Tough Decisions

(wife posting)

Our youngest child is approaching the age where I generally start to get that, "it's time to have another baby" feeling. The thought of bringing another life, another child into an already complicated and difficult situation is absolutely frightening to me. I want more than ANYTHING for my husband to recover from his addictions, I want our family and our marriage to be healthy and happy, and I want to be able to have more children without the fear that I might not be able to provide the kind of life and family that my children deserve. Recently several of our friends have announced that they have a new little one on the way, I am happy and excited for them, but at the same time it makes me sad (for us, not them), it reminds me that my marriage is not in a place where we can make those kinds of decisions right now. I truly hope that someday, hopefully soon, as we continue to work through these GIANT obstacles that I can eventually feel at peace with having another baby. I love and adore my children, they are so amazing, I am incredibly grateful that Heavenly Father entrusted them in my care and if I never get to the point where I feel like we can bring another child into this world then it will be okay because we have been blessed so much already.

Words To Live By...

I saw this quote today by our beloved Prophet, Thomas S. Monson, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

"The past is behind, learn from it.

The future is ahead; prepare for it.

The present is here, live it."

Thomas S. Monson, May 2009

***At times I take for grated the amazingly wonderful blessing it is to have the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my life, then I see a quote like I did today by a Prophet called of God to lead his children, and I am reminded of just how lucky I am. The Gospel is my CORE, it is my strength, and I am constantly humbled by the peace and knowledge it brings me.***

My husband and I are both members of the LDS faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, this blog was created to help us through our trials and to help others suffering from addiction or any trial in their life. If you are not a member of our church please know that you are more than welcome here, this is a place for anyone who is suffering. To those that are not members of our faith I encourage you to visit the site www.mormon.org to learn more about what we believe, I PROMISE you that if you will learn about our beliefs and go to Heavenly Father (God) in prayer and humbly ask him if these beliefs are true, he WILL answer your prayer. I also promise you that once you receive your answer from Heavenly Father and seek to have the Gospel in your life that you will find happiness, peace, and guidance beyond comprehension.

With love,

(wife posting)

The Loop

(husband)
I would first like to say a few things to my family. I love u. I will always love you. I could never do this without you. My wife has been both a loving partner that lovingly helps me and a loving partner that gives me "tough love" when called for. I don't think i realize how hard the tough love can be for the one giving it. I know I don't espesially love being on the receiving end of it even though I need it but I have never considered how hard that could be to give out so let me just say thankyou for still being there.
About a week and a half ago I went to my first SA meeting(sexaholic anonomous). To say it was eye opening would be an understatement. I saw people going through what I have been going through, people going through worse, and people who I could see that struggled with my problem and didn't get help and went on to have much bigger problems before they got help. It scared me to death. It motivated me to want to do more. It gave me hope and then I fell right into my loop!
I don't know if all people with my addictions have this loop or if it is just me but I hate it. Something will happen to cause high emotions(most likely me not doing what I promise to do to show my wife I am actively doing something about my addictions) and there will be a fight and I will feel bad and make more promises to myself and my wife, then for all of a second I will do that, then I will get busy and because my wife seems okay I will think things are fine I will go right back to life as if I were a normal person and my wife and I a normal couple, then comes another high emotional event. That is the loop and I feel stuck in it. The problem is that the loop leads me inevitable back to my addiction. I have managed to stay in the loop for over a year without a major relapse but I know that if I don't start showing the Lord, my wife and myself everyday that I am going to stop this addiction from ruling me then I will lose everything. I need out of this loop so bad, I want out so bad, I don't get why I can't seem to do it! It is hard to look in the mirror and see myself for what I am. It is hard to look at my marriage and see what I have done to it. I am not a normal person and things with my wife and I are not good. I am not sure if we will make it. It will be because of me if we don't. It is scarey to write that but it is the only way to keep it from happening. If we as addicts don't see things the way they really are we can never correct them.
One promise I made to myself and my wife was that I would write in this blog once a week. You can see how well I've done. I am doing so right now infact because of another high emotional event(lets call those HEEs) but even though it would have been better if I had done so on my own I know if I don't start the habit of doing it with these reminders I might never.
I know I say this too much but to my wife I am sorry It takes me so long to "get it" and I do love you so much.

I'm Scared

(Wife posting)

Our family has had an extremely rough year and a half (aside from my husbands addictions), there have been moments where I have felt like giving up and I have thought 'why us, we have been through so much already'. I know it will do me no good to think about all the why's and that I need to look towards the future with faith that if we live righteously that the Lord will bless us. Recently I have felt so good about the direction things are going, I feel like we are being given a chance to start over, a new place, a new job, a new perspective, but as I get more and more 'comfortable' with the direction things are going, paranoia starts to set in. See, every time I get comfortable and THINK that things are going so well, that is when my heart gets broken, that is when my husband slips up again. I don't know if I can survive having my heart broken again. I don't want to live in fear, but when you are married to someone who is an addict weather it be pornography, drugs, gambling, etc... it is very difficult to not constantly wonder, 'what is going to happen next'. If anyone out there has been through trials similar to ours has any advice for me I will gladly listen, I want to enjoy this time of things progressing and going well without constantly being paranoid that the next bomb is about to go off.

A BIG step in the RIGHT direction

(wife posting)

Last week I followed through with the promise I had made to myself to attend a 12-step group for those that love someone who is an sex addict. I really didn't want to go but I felt the spirit so strongly as if someone was literally taking me by the hand and pulling me there. To my surprise my husband came with me. I attended the group for the spouses and he attended the group for the addicts. As I walked into the room I felt a wave of emotions... fear, anger, resentment... and then something I didn't expect...the Spirit, it filled the room, it was undeniable and extremely powerful. As I looked into the faces of these women (and a few men) it was as if I could see right to their soul, I could see the pain in their eyes, pain that I am all to familiar with, but I also noticed those that seemed to be more at peace with their trials. I have no doubt that even those that seemed more in control of their emotions and in a better place than I am currently still have very difficult times, but seeing them working through their trials and 'recovering' gave me so much peace to know that someday, hopefully soon, I too can be in a better place.

I really didn't know what to expect going to this group. I was very pleasantly surprised by what a humbling and wonderful experience it was for both me and my husband. After the meetings were over and my husband and I got back in our car we were able to talk privately about what we each thought about the meetings. It was so nice to hear what an eye opening experience this had been for my husband, he said things to me that I never expected to hear from him, it was a answer to so many of my prayers over the last six years. (I will leave it up to him to decide if he should share his personal experience or not.)

Things between my husband and I have been so much better since we attended these meetings together. I feel like we are really starting to grasp what it means to truly turn our lives over to the Lord and follow HIS will no matter how hard it may be. I have found this past week that it has been easier to make sure we are saying our prayers together as a couple, to read the scriptures and pray individually, and to feel connected as a couple. I know that we were blessed with strength in these areas because we followed the Lords will over our own. Neither my husband or I really WANTED to go to these meetings, it is never easy to FACE our problems, but it is what we NEEDED to do and I am grateful to the Lord for granting us the strength to follow through.

If you would like more information about the 12-step group that we attended please email us at
spirituallyfit09@gmail.com

New day, Same BATTLE

(wife posting)

I have been meaning to post for awhile now but life has been so busy that I haven't had much free time. Our family is ALL together again and it has been really nice to have us all under one roof. The kids have missed their daddy SOOO much and it is great to not be single parenting anymore. The first couple of days that we were all home together things between my husband and I were wonderful, then slowly the 'honeymoon' effect began to wear off and we have been struggling with re-adjusting to living together again. I knew that this would be a hard adjustment but I guess I was just really hopeful that my husband would be a changed man after almost 3 months with out his family. I felt so much humility from him while we were apart but now that we are together again I feel like he is right back in his comfort zone and isn't appreciating what a GIFT it is to have his family back. I by no means expected him to completely change, but I really thought that maybe things would 'sink in' a little deeper. To his credit things have been CRAZY with work, with the kids, one of our cars completely died, etc... etc... We are experiencing many more trials on top of our marital problems and my husbands addictions, but still I am finding my self puzzled that he isn't making a bigger effort to show me that he is grateful that he now has his family back in his life.

Our marriage has been made up of broken promises after broken promises. My husband gets caught in addiction, promises to stop and change, then things happen again. I do know that he wants to stop, he wants to be free of these addictions, but I don't believe he knows how to stop. I really don't know where to go from here. I want to stay, I want things to work out, I want our family to be together but yet I don't see my husband doing anything to make those things possible. Yes he is a great dad, he is helpful around the house, he works hard to provide for our family, but what he doesn't do is actively DEAL with his addictions. He thinks that just because he isn't currently looking at pornography or gambling that he doesn't need to daily deal with these things. I truly believe that if you struggle with addiction of any kind that you MUST work on controlling those addictions EVERYDAY, because if you don't they will just creep right back into your life in one form or another. This blog is a PERFECT example of my husband promising to do something and not following through with it. We set this blog up as a tool for HIM to work on actively dealing with his addictions, he promised to write here regularly, but that has obviously NOT happened. I am tired of broken promises, I am tired of my husband not dealing with HIS addictions, I am tired of being the one to always SAVE him. I just want him to follow through with his promises, I don't want to have to ask him to write on this blog, I want him to do it because he knows it will help him work through these things. I don't want to have to ask him to go to counseling, I want HIM to set up the appointment. I am tired of carrying all of the load on my shoulders!!!

I have done some pretty serious soul searching these last few months and have decided that I will no longer let my husband hold me back from MY healing. I will no longer wait for him to make the counseling appointment, I will just go alone because it is something that I need to do for ME. I am also going to go to a meeting once a week for women that have been through experiences similar to mine, this is something I am VERY nervous about doing, but I believe that it will help me. I have also done a lot of research about depression recently and I really think that there is a very good chance that I have been suffering from depression for a very long time. This is not something that I want to admit, but I know that the only way for me to get help is to deal with MY issues head on. For now I am going to stop trying to 'fix' my husband and work on fixing ME.

I want to encourage those that are personally struggling with addiction or those that are struggling because they love someone who has addictions to get the help that THEY need. I'm not sure we can adequately help those in addiction until we help our selves, learn tools to deal with these trials, and educate our selves on addiction.

PLEASE feel free to anonymously leave your comments, questions, advice, concerns, etc... I TRULY want this blog to be somewhere people can come to OPENLY talk about addiction and to help each other.

"May God Help Us"

(wife posting)

I saw this quote today and it truly spoke to me...

"May God help us to be a little kinder,

showing forth greater forbearance,

to be more FORGIVING,

more willing to walk the SECOND mile,

to reach down and lift UP those who may have sinned

but have brought forth the fruits of repentance,

to lay aside old grudges and nurture them no more."

-President Gordon B. Hinkely (former LDS Prophet)

October 2005

I am so excited for our family to be together again. I am excited to have all of us under one roof, I am excited to have a husband again and for my kids to have a mom and a DAD again. But I am scared, anxious, and worried about what the future holds for our family and our marriage. I desperately want my husband to change, to get the guidance and help he needs, and to daily rely on the Lord for strength to overcome these addictions. I KNOW that he CAN do it, but what I don't know is if he WILL do it. With all these uncertainties there are a few things I do know with out a single doubt...

*The Gospel of Jesus Christ is TRUE, I know that for a fact, my testimony of the Savior and HIS Gospel (The Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints) is my CORE, it is my strength and my foundation, with out my testimony I would feel so lost, alone, and afraid.

*My Heavenly Father LOVES me, he LOVES my husband, he LOVES my children (he LOVES all of his children here on earth), he wants us to be happy, I know that I would not have received my answer from my Heavenly Father that he wants my husband and I to continue to work through our trials if there was no hope and if he didn't intend to help us through this every step of the way, however the KEY to receiving his help is to ask for it, to turn to him through prayer, and to have the strength to carry out whatever he asks of us.

*I struggle with praying daily, I don't know WHY, this is something that I am working on, but I do know that prayer is essential to communicating with our Father in Heaven, he WANTS us desperately to come to him through prayer, to thank him for our abundance of blessings, to ask for the things we are in need of, and to receive guidance from him.

*I know that my family loves me, they want me to be happy, and they will support me in my decisions. I also know that they trust me to know what is best for me and my children and that I will do what the Lord asks of me.

*I know that I can not change my husband, I have tried, it is not something I recommend! I also know that his addictions are not my fault. Many women that are married to a man that has a pornography addiction often think it is because of them, they feel like they are not good enough, or not sexual enough, or not attractive enough, I know this because I have experienced all of these feelings myself, but it is not true, it is NOT your fault.

*I know that addictions are REAL, every addict 'cycles', weather someone looks at pornography once a week, once a month, once a year, whatever their cycle may be, they are still addicted. Addicts almost always make excuses or justifications and just because their episodes of 'using' pornography may not be constant does not mean that it is not a problem, that it is not an addiction.

*I KNOW that I LOVE my husband, I WANT to get through this, I WANT to be his 'help mate', I KNOW that as we turn our lives over to the Lord that he will give us the strength and the tools to face these addictions (and the damage they have caused) head on. I also know that my husband will never completely BEAT these addictions, for a long time I wondered, 'when will this be over'?. As I am learning more about addiction and educating myself about the effects of addiction on a person and the damaging effects addiction has on a persons brain, I now know that this will NEVER be over. This is something my husband will struggle with for the rest of his life. That doesn't mean that my husband can't CONTROL his addictions instead of allowing them to control him, with the help of the Lord ALL things are possible. MY husband can get his life back, we CAN have a happy, healthy marriage and family, and I hope and pray we can get to a much better place!!

As long as my husband SHOWS me that he will continually work on controlling his addictions, as long as he will SHOW me that he is going to truly repent and turn his life

over to the Lord, and long as he SHOWS me that he will put our family first no matter

how hard that may be at times...

I will be HERE, holding his hand, encouraging him every step of the way!