The short story is, I married my best friend and true love in the temple 5 years ago. We have 3 children and we are living our happily ever after in Utah County. Our life is wonderful except for this one little thing... my husband is addicted to pornography. Some days are great and some days are hell. But right now things are good as far as his soberness. He has relapsed once in the last year and a half. I hope that one day I'll be able to say we are a success story.
I also know very well that tomorrow I may be writing "Never mind, just found out he was acting out the whole time." But for now, I'm going to enjoy and celebrate the good times to keep me going through the bad. Today is a gift, that's why it's called the present.
Like many of our stories start, Mr. Smith was the "perfect guy". Fresh off his mission, we were in an institute class together. I was swept off my feet immediately. Handsome, hilarious, smart, sweet, generous, and fun. After 2 dates we were together every spare minute. Once I met his family and saw him in action as the world's best uncle, I told my family "I know this sounds crazy, but I want to marry him!".
We knew we were young and dumb and the relationship was moving fast, so we tried to be as smart as we could. We started having the really serious conversations to make sure we were really compatible before we got engaged. He told me that as a teenager he had struggled a little with pornography. It was no big deal, he had taken care of it long ago, but just wanted to be honest.
I went to my parents to ask what they thought. My dad and I had a great talk. He was a Bishop at the time and was counseling men young and old with pornography problems. He told me that I was right to be concerned. I would have to decide for myself if I could handle that kind of past. But he also reminded me that to really believe in the Atonement, I need to believe that it is infinite. And if the Lord could forgive Mr. Smith, I needed to as well. It didn't mean I had to marry him, but I needed to forgive. I knew my dad was right. I thought about it and decided to forgive the past and move on. I prayed to know if this relationship was right for me, and received an immediate answer that it was. I was surprised at how easily I was able to forget all about Mr. Smith's past. We got engaged and planned to be married in the Spring of 2008.
A few weeks before our wedding, I woke up one morning with a terrible feeling. I felt prompted to check in with Mr Smith and ask him if he was okay. He called me a minute later, like he did every morning. I asked him how he was doing and he gave the usual answer that he was doing great. Relieved, I tried to push it out of my mind and continue on with my day. But the feeling did not go away. I wrote him a quick email, "I feel like something is wrong. Is there anything we need to talk about?" He wrote back that he was sorry if he had been weird lately, he was just stressed about school. I accepted this and didn't ask any more questions. We both had a rough week. I couldn't shake my feeling that something was wrong, and he was acting weird. I prayed and prayed but never got any specific answers about what was wrong. Eventually I decided it was just pre-wedding jitters.
We were married in the temple and it was a beautiful day. I felt so at peace and knew I had made the right choice. I didn't have a single doubt that day as I made sacred covenants with my husband and God.
The honeymoon was... not what I expected. I won't go into the dirty details but nothing about it felt sacred or beautiful, and that made me very sad and left me feeling empty. By the third day I started wondering if I had made a huge mistake.
Before we got married I knew a lot about intimacy thanks to the classes I had taken in college. I had even studied about the "good girl syndrome" so I felt like I was more prepared than a lot of LDS girls and I didn't have fears about what was coming. So it was a huge surprise to me to have things happen so differently than I expected.
I couldn't figure out how to discuss my concerns with Mr. Smith. He seemed perfectly happy with the way things were. When we got home I started reading everything I could find about sex and marriage from a religious standpoint. Well, there wasn't much specific information out there and I was too nervous to start searching the internet for sex advice. I just kept hoping it would get better, and tried not to doubt the answer I had received that our marriage was right.
Less than 2 weeks after we returned from our honeymoon, I stumbled upon the first evidence of pornography on the computer. I immediately asked Mr. Smith about it since he was next to me, and he quickly brushed it off as someone else's history. We were borrowing a laptop, so this was believable. I certainly didn't feel good about it but I didn't know what to do.
A few days later I got on the laptop again to order a birthday present while Mr. Smith was at work. He was still logged in to his amazon account. We had talked about adding movies to our DVD collection since we didn't have TV at that point. I clicked on his account history to see if he had bought any yet. What I saw completely floored me. He had ordered some DVDs all right. I felt dirty and nauseous just reading the titles. I looked at the date they had been ordered. Just weeks before our temple wedding. The week I had felt something was wrong. I was too shocked to do anything but sit and stare at the screen. I remember wondering why I wasn't crying. I don't know how long I just sat there frozen in shock before Mr Smith came home. I remember that I had to tell my head and then my eyes to turn and look at him. And his face... He knew.
Well, he apologized a million times. Promised he had only had that one moment of weakness. Promised that as soon as the DVDs came he threw them away in anger at himself. Promised he had never opened them.
I was so naive. I didn't 100% believe him, but I told myself I should. After all, he had married me in the temple. He had to have been worthy, right? I spent many, many hours over the next few years agonizing over that moment. Should I just have ran away and had our marriage annulled right then? Why oh why did Heavenly Father let me marry this man? Is our temple marriage even legit? Is there even a chance that we'll be together in the next life?
After a very rough night I decided to try to forgive and forget, after all, he said nothing had happened. I could not believe that he would lie to me or go to the temple unworthily, so he must have been telling the truth.
I decided I just needed to step up my game. I did everything I could think of (within my personal beliefs) to try to be the sexiest wife ever. Lingerie, sex every morning and night, spending hours making myself look my best, sexting him at work, leaving my job early to surprise him, being more adventurous in our love making, etc. We even had a conversation about saving up our money for me to get breast implants (never got there).
All the while, we were praying and trying to decide what we should do about some big life decisions. We had always said we'd wait a year before talking about starting to have children but suddenly after only a month of marriage we felt prompted to start our family. We prayed about it but the feeling never changed, so I stopped birth control. Because of my medical history I wondered if I might have a hard time getting pregnant. I thought maybe we needed to start trying so soon because it may take a year or longer to actually happen.
A few days later I once again stumbled onto something on the computer, proof that he could not talk his way out of it, he had definitely been looking at pornography. I found it in the middle of the night when I could not sleep. I cried myself to sleep on the couch wondering what the heck God had planned for me. Why did he want me to have a baby with this man who was cheating on me with the computer almost daily? In the morning Mr. Smith and I had a hard talk. He never really admitted anything other than what I showed him on the computer. He said he didn't know why he had done it, but promised he would never look again. At that time we didn't understand addiction and so we thought he could handle it on his own.
Well, surprise, he couldn't. During that newlywed summer, which was supposed to be the best of our lives, the honeymoon turned into my hell. During those college years he had the type of job where he was alone, in front of a computer, for several hours a week. He was able to spend a lot of that time studying, which was a huge blessing for us, but he was also tempted every single minute at work to act out his pornography addiction. As I kept finding more and more evidence of porn, from the way he would get so depressed or mad about little things, to the obvious search history he had forgotten to erase, I realized this was serious. I begged him to go see the Bishop. He was not totally honest, and so after a slap on the wrist, nothing changed.
The hardest part was that despite all the crap going on, I was still crazy in love with him. He was never mean or hurtful, never did anything wrong when he was with me. He treated me like a princess. Did housework and took me on fun and romantic dates. Cried and apologized endlessly. He was so good at making me feel better when a few minutes earlier I wanted to leave him forever. My heart was constantly switching between feeling broken and madly in love.
Soon I realized it was time to buy a pregnancy test. What a huge surprise that I had gotten pregnant the week we started trying. I was unbelievably happy. Not only was my biggest dream of becoming a mom coming true, THIS would be the answer to all our problems. Surely he would be able to stop when he realized he was going to be a dad.
Wrong. Days after that first ultrasound, I came home from work a few minutes early. When I opened up the door Mr. Smith quickly turned off the computer and ran into the bathroom. I was so furious at him, first for what he was obviously doing and then for not having the courage to even look at me. I started packing clothes into a bag and left. He had never come out to talk to me. I drove out of town, headed toward my parents house. I didn't have a plan, I just knew I had to get out. My phone rang. I didn't answer it but listened to the voice mail. It was our Bishop. Mr. Smith had called him to confess and ask for his help.
I pulled off the road to cry and pray. I found myself turning around and going back to Mr. Smith.
We started going to counseling with LDS Family Services. Our counselor was great. We worked on our relationship, communication, as well as learning about the science of addiction and identifying Mr. Smith's cycles. When we finished going through the pornography and couple's counseling, I thought all was well.
6 months later, with my beautiful baby girl in my arms, I again stumbled upon evidence of porn. I took a few deep breaths, put the baby to bed, and found our "What to do in case of a slip up" plan. I gently took the paper to Mr. Smith and asked if there was anything he wanted to tell me. I was not prepared to hear that he had been acting out at least weekly ever since we stopped going to counseling.
We went back to the Bishop, back to counseling, started going to 12 step meetings, and I began to realize that it was probably going to be like this for the rest of my life if I stayed with him. He disclosed much more than he ever had. I woke up and looked at him the next day with the thought "I love you, but I'm not
in love with you anymore."
"I love you, but I'm not
in love with you anymore." That feeling stayed for much of the next 3 years.
So why did I stay?
First, because that is what God told me to do. Every time I asked if it was time for me to leave, the answer was "No". So, I stayed. The best reason I can give is that above all, I believe in God. I believe that He loves me, He knows me, and He wants what is best for me and my children.
Second, Mr. Smith is the BEST DADDY EVER. We have 3 beautiful children now, and he is their hero. He has never yelled or laid an unkind hand on them. He is always teaching, playing, and caring for them. He is definitely a family man. He is fulfilling his duties to preside, provide, and protect.
Third, he is a wonderful husband. It may sound ridiculous, but he really is almost perfect other than this one huge thing, of being a porn addict. Unlike many addicts, he has never been mean or cruel to me a day in his life. He is gentle and loving and so much fun. And he does the dishes.
If he were an angry addict, I think I would have left long ago. I made him move out for a month when his addiction was at its worst and he was going through very serious withdrawal symptoms as he decided to enter recovery. This was a huge turning point for him as he realized what he could lose. He had somewhat of a breakdown and decided to take recovery seriously when I told him I was looking into divorce. Since then he has had relapses... but he has been completely sober for about a year (at least as far as I know, and I'm choosing to believe him).
