February 16, 2023 • 50 mins
CONTENT WARNING: this episode discusses child pornography, the pornography industry, sex addiction and potential suicide.
Actress and playwright Maddie Corman became brave because she had to be. It was crisis time. About seven years ago her husband was arrested for downloading images of child sexual abuse material* (legally known as child pornography). And while it’s important to point out that he never went further in any way, that shocking act would forever change their lives. Maddie wrote and starred in a one-woman play called Accidentally Brave that depicts the horrors and terrible loneliness she experienced in those early days, years and even now. But she has continued to fight for her marriage, protect her family and heal herself one day at a time. Maddie says there is opportunity when your life blows up.
Maddie won the Off Broadway Alliance award for best solo performance in Accidentally Brave.
*Thorn.org : “Child sexual abuse material (legally known as child pornography) refers to any content that depicts sexually explicit activities involving a child.” // “Those working to combat this type of abuse have begun using the term “child sexual abuse material” (CSAM), which more accurately conveys the content and is explicitly tied to the source of the problem.”
If you have questions or guest suggestions, Ali would love to hear from you. Call or text her at (323) 364-6356. Or email go-ask-ali-podcast-at-gmail.com. (No dashes)
**Go Ask Ali has been nominated for a Webby Award for Best Interview/Talk Show Episode! Please vote for her and the whole team at https://bit.ly/415e8uN by April 20, 2023!
Links of Interest:
RAINN - help for survivors of sexual abuse
S-ANON - support for loved ones of sex addicts
SAA - support for sex addicts
Accidentally Brave on Audible
Also, from Season 1 of Go Ask Ali:
Casting Light on to the Dark Web w/ Julie Cordua
Credits:
Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins
Producer & Editor: Brooke Peterson-Bell
Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Go, Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. When I have
been with friends and that happened and I paid my pants,
I did lose the room, they did leave. I saw
her light up and I was like, I'm just going
to work. But we are here until one of our
last reps. I was just the one that was meant
(00:21):
to take care of mamma. It's for me to remember
every single day is that I always have a choice.
Everyone always has a choice. Whenever somebody says no, you can't,
or there's no rules for you, or you have to
look like this, I go. I'll show you. I'll show you.
(00:42):
Welcome to Go, ask Allie. I'm Alli Wentworth. You know
I've talked about stories. I like to dig into this
being a master class where I get to learn about
people and their experiences and their stories. I had a
conversation with my guest today before we started the podcast,
and one of the things I talked to her about
was the fact that she gets a lot of hate
(01:04):
and people get triggered by her story. So it's important
to say that within our conversation, we'll be talking about
child pornography, and addiction. So I just wanted to send
out a warning to all of you listeners that this
conversation can be very difficult and for some people it
might bring up a lot of rage and a lot
of feelings. Maddie Corman is an actor, teacher, and writer
(01:28):
and listen, if you grew up in the nineteen eighties,
you definitely saw her as a teenager in Seven Minutes
in Heaven in some kind of wonderful. Since then, she
stayed incredibly busy in TV and film and theater on
Broadway and off. Maddie also wrote and starred in a
full length play based on her life called Accidentally Brave,
which has been filmed by producer director Steven Soderberg, and
(01:49):
for her play, Maddie was nominated for the Outer Critics
Circle Award and when the Off Broadway Alliance Award for
Best Solo Performance. So, Maddie, first of all, I'm I'm
so happy to see your face. I came to see
your play Accidentally Brave off Broadway, and I was so
(02:11):
moved by it. I was so affected by it. Um,
we didn't know each other before that, and after I
saw the play, I stayed till the end because I
wanted to hug you, and I pushed aside all your
other friends so that I could get in in front
of the line. Um, before we go into it, if
(02:35):
you feel comfortable, yeah, why don't you tell the story?
Is if you're telling the story of accidentally brave okay. Um.
You know I'll start by saying, I've now told the
story a lot of times, and yet here we are,
seven years later, and I have to take a deep
breath and I feel it in my stomach before I've
even started. And that's just what telling this particular story is. UM.
(03:01):
About seven plus years ago now, I was living in Westchester,
living a very nice looking life, three great, difficult, hilarious children,
a dog and a cat, husband who was not only
sexy to me, but had a sexy job. And I
(03:26):
worked occasionally. I'm an actress, among other things. Um. I
had a semi great career where I worked but was
also able to be with the kids and family and
friends and all the all the things that looked really
good on Facebook and Instagram. And I was summer. My boys.
I have twin boys who were eleven at the time,
(03:48):
and they had just just gotten home from sleepaway camp. Um.
But I had an early morning shoot. So I was
in my car, actually left the house before anybody woke up,
which was very rare and very delightful. And so I
was in the car and my phone rang at five am,
and I was always already almost to work, and it
(04:11):
was my daughter calling, which was very already. It was like,
something's up because it's summer and it's five am. And
just the scream that I heard, Um, I knew immediately
something was very, very very wrong. And she let me
know when I could understand her. I couldn't even understand
(04:32):
her at first, but the police were in my house,
our house, and they were I didn't I didn't understand
at the time what was happening, and neither did she.
I said, hang on, sweetheart, let me just call your dad.
And I was like, what the hell is going on, babe?
Like nothing, I honestly had no idea what could possibly
be going on? And he said I can't talk, and
(04:55):
I was like, I mean you can't talk? Yeah, I
mean what? And then the police got on the phone
with me and said, um, we have reason to believe
there's material on a computer. I could barely even understand,
but at that point it became clear that there was
something illegal, perhaps on our computers, and they were taking them.
(05:16):
And then it became clear that my husband was being arrested.
And I still didn't understand what it was. UM. I
won't go through the whole story because we don't have time,
but I actually went to work. I kept going, which
is a little bit insane looking back, but I didn't
really understand. Still, my brother, thank god, was living really
(05:38):
close by and came and got my kids. I sent
my dad over to go help my husband and bring
him to a lawyer. And I still was like, this
must be some crazy kind of mistake. And uh, he
was arrested for downloading images of child pornography. And that
(06:04):
is the beginning of my story, the story, our story. UM.
I will say that within twenty four hours of finding
this information out, it was in the newspaper. And just
to have the worst thing that's ever happened happen in
(06:24):
real time and have it be public and digesting that
and managing that and figuring things out while the world
is watching, UM is something that I don't wish upon anyone.
But that's what happened, and and that began a very long,
(06:47):
arduous process of trying to trying to keep my kids okay,
trying to honestly keep my husband alive, even though in
those moments I didn't know who he was or what
was going to happen to our marriage or him or anything.
(07:08):
I am maybe because I lost my own mother when
I was sixteen, I just had a feeling that and
I still have this feeling that where there is breath,
there is hope, where someone is alive, there is room,
there's a very For me, there was a very poignant
point in your play. And as I said at the beginning,
(07:31):
your play has been um filmed by Steven Soderbergh, so
people will be able to if they haven't seen the play,
they will be able to kind of have this journey
with you when they see it. But there's a moment
in the play where you go to rehab with your husband,
still very conflicted, still trying to catch up with the
(07:54):
new reality that's your life. He went to rehab, and
then at one point during rehab there's something called family
Week where they invite the wives to come for five days.
And you said something which was very funny but yet
very insightful, which was you said, I see the people
that are visiting the alcoholics and the drug addicts. Why
(08:17):
did we have to get the bad addiction? Why couldn't
we get one of the cool ones? Really really, but
you forget, particularly living in our culture, that addiction shows
itself in many forms, and so you know, sex addiction
is an addiction like alcoholism. And for me being in
the audience, that sort of sort of changed the road
(08:40):
I was going down with you. And I want to
say now at this point in our conversation that he
downloaded some images. He's never touched a child. There's been
no so it's that's to me, that's an important distinction.
It's a very important distinction. And I'd also like to
say that it's a really difficult thing to talk about,
(09:02):
and I know there are people, um who are that's it.
We can't even have the discussion. It's too upsetting, it's
too clearly horrible. I want to be really clear and
say I think child pornography is horrible. My husband thinks
child pornography is horrible. There's no one that thinks what
he looked at is in any way okay or a
(09:23):
small thing, or that there are no victims. There are
actual victims of child pornography, and I think about the
victims all the time. There are organizations that help, and
REIGN is one of them, and I happen to now
have a lot of experience learning about sex addiction. And
(09:45):
one of the reasons I want to talk about it
is because nobody does talk about it. And yes, everyone
has their boundaries, and there are people who are very
very quick and loud to tell me that they would
never ever ever stay because spoiler alert, I am still
married to my husband, UM and that seems to be
(10:06):
the big headline in your life. Sure, that's the sexy
story to talk about. But I want to be really
clear before we go on. Yes, there was never any
physical touching of any child or person outside of my marriage,
and there was also never any contact because that's another
really big thing is that it's very easy on the
(10:27):
internet to um have intriguing with people, conversations with people
that was not part of my husband's acting out behavior.
And there are people who I'm not even saying that
I have a judgment about people who do whatever, but
in my particular case, for me, that was a very
(10:49):
important distinction early on, and while I was in no
way thrilled to hear that my husband was looking at
absolutely horrifying images. And I'm still all not okay with it.
There's never been anything in me that says that's okay.
But that is what happened. And that was an important, um,
an important thing to learn because I didn't know, quite honestly.
(11:13):
And I do talk about this in the show, and
I've talked about it with you. I didn't know my
husband was looking at any pornography. And I'm not I'm
not a super religious person. I live in and around
New York, I'm I'm in the entertainment industry. I'm aware
of a lot of things. And yet that was not
a part of our marriage. That was not a part
of something we talked about. It was a very very
(11:35):
very hidden thing for my husband. And as I learned
at Family Week and beyond, there is um a kind
of addiction to pornography where what gave you your hit
doesn't work anymore and uh. And I also learned at
Family Week, which by the way, I wasn't going to
(11:57):
go to at all because I was so furious. And
I also said, my kids have been completely traumatized. Now
their mom's going to take off no way, And I
had very wise, wonderful people around me saying, you've got
to go. You've got to go for your kids, you've
got to go for yourself. This is part of the
(12:18):
healing and you need to see what's going on. And
I still wasn't going to go. And then my daughter,
who was sixteen at the time, said to me, well,
didn't you make a vow to love dad and sickness
and in health? Dad's sick? And you know that was
pretty tough to um to argue with. That's a strong statement.
(12:42):
She's really amazing. She's probably mad right now that I'm
even mentioning her, but she's amazing. Um. I don't think
she knew, but she gave me the fortitude to keep
going and go and go to that place where I
was able to also fall apart, quite honestly, because I
had been trying to hold it together for my kids,
(13:04):
for the world, and suddenly I was in the desert
in Arizona and very privileged by the way. I understand
that not everybody has that opportunity. But there was no
one around except these other ladies who were married to
other kinds of sex addicts, and I was like, well,
what do I care? What they think. It turns out
they were some of the most incredible, funny, smart, empathic, religious, interesting,
(13:30):
just fascinating women. And that actually was incredibly important in
my own you know, I don't like the word journey,
but um, but being in the desert and being not
around anyone who knew you, especially my kids, anyone who
knew me, but also especially my kids, I just didn't
want them to to see. I'm sure they did. I'm
sure it wasn't as good as I think I was
(13:50):
at holding it together, but I didn't want to scream
and fall on the floor. And I did get to
do that, um, And I got to feel sad and
green and all the things that I just didn't have
a moment to feel because there was the house was
on fire. You know, there's no there's no talking about
what the meaning of this is morally or financially. There
(14:12):
was just no time I was I was actually trying
to keep things from falling down. And so in the desert.
The other thing I learned from not my husband telling me,
because I don't think I could have ever believed him
or listened, but very trained doctors saying talking about addiction,
which I know about, and I believe, but I didn't
(14:34):
believe in sex addiction because that just felt like a
really it felt like a joke or an excuse for
bad behavior. But here were these doctors saying, listen, we
believe that addicts are sick people, not bad people, and
that the worst thing you've done is not what defines you,
and the worst thing you've looked at in terms of
(14:54):
pornography is not necessarily what you actually want to do
in real life. And these were things that I needed
to hear in order to even begin to consider being married.
And they also said to me, along with a very
wise therapist, let's not figure out whether you're staying married
or not right now, because the last thing you have
(15:15):
the you can't even wrap your head around Wednesday. Let's
just put a pin in that and try to get
through the next six months and then we'll we'll meet again.
It's not you're It wasn't like I was going to
go on the dating sites, you know, in the next
ten minutes. And I had a really long, mostly good
(15:36):
marriage that had been happening for twenty years, and three
kids who loved and love their dad very very much,
and our families very in meshed I don't think that
allows you to stay no matter what, but it certainly
gave me pause when I didn't know what I wanted.
(15:56):
I knew I didn't want I didn't want to to aside,
and then maybe I stayed for another part of that,
for the kids to be to get their feet on
the ground, and then I got some extra time to
see what was happening, to see what this man that
I loved so much, so much, who was he? Was
(16:18):
that all a lie or was there an actual compulsion
that could be treated? Well. It's interesting because if I
told your story to somebody on the street, their initial
reaction would be, well, she left him, right, And there's
there's an anger that comes out when people go, well,
(16:39):
why didn't she leave him? Which is to me, the
reason our culture gets so stunted and so uh polarized
because we all jumped to conclusions and say, well, she
should have left him. I have no sympathy for her
because she stayed. But to me, the story of all
(17:02):
of this is the fact that you didn't leave your
husband because it's much easier to leave any situation. Let's
take a quick break and we're back. So you have
(17:27):
stayed in this marriage I have, and it has been
incredibly difficult. You have a partner who can't go to
birthday parties, can't walk the kids to school, all of
all the limitations that come with that kind of arrest.
And one of the things that you say is yes,
(17:48):
I'm still married today. Yeah, they do say that, and
we have a very different kind of marriage. I would
say we have a better marriage. We have a marriage
without secrets. We have a marriage that's authentic. We have
a marriage where I shouldn't have taken this for me
to learn certain things about myself. But UM, I don't
(18:08):
wish this certainly on anyone, but there is something about
having your life blow up that gives you an opportunity
to really look at yourself. And UM, I'm not a martyr.
I'm not a person that says, well, life's over, but
I'll stick it out for the kids. I actually, um,
(18:30):
I actually have allowed this person that I love to
get well and get better. And I just want to
make that clear. The reason maybe you've heard me say
I'm married today and I have a marriage and recovery
is that I don't have an interest in being with
a person who says, you know what, So what all
guys look at that, or yeah, I made a mistake,
(18:51):
So what That's not who I'm married to, and that's
not what I believe either. Um. I gave a person
who I believe is a good person an opportunity and
he has taken that opportunity. And you know, it's been
seven years when I wrote the show. I wrote it
(19:12):
really soon after, which seems a little bananas now, but
one of the reasons I wrote it was there wasn't
anybody talking about this and it was the loneliest time.
And I already mentioned that I lost my mom when
I was sixteen, which you can imagine was pretty lonely.
So I had I had a place of of trauma
(19:36):
and loneliness already, but this was a whole other level
because I just didn't think anybody had ever been through
this or could even possibly understand. And did you write
it to be as a like cathartic exercise? I mean,
why in that form? Why not dear diary? I mean,
why did you decide to write in a play for
(19:57):
when I was on the floor of my bathroom, you know, moaning, sobbing, screaming. Um,
I was really lost, and someone reached out to me,
who I did not know. And she had read about
my story in the newspaper, in the New York Post,
(20:20):
and thank you New York Post, um, including details that
weren't actually true. But that's a New York Post. That's
and and by the way, I now know that, I'm like,
oh wow, not everything is true. Um. And she had
was working with a friend of mine and somehow figured
out how to get like she found me. This is
your angel, as you call her in the place, this
is my angel. And she said hi. And I just
(20:44):
fell to my knees and said hi. And she said,
my story is not the same as yours, but it's
close enough. And I'm telling you your kids are going
to be okay. You're gonna be okay. It's possible. Your
husband's even gonna be okay. And I'm here and I
don't feel so sorry for you. I feel sorry with you.
And in that moment everything felt possible. And in the
(21:10):
ensuing months, as I got up off the floor, I
would say to her, what can I ever do? And
she said, just pay it forward, just do it for
someone else. And I think that's when I started writing.
I just knew and I didn't I'm not a good
enough writer. It turns out I'm a good writer. I
kind of knew that, but I'm not a good enough
writer to express what I wanted to express and I
(21:34):
I want. I trusted myself to be able to somehow
tell the story on a stage, because I wanted just
to show the messy parts, and I wanted to be
of service. I really did. As corny as that sounds,
I wanted to tell my story for all the people
who I thought needed to hear it. What was a
surprise to me was the people like you, and very
(21:58):
very many others whose stories were nothing like mine, who
came up to me after the show and said, my
sister died in a car accident, and overnight my life changed.
My brother is a drug addict. Overnight we got a
call that changed our life. You know, in a in
a second, what was my foundation fell out from under me.
(22:20):
And it was helpful for me to hear that that
happened to you too. It was helpful for me to
hear you didn't think you would ever laugh again, because
when stuff like this happens, you're supposed to be earnest
and thoughtful all the time. It was helpful to me
to hear that you found a higher power, because even
my angel was not able to make this better, like
(22:40):
I actually did need something deeper and stronger. So that's
there too. So I can't tell you exactly when the moment.
I mean, I certainly wasn't like this would make a
great show, but there was some part of me that
felt compelled to share it in a way. And I
have a very good friend who you know, one of
my best friends, who's a writer, a really good writer,
(23:02):
and she saw a very early reading and she said,
you know, it's beautiful and good for you, and I'm
proud of you. And you know you don't have to
be up there on that stage alone. You could add
almost like a Greek chorus, who plays because I kind
of play some of the other characters, and somebody could
play your husband, and some of the doctors and the neighbors.
And I said, and she's so brilliant. And I was
(23:25):
far be it from me to not take a note
from my wonderful writer friend. And I said, I know
that's not right. I know that part of and I
hate solo shows. They're so like, come down and see
me sing and dance about my midlife crisis, but I
just knew that being on the stage alone represented what
(23:45):
it felt like absolutely. So how did your family feel
about it? Uh? Huh, Well, I think my husband lost,
you know, the right to have too much say. But
that being said, he and I both very strong. We
feel that we're as sick as our secrets, and that
it's important to shine a light on things that are
(24:07):
in the dark and and the scary things and the
things that people don't want to talk about. In fact,
I believe that. Look in my experience and now I
have a lot of experience being around people with sex
addiction and various kinds. There's a lot of childhood trauma.
There's a lot of childhood abuse. And so if we
(24:28):
just throw people away and say, well, that person did that,
so they must be no good. Let's get rid of them,
and then we're we've solved the problem, Like we haven't
solved the problem of child pornography by my husband being
punished for that. I I am. I believe in punishing
people who participate in any way in child pornography, but
(24:48):
it's not going away because we shame people and out people.
There's a really, really big part of our society that
we need to talk about UM. So my husband was
down with UM. And he's also an artist. Although he's
he never worked another day as a director, producer after that,
but he is. He comes from a world of believing
(25:09):
that we take our pain and we make it into art.
So he saw the service in it. I think, my kids,
you'd have to speak to them. I tried to have
integrity and not and I say in the in the play,
I say, you know, this is my story to tell.
I'm trying not to tell their stories. I don't know
how to tell my story without including the fact that
(25:30):
I have three children, because that's a huge part of
the story. Yes it is. It's a whole other world,
and you're not telling it through their eyes, but you
have to. You are a woman with three kids and
this happened to and it imploded all of your lives absolutely,
And every choice that I've made has been based on
(25:51):
being a mother, every choice that I've made, and doing
this show was really hard and my um for them
and I will I think it's okay for me to
say that my daughter really did not want me to
do it, and it was a very difficult thing and
it was part of I don't think I had ever
done anything honestly that my kids didn't like I mean anything,
(26:17):
And um, I mean, of course they were annoyed by
me all the time, you know, but but really this
was a very big thing and we had to talk
about We had to talk about shame. And you know,
if shame is the reason not to do something, I
don't know that I agree with that. I believe that
telling this story is a love story about a family,
(26:40):
and I believe that telling the story ultimately helps my family.
If I actually believe that it would hurt my kids
to tell this story, I wouldn't do it. But that
doesn't mean that they agree with that. Now, my daughter,
you know, all my kids, My boys were eleven and
now they're eighteen. My daughter was sixteen and now she's
twenty three. So everybody's everybody changes, but our family is
(27:04):
really strong now. And I would like to think that
I have kids who are empaths, who have less judgment,
who understand nuance, and who will give people in their
life a chance to redeem themselves, not be walked over,
(27:29):
not be abused, but who might see an opportunity for
grace and radical acceptance. Yeah, I mean radical acceptance with boundaries.
You know, there's a lot of therapy, there's a lot
of talking. Um. We talked about things that I don't
think I ever would have talked about, but I'm glad
(27:49):
to talk about them. I think every mom should be
talking to their kids about pornography. I don't know that
I would have I had to, And of course this
is extreme, but it also put me in front of
a world that I was in some denial about. Um,
not just in my own household, but in the in
(28:11):
the world. Did your husband see the show? Yes? Early on, Yeah,
he told me that he was going to see it
and that he wasn't going to tell me when I
asked if he wanted to read the script, and he
said no. And one night I got home from doing
a two show day, which was extremely It was really
(28:32):
it was really exhausting. We were in previews still and
and I came home. It was a Wednesday, and I
was talking about somebody who had been there that night
and some blah blah blah, and you know, one of
the projections didn't work and this and that, and then
when I finished my monologue, he said, I saw the
(28:53):
show this afternoon, and I just took my breath away
because I was like, oh my god, is he okay?
Was kind of my first thought actually, And I said,
how you do it? And he said, it's really beautiful
and it was really hard, and I have a couple
of notes and I said, thank you very much, I
don't want your notes. And we went to bed that night,
(29:16):
and in the middle of the night, I was like,
what are your notes? Um, Because you know, he's a
good director. Must have been hard, hard for him to watch.
But also I'm glad he saw it. I mean, we
don't get the opportunity to be so raw and speak
our truth and sort of show strangers and non strangers
(29:39):
what we went through. You know, we're not all performers
that way. So yeah, I think I wanted to do
that for the partners of I mean for the partners
of anybody, because it's easy to look at me and
go she stayed. And then it's like, and believe me,
in ninety minutes you don't fully understand why. But there's
(29:59):
a lot more to it, and there's it's not like
and I never thought about leaving. It's like, no, I
thought about leaving every second, And no, I was incredibly
hurt and angry and scared and disgusted and all of
the things that you think I might be. But I'm
not going to be able to say that to you
in a seven minute meet and greet on the street
(30:20):
or the course of you or wherever I go. But
I also think there's a real issue in this world.
And I think women have this more than anyone. You know,
I am. I'm a real fan of twelve Step, and
it's free, and it's incredibly helpful for me in my life,
and you're not really supposed to talk about it, so
I won't get into the details, but I will say
(30:42):
that it has saved my life. And I will say
that the twelve Step programs that help partners, spouses, brothers, sisters, mothers,
fathers of people who struggle with addiction, you know, the
Alanan's and a c s, and the people who struggle
(31:05):
with someone else in their life and then need to
get help for themselves but don't want to talk about
their partner or their son or their mother, so then
they're keeping the secret and then they're getting sick, you know.
And so I think I wanted to do this. There's
even a lot of help for men who are and
(31:26):
and there are women as well, but mostly in my experience,
men who are sex addict and poor an addict, and
there's very very few people talking about help for the
betrayed partner. And if my husband wants to go to
a meeting, well this is pre COVID, but even still
on zoom um form a sex addiction twelve step meeting,
(31:47):
and we live around the New York area, I would
say there are a hundred meetings a week that he
could choose from, and I would say for the partners,
there's about two. And I know that all those people
going to the other meetings many of them have partners.
So it's not that there's not people affected by this,
but there's so much shame, Like we all have these
(32:10):
same feelings, whether our stories are the same or not,
and with sex addiction it is not the same, Like
there's just something about this. But even if it's not
an illegal sex addiction acting out, the shame that the
women feel about staying or even just carrying it is
(32:31):
so exhausting that it becomes this really lonely world where
these badass, brilliant women either they leave but they don't
really want to leave, or they leave but they haven't
gotten the help they need, or they stay but they're
so angry, and they're like, I'm going to punish you
(32:51):
for the rest of our days, but I'm gonna let
you stay. And that's no life for anybody. I'm not
saying I feel sorry for the guys. I'm saying these
women are like, they want so badly to kind of
move forward, but their friends don't know their secrets, and
their husbands are being punished because they're so scared to
not be angry. I've been that person. I'm scared to
(33:12):
not be angry. And you know, that same angel said
to me early days, Oh, you're so lucky that your
story was in the newspaper. And I was like, um, no,
I'm not. It is really not a good thing. And
everyone's looking at me, and everyone's looking at my kids,
and everyone knows, and and she said here's why. She said,
(33:36):
it's not your job or the kid's job to do
the dance of keeping this a secret. And if you
had been given that choice, you would have And I agree,
I would not have done the show. I don't think.
I mean, who the hell knows, but my story, you know,
the show is called accidentally brave, because I'm not that brave.
But it was already and it was already out there.
(33:58):
I don't know that I would be going, hey, um,
you may not know this, but let me tell you
what happened. So the good news is about my kids
is that they're doing really well right now and their kids,
you know, and every time anything happens or they have
a feeling or an emotion, or a bad day or
a bad month, I am going to probably forever ask
(34:21):
the question, was it because of the thing? Was it
because of the trauma? And then I talked to my
friends who have had, you know, no issues. Their lives
are great, and their kids are also having anxiety and
all kinds of other issues that you know we all
deal with. But but um, but really we have had
(34:41):
moments of of joy and togetherness. And you know, my
husband has worked and continues to work at his own
recovery and wants to do right by the world and
right by me and his family and and many many,
many many people that he let down. Um, it's not
(35:04):
an easy thing to walk through the world with the
very worst thing that you've ever done, that everyone knows
that you did, that you're wearing the T shirt every day. Yeah,
And you know, like I said, I it's hard to
talk about this because it's a certain kind of His
behavior was so aberrant and so horrible and scary that
(35:30):
a lot of people just can't see past that. And
I had to I didn't have to say it was okay,
but it happened. So it put me in a land
where I felt that in order to go forward, I
needed to learn and educate myself in order to make
good decisions. Of course, you know, listening to you talk
(35:53):
about it, you can't help but think yourself, what would
I do? What would you know? I mean, and I've
been married for over twenty years and I love my husband.
I I can't fathom it. But it would be easier
to especially if it wasn't in the paper. It would
be easier to run away, you know, like moved to
(36:14):
outside Reno and just pretend it never happened and start
a new life. But as you said before, and the
unfortunate thing about our culture is that just perpetuates the problem.
And if we don't talk about it, and if we
don't hear other people's stories, we will always slam the
(36:36):
door shut on even the subject of it. And the
porn industry is a multibillion dollar industry. So let's be
honest about that. That's right, let's take a short break.
(36:58):
Welcome back to Go Gali. I'm curious why, you know,
when you think about opiods and drugs that ultimately human
beings blame the drug industry, right, like you think now
after with all these opiods and dope sick and everything,
it's like, how dare these pharmaceuticals, you know, with cigarette smoking?
(37:21):
How dare these big companies. Why isn't everybody going, how
dare these pornography billion dollar things? H And because what
they do is they blame. They blame the person that's watching.
You know, there's something wrong with him. And let's round
up the guys. Somebody's feeding all these people. It is insane, right,
(37:43):
that's the big lie in a sense. Yeah, but it is.
It's like, you know, pornography is being fed by the
way through Fortnite to young boys. I mean, so why
are we looking at this? Why are we just going, Oh,
he's gross, you know, put him in jail for two years.
He's gross and he did that. They well, what are
you watching? What porn are you watching? Because if you're
(38:07):
watching something and you're saying that girl's eighteen, but she's
playing a thirteen year old, Like is that better? Like
it's all terrible, or she's twenty, but we're tying her
up and you know, whatever it is. But you know, look,
I am not making any excuses for my husband, and
he has been punished severely and continues to be punished
(38:30):
by society, by the law, financially, everything else. That being said,
I think the number one search in porn sites is babysitter,
porn and I and that's not okay either. And by
the way, now it's not just porn. If you're on
the porn sites, you can click and then you're talking
to someone and then click and then you're meeting someone
(38:51):
and it's it's just it's it's so easy. But like
we just want to shame the guys. And I get it.
And anyway, you know, I've learned a lot about pornography
and I think it's really dangerous. And I'm talking about
legal pornography. Um, I think our kids are learning sex
(39:12):
ed from it. And it is free, and it is accessible,
and it is anonymous, and it is a real issue
and there are a lot of good men who are
trying to actually not cheat, and that is allowed. Like,
is pornography cheating And that's a whole other I mean,
(39:33):
we could talk about that for us, but yes, is
it cheating. But but also we live in a world
now with the Internet where a seven year old boy
can type in boobies and get to the dark Web
and no time. So guess what a seven year old
boy can type in the White House and get to pornography.
I mean, it's really, really, it's a hugely complicated subject
(39:56):
and I am certainly not here to say I know
the answer, but I do know that it's harder for
a kid to get a beer than it is to
get to hardcore pornography. And I do believe from my
experience that pornography is addictive, and not everybody, just like
not everybody gets addicted to gambling, and not everybody gets
(40:18):
addicted to binging and purging and all other kinds of things.
There are people who that is their numbing out and
then it stops working, And then what do you do
when your drug stops working? Um, you know, whenever I
talk about this, I hear this voice in the back
of my head going, Maddie there's going to be people
saying you're making an excuse, You're an idiot, you know,
(40:39):
but so be it. I just really want to I
want to talk about it because it needs to be
talked about, I think, and I want there to be
some hope. I also think that my story maybe provides
some hope to men, because I think a lot of
men are keeping this all kinds of secrets because they
(41:02):
believe if they tell the secret, then their life will
fall apart and their family will fall apart. And then
in keeping the secret, it can get more shameful and
spiral down. And I'm not guaranteeing anything, but I wish.
I wish that my husband had looked for help. He
was in therapy, He had a wife that loved him
(41:23):
and was seemingly an understanding person, but he would say
he was so ashamed. Of course, like I think it's
easy and I love you and this is no offense
to you. I think it's easy to ask about the
marriage and to go, well, how did you stay and
why did you stay? Just like people say, did you
lose friends? Yes, I lost friends, But another question is
did you gain friends? And who are your real friends?
(41:46):
And yeah, yeah, look who my freaking friends like. I
have a really really beautiful, intense, difficult life, but it's
authentic and the people in my life are there and
they know me. And I never want you to know
my messiest parts. Ever, I wanted you to know just
the little bit of the mess enough that it would
be adorable. But this is not adorable. I get it.
(42:09):
I would want to know the same question. I would
want to talk about it and look at it and
ask all the questions. But I think what is also
interesting and important is that there are all these women
out there who thought that their husband and I can
only speak for myself, so I will. My husband became
my higher power. When I was anxious, he calmed me down,
(42:31):
when I was happy. He was who I told the
good news too. When I had any kind of problem,
I knew he would be there for me, and suddenly
that was gone. And that happens for all different kinds
of reasons. So I think what I would like to
give to people is just a toolkit for how I
got from there to here, and not because my husband's okay,
(42:54):
because I had to learn to be okay, because I
had to make friendships that were stronger than what they
ever had had to be because I had to learn
how to stand on my own two feet and then
say I choose to be in this marriage or not
that I don't need to be, and not to sound
a holier than now because I'm not. I loved having
(43:17):
someone else be the person that answered the questions and
took care of me. I was exhausted, even at twenty
three years old. When I met him, I was like, finally, finally, finally,
and it broke, you know, broke my heart a million
pieces when he in my when he betrayed me, when
(43:40):
he betrayed that trust, I was completely shattered. And I'm
not unshattered now. I'm still I'm still working on that,
you know. But but I learned, I learned a lot.
I've learned a lot. I'm out of my marriage. I'm
(44:01):
not just proud of myself. I'm proud of my kids.
I'm proud of my husband. My dog was the best
and never wavered, you know. But I am. I think
in some ways, Ali, I am. I do think I
did a good thing for my family. I think in
some ways I like held the car up. You know,
they say the moms can hold the car up. And
(44:24):
now what I'm dealing with is my kids have gone
out from under the car. They're okay, they're like off
living their lives. They've told their friends, are not told
that they've got their own stuff. And I'm still holding
up the car because I'm not sure how so I
in my own PTSD, I'm going, is it okay to
(44:47):
set the car down? And then what you know? And
I feel like in some ways I've got like a
year and a half of let down to go. Maybe,
but I just dropped both my boys at college, so
maybe this is the time. So you're an empty nest
or now right? I mean ish, you know, like the
minute the nest is. And that's another thing with my
story being so public. I had someone say to me
(45:08):
just the other day, well, now you can get divorce. Wow.
And you know, I don't think anybody would say that
somebody else other than me, but um, I kind of
hurt my feelings and it took my breath away for
a minute. And but it was just an opinion of like, oh, well,
you stayed for the kids, and you know, like I
(45:30):
said that that may have been a truth at the beginning,
and we do share three children. That's not nothing that's
that's forever. That's whether you stay married or not. I'm
sure you received a lot of opinions over the past
seven years, all kinds of opinions. And one of the
reasons that I wanted you on and one of the
reasons that when accidentally Brave comes out and in the
(45:53):
meantime someone can listen to it on audible, is there's
a story here, a bigger story that can help all
kinds of people, like we've been talking about. And that's
why I was so moved and and why I feel
like it's a story that has nothing to do and
(46:16):
yet everything to do with addiction. But it's about a family.
As you said. Yeah, so Mattie, where are you now?
I mean my room? Um I am let's see seven
years later, Um, I am writing more, i am healing more.
(46:40):
I'm still acting, I'm still mothering. I am still looking
at my own part of everything and trying to be
a decent person with integrity, authenticity, some boundaries, and a
(47:06):
little bit of humor and even a tiny bit of delight.
That's sometimes that's where I am all within forty seven minutes.
But um, I'm just a work in progress. But it's
it's it's not done. And you know, when my mom
died and I was like, okay, it's been a year,
(47:28):
it's time to it's no one wants to hear about
this anymore, and it's time to be okay. And of
course I look back at that seventeen year old girl
and say, well, poor you. You know that was crazy.
But in a way, I'm here to tell you today that,
like I said, I can also today talk about mascara
and other things whereas I couldn't, you know, in the
throes of everything. But it still affects me, um, and
(47:54):
my heart is still healing. It's and I'm scared of
what you'll think. Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, But I
want to tell you that I'm very thankful and grateful
that you came on and talked about it. I just am.
I love you so much. I think it's important. You know,
(48:14):
it's it's uncomfortable for me to talk about It's uncomfortable
for me, but yet I know, yeah, we got to
have these conversations. We do. I know, and you do.
I think you're an incredibly courageous woman. Well, I am
grateful for your support, accidentally, brave, thank you for listening.
(48:39):
To go ask Ali if you are someone who knows
experiencing sexual abuse or trauma. Contact rain are a I
n N the Rate Abuse and Incest National Network at
one eight hundred six five six hope. That's one eight
six five six four six seven three. Just to be clear,
(49:00):
is an ongoing debate in the mental health field about
sex and pornography addiction. While some therapists may refer to
compulsive behaviors as sex quote unquote addiction, strictly speaking, the
struggles are not officially considered a disorder or an addiction.
Other therapists believe the behaviors are actually symptoms of personal
or psychological problems. But luckily, while the experts figure it out,
(49:24):
treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy are available and effective. For
more info and what you've heard in this episode, including
the link to Mattie's play Accidentally Brave and Audible, check
out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review,
Go ask Alli, and follow me on social media on
Instagram at the Real Alli Wentworth Now. If you'd like
(49:46):
to ask me a question or suggest a guest or
a topic to dig into, I'd love to hear from you.
And there's a bunch of ways you can do it.
You can call or text to me at three to
three three six four six three five six, or you
can email a voice memo right from your phone them
to go ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com and
if you leave a question, you just might hear it.
I'm Go Ask Allie, Go Ask Gali is a production
(50:15):
of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I heart
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favorite shows.
Welcome to Go, Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. When I have
been with friends and that happened and I paid my pants,
I did lose the room, they did leave. I saw
her light up and I was like, I'm just going
to work. But we are here until one of our
last reps. I was just the one that was meant
(00:21):
to take care of mamma. It's for me to remember
every single day is that I always have a choice.
Everyone always has a choice. Whenever somebody says no, you can't,
or there's no rules for you, or you have to
look like this, I go. I'll show you. I'll show you.
(00:42):
Welcome to Go, ask Allie. I'm Alli Wentworth. You know
I've talked about stories. I like to dig into this
being a master class where I get to learn about
people and their experiences and their stories. I had a
conversation with my guest today before we started the podcast,
and one of the things I talked to her about
was the fact that she gets a lot of hate
(01:04):
and people get triggered by her story. So it's important
to say that within our conversation, we'll be talking about
child pornography, and addiction. So I just wanted to send
out a warning to all of you listeners that this
conversation can be very difficult and for some people it
might bring up a lot of rage and a lot
of feelings. Maddie Corman is an actor, teacher, and writer
(01:28):
and listen, if you grew up in the nineteen eighties,
you definitely saw her as a teenager in Seven Minutes
in Heaven in some kind of wonderful. Since then, she
stayed incredibly busy in TV and film and theater on
Broadway and off. Maddie also wrote and starred in a
full length play based on her life called Accidentally Brave,
which has been filmed by producer director Steven Soderberg, and
(01:49):
for her play, Maddie was nominated for the Outer Critics
Circle Award and when the Off Broadway Alliance Award for
Best Solo Performance. So, Maddie, first of all, I'm I'm
so happy to see your face. I came to see
your play Accidentally Brave off Broadway, and I was so
(02:11):
moved by it. I was so affected by it. Um,
we didn't know each other before that, and after I
saw the play, I stayed till the end because I
wanted to hug you, and I pushed aside all your
other friends so that I could get in in front
of the line. Um, before we go into it, if
(02:35):
you feel comfortable, yeah, why don't you tell the story?
Is if you're telling the story of accidentally brave okay. Um.
You know I'll start by saying, I've now told the
story a lot of times, and yet here we are,
seven years later, and I have to take a deep
breath and I feel it in my stomach before I've
even started. And that's just what telling this particular story is. UM.
(03:01):
About seven plus years ago now, I was living in Westchester,
living a very nice looking life, three great, difficult, hilarious children,
a dog and a cat, husband who was not only
sexy to me, but had a sexy job. And I
(03:26):
worked occasionally. I'm an actress, among other things. Um. I
had a semi great career where I worked but was
also able to be with the kids and family and
friends and all the all the things that looked really
good on Facebook and Instagram. And I was summer. My boys.
I have twin boys who were eleven at the time,
(03:48):
and they had just just gotten home from sleepaway camp. Um.
But I had an early morning shoot. So I was
in my car, actually left the house before anybody woke up,
which was very rare and very delightful. And so I
was in the car and my phone rang at five am,
and I was always already almost to work, and it
(04:11):
was my daughter calling, which was very already. It was like,
something's up because it's summer and it's five am. And
just the scream that I heard, Um, I knew immediately
something was very, very very wrong. And she let me
know when I could understand her. I couldn't even understand
(04:32):
her at first, but the police were in my house,
our house, and they were I didn't I didn't understand
at the time what was happening, and neither did she.
I said, hang on, sweetheart, let me just call your dad.
And I was like, what the hell is going on, babe?
Like nothing, I honestly had no idea what could possibly
be going on? And he said I can't talk, and
(04:55):
I was like, I mean you can't talk? Yeah, I
mean what? And then the police got on the phone
with me and said, um, we have reason to believe
there's material on a computer. I could barely even understand,
but at that point it became clear that there was
something illegal, perhaps on our computers, and they were taking them.
(05:16):
And then it became clear that my husband was being arrested.
And I still didn't understand what it was. UM. I
won't go through the whole story because we don't have time,
but I actually went to work. I kept going, which
is a little bit insane looking back, but I didn't
really understand. Still, my brother, thank god, was living really
(05:38):
close by and came and got my kids. I sent
my dad over to go help my husband and bring
him to a lawyer. And I still was like, this
must be some crazy kind of mistake. And uh, he
was arrested for downloading images of child pornography. And that
(06:04):
is the beginning of my story, the story, our story. UM.
I will say that within twenty four hours of finding
this information out, it was in the newspaper. And just
to have the worst thing that's ever happened happen in
(06:24):
real time and have it be public and digesting that
and managing that and figuring things out while the world
is watching, UM is something that I don't wish upon anyone.
But that's what happened, and and that began a very long,
(06:47):
arduous process of trying to trying to keep my kids okay,
trying to honestly keep my husband alive, even though in
those moments I didn't know who he was or what
was going to happen to our marriage or him or anything.
(07:08):
I am maybe because I lost my own mother when
I was sixteen, I just had a feeling that and
I still have this feeling that where there is breath,
there is hope, where someone is alive, there is room,
there's a very For me, there was a very poignant
point in your play. And as I said at the beginning,
(07:31):
your play has been um filmed by Steven Soderbergh, so
people will be able to if they haven't seen the play,
they will be able to kind of have this journey
with you when they see it. But there's a moment
in the play where you go to rehab with your husband,
still very conflicted, still trying to catch up with the
(07:54):
new reality that's your life. He went to rehab, and
then at one point during rehab there's something called family
Week where they invite the wives to come for five days.
And you said something which was very funny but yet
very insightful, which was you said, I see the people
that are visiting the alcoholics and the drug addicts. Why
(08:17):
did we have to get the bad addiction? Why couldn't
we get one of the cool ones? Really really, but
you forget, particularly living in our culture, that addiction shows
itself in many forms, and so you know, sex addiction
is an addiction like alcoholism. And for me being in
the audience, that sort of sort of changed the road
(08:40):
I was going down with you. And I want to
say now at this point in our conversation that he
downloaded some images. He's never touched a child. There's been
no so it's that's to me, that's an important distinction.
It's a very important distinction. And I'd also like to
say that it's a really difficult thing to talk about,
(09:02):
and I know there are people, um who are that's it.
We can't even have the discussion. It's too upsetting, it's
too clearly horrible. I want to be really clear and
say I think child pornography is horrible. My husband thinks
child pornography is horrible. There's no one that thinks what
he looked at is in any way okay or a
(09:23):
small thing, or that there are no victims. There are
actual victims of child pornography, and I think about the
victims all the time. There are organizations that help, and
REIGN is one of them, and I happen to now
have a lot of experience learning about sex addiction. And
(09:45):
one of the reasons I want to talk about it
is because nobody does talk about it. And yes, everyone
has their boundaries, and there are people who are very
very quick and loud to tell me that they would
never ever ever stay because spoiler alert, I am still
married to my husband, UM and that seems to be
(10:06):
the big headline in your life. Sure, that's the sexy
story to talk about. But I want to be really
clear before we go on. Yes, there was never any
physical touching of any child or person outside of my marriage,
and there was also never any contact because that's another
really big thing is that it's very easy on the
(10:27):
internet to um have intriguing with people, conversations with people
that was not part of my husband's acting out behavior.
And there are people who I'm not even saying that
I have a judgment about people who do whatever, but
in my particular case, for me, that was a very
(10:49):
important distinction early on, and while I was in no
way thrilled to hear that my husband was looking at
absolutely horrifying images. And I'm still all not okay with it.
There's never been anything in me that says that's okay.
But that is what happened. And that was an important, um,
an important thing to learn because I didn't know, quite honestly.
(11:13):
And I do talk about this in the show, and
I've talked about it with you. I didn't know my
husband was looking at any pornography. And I'm not I'm
not a super religious person. I live in and around
New York, I'm I'm in the entertainment industry. I'm aware
of a lot of things. And yet that was not
a part of our marriage. That was not a part
of something we talked about. It was a very very
(11:35):
very hidden thing for my husband. And as I learned
at Family Week and beyond, there is um a kind
of addiction to pornography where what gave you your hit
doesn't work anymore and uh. And I also learned at
Family Week, which by the way, I wasn't going to
(11:57):
go to at all because I was so furious. And
I also said, my kids have been completely traumatized. Now
their mom's going to take off no way, And I
had very wise, wonderful people around me saying, you've got
to go. You've got to go for your kids, you've
got to go for yourself. This is part of the
(12:18):
healing and you need to see what's going on. And
I still wasn't going to go. And then my daughter,
who was sixteen at the time, said to me, well,
didn't you make a vow to love dad and sickness
and in health? Dad's sick? And you know that was
pretty tough to um to argue with. That's a strong statement.
(12:42):
She's really amazing. She's probably mad right now that I'm
even mentioning her, but she's amazing. Um. I don't think
she knew, but she gave me the fortitude to keep
going and go and go to that place where I
was able to also fall apart, quite honestly, because I
had been trying to hold it together for my kids,
(13:04):
for the world, and suddenly I was in the desert
in Arizona and very privileged by the way. I understand
that not everybody has that opportunity. But there was no
one around except these other ladies who were married to
other kinds of sex addicts, and I was like, well,
what do I care? What they think. It turns out
they were some of the most incredible, funny, smart, empathic, religious, interesting,
(13:30):
just fascinating women. And that actually was incredibly important in
my own you know, I don't like the word journey,
but um, but being in the desert and being not
around anyone who knew you, especially my kids, anyone who
knew me, but also especially my kids, I just didn't
want them to to see. I'm sure they did. I'm
sure it wasn't as good as I think I was
(13:50):
at holding it together, but I didn't want to scream
and fall on the floor. And I did get to
do that, um, And I got to feel sad and
green and all the things that I just didn't have
a moment to feel because there was the house was
on fire. You know, there's no there's no talking about
what the meaning of this is morally or financially. There
(14:12):
was just no time I was I was actually trying
to keep things from falling down. And so in the desert.
The other thing I learned from not my husband telling me,
because I don't think I could have ever believed him
or listened, but very trained doctors saying talking about addiction,
which I know about, and I believe, but I didn't
(14:34):
believe in sex addiction because that just felt like a
really it felt like a joke or an excuse for
bad behavior. But here were these doctors saying, listen, we
believe that addicts are sick people, not bad people, and
that the worst thing you've done is not what defines you,
and the worst thing you've looked at in terms of
(14:54):
pornography is not necessarily what you actually want to do
in real life. And these were things that I needed
to hear in order to even begin to consider being married.
And they also said to me, along with a very
wise therapist, let's not figure out whether you're staying married
or not right now, because the last thing you have
(15:15):
the you can't even wrap your head around Wednesday. Let's
just put a pin in that and try to get
through the next six months and then we'll we'll meet again.
It's not you're It wasn't like I was going to
go on the dating sites, you know, in the next
ten minutes. And I had a really long, mostly good
(15:36):
marriage that had been happening for twenty years, and three
kids who loved and love their dad very very much,
and our families very in meshed I don't think that
allows you to stay no matter what, but it certainly
gave me pause when I didn't know what I wanted.
(15:56):
I knew I didn't want I didn't want to to aside,
and then maybe I stayed for another part of that,
for the kids to be to get their feet on
the ground, and then I got some extra time to
see what was happening, to see what this man that
I loved so much, so much, who was he? Was
(16:18):
that all a lie or was there an actual compulsion
that could be treated? Well. It's interesting because if I
told your story to somebody on the street, their initial
reaction would be, well, she left him, right, And there's
there's an anger that comes out when people go, well,
(16:39):
why didn't she leave him? Which is to me, the
reason our culture gets so stunted and so uh polarized
because we all jumped to conclusions and say, well, she
should have left him. I have no sympathy for her
because she stayed. But to me, the story of all
(17:02):
of this is the fact that you didn't leave your
husband because it's much easier to leave any situation. Let's
take a quick break and we're back. So you have
(17:27):
stayed in this marriage I have, and it has been
incredibly difficult. You have a partner who can't go to
birthday parties, can't walk the kids to school, all of
all the limitations that come with that kind of arrest.
And one of the things that you say is yes,
(17:48):
I'm still married today. Yeah, they do say that, and
we have a very different kind of marriage. I would
say we have a better marriage. We have a marriage
without secrets. We have a marriage that's authentic. We have
a marriage where I shouldn't have taken this for me
to learn certain things about myself. But UM, I don't
(18:08):
wish this certainly on anyone, but there is something about
having your life blow up that gives you an opportunity
to really look at yourself. And UM, I'm not a martyr.
I'm not a person that says, well, life's over, but
I'll stick it out for the kids. I actually, um,
(18:30):
I actually have allowed this person that I love to
get well and get better. And I just want to
make that clear. The reason maybe you've heard me say
I'm married today and I have a marriage and recovery
is that I don't have an interest in being with
a person who says, you know what, So what all
guys look at that, or yeah, I made a mistake,
(18:51):
So what That's not who I'm married to, and that's
not what I believe either. Um. I gave a person
who I believe is a good person an opportunity and
he has taken that opportunity. And you know, it's been
seven years when I wrote the show. I wrote it
(19:12):
really soon after, which seems a little bananas now, but
one of the reasons I wrote it was there wasn't
anybody talking about this and it was the loneliest time.
And I already mentioned that I lost my mom when
I was sixteen, which you can imagine was pretty lonely.
So I had I had a place of of trauma
(19:36):
and loneliness already, but this was a whole other level
because I just didn't think anybody had ever been through
this or could even possibly understand. And did you write
it to be as a like cathartic exercise? I mean,
why in that form? Why not dear diary? I mean,
why did you decide to write in a play for
(19:57):
when I was on the floor of my bathroom, you know, moaning, sobbing, screaming. Um,
I was really lost, and someone reached out to me,
who I did not know. And she had read about
my story in the newspaper, in the New York Post,
(20:20):
and thank you New York Post, um, including details that
weren't actually true. But that's a New York Post. That's
and and by the way, I now know that, I'm like,
oh wow, not everything is true. Um. And she had
was working with a friend of mine and somehow figured
out how to get like she found me. This is
your angel, as you call her in the place, this
is my angel. And she said hi. And I just
(20:44):
fell to my knees and said hi. And she said,
my story is not the same as yours, but it's
close enough. And I'm telling you your kids are going
to be okay. You're gonna be okay. It's possible. Your
husband's even gonna be okay. And I'm here and I
don't feel so sorry for you. I feel sorry with you.
And in that moment everything felt possible. And in the
(21:10):
ensuing months, as I got up off the floor, I
would say to her, what can I ever do? And
she said, just pay it forward, just do it for
someone else. And I think that's when I started writing.
I just knew and I didn't I'm not a good
enough writer. It turns out I'm a good writer. I
kind of knew that, but I'm not a good enough
writer to express what I wanted to express and I
(21:34):
I want. I trusted myself to be able to somehow
tell the story on a stage, because I wanted just
to show the messy parts, and I wanted to be
of service. I really did. As corny as that sounds,
I wanted to tell my story for all the people
who I thought needed to hear it. What was a
surprise to me was the people like you, and very
(21:58):
very many others whose stories were nothing like mine, who
came up to me after the show and said, my
sister died in a car accident, and overnight my life changed.
My brother is a drug addict. Overnight we got a
call that changed our life. You know, in a in
a second, what was my foundation fell out from under me.
(22:20):
And it was helpful for me to hear that that
happened to you too. It was helpful for me to
hear you didn't think you would ever laugh again, because
when stuff like this happens, you're supposed to be earnest
and thoughtful all the time. It was helpful to me
to hear that you found a higher power, because even
my angel was not able to make this better, like
(22:40):
I actually did need something deeper and stronger. So that's
there too. So I can't tell you exactly when the moment.
I mean, I certainly wasn't like this would make a
great show, but there was some part of me that
felt compelled to share it in a way. And I
have a very good friend who you know, one of
my best friends, who's a writer, a really good writer,
(23:02):
and she saw a very early reading and she said,
you know, it's beautiful and good for you, and I'm
proud of you. And you know you don't have to
be up there on that stage alone. You could add
almost like a Greek chorus, who plays because I kind
of play some of the other characters, and somebody could
play your husband, and some of the doctors and the neighbors.
And I said, and she's so brilliant. And I was
(23:25):
far be it from me to not take a note
from my wonderful writer friend. And I said, I know
that's not right. I know that part of and I
hate solo shows. They're so like, come down and see
me sing and dance about my midlife crisis, but I
just knew that being on the stage alone represented what
(23:45):
it felt like absolutely. So how did your family feel
about it? Uh? Huh, Well, I think my husband lost,
you know, the right to have too much say. But
that being said, he and I both very strong. We
feel that we're as sick as our secrets, and that
it's important to shine a light on things that are
(24:07):
in the dark and and the scary things and the
things that people don't want to talk about. In fact,
I believe that. Look in my experience and now I
have a lot of experience being around people with sex
addiction and various kinds. There's a lot of childhood trauma.
There's a lot of childhood abuse. And so if we
(24:28):
just throw people away and say, well, that person did that,
so they must be no good. Let's get rid of them,
and then we're we've solved the problem, Like we haven't
solved the problem of child pornography by my husband being
punished for that. I I am. I believe in punishing
people who participate in any way in child pornography, but
(24:48):
it's not going away because we shame people and out people.
There's a really, really big part of our society that
we need to talk about UM. So my husband was
down with UM. And he's also an artist. Although he's
he never worked another day as a director, producer after that,
but he is. He comes from a world of believing
(25:09):
that we take our pain and we make it into art.
So he saw the service in it. I think, my kids,
you'd have to speak to them. I tried to have
integrity and not and I say in the in the play,
I say, you know, this is my story to tell.
I'm trying not to tell their stories. I don't know
how to tell my story without including the fact that
(25:30):
I have three children, because that's a huge part of
the story. Yes it is. It's a whole other world,
and you're not telling it through their eyes, but you
have to. You are a woman with three kids and
this happened to and it imploded all of your lives absolutely,
And every choice that I've made has been based on
(25:51):
being a mother, every choice that I've made, and doing
this show was really hard and my um for them
and I will I think it's okay for me to
say that my daughter really did not want me to
do it, and it was a very difficult thing and
it was part of I don't think I had ever
done anything honestly that my kids didn't like I mean anything,
(26:17):
And um, I mean, of course they were annoyed by
me all the time, you know, but but really this
was a very big thing and we had to talk
about We had to talk about shame. And you know,
if shame is the reason not to do something, I
don't know that I agree with that. I believe that
telling this story is a love story about a family,
(26:40):
and I believe that telling the story ultimately helps my family.
If I actually believe that it would hurt my kids
to tell this story, I wouldn't do it. But that
doesn't mean that they agree with that. Now, my daughter,
you know, all my kids, My boys were eleven and
now they're eighteen. My daughter was sixteen and now she's
twenty three. So everybody's everybody changes, but our family is
(27:04):
really strong now. And I would like to think that
I have kids who are empaths, who have less judgment,
who understand nuance, and who will give people in their
life a chance to redeem themselves, not be walked over,
(27:29):
not be abused, but who might see an opportunity for
grace and radical acceptance. Yeah, I mean radical acceptance with boundaries.
You know, there's a lot of therapy, there's a lot
of talking. Um. We talked about things that I don't
think I ever would have talked about, but I'm glad
(27:49):
to talk about them. I think every mom should be
talking to their kids about pornography. I don't know that
I would have I had to, And of course this
is extreme, but it also put me in front of
a world that I was in some denial about. Um,
not just in my own household, but in the in
(28:11):
the world. Did your husband see the show? Yes? Early on, Yeah,
he told me that he was going to see it
and that he wasn't going to tell me when I
asked if he wanted to read the script, and he
said no. And one night I got home from doing
a two show day, which was extremely It was really
(28:32):
it was really exhausting. We were in previews still and
and I came home. It was a Wednesday, and I
was talking about somebody who had been there that night
and some blah blah blah, and you know, one of
the projections didn't work and this and that, and then
when I finished my monologue, he said, I saw the
(28:53):
show this afternoon, and I just took my breath away
because I was like, oh my god, is he okay?
Was kind of my first thought actually, And I said,
how you do it? And he said, it's really beautiful
and it was really hard, and I have a couple
of notes and I said, thank you very much, I
don't want your notes. And we went to bed that night,
(29:16):
and in the middle of the night, I was like,
what are your notes? Um, Because you know, he's a
good director. Must have been hard, hard for him to watch.
But also I'm glad he saw it. I mean, we
don't get the opportunity to be so raw and speak
our truth and sort of show strangers and non strangers
(29:39):
what we went through. You know, we're not all performers
that way. So yeah, I think I wanted to do
that for the partners of I mean for the partners
of anybody, because it's easy to look at me and
go she stayed. And then it's like, and believe me,
in ninety minutes you don't fully understand why. But there's
(29:59):
a lot more to it, and there's it's not like
and I never thought about leaving. It's like, no, I
thought about leaving every second, And no, I was incredibly
hurt and angry and scared and disgusted and all of
the things that you think I might be. But I'm
not going to be able to say that to you
in a seven minute meet and greet on the street
(30:20):
or the course of you or wherever I go. But
I also think there's a real issue in this world.
And I think women have this more than anyone. You know,
I am. I'm a real fan of twelve Step, and
it's free, and it's incredibly helpful for me in my life,
and you're not really supposed to talk about it, so
I won't get into the details, but I will say
(30:42):
that it has saved my life. And I will say
that the twelve Step programs that help partners, spouses, brothers, sisters, mothers,
fathers of people who struggle with addiction, you know, the
Alanan's and a c s, and the people who struggle
(31:05):
with someone else in their life and then need to
get help for themselves but don't want to talk about
their partner or their son or their mother, so then
they're keeping the secret and then they're getting sick, you know.
And so I think I wanted to do this. There's
even a lot of help for men who are and
(31:26):
and there are women as well, but mostly in my experience,
men who are sex addict and poor an addict, and
there's very very few people talking about help for the
betrayed partner. And if my husband wants to go to
a meeting, well this is pre COVID, but even still
on zoom um form a sex addiction twelve step meeting,
(31:47):
and we live around the New York area, I would
say there are a hundred meetings a week that he
could choose from, and I would say for the partners,
there's about two. And I know that all those people
going to the other meetings many of them have partners.
So it's not that there's not people affected by this,
but there's so much shame, Like we all have these
(32:10):
same feelings, whether our stories are the same or not,
and with sex addiction it is not the same, Like
there's just something about this. But even if it's not
an illegal sex addiction acting out, the shame that the
women feel about staying or even just carrying it is
(32:31):
so exhausting that it becomes this really lonely world where
these badass, brilliant women either they leave but they don't
really want to leave, or they leave but they haven't
gotten the help they need, or they stay but they're
so angry, and they're like, I'm going to punish you
(32:51):
for the rest of our days, but I'm gonna let
you stay. And that's no life for anybody. I'm not
saying I feel sorry for the guys. I'm saying these
women are like, they want so badly to kind of
move forward, but their friends don't know their secrets, and
their husbands are being punished because they're so scared to
not be angry. I've been that person. I'm scared to
(33:12):
not be angry. And you know, that same angel said
to me early days, Oh, you're so lucky that your
story was in the newspaper. And I was like, um, no,
I'm not. It is really not a good thing. And
everyone's looking at me, and everyone's looking at my kids,
and everyone knows, and and she said here's why. She said,
(33:36):
it's not your job or the kid's job to do
the dance of keeping this a secret. And if you
had been given that choice, you would have And I agree,
I would not have done the show. I don't think.
I mean, who the hell knows, but my story, you know,
the show is called accidentally brave, because I'm not that brave.
But it was already and it was already out there.
(33:58):
I don't know that I would be going, hey, um,
you may not know this, but let me tell you
what happened. So the good news is about my kids
is that they're doing really well right now and their kids,
you know, and every time anything happens or they have
a feeling or an emotion, or a bad day or
a bad month, I am going to probably forever ask
(34:21):
the question, was it because of the thing? Was it
because of the trauma? And then I talked to my
friends who have had, you know, no issues. Their lives
are great, and their kids are also having anxiety and
all kinds of other issues that you know we all
deal with. But but um, but really we have had
(34:41):
moments of of joy and togetherness. And you know, my
husband has worked and continues to work at his own
recovery and wants to do right by the world and
right by me and his family and and many many,
many many people that he let down. Um, it's not
(35:04):
an easy thing to walk through the world with the
very worst thing that you've ever done, that everyone knows
that you did, that you're wearing the T shirt every day. Yeah,
And you know, like I said, I it's hard to
talk about this because it's a certain kind of His
behavior was so aberrant and so horrible and scary that
(35:30):
a lot of people just can't see past that. And
I had to I didn't have to say it was okay,
but it happened. So it put me in a land
where I felt that in order to go forward, I
needed to learn and educate myself in order to make
good decisions. Of course, you know, listening to you talk
(35:53):
about it, you can't help but think yourself, what would
I do? What would you know? I mean, and I've
been married for over twenty years and I love my husband.
I I can't fathom it. But it would be easier
to especially if it wasn't in the paper. It would
be easier to run away, you know, like moved to
(36:14):
outside Reno and just pretend it never happened and start
a new life. But as you said before, and the
unfortunate thing about our culture is that just perpetuates the problem.
And if we don't talk about it, and if we
don't hear other people's stories, we will always slam the
(36:36):
door shut on even the subject of it. And the
porn industry is a multibillion dollar industry. So let's be
honest about that. That's right, let's take a short break.
(36:58):
Welcome back to Go Gali. I'm curious why, you know,
when you think about opiods and drugs that ultimately human
beings blame the drug industry, right, like you think now
after with all these opiods and dope sick and everything,
it's like, how dare these pharmaceuticals, you know, with cigarette smoking?
(37:21):
How dare these big companies. Why isn't everybody going, how
dare these pornography billion dollar things? H And because what
they do is they blame. They blame the person that's watching.
You know, there's something wrong with him. And let's round
up the guys. Somebody's feeding all these people. It is insane, right,
(37:43):
that's the big lie in a sense. Yeah, but it is.
It's like, you know, pornography is being fed by the
way through Fortnite to young boys. I mean, so why
are we looking at this? Why are we just going, Oh,
he's gross, you know, put him in jail for two years.
He's gross and he did that. They well, what are
you watching? What porn are you watching? Because if you're
(38:07):
watching something and you're saying that girl's eighteen, but she's
playing a thirteen year old, Like is that better? Like
it's all terrible, or she's twenty, but we're tying her
up and you know, whatever it is. But you know, look,
I am not making any excuses for my husband, and
he has been punished severely and continues to be punished
(38:30):
by society, by the law, financially, everything else. That being said,
I think the number one search in porn sites is babysitter,
porn and I and that's not okay either. And by
the way, now it's not just porn. If you're on
the porn sites, you can click and then you're talking
to someone and then click and then you're meeting someone
(38:51):
and it's it's just it's it's so easy. But like
we just want to shame the guys. And I get it.
And anyway, you know, I've learned a lot about pornography
and I think it's really dangerous. And I'm talking about
legal pornography. Um, I think our kids are learning sex
(39:12):
ed from it. And it is free, and it is accessible,
and it is anonymous, and it is a real issue
and there are a lot of good men who are
trying to actually not cheat, and that is allowed. Like,
is pornography cheating And that's a whole other I mean,
(39:33):
we could talk about that for us, but yes, is
it cheating. But but also we live in a world
now with the Internet where a seven year old boy
can type in boobies and get to the dark Web
and no time. So guess what a seven year old
boy can type in the White House and get to pornography.
I mean, it's really, really, it's a hugely complicated subject
(39:56):
and I am certainly not here to say I know
the answer, but I do know that it's harder for
a kid to get a beer than it is to
get to hardcore pornography. And I do believe from my
experience that pornography is addictive, and not everybody, just like
not everybody gets addicted to gambling, and not everybody gets
(40:18):
addicted to binging and purging and all other kinds of things.
There are people who that is their numbing out and
then it stops working, And then what do you do
when your drug stops working? Um, you know, whenever I
talk about this, I hear this voice in the back
of my head going, Maddie there's going to be people
saying you're making an excuse, You're an idiot, you know,
(40:39):
but so be it. I just really want to I
want to talk about it because it needs to be
talked about, I think, and I want there to be
some hope. I also think that my story maybe provides
some hope to men, because I think a lot of
men are keeping this all kinds of secrets because they
(41:02):
believe if they tell the secret, then their life will
fall apart and their family will fall apart. And then
in keeping the secret, it can get more shameful and
spiral down. And I'm not guaranteeing anything, but I wish.
I wish that my husband had looked for help. He
was in therapy, He had a wife that loved him
(41:23):
and was seemingly an understanding person, but he would say
he was so ashamed. Of course, like I think it's
easy and I love you and this is no offense
to you. I think it's easy to ask about the
marriage and to go, well, how did you stay and
why did you stay? Just like people say, did you
lose friends? Yes, I lost friends, But another question is
did you gain friends? And who are your real friends?
(41:46):
And yeah, yeah, look who my freaking friends like. I
have a really really beautiful, intense, difficult life, but it's
authentic and the people in my life are there and
they know me. And I never want you to know
my messiest parts. Ever, I wanted you to know just
the little bit of the mess enough that it would
be adorable. But this is not adorable. I get it.
(42:09):
I would want to know the same question. I would
want to talk about it and look at it and
ask all the questions. But I think what is also
interesting and important is that there are all these women
out there who thought that their husband and I can
only speak for myself, so I will. My husband became
my higher power. When I was anxious, he calmed me down,
(42:31):
when I was happy. He was who I told the
good news too. When I had any kind of problem,
I knew he would be there for me, and suddenly
that was gone. And that happens for all different kinds
of reasons. So I think what I would like to
give to people is just a toolkit for how I
got from there to here, and not because my husband's okay,
(42:54):
because I had to learn to be okay, because I
had to make friendships that were stronger than what they
ever had had to be because I had to learn
how to stand on my own two feet and then
say I choose to be in this marriage or not
that I don't need to be, and not to sound
a holier than now because I'm not. I loved having
(43:17):
someone else be the person that answered the questions and
took care of me. I was exhausted, even at twenty
three years old. When I met him, I was like, finally, finally, finally,
and it broke, you know, broke my heart a million
pieces when he in my when he betrayed me, when
(43:40):
he betrayed that trust, I was completely shattered. And I'm
not unshattered now. I'm still I'm still working on that,
you know. But but I learned, I learned a lot.
I've learned a lot. I'm out of my marriage. I'm
(44:01):
not just proud of myself. I'm proud of my kids.
I'm proud of my husband. My dog was the best
and never wavered, you know. But I am. I think
in some ways, Ali, I am. I do think I
did a good thing for my family. I think in
some ways I like held the car up. You know,
they say the moms can hold the car up. And
(44:24):
now what I'm dealing with is my kids have gone
out from under the car. They're okay, they're like off
living their lives. They've told their friends, are not told
that they've got their own stuff. And I'm still holding
up the car because I'm not sure how so I
in my own PTSD, I'm going, is it okay to
(44:47):
set the car down? And then what you know? And
I feel like in some ways I've got like a
year and a half of let down to go. Maybe,
but I just dropped both my boys at college, so
maybe this is the time. So you're an empty nest
or now right? I mean ish, you know, like the
minute the nest is. And that's another thing with my
story being so public. I had someone say to me
(45:08):
just the other day, well, now you can get divorce. Wow.
And you know, I don't think anybody would say that
somebody else other than me, but um, I kind of
hurt my feelings and it took my breath away for
a minute. And but it was just an opinion of like, oh, well,
you stayed for the kids, and you know, like I
(45:30):
said that that may have been a truth at the beginning,
and we do share three children. That's not nothing that's
that's forever. That's whether you stay married or not. I'm
sure you received a lot of opinions over the past
seven years, all kinds of opinions. And one of the
reasons that I wanted you on and one of the
reasons that when accidentally Brave comes out and in the
(45:53):
meantime someone can listen to it on audible, is there's
a story here, a bigger story that can help all
kinds of people, like we've been talking about. And that's
why I was so moved and and why I feel
like it's a story that has nothing to do and
(46:16):
yet everything to do with addiction. But it's about a family.
As you said. Yeah, so Mattie, where are you now?
I mean my room? Um I am let's see seven
years later, Um, I am writing more, i am healing more.
(46:40):
I'm still acting, I'm still mothering. I am still looking
at my own part of everything and trying to be
a decent person with integrity, authenticity, some boundaries, and a
(47:06):
little bit of humor and even a tiny bit of delight.
That's sometimes that's where I am all within forty seven minutes.
But um, I'm just a work in progress. But it's
it's it's not done. And you know, when my mom
died and I was like, okay, it's been a year,
(47:28):
it's time to it's no one wants to hear about
this anymore, and it's time to be okay. And of
course I look back at that seventeen year old girl
and say, well, poor you. You know that was crazy.
But in a way, I'm here to tell you today that,
like I said, I can also today talk about mascara
and other things whereas I couldn't, you know, in the
throes of everything. But it still affects me, um, and
(47:54):
my heart is still healing. It's and I'm scared of
what you'll think. Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, But I
want to tell you that I'm very thankful and grateful
that you came on and talked about it. I just am.
I love you so much. I think it's important. You know,
(48:14):
it's it's uncomfortable for me to talk about It's uncomfortable
for me, but yet I know, yeah, we got to
have these conversations. We do. I know, and you do.
I think you're an incredibly courageous woman. Well, I am
grateful for your support, accidentally, brave, thank you for listening.
(48:39):
To go ask Ali if you are someone who knows
experiencing sexual abuse or trauma. Contact rain are a I
n N the Rate Abuse and Incest National Network at
one eight hundred six five six hope. That's one eight
six five six four six seven three. Just to be clear,
(49:00):
is an ongoing debate in the mental health field about
sex and pornography addiction. While some therapists may refer to
compulsive behaviors as sex quote unquote addiction, strictly speaking, the
struggles are not officially considered a disorder or an addiction.
Other therapists believe the behaviors are actually symptoms of personal
or psychological problems. But luckily, while the experts figure it out,
(49:24):
treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy are available and effective. For
more info and what you've heard in this episode, including
the link to Mattie's play Accidentally Brave and Audible, check
out our show notes. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review,
Go ask Alli, and follow me on social media on
Instagram at the Real Alli Wentworth Now. If you'd like
(49:46):
to ask me a question or suggest a guest or
a topic to dig into, I'd love to hear from you.
And there's a bunch of ways you can do it.
You can call or text to me at three to
three three six four six three five six, or you
can email a voice memo right from your phone them
to go ask Alli podcast at gmail dot com and
if you leave a question, you just might hear it.
I'm Go Ask Allie, Go Ask Gali is a production
(50:15):
of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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