Why I Married An Addict

​By: Hope & Healing Pornography Addiction Education and Recovery, an Affiliate of Moroni Channel
United States of America

​The man who is now my husband told me he struggled with a pornography addiction even before we started dating. It was a gut-punch to hear him say it, but that commitment to transparency and openness from the beginning was what I kept coming back to when I was terrified it had all been a big mistake.We’d been getting to know each other from two different parts of the country and I was really starting to like him. It was the suggestion of my flying out for a visit that brought on the phone call that broke my heart. He said that he understood if that meant I didn’t want to come and I didn’t know how to reply. Everything I knew about him until 30 seconds ago was so attractive to me. He was smart and thoughtful and interesting and handsome and good. I believe in the power of the Atonement and I didn’t want him to think that this particular struggle made him automatically unworthy of my time and attention. It would have been hypocritical for me, but it also sounded like an idiot move to know that about a person and still fly thousands of miles to see him.

I hung up the phone saying that I’d let him know.I didn’t sleep all that night and for days after, I had no idea what I should do. It wasn’t until the following Sunday, at stake conference that things became clearer. We’d had a series of great speakers, but none of them seemed to have messages that were relevant to me. Then, as the second to last speaker was concluding, out of the blue she mentioned the topic of pornography. It was only a sentence or two, but she said she believed it could be overcome. Then the last speaker got up. He said he had prepared an entirely different address, but instead wanted to continue with this topic of pornography and how through the Atonement this painful part of so many people’s present could be truly left in the past. The Spirit was so strong and I knew that it would be ok for me to get on a plane and visit my friend.

He became more than my friend not long after my arrival. We connected so incredibly well and I felt so comfortable and secure with him. We could talk about anything, and everything about him impressed me. He was constantly being of service to his family members and every friend in his life that I met would pull me aside and say how much he had inspired them or helped at a critical time or always been there when they needed him. My mind couldn’t even contain the reality that this wonderful person and this terrible chronic behavior could exist in the same being.

You know that phenomenon where you hear a word you’ve never heard of before and then suddenly you see it three different places within a week? The same thing happens when you start dating an addict. I was so happy with him and yet in the months that followed, it seemed like every story I heard was of how so-and-so was getting a divorce because of addiction or how after eight years, this or that person had totally betrayed their partner. I especially remember overhearing a lady at a party saying, “If my daughter was dating someone who had a porn addiction, I don’t care how nice he is, I would tell her to run.”

Meanwhile, I was falling so deeply in love with this man in a way that was so much different than infatuation. It just seemed so obvious that we should be together and everything about it felt so right. He watched out for me and supported me in everything I was pursuing. We would send spiritual thoughts to each other every day even though we were so far apart and I couldn’t help but believe in him. But then there was that anonymous woman’s voice in my head saying how none of that mattered and I should just run.

Read the Rest Of The Story at: Hope & Healing Pornography Addiction Education and Recovery, an Affiliate of Moroni Channel