew it was beyond anything I could control. So I quit. I left. I walked out the door.

A week later we were separated.

A year after that happy New Year's to welcome in 2007, I celebrated the birth of 2008 by myself at my aunt and uncle's condo in Florida, 10 miles from the beach. I cooked lobster. I cried. I drank wine. I ate chocolate. I bought myself a cute nightgown and a beautiful bracelet. I went to the beach. I wrote prayers on shells. I drove my rented convertible up and down the coast. I felt the sun on my skin and the wind through my hair.

I did not think about porn.

I don't know what will happen with me and pornography. "Look at you," said my wonderful red-haired motherly therapist. "You're so much stronger now, you know you wouldn't let a guy into your life who looked at that stuff."

But I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's a deal-breaker for me, or simply something I would want to be completely honest and open about with my partner. Internet porn is out. Done deal. Something I can't stand because it can so easily go from silly to disturbing. But some porn, the silly kind that I feel quite certain was filmed in a studio and not someone's bedroom, the kind that is played on CineMax, can be sort of stimulating and might be fun to watch with someone else. But I'm not sure. I'm still not sure how I feel about porn.

What I do know is that I won't ask Emily, wise as she is, about what is right for me when it comes to porn. That is a decision I will make for myself.