Starting at the Beginning

We were dating.

We'd been dating for just over 3 months.  We liked each other. A lot.  We talked on the phone every night.  I loved his voice.  Deep and rich.  It was bliss for my ears.  It had taken us awhile to find each other and even though he wasn't sure where things were headed, I was.

Before he came into my life for real, I had given up on the whole "finding a mate" thing.  I was pretty happy to stop getting my heart broken and more than happy to stop breaking hearts.  It wasn't fun and I was done.  I had declared my freedom from the dating world and it felt good.  I was 28.

Then he came into my life.  For real this time.  I knew him from a previous ward.  It was years ago.  Like 5 years ago.  I always thought he was handsome.  He never seemed interested.  Things change.  We gain experience, some of our edges are worn down.  We start to see things as they are.  We started talking one night and kept on talking.  We laughed with each other, sometimes till we had to stop and lay down for fear we would fall down.  We had so much fun together.

Three months into this dating thing I went to the temple.  I was by myself.  I looked around the room and saw couples there.  Couples of all shapes and all sizes and that's when I really knew that I wanted to be with him.  Not just now but for forever.  It felt good and I felt at peace.

We went out that evening and had a glorious time filled with food, friends, and lots and lots of laughter.  We held hands, we hugged goodbye.  Tightly.  Lingering.  That was a Friday night.

Saturday, I didn't hear from him.

Sunday, I didn't hear from him.  I got worried.  I sent a text and heard nothing back.

Monday was also filled with silence and I was confused.  Confused because we had such a good time.  Confused at the silence.  Confused because we didn't ever go a day let alone several without talking to each other.  What was going on?

On Monday evening I was headed to family home evening with the singles ward and opted to swing by his house to see if he was there.  To see if everything was okay.  His light was on but he wouldn't answer the door.  I called him while knocking and told him I wasn't leaving until he talked to me.

He answered the door.  He looked terrible.  Not physically but emotionally terrible.  He let me in, mostly because I wouldn't take no for an answer.  I asked him what was going on.  Told him I was confused, I thought we had had a good time.  He said there were some things that he needed to get in order before we could get serious with each other.  I asked him what it was.  He didn't want to tell me.

As we sat in his living room I wracked my brain to come up with anything that I could think if that he would need to get in order?  He was engaged before, was there baggage from that?  Did he have financial difficulties?  Everything that I could think of just seemed so small and insignificant.  When I tried to pin bigger things onto him, like drugs or alcohol or abuse, it just seemed so ridiculous.  It just was not him.  

I asked him to tell me what was happening.  He said he didn't want to scare me, that he didn't want to drive me away.  I said I doubted he could say anything that would scare me and I promised him that I would not go away.  And I meant it.  I knew what I had felt in the temple just a few days before.  I knew that I wanted to be with this man.  I knew that he was a good man.

He told me he had a pornography problem.  That was the last thing that I expected to come out of his mouth.  The last.  He started to cry and I wrapped my arms around him while he wept.  Giving comfort while trying to process this bit of new and life altering information.

The Lord has a way of preparing us for what is going to be happening in our lives.  I'm pretty sure that if I had not had that experience in the temple that very weekend, I would have made a different decision.  I would have broken things off.  Instead I knew what I felt and I knew that I loved this man.  I know now that God was helping me see my husband to be through His eyes.

I hate pornography.  I hate what it does to me, to my husband, to our family.  I hate that I have to deal with it after 8 years of marriage. I hate that I will always have to be careful about so many things.  I hate that there is rarely a home that hasn't been touched by it.  I hate that it makes itself seem so big, so important, so impossible to overcome.

I love that it is not the end.  That it can be kept in check.  That it does not define who we are because we are so much more than this addiction.  

This is the beginning of my story.  My life married to someone with a pornography problem.  I will tell more of the story later, but for now, this is enough.