We are grateful to Diony for sharing her experience of dealing with her husband’s porn addiction. Hers is an example of how sometimes pornography has so much of a grip that a marriage cannot be saved, but again, we see the message about how walking with and turning to God can make healing possible. (She is now happily married!) Read more of Diony’s insights gained from her journey as the wife of a pornography addict.
“God walked it with me. Through Him I found hope. Through Him I found help. Through Him I found healing, and on that path I found peace and love that brought me new joy.”
A Hair-line Crack
~by Diony
From the age of a young girl on, I grew up knowing God. My family was active in our church, we read the scriptures and we prayed together. I knew I could talk to Him whenever I wanted in my personal prayers and I knew He loved me no matter what. My goals and dreams for the future centered around a temple marriage and motherhood.
When I met a handsome returned LDS missionary I was a senior in high school, working, and spending time with my friends. I wasn’t looking for a serious relationship. He asked me out, and from that first date he was charming and fun, romantic and kind, and knew how to make me laugh. We were married the next summer on a beautiful sunny day, We knelt across the altar of the temple, and covenanted with each other and God, our reflections shining endlessly in the crystal-clear mirrors on the walls. I had no idea he was keeping a terrible secret.
Five months later I was expecting our first baby and when he joined our family on a cold winter night, I felt certain my life was close to perfect. It would be years before I came to realize our endless reflection I saw in those mirrors on our wedding day had a hair-line crack. That crack was—pornography—and in time it would lengthen and split until it shattered the glass completely, changing our lives forever.
Pornography was something I never thought would touch me, as if it was a choice like others I’ve made in my life. If I never had sex outside of marriage, I could never have an unwanted pregnancy. If I never drank alcohol, I couldn’t become an alcoholic. If I never used street drugs, I couldn’t become addicted to them.
I was wrong.
Pornography is in a category of its own. You don’t have to look for it to find it—or want it—to see it. It isn’t obviously harmful like touching a red-hot burner with a bare hand, or stopping on the rail road tracks in front of an oncoming train. Its addictive influence can be stronger than heroin or cocaine. Pornography is a growing billion-dollar a year industry that can affect anyone and everyone, because—it’s everywhere.
My husband, became caught in pornography’s constricting web as a teenager, and ended up fighting the hold it had over him from then on. He became one of its many victims. Pornography’s devastating influence marked my children and me as victims of another kind. Its black grasping tentacles eventually tore apart our family. It changed our lives and reached our extended families, neighbors, friends, church members— everyone—who learned our story.
When my husband finally told me the truth, it was too late. Our marriage was beyond saving, and I didn’t know I could ever feel such intense pain, and live through it. I was emotionally caught, dead center inside a raging hurricane. Some days I didn’t know how I could get through the next hour, let alone the rest of the day or coming week.
Pornography accessibility and use has exploded on the internet. It can be indulged in privately, inside the walls of our own homes. It can easily become a ferocious hunger that’s never satisfied. It is stealing the innocence of our children and the younger they are, the worse the addiction can be.
Pornography is highly controversial, but no one, anywhere, can tell me, pornography is harmless. No one can convince me it doesn’t distort beauty, diminish self-worth, damage sacred sexual intimacy, destroy families, and demolish trust. I know, it has marked part of me indefinitely.
But, pornography does not have to destroy your life or those you love. Its destructive influence is not greater than God.
Eventually a day did come when I was not dwelling on my loss. My life had taken another path, something I had not expected, but God walked it with me. Through Him I found hope. Through Him I found help. Through Him I found healing, and on that path I found peace and love that brought me new joy.
