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Terry Crews had a priori everything a man could dream of: the former American football player, recognized actor in films and series, had been spinning the perfect love for more than 25 years with Rebecca Crews, a sublime gospel singer.
Both lead successful careers, are the head of a family of 5 children, and are even grandparents.
Their harmonious and stable married life, however, was almost ruined by the secret Terry had been hiding from his wife for all these years: his addiction to pornography.
A secret hidden since he was 12 years old
Terry Crews is for many a male model: handsome, athletic, famous actor, humorous, model father and husband...
It was perhaps this role model that kept him silent about his addiction to pornography. Perhaps it was also quite simply because it is all the more difficult to realize that one is addicted to a society that trivializes pornographic images.
Terry Crews started consuming porn at an early age, like many others, alas. He was 12 and had found his uncle's VHS.
This childhood curiosity could have been inconsequential in a family context where love, dialogue, and education reign. But having lacked this support, Terry locks himself in this secret, becomes addicted, and manages to hide it from his own wife for 25 years.
The strong reaction of his wife
It is following an argument as there can be in couples who have such longevity that Terry begins to reveal to Rebecca this heavy secret that is eating away at their marriage: an addiction to pornography which he hides from everyone.
From her childhood, which sometimes disunited them even in their sexuality, when Terry tried to reproduce scenes that fed her imagination and Rebecca suddenly felt uncomfortable.
He also reveals to her that he has sometimes dated prostitutes. Pornography had made him lose all his bearings on love, sexuality, and desire:
I realized that porn uses people. You treat people like objects. You look at them badly. You don't see them as human beings, but as objects that you can use. And that affects everything: the way you talk to people, you think everyone can be used, controlled, manipulated. It's that pornography puts you in your head. When you fall in love, porn can no longer be part of the picture. When you talk about love, porn doesn't exist in this world. There is lust and there is love. Those are two different things. So I had to start a detox.
Terry Crews
Of course, he had to. But at the time, his wife suggested that it would be without her!
All those years of lying to her made her feel like their whole story was a lie.
The hardest part was knowing that the person I loved, respected and trusted was not at all who I thought he was.
Rebecca Crews
Confiding in his wife, he did not expect this reaction:
“When I told him 'it's over between us' , he said ' What? What? You are going to leave me? ”, and I said to him “yes, and I will take your money, you will pay a compensatory allowance so that I can enjoy it with my future companion!”
This clear reaction made him understand the disappointment of a woman who had felt betrayed for 25 years. His wife's eyes gave him such a reflection that his decision was made: he was going to start a detoxification process.
I didn't detox to get my wife back: I did it because I needed to be a better person.
Terry Crews.
He had disappointed the only person whose look mattered to him, he had broken the heart of the woman who had given him her life. He was ready for anything. And as he questioned himself, Rebecca supported him, as always. They were going to start from scratch, 25 years after they met.
How they saved their marriage: finding each other through abstinence
Terry Crews went to therapy. At the same time, in his couple, Rebecca and he began a period of abstinence of 90 days: 90 days without sex, but also obviously without any pornographic image. This period allowed them to rediscover themselves, and for Terry to find his bearings and the meaning of his desire.
My wife and I abstained for 90 days. 90 days, no sex. Only our relationship, only discussions. Only hugs. At the end of those 90 days, I was more in love, more lust for her, I felt like I knew better who she was.
Terry Crews
They met again, he courted her again on dates, like young lovers.
And it wasn't 'Come on, let's go out, because I know I'll have sex afterwards', it was 'Come on, let's go out, because I want to talk to you, I want to get to know you. '
Terry Crews
Since then, he has released videos to help men in the same situation as him and wrote Manhood, how to be a better man, or just live with one. better man, a book in which he invites his peers to rethink their definition of virility and to reconnect with their real needs in the romantic relationship, needs far removed from clichés:
“Let me tell you, what a man wants is intimacy . It's the intimacy that you want. You don't want porn. You want to be with someone who really knows you and loves you just the way you are. That's all you want. That's what all men want. But we're scared sometimes, which is why men put on a facade of, "Yeah, I'm the guy, blah blah blah..." but there's that moment when he's scared that you find out who he really is, and that you don't want to be with him anymore.
Terry Crews
By accepting this part of vulnerability, questioning himself, and being totally transparent with his wife at the risk of losing her, Terry rediscovered himself at the same time as he fell even more deeply in love with Rebecca.
After 3 years of working on himself, after 28 years of marriage this year, Terry talks about the one who knew how to forgive him, support him, and still love him in terms that are a perfect definition of the couple:
Rebecca Crews is my backbone. When someone knows you, in your best and in the darkest or dirtiest aspects of your personality, and still loves you, you are experiencing something rare. This is the person you want to be with.
Terry Crews
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