A review of
Laurie Hall’s An Affair of the Mind
One Woman’s Courageous Battle to Salvage Her Family from the Devastation of Pornography
by Sue (used by permission)

• Laurie Hall
• An Affair of the Mind
• October 1996, Tyndale House Publishing
• Paperback, 268 pages
• ($10.99 US)

“An Affair of the Mind” is a first hand true story account of one woman’s experience through the hellish nightmare of her husband’s pornography addiction. She becomes the voice of all spouse of sex addicts as she describes the devastating effects that pornography has on the lives and souls of all those that it touches.

One of the main premises of this book is that pornography is not a victimless crime. Hall relates..”I saw my husband lose his soul to pornography. I have held other women and listened to them weep as they told me how their husbands also lost their souls to pornography. Pornography kills the soul, steals, the heart, and destroys the mind. Pornography is not a victimless crime.”

Laurie Hall describes the very real life of living with a sex addict, one that lives in a very false world of pornography. She describes the gradual descent of her husband into his addiction when she states. “Jack’s deterioration was gradual. The light in his eyes did not go out all at once, and his laughter didn’t turn to sulleness overnight. The guy with the easy, open ways didn’t evaporate into a pathological liar in the blink of an eye. If the changes had been sudden, they would have screamed, pay attention! Something is very wrong here! I mourned the changes, but I wasn’t suspicious. Suspicion is such an ugly thing. It’s so opposite of what love is all about, which is believing the best in each other, going the extra mile, giving the benefit of the doubt. I wasn’t really aware of the danger until it reached a boiling point.”

Hall describes the greatest anomaly for the people to overcome in gaining insight about this addiction, when she explains … “because Jack was so clever with his lying, and because he was so skillful with his ‘nice guy’ public persona, I couldn’t get anyone else to agree that something was terribly wrong. I was all alone in my conviction that things weren’t as they appeared, and it almost drove me insane. In fact, I’m not sure that I didn’t.”

This book is incredibly validating in this regard because finally we, the voice of the wives of the sex addict is being heard. Hall states, “To those looking on, the marriage seemed strong, but in the hidden places there was rot. The wives could feel this decay with their spirits but kept telling their spirits to be quiet because everything they could see with their eyes and hear with their hears said things were fine.”

The wives of sex addicts live in a hell that few people can believe or understand. “The enemy was unseen, but her presence permeated every aspect of our lives.” There is no drunken stupor or needle marks as evidence. Only an imagination that shoots up with the vilest forms of erotic visualizations.

Hall devotes quite a bit of her authoring to address the issues of lying and deceit that accompany this duality in the life of the addict. Because lying is a form of insanity, it denies reality and attempts to force others to deny the reality of a situation by manipulating their understanding of the truth.

“Sex addicts are pathological liars. They lie bout everything, not just their sexual behavior, and they do so with straight faces. they lie when telling the truth would save them time and money. They lie about little things as well as big ones. They lie to themselves about what they’re doing. They lie to their wives and families about where they are going and what they are going to do when they get there, even if there’s no sexually inappropriate behavior going on. Pornography is itself a lie, and they embrace it.”

It is when a wife realizes how dangerously pathological her addicted husband has become that she often chooses to no longer stay in the marriage. Hall, in writing a letter to her husband says, “That’s when I knew you were dangerously pathological. That’s when I knew I’d crack if I stayed with you any longer.”

Hall devotes chapters to dealing with the issues of denial and how those layers are peeled off gradually, usually through the intercession of the spirit. In regard to this Hall writes, “I was certainly in a dance of denial, but inside I was crying out for the truth. I’m so glad that God looks past the surface, to the innermost part of our beings, sifting through and analyzing the thoughts and intents of our hearts. Then, when the groanings of our pain are too terrifying for us to bring into the light of day, the Holy Ghost intercedes for us before God’s throne and says, ‘Look, she says that she doesn’t want to know, but she needs to know.’ And then we are shown. And the truth is ugly, ugly indeed.”

Hall devotes many chapters to describing the spiritual quest that began with the peeling of the layers of denial. When one is dealing with the forces of evil, the father of all lies, one must center themselves and focus on the omnipotence of an all knowing Father who the source of truth and revelation to them. The avenues of prayer, scripture study and sustained close association with Deity are the greatest and sometimes only source of strength to the wife in this situation.

This books explains very well the agonizing plight of sexual addiction from the perspectives of the wife. I believe anyone reading this with this experience in their lives will find many parallels between themselves and the story of Laurie Hall. I personally found a great sense of resolution in my life after reading this. Laurie Hall has chosen to remain in her marriage, I have chosen otherwise. But, I have found the validation through the authors voice in this book to be very healing. I highly recommend the reading of this book to anyone who would like to gain a more complete and accurate understanding of the ramifications of this devastating addiction.

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