Cheating

Assalamu Alaykum my darling,

I write you this time after having labored over my actions in my life and our marriage. While I never had relations with anyone during our time together (physical, online, flirting, etc.), I have begun to consider actions that I previously justified (masturbating or looking at porn, thirst traps) as a type of cheating. I'm sorry for cheating, more sorry than you could possibly believe, and I would never fault your incredulity here. I do not think the frequency really matters, but I want you to know it was never obsessive. I didn't do it every day, or every other day, or even every week. 

But I did it. And what's worse, I did it continually without repentance. I made excuses for it in my head, sometimes to you. I thought it would keep me passionate because I thought I would need to maintain a baseline level of arousal or I would not function in our bedroom. I could blame society for its excessive normalization and promulgation of pornography towards young males. I could blame depression/anxiety for making me nervous about myself. I could blame the Juice 🔯 for selling it.

But I won't. 

It was me being stupid, immature, self-destructive, and worst of all cruel to you. I knew you didn't like it, and I thought you were wrong. I want you to know you're not wrong. There was nothing wrong with you not being okay with it, and I am extremely sorry for doing such things and discounting your feelings. I was truly remarkably selfish, inconsiderate, and immature.

I look at it now as kind of a vestigial reaction to threats of anxiety or unease, sort of similar to my addiction to weed (although I believe this cheating is more destructive). It was a habit I picked up in my teenage years. In a sense it was kind of something that had become so common in my life that without knowing or realizing it, my personality developed around it: I thought it was natural, justifiable, even rational. I became insolated from any critiques of it. Looking back, I see it as a journey of self-awareness, and one that you have played a crucial role in helping me realize and overcome. All of this culminated in creating a very fucked-up person who did not have strong, positive mechanisms for coping with anxiety/depression/feelings of inadequacy. I think I have some of those things now.

I certainly feel repentance, very sincerely, despite sometimes wanting to engage in it again. But I know where that road leads! And, this is crucial, I know where that road comes from, too.  Alhamdulillah medication, therapy, writing, reading, exercise, and most of all prayer are helping me deal with stress and anxiety now. I think it has been about one full month now where I haven't masturbated or purposefully looked at pornography, and I have drastically cut down on my marijuana usage (which is, all things considered, very easy when you're broke). 

I just wish you could see the new person I am becoming. I 'm sorry for all the pain I've caused you and for not realizing this sooner. I'm so sorry, baby. I'm sorry for the cruel lack of introspection, the dismissal of your perspective, and engaging in acts that harmed us and you specifically. I love you forever and always.

I'd like to leave you with a story from my childhood, should you care to read it: 

One day, maybe when I was around 11 or 12, I was at my friend B's house with my other friend T and another kid who I really didn't like named D. B, T, and I knew what porn was, we watched it, we jerked off (separately) to it. D, on the other hand, was a nerd, kind of unlikeable, not as athletic as the popular kids though he played sports with them, and the son of a teacher at our middle school. He refused to watch pornography, which we all thought made him a loser. In other words: an easy target for mean, bad kids of which I was a member. So anyway, we're at B's house and he wants to put porn on his computer knowing D doesn't want to watch it. B and T go out of the room and run back in with a roll of duct tape. While D is sitting in the chair, they held him down, taped him to the chair and forced him to look at it. They didn't hold his eyelids open, and he would turn his head away from the computer, but he definitely heard it and was, understandably, incredibly uncomfortable. I didn't help them subdue D, but I didn't stop it. I can't remember if I was disgusted by it. I don't think I was, at least not at first. I think I probably found it funny for a minute before empathy kicked in. Looking back I think about how well-adjusted D was, and how cruel we were. It was a formative experience, even if I've never recognized it as such, in the process of normalizing porn and masturbation for me. After all, I would have rather been friends with B and T than D.

Assalamu Alaykum bb.