My husband and I have been married for 18 years. I first discovered his addiction to porn about 3 1/2 years into our marriage when I was 7 months pregnant with our first child. Needless to say, I was devastated. I won't go into the details of the ensuing years, but I have found porn on his computer numerous times since. Each time he apologizes and claims he won't do it again, but he refuses to go to counseling--says he is embarrassed to have anyone else know of his struggle.
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When I first found the porn, I was ready to walk out the door, though I had absolutely no idea how I would support myself and a new baby. But when I started packing, I heard God tell me very plainly to say and try to save my marriage.
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For several years, my husband was very active on what was called a MUDD. It was an early version of online games that could be played with other people. Numerous times I saw where he had made inappropriate comments to some of the female players. I let him know that comments like that from him to them made me feel worthless in his eyes. He would usually tell me that what he was doing was some harmless flirting and that I shouldn't get so upset about it. (Hello! We are married! What is he doing flirting with other women?)
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When our oldest child was about 5 months old, I had gone away for a few days to our denominational church camp. Partway through the camp, I had to call my husband for some reason, but couldn't reach him at home. I thought maybe he had been called into work (his hours were very unpredictable). When I called his place of employment, they said he had taken a couple of days off work. A fear when through my heart like none other I have ever known. I found a ride home, went straight to the computer to see if he had left some indication of where he had gone, and found that he had gone to another state (about a 7 or 8 hour trip) to meet a woman he had played with on the MUDD. I was furious and devastated all at the same time. When he come home, I confronted him with what I knew, but he said she was just a friend and that I was blowing things way out of proportion and that nothing had happened between them. A 7 or 8 hour trip to meet a woman and they are just friends and nothing happened? I had a hard time swallowing that one. He still claims that there was nothing sexual between them. Since I have no proof otherwise, I have chosen to believe him.
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When our youngest child was about 2 or 3, my husband admitted that he had been having an affair with one of his coworkers. He only said that they did some things about which he was ashamed, but that they had never actually had sex. I chose to forgive him and move on with our marriage, though we never went to counseling. We had four children, and I would rather suffer and keep the home together than to split it up and make our kids have to choose between their dad and mom.
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Recently, my husband has switched jobs and has begun e-mailing one of his new coworkers several times a day (most of them have been personal and not work related). He says they are just friends, but I worry about the relationship and have confronted him about it several times. It just seems strange to me that a married man would need to e-mail a woman who's not his wife so many times a day. The first time I said anything to him, he became very angry and said that my intense jealousy keeps him from having any female friends. I told him that that is not true because he is friends with many women in our church, he is friends with my sister, and my sisters-in-law, and I'm not jealous of any of them. He has told me over and over that this woman is not a threat to our marriage, but I can't shake the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that she is more to him than he lets on. For a while I tried checking his e-mail, but he found out about it and began deleting them (I found his replies, but not what she had sent to him), and then started using a totally different e-mail account that is password protected. He knows any time I get on his computer, so it is impossible for me to check up on him without his knowledge. He claims he has not e-mailed her for a couple of weeks, but I have no way of verifying that. I want to believe him, but because of his previous times of unfaithfulness, I have an extremely difficult time trusting him. I don't believe divorce is the answer, but I am truly at my wits end what to do to get him to see that his behaviour with other women is, at times, very inapproriate for a married man and hurtful to me.
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