Passionate Living Coach Abiola Abrams gives love, dating and self-esteem advice on the CW’s Bill Cunningham Show and all over the web through her hit web series AbiolaTV. Now she wants to help you keep things spicy and fresh between the sheets. Are you in need of an intimacy intervention? Just ask Abiola!
Dear Abiola,
I married for life. I was taught that a man is the head of the household, so I waited a long time to find the right one. I was a teen mom, so when I finally got married last year at 41 everyone was happy for me. This man proposed after six months because we both knew what we wanted and we got married three months after that.
Now I just found out that my new husband has been using spy cams set up all over the bedroom and bathroom to tape us having sex. I found the first camera when I went to wash this stuffed teddy bear dog that he sat up on our dresser. He said it reminded him of his childhood, so I left it. Something was weird after I washed it so I zipped it open and it looked like there was a recording device in it.
I called my brother (who is a cop) and he and his boy found other cameras in my bedroom — also in the electrical outlet and the damn clothes hook! Who would think you could put cameras in a plastic hook? Then my husband confessed that there is a camera in our alarm clock, in these stupid speakers that I didn’t understand why we had anyway, and well, everywhere!
I feel completely violated. He has tapes of me showering, urinating, and having sex, he says. He says the footage was just for personal use. He also confessed he used to watch his previous girlfriends’ secret footage with his friends. He promised to delete his “archives” of previous women but not of me because that is “special.”
Now I don’t want him to touch me. All trust is gone. I always feel like I am being taped now and it has made me paranoid. He had never even mentioned having sex on camera before.
I’m too embarrassed to leave my husband after waiting so long to get married but I just feel no love anymore. How do I get the love back? Is it okay for a man as the head of the household to choose to videotape his wife having sex, using the toilet, and bathing?
Signed,
Not Ready For My Close-Up
Dear Ready for Healing,
My dear sweet queen, I am so sorry that this happened to you. You certainly deserved much better. You have been violated at most intimate level. Your husband has stolen your trust and your sense of safety in your own home. Take a breath.
The place where you rest your head with your life partner at night should feel like the safest place in the world. Instead, you husband has turned your boudoir into a chamber of horrors. What he has done to you is not only a violation of your very mind-body-and-spirit, but is most likely illegal in your municipality.
Anything that two consenting adults choose to do within the sanctity of their relationship is between them. Your husband, however, did not give you the right to choose to do anything. Instead he stole your right to say yes and no. It is your right to choose whatever you want to do with your body.
My sacred bombshell sister, this is not what you signed up for. Overall it seems as though you have known this man a very short time and you still do not know the depths of who he is. Letting go of this relationship does not make you a failure.
You cannot heal or feel safe while you are still in the lion’s den. Even after this has come out, your husband has refused to destroy the footage?! How can you feel love, trust, or security in that sort of situation?
The real deal: Your man is a secret keeper, a liar, and a thief; he has stolen your very boundaries. Do not allow him to continue to steal your sense of self. Get thee to the offices of a good therapist and a great lawyer — immediately!
I see you whole, healed, and safe in your own skin — and your own bed,
Passionately yours,
Abiola
Abiola Abrams is the founder of The Bombshell Academy blog, online school and web series over at AbiolaTV. Her new book The Sacred Bombshell Handbook of Self Love is on sale now!
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