My Story

*My story has grown, shifted and changed. But this is where it started. I thought about changing it, but for now, this is a piece of me that I want to remember. In the end, it became about so much more than his addiction. There were so many lies, so much control...I had to get out just to breathe again. This was only the beginning of the end of my marriage.

The Day My Husband Died

The day my husband died, my life, and my world as I knew it, was over. And when the weight of reality, and the pain settled onto my shoulders, there was no relief. There were no visitors. No one to come and give their condolences, or to help watch my kids. There was no one to even sit with me while I grieved. There was one person I had left…and that was the man who took him away from me.

You see, my husband didn't really die, at least not in body. But the husband I thought I had was taken away from me. He was taken away the moment he shattered my world. When he told me that most of my life had been a lie. He had spent almost our entire marriage lying to direct questions about his worthiness. Questions that I asked because he had told me about his “little” pornography problem in the beginning of our marriage, when a bishop had told us it was an addiction, and that he just needed to practice confronting and answering temptation, and I needed to trust him.

Years later, he comforted me while I sobbed after learning of my father's lifelong infidelity to my mother. I begged him to tell me if he had still struggled with pornography at all since last time. In the beginning of our marriage we had seen a bishop together after he told me he had viewed pornography and I asked him to please tell me the truth because I couldn't bear the thought of experiencing what my mother was suffering through. Having an entire marriage built on lies. And as he held me, and rocked me, he once again affirmed that the answer was no. Of course not. He would never do that to me and he would tell me if he did. AND I BELIEVED HIM. I allowed him to hold me and allowed myself to feel safe, comforted, and loved. But I wasn't safe. And I wouldn't know that until months and months later, when a nagging feeling tugged at my heart. A feeling that something wasn't right, that there was something he wasn't telling me. I brought it up and the answers were always the same. “No, there is nothing”. “No, I can’t think of why you would feel that way, there isn't anything going on”.

When the feeling that something was wrong persisted, I did some searching. It wasn't easy to find "evidence"; my husband is very good at hiding things. But I finally found proof that showed he was lying to me. And in that moment I was able for the first time in my life, to stand up for what I knew was the truth, and tell him I would not listen to his lies anymore. That was a hard thing for me to do. A leap of faith. Because in my mind I knew that if I was wrong, I would be destroying our relationship. That I would be accusing him of doing something he hadn't. 

But I wasn't wrong. 

And he wasn't innocent.

He wrote me a long letter explaining how he has struggled with pornography off and on ever since that first visit with our bishop when we were going to school out of state. His knowledge of "private browsing", which I never knew existed helped him keep it a secret. He always told himself he would tell me once he conquered it. He would be sober for a time, but it always came back. Each time he said to himself “If I do it one more time I will tell her”. He was going to tell me after he had conquered it on his own. Even though it had always come back in his youth, and continually resurfaced through almost a decade of marriage. 

I had so many questions, but he didn't have any answers. “If you were committed to stopping, why didn't you ever seek help, even if you didn't tell me?”. No answer. “How could you lie to my face every time I asked you?”. No answer. “How can you really love me, and say you wanted to protect me, when you were never willing to do what it took to get past this?”. No. Answer.

D-DAY #2 was in the first days of January of the year 2014. It has been a long road for the both of us. 

I've come to learn that nothing I do will fix him. I need to let him make that decision. And that hurts worse than anything I've ever experienced. To stand by and watch, and see if he will decide to change. To feel the pain that comes from his mistakes, from him learning to be honest, and failing. There have been so many hurts that I don’t know how I can ever truly heal. I have faith that I can be okay, and that my Savior can give me the peace I so desperately need, but I don’t know if our marriage will ever heal. I leave a space for hope that it can, but I am painfully aware of the reality that I cannot choose whether my future includes a loving marriage with trust and safety.

I never thought my happily ever after included the possibility of divorce. I have spent many days sitting in shock realizing that this is my life. Wondering if my family will fall apart tomorrow, next week, next year...How did I get here?

This experience has brought so much pain and sorrow, but also so much growth and change. I have grown so much; my capacity for love and empathy has expanded more in the past few months than it has in my entire life. I wouldn't trade who I am becoming for who I was. Even with all the muck that has come along with it. I can see my Savior has a plan for me, even though I'm not sure what it is. But he is working a great change within me and my life, and I will keep trying to stay out of His way and allowing it to take place. 

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new". -Socrates