How can I help My Wife Heal? Step 5
A Wife in Mourning.
'Addi' continues to lay out the steps the steps he believes will help to mend a relationship broken by pornography, infidelity, or adultery. Read the newest post here.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Honest Answers to Painful questions
How can I help My Wife Heal? Step 4
'Addi' continues to lay out the steps for helping to mend a relationship broken by pornography and infidelity. Read the newest post here.
'Addi' continues to lay out the steps for helping to mend a relationship broken by pornography and infidelity. Read the newest post here.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Get Into The Game
How Can I help My wife heal? Step 3, Get Into the Game.
Dear Addi, has posted the 3rd step in the series on how we as husbands can help our wives heal from and through our addictions and infidelity.
Click here for the most recent post.
Dear Addi, has posted the 3rd step in the series on how we as husbands can help our wives heal from and through our addictions and infidelity.Click here for the most recent post.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Who's Holding The Bat?
Dear Addi, How can I Help My Wife Heal? Step 2.
Step 2 'Take Responsibility' - Who's holding the bat!
Step 2 'Take Responsibility' - Who's holding the bat!
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
How Can I Help My Wife Heal? - 'Step 1'
(his story)
It has been a couple months since I have had time to update our 'Dear Addi' blog. I have received several questions that all lend themselves to this topic so, I am happy to return with a new 12 Part series on how we as husbands can help our wives heal. Part one is available by following the link below. I will be posting a new step every couple of days.
Step 1 can be found here.
It has been a couple months since I have had time to update our 'Dear Addi' blog. I have received several questions that all lend themselves to this topic so, I am happy to return with a new 12 Part series on how we as husbands can help our wives heal. Part one is available by following the link below. I will be posting a new step every couple of days.
Step 1 can be found here.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Making my Peace with God
(her story)
I'm going through this weird phase right now in my ongoing (and often slow) recovery. We are 15 months down the road from DDay and I feel like it has been a hard fought battle for each and every one of those 450 or so days. Some days are easier than others and some days, I find myself struggling with unexpected feelings and angers.
This anger and doubt is unfortunately directed at the one person that I should have total and perfect faith in and that is the Lord. There is a reason for this and perhaps many of you betrayed wives or addicts have often felt the same. I feel like there were only two people that knew of my husband's 17 year addiction to pornography (and the eventual affairs) and those were my husband and the Lord. These are the two most important people in my life and both chose to keep me in the dark.
It actually gets worse then that. When my husband was in the throes of his addiction, he was asked to serve in the Stake Presidency. I am sure the Lord hoped that that call (from an apostle no less) would spur my husband into confessing instead of accept a call that prominent and heavy. But, my husband didn't say anything and the calling went through. Our Stake president was prompted to call him as his counselor and an apostle of the Lord laid his hands on my husband's head and received no revelation or prompting that something was amiss. I don't get that.
What is interesting is that when we were sitting with this apostle just hours before the Stake Conference that would see the new presidency sustained by the body of the Stake, the apostle told us (what seemed at the time) a strange story. He talked of a brother in a stake that was asked to serve in a calling only to have it revealed that he was having an affair with the Relief Society President. The apostle told of how the man's wife fled to the church bathroom on hearing this news and was found there, vomiting and in deep distress. I scratched my head in confusion at this story and why it was being shared now, at this very spiritual meeting. (I also remember thinking, "thank goodness that will never happen to me.") Perhaps there was a reason for that. Perhaps this was a direct warning to my husband. He had not yet committed adultery at that point but would succumb just seven months later.
Did the Lord know that this was going to happen? Surely He must have suspected that my husband's addiction would eventually lead to adultery if not treated properly. So why allow the calling to go through? It would have been so easy to not give the Stake President that prompting to call him as a counselor or for the apostle to receive a prompting during his initial interviews with my husband (and there were several.) And yet, the Lord stayed silent.
I wish I understood why. Sometimes it feels like it was an effort to maximize the painfulness of the whole experience. We didn't get the luxury of handling this in private. Because my husband was very dramatically and suddenly released, everyone in the stake either knew or suspected what happened. The sympathetic looks or the basic avoidance of some members was terribly hard. It has improved significantly now but it is still hard for both of us to be at Stake functions and not feel eyes on us. Are they judging us? Are they disgusted? Do they admire us or pity us? Hard, Hard Hard.
Anyway, I am finding that I am reluctant to go the the Lord in personal prayer because I don't know that I trust the promptings I get. How could so many of us get it so wrong? Perhaps though, I need to change my perspective. Did we get it wrong or is there some higher plan here? Was there a reason that my husband needed to serve in that calling and then fall so brutally in front of all those people? Did he need that friendship with the Stake President to facilitate his confession? Did he do some good in the calling , despite what he was doing on the side? I want to believe that those promptings are the true ones. I just am not confident in my abilities to tell the difference between what I want to believe and what actually is.
And truthfully, I may never know why the Lord stayed silent. I have to believe that had He truly not wanted my husband to serve in that calling, He would have spoken to the apostle and the apostle would have listened. So, if I am being faithful and trusting that the Lord knows what He is doing and always has a higher plan, then there must have been a reason for it all. I hope that someday i can have an explanation that I can trust.
I need to make peace with the Lord. I feel angry at times and betrayed. There is something so utterly terrifying about being in the dark. When there are bad things going on all around you that directly affect your health, your safety, your family...and no one says anything...it makes you feel like you have no control over your life. I am at the mercy of the honesty of others and that' s not a place I want to be.
So, now that we are almost a year and a half into this journey, I want to know for sure that should my husband fall into bad paths again, that someone will let me know. I would hope that that someone would be the Lord. Do I have faith that He will tell me if something goes amiss? Not yet. I wish I did but I don't. I wish I understood completely His 17 year silence. Either way, I need to go to Him in prayer and try very hard to listen. Nothing is going to change if I don't start trusting Him again.
I'm going through this weird phase right now in my ongoing (and often slow) recovery. We are 15 months down the road from DDay and I feel like it has been a hard fought battle for each and every one of those 450 or so days. Some days are easier than others and some days, I find myself struggling with unexpected feelings and angers.
This anger and doubt is unfortunately directed at the one person that I should have total and perfect faith in and that is the Lord. There is a reason for this and perhaps many of you betrayed wives or addicts have often felt the same. I feel like there were only two people that knew of my husband's 17 year addiction to pornography (and the eventual affairs) and those were my husband and the Lord. These are the two most important people in my life and both chose to keep me in the dark.
It actually gets worse then that. When my husband was in the throes of his addiction, he was asked to serve in the Stake Presidency. I am sure the Lord hoped that that call (from an apostle no less) would spur my husband into confessing instead of accept a call that prominent and heavy. But, my husband didn't say anything and the calling went through. Our Stake president was prompted to call him as his counselor and an apostle of the Lord laid his hands on my husband's head and received no revelation or prompting that something was amiss. I don't get that.
What is interesting is that when we were sitting with this apostle just hours before the Stake Conference that would see the new presidency sustained by the body of the Stake, the apostle told us (what seemed at the time) a strange story. He talked of a brother in a stake that was asked to serve in a calling only to have it revealed that he was having an affair with the Relief Society President. The apostle told of how the man's wife fled to the church bathroom on hearing this news and was found there, vomiting and in deep distress. I scratched my head in confusion at this story and why it was being shared now, at this very spiritual meeting. (I also remember thinking, "thank goodness that will never happen to me.") Perhaps there was a reason for that. Perhaps this was a direct warning to my husband. He had not yet committed adultery at that point but would succumb just seven months later.
Did the Lord know that this was going to happen? Surely He must have suspected that my husband's addiction would eventually lead to adultery if not treated properly. So why allow the calling to go through? It would have been so easy to not give the Stake President that prompting to call him as a counselor or for the apostle to receive a prompting during his initial interviews with my husband (and there were several.) And yet, the Lord stayed silent.
I wish I understood why. Sometimes it feels like it was an effort to maximize the painfulness of the whole experience. We didn't get the luxury of handling this in private. Because my husband was very dramatically and suddenly released, everyone in the stake either knew or suspected what happened. The sympathetic looks or the basic avoidance of some members was terribly hard. It has improved significantly now but it is still hard for both of us to be at Stake functions and not feel eyes on us. Are they judging us? Are they disgusted? Do they admire us or pity us? Hard, Hard Hard.
Anyway, I am finding that I am reluctant to go the the Lord in personal prayer because I don't know that I trust the promptings I get. How could so many of us get it so wrong? Perhaps though, I need to change my perspective. Did we get it wrong or is there some higher plan here? Was there a reason that my husband needed to serve in that calling and then fall so brutally in front of all those people? Did he need that friendship with the Stake President to facilitate his confession? Did he do some good in the calling , despite what he was doing on the side? I want to believe that those promptings are the true ones. I just am not confident in my abilities to tell the difference between what I want to believe and what actually is.
And truthfully, I may never know why the Lord stayed silent. I have to believe that had He truly not wanted my husband to serve in that calling, He would have spoken to the apostle and the apostle would have listened. So, if I am being faithful and trusting that the Lord knows what He is doing and always has a higher plan, then there must have been a reason for it all. I hope that someday i can have an explanation that I can trust.
I need to make peace with the Lord. I feel angry at times and betrayed. There is something so utterly terrifying about being in the dark. When there are bad things going on all around you that directly affect your health, your safety, your family...and no one says anything...it makes you feel like you have no control over your life. I am at the mercy of the honesty of others and that' s not a place I want to be.
So, now that we are almost a year and a half into this journey, I want to know for sure that should my husband fall into bad paths again, that someone will let me know. I would hope that that someone would be the Lord. Do I have faith that He will tell me if something goes amiss? Not yet. I wish I did but I don't. I wish I understood completely His 17 year silence. Either way, I need to go to Him in prayer and try very hard to listen. Nothing is going to change if I don't start trusting Him again.
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Telling our family
(Our story)
We have a big family. Jason has six sibling and I have 3. Over this last year, a few of them have found out about our struggle from people that did not have the details and wanted to gossip. But a majority of our family members are clueless as to what we have been going through this past year. Now that the first 12 months have been completed and Jason's membership has been restored, we have felt a need to fill them all in on what has happened.
There are a couple of reasons for this. The most important one for me is to feel like I could stop lying to everyone. Last summer I attended his family reunion in Nauvoo. (Jason stayed home) A couple of times, the brothers-in-law would ask me how Jason was doing in his calling in the Stake Presidency. After that inevitable moment of panic, I had to lie to them and say, "he's doing great." Had I told them he had been released, they would have asked what his new calling was and I would have had to either invent a new lie or let them ask more questions that would surely lead them to realize what was going on. We didn't want to taint this wonderful reunion with this kind of news and disappointment.
The second reason for telling our family now is that we feel like we have achieved some success (despite last week's minor setback) and we worry that perhaps members of our family are struggling with similar things and are just afraid to come clean about it. Perhaps a full disclosure from us could help one of them have the courage to come forward.
Jason was insistent that we wait until he could be re-baptized so that he could speak with some authority on the subject and not as an excommunicated addict. So, we waited and prayed that in the meantime, no one would ask us questions that were too deep and probing.
So, with courage and faith in the love and compassion of our siblings, we moved. Jason wrote a 13 page letter to each of them and sent it...of course, calling each of them beforehand to let them know a letter was coming. Once sent, we could only nervously wait for the fallout. I have to tell you, the repercussions of the letter have been wonderful and healing. Both of his sisters that did not know called almost immediately, so grateful for our story and so compassionate. Instead of asking "how could you do this?" or expressing their disappointment, there was only love. His brothers sent emails back also expressing their love and support. I kind of wish we had done this sooner.
One of Jason's brothers is a bishop and he was right away able to share a part of Jason's letter to a member of his ward that is struggling with addiction. We invited our siblings to share the letter with their married children in hopes that they can start their new marriages free of pornography.
It has been good and it has been a huge weight lifted.
I hate keeping secrets. I hate not being able to speak freely to those I love the most. So, this has been healing for me and I know it is a relief to Jason. I know that for a lot of you, telling your family is not a good option. Perhaps they will judge you too harshly or encourage you to end your marriages. I completely understand the need for many of you to keep this addiction private.
If you are interested in reading the letter that Jason sent to his family, you can find it in our Dear Addi blog. Here is the link: http://dearaddict.blogspot.com/2015/03/how-do-i-tell-my-family-about-my.html
We have a big family. Jason has six sibling and I have 3. Over this last year, a few of them have found out about our struggle from people that did not have the details and wanted to gossip. But a majority of our family members are clueless as to what we have been going through this past year. Now that the first 12 months have been completed and Jason's membership has been restored, we have felt a need to fill them all in on what has happened.
There are a couple of reasons for this. The most important one for me is to feel like I could stop lying to everyone. Last summer I attended his family reunion in Nauvoo. (Jason stayed home) A couple of times, the brothers-in-law would ask me how Jason was doing in his calling in the Stake Presidency. After that inevitable moment of panic, I had to lie to them and say, "he's doing great." Had I told them he had been released, they would have asked what his new calling was and I would have had to either invent a new lie or let them ask more questions that would surely lead them to realize what was going on. We didn't want to taint this wonderful reunion with this kind of news and disappointment.
The second reason for telling our family now is that we feel like we have achieved some success (despite last week's minor setback) and we worry that perhaps members of our family are struggling with similar things and are just afraid to come clean about it. Perhaps a full disclosure from us could help one of them have the courage to come forward.
Jason was insistent that we wait until he could be re-baptized so that he could speak with some authority on the subject and not as an excommunicated addict. So, we waited and prayed that in the meantime, no one would ask us questions that were too deep and probing.
So, with courage and faith in the love and compassion of our siblings, we moved. Jason wrote a 13 page letter to each of them and sent it...of course, calling each of them beforehand to let them know a letter was coming. Once sent, we could only nervously wait for the fallout. I have to tell you, the repercussions of the letter have been wonderful and healing. Both of his sisters that did not know called almost immediately, so grateful for our story and so compassionate. Instead of asking "how could you do this?" or expressing their disappointment, there was only love. His brothers sent emails back also expressing their love and support. I kind of wish we had done this sooner.
One of Jason's brothers is a bishop and he was right away able to share a part of Jason's letter to a member of his ward that is struggling with addiction. We invited our siblings to share the letter with their married children in hopes that they can start their new marriages free of pornography.
It has been good and it has been a huge weight lifted.
I hate keeping secrets. I hate not being able to speak freely to those I love the most. So, this has been healing for me and I know it is a relief to Jason. I know that for a lot of you, telling your family is not a good option. Perhaps they will judge you too harshly or encourage you to end your marriages. I completely understand the need for many of you to keep this addiction private.
If you are interested in reading the letter that Jason sent to his family, you can find it in our Dear Addi blog. Here is the link: http://dearaddict.blogspot.com/2015/03/how-do-i-tell-my-family-about-my.html
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