It begins...

On July 29, 2008, God put a strong enough conviction on my heart to confess something horrible to my wife. This something horrible was the worst thing I have ever done to my spouse or my family in my entire adult life and the shame that came with it was enormous.

The confession was this: over the past two years, I had built up a weight of credit-card debt against my family to the tune of a current balance of about $30,000 and that I had hidden that from her along with our general financial situation for the duration of that time. Not one of those credit cards had been paid since January of 2008. This means that all seven (7) credit cards, which were maxed out and over-limit due to bank fees, were 120+ days overdue.

That was just the beginning. Secondly, we had missed payments on both our first and second mortgage this year and, while our primary mortgage was in fair condition, we were about 1 week away from foreclosure on our second mortgage.

As of April 2007, we had a credit score of 750, now, well, while we don't know the number, we know the situation we are in and we have seen the general credit report and... frankly, it's ugly.

Okay, now for the kicker. While pouring over this for a few days and working out some serious trust issues with my wife, we whittled down to the core of the issue. See, the hiding of debt and finances was not the problem, but rather a symptom of the underlying issue.

Here's my confession to the world:

I have an addiction to pornography.

There it is, plain, simple, open and honest. This problem is not anything new to me. In fact, I was really made aware of it being an issue a number of years ago and I have attempted on numerous occassions to rid myself of this problem. Guess what, I can't do it on my own.

About the same time that I started hiding the finances, I was struggling with my addiction and soon felt as though I had to hide any negative aspect of myself from my wife. Why? I was afraid that if she saw weakness in one area of my life, she would know that I had relapsed back into the world of pornography.

Let me make it clear, not one penny of this debt is due to Internet porn sites, pornographic movies, magazines, etc. It mostly went to pay bills, buy groceries and household items, etc. Had I been managing the finances properly, this wouldn't have been necessary. Nevertheless, wanting to feed my addiction and being quite talented in the realm of IT and the Internet, I found sources of pornographic material on the Internet which were free. Believe me, there are plenty of them. I had settled into a couple of forums on the Internet where people posted images which they had found online or on various paid websites for the rest of the forum readership to partake in.

There you have it, folks. That's our world right now. We have begun counseling with debt management companies and have started contacting the credit card companies to see what we can negotiate. We have also enrolled in marriage counseling through our local church and I am going to begin attending a men's Bible study for additional support. We have felt led to document this experience on the Internet for all to see in the hopes that others out there under similar circumstances can find help and support through our journey.

There's more to the story, as well, but we will share that as we go along. If you wish to assist us in any way, know that your most important support is to pray for us. Without God, we could never get through this; financially or in our marriage. Thank you and we hope you are blessed by our story.