It doesn't bother me that my husband watches porn, what bothers me is something worse...

While checking my internet browsing history I came across my husband's secret...one that explained my rocky marriage.

The story I’m about to narrate is disturbing, but it is important that this story is read by all. If it can help or comfort a person going through a similar situation or provide a reason for someone not to live a life filled with lies, then I consider my job done. Even though it’s much too late for me, for someone out there, this could change their life.

About two months ago, I installed a software on my laptop to monitor my children’s internet activity. This was due to the fact that my children had inadvertently heard a curse word somewhere and then Googled it for its meaning, which in turn produced results with offensive images. I found out when I was casually browsing through my internet history one morning.

They admitted it at once; children are too innocent and unaware of the concept of deleting browser history unlike their adult counterparts. After this incident, I warned my children firmly not to use my computer while I’m not around. I also told them about the software I had installed so they would refrain from doing anything they shouldn’t be doing in the future.

What I hadn’t even considered, not in my wildest dreams, was that I would catch someone else red handed.

And so, I didn’t bother mentioning the incident involving our children to my husband because I knew he would get angry and blame me for ‘being too lenient’ or not ‘disciplining them well enough’. Thus, he didn’t know about the software either; I never felt the need to tell him considering he didn’t use my laptop anyway. Or so I thought...

My husband has a violent temper and has often been abusive. Most of his abuse and anger outbursts have been exclusively aimed at me throughout our rocky marriage. I’ve always felt like he resented me for some reason. He is also extremely secretive and has never allowed me to check his phone messages or use his laptop.

I got married when I was very young and he was a lot older than me; it was an arranged marriage. Despite my best efforts to keep him happy, nothing was ever good enough for my husband and he was often moody and distant. In the past, I often failed to understand what it was about me that ticked him off so much and made him despise me. Many times I even thought of leaving him but, because of my kids, I could never go through with it.

What I had no idea about was that during the late hours of the night, my husband would use my laptop. He hardly ever used my computer when I was around, therefore, I didn’t think he was using it at all!

The next time I checked the browsing history through the software, to my shock and dismay, I discovered that someone had been searching for excessive pornography late at night. Of course, it could only have been my husband because the kids are usually in bed and asleep by 9pm every night. My husband had been watching offensive material in the wee hours of the night for many consecutive nights but truth be told, I know that some men secretly watched porn from time to time so, I was willing to understand and let it go.

But what irked me the most was the kind of porn my husband was indulging in; what he had been watching was exclusively homosexual in nature. To my horror, all his searches involved only men. There was no mention of women anywhere. I secretly prayed that there would be a mention of a woman’s anatomy somewhere, but sadly everything was aimed at gay men. And it wasn’t just one time. It was over the course of the entire month.

All of a sudden everything fell into place and all of it started making sense. How naive was I, how innocent that I had never imagined this as a possibility! Sure, I had wondered sometimes when he would be cold and distant, and avoided me for days, but this just put everything into perspective and cemented my fears.

I thought of confronting him but I was too scared.

How would he react?

What would he do?

What I learnt, during the course of my marriage, was that one thing was very important to my husband – his image of being the ‘good guy’. No matter how cruel he was to me, he would never want people to know about it. We have been married for over a decade and finding out his secret, in this way, just broke my heart. I felt depressed and alone. I cried myself to sleep every night since then and this was all I could think about day and night.

I had invested all my time and love in a relationship that wasn’t even true to begin with! It felt like I had wasted years of my life in something that was all a big lie. I was just an image to him, to be used as a façade so that he could show the world that he was ‘normal’. What a truly and utterly selfish thing to do!

All this time, I had tried so hard to work on our marriage, hoping to be good enough, but I was never going to be. I didn’t tell him that I knew and I plan to keep it that way because of my children. He supports me financially and, sadly, I know that without him I won’t be able to support them. I am solely responsible for my kids and my house. He travels a lot for ‘work’ and even when he is around, he is mostly noncommittal. Some nights he doesn’t even bother coming home, citing some excuse or another.

After this incident, I became more vigilant when it came to looking for other ‘signs’. One day, when he was leaving for a trip, he left his suitcase open while he went to shower. As he never lets me help when it comes to packing, out of curiosity, I opened his toiletries bag and peeked inside.

What I saw horrified me even further.

There were contraceptives inside his bag. I quickly closed the bag and left the room.

At that moment, I knew for a fact that something was going on. I felt so dejected. It was one thing to compete with another woman but competing with another man was downright impossible.

I chose to stay silent about it even though I was shell shocked. I’m still pretending like I don’t know anything and sometimes I wish I didn’t know about it at all. As they say, ignorance is bliss. As time goes on, I keep thinking of what to do. I keep wondering what my life would have been like with a heterosexual man; whether it would have been any different.

Do I not deserve to be loved, respected and cared for?

I have nothing against homosexual men and I sincerely believe that everyone has the right to live their life the way they want, but to deceive someone like this, to make them go through so much just for your convenience, that’s just cruel.

In light of all this, all I want to say to all the gay men out there is, please come out of the closet and take a stand for yourselves instead of ruining someone else’s life! And if you can’t do that, then don’t get married just to ‘save face’. She is a human being too. I implore you, whatever you do, don’t get married and live a life of treachery and lies. You will never be happy and neither will the poor woman you’re dragging into the mess with you.