After four years of dating Claire Dalton was thrilled to be engaged to her best friend and man of her dreams.

She had the ring on her finger for six months… until a week before the wedding when The Worst Thing Ever happened.

She looked at her fiancé’s phone and saw something shocking: He had been watching porn.

She couldn’t believe it.

Three words on his search bar that changed my entire view. Three words that concluded he’d been searching for pornography possibly just hours ago. My entire demeanor must have changed in the brief second when I read those words because he asked me what was wrong. I asked why those words were typed into his search bar, and I looked at him with pleading eyes, hoping there was some logical explanation. I exited out of that window on his phone, only to find multiple windows open of sick and twisted ideas of what women supposedly look like. I felt sick to my stomach.

The fiancé made up some lie about how it must have been his brother before he called her up later that night to tell her, “It’s me… I have a problem.”

The phone fell out of my hands and hung up before I had a chance to say much more. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to kick and punch the wall. But in that moment, I felt paralyzed. I had a sudden frightening sensation of someone grasping at my neck as if someone or something was attempting to suffocate me to my death.

This goes on for a while. Dalton goes on and on about how her life is ruined — ruined — for the dumbest possible reason. Needless to say, she called the wedding off, which she later said involved calling “every single one” of the 300 guests and telling them why she couldn’t marry him.

In short, the 21-year-old Mormon (a presumed virgin who’s saving herself for marriage) had her life shattered — shattered — by a man who dared to fantasize the same way pretty much every other guy does.

This story was first posted on Dalton’s blog a month ago — under the melodramatic title “Understanding Betrayal Trauma” — and since then, she’s gotten exactly the reaction you’d expect: Everyone is telling her she’s crazy to flip out over a guy watching porn.

As one commenter said, “He saw porn. She cancelled their wedding. One of those is a massive over-reaction. Hint: not his.”

She eventually responded to the critics. She (rightly) called out the nasty malicious commenters and (wrongly) maintained that there was nothing wrong with her position. She continued referring to porn-watching as “sexual promiscuity” and insisted there was hope for all other men who “struggle” with the addiction.

Let’s get this out of the way: If this was a deal-breaker for her, fine. The couple really should’ve talked about that early on in the relationship. It speaks to her naïveté that she assumed this topic would never be an issue. Her partner may be better off as well; better to break off an engagement than deal with a divorce, especially when something that’s so commonplace outside Dalton’s bubble was eventually going to push her over the edge anyway.

At the same time, Dalton gets so much wrong. She makes it sound like watching any amount of porn is automatically an addiction. She has no idea how it’s possible to watch porn and have a healthy relationship (sexually and emotionally). She has no clue that women watch it, too. She doesn’t realize that a lot of people use it to learn how to have better sex. It might blow her mind to know that many couples watch it together.

She may insist that her partner never even think about porn. But the message she’s really sending future partners is that they need to clear their browser history if she’s around… or just lie to her. As one former Mormon bishop commented on her site:

Almost every male fifteen to fifty, that I interviewed or counseled as a LDS Bishop has looked at porn and masturbated to it from time to time. I can almost guarantee you will not find a LDS young man who one would consider a good catch for marriage even by the most minimum standards who doesn’t.

Incidentally, a news report from 2009 said Utah ranked #1 in “online porn subscriptions” which is both hypocritical and the most stereotypically Mormon thing I’ve ever heard. (Subscriptions. That’s adorable.)

I would love to read a follow-up piece from Dalton a year or two from now when she’s with someone new and her life is back in order (or so she thinks). Because the odds are pretty good that she’ll be making this “discovery” in every relationship she’s in. When will she come to terms with that?

