nl2br

Ok, I am trying to create a very basic page where we can all easily work on a document. I just have a huge textarea that inserts the text into a longtext field in the mysql db. I use nl2br to keep the formatting. Of course, when the document is viewed in the textarea, all of the <br /> are there. THe problem is, everytime I update the text in the textarea, another set of <br />'s are put in so with every edit, the lines get farther and farther apart...why? Thanks, Eddie