![How do you come to terms with knowing the love of your life is addicted to seeing sex workers?](http://web.archive.org./web/20170729202342im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/y/a/s/y/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gwvoyp.png/1498390019141.jpg)
It's difficult to pinpoint when I began to suspect Chris*, then 46, had a secret life, because the realisation came gradually and started with, of all things, his smell. We'd been living together for seven years and had known each other for eight, but sometimes when he came close to kiss me, I'd get a whiff of someone I didn't recognise and it made me uneasy.
There was nothing in his behaviour that suggested an affair – no calls from "wrong numbers", no surreptitious texting, no out-of-town business – so the feeling was easy to suppress. Yes, he was more emotionally absent than when we'd first got together, and, yes, our love life wasn't what it had been, but we were still having sex, still making each other laugh, still planning on having a child together.
Yet my unease grew. One morning in 2012 I was up early, pottering around. Chris's bank statements were on the table and I started idly flicking through them. Every week, he was withdrawing hundreds of dollars in cash. I'd found the answer, without knowing what I'd been searching for.
Chris was dozing when I went into the bedroom. "I'm going to ask you something and I want the truth. I've been looking at your bank statements and there are only three possible explanations for how you spend so much money. One, you're on drugs – and I know you're not. Two, you're a gambler – and I know you're not. Or three, you're using prostitutes …"
I'd left him no room to manoeuvre – he had nowhere to go but to the truth.
"It's sex," he said. "It's call girls and strip clubs." He was calm, surrendered, almost relieved to have been found out.
He confessed he'd been going to sex workers and lap-dancing clubs for 14 years. He cried, begged me to help him, but I couldn't even look at him. I was disgusted – more because he was perpetuating an industry I abhorred than that he'd been unfaithful.
Chris began therapy and we both joined support groups – Sex Addicts Anonymous for him and COSA (co-dependents of sex addicts) for me.
I didn't get on with the program so I turned to friends, which was a mistake because their reaction – "ditch him!" – clouded my judgment. Of course I'd considered that, but I couldn't just walk away.
Our life became exhausting. I interrogated him constantly, wanting to know every detail. Did he have a favourite brothel? Yes. Did he see the same woman? Latterly, yes. And over and over: why? Why? Why?
There was no answer to that one that satisfied me. Apparently, it had started after a row with a former girlfriend. He'd been propositioned by a sex worker and accepted. He asked me to think of it like a drug.
Three months later, Chris moved out and I lost control. I went to the brothels he'd visited to find the women he'd been with. I wanted to know their names, their backgrounds, details that would help me humanise them.
To him they were completely anonymous, but I thought if I could make him see them as individuals it would help him stop. There was also a part of me that wanted to see what these girls were like and what they could tell me about him – but they said nothing.
Then we tried couples' counselling. But Chris felt I would always be waiting for a relapse, so we parted.
I've been with Steve* for two years now and have no contact with Chris. Five years on, I'm still damaged. I'll read something about the sex trade and I'll feel that same hollowed-out sadness. I love Steve, but Chris and I saw each other's angels and demons, which took us to a deeper level of knowing. Despite everything, I can't imagine finding that with anyone again.
* Names have been changed.