My addiction killed my marriage

[battery1979]

Where does one begin? I suppose starting at the beginning would be the best place to start. I didn’t set out in life to be a lousy husband. Hell to be honest, when I got married, I thought I was a pretty good person. I was probably too immature to get married when I did. I’m writing this out now as I sit in Iraq. You see I’m going home to a divorce. It was a long time in coming. Lord knows my wife did her best to keep us together. She gave more of herself than any human has a right to ask. What follows is probably pretty incoherent, but hopefully it will help me to better understand myself so I can learn and move on. I’m going to try to include everything that led to me becoming the person I did. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes so you don’t make similar ones in the future.
My very first introduction to the world of sex came about as most teenage boys did, with finding the Playboys and Hustler’s of mine and my friends’ dads. Man we thought that stuff was great. That exposure probably shaped my reactions to a lot of future situations. See it became my drive to acquire all the porn mags I could get my hands on. I was pretty nosy, going into every cabinet, linen closet, bathroom closet or what have you that I could. Any mags I found I would smuggle out and squirrel back into my own stash.
The first time my mom found my stuff she burned it, then gave me a long and terrible lecture about how horrible it was, and how it was sinful to have it and look at that stuff and how I was going to burn in hell if I ever had premarital sex. My mom is still a devout Catholic. Somehow the teachings of the church never took for me. What I was supposed to learn from that experience though is that it was wrong of me to want to look at porn, and masturbation was a SIN!!. But… how could something that made me feel so good be wrong? It really only encouraged me to learn to hide my porn better. It made it exciting to have something I enjoyed but had to hide.
So I continued my exploits, acquiring what porn I could find and stashing it away. One day I happened to find a Penthouse Letters magazine. This was a whole new thing for me. It was WORD PORN! There was one story that really stuck in my adolescent mind. There was this guy that had a busted pipe that flooded his basement or something. So he was on the phone to his insurance agent who happened to have a rather nice voice and long story short I discovered the concept of phone sex.
And looky here, what was peppered throughout the magazine I was holding? Numbers for me to try on my own. Porn age verification hasn’t changed at all since I was a kid. “Hey, you’re 18 right?” Throw that onto a 900 number that charges back to your landline and bada bing bada boom, I was soon looking at a $3000 dollar phone bill. My parents were going to commit murder when they saw that.
So I did the only logical thing in my teenage brain and hid the fucking thing. Which only delayed the inevitable because eventually the phone got cut off, my parents called the phone company, found out what happened and grounded me. I also got to do a stint doing hard labor manually leveling the backyard with a wheelbarrow, shovel, and some dirt my dad had acquired from somewhere. That didn’t deter me though.
For some reason my mom got it into her head that I was depressed or something. There was something wrong with me that had to be fixed, because god knows, teenagers aren’t immature and prone to doing stupid things on their own right? Having a burgeoning interest in sex and experimenting and acting out the way I had meant there had to be something wrong with me. I don’t know if that’s how my mom really felt or not.
But she was determined to fix me. She scheduled me an appointment with a psychiatrist. Overall it was pretty unproductive experience. I didn’t want to talk about what I had done. I was embarrassed as hell. And my mom thought the way to get me to stop, was to talk about what I had done, and why I had done it, with a complete stranger. I didn’t want to talk about what I had done, what kid would? I knew what I had done was wrong, even before I started. But I went and did it anyway. Pay attention ‘cause you will see this material again.
So a few months had gone past, I finally stopped going to the shrink because honestly I didn’t want to be there, and you can’t help someone who won’t help themselves. I had enjoyed my phone sex experience so much, I wanted more, but how? I found out through talking with my neighbor’s son that they were going to Disneyland for a week. The wheels in my brain got to churning and I hatched a PLAN.

[battery1979]

I did a fair bit of reconnaissance and determined that our neighbors had the same style of windows we had on our own house. I had learned through the previous experience of accidentally breaking one, that it wasn’t very difficult to remove the flashing around the panes in the windows and remove the entire pane.
So I waited until the neighbors left on their trip and put my plan into motion. The first night they were gone I snuck out of the house and over to theirs. I managed to pry the plastic flashing out of the window, then the pane, and once the pane was out of the way I managed to get the window open. Once I had access to the house I was sure to carefully replace the pane and the flashing so it didn’t appear to be tampered with. Of course I had made sure to wear gloves so I didn’t leave fingerprints. If CSI had come on when I was a kid I probably never would have attempted this.
I proceeded to carefully go through the master bedroom until I found the holy grail of porn for my youth, a VHS Tape. Porn is so easy to get these days, kids don’t know how good they’ve got it. Parents, learn how to set up firewall filters on your routers at home. Anyway I threw the tape in the VCR so I could check it out and then went about what I had really come there to do and start making phone calls. I placed a couple calls until I was satisfied, packed up the tape and several pieces of lingerie (because I liked the way it felt to stroke myself with it), and wiped down anything I thought I had touched. I was careful to partially close the window as I left so I could come back the next night.
I returned each night the neighbors were on their trip. I was partially busted by my parents on the last night, as I was sneaking back into the house. For some reason my mom had come to check on me, and then justifiably freaked out because I wasn’t in my room. The floodlights on the house came on, and I sprinted back across the yard and into my window, where my mom caught me coming in. Luckily I had left my bag outside the window. I made up some bullshit about how I had gone for a walk. I don’t think they really believed that but I didn’t really get into any trouble for that. I still don’t know how my parents and the neighbors didn’t make the connection between two mysteriously large phone bills, a missing tape, and me. ESPECIALLY considering how much all the women in the neighborhood gossiped. Maybe I was just lucky that the particular neighbor whose house I had broken into, was from California, and thus not particularly well liked by the rest of the women my mom spoke with on a regular basis. That kind of put the kibosh on my escapades for a while though. (Looking back here, I was willing to do some dumb shit to get my rocks off.)
I continued to collect whatever porn I could find. The weird thing about the back roads of Louisiana is that you would occasionally find magazines on the side of the road. So I would pick up the odd magazine off the side of the road. One of my uncles had a Playboy collection he kept in his bathroom. I ended up breaking into his trailer one evening to steal it. Eventually my mom found my second stash. She burned that one too, but there was no lecture this time. All in all it really pissed me off but what could I do about it.
I was a shy kid in high school. I wasn’t outgoing, kind of flew under the radar, not one of the popular or cool kids. Needless to say, I didn’t date a lot in high school. Senior year I joined a local theater group sponsored by the local college. It was there I met Jes. She was a college freshman, about a year or two older than me. No biggie really, but we liked each other. We talked quite a bit, called each other on the phone for hours, and eventually we started dating which was a big deal for young me. Things were going well for a while and young love was amazing. She was the first girl I ever kissed, first girl I ever….well there were other firsts too. She wasn’t the one I lost my virginity to, that comes a bit later. I thought we were going to get married. I loved that girl as intensely as an 18 year old kid could. Teenage hormones, what a hell of a drug.
But things weren’t all peaceful in the State of Denmark. You see unbeknownst to young me, Jes had been going home on the weekends with her roommate and it was there she met another man. It was one evening at rehearsal that she came in wearing an engagement ring. I was devastated. You see, Jes. hadn’t bothered to tell me we were through, she didn’t even drop any hints that something else was going on. I was young and inexperienced so of course I had no clue that something had been amiss. I took it pretty hard for a kid. This is important, because I should have learned right then and there how much that hurt and not to do it to someone else. (It’s amazing how much clarity is provided by hindsight) I would be

[battery1979]

doing pretty much the same things later. It wouldn’t be me experiencing these feelings, oh no, I was going to be the monster inflicting them.
My next experience with girls came in college, about a year later. After Jes. I had of course gotten over it and moved on with my life. I graduated high school, spent the summer working, and when fall came around I shipped my ass up to Baton Rouge and started at LSU.
I wish I could say that I studied hard, went to class and graduated, but truth be told, I slacked off, skipped class and ended up dropping out after my second semester. I also discovered the joys of internet porn. It wasn’t quite as ubiquitous back then as it is now but I found it thanks to my roommate’s computer that he was nice enough to leave in the room over the weekend occasionally when he went home for the weekend.
Somewhere in that time period I decided I needed to lose my virginity. This was back in late 1997 early 1998. The internet was still in its infancy. Internet dating was probably still in an embryonic state. I started messing around with Yahoo Personals. Managed to meet a pretty nice, though not particularly attractive girl who worked at the library, but I guess that’s neither here nor there since nothing came from that.
I did however hit pay dirt when Tara answered my ad. She was quite a bit older. She had come to town for a race or something I don’t really remember. I didn’t know it when I met here at the bar, but she and her husband (insert record scratch here) were swingers. I got to meet him after Tara. and I had been making out in the car for a bit.
But I was young and dumb and eager to have sex, so I threw caution to the wind and we went back to the hotel where I got to experience my first threesome. Sex! SEX! Sex was great, it was awesome! I loved it. I don’t know what the lesson was from that bit, since we were all consenting adults so no harm no foul. I didn’t have sex again for probably a year and a half. (Actually though looking at it I can see that when it comes to sex there is a distinct lack of critical thinking involved, and a willingness to participate in potentially dangerous situations with no regard to my safety or well-being. Honestly it could have been a honeypot trap and I could have been killed.)
After dropping out of LSU I got a job working at Wal-Mart where I spent my days sleeping and my nights stocking shelves. (Weird coincidence to follow) By this time I was legal so I was able to start buying my own porn. I acquired another stash consisting of a bunch of magazines and videos which my mom didn’t manage to discover.
My free time was spent with my friends prowling New Orleans dressed in Gothic attire. One night while we were out we ran into an old schoolmate of ours. Kelly was a grade year behind me and should have graduated about year after me. We had been together in yearbook class.
To be honest I wouldn’t have given her a second look while in high school. She was really awkward and nerdy, and acne wasn’t kind to her. She had dropped out Senior Year, moved to New Orleans changed her looks, taken up stripping, and gotten married in there somewhere. We caught up for a bit. She was heavily into the Vampire culture of New Orleans. That’s actually an interesting topic to look into by the way. Kelly actually thought she was a vampire. And I introduced her to my family eventually.
Anyhoo a couple months later I ran into her at one of the clubs in Thibodaux. She had decided to move home as a way of running from her husband. I ended up taking her home that night and things got heavy, we almost consummated our relationship that night, in the car, in front of my parents’ house. But we stopped short. I dropped her off at her house. Now that I think about I don’t remember the first time we had sex (Strike that now I do because I just remembered I wrote it in a journal. I don’t actually remember the details, just that it happened. I wonder where that is?). But I know it happened because we eventually decided to get an apartment together. I had been living with my friend Rich before I moved in with She was a bit of a freak. I guess I was too. Remember the part about Kelly thinking she was a vampire? I let her “Turn” me. It really just involved a pinprick and us drinking a drop of each other’s blood. She was my sire, my Dark Empress. I loved her, or at least, I thought I did. We had a lot of sex. One night she decided she just had to have my best friend and me together so we obliged her and that was the second threesome I had.

[battery1979]

Rich was about the weirdest most amazing guy you could ever know, but shortly after that he moved up to Canada. I decided I wanted to go with him but I didn’t have the money at the time, so I went and got a better paying job doing air conditioning work. This job put me on the road quite a bit. I knew Kelly was rather promiscuous prior to getting together with me, but I didn’t mind too much since she was sleeping in my bed at night and she was mine, and I was hers.
It was through Rich and another friend of mine, Evan that Kelly and I met Allie one of Rich’s exes. Allie may have been certifiably insane. But Kelly didn’t mind. And I didn’t care either. I’m not sure how we acquired alcohol since none of us were over 21 yet but we were having a party at the apartment, I think we may have been playing D&D or something and drinking. Allie was there along with Evan. One thing led to another and later that night we all ended up in the bedroom together, me with Allie and Evan with Kelly. It was really awkward since Evan was still struggling with coming out of the closet and I really felt no attraction to Allie but I guess Kelly had fun. That was my first orgy? No clue.
There was one night, we had gone up to New Orleans to party and Kelly found a guy she wanted to bring home with us. I didn’t know this dude from Adam, so I put my foot down and told her no. This was apparently the wrong thing to do. The next time I was out on the road she threw an orgy at our apartment. Not that I minded, but it would have been nice to be invited.
Allie decided to introduce me to her friend Terri. Terri was a rather nice girl, and Kelly encouraged us to sleep together, which of course happened. I’m not sure what the play was there, but I suspect it may have been a set up for what was soon to follow.
The tipping point for me came when Kelly quit her job and I had to take up paying for the apartment and all the utilities and food. She sat me down on the couch one night and told me she was breaking up with me, but get this, she’d still have sex with me. I didn’t really know how to react to that, so I packed up my shit and left. To this day I’m still pissed about the whole situation, and I harbor a mild desire to see her stapled to a wall with a sword through her chest. That bitch still has my Queen CD collection. (Keep in mind my reaction to that, and it looks like another piece of the puzzle emerges you would think having these things done to me would have taught me not to do it to someone else)
I was still working with an AC company trying to save money to move to Canada to join Rich on his Canadian adventure. I decided that hey, the internet had worked so well for me before why not give it another shot? I met Dana through Yahoo Personals. She was a nice woman in her thirties which for me at 19 or 20 was pretty amazing. We went out a couple times and one night she invited me back to her place. One thing led to another, as they do, and then we were a thing. It was a nice couple of months in which Dana was introduced to my circle of friends which included Evan, Allie, Kelly, and John.
But… Dana wanted more. Dana was a divorcee, and she was looking for someone to build a new life with. That wasn’t me. I’m captain oblivious. Dana didn’t do anything wrong though. We had a conversation one night in which she asked me where I saw our relationship going, and I told her I didn’t know. I guess that was the end of it, even though I didn’t process it right then.
One night when I was out with Evan and Allie, she let slip that Dana and John had hooked up. I was furious because my dumbass missed the part where we broke up. I tore off in my car to go and confront Dana about it.
After pounding on Dana’s door for about five minutes she finally answered. I barged in and immediately began yelling at her about how she had betrayed me and gone behind my back. I see now, I still felt the pain Jen had caused me two years earlier and I unjustly transferred it to Dana. When Dana got me calmed me down, I finally realized we had in reality broken up about two weeks prior. John and Dana eventually got married a couple years later. They have a beautiful little girl and are still married to this day.
I, along with my usual inability to process things, decided that it was definitely time for a change. So I hauled myself down to the recruiting office and went and enlisted in the Air Force so I could get the hell out of Louisiana. It was shortly after I had joined the Air Force that I met my future wife.
I was honestly not looking for a girlfriend when we met. I was at the base community center with some of my friends one night. We were hanging out having fun. I had been reading a book while we sat outside on the patio smoking, when I looked up from my book I saw her.

[battery1979]

Man it was like heaven itself was smiling upon her. She was sitting alone at another table close to my friends and I, and I swear it was like the clouds had parted to allow a beam of sunlight to shine upon her. I felt like the universe had answered a question I didn’t know I had asked. I knew I had to go talk to her.
I was scared. I never really developed the social skills to talk to women. But I swallowed my fear, walked over to her and sat down to introduce myself. We exchanged names and started discussing the book I had been reading and then moved onto other topics. At some point in the night we got up to go walk around. It was amazing that first time I held her hand. We spent most of the evening walking around talking about what we had been doing before enlisting, why we enlisted, what we were going to do after tech school. I knew that first night I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. As we walked back to her dorm, we stopped to hug under an oak tree and I asked “Can I keep you?” She answered yes.
Our first date was to Waffle House to get dinner the next day after class. I think we spent the rest of the evening walking up and down the beach in the dark talking. After our date as we walked back to her dorm room we stopped under the same tree to say goodnight. I was so sure about her, I asked her to marry me. She told me yes. (I’m smiling as a write this, but bad things are on their way dear reader,).
Our third day together, was spent much like the first two. You see at Keesler, there is mass PT in the afternoons. The students would form up in front of their dorms to do calisthenics and then we would run around the triangle formed by all the various dorms. My dorm was further down the triangle than hers was, and after the calisthenics we would run. I would run slowly waiting for her to catch up with me so we could run together. We usually did that for a bit until she got tired and would tell me to run ahead. I’d run ahead, trying to catch back up to her, but usually not succeeding. After PT we met up for dinner and hung out for a while before we had to go back to our rooms and do homework.
It took me a while to work up the nerve to kiss her. It wasn’t until like our fourth date when I finally manage to work up the nerve to kiss her. We had started out trying to go see Hannibal, but luckily it hadn’t come out yet so we ended up going to see Save the Last Dance. We spent the movie wrapped in each other’s arms, and finally at the end of the movie, I made my move. It was amazing.
Dating my wife during Tech School was easy. All I had to focus on was her, and passing my classes. When we weren't in class we'd usually meet up for dinner and spend an hour or so together before having to return to our dorms to do homework. Our weekends were usually spent off base, going to the mall, movies, hanging out at her mom’s apartment to watch movies, cuddle, and making out in her room. There were many, many nights where I went home with a bad case of blue balls but it really wasn’t that bad. I loved her and was afraid of ruining what we had by moving too fast.
We were together every free moment we could scrape together, always holding hands when we walked. I had never felt so close to someone else before. I was a great boyfriend, super attentive and affectionate, always considerate, kind. She was the center of my world, and I was the center of hers.
Eventually I reached the end of my training and got orders to Nellis AFB. We were greatly saddened because we were being separated and we didn't know what was going to happen between us. We vowed to each other that we would stay in touch and talk every day. The first time we made love was the weekend before I moved away. I think we were both very nervous. It was tender and sweet, and passionate, and all the things your first time is supposed to be but also bittersweet because I was leaving.
As I drove out west my wife was constantly in my thoughts. She still had a couple of months before she would graduate. I eventually got a phone so I could call her on the weekends. Eventually she graduated too. We were almost separated completely because she had gotten orders to Germany. I'm not sure if we would have made it through that, and in the long run it probably would have been for the best.
But my wife wanted to remain close to me, or as close as she could so she arranges to trade orders with a classmate and managed to get stationed at Barksdale Afb. Once she was established, we would talk by phone for hours every day, I can't really remember about what. Our daily schedules were busy learning to do our jobs. I was fiercely loyal to her at the time, going so far as to take her initials for my air traffic control call sign.
I was mostly faithful to her. I had my porn stash from my house that I had picked up on the way out to Vegas. Occasionally when we'd talk I'd try to get my wife to engage in phone sex with me, masturbating while we talked, but I think it kind of repelled her to be honest. I just wanted be with her and it was the closest I could get while she was away.
We took leave to visit each other at our respective bases every chance we could get. I eventually got disqualified from Air Traffic Control and went into a holding pattern waiting for another Tech School slot so I could cross train. While I was waiting, September 11th happened and I got drafted into being a Security Forces augmentee. My wife made several more trips out to visit me while I was stuck waiting and one trip we decided we would finally get married.
So we went out and got married which meant we could now apply for a joint spouse assignment and finally be together for real. She went back to Barksdale and found us an apartment to live in. I eventually got a new Tech School assignment, and it was back to Keesler I went.
This was great for us because I was much closer to her. She came to visit me in school a couple times, and close to the end she was even sent back to Keesler for another weather school. I think we ended up living in my dorm room and her hotel room for a couple of weeks.
We both graduated again and finally moved in together to begin our married life together. It was great at first, as I'm sure it is for most newlyweds. But it would change soon enough. I had gotten used to being on my own while I was out in Vegas, so I still had a tendency to act like a bachelor, even though I was now married.
I loved playing video games, I still do. This wasn't so bad at the time because we both loved playing City of Heroes together so we spent a lot of time doing that. I've devoted more time to computer games over the years than I ever did to my wife. (God that hurts to write that and realize it at the same time.) This was just one of the things that drove a wedge between me and my wife but it’s a wedge that was probably the easiest to forgive. The video games weren’t the problem though at that time.
The first big stumbling block for us was that porn collection of mine. You see it was a point of contention between us. My wife doesn’t like or approve of porn. She felt like she had to compete with the girls in the magazines and the movies. She didn’t by the way. I know it’s all fake. Women in real life don’t look like pornstars. It’s all done through airbrushing and makeup. She didn’t like that I had it, but she allowed me to keep it.
I have this weird problem where, if I don't periodically have sex, I start to get stupid. I don't understand why, but it tends to lead me into making really poor life choices. I like sex. I like sex a lot. I would prefer to have sex, but if it's not available masturbation will do in a pinch. There have been times where I'd masturbate two, three times a day. Sometimes even four. No particular reason, other than I was bored and it felt good.
This has led me into quite a bit of trouble over the years. Boredom and hornyness are a dangerous combination for me. I think most of my marital problems stemmed from me improperly dealing with those two things. Laziness was probably a compounding factor also.
I also really enjoy porn. I don't think there's anything wrong with porn, it has its own time and place. One of the great things about porn is that it doesn't care when you look at other porn. Porn is never tired, it never has a headache. Porn doesn't get mad at you for not doing the dishes or cutting the grass. Porn is always willing to be there for you when you're feeling horny.
The problem with porn is that the desire to have porn and sex has caused me to lie and hide things over the years. It's caused me to be a bad communicator. It's made me lazy. Why would I have to go through the trouble of spending time with someone, caring about them, making them feel safe and secure, just so I could get off?
The easier thing to do is just throw on some porn, rub one out, and be done with it. That's actually a really empty way to go about life though. And it's not really satisfying either. And it caused problems between me and my wife. Because I was focusing on my needs and not our needs.
The way I was raised left me feeling weird about masturbation. In a healthy marriage you should be able to tell your partner, hey I'm feeling a bit horny and needy, I'm going to rub one out. Depending on the situation, your partner should either be able to be ok with that if they aren't in the mood, or hey if you're lucky and they are, then really good things could happen instead of you just going solo.

[battery1979]

But I was raised Catholic and my parents, my mom in particular, left a stigma on me that it was wrong to be a sexually active human being outside of marriage. What a thing to teach a kid. That it's wrong to have sexual urges, it's a sin, you're going to hell for doing that. It didn't stop me. It just taught me to hide it and not talk about it.
It made it difficult for me later in life to share with my wife that hey I have needs and they're not being met. I bet my wife would have loved to know that I wanted to have sex, especially with her. But instead of letting her know that, I would often just go masturbate in the bathroom, or I'd do it while she was at work and I was alone.
Despite the number of times we had that discussion (and in retrospect, we had it a few times over the years.) I never accepted her reassurances that I could ask and she would accommodate me. It felt wrong for me to share that with her. I know that's stupid but it's the truth.
How stupid and lazy was that. I would have rather hidden and masturbated by myself than actually pay attention to my wife, talk to her, and have a healthy sexual relationship with her? How fucked up does that make me? Of course this caused marital problems. There was something missing in the marriage. A noticeable loss of intimacy between me and my wife was developing.
A change in our work schedules didn’t help the matter either. I fairly consistently worked 7:30-4:30, but my wife worked a shifting schedule that had her working different hours all the time. We were both usually tired from work when our schedules aligned, or sleeping at different times when they didn’t. I didn’t know the importance then, of going the extra distance to inspire intimacy. The importance of honest and open communication.
Instead of working on what was bothering me, I decided to start looking for other solutions. Here’s where I really started to make fatal mistakes. It started with me calling the Shreveport Singles Line trying to talk to other women. When that didn’t work I went online and started using the Adult Friend Finder website. I posted a bunch of naked pictures of myself, trying to attract another woman. Of course my wife found out about the website and we had a big fight about it. But I was able to reassure her that nothing had happened.
We went to a couple of counselling sessions, but nothing really got resolved because I wasn’t really participating and doing the suggested work. I think around this time I did throw out my porn collection though. Then I got sent TDY to Las Vegas. My wife and I hadn’t had sex in a while, mostly because she was still angry at me about the website and I hadn’t done any of the work to make her feel reassured. She was feeling really insecure (justifiably so) and we had a fight about the trip before I left.
Because I had been stationed in Vegas previously I knew how easy it was to get access to escorts. I knew my wife was still mad at me from previously, but I figured that since I was so far away I could indulge myself and she would never find out about what I was about to do. Besides, she already thought that I was cheating on her. I had gotten some cards from one of the hawkers on the strip and that night I called up and had a girl come to my room. We did what a prostitute and her John do in that situation.
When I came home we worked on things a little bit, and things got a little better. I was still a cheater. I got sent to Vegas again a couple months later but this trip out I didn’t hire a prostitute. Things were alternatingly good and bad at home. We were ok for a few months until I got sent to Vegas again and we had a fight before I left. I hired two prostitutes, neither of the experiences were as good as the first but it was still sex. Thing is though, it wasn’t as good as the sex I had with my wife. Honestly no sexual experience I’ve ever had with a prostitute was as good as sex with my wife.
I came home again and things seemed to return to normal. Except for the fact I was a lying cheater. Things proceeded along for a while. I was hiding what I had done the entire time and my wife knew something was wrong even if she couldn’t figure out what. There was a part of me that was missing and she knew it. It didn’t help things that I got sent to Vegas again, and of course there was another prostitute. I told myself it would be the last time, and I’d work on making things better between us, but I was lying to myself.
I’m not sure about what happened between us when I came back, but things improved enough between us that by Christmas time we managed to conceive a child. We were supposed to be going to Korea, but with our child coming, our orders got turned off. I was good for most of the next year. I ended up deploying to Qatar for four months, on my best behavior. That changed after the birth of our child. With the birth of a new child of course our sex life tanked. That’s pretty usual for two parents with a newborn. But I was feeling neglected and ignored. Once again I failed to communicate with my wife and things began to deteriorate again.
I got sent to Las Vegas again, I don’t know what we disagreed about but I left feeling resentful and neglected, so of course I turned to prostitutes again. This time was different, because I questioned what the hell I was doing with myself. I should have listened and just not picked up the phone.
When I returned home, I guess I was doing things better, because the next time I went TDY to Vegas my wife decided to fly out to visit me for a couple days. Well, I behaved myself for the next couple of months. The military being what it is, I got picked up for a deployment to Afghanistan. While I was in Afghanistan my wife got orders to Italy, so she had to pack up our apartment and one year old and move overseas by herself. I eventually returned home. I had about three weeks in the states while I out processed to join my wife. I hadn’t had sex in the past seven months so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to hire yet another prostitute and get it out of my system once and for all, so I could go back to my wife and start focusing on her. This time however I used a digital computer and left a trail that could be followed.
When I got to Italy it was a happy reunion with my wife and child. I was paying more attention to her, but in retrospect that was probably just part of having been away for seven months. My found my search history on my computer and I admitted to her what had happened when I came back from Afghanistan. I managed to convince her it had just been the one time and it had meant nothing. Well we both went and got STD screenings and we tried counselling again. I thought I was sorry at the time, I don’t know what I said or did that convinced my wife to take another chance on me, but a few months later we conceived our second child. For the rest of our time in Italy I limited my discretions to porn. This was the same when we moved to Germany. We spent a lot of time together, but I still wasn’t doing enough to repair all the damage I had done. I should have shown my wife more affection and told her that I loved her more often.
I felt things were better for us in Europe. I’m not entirely sure how true that is, but in my eyes, I wasn’t looking for sex outside our marriage. I was busy with work and my wife was busy with school and roller derby. I was content to confine myself to porn when my wife wasn’t around. We still were only occasionally having sex. I went for six years being mostly faithful to my wife.
We eventually returned back to the states. This is where I would begin putting the final nails of the coffin into our marriage. My wife got involved in Team Rubicon, and she was still working hard to finish off her degree. We both hated the area we were in, I don’t know how much that dissatisfaction played into things, but neither of us were really happy.
I got to feeling frustrated because we weren’t having much sex at the time. Why would we though? My wife was constantly busy with school work and Team Rubicon, and I was just spending all my free time in my office playing computer games, instead of spending time with my wife. I could have been sitting with her while she did her class work or any of a bunch of other things to be around. I wasn’t around though. I was physically present, but emotionally absent. Well my wife eventually got to go on a trip to Las Vegas which she had been wanting to attend for years. While she was gone I fell into old habits, went on line and turned to Craigslist where I met The Other Woman. I figured if my wife was out having fun, then why couldn’t I. And besides she’d never find out right? Wrong!
We began to have an online affair. We’d exchange messages and texts, sexting on a fairly regular basis. I’d text her throughout the day, probably more than I was texting my wife. I never texted my wife like I texted The Other Woman. It was really unfair to my wife that I was spending more time on the Other Woman than I was on her. I kept pressing to go from an electronic affair to a physical affair but luckily I guess, The Other Woman never agreed to meet in person. This affair went on until and while I was deployed to Kuwait. While I was in Kuwait both the kids got sick, ended up in the hospital and I got recalled home.
When I came home I ended the affair for a year. I sort of realized how stupid I was being. I wish I could say that I started spending more time on my wife, but she was still working on her degree so I just stayed in my office playing video games all the time. Things between us weren’t great, but they weren’t terrible. We were still only occasionally having sex like maybe once every three to four months, and I was resigning myself to living in a sexless marriage. But I was the problem, and the reason we weren’t having sex. I wasn’t doing the work. I wasn’t spending time with my wife. Goes back to being physically present, but emotionally absent.
I don’t know why I started texting The Other Woman again, but I did. We resumed our sexting affair which continued until October of 2016. My wife went to a leadership conference for Team Rubicon and I decided that I was going to have sex one way or another, so I used Craigslist and managed to find two prostitutes in Clovis on two separate nights. I was completely selfish, and also stupid about this, because I left my children home alone in the middle of the night not once, but twice, to go have sex with prostitutes. What in the hell was I thinking. Honestly I was really only thinking about myself and my desire to have sex and I let that become my overriding drive.
When my wife came home she discovered what I had been doing. I hadn’t bothered to cover my tracks and there were message from the next prostitute I was planning to meet with still on my phone. I had been planning to meet in the morning on my way to work, since I usually left pretty early to go to PT. When she discovered that I had been having sex with prostitutes and carrying on an electronic affair she was furious. She destroyed my phone and kicked me out of the house. I didn’t go far, I ended up staying in the driveway in my truck for a few hours, before I let myself back into the house, and fell asleep on the sofa.
My wife continued digging into my internet history until she had discovered everything, I came clean about it all, admitting to her that I had cheated on her for years essentially every time I had gone TDY. She said that she wanted a divorce and I needed to help her to get that. So I cashed out my mutual fund and gave her all of the money from it so she could leave. While she was deciding what to do with her life, I was sleeping in her office on the futon.
She wanted to talk about the things I had done, demanding answers from me that I was too ashamed to give. We started seeing therapists, I think hers was a lot better than mine, but I had only been to a couple of sessions when our daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. This kind of put a hold on me working with the therapist. I could have gone back once our daughter was ok, but my wife had started working with me trying to sort me out. She told me time and time again what it was I needed to do to fix our situation. I don’t know why I couldn’t just accept what she was telling me at the time. It was really such simple stuff to do. Pay attention to her, tell her every day that I love her, hug her every day, and spend time with her. Simple.
We eventually got orders to move back to Shreveport since there was pediatric endocrinologist there. I settled back into my usual routine of going to work, coming home, and vegetating in front of the computer instead of working on fixing my relationship with my wife. Back to being physically present but emotionally absent. This continued on until February 5 of 2018, when my wife finally gave me the ultimatum letter. She said we needed to separate so that she could have space to work on herself. I totally misunderstood what she had written to me. She was once again asking me for my time and attention, but what I understood was that we were getting a divorce. All of her actions made me feel like she was pushing me out of life. She took to sleeping in the closet, then moved all of my stuff out of the bedroom and I started sleeping on the couch. She spent all of her time locked in the bedroom while I was out in the living room. I wish I had understood then that I could have gone to her. I should have gone to her years ago, but I always took the easy way out. I was so sad angry about the letter. I became depressed and was even suicidal for a while. I was in hell, but it was hell of my own creation due to my past actions and lack of effort to try and resolve the situation.
My wife decided to move the bedrooms around, taking our daughters bunk bed and moving it into the master bedroom, and moving our bed into our daughters room so I wouldn’t have to sleep on the couch. I didn’t realize the gesture for what it was. One final offering to get me to pay attention to her. Even then she was still more concerned with my comfort so I wouldn’t be angry about the situation.
Of course I managed to fuck that up too. Once again instead of trying to pay attention to my wife I tried to find an easy answer, using Tinder and Plenty of Fish to try to find women to date because, my wife had already told me we were getting a divorce, and I thought we were finally done. I don’t know

[battery1979]

what I did, but there were two occasions where my wife decided to have sex with me during those months. I’m not sure how many months ago the final straw hit, I just know that the last words my wife spoke to me that told me I had finally managed to kill our marriage was that she wanted me to date her. And I had once again failed to focus my attention in the right place….. on her.
I could have avoided soooo many problems with our marriage, if I had just paid attention to my wife, spent time with her, and communicated with her.

[battery1979]

So currently I'm at 56 days with no porn. When I get back to the states in 46ish days or so I get to start the divorce process along with going to see my therapist. I've started taking classes to finish out my bachelor's degree before I leave the military. I wish there was some way to fix the rest of my life so I wasn't losing my wife. I get to work on me now, and work to be a better father but I let addiction drive away the most important person in my life. I don't know how to go on from here.

[jixu]

Did she file papers yet-are you certain she is going to do so?  56 days is a good start-at the bare minimum keep that streak going.  Do you have lines of communication with her that would enable you to share this new commitment with her?  Also, I hope you have thought through the decision to leave the military.  Take care.

[battery1979]

Did she file papers yet-are you certain she is going to do so?  56 days is a good start-at the bare minimum keep that streak going.  Do you have lines of communication with her that would enable you to share this new commitment with her?  Also, I hope you have thought through the decision to leave the military.  Take care.

We haven't filed yet, but she has told me it's over and there is no fixing it anymore. As far as leaving the military, I'm retiring sometime in the next two years.

[jixu]

You have a lot on your plate, both personally and professionally.   Keep your clean streak going and keep journalling your progress-take care!

[battery1979]

You have a lot on your plate, both personally and professionally.   Keep your clean streak going and keep journalling your progress-take care!

Thanks. I'm trying to.

[jixu]

Hi!  You must be getting pretty short by now-stay alert, stay alive as they say.  Hope you are still fighting the good fight.  Stay in touch-take care!