Secret revealed
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By COREY TAULE
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ctaule@postregister.com
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Over the next few days, the Post Register will be running stories examining the impact of pornography and sexual addiction on eastern Idaho and one local family, whose real names aren't being used. These stories contain adult content. It started with online backgammon and espn.com. But between the baseball box scores and football trade rumors lurked pictures of scantily clad cheerleaders and swimsuit models -- innocent stuff, unless you are a sexual addict. "Steve" and "Rebecca" purchased a home not far from school and began remodeling and furnishing it. They widened the basement stairs and placed a computer on an oak desk in a small white room. The basement was a perfect place to study. It was also a perfect place to cruise the Internet without interruption. He'd sit down at the computer, already aroused, rationalizing that this time he wasn't going to those sites, but end up there anyway. His pattern was to search for something borderline innocent, such as "G-strings," knowing where it would take him. When Rebecca came down the stairs, he'd quickly click on his homework, or if caught, tell her that the image was spam or a pop-up. She wasn't computer literate enough to call him on his lie. Addicts of all stripes begin small and work their way up. Steve's addiction began with a picture in a magazine, was enflamed by the abuse inflicted upon him by his friend's older brother, and escalated to the point where he was thrown off his mission and placed on probation by his church for premarital sex. When his addiction caught up with him again, the Internet suited Steve perfectly: private, free and plentiful. "Introducing cybersex (to a sexual addict) is like throwing gasoline on the flame," writes Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., regarded as one of the country's leading experts on sexual addiction. Years ago, LDS Family Services had one counselor who dealt with sexual addiction issues. Today, every LDS Family Services counselor is trained to deal with sexual addiction, said Steven A. Dahl, director of the Idaho Falls office. Cybersex is a growing segment of Creekside Counseling's business, said Janet Allen, clinical director. She calls online porn "the methamphetamine of sexual addiction" because one exposure can lead to addiction. Steve didn't know it, but he was already an addict when he started working long hours in his basement. He finished his bachelor's degree, applied for graduate school and took a night job. His work mentor was a married woman, flirtatious and attractive, and the long, lonely nights were akin to putting an alcoholic in a room full of beer kegs. Their affair was intensely physical. After each encounter, Steve felt an almost crushing guilt. But he went back for more. Over and over again, he wondered to himself, "How can I tell Rebecca?" Rebecca wasn't sure what she was doing. Steve was on the East Coast, interviewing for graduate school, and she was on the computer in the basement. She floundered through the prompts that showed up on the screen and found herself in Steve's inbox. "XXX." "XXX Asian Women." Something clicked in Rebecca's mind. She knew Steve had been kicked off his mission for having "problems." Lately, he'd been distant and impatient with her and their daughter. She jumped to a conclusion when she discovered Steve's computer habit: My husband is cheating on me. Lusting after another woman means a man has committed adultery in his heart, the Bible taught Rebecca. She walked up the stairs of their home, called Steve and demanded an explanation. "Are you having an affair?" "Do you love me?" Steve denied everything. He rehashed an old lie, that a friend had e-mailed him the images. "There is nothing wrong," he insisted. Rebecca wasn't buying it. She kept after him. "What's going on? ... Do you want to talk about it?" For months, Steve had tried to figure out how to tell Rebecca about his affair. He wanted his wife to know that for some reason he couldn't stop himself from returning to those Web sites, or from acting out fantasies with his co-worker. "You're going to leave me if I tell you," he told Rebecca. "Just tell me," she said. So he did. Steve told Rebecca he'd had "problems" with pornography and "problems" with a woman at work. Never did he use the word "affair." Steve, lying on the bed in his motel, and Rebecca, sitting in the couple's living room, talked until 3 a.m. Rebecca raged. She cried. She screamed. But in the end, she felt something akin to relief. The problem was squarely in front of her and she was determined to fix it. "What can I do to help you?" she asked Steve. "What can we do to get through this?" Making love to his wife, Steve tried to pray images from the Internet out of his head. Rebecca would begin to think about that other woman. Rebecca didn't know who she was or what she looked like, and her imagination conjured up all sorts of images. Then she'd pray for them to go away. Rebecca was embarrassed. She felt like a failure. It killed her to know Steve cheated. "I'm a good person, and I'm a pretty person and he loves me," Rebecca told herself, over and over again. Steve confessed his affair to his new bishop, who asked, "Do you not love (Rebecca)?" and ordered him to "just stop." The bishop told Rebecca that she was enabling him by not leaving and recommended counseling. The High Council of their congregation disfellowshipped Steve. Steve and Rebecca moved east so Steve could attend graduate school. Alone in a strange place, Rebecca lost herself in the LDS church's Relief Society, an organization focused on mentoring and good deeds, and the Young Women's Program. In charge of 35 girls between the ages of 12 and 18, she led Sunday School lessons, service projects and activity nights. And, while Steve worked and attended school, Rebecca raised their growing family. She felt overwhelmed but didn't confide in anyone. Their problems were too personal, and she didn't want family or friends to think badly of Steve. Steve immersed himself in graduate school, earning straight A's. And yet he continued to fall, having quick physical encounters with women he met on campus. Online pornography numbed him, and the lead-up to sex was exciting. Adrenaline, testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin and phenylethylamine flooded his body, producing a "poly-drug cocktail mix," as it's described by Dr. Judith Reisman, a leading brain science expert. She said sex addicts experience something comparable to the high induced by drugs such as cocaine or heroin. So, when an attractive young library worker came back to his study carol to check on him, he turned on his charm. "How are you doing?" and "What are you studying?" led them to a dark room and fast, impersonal sex. The pattern was back: desire, rationalization, sex, guilt, confession and consequences. Steve took Rebecca for a drive in their 1987 Honda Accord with one working headlight and told her he'd slipped again, this time in a public place with a near stranger. "I have hope," Rebecca told Steve, "but it's starting to go. I can't keep living like this." Back home in the West, Steve and Rebecca had a dial-up Internet connection, which fed him still photos of nude women, the rough equivalent of the pictures he'd sneaked off to peek at as a kid. At their new home in the East, however, Steve got broadband and discovered the wonders of streaming videos: women performing oral sex; women with women; and orgies. Anything the imagination can conjure is available on the Web, anytime. More than 4 million pornographic Web sites can be found on the Internet, encompassing 372 million pages. Steve could now download videos of surgically enhanced women serving the fantasies of millions of anonymous viewers like himself. Google "Asian Women" and 78,500 pages pop up. Try "naked women" and 13.1 million options abound. Steve's "G-Strings" search might have brought him 1.06 million pages to choose from. You'd never have known Steve was prowling the dark side of the Web while at graduate school. He was the stereotypical clean-cut Mormon male. Cracking jokes and shaking hands, he was the classmate who went out of his way to make people happy. But privately, Steve was compelled to take greater and greater risks for sex even though he knew it could cost him his family. Rebecca was not fooled. Outwardly, she was a pillar of strength for the girls in her care. But she tortured herself with thoughts that she couldn't compete with those airbrushed women on the Internet. When he confessed his latest dalliance, she lashed out at him: "What is wrong with you?" "This is not normal! What has happened to you?" Rebecca's questions were the same ones that haunted Steve. For the first time, he told her about the magazines under the mattress, about the videos and about the abuse suffered at the hand of his friend's older brother. Rebecca and Steve decided to follow their bishop's advice and see a counselor. They walked in emotionally naked, ready to find answers to those questions. "You should have been excommunicated for this, not just disfellowshipped," the counselor told Steve. Rebecca left his office furious. She'd gone in thinking that they'd finally get the help they needed. Instead, she heard, "just stop," as though Steve hadn't told himself that a million times. Steve was humiliated. "I'm never going back," Steve told Rebecca. "I'll never do that again." COMING TUESDAY: Steve suffers the consequences
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