Terry Crews recalls how his pornography addiction affected his relationship with his wife and kids: 'I felt bad about myself all the time'

• Terry Crews appeared on Dax Shepard's podcast "Armchair Expert" and spoke about his porn addiction.

• He said he would start arguments with his wife and "get angry" at his kids during his addiction.

• Crews eventually sought help for his behavior after admitting that he had cheated on his wife.

Terry Crews opened up about how his pornography addiction affected his relationship with his wife and children on Monday's episode of Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast.

The "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" actor recounted how he would "start an argument" so that his wife, Rebecca King, "wouldn't ask more questions," whenever she tried to check in with him at the height of his addiction.

"Poor woman," he said. "It was horrible. My kids, I would be angry at them for getting in the way."

Crews, who said he was raised in an "ultra-religious" household and had an abusive father, said that he had his first exposure to pornography via explicit magazines when he was 8, which made him forget "all the stress, all the problems, everything."

The actor said that throughout his adolescence, he came to rely on pornography as an escape, and by the time he was an adult, he was an addict.

"A lot of time in the hotels alone I would be on the porn channels. I would feel super guilty and then I would read a bunch of self-help," he said, explaining that his mindset was: "OK, let me get back to even here."

"I felt bad about myself all the time," he said. "I am a failure in my head."

Crews previously spoke about his porn addiction last year, admitting that: "If I got a day off from a set and I could watch porn from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. at night. And I wouldn't stop. I couldn't stop."

Crews told Shepard that for a long time, he felt he could "justify" his behavior as his porn addiction never led him to cheat on his wife — until it did.

Crews met King when he was 19 and they married right before he turned 21, several years before his career as an NFL player began in 1991, and two decades before he pivoted to acting.

The "White Chicks" star said while shooting his first-ever movie, "The 6th Day," in 2000, he "went to a massage parlor in Vancouver and got a hand job," describing the incident as a "binge."

"I cheated on my wife. I was that dude. Like, who officially stepped outside and I had never done that before. I kept that secret for years," he said, adding that while King didn't know what had happened, his infidelity "affected" their then-11-year marriage.

Crews initially told himself that he was "going to my grave" with the secret but decided to fess up to his wife a decade later when he began seeking help for his addiction.

He said: "I put it all down and I told her what I did. I said, 'I got this hand job in Vancouver back on the first movie I did.' And she went, 'Oh!' and I will never forget that gasp," he said. "And what's crazy is that I'm thinking, hey, that was 10 years ago, but for her, it was a second ago."

Crews' confession led to King leaving him, but they eventually reconciled after Crews entered a rehabilitation facility to receive help for his addiction to porn.

The couple, who tied the knot on July 29, 1989, will celebrate their 34th wedding anniversary this month. They share five children: daughters Naomi, Azriel, Tera, and Wynfrey, and son Isiah.

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