I am totally emotionally drained, after the most terrible Thanksgiving weekend of my life. I hope my story doesn't bore, but I want to tell it completely, if only to get things off my chest. I am a 46 year old, who has been married to my, now 50 year old, husband for 21 years. I always thought we had a great marriage, and I imagine for much of the time it was. We raised my two boys (from a previous marriage, that I got into too young) together. The boys are now grown men, with lives of their own.

I own a business and my husband owned a business as well, during most of our married life. When the kids got to be college age, my husband decided to go back to college and earn his Doctorate, and I have been very supportive and proud of him in the process. Because his college is two hours away (one way), for the first two years he was there, he rented an apartment and stayed there during the week, but drove home on weekends. Do I suspect he had an affair while there. No, not at all. Not even once.

The problems seemed to start occuring when we made the mutual decision for him to move back home. The decision was made for a variety of reasons, including saving money on rent (it was cheaper to drive to and from every day, though physically demading on him I'm sure). I even tried to encourage him to move back up there, to save on the taxing drive time, but he insisted on living at our house here.

In any event, he moved back home and continued his educational goals. This was slightly over two years ago. A few month after moving back we started to have problems in the bedroom. He could being the act, but not finish it. He became very depressed over this, I believe, and it got worse with time. I tried to encourage him to see a doctor, but he seemed too embarrased to address it in that manner, and never did. A few months later I discovered that not only had he been looking at porn on the internet, but he had been asking girls on Craigslist to send him nude photos and had set up a secret email account to do so. I was absolutely devistated. I am not one to "snoop" on my husband at all. It was a chance finding that I ran across these things, when I was looking for something totally unrelated on his laptop computer.

I was ill prepared to see this on the computer of my husband, the man everyone thought was flawless...lol, he had his flaws, but most people thought he was the perfect husband. He told me that the behaviour had only recently started (don't know if that was the truth or not, but seemed likely), and was a result of his inablility to perform, stress from travel and school, and for a cheap sexual thrill. I was ready to call it quits, after 19 years of marriage, then, but agreed to seek marriage counseling, as he requested it. Because we are Christians, we chose a Christian counselor and went for several months. Eventually we felt like we were on the road to recovery, more from an effort on our parts, then from the counselor's. Neither felt he was doing much good for us, or really helping in any way. His question and answer sessions seemed ludicrous, trying to delve into our upbringing (we both came from loving households with great parents) and he never even much addressed the pornography issue at all.

So, we stopped our MC sessions and continued on our own. But, with time, stress from business, school, etc., I'm sure we didn't put as much into it as we should have. Our sex life continued to deterioriate, until it eventually got to the point where he couldn't even start the act at all, despite by best efforts. He said it was because he was scared things wouldn't work. I begged him to see a doctor, but still he didn't.

We continued along for almost two years, when about two months ago, I discovered, again by sheer accident, he was visiting porn sites again. I also saw he had set up an anonymous email account (via one of those free emails), but he refused to tell me what it was for, although I had my suspicions. We went through another round, just like two years before, of me being devistated and hurt beyond all belief. I let the email account thing go, as I didn't want to push him, and because he agreed to seek counseling for what he calls an addiction to porn. A problem on his part, he says. He also agreed to seek medical help.

That week he started counseling again, with our former counselor, on a one on one basis, in homes of helping with his porn problem. He also finally sought the help of a doctor for medical issues. She referred him to a phychiatrist for a mental evaluation and then said they would take it from there, once he had seen them. He never followed up on that, although he continued to see the other counselor for several more weeks, then stopped, saying that he wasn't satisfied with the guy's help or approach. I kind of left the ball in his court to continue follow up, without being "pushy" about it. In the meantime, I, the more technologically advance in our relationship, rerouted our home internet through a proxy server to filter out any porn. It worked. You could not longer access porn sites, dating sites, etc. on our home network. Since I know he uses our network for 98% of the work he does, I felt pretty safe.

Just on a whim, because I couldn't access a site I needed (have no idea why, but the server block was causing it), I logged into my control panel and found that I could see what sites that were blocked had been accessed over the past month. I was shocked. The free email account had been accessed hundreds of times in a three week period. It wasnt blocked, because it wasn't a porn site. I confronted him with it, and he denied it, of course, until I showed him the proof. Then he finally admitted that he had still be accessing it to look at naked pics that women had sent him. Again, he said it was for a sexual thrill, and that he wasn't having an "affair" with any of them. I don't know what to believe. I know that he has very little time for trysts in his schedule, and I would find it hard to believe he could actually schedule something in his tight time blocks, but I'm sure guys are able to find a way, if there is a will. I asked him to show me the emails, but he refuses. I don't know if its embarrassment or he is hiding something. He is the type to be embarrassed by this type of thing. I have asked him to delete the emails and the account, but he won't do it in front of me. If he won't do it in front of me, how am I to believe he will do it at all!

He says he doesn't want the marriage to end, but I am just about at my breaking point. I am too old to play these childish games with a 50 year old man who needs to view anonymous women's bodies to get his jollies. Not sure if this is the right forum to post in, as it is about infidelity, but as far as I am concerned (and from what my Christian beliefs teach), he HAS committed infidelity, even if only emotionally.

I love him, and hate to think of my life without him, but I will not live with a man who has a pattern of this type of behaviour and doesn't do something about it. He says he has the numbers for some counselors who deal with porn addiction, and will continue to follow through, but his follow through, up till now, has been poor at best. So how am I too believe. I just can't get the thoughts of what he has done out of my head and every moment that I have free and not thinking about other things, I think about this and cry.

I feel drained and don't want to eat. I can't sleep. He is going back to school after the holiday weekend and will be staying up there, rather than coming home. I guess it will give us time apart, but at the same time, I don't trust him at all. I guess I just needed to vent and let some of my anger and hostilities out, by telling my story. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

Hi sadinfla, sorry you are here. Welcome to Marriage Builders.

The basic problem in your marriage has never been addressed and as long it is not addressed and resolved, your problems will continue. You are headed to divorce as it is now. The problem is that you live apart. Because you live apart, which is an invitation for infidelity, he has replaced his marriage with pornography.

If you want to save this marriage, I would strongly advice that you ask him to move home. Quit his schooling and come home. Make an agreement that he is NEVER on the computer without you. That way it will be impossible for him to look at pornography.

Once that is done, you can use this program to restore the romantic love in your marriage. It is obvious that you have created completely separate, independent lifestyles and have fallen out of love. This program can turn that around.

Addionally, I would strongly urge you to get counseling with the Harleys instead of traditional counselors. Marriage Builders is completely different in their approach in that they take an action oriented path to recovery. They don't spend 1 second talking about your childhood, rather, they give you an ACTION plan to turn this around that really does work. Your sessions with them are only spent on focusing on solutions. They find a solution and then motivate you to stick to it.

Many of us have used the Harley's counseling services and/or gone through their seminar with remarkable results. I don't think you can fix this on your own anymore and the influence of other [bad] counselors has only made it worse.

The problem is that the environment that enables his porn addiction has not changed, so nothing will change until that changes. The alcoholic has to get out of the bar in order to sober up. And when he quits drinking, he has to REPLACE that vacuum with something positive. That something positive needs to be a romantic, passionate marriage. If your husband would move home, have no access to the computer, and throw himself into building a GREAT marriage, it would save your marriage.

But the alcoholic has to get out of the bar first. Change the environment and you can change the behavior. Will power did not work in the past and it will not work in the future.

Thanks for the response MelodyLane, much appreciated. However, I think you misread my post. We do NOT currently live apart at all! He has been in school for 6 years. The first two were at the community college here, locally, so he lived at home. The second two he had to go to university two hours away (very specialized degree). That was when he moved away. He was not doing all of this stuff then. As a matter of fact, our marriage was pretty good, from both of our perspectives at that time. No "physical" marital problems, and I would visit him on weekends (and sometimes pop in during the week unexpected), or he would come home.

The problems started to occur when he MOVED back home AFTER those two years. It was his idea to move back home, because he said that he missed me and our dogs, and would rather commute the two hours there and two hours back every day. The man drives four hours a day to and from school! The pornography came into play WHEN he MOVED back home, not before!

My take on it is graduate school has become more stressful, as time has gone on, and he does an awful lot of commuting. I am sure that has contributed to the physical problems and fatigue. I am guessing it was a whole lot "easier" for him to deal with pornography, than work a relationship. We both agree, our relationship has been put on the back burner, just from our general stresses in our everyday life, he with school and me with running my business, and we need to work on it, as we haven't put much effort into it in the last two years.

As for him quitting school...there is NO way I will ask a man who is following what he has always wanted to do in his life (get a Doctorate in his field), and has put five years into it already, with only one short more year to go, to quit school! That's just not happening. Again, he does not live apart from me right now. I know he is not "cheating" on my physically, as I know when he leaves for school, how long it takes to get there, what his class schedule is, and how long it take to get home. The rest of the time we are in each other's presence. It would be extremely hard for him to fit an actual affair into that tight schedule.

I have also checked our cell phone logs and there are absolutely no odd phone calls or suspicious things there. As a matter of fact, the ONLY calls on our cell phone bill to or from his phone and from either me or his brother. No one else. (I am the one who pays all the bills, so I see the complete breakdown every month.) He does not know how to text. I have tried to teach him in the past and he is clueless...LOL.

I also, to my shame for being so nosey, as that is really not the type of person I am, went through his backpack, car, and desk, when he wasn't around. Nothing. No signs of "another woman" or anything. The only thing I have on him is the "free" email account he had set up to ask girls from Craiglist to send him pictures. He will not open it up and let me see it, I suspect out of shame, guilt and embarrassment. I asked him to delete it and he says he will, but who knows.

I stated that he is going back to school on Monday, and **I** had asked him to stay there, because I was so hurt, but he really does not want to, so I have agreed to let him continue to commute and come back home, while we work on this. We had a long talk today and both agree that it is going to take time and lots of effort on our part to rebuild things. Neither of us wants a divorce.

We have both been looking at solutions to our problems, and that is what led us to Marriage Builders. I don't think traditional MC is right for us either. Marriage Builders is not the only place I have found statistics on traditional MC on the web, and those statistics do seem rather dismal. We are both going to look into Marriage Builders further, as so far we like what we have seen and heard.

Thanks for the clarification, sadinfla. Your post is so long that is it very hard to follow the story. That is great that he does live at home, but I would reiterate my advice about changing the environment that allows his pornography. If he cannot be on the computer without you, he can't very well access pornogrphy.


I would strongly suggest you DO BECOME the kind of person that protects your marriage by snooping. That is a VIRTUE, not a shame. Much of this could have avoided if you HAD been snooping. When the feds spy on drug dealers, are they acting shamefully or they acting wisely? It is the same principle here. There is absolutely no shame in spying on your husband.

Put a keylogger on his computer and watch what he is doing on a DAILY BASIS. By snooping you can quickly put a stop to whatever he is doing quickly. You can also establish TRUST when you can see what he is doing.

Also, can you make shorter posts? It will make it much easier to understand your situation when folks don't have to read through a long story just to GET IT. I have read both of your posts TWICE and I still don't really understand.

When and where does he engage in porn if you are home together every night? I don't understand how he was able to get away with this so long....

Couldn't this ALL have been avoided if you had simply installed a keylogger on the computer and watched him on a DAILY BASIS? I am honestly confused about why this got so far when it could have easily been stopped if you were monitoring him daily?

Am I missing something?

That's just the thing. We ARE pretty much together most of the time. He does have an office and I have an office (side by side) in our home. And, I am in an out of his office while he is studying/writing all the time. I constantly see his computer screen.

According to him, he only has done it in short time frames, from time to time. It is not an "all the time" sort of thing. It seems every time he has pulled this (3 times in two years), I caught him within a day or two of doing it.

The server logs I recently found out I had access to, support what he is telling me. I have gone through them for several hours, pinpointing time frames of when this type of stuff occurred, and it all corresponds to his story.

The first time I found him asking women on Craigslist to send photos was two years ago. I caught it within the first day. He did it on a night that I had a migraine and went to bed before him. I remember it distinctly.

I watched him very closely for a long time after that and never saw any reoccurrence, odd behavior, etc. This is when we first saw a MC as well.

The second time I caught him was about two months ago. He must have done it while I was in the shower or perhaps I had gone to bed before him. About 90% of the time he is in bed before me, and generally the rest of the time we either go to bed at the same time. It is very rare that I go to bed before him. So I am in and out of his office, whenever he is working. He NEVER closes his office door either, and I have to walk by it every time I go to the kitchen from my office. So go figure.

But, I walked in there one day two months ago, and he was acting odd, so I asked him to show me what he was doing. He was working on school stuff, but I browsed the history and saw he had visited a porn site and logged into a hotmail account that day and the day before. He said he had only been doing it for a day or two that time, and a view of his browsing history supported that statement. Apparently I caught him right away. I viewed his history for several months back and it didn't show anything either. Other things were still in it, but no porn. He isn't exactly computer literate, so I don't think he knows about "private browsing", but maybe he does...but if so, you would think he would have known enough to block the previous day or two.

That's when I "blocked" all porn sites, dating sites, Craigslist, etc. So, he could no longer get on them. Right before Thanksgiving I went into my server block to open up a website I needed to use (I was ordering bras for myself online and it was blocked, because it was a lingerie site...LOL). That's when I saw that for the past two weeks he had been logging into a hotmail account. Apparently, while I had blocked the porn sites, he still had some "dirty" pictures that women from Craiglist had sent him in there. And was basically using that to get his "fix."


Already working on it. Also I have my server stats to show me what sites everyone in our household is visiting. It's just me and him, so I will know.

FYI, I am getting NO FLACK at all from him about keeping an eye on him, me knowing what he is doing at all times, etc. And, he wants to work on our marriage as well, and we are jointly looking into the MB program. We even agreed tonight to co-join our offices, so that we are together, when he works on the computer. He will have a computer desk in my office, from when he needs to work online. No problems, fights or issues about that at all. He was very agreeable.

I must also point out that there is absolutely no push back from him on any of this. We generally do not fight, and live a fairly peaceful coexistence. We always have. Of course, I have been doing a lot of screaming, yelling, crying over the past several days because of this. But, I think I am done. It served no purpose other than to let me vent.

He is all for doing what needs to be done to keep us intact. I am the more stubborn of us both, and was standing my ground about him going back to school and just staying there, instead of commuting, but have since backed off on that, knowing that in order to do this we need to work on it together.

While I have the server stats on our home network, the keylogger will let me know what he is doing away from home. Of course, his computer is in full view of his fellow grad students when he is at school working, and being that he is several decades older than them, and a pretty private person, I am sure he isn't exactly flaunting this stuff around at school in front of them.

Luckily, I am the computer savvy person in our relationship. I have worked with computers extensively for over 25 years, including programming them as a profession at one point. He only got a computer five years ago when he went back to school. He only knows enough to get himself in trouble...obviously!

My point is that he should NEVER be on the internet without you. I don't mean in the next office, but right there with him. If you are right there, he can't go view porn. And if you are not there, he doesn't go on the computer. Also if you have a keylogger on his computer and are checking it daily, he can't get away with viewing porn.

A good one is eblaster at spectorpro.com. I would put that on his computer without his knowledge. You can program it to mail you reports HOURLY or daily. But this way you can nip these problems in the bud RIGHT AWAY.

Of course, which is why we will be co-sharing an office now (as noted). Problem solved. However, I can't be over his should at school. He is in a lab intensive graduate program. Of course it is being used in full view of other fellow grad students, of all ages (however he is the oldest). So I KNOW there isn't exactly an opportunity to view porn there. He would be WAY to embarrassed to do that in front of anyone.


Awesome, I will look into that one for sure. I love the hourly reports. Too cool. Thanks.

Curious? As I am new to this board and trying to figure out all the little abbreviations. I get MB (Marriage Builders), and of course know the DH is dear husband. What is BS and WS? I haven't figured that out yet.

I don't understand. How do you know this? Why does he need his laptop there? It would be very simple to use the laptop anywhere that it is not visible.

BS= betrayed spouse and WS = wayward spouse.

Um, they ALL need their laptops there, for the work they are doing. I have seen the lab and the way its set up. I suppose he could sneak away for a quick peek if he wanted, but isn't that what the keylogger would alert me of anyway?

I did mention this is graduate level work in a very course intensive area correct? These people aren't exactly given a ton of free time. This is some seriously difficult course work. And, again, there is no way, with what we have sacrificed for the last five years, financially and everyway else, to get him through this program, that he his dropping out of college with only one year left to go. I want this Doctorate as much as he does. We were planning on traveling the world together when its done, as it will put us in the position to do so.

Perhaps I was too hasty in posting my rants earlier. I needed to vent. I have since read soome of the other postings here and feel like my problems are "small potatoes" compared to others here. I feel bad for even bringing them to the table at this point.

How will you get the keylogger on his computer without his knowledge?

Another suggestion would be to slip some spyware on his phone. If he has a smartphone like android, blackberry or iphone, you can spyware that will send you the text messages, all websites visited WITH A BUILT IN GPS.

Does he have an ipad?

You do understand that you only know what he tells you, right? Addicts lie. I am sure it is very "serious" and very "difficult" but that will not stop his porn use if he is so inclined. I would suggest his love of porn is considerably more serious and important to him. Do you verify EVERYTHING he tells you? For example, do you have concrete proof of his class times?

How do you know he doesn't skip classes? How would you ever know?

If I were a porn addict that had my wife on my back, I would find a way. Such as buying an IPAD and then lying to my wife about my classload. College students can find free computers in out of the way places at school. Why couldn't he do that?

You posted earlier because something is not right in your marriage - and that is a big deal for YOU. I don't think you understand how underhanded and devious people can be - you think you know your husband but that still small voice is nagging at you that something is not right - you will ignore that at your peril. Your problems are just as important as anyone else's here.