I rashly went out Halloween costume shopping a few days ago. I'm not sure what I was thinking. Well, I know I needed to pick up a costume for my daughter — Yes, a few days shy of Halloween. I'm totally on top of it as a mom. — but for some reason I thought maybe I could find something cute for myself. You know, something suitable for a 40-year-old mother of two married to a recovering sex addict. There must be tons of costumes to fit the bill, right? At the very least there had to be a nice Hillary Clinton, complete with businesslike pants suit.

Instead, I prowled through the store grimacing, rolling my eyes and blowing exasperated puffs of breath like some kind of crazy person. I wasn't fussing, like most of the other customers, at the cost of the costumes (although, yeah, ouch! Shouldn't those things be marked down with just moments left to go?) but at the sexuality of nearly all the costumes for women and girls, with the exception of those for infants and toddlers. (Boys and men, I noticed, had a variety of different costumes available. Most of these were neutral in terms of sexual content, while even those with a sexual element (I'm thinking the orange "Department of Erections" jumpsuit with penis prosthetic) comfortably covered their bodies.)

The womens' and girls' costumes were a veritable Fredrick's of Halloween catalog.  There were tens of different variations on the same micro-mini barely covering the buttocks matched with the same plunging, cleavage baring neckline; I could choose to be any number of porn star characters: the cop porn star, the nurse porn star, the super-heroine porn star, this hippie porn star, the movie star porn star... It was like looking at Carvel ice cream cakes back in the day; Fudgie the Whale would look like a whale, while Santa would come out sporting a red cap topped by a suspiciously untraditional two tassels. (Apparently, Tom Carvel didn't get to the top of the ice cream game through extravagant purchases like molds that would be used only once a year.)

Needless to say, all those droopy eyes, pouting lips, fishnet clad legs and ample bosoms can be triggering for sex addicts and their partners alike. I can't dress up like that: not after the way it's been mixed up with feelings of trauma and degradation.  My husband can't look at anything like that: not after the way he's used it as a drug, an escape into fantasy.  I found myself wondering if there was a special Halloween store for Mormons and if they'd let me shop there. (You make the costumes yourselves, don't you? Sigh!)

Hanging out with my kids all day, going to their Halloween parties at school, watching them dress up with their friends, I sometimes forget (even having had experience with it in recovery) what a sexual (sexually objectifying?) holiday Halloween can be for adults. I think that I, married to a sex addict, with all of my complicated issues around sexuality, can just pop into a store and pick up a fun little costume for myself, not have it trigger the shit out of me. And I'd be wrong. Halloween is just too scary. Next year, I'll stick to eating cupcakes and shopping for modest pantsuits on the Internet.

Eight years ago, in spite of the fact that we were both exhausted by caring for our infant son, I found that my husband Mark was staying up later and later at night. He had to be up at 5 a.m. to get ready for work, yet I would wake some nights at 2 or 3 or 4 a.m. to my son, wailing for a feeding or a diaper change, and find Mark's side of the bed empty, cold, untouched. Then I'd glance to the bedroom door and see the eerie blue glow of the computer screen in the next room creeping in. And I knew he was looking at porn. Sometimes I'd ask him to come to bed, sometimes I'd just stew and wait. And in the morning, I'd wonder, "Should I be worried about this? If he is, is it a big deal? Is this ok? Is it normal?"

Those seemed like legitimate questions at the time. He wouldn't stay up every night. And sometimes he was actually doing some work, or starting off doing some work. (Hey, I'm codependent. I spied, so I know.) I knew he was looking at some porn, but I didn't have a problem with porn. It was one of those things guys did, right? And I even viewed it myself. But this seemed like a lot. Did he have a problem? Or was I crazy and overreacting? (I knew he fell on the side of crazy and overreacting. But if he was crazy then his evaluation of the situation couldn't be trusted.) I simply didn't trust myself or my own feelings. I wanted some neutral third party to say where the line should be drawn, to define exactly what was normal, what was ok, what was worrisome, what was a problem.

I was thinking about all this as I read an article about how his porn use is the equivalent of her pedicures, a way to relax and blow off steam. The author of the piece asked questions like "should you be worried?" and tried to reassure partners that, even if porn use bothers them, it may not be a "big deal." They may be overreacting. All of which made me want to punch the author in the nose and then send him to a therapist who could teach him not to invalidate people's feelings. (What? Are you saying I still have control issues? No worries, I'll lovingly detach and let him crash and burn and learn on his own.)

The reason I got fussy when I read that, is because it took me some time in recovery to realize that there is no "should" when it comes to feelings. And that lesson is still raw. It's something that I am apt to forget as I fall back into fretting over whether or not I "should" be upset or angry or worried. I'll wonder who is right and who is wrong and who is crazy and who is sane and what's normal and grind myself to bits hoping that the world will arbitrate in my favor.

But here's the thing: a problem is a problem. If something worries me, it's worrisome to me. If my husband was staying up at night looking at porn, and it was bothering me, it didn't matter if he was an addict or not; it was bothering me! And it was ok for me to be bothered by it even if it wasn't a problem for him. If my feelings about his porn use were interfering with our relationship, then there was a problem with porn use in our relationship. Likewise, if I'm spending money on spa vacations and my husband is getting anxious and irritable about that, if he's feeling threatened because I'm spending time having my pedicurist massage my feet rather than him, then my spa time is an issue in our relationship, even if pedicures are perfectly healthy and relaxing for me and he "shouldn't" be upset. It doesn't matter how he or I "should" feel, it only matters how we do feel.

Thankfully, we've found recovery programs and therapists that have helped us deal with our problems in a way that has acknowledged and respected each of our feelings, rather than telling us that the way to solve the problem was to convince us that we should stop having those feelings.

Image credit: Photo by kchbrown on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a woman named Paula Saardchit. She told me she'd found my blog while doing research for an article she was writing on sex addiction for her website, and she wanted to write and tell me how moved she was by my story. Of course, I was curious to know more about her site, so I googled her. And I found out that she helps women plan lingerie and sex toy parties. (And I know what kind of party some of you have in mind. No, not that kind! You know, this is like a Tupperware party, only with vibrators.)

When I found out about my husband's sex addiction, one of the first things I did was get out my big, black garbage bags and start dumping in porn, lingerie and sex toys. The sight of them, of anything that made me think of sex or by extension of my husband's sexual acting out, made me want to vomit. So off in a landfill somewhere are all the artifacts of my subconscious attempts to control my husband and keep his sexual attention firmly fixed on constantly exciting, porn star me: the dildos and the vibrators, the bustiers and fishnet stockings and the crotchless panties and the wigs and the costumes, the X-rated board games and the porn DVDs. Yeah, I tried it all. Well, except a stripper pole. That hadn't occurred to me yet. And thank goodness because how would I have carted that out to the trash?

I had been as conventionally sexy and exciting and adventurous and engaged as can be, and my husband loved it. But it wasn't enough. That endless, aching need of his wanted more than I could give. More than all the women in all the lingerie with all the sex toys in the world could give. And still I wanted to give it. Which is how I ended up there, with the black Hefty bag in my hand, sick to my stomach with shame and disgust and rage.

And now, six years later, I was on a lingerie party website, full of pictures of that conventional sexy I dumped in the trash, wondering what kind of sex addiction article Paula intended to write. As I glanced at the site, I saw that there was plenty of the usual "hot" and "titillating" sex selling, but Paula also genuinely seemed to see these parties as a way of empowering women to learn about and appreciate their own bodies. Black and white thinking is common in the lives of addicts and those who live with them, and I've been slowly working toward a place where, after fully indulging in our culture's idea of "sexy" and then fully rejecting it (from lingerie to makeup to shaving my legs), I am exploring more shades of grey. So, just because I can't incorporate lingerie and sex toys into my relationship in a healthy way right now, doesn't mean they are evil in themselves. There are definitely aspects of lingerie and sex toys that I'm deeply uncomfortable with, and even perceive as dangerous to women, but there was enough that was positive about Paula's site that when she asked if she could interview me, I said, "Well, send me your questions and I'll see."

When I saw the questions, I found that not only was I comfortable with answering them all, this would be a good opportunity to reach out to women who may not realize (yet) that their partners are sex addicts. (I mean, what better place to find a sex addict's partner in denial than out buying lingerie?) So, while many women may be using Paula's parties as a healthy expression of their sexuality, I (taking to heart that 12 Step message of reaching out to those still suffering) couldn't pass up the opportunity to plant some seeds among those who might be indulging in sexy, not as an act of empowerment, but as one of desperation and degradation.

Then had to take that last leap of faith that Paula would put it up as I expressed it before I clicked send. (Not that I have trust issues or anything!) And she did. The interview is up, and after having thought long and hard about linking out to such a potentially triggering site, I thought I would share it with you all, especially since many of you don't have sex addiction as part of your lives at all and may find it interesting. There is nothing in the content of my interview that I wouldn't post here, but images and links in the header and sidebar are related to lingerie and sex toys. So, one last time before the link...

Warning: Sex addicts and their partners may find images and language in the linked site triggering!

(If the thought of clicking through raises any concerns about your sobriety or serenity, please feel free to e-mail me for a copy of the information contained in the interview instead.)

And here's the link (isn't it cute that I'm an expert?): Interview with Mary P Jones at Lingerie Party and Adult Toys.

I fear business trips. But it's not my own business trips I fear — as a mom who left corporate work behind some nine years ago, I don't get those myself anymore — it's my husband's. When Mark was active in his sex addiction, (unbeknownst to me at the time) the trips he took for business were veritable perfect storms for acting out. The simmering brew of loneliness in an unfamiliar city, exhaustion brought on by travel and stress about his work triggered the compulsive behaviors he used to self-medicate. And on top of that, his location (most often a hotel room in a major city) generally provided plentiful opportunities for acting out (from porn to strip clubs to prostitutes).

When Mark started in recovery, he changed jobs and took a position that required no business travel at all. He didn't feel he was ready to travel safely at that point, and I was grateful that I didn't have to add one more post traumatic stress trigger to my life just then. Over the years, as his job has changed, he has occasionally been asked to do business travel. He weighs the merits of each trip and talks to me about the impact on me and on our family; sometimes (especially early on) he has refused to go, but sometimes he takes the trip. And every now and then, when he does, a bit of fear creeps up and wraps itself around me. Ok, ok, sometimes more than a bit. There are times when business trips can really make me crazy.

It so happens that Mark has one of those crazy making business trips coming up in a few weeks, and I've felt that fear tightening its grip around me once again. He'll be flying overseas to visit a wealthy business partner who will be treating them to a tour in his private jet, lavish meals and a stay at a luxurious resort. And when I think of wealth and power and indulgence, my mind flies to an overseas trip years ago, when a wealthy and powerful executive in his company rewarded Mark an his coworkers with a night at a strip club, complete with lap dances for all.

And there, as the past casts its shadow on the future, lies fear. It's a fear that has nothing to do with the present moment, where we are both using all the tools we've amassed in the last six years to communicate our feelings honestly and to maintain our respective states of mental health and sobriety. But as I sit with that fear today, with those tools at my disposal, I'm reminded by its dark presence that I must be out of touch with my Higher Power. When I am present and in touch with my Higher Power, there is no fear. The fear, I realize, is a gift that reminds me what I need to do to be free of fear. It guides me back to contact with my Higher Power and back to my faith that Mark and I both (together or separately) will be ok whatever happens, because it is all part of our journey, our learning, our growth. As feel my Higher Power once again, I'm able to breathe, let my shoulders drop away from my ears and gently release that dark shadow and watch it fade away.

Image credit: Photo by thegreenpages on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

People (particularly women) who work in the porn industry are being abused and exploited.

Think about that statement. (You're already framing your argument, agreeing or disagreeing, aren't you?)

Now think about this one: People (particularly women) who work in the garment industry are being abused and exploited.

Different reaction? From what I've seen and heard, both online and off, I expect so. After all, mention abuse and exploitation in connection with the garment industry, and heads tend to fill with images of sweatshops: forced labor, locked factories, squalid conditions, low wages, sexual harassment, even physical or sexual abuse. But mention abuse and exploitation in combination with porn and suddenly you find yourself in the territory of feminism, religious dogma, sexual mores, free will, free speech and personal beliefs and experiences.

Imagine accusations of sweatshop conditions in the garment industry being countered with:

• "Sewing is an enjoyable activity; lots of people probably begged for those jobs." or
• "I have a friend who works in middle management for Nike and she's not being forced to work in a locked factory." or
• "Why is it inconceivable that someone could choose to make clothing? Shouldn't women be free to choose whatever employment they want, even if society doesn't value it? " or
• "Isn't work for clothing manufacturers better than working in a fast food restaurant?" or
• "Venus Williams is making a lot of money from clothing endorsements. It's outrageous and insulting to claim that she's some poor exploited victim of the garment industry." or
• "You're just attacking clothing manufacturers because your uptight religious beliefs don't allow you to wear t-shirts."

Yet those same types of arguments -- that not all porn workers are abused, that not all employers engage in unethical or illegal practices, that some people like and choose their jobs and are well paid for it, that some people enjoy decent working conditions -- are exactly the ones that are generally brought forward to counter claims that the porn industry is involved in human trafficking, forced labor, and physical and sexual abuse.

Nike has (and continues to) come under harsh criticism for its labor practices. Yet no one counters these charges by pointing to the good working conditions and benefits for employees in Nike's corporate offices. No one defends its sweatshop work as a matter of personal choice, in spite of the fact that most Nike employees are working for Nike by choice. No one frames the degradation of the female sweatshop workers as feminist empowerment just because Nike employs female executives and runs ad campaigns celebrate feminine achievement and power.

Sex is such a charged subject that when public dialog turns to porn we run off into separate camps: for porn or against. We start talking about whether porn itself is morally abhorrent or not and miss an actual moral wrong: the pain of some young men and women we consume in the name of entertainment. Porn has its sweat shops. Some of those employed in making porn are being abused, just as some of those employed in making clothing are being abused. Yet folks who wouldn't buy a pair of Nike sneakers or who would support regulations or unionization or trade agreements to protect garment workers, probably don't think twice about where that jpeg they just downloaded comes from.

Think about it now.

When I posted a few months ago (starting here) about how I came to discover my husband's sex addiction, I wrote a post about his porn use and promised to follow up with a post about my own complicated feelings about and relationship with porn. But it's only been recently that I've gotten my mind wrapped around the subject to a degree where I felt I could begin to write about it. This (Velvet Verbosity is sighing in relief) is the long awaited, can't-possibly-live-up-to-expectations porn post.

Photo credit: Photo by *nathan

I can't remember when I was first introduced to Porn. I know I'd heard about Porn before we actually met, and I was intrigued. Sure, there were folks who told me to stay away, who said that Porn was bad, or more than bad: evil. I heard all kinds of claims about the bad things Porn had done: Porn was nasty, Porn abused women, Porn was Satan's bitch.

But I thought Porn seemed sexy, exciting, fun; Porn was harmless and misunderstood; Porn was discriminated against by hopelessly dull and uptight women who were threatened by sex or by hypocritical men who sought to control women's sexuality while themselves secretly partying with Porn. Porn's friends and lovers were grown men and women, who were capable of wearing big boy and big girl underwear, but chose to forsake those for big boy and big girl thongs and crotchless panties instead.

So, Porn and I started hanging out; we had fun. I found Porn funny and entertaining. Porn liked to date bad actors who made me giggle. I didn't feel threatened by Porn. Porn kept my secrets and let me explore fantasies in a safe solo environment where no one was going to hurt or pressure or judge me. And I defended Porn from all attackers:

Ms. Anti-Porn: "Porn is immoral and people who hang out with Porn are bad people."

Me: "I don't think Porn is immoral."

Ms. A-P: "But God hates Porn."

Me: "But I don't believe in God."

Ms. A-P: "You are bad and going to hell."

Me: "Well, then I might as well kick back and enjoy myself with Porn in the meantime."

Ms. A-P: "But wait, Porn is degrading to women. I thought you were a feminist."

Me: "The women who get involved with Porn are adults who are making their own choices about their bodies and careers. The problem is not Porn but society's double standard."

Ms. A-P: "Their actions contribute to that double standard and drag all women down. You've been brainwashed by the patriarchy and are not really a feminist."

Me: "I think you're the one who's not really a feminist for not respecting women's choices."

Ms. A-P: "You're wrong."

Me: "No, you're wrong."

Ms. A-P: "No, you're wrong."

Me: "Whatever, you are boring and uptight. I'm going to go hang out with Porn now and have some fun."

So, I did. I hung out with Porn from time to time, alone or with my husband, with not a care in the world. Sometimes my husband hung out with Porn alone, and that was ok too. After all, Porn was a mutual friend. But then he started to get really serious about Porn, he was spending more and more time with Porn. He'd spend time away from me and our baby, out with Porn instead. And eventually, he met some people through Porn and got involved with them: sexual online chats, sexual e-mails, lap dances, sexual encounters.

It didn't bother me when we were casually hanging out with Porn, together or alone, but it did bother me when he craved Porn more often than the occasional fun evening together, when Porn usurped his life and mind to the point where he was obsessed with Porn to the exclusion of his own family, when he needed more than what Porn alone could give him, when Porn introduced him to other people.

And I started to see Porn differently. I wasn't angry at Porn. I still didn't think Porn was morally wrong, but I could see now that Porn was spiritually damaging and that the people who were involved with Porn were damaged people. Porn didn't seem fun and sexy anymore, Porn seemed hurt and lonely. Porn was laughing and carousing and spinning in wild hedonism to hide a deep pain. And the people involved with Porn were pretending to have fun, but I could suddenly see in so many of their eyes how degraded and ashamed they felt. I saw women who had been sexually abused hanging on Porn's arm, looking for reassurance and love. I saw men who had been molested strutting by Porn's side, trying to make it ok. I saw eyes glazed over with drugs. I saw lonely, aching emptiness. I hadn't been a voyeur to people's pleasure, I had been a voyeur to their suffering.

I was out of the Matrix; Porn was still inside it. And it just wasn't fun or entertaining anymore. It was painful and sad.

So, Porn and I, we don't hang out anymore. But we're both ok with that. Porn has lots of other friends, and so do I.

I'd feel a wave of aggressive sexuality coming from these women that would make my chest tight with rage. Everything about them screamed sex and seemed to say, "I want every man to desire me, and when a man desires me, nothing will prevent me from trying to get him to act on that, if he is what I want."

In the days immediately following my husband's revelation that he was a sex addict, I pressed him for details with sleepless fury. I wanted to know everything: to break the bond of secrecy he had with these other women, to reclaim my reality, and to try to make sense of what had happened and what was happening. I would make lists of tens questions as they popped into my mind during the day, so that I wouldn't forget a thing, and I would keep him up far into the night answering them, not letting either of us rest until I knew every word, every thought, every name, every touch.

I know this wasn't a unique desire; the first impulse of many wounded and betrayed partners is to want to know everything. And I know that many of them regret it; that knowledge stays with them and the images haunt them. But while it's true that those details did (and sometimes still do) bring a deep, piercing pain, they also did bring me some of that insight I craved and some of my first real moments of empathy: for my husband and the women he was with.

In one of those very early days, my husband was telling me about a sexual encounter. The woman he described was very sexual, very eager and willing to become intimate quickly. And yet, although they had sex, she refused to touch him. As she took shape through his words, I saw her arranging a casual sexual encounter with a married man whose body she wanted and shuddered at, to whom she revealed herself and from whom she wanted to hide. And the realization of her pain went through me like an electric shock. I shook with rage, locked for that one moment in a furious solidarity with the woman whose actions tortured me, as I hissed at my husband, "My God! That woman was sexually abused! How could you not see that? How could you use her like that?"

I started to see, slowly, that she wasn't the only one. The women my husband acted out with were, each in their own way, deeply hurt and damaged. In trying to understand the other side of my husband's story, I read books (because I'm a nerd like that) on female sex addiction. I read the personal stories of women like former porn star Shelley Luben. I got to know courageous, inspiring women bloggers who struggle with their own compulsive sexual behavior.

I learned how abuse, particularly sexual abuse, can lead women to seek out love in the only way it has ever been shown to them, through sex. I saw how sex could be used to medicate feelings created by the abuse: that they were unworthy, undesirable and unlovable. I saw how that aggressive sexuality that threatened me was a woman's way of seeking power over her abuser. And I started to recognize that when a woman made me feel uncomfortable and threatened with her sexuality, it was a sign, not of her desirability or confidence, but of some deep, past hurt to her body, mind and spirit.

A few days ago, I was chatting with some friends in recovery about celebrities when the topic of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie came up. And I said, "Oh, I hate Angelina Jolie!" It wasn't one of those dramatic uses of the word hate either. I thought about her and felt a sickness like a punch in the stomach. I've never met the woman, I know nothing about her other than her on-screen persona and the headlines I've seen on tabloids in line for the supermarket checkout. But I have truly always felt a tight, burning rage and disgust at the sight of her.

"Ugh! So do I," said one of my friends, who is also the partner of a sex addict.

"That's because you're both with sex addicts," said another. "She's sexy and you're threatened by her."

Duh. I hadn't thought about it lately, my hatred for Angelina Jolie was so long standing and unspoken that I'd virtually forgotten about it. But why had I always had such passionate negative feelings about her? What had she ever done to inspire irrational loathing in me? She was sexy. Sexy in the same distinctive, fierce way that always made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

And the proverbial light bulb clicked on, right over my head, and flooded every cobwebby room in my mind with light. Maybe Angelina Jolie was sexually abused. I could feel something like that in the aggressive sexual energy that was beating against me. And I experienced one of those moments where faces and images and sound fired at me in a rapid barrage, like a movie time traveler. The women my husband was with were abused. Prostitutes and porn stars overwhelmingly come from abusive backgrounds. Marilyn Monroe, the queen of sexy herself, the woman on whom so many women from whom that same threatening sexuality radiates have modeled their own image: Marilyn Monroe, was sexually abused as a child.*

And I sat there like some slapstick cartoon character, with stars dancing around my head, knocked to the ground by that falling anvil. What we call sexy, what we hold up as the standard of female sexuality as a culture, the sexiness we aspire to and celebrate, is the sexuality of abuse. In looking for feminine power in movie stars and models, in porn stars and pole dancers, we're aspiring to be victimized girls grown up, fiercely pretending to revel in our shame. We are modeling our behavior on a sexuality born of violence against women, of abuse, of molestation, of rape.

And I thought, my God. My God. What are we doing?

That first year of my son's life is something we each seem to have merely survived. For all the love we had for each other and that baby boy, we existed in our separate dark places that year. Although Mark made a silent promise on the day of our baby boy's birth that all the intrigue, flirting and cheating would end, without the tools of recovery, each new stress was driving him to the only means of coping he knew: sex. And I was wrapped in a boa constrictor of anxiety that would squeeze tighter with each movement, crushing me with migraines and chest pains that would wake me in the middle of the night.

As the months crept on, I'd find that when I woke, from anxiety or the baby, it would be to an empty bed with Mark on the computer in the other room. I'd doze and wake every hour, only to find Mark still gone. It would be two or three in the morning before he would come to bed, and he'd be up again at five for work. I'd hear him in the shower, muttering and cursing to himself, as if he were talking in his sleep. I'd lie in bed, straining to listen, thinking those words held the answer to his secret.

What secret? I really couldn't tell. None of it made any sense. When I tried to talk about what he was doing on the computer or ask why he was talking to himself, I hit that soft barrier again: I was fighting to swim through sand, with only the illusion of mobility. I knew he was looking at pornography on the computer (whether because he told me or because I sensed it I don't recall any longer), but I couldn't understand why that should be a secret, nor why it would be reason enough to lose hours of already scarce and precious sleep. Why hide porn? I'd never had a problem with it: I viewed porn individually (as did he) and we'd view it as a couple. And why stay up for hours viewing porn night after night? I was there: a real live available partner. And sleep was there with me.

Something was wrong, really wrong. Something was being hidden from me, and I had to see that something. If Mark wouldn't pull aside the curtain, I decided I would rip it down. I sat down one day at our iMac (grandchild of our first computer, Abby) and installed software that would track each keystroke. Then in the morning, when Mark left for work after a night on the computer, I sat down to trace his footsteps.

I found he had an e-mail account I didn't know about (one of several, it turned out). I found that he had been frequenting a pornographic web site that allowed users to pay for access to adult chat rooms and pay still more for private video chats. I found that he had spent hundreds of dollars in a matter of days paying a woman to masturbate for him on camera and that he had been e-mailing her privately as well. I found that he had been attempting to set up our web cam to send video of himself back to her, but had been unable to overcome some technical difficulties.

I thought briefly about waiting until he got home from work to talk to him, but I knew I couldn't make it through the day with the blood pounding in my ears and my stomach churning in rage and pain and confusion. I picked up the phone with shaking hands and called him on his cell phone on his way to work. He heard the tremors in my voice, turned the car around and rushed back home.

The question I spat out over and over in my fury and bewilderment was, "What were you thinking? Why? Why? Why?" His answer, which seemed crazy, but which was delivered with utter sincerity was, "I didn't know I was doing anything wrong." I could see genuine bewilderment in his face. He didn't see the difference between his actions (which hurt and infuriated me) and viewing pornography (which he knew I was fine with). He told me that he was so worried about me and how exhausted I was with the baby that he wanted me to get as much rest as possible; he decided to use pornography and be as quiet as he could about it so he wouldn't disturb me. He said he had gotten bored with pictures years ago; they didn't do it for him anymore. So, he moved on to video, but recently that wasn't exciting enough either. He really wanted something more, so he sought out the video chats, which was just live, interactive pornography, right?

He was baffled that I was ok with porn, but not with this, that I considered this infidelity, betrayal, cheating. After all, no actual physical contact had been made. He looked like a soap opera amnesiac struggling to remember his true identity: furrowing his brow and saying, "Well, if you say I'm Dirk and I'm a surgeon, I think I might be able to see how that could be true..." There was something he was almost understanding, but not quite. And what he wasn't understanding was so. frightfully. OBVIOUS. It terrified me that he really couldn't see the difference between a Playboy centerfold and a live, online interaction. How could he not grasp the distinction? How could I trust him not to cross some other line in the future, something I understood to be there but he couldn't see?

Still, by the end of the conversation, he'd made it very clear that he was terribly sorry, that he never wanted to hurt me, that he loved and adored me, that he'd learned the difference between right and wrong, and that he was absolutely never going to do this again. He canceled his account with the porn site. He agreed to let me make decisions about the amount of rest and sex I needed instead of making that decision for me. He swore he knew right from wrong now and would never do wrong again. (And he never did do anything on the home computer again.) I was still hurt and uneasy, but we seemed to be back on the right track. Glad we talked about that. Problem solved, right?

However, today Aunt Babz, who runs the advice column Ask Aunt B asked me to do a little consulting for her. She received a very poignant letter from a reader whose husband was using pornography to the extent that it was seriously hurting her and harming with their relationship. Unfortunately, this is an area in which I can say I now have some expertise. The letter touched me greatly and reminded me so much of some of my own pain and struggles. So, I threw caution to the winds, went ahead and made my armchair therapist diagnosis and even gave a little (gulp!) advice.

You can read the letter and my guest columnist answer at Ask Aunt B.

If you know the pain of sex addiction, you'll feel for the woman who wrote this letter too. If you don't know what sex addiction looks like, take a look; if you've dealt with addiction in your own life, it will look familiar enough to break your heart. (You can even try substituting the words "alcohol" or "drugs" for "porn," if that helps.)

I have to say, after my gig today as guest columnist, my hat is off to Babz more so than ever. It's a lot of pressure to have another person reaching out to you for help and trusting you to be there for them and point them in the right direction.