April’s Story: It Was On Our First Tour Of Duty That I Learned Of His Sex Addiction

I sit here in tears as I write this.  I am 25 years old and married to a sex addict. 

I met my husband in high school, had 3 kids by age 19, and was married soon after.  He joined the military and I went to college.  I eventually left school to follow him across the country to fulfill his military obligations. It was there, at our first duty station that I first learned of his sexual addiction.

It began with him closing down internet browsers and looking suspicious when I walked into the room, and I eventually found charges on our account for Adult Friend Finder.  He would lie about his internet activity, blaming the charges on a “favor” he was doing for a buddy who didn’t have access to a credit card (really?), and the porn account was in said friends name (yeah right).  Although none of this ever explained why he was on the websites, he never offered up a valid excuse or apology.He would let my suspicions die down, and then start back up with the same activity. 

 Over time he has become quite sophisticated, deleting browsing history, deleting internet cookies, using his smartphone (that is completely off limits to me).  The few times I have actually caught him viewing porn on the internet and confronted him, he would admit to it, but then blame me for not fulfilling his sexual needs. 

Early on, I too blamed myself and tried to do what I thought was necessary to stop all of this, but I have since learned that I will never be able to stop him.  Oh, and let’s not mention the fact that he got a vasectomy, against my will.  He claims it is because the military covered the full bill, but I really think that gave him more freedom to have sex without worrying about planting his seed.

He was deployed over the course of 15 months between 2007 & 2008. During this time, I found emails to several women detailing their most recent physical interactions and how they planned to meet up in the future.  He lied and told me that he allowed another soldier to use his email account so that that soldier’s wife would not find out about his communication with other women. 

I confronted one of the women, and she reached out to him for help in dealing with me.  I found the email where he instructed her to lie to me.  While he was deployed I lost a significant amount of weight, partially because I was worried about his safety, but also because of the crap he was putting me through. 

When he returned, I was conflicted but tried to be happy my husband was home.  Now having access to his personal computer, I found more internet history, detailing what took place during his deployment.  Despite all of this, we resumed our sexual life (of course we did, he was my husband).  We planned a big family trip to Disneyland a month after he returned home.  While at Disneyland he learned (while in line for Magic Mountain) that he had an STD and should get to the nearest clinic for treatment.  It was another week before he got treatment or told me anything.  Sure enough, I had myself tested, and tested positive for Chlamydia. 

He has told several lies surrounding the STD, none of which I ever believed.  His first lie was that he contracted it by receiving oral sex from a woman who had it in her mouth (possible?).  He eventually told me that he knew that I thought he had cheated anyway, so he told me what I wanted to hear.  The next lie was that a male friend with the STD shed a lot of blood in battle, and he (my husband) came in contact with this blood via an open wound, and then transmitted it to me (BS!).    Even now his story changes slightly, as he cannot remember the original lie.

Fast forward three years later, and I am still dealing with the same thing.  Although he has promised me numerous times that he had gotten over looking at porn, I just found him looking at porn while sitting in the living room with our children watching television.  He moved to the restroom, and I went to check on him because he had been in there a while, and sure enough he was using his smartphone to watch porn online.  He didn’t apologize or even try to reassure me, all he did was laugh it off. 

This recent fiasco has been my tipping point.  I sought counseling once but, we have never been able to afford it.  My situation (teen parent) has afforded me no real friends I can talk to, and my family has offered me ill advice thus far, everything from blaming me to telling me that his behavior was normal “man” behavior.

Despite his actions, I have continued to pursue my goals, completing my Bachelor’s and I am currently in graduate school full time.  At this point I do not want to salvage anything.  I try to live daily like there is no problem, but I worry that my continued engagement in sex will lead to another STD or something worse. 

Our children are older, and I worry about them finding porn in the internet history, and also how a divorce will affect them.  In addition, with no money to file for divorce, fend for neither myself nor my children outside of the home, I feel helpless.  With my responsibilities as a student and mother, a job is just not feasible.  I feel trapped at this point, and I almost feel like he knows I can’t go anywhere, so he continues to disrespect me in my face. 

 We just moved into a new city (far away from family) a few months ago for me to pursue my graduate degree and for him to get his Bachelors.  I don’t want to give up my education to move back home with my mom, but I don’t know how much more of this I can take.  I have hidden a lot from my children, as I do not want to portray their father negatively to them, but the tension between us is becoming more obvious. 

I feel disrespected, torn, hurt, depressed, disillusioned…and all for something I did not do.