gail56

During premarital counseling I asked my husband to promise that our home would always remain free of sexually explicit material; I had previously experienced sexual assault and emotional abuse directly related to sex and attractiveness. I told him that I could not go through that kind of pain ever again. He said he understood what I was saying and he said this promise would be no problem for him to keep. Twelve years of marriage passed when one day I discovered my husband was maintaining a secret life that included (at minimum) several hours of daily compulsive pornography use, an obsession with celebrities, and masturbation. On that day, I found photos, videos, and a list of all of his searches (he mostly searched for celebrities nude). There were more than 4,000 pictures on his home computer (thousands on his work computer), and not a single one was a picture of me. Not even one portrait. When I confronted him, he told me that this had been going on for “many years” (at minimum five years). On that summer day in 2010, I broke down completely. I was out of work for 6-months. I came back to work marginally functional, with disability accommodations (PTSD and body dysmorphic disorder). My husband and I are still together and he claims to be free of his compulsion. He seems to have moved forward with his life. Yet I am heartbroken and stuck. I have tried everything and I cannot seem to recover from the trauma. I am losing hope that I will ever experience peace, let alone the unbridled joy I had experienced before I discovered his compulsion. I want my life back (the life I thought I could have, before I learned about the compulsion).