WoPA Letter 14 - My Story

I first learned of my husbands’ pornography addiction in 2003, after two kids and six years of marriage (of course at the time I didn’t know it was an addiction). Walking into our computer room that night is an image I can never erase from my mind.

As you can imagine, I was absolutely devastated. I had known something was not right in my marriage, but could not clearly see what it was. My husband and I went through a very rough patch, marriage counseling, (all while publicly pretending things were fine) and thought we were okay. I thought that he was okay. My husband had stopped the behaviors (sobriety) and I dusted it under the rug and pretended it never happened. After all, he had only viewed pornography a couple of times (that was the lie I believed).

In 2007, after two more kids, I was once again confronted with pornography, not with honesty from my husband, but with pictures I found on our computer. My husband assured me it was “not as bad as before”, and all signs seemed to confirm it. We completed another shorter round of therapy and…for a second time, went on with life as if nothing had happened.

While my husband was indeed slowly moving away from these addictive behaviors in general, it wasn’t until December 2012 that, through a series of emotional and marital struggles, we were forced to finally dig deep into to issue of my husbands pornography/sex addiction and its impact on him, me, and our marriage. I had no idea how much pain, anguish, and emotional trauma I was about to experience.

The second chapter of Jacob is often referred to when talking about pornography/sex addiction and the effect on the spouse. Several things have stuck out to me more clearly since going through this experience. The very last line of the last verse says, “…many hearts dies, pierced with deep wounds”. It didn’t say women were just sad, or sorrowful, or depressed, but that their hearts were dead. It doesn’t say that they died of wounded hearts, but they continued to live, only now with dead hearts.

This is where I had been. My heart was dead for years. I was a robot. I did and said everything I was supposed to, and no one would have known I was anything other than what they saw. Even though this is different than a hard heart, the effects are much the same, and I had a hard time feeling the spirit, strengthening my testimony, knowing my worth-pretty much applying gospel principles to my life. And because I believed my husband when he looked me straight in the eyes and told me he didn’t have any current problems viewing pornography, and because he projected his shame and blame on me in pretty much every area of our lives, my heart slowly died.

To make the situation worse, all those years I thought I was doing something wrong. I was sad and depressed, and I beat myself up thinking, why can’t I just be happy? Pray more, serve more-that was the answer, right? Well, when you don’t know what the problem it, it is so hard to fix.

Continually trying to fix the wrong problem led me to feel crazy and hopeless. Call it stupidity or ignorance on my part, I never dreamed my husband would look me in the eyes and lie. Yet, like all addicts, he did, and with every mistruth and dismissal of what was truly going on, I began to believe even more firmly that I was losing my mind. And slowly but surely, my heart was dying.

After years of this, I lost hope of ever being happy or finding the solution. I lost faith in my Heavenly Father, and faith in myself. I gave up. My depression consumed me. I still put on a happy face while serving in the church and in public, but it got harder and harder to do at home. Then it got harder and harder to do in public, so I isolated myself. The battery in my robot body wasn’t charging as fast as it used to, and I began to slow down.

This is when, in 2012, I decided I really did need help. Because I thought my husbands’ pornography ‘problem’ was two small isolated incidents and was no longer a problem in our marriage, I figured the problem then was most definitely me. So, I went to counseling.

This counseling led to a half-cracked disclosure from my husband, with a therapist whom I now believe did more harm than good. My husband and I continued to see her for almost eight months before we realized how harmful a bad therapist can be.

Shortly after we quit seeing her I began educating myself, admitting it was indeed an addiction and that my husband wasn’t just a pervert. I read Rhyll Crowshaw’s book “What can I do about Me?”, then jumped right into “Your Sexually addicted Spouse”. My husband and I found a sex addiction recovery program (LifeStar) that not only helps the addict take responsibility and overcome addiction, but also focuses on the spouse’s recovery from betrayal trauma.

The journey has been long, and still continues. I have experienced some of the darkest days of my life during this process. And I can’t even say with a deep conviction that my marriage will survive. Because I am only 50% of my marriage. And although my husband has technically been ‘sober’ for well over a year, he continues to show signs of addict behavior, such as minimizing, justifying, blaming, and sometimes even lying. Viewing pornography and masturbating are just the tip of the iceberg for an addict.

Even though my marriage is in limbo, I know I will survive. I know I will recover. I believe dead hearts can be resurrected and made whole again. My heart is alive again today. Some days it feels love, safety, peace, and comfort. Other days it still feels lonely, sad, and hurt. But if it is feeling anything then I know it is alive. And that is a far cry from numbing and not feeling anything.