In this compelling episode of Family Talk, Dr. James Dobson engages in a heartfelt conversation with Nancy Blake, whose life was turned upside down by her husband’s secret addiction to pornography. Learn from Nancy’s experience as she exposes the destructive force of hidden addiction that affects countless families worldwide. This episode offers an important dialogue about the power of healing, reclaiming personal worth, and the critical support structures needed to overcome such challenges.
Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It’s a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute supported by listeners just like you. I’m Dr. James Dobson and I’m thrilled that you’ve joined us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Roger Marsh, and today we’re tackling a sensitive topic that affects countless families all across the nation, and that is pornography addiction and its devastating impact on marriages. So if you have young ones listening with you right now, you may want to return to the program later online at drjamesdobson.org forward slash Family Talk. Our guest today here on the Family Talk program is Nancy Blake. Nancy courageously will be sharing how her life was turned upside down. when she discovered her husband’s secret addiction. For nearly 25 years, Nancy lived what appeared to be a picture-perfect life. A loving husband, three sons, a successful business, and deep involvement in their church. The Blakes had it all, or so Nancy thought. She didn’t know that behind this carefully constructed facade lay a secret life of addiction and infidelity. Her world eventually shattered when the painful truth emerged, leaving her questioning everything she believed about her marriage and herself. Dr. Dobson begins today’s conversation with powerful insights about the addictive nature of pornography, how it captures minds, destroys relationships, and leads to increasingly destructive behaviors. The conversation isn’t easy to hear, but Nancy’s courage in sharing her story offers a lifeline to those who may be suffering in silence. So here now is Dr. James Dobson with our guest, Nancy Blake, on today’s edition of Family Talk.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, hello everyone. I’m Dr. James Dobson and you’re listening to Family Talk, which is a division of the James Dobson Family Institute. I want to talk to you from the heart today about an evil that stalks millions of homes today. And it’s like a roaring lion tearing through Western civilization. I’m talking about the curse of pornography. You’ve heard it before from me, and you’ll probably hear it again because it’s such a major concern. Those who produce this wretched stuff like to say that it is harmless and it’s just a source of pleasure. They’re lying to you. I’m telling you that it destroys lives. It devastates marriage. and it causes all kinds of difficulty. Pornography unleashes powerful forces. I can’t state that strongly enough, especially in men. That is like a raging fire that consumes those who give free reign to it in their lives. The addictive nature of pornography is like heroin in some ways, or cocaine, because it captures the mind and the body. And It can grab a boy as young as 13 and in a span of just a few months enslave him for the rest of his life. That’s not an overstatement. It happens over and over again. I don’t know any force in human nature that can take control of the mind and body as effectively as obscenity and as difficult to treat as it is. It can bankrupt a family. It can lead to child abuse and often does and to womanizing and infidelity and solicitation of prostitution. It can lead to murder as it did with Ted Bundy, whom I knew. He was convicted of killing two women, but he admitted to killing 28 and probably more than 100 women. He was a serial murderer who got addicted to pornography very, very young. Exactly what I was just talking about. If you read about violent sexual abuse on victims of any age, and it can be babyhood to the elderly, I guarantee you, that the authorities will find pornography on the perpetrator’s computer or published material in his house or garage. It is always there, complicit in those kinds of crimes. I have heard about this from thousands of families through the years, usually women who contact us and whose lives have been devastated by obscenity. I’m almost reluctant to talk about it here on the air, frankly, because our ministry doesn’t have the resources to counsel thousands of people. It’s impossible. And yet we care about those who are victimized by this evil. The best I can do is come here and talk about it on the air and to give solace to those who are captured by it and to talk about the danger and how to avoid it and offer some suggestions and hope. Toward that end, I have a guest here with me today that I care about a great deal. Her name is Nancy Blake, and she has been through this tragedy. And it is a very courageous thing that she has been willing to come here today. Shirley and I have known Nancy for more than 40 years, although we didn’t know all that she was going through from the beginning. And I’m not sure she even understood it all. But she has come here today. She’s written her own book. It’s called Betrayed. by Nancy Blake, and she tells her story here. I want to tell you, it takes guts to lay out an experience like this that has so much pain attached to it. Nancy, thank you for being with us here today. What I just found out a few minutes ago is that instead of allowing us to fly you here for this purpose… You drove more than 1,000 miles to be here today alone. You are a gutsy lady.
SPEAKER 03 :
I know lots of people that would have done that to come and see you. Oh, goodness. The reason I came is because I wrote a book called Betrayed, and my pen name is Nancy Blake. I have another name, but I’ve changed all the names in the book because I wanted to protect my family. I understand. So I am Nancy, and— I have a story to tell. I want other women to come alongside other women and help them to realize that it’s not about them. I suffered for so many years wondering why my husband wasn’t home at night. And we had so many employees that he always had an excuse.
SPEAKER 04 :
You didn’t really know what he was into.
SPEAKER 03 :
I had no idea for 25 years. So I’ll start at the beginning because I think this part’s kind of interesting. We both graduated from college, and he was two years older. And we got married, and I started teaching. And a man named Ray Kroc, who started a McDonald’s restaurant, approached us and said, I’d like to help you get started in a McDonald’s franchise.
SPEAKER 04 :
This is the founder of McDonald’s?
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. Ray Kroc. He was a wonderful man. And I was 21 and my husband was 23. And so my parents had saved for years to send me to college and to be a teacher, not to make hamburgers. And they were kind of upset about it. But we took a gamble and decided we had a surfboard and a stereo and we thought, why not? Anyway, and he provided the financing for us to start our first McDonald’s, and we ended up with five of them, and we were very grateful. He was very colorful and very committed to the restaurant business and paid a fortune for what he bought from the McDonald Brothers.
SPEAKER 04 :
He actually loaned you $60,000 for that first McDonald’s.
SPEAKER 03 :
He did.
SPEAKER 04 :
I wonder what it costs today. Millions, wouldn’t it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, a lot.
SPEAKER 04 :
But he got you started, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
He got us started and we worked really hard and he knew we’d be good workers. So the reason that I share that part is that people from the outside would come into our house and we had three sons and we had this affluent lifestyle and we were able to give to different ministries and we had it all. My husband was on three Christian boards. He served communion and we had a Bible study that met in our house on a regular basis and So my friends, the world would come into our house, not the world, but other people. And they would say, you’ve got it all. And I would just say, I’m so thankful. Got great kids. We’ve got, I had no idea.
SPEAKER 04 :
He was not only into pornography, but a lot of other things.
SPEAKER 03 :
He came into our marriage.
SPEAKER 04 :
Like what I just described, it leads to.
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly. It’s ditto everything that Dr. Dobson said. He had this other life that I never knew about. I thought we were okay, except that there were signs I didn’t see, but I didn’t know. I was young. That he didn’t come home until really late at night, or he’d come home. to have dinner with our family and then go back out, always with the excuse we had so many employees that he was always helping somebody.
SPEAKER 04 :
You eventually had five McDonald’s. Yes. Was he caring for you? Did he show love to you? Did he give you time? What was your relationship?
SPEAKER 03 :
I probably got flowers at least once or twice a week for 25 years. And he wrote me poems and poems. I mean, when the music was playing, he was always the first one on the dance floor to twirl me around. But when the doors closed, he was kind of distant.
SPEAKER 04 :
He was tired. Your physical relationship. So there was something lacking there, obviously.
SPEAKER 03 :
But I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I was in my 20s. You were a virgin when you got married. Yes. And I assumed he was. I never asked him, but you don’t ask those kind of questions or I wouldn’t. But what happened, part of his story is so sad, and you kind of alluded to it in your introduction, that he was, this is what he told me, is that he was 12 and was walking along the side of the road and saw pictures. At that time, there were no computers around. And he picked up the magazine and looked at the pictures, and it was pornography. And he said, and then it led to women. So he came into our marriage having had lots of experience with other women.
SPEAKER 04 :
See, that is – I didn’t know that part of the story, but that’s exactly what – Ted Bundy described he was 13. He was at a dump. He saw detective stories which marries violence with sex. What a cocktail that is. And it grabbed him and he got farther and farther into pornography. Pornography has a way of leading you. It does not stay in the same place. What excites one day does not be enough the next day. And it walks you down a road of terrible things, in his case, to murder. It didn’t for your husband.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, thankfully, he wasn’t like that. But as you said, it escalates. It doesn’t just stay, at least in what I’ve heard or what I’ve read about it. But I also feel like there was an emotional vacuum in my former husband’s life. His name in the book is Bob, so I’ll call him Bob because his parents were going through a divorce and his mother was dating somebody. And so he had a lot of turmoil probably going on at home. And so this filled a vacuum, this filled a need maybe. He was a preteen and that part of the story is so sad. But what he chose to do with it led from the pictures into pornography. into having affairs with several different women. And then I met him in college at school. He was Mr. Clean Cut. And it was not the other life that has now been revealed.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, you would never have known it. From looking at him, I knew Bob, and he was a really good-looking, nice guy, became a friend to me. I had no clue, just like you really didn’t, although you should have been asking more questions than you were asking, shouldn’t you?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, probably, except I wasn’t aware of that. I was raised in a home where my parents protected me. And for them to allow me to go away to college must have been a huge gift to me because I was protected. I wasn’t allowed to go to a funeral or a hospital until I was 21. So I wasn’t very worldly at all, to say the least. Yeah. And so I wasn’t aware. I wasn’t questioning, and I had nobody to talk to. In the very beginning of McDonald’s, we had basements, and so we had potato sacks in the bottom of the basement. And so he would tell me that he slept on the potato sacks, and we would bring a sack of potatoes up every day, or a crew member would, and he’d slice the potatoes fresh. Now they have frozen, but they’re just as good as they were then. Yeah. Anyway, so he would say that he was working so hard that he would sleep on the potato sacks at night many times. And I thought, gosh, he’s such a good worker. He’s working so hard, and I’m teaching during the day.
SPEAKER 04 :
You now know that he had another life, a complete other life that’s out there.
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 04 :
How tragic.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s sad. It’s sad.
SPEAKER 04 :
Nancy, how tragic.
SPEAKER 03 :
I don’t want other people to go through it. And if they do, I want them to know that there’s not shame and embarrassment and everything that I felt when I found out everything. I thought that I wasn’t a good enough wife for him and what was wrong with me.
SPEAKER 04 :
So you blamed yourself.
SPEAKER 03 :
I blamed myself. And I must be speaking to somebody right now who’s going through that. And so I’m just saying it’s not about you. It’s about an addiction.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, but it is about you. You have tears in your eyes now, don’t you?
SPEAKER 03 :
You said that. So anyway, the church that I attend has a class called Sexual Addiction. And I think it’s high time the church brought that to the forefront because it’s out there and it’s real and we can’t put it underneath the – covers any more. But anyway, so I meet with the wives on a one-to-one basis, and I don’t have any answers for them, but I point them to the one who does have an answer, and that’s the Lord.
SPEAKER 04 :
So you’re seeing evidence of this in the middle class that you live in, among the women, homemakers, or working ladies around you. It’s everywhere, isn’t it?
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s everywhere. It has no class.
SPEAKER 04 :
I described it as being a raging fire throughout Western civilization. You’re seeing evidence of that.
SPEAKER 03 :
I am and it’s really sad. The last lady that I met with, she was so sweet and I think she was probably in her 30s and she was pregnant, seven and a half months pregnant. She had a one and a half year old little boy in the other room. And she said, I don’t know what to do. He’s in the sexual addiction class and he’s trying, but it’s gone to another level now. And I don’t know what to do. Here she’s expecting a baby and everything. And I said, I can’t answer that for you. I can just come alongside of you. And I asked her if she had family close by, which she did. So, you know, there’s two different ways you can look at it. You can go ahead and divorce somebody who’s not faithful, and then you don’t know where your children, what they’re going to be exposed to every other weekend when they go with their father. Or you can live with it with certain boundaries.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, it’s Satan’s tool. It’s one of the most effective tools he has for destroying the family. Which is where I come in because I’m in the business of trying to preserve families. And he takes this desire and sets it on fire and it becomes an addiction that’s every bit as difficult as heroin or one of the other addictions. And it’s just about that hard to treat as well. And you mentioned the church. I hate to admit it, but frequently the church will not talk about this. But there are an awful lot of pastors who are doing everything they can. They are overwhelmed by it, just like I am. When you consider the scope of it in the culture, it is very difficult to try to deal with. But many pastors just don’t want to touch it. And there are two reasons why not. One, they look on Sunday morning at that audience in front of them, the congregation, and they know many of those men, maybe the majority, maybe the big majority of them are at least toying with it. or have been addicted to it. It is everywhere. I’m telling you, you look around at the men around you, it’s out there. I hate to overstate that, and I don’t think I am. You know, I served on the Pornography Commission for Ronald Reagan for 18 months, and I know a lot about this subject, more than I wanted to know when I was studying it. But it is there. The second reason pastors don’t want to talk about it is that many of them have the problem themselves. When I was at Focus on the Family, we had a hotline just for pastors, associate pastors, youth leaders, and other staff members, and they could call anonymously. They didn’t have to say who they were, and they could call us for any subject they wanted to. Month after month, year after year, The number one reason they called was sexual addiction, sexual misbehavior, infidelity, homosexuality, all that range. And pornography was at the top of that list. And that came from the church. So I’m telling you, I’m not just talking out of school. It is out there. And that’s why the church has great difficulty dealing with this, as does everybody else, including spouses like you. And you did it pretty much alone, didn’t you?
SPEAKER 03 :
I did. I remember, Dr. Dobson, when our oldest son was in high school. And he came home from school and he didn’t want to eat dinner. And his name’s Michael in the book. And I went upstairs and I said, you love food. What’s the matter with you? And he said, finally, he told me, he said, well, you know who? And he named the teacher. And I said, yeah, he’s a psychology professor and he’s teacher of the year and you love him. And he goes, well, he said he was doing this and that in the classroom, things that I guess I probably shouldn’t talk about, but it was really verbal pornography. So I just got up and walked out. And later I told him why. He said, I’m a Christian and it bothers me. And so the teacher said, you never have to stay in the class during those times. You have my permission to leave whenever.
SPEAKER 04 :
Today that would be different.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, what happened is, I don’t know if you remember, but we were with you that weekend, and we told you the story. And you said, would he be willing to come to Colorado and tell his story? And I’ve also learned my former husband, Bob, was absolutely furious. He almost had an overreaction because here he was involved in it. We didn’t know that.
SPEAKER 04 :
So he didn’t want your son to expose that story?
SPEAKER 03 :
I think that you’re right, yeah. We still have the little cassette of when he spoke. Anyway, and I went to see the teacher, and I said, Mr. So-and-so, I said, you know, you’re Teacher of the Year and everything, but you have two daughters. Would you ever let your girls see this, like see a Playboy or something? He said, absolutely. And I said, you know what? We’re on different wavelengths. This is not right. And I went to the superintendent and said, And he said he would give a permission slip for them to have to sign. The parents would have to sign it. So we dubbed out the name of the school district, but he never changed it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Was that in the 1980s?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. And you said this is just the beginning. You watch, and I thought, what’s he talking about? You were right.
SPEAKER 04 :
I was absolutely right. And now it’s in the elementary schools. It’s in the guise of LGBTQ where they’re teaching little children transgender notions, saying to five, six, seven, eight-year-olds, you don’t have to be a boy. You can be a girl. You just choose it. And if you don’t like what you’ve chosen, you can change back. And telling people what the medical approaches are to changing from one sex to the other. Telling this to children. It’s terrible. And talking about homosexuality as though we’re a normal thing. This is another thing that you can choose. Believe me, that’s going on, not only in California and Massachusetts, but right here in my home state of Colorado, where the entire curriculum has been rewritten to make that possible. Furthermore, parents are not able to intervene.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, there was no permission given.
SPEAKER 04 :
The only thing you can do is take your kid out of school, but you can’t take them out of a class. So what you experienced was just the beginning, and I saw it then.
SPEAKER 03 :
You did see it. And now that you mentioned the homosexual community, he brought in people that had a different lifestyle. But I said to him, why don’t you bring in a happily married couple? But that wasn’t what he did. He just brought in the alternative. He didn’t expose them to everything, just what he wanted them to hear. I guess that was my first introduction to pornography.
SPEAKER 04 :
Nancy, I hate to interrupt this conversation because there are so many components to your story, and some of it is very uplifting. We’ve been through some tough water so far, but the Lord had a plan for your life, and we’re going to talk about that next time. And you’ve driven all the way out here, a thousand miles to be here. I’m not going to let you go. We’re going to talk again about the rest of your story. Is that fair?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, I would love to. Thank you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you so much for being here. It took a lot of courage to talk about this.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I hope that you will talk to a lot of people about it. You don’t call yourself a speaker, but you can learn to speak. You ought to be letting people know what God has done in your life.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. Are you all right?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
You came here a little scared.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
But it has not been that bad.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, no. Sitting here talking to you, it’s like a conversation because you’re so loving and encouraging. And who wouldn’t want to sit opposite you and share?
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, goodness. Well, we’ll do it again next time.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
Amen. Amen. Amen. If you missed any portion of today’s broadcast or you know someone who would benefit from hearing this program, visit drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. You can listen to the complete broadcast and you’ll also find a link for Nancy’s book, which is simply called Betrayed. Again, that’s drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. Here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we’re committed to preserving and promoting the institution of the family and the biblical principles on which it is based. The painful reality of pornography addiction affects countless marriages, but we believe there’s always hope for healing and renewal through Jesus Christ. Your gift today of any amount helps to continue sharing Dr. Dobson’s time-tested wisdom with families who need it. You can make a secure donation online at DrJamesDobson.org. You can give a tax-deductible gift over the phone when you call 877-732-6825 or you can send your check through the U.S. Postal Service. Our ministry mailing address is Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949. I’m Roger Marsh, and on behalf of all of us here at the JDFI, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time for part two of Nancy Blake’s story, as she’ll share it with Dr. James Dobson right here on the next edition of Family Talk.
SPEAKER 01 :
This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, thank you everyone for tuning into our program today. You may know that Family Talk is a listener-supported program. And we remain on the air by your generosity, literally. If you can help us financially, we would certainly appreciate it.
SPEAKER 02 :
God’s blessings to you all. That’s right, Dr. Dobson. And friend, thanks to generous listeners like you, Family Talk can reach more and more listeners with practical help and encouragement. To support Family Talk with your best gift, go online to drjamesdobson.org or call 877-732-6825.
