Your Husband Watches Porn

As the online porn explosion goes mainstream, more women are finding out about their hubbies' late-night, clandestine meetings with the soft blue glow of the family computer.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to share these thoughts with Thad. Already, he’s hatched an elaborate plan to trade cars with other dads once our girls start dating, so he can follow them around town without being detected. He laughs when he describes his scheme to friends at cookouts. The truth, though, is that the mere suggestion of his daughters hitting puberty makes him grit his teeth and double over, as if his balls have been grazed by something subtle, like a baseball bat.

For now, lying is so much easier. For both of us.

I ask Thad a third and final time: “Do you watch porn online?”

“I told you,” he answers, laughing about this, too. “It’s been forever.”

“How long, would you say, is ‘forever’?”

And finally comes a trickle of truth. I think. Even though I don’t care.

Right.

“At least … oh, I don’t know … two weeks.”