From my other journal, dated October 7, 2002

Our anniversary was yesterday and today is Larry's birthday, so we finally got some time to ourselves last Saturday night. We saw The Red Dragon, which was absolutely brilliant. Some of Anthony Hopkins' best work; raw tense and scary. We couldn't do anything after but it was still nice to get out and we both loved the movie.

We had my folks over yesterday to celebrate Larry's birthday and that went really well. I mean, everyone had a good time. But my mind just wasn't there.

I know Larry has a huge collection of porno shots on his PC, over 25,000 thousand pictures of girls that are the exact polar opposite of me. I have spoken to him about this before and told him it bothers me but he's really into it so I haven't pressed the issue. He visits porn sites every morning before work and every night after work. He has a screensaver that's a filmstrip of pictures from his files and has downloaded some of them to his handheld (PDA), to use as wallpaper.

His focus is so on this shit it scares the hell out of me. Studies have proven that a large percentage of men who seek out women on the internet to have sex with, started by frequenting porn sites. As far as I know he isn't paying for access to those sites (which is in itself a very bad sign), but I really don't know.

I caught him looking at them yesterday and he for some reason lied to me about it as if I were too stupid to understand what I had seen. I saw him. Granted, I wasn't wearing my glasses, but there are only so many things that look like a naked woman exposing herself to a camera. Actually, there's only one thing.

I could have dealt with him doing that, it bothers me a lot and it really hurts (for reasons I'll explain later), but I wouldn't have gotten as upset about it if he hadn't fucking lied to me about it. The fact that he acted as if I didn't understand what I saw pissed me off. It was a direct insult to me as his wife, and to my intelligence.

We had fantastic sex after the babysitters (my parents), left on Saturday night. The next morning Larry woke up with a killer headache, a side effect of some meds he's currently taking. I let him be for awhile and he slept a bit then said he was starting to feel better. Knowing that we may not have sex for anywhere from two weeks to two months I started trying to get him in the mood again but he didn't want to so I gave up and started getting things done to get ready from my parents to visit. He said that even though the headache was letting up he didn't feel like doing anything.

Understandable. Okay.

Then a few minutes later I caught him downstairs doing his porno thing (no details, sorry).

I have asked him several times how he would feel if I started collecting pictures of naked (aroused, erect), men on my PC and he said he'd be completely okay with it. He's such a liar. I deleted a file with some pictures on it of Trent Reznor and other famous, really gorgeous men on it two years ago because he said something about it. And (dig this), those men were all fully clothed. The closest any of them got to being nude was Trent Reznor, who was wearing a blindfold and a pair of black pants that hung really low on his waist.

Over 200 hundred pictures. All gone because he was uncomfortable with them. Later on he said he was kidding. I could have fucking killed him. Him saying he was joking doesn't bring my pictures back, does it?

On top of that, I started collecting again and had a really nice file started with pictures of Mel Gibson, Donnie Chen and Oded Fehr. My PC crashed about two months ago and had to go to the PC hospital. When it was returned all of my files were intact. I checked them all, including the IRM file where I keep those pictures.

A few days later it was gone. The file wasn't empty, it wasn't there. I started another one but I'm wary of putting too many pictures in it lest they be deleted too. I didn't do that. Larry had to have done it because he's the only other person who uses my PC regularly and it's happened not once, but twice. There have been lots of times in which I have been greatly tempted to erase one of his porno files but I don't. The only thing stopping me is that I didn't catch him erasing mine. I know he did it without a doubt but I can't prove it so I can't feel comfortable doing anything to reciprocate just yet.

I really don't know why those pictures would bother him. With the exception of a few bare chests (and Donnie Chen without a shirt is a glorious site to behold), there is no nudity and nothing even remotely objectionable.

I feel as if I have been disrespected. If he's looking at whores on the internet and saving their images there are obviously some comparisons going on. He says there aren't but how could there not be? I told him I really don't blame him, after all I have gained a lot of weight over the last three years with two pregnancies and everything. I'm not a 17 year old girl anymore. The fact that I understand why he's looking at those pictures doesn't mean that I am okay with it. If I were thinner, prettier, younger...I feel that he wouldn't be so interested in seeing other people naked. It just really hurts that he would rather go downstairs and do that (there's much more to it I just don't want to go into detail), than have sex with me. I practically threw myself at him all morning and he blew me off so he could go downstairs and do...that. I would have rather he hit me. A good hard slap would have hurt far less. He didn't mind having sex with me on Saturday night when the lights were out.

He says it has nothing to do with me, that's it's just something guys do.

Yeah, like after catching him yesterday I can believe that.

I don't think I have ever been more conscious of my appearance than I was just then. I don't even want to go out side. I'll have to some time this week, but I really don't want to.

I feel as if I have to lose a lot of weight or I'm going to lose my husband. I love him so I can't do that.

Losing weight won't make my scars go away. I will never be a teenager again. Even with a rigorous workout routine there's only so much I can do. I get discouraged because I have so far to go and feel as if I could never reach such a major goal. I've tried starting out small and setting less ambitious goals, but my mind always demands that I look ahead and imagine looking the way I want. This won't happen even if I exercise like a madwoman three hours a day every day. There's where a lot of the frustration is. Knowing that no matter how hard I work I will never look like the girls he collects pictures of every day. I have 70 pounds to lose and very little time to work out. These kids need constant care. The starvation diet only made my diabetes zoom out of control and that is extremely dangerous.

I don't know what to do. I just know that whatever I do, it has to be done fast.

He says he's not interested in anyone but me, that he loves only me and doesn't want to have sex with anyone but me. I did just catch him in a rather blatant lie yesterday though. I don't know what to believe.

I asked him if he does cyber, which is the next step guys statistically move up to after the online porno thing stops being satisfying.

He said no.

But I have my doubts.