'Porn was my husband's mistress'

Sex addiction – a term that might make you think of Michael Douglas or Tiger Woods – is a real and common problem among Irish men. Here the wife of a recovering sex addict describes the effect of his pornography dependence on their marriage

YOUR INTERNET connection fails and you’re on deadline. It makes perfect sense to go to use your partner’s computer, in the home office. You click on the screen and a pneumatic-breasted creature jumps out at you. You’re surprised but not appalled. This is the 21st century, and porn on the net is a fact of life.

I’d never really given the softer side of porn much consideration. It’s a free world: live and let live, I thought. But there was disquiet in our marriage; children and hectic workloads had affected our intimacy.

We shared a bed, but my partner was physically and mentally absent. He was traversing the globe, trying to find work, which I couldn’t begrudge him – but, equally, he had no interest in me. I suspected he was having an affair. And in a way he was.

There were rows about that suspicion, but I had no proof bar his patent lack of interest in me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, yet I knew something wasn’t right. Our life just didn’t feel right, but I didn’t know how to articulate it.

My family background was fractious. I reasoned that my upbringing had made me suspicious and bad at building relationships. Up to that point in my life the only addiction I was on first-name terms with was alcoholism.

Sex addiction is mired in secrecy. With alcoholism you can smell the booze on the addict’s breath. A gambler’s lack of money will eventually out his or her problem. But sex addiction is something that can be done at home and hidden from view.

It took several accidental discoveries of pornography on his computer to realise that perhaps this wasn’t just simple titillation. Porn was in fact my husband’s mistress.

Sex addiction is an umbrella term for obsessively viewing pornography, engaging with the pornography, frequenting brothels and/or having random sex with people other than your partner. The behaviour of the actor Michael Douglas first put the problem on the front page. Back then it sounded like a lame excuse for him to do exactly as he pleased. The term was widely used again in the recent coverage of Tiger Woods’s affairs.

The absences continued. My partner was always working, looking for work, making money for us, he said. His business in construction was drying up, and he was panicked. The bank was on our case. My earnings couldn’t take up the financial slack. The more he panicked the more he used porn. The more he used porn the more I raged at his unexplained absences. I raged against his lack of interest in me and our children. We never went to bed together. I was up hours before him. He would come to bed at 2am and 3am.

Isolated, I drifted farther and farther, my confidence diminishing as he further absented himself. My rage was driving him away, but I didn’t know what else to do. Our marriage was in trouble, yet neither of us had the courage to admit it.

This misery continued for three years. And then finally, in yet another row, I brought up the pornography. I still didn’t think it was having an undue influence on his behaviour, but I demanded to know why he was interested in its imagery rather than in me. It was a light-bulb moment.

I asked where he kept his porn. I wanted to know if it was on the home computer, because our son was on the PC at every opportunity. This was the first time I considered what I was seeing as the debasement of women. He returned to the room with six hard drives full of porn: hundreds of gigabytes of fantasy. I actually felt faint. As I stared at the size of the problem I realised he needed help.

This wasn’t titillation. This was a chronic problem that started 30 years ago, after a family member died tragically when he was just a young teen.

Research shows that a lot of addicts suffer from low self-esteem. This was his escape. This was where he went when the panic attacks started, where he returned when the attacks came back, as money and other worries mounted. This was how he stopped himself going over the brink, unable to articulate how he was really feeling, keeping it all in, bottling it up.

I had been too busy bringing up babies to see it. As I realised the gravity of the problem, a strange calm came over me. I began to understand the absences. For the first time in years I felt I had some control over my life, because I finally had the complete picture.

PORN ADDICTION is very treatable. As with all addictions, the addict has to want to change his or her behaviour. Addiction to pornography is stealthily destroying family life, and all because most of us are too ashamed to admit it – I use the plural pronoun because it is a family problem and affects every member of that unit.

The calm empowered me and gave me the strength to fight for our marriage and our family life. I saw a man made miserable by his addiction, and I wanted to help. I wasn’t sure about our own relationship at this point, but I wanted to see him free of this burden.

If you get to this point you need to enlist the help of professional counsellors with training in this area. They’re hard to find and usually have waiting lists. I was lucky. A friend who was a counsellor recommended a wonderful no-nonsense colleague who specialises in sex addiction. (The website of the Irish Association of Alcohol and Addiction Counsellors is a good place to start.)

Counselling is also expensive, and the sessions are not covered by medical insurance. The man I spoke to cost €120 an hour. I couldn’t afford regular sessions. But my one session with him emboldened me to talk about the problem with my friends, to unveil our dirty secret. And that was immensely liberating – more for me than for my husband. Sex addicts carry enormous shame about their addiction, and this fuels the addiction: it is the low that follows the high.

Identifying the problem is the most difficult part. And there is a certain shame in admitting that your partner hasn’t left you but has chosen porn over you. But, if you can get admittance that he or she has a problem, sex addiction can be dealt with, and if you can park your pride you can overcome the problem. Secrecy is what feeds sex addiction. But it takes a willingness to want to change on both sides. This is true of all addictions.

With sex addiction there is an absence of facts. All you have are the impressions of the counsellors working in the field. They say numbers are up fivefold.

I lost three years of married life to this addiction. I would advise anyone who believes they might be going through the same experience to seek help. You already know that something isn’t right in your relationship. If someone is disappearing to another room or office for hours on end, locking the door, and is generally agitated by intrusion, something is up.

It takes courage and self-belief to confront addicts. They will deny and deflect, blaming you for their problems. They may not want to admit their addiction. But for those who do, the release from their shame is the first step.

Real friends will support and help. They may not understand it, but they don’t need to. They just need to lend supportive shoulders to hold you up.

Once this darkness is given light, its hold on family life evaporates. It’s like switching on the light when you have a nightmare.

Then, when you’ve made that first step, you really need to think about couples’ counselling. This takes more time and money, and for it to work you need to find someone you like. We tried several unsuccessfully before someone suggested Accord.

I pooh-poohed the idea of a Catholic service offering advice on marriage, but we were running out of options. I am delighted to say that I have had to eat every one of my words. Accord was fantastic. Best of all, it asks you to pay what you can afford – and has a discreet little box with brown envelopes that you put what you can into.

Part of the reason you need counselling is to vent and to break the cycle of rows. And at some point you have to park your anger. For us, counselling became the stabilisers on the tandem that we had chosen to ride.

The problem with sex addiction is the secrecy. Unlike with other addictions, there is little support for the partner and children. This helps fuel the secrecy.

But there is nothing shameful about this problem. When you distil it down, and discard the tabloid headlines, it is an addiction like others. Addicts’ problems are rooted in self-esteem. This also needs to be addressed – which you can do only with the help of professionals.

Many families and couples are going through the same experience. It’s just there’s nowhere for them to go and meet and learn and support each other. That needs to change.

My partner hasn’t used porn in 15 months. He still attends some counselling sessions. Dealing with the problem has made us stronger as a couple. Yes, we still fight about whose turn it is to cook or clean-up, but we’re a team again.

The writer's identity is known to The Irish Times

WHERE TO GET HELP

Addictive Behaviours (addictivebehaviours.com) has a confidential helpline for addicts and family members. Call 087-6858854, leave a message and someone will call you back.

And when you’re ready get in touch with Accord (01-5053112, accord.ie). For a counsellor suited to your needs contact the Irish Association of Alcohol and Addiction Counsellors (01-7979187, iaaac.org). You might also try reading any of Dr Patrick Carnes’s books, which are available to buy from Amazon.co.uk. His In the Shadow of the Net is helpful for anyone struggling with online pornography addiction

'Like with an alcoholic, they both love and hate what they are doing'

About 200 Irish peopl ea year now seek treatment for sex addiction, writes Róisín Ingle

When Eoin Stephens, a counsellor based in Dublin, set up the Centre for Sexual Addictions, in 1999, he was among a tiny pool of trained professionals dealing with only a handful of clients. Now he estimates that about 200 Irish people a year seek help for an addiction that can be just as destructive to families as drugs, alcohol or gambling.

He attributes part of the increase to the availability of pornography and prostitution online. Dr Patrick Carnes, one of the world’s foremost authorities in the area, describes the internet as the “crack cocaine” of sex addiction.

“The biggest factor is the internet, which has made online pornography and sexual interaction in chat rooms widely accessible,” says Stephens. “But there is also more openness about the problem now, which means more people are coming forward to get help.”

The economic downturn is also a factor. “Whenever there is stress around employment or finances, people often look for mood-altering distractions as a way to cope. We haven’t seen the full impact of this yet,” he says.

A sex addict is defined by the same criteria as any other addict. “They are someone who has developed an out-of-control relationship with the mood-altering affects of sexual behaviours,” says Stephens. “The person is struggling and making promises to themselves to stop. Like with a drug addict or an alcoholic, there is an ambivalence at play: they both love and hate what they are doing.”

As well as online pornography and prostitution, visits to massage parlours and lap-dancing clubs, or anywhere there is payment for sexual activity, can also be part of the problem. Help is often sought only in the wake of a crisis.

The director of Addictive Behaviours Centre Ireland, Declan Fitzpatrick, says the term “sex addict” can be misleading. “Sex addiction is not a condition of high libido or someone who is oversexed, the same way an alcoholic does not drink more than others because he is very thirsty . . . He becomes addicted to the mood-altering affect that the alcohol gives. With sex addiction it is the mood-altering effect of being sexual that becomes addictive.”

Treatment can involve one-to-one or group counselling; a one-hour session usually costs about €70. Although the issue can have a devastating effect on relationships, partners are encouraged to take part in the therapy. “Recovery from this is no different to recovery from other forms of addiction,” says Fitzpatrick. “There needs to be a commitment to exploring the underlying emotional drivers behind the compulsive behaviour.” These can range from low self-esteem to past difficulties in forming intimate relationships, particularly in adolescence.

The secretive nature of the activity means most of the time it comes as a “terrible shock” to partners and is viewed as a “huge personal betrayal”, says Lisa O’Hara of Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services in Dublin.

A person “in a relationship with someone who has these kinds of problems will often feel rejected, asking themselves: ‘Why wasn’t I enough?’ which can lead to huge insecurity”, she says. There is also shame: the partners of those affected will often say they would prefer to be living with an alcoholic or a drug addict, because at least then they could confide in their families.

O’Hara says sex addicts can take a long time to seek help. “This is sad, because there is help,” she says. “We’d like to get the message across that we don’t judge – quite the opposite: we think those who come for help are very brave to make that first step towards their recovery.”

See addictivebehaviours.com or mrcs.ie for more details or call 1890-380380