the dirty little secrets…
January 28, 2010Few things in life are as painful as having to present the last 3 years of your financial transactions to your X’s lawyers. Even worse is when your X is a poster-child for OCD. Every transaction, every action, is audited with a fine tooth comb, and believe me, although I’ve been physically faithful in my marriage, I have purchased a LOT of porn over the years.
I got addicted to porn when X was pregnant with our first child; she immediately quit having any sort of sexual relations with me. If I’d have known what was to come, I would have walked away then. I’m not proud of my porn usage; as a Christian (albeit a continually fallible one), I’ve tried to quit many times over the years but my crappy sex life kept bringing it back around. The last few years, pornography became a near constant solace for me.
I did a good job of hiding it from my kids and my wife (she’s a religious prude and would never have understood); however, she caught me in July as I was closing out some of my accounts. I promised to stop, but when the sex stopped, I started. I know it’s a lousy justification, but I’ve always felt that porn kept me faithful in a bad relationship. It’s an evil, but it was less evil than going outside my marriage.
However, X has decided to make this an issue in our mediation; I’m not sure what she’s trying to do, but I think she’s trying to blackmail me for more alimony. At this point, I a) can’t afford more than I’ve offered, and b) don’t really care if she parades our sex life (or lack thereof) in public. I guess the question she’s forcing me to consider is: is pornography adultery (in the legal sense of the word)? I don’t think so, and my lawyer doesn’t either (at least, she didn’t say it was).
It sounds like your X is trying to make the divorce proceedings into a trial where you are the defendant and she is simultaneously prosecutor and victim. This is a woman who is shrieking to be heard. I am concerned that she not only has used the children as hostages, but may decide that if the courts won’t give her satisfaction (they won’t), she’ll air her grievances with the kids. This would not serve anybody’s best interests, even if she doesn’t see that.
You previous strategy of shutting down any conversation that didn’t move you forward was a sound one. Don’t let her bait you. Don’t become defensive about your spending habits — by the way, it just occurred to me that she may be making an issue of it in the hopes of impacting the custody arrangement. Although, since the two of you seem to have come to terms on that question, I’m not sure what she would hope to gain by this.
I’m surprised her own lawyer isn’t reigning her in to focus on the real goal of mediation, which is to resolve your post-marital arrangements, not to air grievances.
That said, no, porn is not adultery. Fucking another woman is adultery. And telling friends (as you say she has done) that you’ve had an affair is lying. I am constantly amazed by people who claim to be devout but who have no qualms about ‘bearing false witness.’
Don’t be drawn into her head games, my friend. None of us are perfect, but what she’s doing to you right now is simply wrong.
I needed that this morning; one of the things I have discovered about myself is that if I was uncertain about what to do in the marriage, then I’m absolutely terrified of making a mistake in the divorce. As my therapist puts it: “we’re all a little fucked up.” X and I (like many marriages) picked each other because we saw a spark of something that fed our own defense mechanisms, and over the years we’ve fertilized that until it bloomed as field of weeds.
She has trust issues with men, so she picked a man who she could poke at until she found something that validated that. I need constant validation that I’m doing the right thing, so I picked a woman that kept setting the bar higher and higher until I finally validated my feeling that I was worthless.
I know it’s psychobabble, but in practical terms, you’re right. I DIDN’T fuck around, and I DID make mistakes. But the point of mediation is NOT to keep banging on those mistakes, but rather to divide the assets we have AND WALK AWAY.
Here’s to the future. I’m heading there like a rocket.