I'm a Sex and Porn Addict. My Boss Told My Wife

I was 12 and I had never snuck out of the house before. But I did that night because out there was something irresistible to me.

Earlier that day, my friends and I found a porn magazine at the park.

We did what every group of pre-teen boys does in that situation: We laughed uncomfortably, ogled, and made crude jokes. We were simultaneously fascinated, disgusted, and intrigued. But being good little boys, we threw it in the trash and continued our day.

For me, though, the thought of it never left. I secretly plotted how I would go back and get it. Suddenly, at 1 a.m. there I was, at the park, in the dark, digging in the trash to find it. Eureka! I took it home and tucked it under my bed.

I didn't know it then, but that's probably the first act that showed I was a porn addict.

This searching for images of women wasn't a new behavior. For years I had been getting up early on Sunday to retrieve the ad-laden newspaper for my dad. Before handing it over, I plucked out the women's underwear and swimwear ads.

I spent my free time in my room poring over the images, fascinated by what I saw. I couldn't get enough—and I was completely disgusted with myself.

I knew it was at very least unhealthy behavior and at worst immoral by my own personal standards. I just didn't care. Not in the moment.

It was at other times the shame of it all overcame me. Late at night trying to fall back to sleep after an explicit dream; sitting in church fantasizing about what was under the women's dresses; getting caught by my parents talking on a phone sex call and lying that it was an innocent "chat line".

I felt a gripping, painful, and terrifying self-hatred; an unworthiness followed by a thought that no one loved or could ever love me because of what I was secretly doing—and yet I had to get more.

I had a recurring dream for years of falling over a banister and down a stairwell. Falling, falling, falling and the moment I saw the ground rushing up to me, I would awake with a start, heart pounding and short of breath.

Those feelings caused by the dream—of helplessness, adrenaline-induced excitement and fear, and impending death—were often the same as I had while looking at porn or seeking sex.

The first time I masturbated wasn't even pleasurable. Neighborhood kids bullied me, and I served as the butt of a lot of their jokes. Kids sense insecurity and attack weakness; I was a walking sack of self-pity.

I don't know where it came from, but they openly called me "the masturbator". They joked that I just went home and masturbated every day. I hadn't ever done that before, but one day when I was 14, I said to myself: "That's who they say I am, I guess that's who I am." So, I went home and did the deed.

I was full of angry resentment. I don't remember any pleasure, but somehow, I felt relief, especially when paired with the porn. I had girlfriends in high school. I was dumped by my first when I was 16 because I pressured her to go too far physically. I wasn't bothered though, because I heard of another girl from my neighborhood who was recently single because of her promiscuity. I didn't even like her, but I knew I could get some sexual gratification.

It was clearly not a healthy relationship and it ended with me in court a year or so later facing harassment charges because I couldn't bear not being with her even though I still didn't like her. I was a sex addict.

Prior to the hearing, the prosecuting attorney took me into a back room and asked me some questions. The judge and prosecuting attorney in the court case seemed to understand there were two teenagers in a toxic relationship. They decided to keep it off my formal record provided I did some community service and did not contact her anymore. I complied.

My parents got a computer when I was 15 or 16, and it came with dial-up internet. To my surprise and excitement, they put it in a downstairs office just down the hall from my room. I would spend entire nights searching for and then printing images I found.

I remember covering the router with a blanket to quiet the chirps and beeps of the old dial up, and the printer to hide the sounds. I have no idea how I never got caught.

In my early twenties, I spoke to a church leader about my issue. He said I needed to get married. I don't fault him for saying that. I didn't disclose to him the depth and breadth of the problem, so his suggestion was probably fine for someone who looked at porn "every once in a while" and "sometimes masturbated".

The shame I felt for what I was doing, and the fear of judgment if someone knew, kept me from telling him the truth; I was looking at porn almost nightly and masturbating more often.

At 22, I got married to a wonderful and kind woman. I told her nothing of my issues. Lying to your would-be spouse is not how you begin a healthy, long-lasting relationship. I didn't know that then.

I spent the next few years looking at porn until one day my boss called me into a meeting in the owner's office. With him, sat the owner and a vice-president of the company, both women.

They proceeded to tell me I was being fired for looking at porn on company computers and company time. They told me they had sent a letter home to notify my spouse of my termination and exactly why, including a list of websites I visited.

I went home jobless to a devastated wife. That marriage ended shortly after.

Reflecting now, it was probably inappropriate for an employer to do that. But I was so full of shock, devastation, and shame that I was only thinking from moment to moment. I didn't have enough sense of self-worth to think that big.

I lived from high to high not considering the consequences or impact on myself or others. When there were lows, I knew I just needed another high. I can imagine they wrote the letter and sent it to my wife because they wanted her to know the truth.

Most people would have learned from that mistake. Not addicts. From my addict point of view, it wasn't really my fault. She didn't give me sex whenever I wanted it, and work was so demanding I needed some kind of relief. I believed sex was the only way to get it. Oh, and she was just a prude.

None of that is the truth. But it was my truth at that time. I believed I could find someone better, who would meet my ever-changing needs, who would do what porn did for me so I didn't ever have to look at it again. I can see now that was a delusion.

I kept that mentality through another relationship. It ended even worse than the first. We were engaged but not sexually active. A "tight lead from first base" was the extent of our physicality.

That relationship ended when one night I went onto Craigslist Romance listings and solicited women for sex. I spent all night anticipating something which I was, in reality, too much of a coward to have ever followed through with.

The next morning, I felt sick. I had to tell her. After I did, she decided to end the relationship. I sank into a deep depression. So deep I had thoughts of harming myself and even made a half-hearted attempt, which led to me sitting in the lobby of a psychiatric ward waiting for admission.

After getting scared by what I had planned to do, I realized I was in a bad spot mentally and emotionally. I called everyone I knew to talk to them and ask for help. No one answered. I was desperate so I finally called 911.

I was 28 and felt helpless and hopeless. After the psych ward, I got some much-needed therapy and found some relief. Enough to feel sane again. I threw myself into my education and avoided women. I figured I could look at all the porn I wanted if my grades stayed up.

I survived by making myself busy, which isn't hard to do on a college campus. My days consisted of going to classes and doing my homework all the while looking at college girls, fantasizing about them and following them around, then going home and watching porn for hours and masturbating, only to do it again the next day. My way of controlling the behavior was to never look at porn anywhere except at home, and I spent a lot of time at home alone.

As I got closer to college graduation, I met a woman on a dating site. She didn't live in my hometown, which suited me just fine. It was much easier to look at porn with a girlfriend who wouldn't pop in or want to come over spontaneously.

Eventually, we got engaged and she asked me if I looked at porn or had ever cheated. "Of course not, I never cheated!" I said, "but my last two relationships ended because of porn use. But I got help!"

This was all true, just not all the truth. She told me that if I ever looked at porn or cheated, she'd divorce me. I selfishly decided what she didn't know couldn't hurt her. We had normal relationship troubles, but I made them her fault because if I was the problem, my secret might get revealed.

When we went to counseling, I wasn't honest with the counselor. I manipulated the conversation and learned to say what the counselor was looking for. All to keep my secret. Then one day, nearly 10 years into our marriage, she caught me.

At that time, I was looking at porn for four or more hours every night, masturbating two or three times a day. I was tired and cranky during the day and needed the porn and masturbation to sleep. I poured what little energy I had into work, and I was neglecting my step kids.

I wasn't eating. I felt anger and resentment toward everyone and everything. I was withholding sex from my wife out of that resentment and fear. I didn't have to work as hard for porn as I did a relationship. It was an immediate fix.

It didn't start out that way though. When we first got married, I was looking at porn about once a month for about 10 or 15 minutes. Sometimes not even masturbating. Slowly, what used to be a few minutes turned into hours of searching and always culminated in masturbation.

The women in the videos were younger and younger. The genres got more intense and more taboo as well. I'm a decidedly straight man, but I went to gay porn for excitement. I have nothing against anyone's sexual preferences, it's no one's business but their own, but when I went against what I know is true for me, I felt a deep, deep shame.

I never paid for porn or sex—there was plenty available for free—nor have I done anything illegal. However, I know that given a certain set of circumstances I would have done either or both.

Porn became my life. If I wasn't looking at it, I was thinking about it. If I wasn't thinking about what I had looked at, I was thinking about what I would be looking at the next time. Once she found out the truth—the real truth—she followed through on her promise and my life as I knew it was over.

It was a terrible time, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I was finally willing to admit I had a problem that I couldn't solve. It's sad that it took so much pain and damage for me to realize it.

I had tried everything I could think of to stop. Getting married. Throwing out my stash. Cleaning my hard drive and browser history and swearing off it for good, only to be back on porn sites again later. I tried blockers, and they worked when they were installed, but when the urges got bad enough, I'd figure a way around them.

I tried therapy and counselors. I tried bargaining with God to make me good by committing to do or not do certain things; promises which I rarely kept. I pulled my hair out and did other self-harm out of desperation. I tried self-help books and podcasts. Nothing worked.

I never got an accountability partner. The shame I felt would block me from asking anyone to help me be accountable. I never tried getting a dumb phone—that would be too inconvenient. Never mind the fact I had been blowing up my life with porn.

I never considered having someone else install the porn blocker so I couldn't uninstall it. Addiction is a strange thing. I wasn't willing to consider or commit to solutions that might actually work as long as I still felt I could come up with something on my own.

It wasn't until I was at the bottom, staring up at all I had lost; when I truly believed to my inner core that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I could come up with that would work that I was willing to try someone else's solution. It's sad, but it's how addiction works.

And there I was at the bottom. Five days after my then spouse said she was divorcing me, I joined a group called Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous (SPAA). It was the last place I wanted to be. I thought it was just a bunch of perverts and pedophiles. But I had nowhere left to go.

In my first meeting, I heard myself in their shares. To my surprise, they seemed like just normal people, not the sickos I had imagined them to be. They were complete strangers, but they knew my story. They could tell me about myself and my behavior before I told them.

They told me stories about their porn use and sexual behavior that paralleled mine or were worse, but I knew I could have done if I had continued down the path. Then they told me it didn't have to be that way anymore; they told me that they had stopped and so could I.

They had something that I desperately wanted: Freedom and self-confidence.

I was still skeptical though and thought some of them were completely full of s***. But I couldn't resist the honesty and humility I felt. They were...happy. They seemed to be free from the crippling shame I had felt. They were a jovial bunch despite the pain they had experienced and caused. They were making their lives better and some of their wives even corroborated the story.

I was desperate enough to believe them at least enough to get a start. I did most of what they told me to do. I got a sponsor. I worked the steps. I did it my way at first. But I slowly realized that I had never done this before, so my way was ignorant and stupid.

My way had never worked. It would be better to do it the way I was taught.

Miraculously, I realized it had been weeks since I looked at porn. I wrote a poem about my first 30 days. The point of it was that I could finally look into my own eyes in the mirror. I couldn't remember the last time I had done that. I cried for a while about that with both joy and regret.

They taught me about this thing called edging—religions usually refer to it as lust—what it was, how to see it and more importantly how to avoid it. They gave me tools for dealing with my emotions. Hell, they taught me I had emotions; at least more than just happy, mad, and sad.

They showed me how to be the man who I had always known I could be but never knew how. They showed me how the pain I had lived through could be a benefit and used to help others. They taught me how to make a real and meaningful apology to those I had hurt. They taught me about vulnerability and connection. They gave me a gift.

Today, I am in another relationship with a wonderful woman. It's different this time. She knows all about my history and not because she found out. I told her. I haven't hidden anything from her. I had to face a lot of fear to do that, but now I have no doubt she accepts me for me instead of some masked-up version of me. I can show up for her emotionally. I care about her feelings and her well-being and can even put her needs before my own most of the time—something I couldn't do before.

I commit a significant amount of my time to helping other people who come into this program as broken or more than I was, and who want what I found. I love helping them. I also spend a lot of time doing things like making phone calls, meditating, journaling, praying, and attending SPAA meetings.

I don't lie like I used to, and when I do tell a lie, I go and tell the truth immediately. It surprises people sometimes, but it keeps me sane. I have heard people tell me they feel I'm authentic and real.

When I hear it, I laugh inside because those are words that I have never used to characterize myself. It's a high compliment. I am grateful.

In three years, I haven't looked at porn or anything even close to it.

It hasn't been perfect. I had one day where my fingers were hovering over the keyboard, shaking. I was ready to type in some porn site, but instead I made a phone call and got out of that situation. Another time, a homeless woman flashed me as I drove by; I made a phone call and told someone.

I'm not a pervert and no one I know in SPAA is. I don't live like a hermit or a weirdo. I still go out in public, and I still watch TV and movies. I'm just careful about what I watch. The pace of my life has slowed down. I spend more time connecting with people, asking questions, and trying to be helpful and useful. I try to think of others more than myself.

I wish I could say I will never go back to porn again, but I don't know that for sure. What I do know is that if I keep doing what I have been taught in SPAA and teaching others about it, I will be free.

I'm not a spokesperson for SPAA, and they most certainly don't endorse me. They would probably cringe knowing I put the SPAA name into the media. But it's part of my story. It's where I found a solution and they deserve credit for that.

Being welcomed into their fellowship was the best thing that ever happened to me.

John Montgomery, a pseudonym, is a recovering sex and porn addict.

All views expressed are the author's own.

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