This is a very difficult post for me to write. I think mostly because the Atonement has been such a deeply personal thing for me in my life, but also because I have not really publicly spoken about this particular experience with it. Please note before you read further that these things are very sacred to me. I only share them now because I feel it is what the Lord would have me do. I believe that experiences we have can benefit so many others if we share when we feel prompted to. This is one of those times.
I feel that I should start at the beginning.
I have tried to live close to the Lord all of my life, so that when He speaks to me, I can not only hear Him, but act on what He tells me. I like to think I have done my best at that. Certainly not perfect at it, but I've done my best.
So, when I felt the prompting to go to the Singles' Ward in January of 2009, I didn't like the idea, but I went anyway. Now keep in mind that I had already done the Single's Ward scene, and it was way too much drama for my taste. But this kick in the spiritual pants was not to be ignored. My second week attending, I met a young man named Dan. I tried to brush off the series of encounters, but after a couple of weeks of being around him, I couldn't deny that my feelings for him had grown.
We were planning a date on a Wednesday night in February 2009, and the day before I had a very special experience. Without going into detail, I saw him in a very spiritual light, and knew what kind of a man he was at his core. I knew without a doubt that I loved him, and that we had a very deep spiritual connection.
Well, our date night came, and we sat in the car at the park, planning to go and join a medieval reenactment group for our activity. But the conversation turned to things more serious, and we never did get out of the car. That night, Dan told me that he struggled with a pornography addiction.
He had first been introduced by a school friend back in Junior High, and it had grown into an obsession since then. He had worked with counselors and bishops, but the addiction still held fast. He hesitated telling me this, because his previous experiences had taught him that this conversation usually ended the relationship. Still, he felt he needed to be completely up front and honest with me because he loved me, and wanted me to have the choice of whether or not to continue our relationship.
Truthfully, if not for that previous night's spiritual experience, I would have said goodbye and never looked back. But I knew the man that Dan was deep inside, and I wanted desperately for him to see himself that way, too. So, I told him of my feelings and that I would be willing to work with him as much as I could. The only condition was that Dan really do his best to fight the addiction.
Our date nights weren't all that creative from then on... we went to addiction recovery meetings and bishop appointments together. We read scriptures and prayed together. Still, the change was slow. We got engaged, and once the wedding date was set, Dan had a deadline to be clean that he HAD to keep, or we wouldn't be able to marry in the temple.
I am happy to report that we made it to the temple, and Dan was able to abstain from pornography for the prescribed amount of time. Sometimes, it seemed as if I was the only one who had faith that he could do it. Dan's bishop was cautiously optimistic, and both of our families urged us to have a contingency plan, just in case. But we plowed ahead, and through God's grace were able to make our wedding date with no changes. We were wed in the Las Vegas temple on October 17, 2009.
The months that followed our wedding were full of challenges, but I was happy that pornography wasn't one of them. We suffered devastating loss after loss through miscarriages, and money was very thin on the ground. Yet, we survived, and our love deepened as we faced the trials together.
There was something that kept feeling "off" to me, but I dismissed it as just something I was making up. This feeling continued, and late one night, I finally learned why. It was 3 am on July 21, 2011. I was an emotional wreck at the time, having just lost twins a couple of months prior. I felt numb to all things spiritual at the time, and was simply mindlessly surfing the internet because I couldn't sleep. As I typed a web address into the address bar, something popped up that caught my attention. It was a very crude website address. Thinking it must be a mistake, I pulled up the internet history to see why it would make that suggestion. Perhaps it was a spam site that had come up for Dan before. I thought for sure that was it.
But, it wasn't. Far from it. As I scrolled through days, weeks and months of internet history, the names of the sites I read made my stomach churn. As it went back into 2010, I just stopped scrolling. The reality of what this meant hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt sick. I felt angry! I felt betrayed. Our whole marriage had been a lie. I wanted answers, but I also wanted to be alone. I wanted to rant and yell, but I couldn't make myself say anything. I sat at the computer for an hour, crying. I wasn't going to wake Dan up, I planned to just confront him in the morning. But after sitting there for a while, I knew I needed to wake him up.
He was startled when I came in and turned on all of the lights at such an early hour. It took him a minute to register when I told him I had just seen the internet history, and asked if he had anything to say for himself.
He sat there, head hung in shame, and whispered, "I wanted to get caught." He went on to explain that he had deliberately not cleared the history because he wanted me to know that he had gone back to his pornography addiction. He knew he needed help, but couldn't ask. Somehow, he convinced me that he and I could handle it on our own, that with my help and support, he could overcome the addiction. I am sad to say that I let that lie rule our lives for several months. Our whole marriage, he had put on a very convincing facade of being the spiritual head of our home. I hadn't listened to my gut feelings for so long, even I was convinced that somehow he was more spiritually in tune than I was.
Relapse and apology became the new normal. Dan excused everything with his addiction. He wasn't working enough to support our family, and I was getting so frustrated. I finally had enough in March of 2012. I gave him an ultimatum. It was either me or the porn, and unless he went to the bishop and got some help, I was moving out.
It was one of the hardest trips to the bishop ever. At his request, I went with Dan to the appointment. As Dan surrendered his temple recommend, our bishop probed into the nature of his addiction, and reason for coming to see him. Then, he told us of a program that could help. It was called LifeSTAR, and if Dan would commit to completing their program, the bishop would help us cover the cost. I learned that it was not just a program for addicts, but for their spouses.
In the program we went through before our marriage, this was something that wasn't covered. Somehow, I, as a fiance, was lost in the process. It was all about the addict, but never about the significant other. As we went to our first meeting together, I began to glimpse how important this difference was.
It was a rough start to the program, as Dan had just started his new job with ADT Security, and was under a lot of stress with the training. We had just moved to another home in our same ward, and it seemed as if everything was changing. But we had committed to the program, so we went each week to our meeting.
At first, we met together as men and women, but after the first six weeks were over, we separated into men and women's groups. Being a private person, it was very difficult for me to trust the other women, but as we went on, our similar experiences helped us form a kinship. While Dan's group explored the reasons for addiction, and provided tools to replace addiction with healthy behaviors, my group learned how to set healthy boundaries and protect ourselves from being further emotionally injured by the addiction.
I won't get into the nitty gritty of the program, just that it was a very in depth and thorough process of looking at the sexual addiction from all angles - Dan took a very deep look at his past, and began to understand why he turned to pornography in the first place.
It has been 2 years since our first LifeSTAR meeting. Dan finished the program, and I am very pleased to report that he has been clean and free from pornography for a year and a half. Trust is still being rebuilt, but we are in a far better place than we ever have been. I have learned to trust my gut feeling - it is hardly ever wrong. And in trusting myself, I am able to be more in tune with what the Lord wants me to do.
Through the experience, I marveled that I could love Dan so much even with all of the pain he had caused. I know that those feelings could only come from the Lord, and the mercy of the Atonement. It is for experiences like this that Christ suffered in Gethsemane and gave up His life on the Cross. As Dan and I have journeyed together, I know that we have been upheld by the grace of God. I know that the forgiveness I have felt both for Dan, and for myself are the fruits of that infinite gift.
I KNOW that Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins. Not only that, He has felt all of our grief and sorrows. There is nothing we can experience here on earth that He does not understand. He is truly our Savior.
