Addicted to Porn: Chasing the Cardboard Butterfly Page #6

You know?

And sometimes, it was...

Literally, he would try,

and then other times,

it was, you know, "Goodnight,"

as I pranced around

in a nightie or something.

And it just...

It was very...

As a woman,

it was very difficult

to understand

what my role was.

And I know relationships

aren't all about sex,

but I mean, isn't that

a perk of being married?

Let's get it on,

you know, and I just...

It was just

not there sometimes.

My little sister and I,

she was like 11 at the time,

we were on LimeWire,

trying to find some music,

and it popped up

in the history...

some really just bad stuff.

And my sister was like

"What in the world is that?"

I was like, "Ah, don't look at that!"

You know, she's 11!

And I flipped out.

And, you know,

he lied about it.

He blamed it on his brother.

And I banned

his brother from the house.

I said, "He's never allowed

to come back here.

Why would he do that

in our house?"

And I was very hurt.

I was extremely hurt,

and I confronted him about it,

and I said,

"I just don't understand.

You sleep next to me

every night,

and you don't want to

have sex with me, but...

I'll find pictures

of naked women.

So you must have a sex drive.

You must want to have sex or something.

Like, I don't understand.

Just come down the hall, you know,

and lay down next to me.

We can have

that relationship."

And, um, that was

the first time.

And it was scary to me,

I guess.

I didn't understand and...

It was probably in college.

I started college right around,

you know, the birth of the Internet,

as when it started to get big.

And, uh, you know,

I found myself...

I had a single room

that I lived in

and found myself alone in my

room more and more often.

And at that point, you know, I just

figured it was something everybody did,

but I think I noticed

I was doing it more.

But at that point,

I did realize it was a problem.

I figured everybody, you know...

All the college kids do this.

The magnitude of it,

I don't think hit me

until later on

when I was married.

There were multiple times

in my marriage

where she caught me

on the Internet or whatever,

and at that point,

I started saying,

"Okay, well, I'm sorry.

I won't do it anymore."

And that happened

a couple more times,

and at that point,

it was just like... I was...

You know, I thought to myself,

"Well, I'm starting to hide...

I feel like I'm hiding this.

That can't be right."

It's a compulsion.

It's like any other addiction.

Uh, like I said,

when I was young,

it was something

that made me feel good.

It was somewhere I could run to,

um, for protection almost.

Uh, it became a cure

for boredom, for loneliness,

for anger, for sadness,

uh, for anything.

And it...

When I've done something that long,

it's just something you just...

I go back to, and I go back to.

It absolutely made me feel like

something was wrong with me.

It made me feel

un-sexy, un-lovable.

Um, I felt like there had to be

something wrong with me.

It all boiled down to that.

There was something wrong with me.

I was too... I mean,

at the time, gee,

I think I weighed 98 pounds.

You know, I couldn't be skinny enough.

I couldn't be pretty enough.

I think it was more, for me,

that it was...

You know, the act of intimacy and

sex took a whole lot of effort

and for me, at that point,

it was so much easier

to look at pornography.

You know, everything could be,

uh, you know...

There wasn't...

I didn't have to...

please the other person,

the other "person" involved.

Sadly, you know, it just seemed

like it was easier to do that.

I was only gone for maybe three days,

Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

I came home,

and at that point in time,

Carrie Underwood's "Jesus, Take the Wheel"

was a huge song.

And I loved it,

and I was googling the words.

So, I typed in Google search,

"Carrie Underwood, 'Jesus, Take the Wheel'",

and as I'm typing in

"Carrie Underwood",

a list of female names

pops down.

And I'm like,

"What is all of this?"

And my heart starts, you know,

going, because...

I've been kind of

down this road before,

and we were in such a good place

that I was like,

"There's no way.

There's no way that we're

going through this right now."

And I started clicking

on all the names,

and you know how your search

history is with Google,

and even back then,

the page would pop up, and the links

that you go to are already purple,

and the ones that

you haven't gone to are blue.

And it's, you know,

"Jenny XXX" or whatever.

And I'm like,

"What in the hell is all of this?"

So, of course, I'm completely nosy,

and I start clicking on everything.

And I'm just looking at all of these things,

and then I'm furious.

Heart's pounding?

I'm just... I'm a mess.

And I start

taking Post-it Notes,

and I write down every

single female name

that I saw that he clicked on.

And I just put them

all over the desk,

all over the screen,

everywhere.

And at some point in time,

you know, he had come back in,

and he said something to me,

and all I said was,

"Why don't you ask all your girlfriends?"

And he's like...

"Oh."

I'm like, "What the hell

are you doing while I'm gone?

I'm gone for three days.

Are you kidding me?"

I think it really

didn't hit me until...

There was one point

in my marriage, when she...

confronted me about it,

and I kinda came clean.

And it's like,

"I feel like it's me.

But in my head, it doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense.

How is it me?

And what is wrong with you?

Why don't you like real women?"

And I think I even said that

to him at some point.

Like, "What is wrong with you?"

And he stopped and...

And we're standing,

you know, in our office,

and he said, "I think

I'm addicted to porn."

And I sat on the floor

in my office, and I bawled.

Because I didn't know what that meant.

What does that mean?

I know what it means

to be addicted to alcohol.

I know what it means

to be addicted to drugs.

What do you mean you're addicted to porn?

What does that mean?

I feel cheated on

a million times over

by a hundred different girls.

I feel inadequate. I feel like

I don't know what to do.

I gave him many ultimatums.

Me or porn.

Your family or porn.

Um, and every time,

he truly, truly believed it,

and I wanted to believe it

when he would say, "I choose you.

I choose my family.

I don't want to look at porn.

I want to be with you,

I want to get better."

Um, and he would cry

and I would cry,

and it never lasted.

He was always

sucked back in.

My knight in shining armor

was a porn addict.

How do you...

How do you pick up

the pieces from that?

How do you go on

with your life

when you've given yourself,

and your son...

and your everything

to this person,

and they can't stop

looking at it?

He has these eyes,

these eyes that are crystal blue.

And I used to love his eyes.

And I got to the point

where I would look at his eyes,

and I wanted to stab him

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