Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Warning,
Speaker 1: this episode contains discussion of child sexual abuse. Listener discretion
Speaker 1: is advised. I'm Danny Shapiro and this is family Secrets,
Speaker 1: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: My guest today is actress and playwright Mattie Corman, whose
Speaker 1: one woman show Accidentally Brave, premiered off Broadway in the spring.
Speaker 1: Of Mattie's is a story of love and resilience when
Speaker 1: faced with a bombshell of a secret. Her bravery strikes
Speaker 1: me as anything but accidental. So in many ways, this
Speaker 1: is a story that has a before and and after,
Speaker 1: you know, like a really bright line. Let's start by
Speaker 1: talking about the before. Okay, you married your best person. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was a real romance, a real love. I was
Speaker 1: swept away and madly in love and had my eyes open, thinking,
Speaker 1: this is a really good man and a person who
Speaker 1: really wants to be a partner, a person who more
Speaker 1: than more than I. At the time, I was really
Speaker 1: ready to be a dad and a husband. I had
Speaker 1: been married before, actually, which I forget sometimes because it
Speaker 1: was like a baby marriage. To my first boyfriend, my
Speaker 1: college sweetheart, and that did not work and we got
Speaker 1: a baby, marriage and a baby divorce. So it was
Speaker 1: very I don't want to, you know, drag him at all,
Speaker 1: but I knew walking down the aisle that time that
Speaker 1: something was up, that it was probably not a good idea,
Speaker 1: but the invitations had been sent, the dress was on,
Speaker 1: let's do it. But I didn't feel that way this time.
Speaker 1: I felt very, very good, safe, happy. How did you
Speaker 1: and chase me? I wish it were a simple story,
Speaker 1: but it's a little bit of a twisty road because
Speaker 1: we had been He's a little bit older than I
Speaker 1: and we had been in the same circles for years.
Speaker 1: He's part of a theater company, started theater company called
Speaker 1: Naked Angels, and they were the really cool kids when
Speaker 1: I was in high school and college, and so I
Speaker 1: kind of knew of him and was around him, but
Speaker 1: we weren't friends until later. Um he had come to
Speaker 1: a screening of a movie I was in with someone
Speaker 1: he was dating. Like we had just kind of cross paths,
Speaker 1: and indeed, I think one of the last auditions he
Speaker 1: was an actor, and then he left acting to become
Speaker 1: a director and I think we ran into each other
Speaker 1: in l A. I mean, I know we ran into
Speaker 1: each other, but at one of his final auditions before
Speaker 1: he quit so and I remember thinking was smart and
Speaker 1: funny and cute, and I was unavailable at the time anyway.
Speaker 1: But then we really met when I was single and
Speaker 1: living in l A but shooting a movie in New York.
Speaker 1: It was the final night of filming, and I went
Speaker 1: out with them a very good friend of mine, and
Speaker 1: she took me to see a play that her friend
Speaker 1: had written, this great play, This is Our Youth. Kenny
Speaker 1: Lonergan and Jas had directed the play next door, and
Speaker 1: it was I believe it was Kenny's opening night, it
Speaker 1: was Jason's closing night. So everybody ended up at the
Speaker 1: west Bank and which is a great New York City restaurant.
Speaker 1: It was so romantic and a great New York City
Speaker 1: theater night. And there was this guy and I spoke
Speaker 1: to him and I thought he was adorable and funny
Speaker 1: and smart, and I was going back to l A
Speaker 1: in a few days. So it turned out he was
Speaker 1: going to work in l A in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: and we had mutual friends, and I made sure that
Speaker 1: I was where he was. Um, that was intentional. After
Speaker 1: a flirtatious game of basketball, yes basketball, in a friend's backyard,
Speaker 1: Mattie and Jason go out on a date and within
Speaker 1: a week they're crazy about one another. Jason returns to
Speaker 1: New York and for a while they navigate the bicoastal
Speaker 1: divide as. The romance becomes serious very quickly. Then about
Speaker 1: six months in, he said, somebody's gotta move someplace, and
Speaker 1: my whole family. I'm from New York. I love New York,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, I'll come there. I kept my
Speaker 1: place in l A just in case, but I moved
Speaker 1: in with him after six months. And then you began
Speaker 1: to build this great, big, beautiful life together. Yep. We
Speaker 1: had a big, fun, outdoor, hippie kind of wedding with
Speaker 1: lots of friends and family celebrating. We had basically a
Speaker 1: honeymoon baby. My mom had had a really hard time
Speaker 1: getting pregnant, and I grew up with that story, so
Speaker 1: I was very aware. I thought it could take years,
Speaker 1: and it took. It was very after school special, like
Speaker 1: it was the first, like the first, the first try.
Speaker 1: So we had a baby before our first anniversary, and
Speaker 1: that's my daughter, and a couple of years later, I
Speaker 1: thought maybe I'd only have one because it was so
Speaker 1: all encompassing and amazing and difficult and fantastic and all
Speaker 1: of it. And then when she was about three and
Speaker 1: a half, I thought, Okay, well I want another. I'll
Speaker 1: be so much better at it this time, and i
Speaker 1: won't be so scared, and I'll be the cool mom
Speaker 1: with my four year old. And then another on my hip.
Speaker 1: And then God laughed and I got pregnant with twins,
Speaker 1: so there was no There was no cool mom with
Speaker 1: a baby on my hip. But I had the boys.
Speaker 1: I had twin boys who are about four and a
Speaker 1: half years younger than my daughter. Before the twins are born,
Speaker 1: Maddie and Jason moved out of Manhattan and to a
Speaker 1: Westchester suburb. Their life in that suburb is idyllic. They
Speaker 1: have the nice house, three great kids, a cat, and
Speaker 1: a dog, and as Maddie calls it in her One
Speaker 1: Woman show, she has a semi great career. Life just
Speaker 1: kind of took over. I had been not really a
Speaker 1: kid actress, but a young actress, you know, starting in
Speaker 1: my teenage years, so I had been working. But when
Speaker 1: I had my all these kids. My husband was a
Speaker 1: very successful director and producer, and so he knew about
Speaker 1: his jobs more in advance, and he was well compensated.
Speaker 1: So I was very lucky to be able to say, well,
Speaker 1: let me be home. Because he was a TV director,
Speaker 1: his work was all encompassing. I mean the hours are
Speaker 1: sometimes eighteen hour days. Sometimes he was out of town,
Speaker 1: but even when he was in working in New York,
Speaker 1: it was important to me that there be a point person,
Speaker 1: you know, not just a point person, but that I
Speaker 1: got to be there and go to the school events,
Speaker 1: and go to the doctor's visits and be on the
Speaker 1: book sale committee. And I loved it. And I missed
Speaker 1: my career, but I was lucky enough to be able
Speaker 1: to keep a toe in, you know, and do do
Speaker 1: work here and there. And it was really busy. There
Speaker 1: was and still is dogs and cats and and friends
Speaker 1: and kids. And I find a lot of twin moms
Speaker 1: are really organized, and it was like they were chosen
Speaker 1: from above. I'm not so. I always felt like I
Speaker 1: was forgetting and I did, you know, forget somebody's soccer
Speaker 1: game or something. Um. And that is not to say
Speaker 1: that my husband was checked out at all. He would
Speaker 1: be around on the weekends and coaching the kids teams
Speaker 1: and volunteering at the local churches and temples, doing Midnight Run,
Speaker 1: which is bringing food to the homeless. And we were happy,
Speaker 1: but certainly distracted. Our life was mainly about the kids,
Speaker 1: and that was what we both chose, you know. That
Speaker 1: was it was an unwritten agreement in our marriage, but
Speaker 1: one that I think we both we're fine with, which
Speaker 1: is they're going to take center stage and we are
Speaker 1: going to work around that. It's an absorbing family life.
Speaker 1: Years go by in a happy, busy blur. By the
Speaker 1: summer of the twins have finished fifth grade, Mattie's daughter
Speaker 1: is a teenager taking driver's Head, and Maddie had a
Speaker 1: guest spot on a TV show. Everything as business as
Speaker 1: usual until very early one morning at five am. Maddie
Speaker 1: is driving to set when she received a phone call.
Speaker 1: Her daughter is hysterical. On the other line. My daughter
Speaker 1: was sixteen. I'd been a mom for sixteen years. I've
Speaker 1: heard all kinds of screams and yells, and you just know,
Speaker 1: as a mother, I was already a warrior. But I
Speaker 1: knew the minute I heard the pitch of her scream
Speaker 1: that this was different. And really bad. And already, when
Speaker 1: you're sixteen year old calls you at five am, that's
Speaker 1: not normal. But she was screaming and saying that the
Speaker 1: police were in the house, and I couldn't. I couldn't
Speaker 1: understand what she was saying. And I couldn't even comprehend
Speaker 1: that police were in our house, let alone why they
Speaker 1: were there. And I could also hear that my boys,
Speaker 1: who were eleven at the time, were with her, and
Speaker 1: they were I could hear them crying. And even right now,
Speaker 1: I feel like my face is going to fall off
Speaker 1: even just talking about this and remembering this moment, because
Speaker 1: it was the moment that all of our lives changed forever.
Speaker 1: This was the moment of discovery. And um, I told her,
Speaker 1: I have to hang up and call Daddy and find
Speaker 1: out what's going on. Just hold on, hold on, hold on.
Speaker 1: And I didn't pull over like I I you know,
Speaker 1: when I tell the story, people are like and then
Speaker 1: you turned the car around. I didn't. I wish that
Speaker 1: I could say I did, but I just kind of
Speaker 1: kept driving to work. I somewhat left my body, but
Speaker 1: kept driving and I called my husband, who didn't pick up,
Speaker 1: and I called again and he picked up, and he
Speaker 1: didn't even sound like my husband, my person, my partner,
Speaker 1: my best friend. He sounded very formal and weird, and
Speaker 1: he said the police are here. I said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know what what's going on? And he said, I can't
Speaker 1: really talk right now. And I just couldn't understand or
Speaker 1: imagine what was going on. I think that the police
Speaker 1: said they want to talk to you, and someone got
Speaker 1: on the phone and said we we're searching devices or
Speaker 1: your husband's computer or something. And all I could think
Speaker 1: was I need to get my kids out of that house.
Speaker 1: I need my kids to not be there. And I
Speaker 1: was close to Brooklyn at this point, which is not
Speaker 1: close to my house. I called my daughter back and said,
Speaker 1: hold on, I don't know what's happening. What's happening, and
Speaker 1: I said, just hold tight, baby, hold on. And in
Speaker 1: a very very strange I guess one could say stroke
Speaker 1: of luck. My brother was staying. He doesn't normally live
Speaker 1: in this house, but he was staying two doors down
Speaker 1: from where our house was. And I'm very close with
Speaker 1: my brother, and my brother is very close with my kids.
Speaker 1: My brother and his amazing wife had just had their
Speaker 1: first baby. I mean, she was maybe a week old,
Speaker 1: maybe not even she was probably ten days old actually,
Speaker 1: And I called him and said, you have to go
Speaker 1: get my kids and bring them over to your house.
Speaker 1: And of course he was going why, and I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but you have to do that right now.
Speaker 1: I can't talk to you. You have to go do it.
Speaker 1: What was going through your mind in this discovery moment?
Speaker 1: Nothing was going through my mind except I don't understand.
Speaker 1: I don't understand. I don't understand. Were there are scenarios
Speaker 1: that were running through your mind, like maybe it's tax evasion, yes,
Speaker 1: or gambling or something. And then I believe I called
Speaker 1: back my husband, and you know, I heard something about
Speaker 1: they're saying they found some files that are illegal, and
Speaker 1: and that was the first time my mind thought about
Speaker 1: pornography maybe, And I still thought, well, that has to
Speaker 1: be a mistake, even if that is what they found.
Speaker 1: Looking back with the eyes that I have now, and
Speaker 1: I've heard many many people's stories that are similar, different
Speaker 1: but similar, I had no idea. I'm embarrassed still deciding
Speaker 1: the lots of shame about lots of things. But pornography
Speaker 1: was not a part of my marriage, and it was
Speaker 1: not a thing where I had caught my husband multiple
Speaker 1: times watching pornography. If you had said to me, do
Speaker 1: you think your husband watches pornography? I would have said probably,
Speaker 1: you know, when he's away. But like, it didn't even
Speaker 1: occur to me that this was something which turned out
Speaker 1: to be a very big issue for him. Mattie's father
Speaker 1: also lives nearby in Westchester, and he takes Jace to
Speaker 1: a lawyer and then drives him to Brooklyn. Maddie leaves
Speaker 1: work early, citing a family emergency, and then she goes
Speaker 1: to meet Jase on a street corner near the set.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until I looked at his face and he
Speaker 1: didn't even look like himself, and he looked away that
Speaker 1: I realized this was not a mistake. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: it was a mistake that he viewed any kind of
Speaker 1: child pornography, but it was not a mistake like, oh,
Speaker 1: they got the wrong guys, something got the wrong guy,
Speaker 1: or my kid accidentally downloaded something. Yeah. It's kind of
Speaker 1: amazing in those moments, the way that in you know,
Speaker 1: moments of a lot of trauma, the way the body
Speaker 1: and the psyche kind of take over in some way
Speaker 1: to protect us, Like you went on autopilot. You were
Speaker 1: definitely just dissociated. You kept on driving, you were going
Speaker 1: to go to work. I did my work. I mean,
Speaker 1: I haven't ever watched that TV show, but I shot scenes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I shot two scenes in a completely altered state. And
Speaker 1: you took care of your kids. You did what was
Speaker 1: necessary to get your kids safe and out of the house.
Speaker 1: But I just think that there's this way, and I
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with it myself, and and I've heard it
Speaker 1: in many stories where there's this kind of protection that
Speaker 1: happens for a little it's you know, shocked is a
Speaker 1: form of protection. Yeah, it's like a biological survival instinct.
Speaker 1: Within about twenty six hours, the story becomes public. Maddie
Speaker 1: and her family are not even given the opportunity to
Speaker 1: have a secret or to reckon with it privately. What
Speaker 1: ordinarily would be nobody's business is swiftly in the public sphere,
Speaker 1: leaving the family unable to properly or quietly digest what
Speaker 1: has happened. I was also worried about him. We didn't
Speaker 1: know it was going to become public. It was as
Speaker 1: we were sitting in a diner right after court, and
Speaker 1: I was still digesting like I said, I hadn't even
Speaker 1: really gotten what had happened and who he was and
Speaker 1: what this is and is this a thing? And what?
Speaker 1: And are my kids okay? Are they you know? Where
Speaker 1: are they? Are they all right? Do I go to court?
Speaker 1: Do I stay with them? Who are we telling? Um?
Speaker 1: How is he going to go to work? And then
Speaker 1: we're just sitting with these lawyers who are brand new
Speaker 1: people in my life, talking about things I never thought
Speaker 1: i'd talk about, like jail time for my husband and pornography,
Speaker 1: and it's all swirling. And I looked down at my
Speaker 1: phone because I'm constantly texting and calling my children, and there's,
Speaker 1: you know, a banner alert, and it's on Facebook, it's
Speaker 1: on USA Today, It's it's on the local patch you
Speaker 1: know there, it's everywhere. So that opened up a whole
Speaker 1: new way of having to deal with the crisis, which
Speaker 1: was the press showed up at our house. I'm not
Speaker 1: a famous person and neither is he, but we're well
Speaker 1: known enough and this is salacious enough story that the
Speaker 1: press was there, and that was another thing that I
Speaker 1: had to keep my kids safe from. And I did
Speaker 1: not want my husband to kill himself, so I made
Speaker 1: him promise that he wouldn't kill himself. But I'll so
Speaker 1: felt like I had to keep an eye on him
Speaker 1: as well in those early days. And there's so many
Speaker 1: layers of feelings that might seem like they would contradict
Speaker 1: each other, but of course they don't. That that you're experiencing,
Speaker 1: both in those early days and then for a long
Speaker 1: time to come and perhaps even forever, like ten minutes ago. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: But in the early days it wasn't what I would
Speaker 1: I think had I written this story and not lived it,
Speaker 1: I would have said, well, no, you would have been
Speaker 1: feeling that. And when I started writing my story and
Speaker 1: we did it as a play, my brilliant producer Darryl Roth, said, well,
Speaker 1: it's not really believable that you got up and went
Speaker 1: to work the next day. I was like, I know,
Speaker 1: but I did, you know, because I thought it would
Speaker 1: be a secret and I had to finish my job,
Speaker 1: and I had a little part of me that also went, um,
Speaker 1: I'm probably going to have to be the breadwinner. There
Speaker 1: was just that's what I did. And the anger that
Speaker 1: I felt didn't come when I thought it would come,
Speaker 1: and the all of that. It was so it was
Speaker 1: such a crisis and such a catastrophe trauma. I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about all the things one should probably even think.
Speaker 1: You know, that all came later and continues to come.
Speaker 1: There are real victims of I want to be really
Speaker 1: clear that I understand that I was traumatized, my kids
Speaker 1: were traumatized, but that does not take anything away from
Speaker 1: the children that are traumatized in this kind of pornography.
Speaker 1: That was not at the forefront of my mind in
Speaker 1: that moment that came later, like well, what does this
Speaker 1: mean to me as a woman? Was it? What does
Speaker 1: it mean? Are my kids safe? There were just so
Speaker 1: many things, but it was an emergency in the beginning,
Speaker 1: and even even in the following weeks and months. You know,
Speaker 1: kids and dogs and cats don't stop having me needs
Speaker 1: because there's a crisis, And so I was trying to
Speaker 1: process a lot of things at the same time that
Speaker 1: there was, you know, a wisdom teeth removal and kids
Speaker 1: starting school, and bills that needed to be paid and
Speaker 1: all these things. In the beginning, it was just what's
Speaker 1: right in front of me, and how can I make
Speaker 1: sure we get through today. We'll be right back in
Speaker 1: the midst of all this. Jase loses a number of jobs.
Speaker 1: In the midst of all this, friends come forward, so
Speaker 1: I'm saying absolutely the right thing, and others not so much.
Speaker 1: And in the midst of all this, someone important appears
Speaker 1: in Maddie's life, someone she considers to be an angel.
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of the New York post
Speaker 1: um nor what they've written about uh me and many
Speaker 1: other people, but I believe that she saw the story.
Speaker 1: And we have a mutual friend. I don't say her
Speaker 1: name because she's very famous and because that's her story
Speaker 1: to tell. But somehow she contacted this mutual friend and said,
Speaker 1: I think you know the wife. And she had her
Speaker 1: own version of this, nothing to do with this particular
Speaker 1: acting out, but her husband was a sex addict, and
Speaker 1: she recognized some kind of addiction that I didn't even
Speaker 1: know was something we were talking about. But whatever it was,
Speaker 1: she had the compassion and the experience to read a story,
Speaker 1: a headline and say, there's a family behind that headline,
Speaker 1: there's some people in real trouble, some people who are
Speaker 1: really hurting and scared and lonely and afraid. And she
Speaker 1: contacted me, and I was being contacted by everyone under
Speaker 1: the sun, and I didn't really want to talk to anyone,
Speaker 1: but something in me had a feeling. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know her story, but something in me had a feeling
Speaker 1: that I should take that call and speaking to a
Speaker 1: stranger but who had some experience, strength and hope around
Speaker 1: what I was going through. It did save my life.
Speaker 1: I'm not being hyperbolic. It absolutely saved my life. It
Speaker 1: was just so complicated and it was so lonely and
Speaker 1: so terrifying, and to just have someone go it's going
Speaker 1: to be okay. I kept saying, no, no, no, but
Speaker 1: my story is different. I'm telling you it's going to
Speaker 1: be okay, and your kids are going to be okay,
Speaker 1: and maybe even your husband's going to be okay. And
Speaker 1: just hearing those words would have been enough, but she
Speaker 1: went beyond that, and she gave me names of people
Speaker 1: to call, and she was just there for me in
Speaker 1: a way that I don't know how that happened, but
Speaker 1: she was my angel. And it's amazing the way that
Speaker 1: within some of the most difficult stories there are these
Speaker 1: beautiful stories or these kernels of light and just miracles, really,
Speaker 1: and that's certainly just seemed like one Jas goes to
Speaker 1: rehab in Arizona for forty five days, the first two
Speaker 1: weeks of which he and Maddie are not allowed to
Speaker 1: speak while he's away. The fallout continues, and a sort
Speaker 1: of public excommunication occurs. He's fired at the kids soccer coach,
Speaker 1: removed from his position at the Director's Guild, and their
Speaker 1: names are removed in quick succession from several charities and boards.
Speaker 1: At that time, you lived in a relatively small town,
Speaker 1: you don't like, very very small suburban town where everyone
Speaker 1: knows everything, which is incredibly comforting and then incredibly horrible
Speaker 1: depending on what's going on. So what role did at
Speaker 1: that point did shame play in all of that? Um?
Speaker 1: Did you find yourself, you know, just sort of hiding
Speaker 1: or feeling like you didn't want to talk to people,
Speaker 1: you didn't want to deal. Oh? Absolutely, the shame was crushing,
Speaker 1: is the only word that comes to mind. Absolutely crushing
Speaker 1: in the moments that I had time to feel it,
Speaker 1: you know, in some ways I just had to keep
Speaker 1: going with life. But when I had a moment or
Speaker 1: saw someone or made eye contact, yes, the shame was
Speaker 1: absolutely staggering. And I had been not even aware of
Speaker 1: how much I cared about what other people thought it
Speaker 1: was incredibly humbling to be publicly humiliated, and also, what
Speaker 1: is mine and what is my partners? Where is my
Speaker 1: part in that? Why am I ashamed of something that
Speaker 1: I didn't do? Butt? How do I not wear this?
Speaker 1: And how do I process it privately when everyone's talking
Speaker 1: about it, looking at it, asking me, are you staying together?
Speaker 1: Are you breaking up? You know what's going to happen?
Speaker 1: Is he going to jail? You know? I was not
Speaker 1: prepared for this. I had been married to this man
Speaker 1: for almost twenty years, and what I hadn't noticed along
Speaker 1: the way was how much of my identity had become
Speaker 1: wrapped up in being his wife and being this family
Speaker 1: that we were. And I had lost a lot of
Speaker 1: myself And so now who am I? And what am I?
Speaker 1: And I was very proud of my marriage. My marriage
Speaker 1: looking back had certainly started to fray, and there were certainly,
Speaker 1: now that I can look back, there were some signs
Speaker 1: that things weren't so well, and my husband had gotten
Speaker 1: progressively more irritable and depressed and distant and romantic. Only
Speaker 1: things were off, but we were so great and we
Speaker 1: are the actress and the director who aren't in Hollywood
Speaker 1: we're making it work, and we're still coaching the kids
Speaker 1: teams and look, and I was proud of that. I
Speaker 1: was proud of that part of my identity. We can
Speaker 1: we can give you marriage advice. Look at us, We
Speaker 1: got it and and we're messy. By the way. I
Speaker 1: wasn't even trying to pretend to be perfect. I just
Speaker 1: thought we had something that we actually now I know
Speaker 1: we did have. But there was a big, big secret
Speaker 1: that was there that I didn't see. And so for
Speaker 1: everyone to see that secret at the same time that
Speaker 1: I was seeing it was incredibly shameful. And I also
Speaker 1: I was trying to navigate this without letting my kids
Speaker 1: feel that, but also wanting them to feel their own feelings.
Speaker 1: And I still feel this way, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: renn A Brown says it way better than I do.
Speaker 1: But it's okay to care about what some people think
Speaker 1: the people you love very much. But if you spend
Speaker 1: your time caring about what every single person thinks, you'll
Speaker 1: never get out of bed. Mattie has asked at one
Speaker 1: point to come out to Arizona for family Week at
Speaker 1: the rehabilitation center. She really really does not want to
Speaker 1: do this, but with the help of her daughter, her therapist,
Speaker 1: and her angel, she eventually decides to go. You learn
Speaker 1: while you're there that porn can be as addictive as
Speaker 1: crystal meth, that you know what it actually does to
Speaker 1: the brain, and that addicts are not bad people, they're
Speaker 1: sick people. And and that really is something that in
Speaker 1: getting over your resistance to going to family Week and
Speaker 1: going there and hating it and at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, going through all of the waves of feelings. Um, oh,
Speaker 1: thank god I went. And you know, it was my
Speaker 1: daughter who actually got me there. My therapist who is
Speaker 1: Goddess who specializes I had switched therapists because also my
Speaker 1: wonderful therapist I had been seeing It's just a lot
Speaker 1: of people aren't versed in this, and it's so scary
Speaker 1: and and I really needed someone who it was not
Speaker 1: going to be shocking. I needed to not absorb anyone
Speaker 1: else's shame just to get to being moderately okay. And
Speaker 1: my therapist was great and actually had trained at and
Speaker 1: had worked at this place Gentle Path in Wickenburg, which
Speaker 1: is part of the meadows where my husband went, and
Speaker 1: so she was just great and she said, you have
Speaker 1: to go, and my Angel said you absolutely have to go.
Speaker 1: It's where her husband had gone and it saved his
Speaker 1: life at family Week, saved her life, and you have
Speaker 1: to go. And I said no. But then my daughter,
Speaker 1: who was sixteen at the time and not thrilled with
Speaker 1: any of this, said to me, well, Mom, didn't you
Speaker 1: take a vow to love dad and sickness and in health?
Speaker 1: And I said yes, and she said, well dad's sick
Speaker 1: and she was so clear and clean about it, and
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, okay, I'll go. And I'm really it was.
Speaker 1: It was a life changing experience. And the women that
Speaker 1: I met in Wickenburg, the other partners wives, were so
Speaker 1: incredible and continue to be my sisters. And I would
Speaker 1: never have had that. I mean, I feel incredibly Again
Speaker 1: it's weird to say lucky around this, but I know
Speaker 1: that I am privileged that we I mean, we just
Speaker 1: didn't even think about how much it would cost, and
Speaker 1: it is incredibly expensive. But at the time it was
Speaker 1: like the ship was sinking, just whatever. But to be
Speaker 1: around other people who were going through something similar again
Speaker 1: very different, acting out behaviors, but just looking at each
Speaker 1: other going what and learning that almost every one who's
Speaker 1: married to sex addict finds out about it in a
Speaker 1: really shocking way. It's not usually like, hey, there's something
Speaker 1: I want to tell you. It's usually a big, dark, deep,
Speaker 1: shameful secret that comes out in a really messy, horrible,
Speaker 1: catastrophic way. At least people who wind up at this
Speaker 1: place nobody's there because they're having a little bit of
Speaker 1: a bad day. You also describe, you know, these broken
Speaker 1: husbands who are there, and it's kind of the beginning
Speaker 1: of your getting in touch with your own compassion, because
Speaker 1: these are not trolls. These are decent human beings who
Speaker 1: have done things that are awful, but it doesn't make
Speaker 1: them awful and good men by the way, rabbis, doctors, musicians, sons, fathers,
Speaker 1: and men um that I did spend incredibly authentic intimate
Speaker 1: moments with intimate meaning people were pouring their souls out
Speaker 1: and telling their stories, and I could barely look at
Speaker 1: my own partner, but seeing these men and seeing how
Speaker 1: deeply sorry they were for the hurt that they had caused,
Speaker 1: and seeing that they were smart and funny and kind
Speaker 1: and just decent, which is not what I You know,
Speaker 1: the story that we're told that we hear about the
Speaker 1: names we hear, you know, perverts, sex addicts, sex offenders.
Speaker 1: You know, this is not the men that I saw,
Speaker 1: were not the image that I had, And it was
Speaker 1: the beginning of my ability to feel compassion. The combination
Speaker 1: of me being able to witness other people and also
Speaker 1: hearing from people who could say I too, went to
Speaker 1: a place I never dreamed I would go in the
Speaker 1: throes of a of a really gripping addiction, helped me
Speaker 1: have a glimmer of an idea that this was the
Speaker 1: person who I loved, whose brain had been hijacked. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment with more family secrets. Mattie
Speaker 1: returns home, and soon Jason will too. Parameters are set.
Speaker 1: He will sleep in the guest room, and there will
Speaker 1: be one computer in the house filters on all the devices.
Speaker 1: It's a tenuous time for them all, but also bolstered
Speaker 1: by incredible bits of generosity and wisdom. As one of
Speaker 1: their sons says, it's intense to love someone so much
Speaker 1: and also be really, really out at them. So Jason's
Speaker 1: back home, You're experiencing all of these different waves of feelings.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're shopping at St. Leonards, the famous
Speaker 1: supermarket that's both in Westchester and in Connecticut for Halloween items.
Speaker 1: And suddenly it occurs to you, maybe it's not okay
Speaker 1: for us to decorate our house for Halloween. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: people won't come and trick or treat at our house.
Speaker 1: And there's this really powerful sense of mourning the loss
Speaker 1: of the way things were, you know, the grief for
Speaker 1: that life that would never be the same as it
Speaker 1: was before that phone call that morning. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And no matter what, if I choose to stay with
Speaker 1: this person, there will be a very big loss of
Speaker 1: the life that I have known and that we have known.
Speaker 1: And if I leave this person, there will also be
Speaker 1: a very big loss. Right, So there's going to be lost,
Speaker 1: there's no getting around it. And there's only so much
Speaker 1: I can do to protect my kids from that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's some part of me still that is so resistant
Speaker 1: to change, and and I project that onto my kids, like,
Speaker 1: oh no, but what if we have to move? That
Speaker 1: will be so upsetting, you know. And it's like I
Speaker 1: never think about the good things that might come from that.
Speaker 1: I just don't want them to have to absorb any
Speaker 1: more trauma. And change to me sometimes means trauma and loss. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Jason moves out of the guest room and back into
Speaker 1: the master bedroom. Things improve, not in some sort of cinematic,
Speaker 1: smooth narrative arc, but rather it fits and starts. One morning,
Speaker 1: Maddie wakes up in a profound state of rage, and
Speaker 1: this moment marks a turning point. Jason has apologized before,
Speaker 1: but this time he exp us as his full empathy
Speaker 1: and awareness of what he's done to her in all this.
Speaker 1: Shortly after this powerful moment, Maddie decides she wants to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that while this is not the same marriage it
Speaker 1: used to be, it's still a marriage. She hadn't been
Speaker 1: wearing her wedding ring for some time, and now she
Speaker 1: wants a new one. They go to Soho and wander
Speaker 1: through jewelry stores, but nothing feels right. They're about to
Speaker 1: let it go and head home when Maddie stops to
Speaker 1: look at a street vendor who has jewelry on display.
Speaker 1: Something about this person seems magical. He asks her what
Speaker 1: she's looking for. I said, um, I want something unique
Speaker 1: and beautiful and delicate but strong, nothing like he probably had,
Speaker 1: I mean mostly had, like peace sign rings and you
Speaker 1: know Kitty cat rings, and and he said hold on,
Speaker 1: and he reached under not on the main tray where
Speaker 1: everything was, this little kind of secret drawer, and he
Speaker 1: took out this ring and it was so beautiful and
Speaker 1: it was unique and delicate but strong, and it had
Speaker 1: a kind of a scarlet stone. And I have freakishly
Speaker 1: tiny hands, I really do, um especially my fingers, and
Speaker 1: I've never had a ring that I haven't had to
Speaker 1: get sized down, especially from my wedding finger. I think
Speaker 1: it's one of other than my pinky, the smallest one.
Speaker 1: And I popped this ring on and it fit perfectly
Speaker 1: and I loved it. Yea. My husband was so excited
Speaker 1: because we had gone to a bunch of shops and
Speaker 1: nothing was right and things were too expensive and didn't
Speaker 1: fit and and he said great, and he went to
Speaker 1: pay for it, and I said hold on, and I
Speaker 1: took out my wallet and paid with my money. And
Speaker 1: not that that maybe was more symbolic than anything, because
Speaker 1: it's not like at that point we had separated our
Speaker 1: bank accounts. But it was important to me to get
Speaker 1: myself a ring. I made a choice to be married.
Speaker 1: I made a choice to stay for the time being,
Speaker 1: at least at that moment with my family and try
Speaker 1: to put this family back together. And I wanted a
Speaker 1: symbol of that, but I wanted to get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. When there's a betrayal in a marriage, when
Speaker 1: there's a secret that one person knows and the other doesn't,
Speaker 1: there's a part of history that is stolen, at least
Speaker 1: from me. And until recently, I couldn't even look at
Speaker 1: my wedding photos or beautiful moments over the twenty years
Speaker 1: we had together because I felt like I was the chump,
Speaker 1: you know, like I didn't know what was really going
Speaker 1: on there. That's changed a bit, i will say, in
Speaker 1: present day, but at that time, there were songs that
Speaker 1: I always loved that I couldn't listen to. There was
Speaker 1: jewelry that meant so much to me that I had
Speaker 1: to put away, and that was just such a loss.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to belittle other parts of grief
Speaker 1: and loss in betrayal, but there is something that the
Speaker 1: partner who's betrayed really never gets back because you're still
Speaker 1: putting the story together, whereas the other person knows the
Speaker 1: full story. And you know, my husband to this day,
Speaker 1: I'll look at a photo and say oh, that was
Speaker 1: just such a beautiful happy day. And I'll say, but
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't really know. He'll say, no,
Speaker 1: it was, and I but you know, there's just that
Speaker 1: feeling of there was something going on that I didn't know.
Speaker 1: At Jase's hearing, he pleads guilty and is sentenced to
Speaker 1: ten years of probation. It's a huge relief that he
Speaker 1: won't serve jail time. But despite the legal proceedings being over,
Speaker 1: there is and perhaps always will be, continue to fallout,
Speaker 1: and he had to register as a sex offender. Yes
Speaker 1: he did, he does, he is. I guess I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about marriage and partnership and intimacy and what it means
Speaker 1: two like sort of reach a new place, hard hard
Speaker 1: one and ongoing, but one in which there is the
Speaker 1: true intimacy. Early in your play, you say something like
Speaker 1: I entered the marriage with little secrets, you know, the
Speaker 1: occasional cigarette, a little botox, you know, my secret meditation mantra.
Speaker 1: But Jason entered the marriage with a big secret, and
Speaker 1: that was obviously something that was there and which you've
Speaker 1: had to revise in a certain way those those twenty years.
Speaker 1: With the fact that he knew his secret and you
Speaker 1: did not, but now you do. And what does that
Speaker 1: do for the sense of connection and closeness and intimacy. Well,
Speaker 1: I've heard it said, and I believe that the opposite
Speaker 1: of addiction is not sobriety, it's connection. And when someone's
Speaker 1: in their addiction of any kind, there's no real chance
Speaker 1: for intimacy. So I was in a marriage. I want
Speaker 1: to also be clear that again I say this that
Speaker 1: I can't tell my husband's story. That's for him to tell,
Speaker 1: but I will say that Jason's pornography addiction did not
Speaker 1: start where it ended, you know. That's that's like the end.
Speaker 1: The illegal pornography was a very late stage, part of
Speaker 1: the end of a long of a drug, you know,
Speaker 1: where you need more and darker to get your high,
Speaker 1: I suppose. But yes, pornography was a part of my
Speaker 1: marriage that I didn't know. And now I am with
Speaker 1: someone who not only do I know the worst thing
Speaker 1: they've ever done, everyone knows the worst thing he's ever done.
Speaker 1: And as much as that is shameful, it is incredibly
Speaker 1: freeing because if you're that person and people still love you,
Speaker 1: I mean, what that can do is pretty astonishing. So
Speaker 1: we don't have secrets anymore. So there is a level
Speaker 1: of intimacy that I didn't know existed that I now
Speaker 1: have now Danny. That is not to say that if
Speaker 1: I say to him one day, hey babe, I need
Speaker 1: blueberries as part of you know, you're going to do
Speaker 1: the food shopping and he comes back and forgets the blueberries,
Speaker 1: that I don't have a moment of going you don't
Speaker 1: listen to me. You're keeping secrets. What's going on? You know?
Speaker 1: This is not to say everything is latti dati da.
Speaker 1: I am very very attuned and afraid of any kind
Speaker 1: of lie or secret. But I also see the person
Speaker 1: that I fell in love with who started to fade
Speaker 1: away through the years, and I see more than that.
Speaker 1: So I don't wish this on anyone. He has done
Speaker 1: a lot of work and is well aware of the
Speaker 1: victims of that kind of pornography and the hurt that
Speaker 1: he has caused so many people, and he is fully
Speaker 1: honest in his life, and so to have that partner
Speaker 1: is great. I mean, it's a weird thing to say,
Speaker 1: but it's great, and it's deep and it's real, and
Speaker 1: it's sometimes incredibly exhausting, and I try to match it
Speaker 1: with my own work and my own program and my
Speaker 1: own honesty. Like I said, I'm really not a person
Speaker 1: who kept too many secrets. Quite the opposite. I tend
Speaker 1: to lead with telling you the worst thing about me
Speaker 1: so I can get ahead of it. But this stuff
Speaker 1: goes to another level. I've learned a lot about shame
Speaker 1: and things. Anything that has to do with sex and
Speaker 1: sexuality can just be really deeply buried, and I've I've
Speaker 1: had to look at my own past and things that
Speaker 1: I had to look at. I didn't understand at first
Speaker 1: why my husband wouldn't just tell me I'm struggling with
Speaker 1: this or I was abused as a you know, I
Speaker 1: had some abuse as a as a boy, like I'm me,
Speaker 1: But there's something that shame does. I really have come
Speaker 1: to believe that secrets keep us sick, and that the
Speaker 1: shame just perpetuates this, and that if we don't talk
Speaker 1: about it, it'll just keep happening. I think if you
Speaker 1: ever interviewed Jace, he would say he planned to stop
Speaker 1: doing this and go to his grave with that secret.
Speaker 1: He did not want to ever tell anyone that he
Speaker 1: was looking at pornography, let alone illegal pornography, ever, and
Speaker 1: he didn't tell his therapist, you know. And and if
Speaker 1: someone believes that maybe they could talk about it and
Speaker 1: not be thrown out of society and not be thrown
Speaker 1: out of their marriage, maybe we can actually get somewhere
Speaker 1: and get some help and not have this huge industry.
Speaker 1: I mean, pornography is everywhere, and nobody's talking about it. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean not nobody, but I feel like we're not
Speaker 1: talking about it. I have three children. They've gone to
Speaker 1: sex ed in various schools, temples, churches, and it is
Speaker 1: really under disgust, which again is like, oh, it's shameful,
Speaker 1: it's secret, but it's there. I have now told this
Speaker 1: story publicly partly because it was already out there, but
Speaker 1: I wanted people to know the nuance a little bit.
Speaker 1: And the number of women and men who have shared
Speaker 1: their stories with me, including people I know well who
Speaker 1: I had no idea there were certain secrets going on.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be in a family and I include
Speaker 1: my kids in this where we can lay it all
Speaker 1: out on the table. There's not much that we don't
Speaker 1: talk about. And seeing that their dad fell down so
Speaker 1: hard and we as a family allowed him to get
Speaker 1: back up, I hope is a lesson in saying, you
Speaker 1: don't have to keep things secret. We can help, there's recovery,
Speaker 1: there's hope. Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Molly Zachor is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is
Speaker 1: the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
Speaker 1: like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your
Speaker 1: story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
Speaker 1: one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You
Speaker 1: can also find me on Instagram at Danny writer. And
Speaker 1: if you'd like to know more about the story that
Speaker 1: inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance m h.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.