My husband's porn obsession makes me feel unsafe in our home - OY's story

All weekend I was on the verge of walking out of my home and my marriage. I have now realized that my husband's porn addiction has been going on for far longer than I had realized.

I have been married for 20 years. My husband has his own business and often works long, irregular hours. For years I heard he had to stay late in the office, working on billing or proposals, that he couldn't get any work done until everyone left at 6 and had to stay late to finish up. I was left home alone night after night with our 3 kids. It was horribly lonely. I don't know how much of the time was spent on actual work and how much was spent looking at internet porn. I would question, he would deny.

I was married to a cocaine addict for 8 months in my early 20's. I know what addiction and denial look like. This is deja vu all over again. Sadly, I also know what the end of a marriage looks like.

Before the internet, my husband and I had always had a 'don't ask, don't tell' relationship with porn. He would sneak a Playboy or a Penthouse into the house once in awhile...usually with a big cover, like Madonna or Cindy Crawford. I would look the other way. Once in awhile we would get frisky and watch some bit of a movie together. Then my husband took up an interest in photography and lingerie. He started buying me dozens of the most expensive brands, and when I didn't wear the fancy expensive stuff because I was nursing a baby or chasing a kid around the playground, he would be upset.

Then a camera started following us into the bedroom. Every bit of our supposed 'lovemaking' was a "Hold that pose!" I went along with it for years, though it killed any pleasure in the act for me. Then he started buying me frilly dresses and high, high heels (which has never been my style) and would make comment about I didn't love him if I didn't want to wear them out at night. I felt terrible about myself. I tried to dress up for him and make him happy. I started wearing my hair down and wearing makeup during the day, and trying to dress up, but still, I could go a whole day and never see my husband from the time I was still in my pajamas when he left for his office in the morning until I was back in pajamas late at night when he returned.

I would sometimes swing by the office to show him how pretty I looked during the day. He'd still stay in the office all night. I was depressed and felt horrible about myself. Every birthday gift, Mother's Day gift, Christmas gift involved a sex toy or lingerie or some sexual thing from some store that claimed that's what women really wanted. On our vacations as a couple, our bags were filled with cameras, camera stands, video equipment, and sex toys. It looked as though we were going on location to shoot a porno. IN fact we were.

Last Christmas my gift was a fancy hotel room. I wanted to take an art course, which we couldn't afford, because my husband had just paid the same amount for the hotel instead. I wanted to pretend to be pleased and not seem ungrateful for the gift, but I would cry and cry and throw temper tantrums before we would go. I just knew it wasn't 'for me', as my husband would tell me it was.

Then he started with his erotic book collection. At first he 'bought me' an enormous book on Dita Von Teese for Christmas. Then he started asking for these books for gifts for himself... I believed my husband, that he had an avid interest in photography. But certainly not in photos of mountains or nature or anything but naked bodies doing erotic things. The book collection grew into the hundreds and soon he was buying these very expensive books instead of paying his office rent and telling me "Uh, oh. We don't have any money left for Christmas." after one book spending spree that cost upwards of $3,000.

One day my sweet, adoring, mild tempered husband became nasty. He was nasty to the children and nasty to me, and would throw fits over things like I made homemade chicken soup for the kids, who were sick, and he didn't like soup, and things like I ate without him although I had waited all night to eat and it was 11PM and he wasn't home yet. He often put me down, telling me things like I dressed like a boy and looked masculine. I have always been a bit of a tomboy but I have waist length hair and am considered very attractive and feminine in my appearance. I was bewildered. In shock.

Last year I went away for a night to a sleep-over with some old high school girlfriends and came home to find my husband had redecorated the living room with many 'art prints' he had collected. My walls were lined with S&M-y photos and photos naked young women. My daughters and I spent months objecting before he finally took them down. Although my daughters had presented us with a series of beautiful portraits of our children for Christmas, my husband wouldn't take down his 'art prints' and put up the photos of the kids. I was on the verge of leaving last spring before he did so.

I also spent about a year being woken up by my husband trying to stick things up my vagina and anus in the middle of the night and take photos. I told him to stop, that it felt like rape. He finally did.

Around Memorial Day, he finally admitted he had a pot and porn addiction, and agreed to stop. We spent the summer with our kids at our beach house and thought everything was hunky dory. That our problems were behind us. In about August, I found out my father has terminal cancer. I flew to visit my father for a week and returned home to find that my husband had basically turned on the porn and clicked away from the time he came back from dropping me at the airport. I checked the history when I returned. I knew he had sounded nervous and frantic over the phone when I'd spoken to him during that week. I knew something was up. But my husband made tons of excuses and even blamed me for it. He'd also spent quite a lot of time before and after my trip on these erotic sites (one of his claims was that they were photography sites; 'art', not porn, although some of the pictures involved naked teenaged girls our daughter's age with no public hair making out. But that's art, not porn, according to my husband.)

I have been crying every since I discovered how my husband spent his time while I was away caring for my dying father. And my biggest question is, how was my husband caring for our little one if every 3-5 minutes he was clicking away? I once said to him I couldn't believe he would look at porn on his laptop in the living room with kids playing right there. His answer was "Not always!"

I don't want to be here any more. I feel unsafe in our home and I am not comfortable with our children being here. My husband still has all the books he bought, although he'd feigned an attempt to sell them last spring (he used to justify his very expenses purchases by telling me he could sell them for so much more than they are worth.)

He tells me he'll stop looking at erotic images, though he still insists they are not porn, because it's not 'hard core' and they are photos, not movies. I don't believe him. I believe he'll just be more careful to erase his history in the future.

We used to have regular sex. More often than 'regular'. A few times a week. I thought my husband had a high sex drive and needed lots of release, so I took care of him. Now I don't want my husband to come anywhere near me. I have one foot out the door. I just have to deal with my dying father, and then I can figure out my marriage.