The war begins with a revelation

(From the wife's perspective)

Eight weeks ago, my world changed.  Before that life changing day,  my world was comprised of several key components.  First was my wonderful husband...the funny, clever, hard working priesthood holder, father to our children and business owner.  I adored him.  I worried over him.  I wanted to make sure he was always happy and feeling secure in our  marriage, in his weighty church callings and as a provider for our family.  To me, ours was a perfect marriage.  The second component that was my world was of course,  our tender children.  They range in ages from high school to elementary school.  They are the joy of our lives.  Finally, our membership in the church has been the bedrock to our marriage and our family from the beginning.  (Or so I thought.)  We serve hard, we are faithful, we pay our tithing, we try to be obedient always.

So, when things started to seem a little "off" in November of 2013, I started to get very concerned.  My husband started to morph into something I didn't recognize.  He started to pull away.  He started to make comments like, "I don't like that I can't be myself at church.  I hate having to play a roll there."  He started to use mild swear words that I had never heard him utter before.  He disappeared for large spans of time with no contact and lame excuses when he finally did make contact.  He refused to give me a Priesthood blessing. His productivity at work was suffering.  I started noticing extra pairs of his work out  underwear in the laundry, receipts for purchases on Sunday, and finally, strange notes with another woman's name on them.  Lastly, he was ALWAYS on his stupid cell phone, texting and "checking emails."  When I entered the room, he would quickly swipe the screen to something else.  When I asked to use his phone, he insisted that he needed to dial for me and then he hovered over me until I was finished with my phone call, quickly snatching it back.  Something was wrong.  Something had changed.   In my perfect little world, something was going awry.  

I am convinced that the Lord was quietly and lovingly whispering to me that my husband was being unfaithful to me for those two months.  He would put little impressions in my mind that perhaps some of the things that my husband was saying and doing just didn't add up.  All the while, Satan was trying to convince me that I was simply being paranoid, overbearing, and controlling.  Satan had me believe that I was going to just drive him away if I pushed him for information...so best to just keep my mouth shut.

I listened to the adversary's voice for a while.  We got through Christmas and New Years.  It was then that the promptings from the Lord got stronger and more forceful.  The weekend after New Years I was going to take a day trip down to our cousin's house with the children.  My husband kept insisting that perhaps we would be better off if we got  a hotel room down there so we could stay longer.  When he kept insisting, and even went so far as to book a room for us, two promptings came.  First, I heard something tell me, "He's trying to get rid of you."  Second, I felt a prompting to leave a few of my older children behind.  I followed that  heavenly counsel and the kids and their dad had a great night together.  It was only later that I discovered that those promptings had indeed been correct.  

A few days later I was doing some work at our office while my husband was supposedly out of town meeting with a client.  Halfway through the morning I had the overwhelming prompting to go look in his garbage can.  I hopped up from where I was sitting, wandered into his office and glanced at the can.  Right there on the top of the garbage was a list of items with another woman's name at the top.  We will call her Alice.  It was a list of gifts and personal items.  Underneath the first note was a list of candy bars.  Knowing that when my husband was dating me, he had put a giant candy gram together with  candy bars, my blood went ice cold.  I started to shake, my heart started to hammer in my chest and I felt myself begin to cry.  Here was the proof.  There was indeed another woman in my husband's life.  I felt like garbage.  I felt betrayed.  I felt like he must not love me in the slightest.  I immediately called him in tears and demanded to know if he was having an affair.  He came up with some lame excuse and because I was so desperate to believe that my husband was not being unfaithful, that excuse soothed me temporarily.  I say temporarily because within a few hours, the Lord was whispering that his excuse for the note just didn't add up.

Two days later my husband had told me that he was going for a swim at the nearby pool...something he did every morning.  I had been recently questioning if he had truly been going to the pool.  Something was telling me that that too had been a lie.  As I drove by the pool that morning, the spirit whispered to go into the parking lot.  I was surprised to see that his car was indeed there but that he was still sitting in it.  Again, I was prompted to get out of my car and get into his.  He was surprised to see me and he instantly seemed nervous.  Again, he was on his phone.  I begged him to just come home, spend the day with me and play hookie from work.  I was shocked when he sadly said that that sounded great.

We went on a bike ride.  During that long and lonely ride, he rode far ahead, not paying much attention to me.  On the way back, I knew that today was the day.  I begged my Heavenly Father to please give him the courage to tell me the truth.  As I finished my internal prayer, I heard something say, "This is going to be a really bad day for you."  It was then that I knew.  My intuition, my promptings...it had all been correct.  It didn't take much to get my husband to tell me everything.  He was more than ready.  He was so tired of what he was doing.  He was trapped in an addiction with no way out but honesty.

For the months of November and December, my beloved husband was having an affair with a woman that he had met on Craigslist.  While having an affair with one woman, he had met another Craigslist woman while out of town and been intimate with her as well.  Two days ago (while I was at his office searching through his trash), he was meeting with yet another woman, trying to determine if he could get her to also fulfill his pornography induced fantasies.  The final straw had come when another woman that he had been corresponding with turned out to be a member of our Stake and recognized him.  That was when it all started to fall apart.  My husband was escalating into truly dangerous territory.

He has been struggling with pornography for 25 years.  17 of those years we were married.  He had lied to me almost every single day of our marriage.  He had suffered with this addiction hanging over his head through the birth of our five children, through his church callings and through every happy memory we have ever had.  How had I missed it?  How could he do this to me?  Did he love me?  Did he love these other women?  Was he going to leave me?   Should I leave?  Was this unforgivable?   Oh, the agonizing questions that flooded my mind and heart were so painful and some of them didn't have answers.

What followed was a week of anguished pain, long meaningful talks, an excommunication from the church, a loss of our temple sealing and his sealing to the children, a greater understanding of his now fully escalated sexual addiction and believe or not, an increase in love and understanding on both of our parts.  My husband has been released from hell.  He is finally out of prison...the governor has given him a stay of execution.  He can finally access something that he never felt worthy to have...the blessings of the Atonement.  As for me,  I felt myself learning to love as the Savior loves...to hate the sin but love the sinner.  We have a long journey ahead of us.