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Are my weight issues related to my husband’s porn addiction?

Are my weight issues related to my husband’s porn addiction?

Last updated on: May 8, 2010 at 1:58 am by Natasha Helfer

Are my weight issues related to my husband’s porn addiction? 2010-05-08T01:58:00-05:00 Natasha Helfer

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I have been struggling with my weight for many many years. I have been trying to lose the weight through consistent efforts for over 3 years and I finally came face to face with why all of my efforts, charts, and personal trainer are not working.

For 24 years of married life my husband has had a huge problem with pornography and masturbation. When we got married I had no idea. I was pretty naive. I remember clearly the first day I found porn at my house. It was a pretty sunny day. Our first child had just been born. I was bed ridden for several weeks. He would come home from BYU and exchange all the things I had on the bed for the baby, eat lunch, and head off to work. One day, after he left, I “cheated” and wandered around the house and found his porn just laying on the kitchen counter. I asked him about it and he brushed it off as nothing. It came in the mail or something like that. I believed him, but I couldn’t help wondering about it.

While we were dating he hurt me one night when he said he couldn’t hang out with me anymore because I was “fat” (mind you, I was the smallest I had ever been at 190 lbs) and that he was attracted to blondes (I have red hair) and bombshells (I now know what he meant – he was aroused by the girls of porn and not by “fat” girls like me). Anyway, I was crushed. I think I cried all night. Within a couple of weeks he said he should date me because he liked my personality and a few months later we got married.

That little tid-bit is important because with each discovery of indiscretion I would relive that sad night and each time I did, it would hurt more deeply. I continued to find evidence of porn. One night I woke up and caught him using porn for his pleasure in the same room as me and a sleeping child. He’d ask me to do odd things sexually – things that he had seen in porn. They made me feel yucky but I did them anyway because I thought if I did then his “need” for this behavior would switch from pictures to real people. About 9 years into our marriage he finally confessed to a Bishop… well at least a Bishop who did something about the problem… unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. He lost his temple recommend for a short while. I felt like I had to lie about why he missed temple experiences and why he couldn’t baptize our daughter or give the family blessings. The hardest was lying to my family about the reasons he wasn’t there. Eventually, he got his temple recommend back. Then he started traveling for work. He spent months on end in China or else where. While he was gone he found it ever so easy to entertain himself. He even paid for the porn! He also lied to me that things were OK. Over and over I’d catch him and over and over he’d lie and sometimes confess that the ugly problem had returned. He lost his recommend again and regained it again. He stopped taking the sacrament and lost callings.

Nothing has stopped the madness. Each time he tells me he “slipped” all of the past hurts return to me and crush me in their dark despair. In August of last year I hit a major wall. I didn’t get out of bed for days after I caught him in the family room on his computer doing… I couldn’t eat… I couldn’t stop crying… my kids thought I was crazy. But I COULDN’T tell them the truth. I knew that if this continued that it would kill me and I told him that. He said he didn’t want that and tried to clean up his act. He started going to the church 12 step thing – a group totally dedicated to guys stuck on porn every week. He started meeting with the Bishop every 2 weeks. He lost his recommend and hasn’t gone to the temple in over a year and a half. But that hasn’t stopped it. The goal was to go to the temple for my birthday and our 24th year anniversary in October. That was all I wanted. I didn’t get it. The last week of September I caught him again – this time on his iPhone for work because I turn off the Internet when I go to sleep and I haven’t told him how I do it so he can’t turn it back on – a little irritation to him.

Anyway, the blackness hit me again. I told him that we were done. That I couldn’t be hurt like this anymore. He says that was his wake up call. I prayed about what I had said and I know the God told me to hold still, but I still don’t trust him. I still don’t even want to be married.

I don’t want bad things to happen to him. In fact, I want him to overcome this problem and to triumph. But I can’t say I want to fight anymore. I’m too tired. I really have little hope for our recovery. All of which makes him impatient with me and he tends to lecture me that I’m being prideful and I need to let the Savior heal me and that all things are possible with God. This is not something I don’t know.

I know that! I already feel bad because I’ve been put on the same playing field as the whores who make porn, but now I have the added guilt of knowing that I’m struggling to let this go – once again – and that I’m expected to trust him. This time the coffin of all the hurt and the fears of 24 years of what I now call abuse were nailed shut when he said he couldn’t be sexually active with me until he had a temple recommend back. Well that explained a ton in my heart. That fateful night more than 24 years ago should have been where we left things. He is not attracted to big girls like me. He says he loves me, but I can’t bring myself to trust that. He left his journal open on his computer Tuesday (usually it is locked because he doesn’t want me to know anything – it’s always about lies and secrets) and I read it. My youngest wanted to use his computer while he was at a meeting and said, “What’s this?” The things I read that were written just since August of this year hurt me so much. He talked about how he prays every day for me to change. He said I was hard to live with. He said he doesn’t like that I have depressing days because he feels like he is doing great and that I should just let it go but won’t because I’m too dramatic. He says that no sexual activity has been a great thing because it hasn’t forced him to think about the pictures. Anyway, I cried.

PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME!! This is the first time I have broken my “silence” about this… well I did try a few Bishops. Their comments hurt me just as much as his actions. One Bishop said I wasn’t exciting enough sexually and if I’d try “stuff’ he’d be more interested in me. The same Bishop said that it was because I was fat and that no man deserved to make love to fat. His counsel was to lose weight. A different Bishop blamed me because I didn’t monitor the Internet well enough in my home. I don’t think my family would agree. I’m pretty sure they feel I’m the Internet Nazi.

Please don’t think he is a bad person. He really isn’t. I know he is caught in a terrible addiction brought on by his dad’s addiction to porn. His first experience with porn was when he was 6. His parents never had the “balls” to correct the problem in their family and thus it’s evil influence now affects my family. Bishops all through his youth downplayed the severity of the issue as did his mission President and a few Bishops since then. In fact, the only 3 – all within the last 8 years have really made an effort to take a hard line. There is plenty to go around.

But the damage is still done in my heart… regardless of blame. IT IS NOT SAFE!

It is not safe because if I lose the weight I might become a “hotty” and be in the same category as the porn. If I stay fat I can never truly be in their “gang”.

If I lose weight I will have to give up all the things that bring me comfort.

If I lose weight I will have gone through all that effort and I still won’t be “enough” for him to stop his addiction. If I stay fat I can at least conserve effort and have something to blame.

If I lose weight I won’t have a reason to blame for his problem… it will return and “fat” won’t be the excuse. I will still not be enough.

If I lose weight I might discover that I don’t “need” anything and my family possibilities will be lost forever.

If I lose the fat I will lose my protection. In some weird way the fat is protecting me.

So there it is – the whole BIG ugly secret.

I don’t know what is next. That scares me. I know all things are possible with God, but most often are not probability. People still have agency and choices just aren’t made the way we would like all the time. I wanted a temple marriage that meant something. I wanted to feel like I could trust and that someone in my life was loyal. I wanted to be happy for my daughters as they grew up and could marry a priesthood holder in the temple with the real possibility of an eternal relationship. Now I am scared to death. There is a piece of me that never wants them to be married. It will only end in disappointment, heart break and despair. I want to feel completely healed from the pain I feel, but each time he “slips” the same old wound is ripped open and my tired soul struggles to repair itself. Each time is slower and I am afraid. I am afraid that there will be a day that it won’t matter what my desires are, I will not recover and I will die literally of a broken heart.

September’s news caused severe chest pains and I don’t think I will live through many more “slip ups”. I wanted to feel close to my spouse, but as of today, I feel further away than ever. Even if I wonder what he is thinking about during intimate moments, I realized that giving a piece of me in that way somehow bonded me to him. With next to no physical contact we are further away than ever. I wanted to feel like we could talk to each other. But we don’t. He doesn’t want to talk to me because he’s mad that I haven’t let it go yet. He thinks I should let “by gones be by gones” and he hates that most conversations about how I feel lead him to feel more guilt because I feel crappy still and he doesn’t and because I cry. For 22 of those 24 years I kept my pain to myself. Now he wants me to again. Unfortunately now it is so great that I can’t control or contain it. As a result, I haven’t talked to ANYONE else about what I’m going through because I really don’t want people judging him or judging me. I don’t want to hear more people restate the obvious, that I need the Savior to heal me. And he calls some friend from the group everyday. He talks to that guy more than he talks to me. I really cannot see how we will survive. I fear what I will have to tell my kids… and when.

I am afraid that if I don’t lose weight I will not be able to get a job to support my kids and myself when he leaves me. I am afraid enough that I have a secret of my own. I’ve been hiding all the money that I make through babysitting and another home business in a drawer at home. I’m trying to get enough money to start myself on my own… just in case. He is trying hard is his way to clean things up, but I don’t think we are what he really wants.

PLEASE HELP ME! I’m not really looking for “hang in there”, or “you should leave him” or ” you should do…..” I just needed a safe place to get it all out. Up ’til now, it has not been safe to lose weight, it is serving me. But I need to let go of my fat and….maybe him and move on. My prayers say “no” on him, so at the very least I can let go of my fat and hold my breath. Right?

I had a friend ask me about getting a blessing for losing weight and I told her, “yes” but sadly, the answer is really “no”. I can’t ask my husband and to ask someone else would mean I’d need to explain why he can’t. So I guess you’d say I’m living without the blessings of the priesthood in my home for the time being.

Natasha, I can guess that you are very busy, please help me, and in turn it will help all of my children.

Well, it sounds like you have a long history to sort out – both within your marriage and also within your relationship with self. Here are some thoughts:

Your awareness that your issues with weight go way beyond just simple diet and exercise is good. Because the many psychological factors as to why you feel safer being overweight will affect your ability to self care and take off the weight if that is your end goal.
It sounds like your husband was more attracted to your personality than your physical appearance during your courtship. This is not necessarily something that uncommon. In fact it applies the other way around as well – being attracted physically but not emotionally. It also sounds like he dealt with this problem in an immature fashion (maybe trying to hold himself to a higher standard – “this shouldn’t be what is important to me”) which started some very negative patterns between you that further decreased the safety in your relationship – affecting self-esteem, emotional intimacy, guilt, etc. Both physical and emotional attraction are important in a relationship. Regardless of his levels of attraction for you or how he dealt with them – this does not mean he was only attracted to women within the context of pornography. It also doesn’t mean that he wasn’t legitimately attracted to many aspects you did offer.
Correlating the problems within your marriage, sexuality and your body-image only to the issue of pornography is taking a rigid view and will not help you achieve your own potential. If being attractive, at a healthy weight, sensual or beautiful means that you are somehow “approving” or “joining” in with the pornography industry then you are stuck. You’re only option is to feel ugly, fat and non-sensual.
I wonder why it was that you decided to marry a man who raised a pretty big red flag? A man who told you he didn’t find you attractive? Why was this an OK decision for you? I ask these questions so you can take responsibility for your own issues with self-esteem and body image. If you’re unable to do this then the power will lie beyond you instead of within you.
Pornography addiction is a form of infidelity – but with the added issue of compulsive behavior – and can be extremely difficult for a spouse to come to terms with, understand and not take personally. Some of the things that have been shown to help an addict of any type are self-awareness, honesty, openness, addressing issues of underlying shame, safety and accountability. All of these were severely compromised in your marriage – mainly because you were both nursing your own hurts. Licking your own wounds. Feeling judged. Feeling inadequate. It’s difficult to reach out to another when focusing on our own pain – especially when that pain seems to be inflicted by the same person we want to be intimate with. Therein lies the biggest dichotomy of marriage.
In no way am I trying to minimize your pain by validating your husband – but imagining the shame I’m sure came to define him as he went through this self-abusive pattern of trying to overcome something he wanted to desperately overcome – feeling continually guilty about his thoughts and feelings – failing over and over again – the humiliation of losing his recommend, his callings, his standing as a “righteous” man. That’s pretty difficult and damaging. And in many ways, probably not altogether different from your own issues and feelings with food. When we can begin to look through the lens of empathy – it can be freeing from many different perspectives.
I’m wondering why you “lied” for him? This brings codependency to mind. I’m not suggesting we need to tell people private things about our lives, but we do not need to be dishonest either. I highly encourage spouses to have some prepared statements for the types of public situations that inadvertently come up when repentance is unfortunately made a public process (i.e. taking the sacrament, baptizing a child, attending the temple, etc.). I encourage couples to come up with these together so they are in agreement as to what will be shared. A few examples of appropriate statements include: “I am not at liberty to discuss that subject,” “Why don’t you ask him/her?,” “That is something personal I’d rather not discuss right now,” and “We are dealing with some personal issues.” Dealing with our own anxieties about how we will be perceived is something we need to personally address. These types of issues are no one’s business but your own.
As far as your children are concerned, they will know when things are not going well because they are incredibly insightful. You don’t need to tell your children specifics in order to give basic explanations: “Your Dad and I are going through some difficult things right now that we are trying to resolve. Sometimes marriage is hard. We are doing our best to work on things and make them better for all of us. We love you. These problems are not your fault. They are not for you to worry about. We will let you know what you can expect.” Do not lie to them and do not offer false promises like, “everything will be OK.” If they ask whether or not you are going to divorce and you don’t know just say that. “I don’t know.” You can always add reassurances. “Whether or not your Dad and I divorce we will always be a family and we will take care of you. This is our job as parents.” Kids have anxiety when they face unknowns, just like us adults. The best you can do is offer the things that are known.
The fact that you are finding yourself depressed, anxious, “tired of the fight,” and wondering if you still want to be married are all normal responses in this situation. However, working on these issues will help you regardless of whether or not you stay married.
There has been an ongoing breach of your marital contract. Therefore, you have the right to leave this marriage. Staying because you feel a need to “endure to the end” is not necessary. However, there are legitimate reasons you may want to stay (your children for instance). And I cannot repeat enough that problems that go unresolved in first marriages many times find their way into second, third and fourth marriages. In other words, it is in your best interest to resolve issues in the relationship you currently find yourself in. But I am not implying that anyone should put up with or endure abusive behavior.
The fact that your husband is turning off his sexuality as a way to deal with his fantasies/compulsions is not about you. I’ve heard of several treatment centers which focus on sexual addiction asking for several months of abstinence in order to help the “rewiring” process. However, I wish this aspect of your lives was something you guys were discussing and having monitored within counseling.
The fact he is relying on a “sponsor” is also recommended and part of his accountability. Do not be discouraged or threatened by this. This is actually a good sign and a common thread in recovering addicts.
Understand that his recovery – if he recovers – will be bittersweet. Although it’s what you want, you will no longer be able to place blame like you have and it will change your couple dynamics in ways you may be unprepared for. This too, is normal.
I’m sorry you received less than helpful or even inappropriate advice from some of the bishops you relied on for help. It is very unfortunate when this happens. I suggest you seek professional help in addition to any ecclesiastical help at this point.

My suggestions at this point are as follow:

Focus on the only thing you truly have control over: SELF, SELF, SELF!
Do not make your husband’s struggle and addiction your own. Believe it or not, this addiction has little to do with you, your weight, your sex life, etc. You are not on “the same playing field” as porn. This is not about YOU! It has to do with neurochemicals in your husband’s brain that were in place way before he met you. It has to do with his own sexual and personal development. The less personally you can take this issue, the better. Give this problem back to him where it belongs.
Pick up a copy of Mending a Shattered Heart: A Guide for Partners of Sex Addicts Edited by Stefanie Carnes, PhD. HBO has a great series on addiction films that can also be useful in understanding what you are up against and that it is much more complicated than the simple choice of whether or not people want to be righteous.
Focusing on self will mean learning how to set appropriate boundaries and communicate clearly. I highly suggest both individual and marital counseling for this process. You have 24 years of dysfunctional patterns to overcome. Functionality will not happen overnight. It will take time, patience, tolerance and acceptance of failure as well as victory. Relapse will more than likely be part of recovery – knowing this hopefully helps you again, to not make this about you.
Part of having appropriate boundaries is understanding that trust is something earned, not given. It will take time to rebuild trust in your relationship. If I was working with you as a couple, I would want to start the focus of trust on honesty vs behavior. It sounds like this has been somewhat the case with your husband’s continued ability to keep confessing. However, reparation will also need to be part of the solution. “By gones” cannot be “by gones” until they are properly dealt with. This is part of a successful repentance process.
Get in touch with your own body, sensuality, and sexuality. These things should not be held hostage by your husband’s addiction. These things are yours. You are a woman, you are a daughter of God and these are part of your birthright.
Expand your own horizons as to what brings you joy. You are correct in realizing that food is a great sense of comfort. Your relationship with food has become more intimate than what it is meant to be. Food is supposed to give you life – not emotional intimacy. What other things can you develop in your life that bring you joy? Hobbies, interests, career goals, friendships, self-care, exercise, etc.? You will not be successful if you stop comforting with food and have nothing to replace it with. Be patient with yourself.
Do not work on yourself FOR your husband. Do it FOR you. That way, regardless of what happens to the marriage, you are still ahead of the game.
Get a blessing if you want one. You don’t need to give any explanation for asking for one (example of appropriate boundary). That is your right as a member of our church.
Focus on your health versus weight loss specifically. Weight Watchers is a good program that focuses on “lifestyle” more than “diet.” They have an on-line program as well. A lifestyle has to be sustainable over time. Many times diets are not.
Medication might be part of a temporary solution – especially if depression/anxiety are overwhelming at this point. This is something you can discuss with your primary health provider or counselor.

You wrote to me from “Beautiful Fat Woman.” This tells me that there is something in you that believes in yourself. Something that recognizes your self worth, beauty and inner drive. This is where you begin. With this spark of knowing who you truly are. Our potential is only reachable when we embrace where we are right now. With all our weakness, struggle, and personal crap. What is ultimately so difficult about true intimacy with another person – is the ability to be comfortable in our own skin first. We think this is something we will get from the “other” when it is something we need to get from ourselves. Only then, can we truly join with another and find intimacy at a deeper level that has little to do with perfection – rather the acceptance of each other’s imperfections. The irony runs deep, and yet the lesson is profound.

Stop looking to your husband for your happiness. Get your own.

If you want to be with this man, stop worrying about his redemption. Be willing instead to be witness to his shame – his struggle – his crap. See his divinity regardless of what he’s wallowing in. These issues do not define him. And they definitely don’t define you! Be willing to look at him through the loving lens of your Heavenly Parents.

When he falls or stumbles, don’t fall with him. Stand on your own two feet. It’s not useful for the two of you to be sprawled upon the floor simultaneously. And when you need your turn on the floor, he can take a turn standing up.

Be willing to get help. Get all the help you need. You deserve it.

What you tell yourself is possible is powerful. Believe anything is possible! Faith, after all, requires a belief in God. If we can believe in His existence, we should be able to believe in anything.

Take time for yourself! Take time to recover.

These will be some of the most valuable lessons you can offer your children.

I appreciate the courage it has taken to reach out on this venue. I hope some of what I have shared is helpful. Feel free to write in again, or to contact me for a consult.

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