CHERAE

My name is Cherae.  I am a wife and a mother of 4 beautiful children.  I have been married to my husband for almost 16 years. I am starting this blog with my husband Brandon to record our journey of addiction, and betrayal in hopes to help others who may be dealing with the same struggles that we have and currently still face.  Brandon is a porn addict. And I just recently (7 months ago) learned about this awful truth. It all started when he was an innocent 7 year old boy and was exposed to pornography. That planted the seed that would change our lives forever. I  will recount in as few words as possible to recap the last 15 1/2 years of my marriage to give you an idea of what were dealing with here, and as to why we fight.  Many of my posts will be from my journal entries of when this all started.  I hope this blog will inspire many of you out there to look for reasons to fight!

  Like I mentioned above I am a wife of almost 16 years and a mother to 4 children 14, 12, 8, 2. I was married in August 1998.  Throughout  the first 2 years of my marriage I always knew something was off with my husband. He would stay up late at night on the computer and would get up early to again get on the computer.  I would always question him about it but he had some excuse every time. After dealing with those lies for 2 years I finally caught him and he did come clean (or so I thought) that he had been looking at pornography and had been since before we were married. We had one child at this point and as hard as it was for me to work it out I knew that I needed to for my sons sake. We visited with the leader of our church and he gave my husband a few suggestions as to what to do to help better himself. Back then there were no programs for this type of thing so he did the best he could and  I was convinced over time that he had overcome his ordeal with pornography.  Throughout the rest of our marriage there was again always something that was off. Again i would question him over and over. I would question him about pornography issues and relationships with other women and again he always denied it. This went on for another 13 years. He was caught a few times with some inappropriate material on his phone or some texting with other females, and I even caught him involved in an emotional affair. Each time and lots of counseling I stayed with him thinking that it would be the last time. Now let me interject here and say that I am a strong willed women who doesn't need anybody's validation to make me feel good about myself.  I would be fine being single and raising my children alone, but i knew it was important for them to be raised in a home with their mother and father together. So I stayed. Then on Dec 14th 2013 I was christmas shopping alone and I received an email from him.  It started off by saying that I should always trust my instincts for they have always been right.  It was him that made me doubt how I felt about him.  He then proceeded to tell me how he has been addicted to pornography since before we were married. His pornography addiction led him to having multiple affairs, and many other offensive, and inappropriate things that no man should ever do. Unfortunately many of the women he was unfaithful with happened to be close friends of mine. I was horrified at the things I was reading, broken hearted, devastated, angry, and betrayed, but at the same time I finally felt the relief and validation that all those years I thought I knew something was wrong, I was right. My husband had finally hit his "rock bottom", which had now become my rock bottom. And the only thing there is to do when you hit rock bottom is to fight.  And so I fight. Each day I fight and each day my fight gets easier and easier. There are days that are difficult and those are the days I have to fight even harder, but I fight for my children, I fight for my husband, and I fight for myself.  I am happy to say  that my husband fights right along with me. He is 207 days sober as of today, and our marriage is better than it has ever been. After all that my husband has put me through i stand tall with my head held high and my dignity in tact. I am well on my way to having accomplished saving my family and my marriage and most of all saving my husband from this horrible addiction that we know as pornography!

Lots of love, 
Cherae