Read more about why a water lily is the image of choice for this post.

Over three and a half years ago, I was noticing a lot of traffic on our site from wives of men with pornography/sex addictions. At that time, there wasn’t anything on our site to help women in this situation, and I felt strongly impressed to post some stories.

A documentary called “Out in the Light” had just been released. I believe it was tender mercy timing. I was able to connect with Rhyll and Steven Croshaw, who shared their story here. Somehow, I was able to find a few more women who could share their experience as well. (See a link to an archive of personal stories.)

The traffic related to this topic continued to rise, and a steady stream of comments, questions, and emails made it clear that something more needed to be done. And so the site Hope and Healing was born. The site includes a public blog and a private forum, as well as a Facebook page. Over 600 women have registered for the forum since its inception, and the site was recently redesigned.

If you are a woman who has been affected by the sexual addiction of a spouse or loved one, please consider joining the forum. There are women there who understand the intensity of betrayal trauma and who share what is helping them find healing. There is a continuously-growing pool of resources available to help spouses. (Being a witness to this growing wealth of resources has been amazing. Miracles are happening!)

You are not alone. Healing is possible, and I have seen time and time again how God has a way of turning this terrible trial into bread as women work together to help each other, and to prepare the rising generation against this plague.

p.s. Even if you aren’t married to someone in addiction, I encourage you to get educated about sexual addiction. It is all around us, and we need to be aware so we can help our children, friends, and women all around us (credit becky). I firmly believe that women who are educated on this topic can help turn the tide.

p.s.s. Here are some of the other resources that have repeatedly been shared in the healing community and that are great resources for anyone interested in becoming more educated about sexual addiction.

Healing through Christ (free workbook for loved ones of addicts, and free phone meetings; 12-step)

Addo Recovery (See their six free videos on YouTube, plus many other free resources. They also have for-pay services.)

LifeStar (a three-phase, for-pay group program)

Rowboat and Marbles (a wealth of information about sexual addiction from the perspective of an LDS addict in recovery)

S-Anon and SAL meetings (12-step programs specifically designed for loved ones of sex addicts)

LDS Addiction Recovery Program

Togetherness Project

Books like Don Hilton’s He Restoreth My Soul, Rhyll Crowshaw’s What Can I do about Him Me?, Your Sexually Addicted Spouse and many more

Presentations, classes, research, etc. from therapists like Jill Manning, Geoff Steurer, Jeffrey Ford, Kevin Skinner, Adam Moore, Dorothy Maryon, and others

The post For wives of men in sexual addiction appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

At the same time, I am struck every time by the patterns in the stories. Addiction has predictable patterns. Which means there is hope for the principles and support and therapeutic approaches that can help those who need healing. It is gratifying to see how many people are spending their time and energy to help couples in this situation. “KatieDid” is an example of one such person. Catch a snippet of her story below, and find information about what she and others are doing in the Northwest part of the US in September.

A guest blog post written by “KatieDid”

When I was a girl, I would often dream about love and romance. I looked forward to the time when I would fall in love and get married. I wanted to meet someone with whom I could share my true self. We would share everything about ourselves: our hopes, joys, dreams, work and sorrows. I knew marriage wouldn’t be a walk in the park, but I believed it would be worth the effort. Eventually I found that special someone and we began our life together. He was my best friend and greatest supporter. We worked, played, cried and laughed together.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, over the next few years that relationship changed. We still lived and worked together, but that closeness was gone. I felt the loss, but assumed it was due to the stress of having children and still being in school. Not everything can last forever. One evening my husband came to me looking very uncomfortable. He confessed that he had been using pornography….

Read more of KatieDid’s story at hopeandhealinglds.com

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And take a look at the end of the post for information about a conference that will be held by the Northwest Coalition for Healthy Intimacy in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, September 13, 2014 Speakers will includeDouglas Weiss, Ph.D; Donald L. Hilton, M.D.; Geoff Steurer, LMFT; Rhyll and Steve Croshaw; and LaVarr McBride, instructor of criminology at Penn State University. The conference will include an exclusive pre-screening of the forthcoming documentary The Heart of the Matter: Finding Light in the Darkness of Pornography Addiction (formerly titled Shamed). Editor’s note – this is a must-see!) Find more information or register at www.nwchi.org.

The post Restoring Intimacy – a personal story appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post submitted by Shay, the wife of a man who is seeking recovery for his pornography/sexual addiction. This is a challenge that many people are facing; we get traffic about this topic constantly. This letter to a Relief Society president could be relevant for anyone to read, as it contains information and resources that can help people understand more not only about pornography addiction, but also about the impact it has on a wife and about how both the one suffering from addiction and the spouse can find healing and recovery. Shay shares what brought so much pain, in addition to some of the things that have helped her find healing from the trauma of her husband’s addiction. These are resources that are helping many LDS people find healing and hope.

I’ve included the Bible video above about the woman with the issue of blood, because I believe that women suffering from the impact of their husband’s addiction need the individual, personal healing power of the Savior as much as their husbands do. And to me, women like Shay who are using many resources at their disposal are showing faith that the Savior can heal them. I am grateful that there are more resources available to help those affected by sexual addiction. Read more personal stories on our site, or in the blog list Shay shares below. You can also find more resources at hopeandhealinglds.com.

To My Relief Society President,

This is a very hard letter for me to write.  The desire and need to confide in you has been bouncing around in my head for a while and I can’t ignore it any longer.

This has been a trying year for me.  Actually, it has been one of the hardest of my life and yet also the most spiritual and comforting.  I found out at the beginning of this year that my husband has struggled with an addiction to pornography since he was a teenager.  There were long periods of sobriety, sometimes years long and many bishops and feelings of “I’ve got this.”  He would continually follow his priesthood leader’s guidance to “study your scriptures more, pray more and attend the temple more,” in an effort to conquer this trial.  He first told me about his “problem” a year or two into our marriage, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that we recognized this “problem” as an actual addiction — not because of the intensity and escalations [a common symptom of addiction], but rather due to the cycles [unhealthy, repeated patterns can also be symptoms of addiction].  Once we started treating it as an addiction, or an illness, then we both began to heal and recover.

When I married, I made all of the “right” choices.  I married my stalwart, returned missionary for time and all eternity.  There was so much emphasis on temple marriage that I felt that it was the end goal.  I thought that once you achieved that, life was just living in the dream you’d built. I knew that there would be bumps in the road but no lesson from Young Women’s or Sunday School, or even college, prepared me for the pain and trauma that would leave me crumpled in a heap on my closet floor.  Nothing taught me how to pull myself from the darkness that left me in my pajamas for weeks at a time.  There was no lesson that let me know that my eternal companion could betray me in such a personal, devastating way.

My husband is a good man, who became ensnared by a vicious, plaguing addiction.  It changed him.  It took my kindhearted loving husband and caused him to be selfish, cruel, critical and manipulative.  This addiction caused him to repeatedly look me in the eyes, and lie.  I was left feeling crazy and insecure.  This journey has taught me that the real damaging issue is not the pornography, but the changes in behaviors and unhealthy ideals caused by the pornography.  That is the true cause of the trauma.

I have learned that as the spouse of a pornography or sex addict, I have experienced what is called “Betrayal Trauma.”  Its symptoms are akin to the symptoms of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. It comes with all the same triggers and deep rooted emotions that are felt by a soldier returning from war.  I felt isolated.  I had been taught by my addicted husband that this was HIS secret and I would betray him by seeking help.  Because my husband often didn’t share my inspiration, I learned over time that I was unable to really seek, listen to and discern the direction of the spirit on my own.  I felt let down by the priesthood (because my HUSBAND did this) and often feel like I am living in a Man’s World.

I have learned that despite his (and my) discomfort, the best way for me to heal, is to talk about my trauma.  I need a safe way to release these negative feelings caused by the addiction so that they don’t fester and cause resentments which make it harder to heal and forgive my husband.  It is healing and helpful to be able to say to a safe person, “I am devastated and hurt because ____________.”  I need supportive family and friends.  I needed to educate myself about addiction and the effects it has.  I needed group and individual therapy.  I needed a many different ways to feel loved, supported and validated, without judgment.

Recovering from an addiction and being a recovering spouse is HARD.  We are under intense pressure and suffering from real diagnosable trauma.  We don’t always make the right choices or behave in healthy ways.  But, we are TRYING.  So hard.  And we are HURTING.  So bad.  We don’t want to be judged, we want to be loved and validated.  With technology ever changing, it could be in any home or marriage, at any minute.  This problem is wide spread and growing.  According to Andrew of Rowboats and Marbles, 70% of men between the ages of 18 and 34 visit a pornographic website at least once a month.  This problem is no longer confined to men either.  We are all made to be sexual creatures, it is part of His divine master plan and we are all susceptible to the temptation.  Through recovery, I have met many women struggle too. This is a human disease.

This journey has changed me.  I have come to realize that my worth and value is determined by who I am, or rather Whose I am, and not by my husband’s choices or even by my own.  My worth is constant.  A bad choice does not make me, or him, a bad person, it only makes it a bad choice.  It doesn’t change my divine worth or his.  I am learning so much, about who I am and the kind of person I want to be.  I am learning and gathering resources about addiction that I would love to share with others who are struggling.  This addiction, like many others, feed from shame and secrecy.  I am contacting you because I am trying to break my silence. As scary as it is, I would be willing to be a friend to any wife who is suffering.  I would love to support and validate her and feel supported and validated in return.  I have found such strength from The Healing Through Christ 12 step program, the Church’s spousal PASG [pornography addiction recovery support] program, Addo Recovery [a commercial organization that offers a free six-week workshop on betrayal trauma] and LifeSTAR [commercial recovery organization].  I have books, blogs, forums and websites and I would love to share with her all of these resources.  I am contacting you because even though I don’t feel the need to shout it from the rooftops, I also don’t feel the need to suffer in silence any more.  I would like to bask in the light of His Love.  It is filled with knowledge, learning, self worth, forgiveness and the Atonement.  I would love to know if anyone else is looking for this light as well.

Thank you so much for your time and love,

Shay

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Shay’s Recovery Resources

Books
He Restoreth My Soul  by Donald L Hilton, Jr
What Can I Do About Me? by Rhyll Croshaw
Healing Through Christ (12-step workbook for spouses)- can be downloaded for free at www.healingthroughchrist.org [they are also working on a 12-step workbook for those suffering from sexual addiction]

For Addicts and Spouses
LifeSTAR: www.lifestarnetwork.com
(this is a paid program =)
List of Blogs: http://ldsaddictionrecoveryblogs.blogspot.com

For Spouses
Addo Recovery: www.addorecovery.com
(this is a free online program with the option to continue paid online/in person group therapy.  This is a favorite amongst wives…)
Online Anonymous Forum: www.hopeandhealinglds.com/forum-for-wives

The Togetherness Project: togethernessproject.com

Websites
www.rowboatsandmarbles.org
www.fightthenewdrug.org
www.rhyllrecovery.com
www.salifeline.org
http://addictionrecovery.lds.org/
You can read more about Shay and follow her blog at www.awiferedeemed.blogspot.com

Read more personal stories in our personal stories index or at hopeandhealinglds.com or at womenfordecency.org/blog

The post Letter from a wife of a pornography addict: To My Relief Society President appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

“Sexual addictions in women are increasingly becoming more common. Television, movies, magazines, and music videos promot decadent sexuality as good, desirable, and acceptable but never reveal the negative consequences of these behaviors.”

So writes Dr. Donald Hilton in his book, He Restoreth My Soul. Hilton devotes one of the appendices in his book to stories of LDS women who have suffered with sexual addictions…but who have also found hope and healing through Christ and through getting the specialized help they needed.

With his permission, we are sharing some of those stories here at Mormon Women. Following is the first one. More will be forthcoming. (To the reader who asked about this…sorry that this post comes a day late.)

– – – – –

I am a female in recovery from sexual addiction. From the time I was born, my life was filled with many challenges and struggles. An unstable home environment, physical and sexual abuse, and my mother’s struggle with two failed marriages all contributed to severe emotional scars that impacted my ability to feel safe and loved.

[My mother’s third husband] was everything I had been missing in a father…. I know that I owe much of my life and happiness to his lessons and his love….

Sadly, no human being can take away all emotional pain and I began to turn to books for some measure of comfort. It started out with fantasy books. They would take me to faraway places that didn’t have horrible fathers who abuse you. I could leave the challenging life I endured behind. I stumbled on my first pornographic book when I was twelve. It came in the form of a romance novel. By then my mom was so used to be always having my nose in a book that she didn’t think anything of it. I began to feel strong sexual reactions that were fueled from molestations [I had experienced earlier in my life]. The sexual feelings that this created in me made me want to escape even more.

From then on I would do anything to get a book with sex in it. I bought used books and I began stealing books. I found a neighbor who also had an addiction to sexual romance books and I was able to get them from her. I loved imagining myself feeling loved again. My child abuse had polluted my understanding of being loved and so the romance books supported my confused understanding of what love was. … I kept trying to stop reading the books but I couldn’t. I recall throwing a book across the room trying to get away from the words and the feelings in the book but they haunted me and wouldn’t leave me.

[Her addiction escalated to acting out with various boyfriends, trying to “find…comfort in a sexual relationship.” In one situation, after a move, she found another boyfriend. She writes, “Even though I hated him, I needed him to act out my sexual addiction.” This illustrates how powerfully such an addiction can control someone’s life. She ran away and lied to her parents and they sent her to a recovery center, where she first felt the rays of hope and faith.]

I was lying in a girl’s bedroom after the lights went out, and I realized I could not do this by myself anymore. I finally prayed to my Heavenly Father even though I had rejected him all the previous years of my life. I felt like I was placed underneath a waterfall of the Spirit, and I received a testimony of Jesus Christ and that He loves me. This witness and a powerful love carried me until I graduated from the program at the recovery center.

Three months after I graduated, I relapsed back into my addiction worse than I had ever relapsed before…. This time I knew what I needed to do to find peace. I went cold turkey from my addictive patterns, but I was afraid to go back to church [but I did]. The lesson was on the law of chastity and keeping yourself clean for your future husband. … I felt like it was a message from Heavently Father to get my act together and prepare myself for the time when I would meet my husband. I decided to meet with my bishop again…. I discovered my testimony of Christ’s atonement again and became ready to take the sacrament. With the help of my bishop I felt that I was better prepared for marriage when I eventually found and married my husband in the temple.

[Marriage brought another layer of challenge as she realized that she expected her husband to fill the emotional void she still had in her life. After some time and losing a baby, she writes that she was once again “reminded of my powerlessness and how I desperately needed to rely upon my Heavenly Father. As I began to rely on my Savior, he began to heal me from the emotional pain I was feeling from the loss of our baby.” She began attending 12-step support groups for women in sexual addiction and eventually became a facilitator in the LDS 12-step PASG (pornography addiction support group) program of the Church.]

[Through participation in the PASG program,] I recovered from the pain of the loss of my unborn child, as well as from everything that had ever happened to me — the abuse, the neglect, and all the hurt I had caused myself by participating in sexual addiction. By continuing to apply the 12 Steps I deepened my resolve to get to know and trust my Savior every day. This spiritual understanding takes time to fully apply. My marriage improved by leaps and bounds and four months later I discovered that I was pregnant again. Imagine the fear I felt as I begged my Heavenly Father to not take another child from me. Then humility came over me as I finished that particular prayer with: “If it be Thy will that I lose another child to learn more about my recovery I will accept Thy plan for me.”

That’s when I realized how dedicated I am to the recovery program that we have. My whole life has been centered upon this God hole that was gaping open in my heart. No matter what I threw at the hole, it could not be filled. The 12 Steps have helped me learn to find the healing I finally needed and that healing could only come through the Savior.

I would like to describe my life to you now that I am in full recovery. I have a beautiful baby girl who is so precious to me. My husband and I are again best friends, like we were when we were dating, only our relationship is better because we rely upon our Savior who is with us in our home. I am assertive about my feelings adn I have learned to not let them build up because of the fear of being misunderstood and rejected. As a [PASG] facilitator, I currently serve my fellow sisters seeking recovery from addiction with joy. Each week I watch them go through the same journey that I have experienced with 12 Step recovery. I am motivated to serve my family and I have  wonderful relationships with my parents and siblings.

Most importantly, I know that my Savior is truly my Redeemer. I know that there is not another method on this earth that will bring the peace, love and joy that we need other than the Atonement of the Lord, Jesus Christ. I know that He “remembers my sins no more” and because of that, I feel, like Alma, that my joy is greater than my sorrow. I know that true peace is possible because I have felt it in my own life and I encourage each of you to find out for yourself that He lives. For those of you reading my story please know that Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father love you and are there for you. There is hope for full freedom from your addiction.

Top image created by andrea silva at Wikimedia Commons. She has no affiliation with this site.

The post Women healing from sexual addiction: Personal stories appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.