Hope After Porn: Our Marriage Would Never Be the Same

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
Written By Guest Author
Categories: Wives of Porn Addicts

Hope After Porn: Our Marriage Would Never Be the Same

by Laura Booz

It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

After the trauma of preterm labor, a month of bed-rest, and a three-day long delivery, I was a new mom who had to constantly hold, nurse, or pump milk for our premature daughter. The around-the-clock care didn’t ease up after the first couple of weeks like they said it would. I was so exhausted that I felt delirious. You might know the feeling.

To top it all off, I could tell our marriage was strained and I felt compelled to check my husband’s computer. I knew that in the past, when I had been sick, weak, or occupied with something else, Ryan would struggle more intensely with pornography. We had been going around and around with this problem for the full three years of our young marriage. No amount of disappointment, hurt, anger, conviction, or counseling had solved the problem. The solutions we had tried only lasted until the temptation crept up again. I ignored the internal warning several times. I felt too drained to admit that Ryan might be looking at pornography while I was caring for the baby or enjoying any moments of sleep that came my way. I thought, I can’t take care of another person’s problems; he’s supposed to be strong for me.

And yet the prompting continued. Check your husband’s computer.

When I finally scanned the history on Ryan’s computer, I found some images that he had recently viewed. Even though I wasn’t surprised, I did feel freshly hurt and betrayed. I felt the familiar rush of jealousy, of wanting to look intently at every two-dimensional woman to discover what she had that I didn’t have, what she did that I didn’t do, or what she was that I couldn’t be. I clenched my jaw and set my heart in disgust towards my husband: my heart was filled with bitterness toward this man who wasted our time, energy, and resources on lust while I worked so hard to take care of our family…