I've been happily married for 40 years... until I came downstairs and caught my husband doing something unthinkable. He's full of remorse but I can barely look at him: BEL MOONEY reveals dark habit snaring so many weak men

Dear Bel,I always read your page in the paper and remember a while back, you printed a letter from a woman much younger than I am, who had found her husband watching pornography. I can’t remember what advice you gave the poor lass and didn’t expect to be having the same problem with my own husband. Now I understand how devastated she felt.My husband and I have been married for over 40 years and have children and grandchildren. I thought we were happily married and enjoying retirement. We like travelling and are lucky enough to be able to go on many holidays a year.But my world came crashing down recently when I came downstairs, a little earlier than usual, to find him watching porn on the computer.This has completely gutted me. I cannot believe it has happened and I am really struggling now. I just don’t know what to do. He is full of remorse. He tells me he knows he’s been stupid and a fool. He’s now got rid of the computer and thinks that will solve the problem, even though he has a tablet, smart phone and access to my laptop. But he says there’s no porn on these appliances, which is currently true. I have checked!But what is to stop him doing it all again? It appears to have been going on for several years, possibly since we retired. How can you live with someone for all these years and really not know them at all? I really wouldn’t have thought it was the sort of thing he would ever do. He has confessed that he would do this not only early in the morning whilst I slept, but also when I was out shopping or when I’d popped out just for a while. How can I ever trust him again or believe anything he says?I have suggested counselling but he’s said no. I don’t know what to do. Will I ever be able to forgive him? The only thing he has said (apart from sorry) is that he wants our marriage to continue. It’s not as if he ever wants sex with me. But when he does, rarely, we do have sex. I have never said no to him. Please can you offer some words of wisdom?BarbaraAgain and again this issue raises its hideously ugly head, and again and again I find myself feeling a mixture of despair and fury. The last time it appeared was May 16, 2026, with the headline, ‘How did my lovely husband turn into a porn addict?’ That cry of revulsion came from a young mother – and now here you are, at the other end of the age range, with the same problem. It proves the extent of the scourge. And by the way, if any readers choose to avert your eyes, I do understand - but I’d rather you didn’t. Barbara came downstairs to find her husband watching porn on the computer. Picture posed by modelThere are still plenty of deluded – and often reprehensibly stupid – people who think pornography is cool, or empowering. I blame the Baby Boomers, my generation – oh so keen to embrace anything that was ‘progressive’ and anti-stuffy-old-establishment. Brilliant barristers gladly flew around the world to defend the right of filthy-rich men to make money from exploitation– all in the name of ‘freedom.’ The so-called intelligentsia made porn acceptable and if you objected you were called a prude, and worse. ‘Anything goes’ ruled.What possessed the late, stylish journalist A.A. Gill to make a porn film in 1999, when recently divorced from Conservative politician Amber Rudd? Why did Victoria Coren, the brilliant, talented, charming presenter of TV’s ‘Only Connect,’ want to venture on to the world of the ‘skinflick’ (her word) before she was 30? Because it was seen as fashionable and fun. Something to write about – and laugh about with friends. No harm done.So here we are, led inexorably towards a cruelly harmful world that’s neither fashionable nor fun - with countless young men turned into addicts because smartphones have made the violent and disgusting pornography so readily available. A quarter of 16-21 year olds have first seen porn at primary school – with potentially catastrophic effects on their ability to form relationships in adulthood. Now, Barbara, your husband has become yet another victim of this pandemic – and so have you.I realise you are waiting for my ‘words of wisdom’ and I’m sorry if they’re slow in coming. This subject upsets me greatly, especially when I read about the distress it causes to women like you. Actually, I hope my sounding-off above might help you understand that your husband has been corrupted by the wider world, so his porn habit wasn’t caused by intrinsic wickedness. I’m afraid he’s just another bloke caught up in dark desires that gradually began to control and lure him into addiction and deceit.That’s not to make light of it. But I do hope you can stop catastrophising and see him as ordinarily weak, foolish and deceitful, like millions of others. You never know what’s going on in people’s heads, therefore a modicum of mistrust is probably sensible. The big change called retirement itself may have pushed him towards the behaviour. So stay put and tell him what he has to do. Visit this website: thelaurelcentre.co.uk and study the content together. The organisation deals with sex and porn addiction and reaches out to partners too. He won’t want to do this, but warn him that it’s the price he has to pay if he wants your marriage to survive.Dear Bel,I am concerned for a friend I have known for about ten years. About seven years ago she moved to another city about one hour away by car, but my son used to take me to meet her about three or four times a year. She used to call him ‘My Number one Gent’! She always used to welcome us with open arms and because she is 70 and lives alone my son did jobs for her around the house. We chatted on Whatsapp several times a week, exchanging thoughts about politics, religion and health issues, as we have similar opinions.On our last visit to her just before Christmas we were talking as normal and discussing her forthcoming trip to Mexico. Shortly after that, I got a text saying she did not want to be contacted again. It made no sense and I wonder if she has become a victim of coercive behaviour. I texted back that I didn’t know what I’d done wrong but I was sorry if I had accidently hurt or offended her. No reply.I know she uses online dating sites and feel she is very vulnerable. She is a widow, quite wealthy and her first language is not English. She has no family in this country. By chance, my son passes near where she lives most weeks to visit his girlfriend in the same county. He has offered to knock on her door, but I wouldn’t want her to take it the wrong way and ring the police. I feel I have lost a friend and it makes no sense at all. I sent a Happy New Year message. What else can I do? My only consolation is that she is a devout Catholic and may have Church friends who might notice if anything is amiss.RosieI suspect that many people reading this will recognise your quandary. Their situation may not be the same at all, yet they are aware that someone who was a good friend has cut them off and they simply do not know why. When it happens to somebody after a couple of dates it’s called ‘ghosting’ – but isn’t it pretty much the same in this situation?Of course, sometimes all of us can reach the stage where we have just had enough of a particular friend or acquaintance. We often continue with a relationship for sentimental, historical or guilty reasons, then one day something changes – and you decide you’ve had enough. I confess this has happened to me, and I realise the person probably felt as confused as you do. But she had said something that really hurt, and I knew she would never understand why (she’s pretty obtuse) – nor could I find it in me to explain. So I’m afraid I dropped her. Perhaps some of you will recognised that situation of being the ‘ghostee’ as well as the ‘ghosted’.With your issue, Rosie, I can understand why you are worried. You quite rightly see the lady as vulnerable, and nowadays there are so many unscrupulous people cruising like piranha fish, ready to scam the unwary and/or the elderly. You say your friend has tried online dating, and there is no doubt that horrible social media and the online dating scene has made the situation so much worse. An older woman can easily fall prey to a younger man, too.Since your son was so well-liked by her, and must have earned real gratitude for all the help he gave her, isn’t he the obvious conduit? I can’t understand why you think she would ring the police if he were to knock on her door. Obviously you know her personality and I don’t - but were he to stop by with a bunch of flowers, and tell her he just wants to see if she is well, or whether she needs any help… surely that would be a good thing?Sometimes we hold back from an action which is caring and generous, just because we don’t know how it will be received. Since you are genuinely worried about your friend’s welfare I see no harm in asking your kind son to check. I think it might be the action of a Good Samaritan.And FinallyNext week I’m off to Belfast to the land of my forbears to visit friends. Last time, I saw the exhibition ‘Troubles and Beyond’ at the excellent Ulster Museum and had to leave about halfway around, because of all the memories it triggered. In the seventies, sectarian hatred and conflict stalked our dreams.As a young journalist tracing the journey of American-Irish dollars through Dublin into the North to fund the IRA, I met some very bad people. On different occasions, I stayed at the Europa hotel when it was a barbed-wire encircled target, took sanctuary with nuns when all transport was off the streets because of bombs, and cheered Protestant rabble-rousing in Antrim – so as not to stand out because the day before a female journalist had been roughed up. I interviewed politicians like Peter Robinson (later to be First Minister) and Enoch Powell (then MP for South Down), and had to stand by as Republicans cheered the deaths of British soldiers. All horrible.If you take a tour of Belfast today you can see the so-called Peace Walls, reminding you of the deep divisions – which (of course) still exist in certain parts. People all over the world learn hatred at their mammies’ knees – always have and always will. Unlike old hypocrite John Lennon, I can’t ‘imagine’ a world of ‘no possessions’ and ‘all the people living life in peace’, because it’s contrary to human nature.Nevertheless the 1998 Good Friday Agreement did change things. Not completely, of course, but enough. That’s why older people like me need to cling to some hope, since we have witnessed change happen. But trust? Sadly not. Politicians and people make me wary. There’ll be no column next week because I’ll be in the Titanic Museum. I tend to expect icebergs.