This blog post is continued from “Jennifer H story… Thank you for sharing your story with others who may have experienced the affects of pornography .

THE EFFECTS OF PORN – Jennifer’s Story Continues 

I was married to a porn addict and the effects it had on the family were astounding!  You would think that being LDS would help someone not be an addict to porn but I can tell you that it has nothing to do with the addiction.  Addicts will find a way to feed their addiction any way they can but the biggest way to feed it is being secretive.  They will find an excuse to be alone to feed the addiction.

We were married 27 years and 15 of those years he was looking at porn or finding a way to talk sexual to other women.  Once he started looking at porn the atmosphere in our home changed.  It went from having a good feeling to having a very dark feeling in our home.  I didn’t notice the change as much as others did because I lived in the home all the time but after he moved out I had several people tell me that they could feel a difference in the atmosphere in the home.

Porn feeds on darkness so keeping things dark is what helps feed it but once you add light to it then it goes away.  The changes were not drastic so I didn’t notice them right away–they happened a little at a time.  This reminds me of the story of the frog and a pan of water.  If you put a frog in a pan of boiling water he will jump out right away but if you put the frog in a pan of cold water and turn the heat up slowly he will end up boiling to death because he becomes accustomed to the heat.  This is the way porn works too.

As one looks at it at first they don’t see the damage it is making on them but their brain tells them that they need to see more to feel satisfied or build their self-esteem.  It starts with soft porn and can lead to hardcore porn the more they look at it.  With the harder porn you end up looking at how men dominate women and how they treat them.  If you watch it all the time then you start treating the women around you the way you saw them treated in the images.

It doesn’t matter if you are a religious person or not, porn doesn’t discriminate–it affects everyone.  It does, however, make it so you don’t want anything to do with the people around you or your religion–especially the LDS religion.  LDS standards are higher than other churches and so when one watches porn then they don’t want to live on the higher level that the church teaches.  You lose the desire to be active and the social aspect of going to church too.  Being around people goes out the window and all you want to do is be alone.

This also affects how you treat your spouse and children.  With our oldest 3 children he was more involved in their lives but with our youngest 3 children he didn’t seem to care as much about being involved in their lives.

He started to criticize his in-laws and my side of the family.  He also started to criticize going on family events and this affected our children to the point that they will not go with me to their grandparents home anymore.  Even the thought of having my parents come to visit makes my kids very negative towards them.

Our affection towards each other disappeared completely.  The only thing he ever wanted to do to get out of the house was to go out to eat which in turn made it so that we both gained weight and became obese which affected our health.  I would try and try to get him to go out for a walk or do something else but he always had an excuse to stay home.  With my calling in my church I was gone a lot to scouting events and would purposely stay as long as I could to avoid going home or would wait until I knew he was in bed before going home.

He told me that he had a problem with porn and asked for support as he went through the 12 step program to try to overcome the addiction.  But he never followed all the way through the 12 step program even with my support.  A lot of other women have felt that the addiction is their fault and their spouse would make them feel this way too but I only had a small time where I felt that it was my fault.

Also these women will turn away from God and their church after being betrayed but I didn’t.  I actually turned towards God and asked for his help to overcome my feelings of betrayal.  As I would talk to people and tell them my story I came to realize that we are only in charge of ourselves and the choices we make but we have to also think of who those choices will affect us.  They don’t just affect us– they affect everyone around us especially family.  Once I was able to accept that,  the healing was able to take place a lot quicker than I expected.

I even went to the point of asking for forgiveness from God to help me heal and I did get confirmation from him that I was forgiven.  That is the most important part of the healing process is having God forgive you, then you can forgive yourself a lot easier.  I now can wait for forgiveness from my children and my ex because I know that God has forgiven me.

I also have a Facebook support group where if I feel I need to talk to someone I can go there and they will not judge me or make me feel bad about myself.  I have become friends with several of those women and have talked to them and helped them with their healing.  Once you heal then you are able to help others in the healing process.

One of the ladies I met on my mission recently told me of her husband’s addiction and how it has affected her and her children.  The difference with her situation and mine is that her husband is very controlling and my ex wasn’t that way.  But I am here to help her and it makes me feel good that I can help someone else.

I have considered my situation and realize that mine is probably a lot different from others–especially after reading some of the other stories from women in the support group.  My ex was actually willing to work with me on our divorce papers and not fight me.  In hind sight I also noticed he was preparing me to support myself by telling me to get my own bank account and telling me to put my paychecks in that account instead of our joint account.

But he wasn’t the only one that prepared me for things to come.  God prepared me for the bad news of his physical adultery.  I knew he had physically cheated on me before he came home and admitted it to me.  This physical cheating was brought on by all the years of looking at porn.  Most people would not consider looking at porn as cheating, but in reality it is.

I was always a happy person but after years of feeling like I wasn’t worth much that disappeared.  My parents and siblings noticed the change but my kids didn’t know anything different until I became the happy person I was before all this happened.  I have had several of my children comment on how much happier I am now that I am on my own and living life the way I want to and doing those things to make me happy.  I took my oldest daughter to an Air Supply concert and on the way home she said, “Mom, I’ve never seen you that way before”.  I was singing and dancing to the music and had not done that before with her.

My determination to become the person I want to be is so much stronger than it has ever been.  I know that despite what I went through for 15 years has made me a stronger person and now I am able to help those that need to become stronger too.  There is help out there and there is a way to get out of the situation you may be in.  Having faith and love for God will help you do that.  God won’t abandon you and if you think he does it’s because you have abandoned him.  Pick yourself up, brush yourself off and move forward with his help.  He will be there for you anytime you need him.  It won’t be easy but it will be worth it!

I still have bad days just like everyone does but I know he is there to help me.  On those days I turn to him in prayer and ask for his help.  For my children the only thing I can do now is be a good example for them and be there in case they need someone to talk to.  They have their own personal feelings towards the church and other things but I can’t fix those for them.  I can only be their support and help them when they ask for it.

With the healing process I have been able to tell my ex my feelings and what I expect from him to help me and the kids heal.  Expressing my feelings to my ex took a long time to do, but now it is up to him to make things right with us and not my problem anymore.  He says he is doing the 12 step program again so we will see if he stays with it this time.  I only wish the best for everyone.

Learn more about the effects of porn on these sites…

• Top 10 Effects of Porn on Your Brain, Your Marriage, and Your Sex Life

• 7 Surprising (and Negative) Effects of Porn

• Effects of Porn on Relationships 

My very good friend Jennifer has had her life turned upside down because of her husbands addition to porn. This is Jennifer’s Story. Topics like this are difficult to share and I know it has been a long road for her. This is a two-part experience.

My Husband Was Addicted to Porn

My name is Jennifer H and my ex and I were married for 27 years with 6 six children.  Somewhere during that time he started viewing pornography without my knowing.  He was diagnosed with depression and anxiety during this time as well and started taking medication for his mental issues.  One of the side effects of the medication was non-performance so our sex life changed.  I don’t know when exactly he started looking at porn but he did.  He would come to me every now and then and talk to me about it and that he wanted to go through the 12 step program to try to change things–not sure how many times he went through the program yet never made any changes.

I would go to church and the lessons that I had would motivate me to want to do things better in our home but I never had his support.  We stopped having FHE, family scripture study and family prayer.  Any time I asked to do those things he would get mad and tell me that he didn’t like that I was controlling him.

All 6 of our children were baptized and confirmed but as the last boy became old enough for priesthood he was unable to do the ordinance so I had to lean on my family for that.  We stopped talking and the only time we went out was to eat with each other.  It wasn’t really “dating” in my book.  I really didn’t realize how much he was into porn until one day I woke up with him talking on the computer in our bedroom no less to a girl.  I faked sleep for a bit to listen to them and then had to get up.  Once he realized I was awake he got off with her.  He knew he had been caught but yet said nothing to me about it all day or ever.  He’s never apologized to me for that incident or anything else.

I just kept my faith and kept living my life and doing the things that make me happy–my crocheting and my scouting.  He had at this point his own online business doing technical writing for a couple of companies so he was always on the computer.  We moved his computer and desk into another room so he didn’t feel like he lived in our bedroom all the time and at times he would shut the door.  I had no way to know what was going on behind that closed-door but every time I asked for him to get his temple recommend renewed he told me he wasn’t worthy.  He never made an effort to change that.

In September 2014 he made a business trip to Las Vegas and I told myself that I needed to make sure I kept in touch through Skype with him.  At one point I needed to make a trip to the store and as I was driving down the street I had the thought come to me–“What would  you do if Gary came home and told you he cheated on you?”  At first I wasn’t sure what was going on and I just kind of let it go but on the way home I had the same thought come back to me.  I never really answered the question to myself but I just went through the day in my head and realized that my day had gone very good.  When he came home two days later the first thing he told me when he walked through the door was that we needed to talk.  We went into the bedroom and he told me that he had a one night stand.  He got all emotional and apologized and told me that he would move out whenever I was ready for him to do so.  I almost started laughing at him because I had been prepared for this to happen.  I told him that I wanted to work things out.  After he told me he told the kids and then he made an appointment with the bishop to do the same thing.

We went to visit the bishop and the bishop asked me if I was willing to try to work it out and I said yes.  At this point I was still thinking of my children and how this was going to affect them–I hadn’t even thought about myself yet.  I wanted to try and fix things for my kids and the fact that I was taught that eternal families are very important.  It was a couple of months later that he met with the Stake President and we then had a sit down with the kids and talked about church discipline and what could happen to him.  We were expecting the worse and then found out that the Stake President decided to leave the decision up to the Bishop.  I was floored!!  How could this happen?  I thought that for adultery you were either disfellowshipped or excommunicated and not on the ward level but on the stake level.

Following what my father taught me, that you didn’t question what your local authorities decided, I didn’t question the decision.  In January 2015 the Bishop came to the decision to just put him on probation for a year.  During the time he was on probation the Bishop met with him maybe twice.  Again I thought “what?” and again I didn’t question the decision based on the things I was taught by my father.

During the year 2015 I still struggled with how things were going in my home–or not going.  We still weren’t having FHE, family scripture study or family prayer unless I asked for it.  I was not getting anywhere as there was too much tension in the home.  I would make it a point to go home after a scouting activity when I knew he was already in bed.  The Bishop had us going to a marriage counselor and I thought ok I hope things change.  The day he admitted to the counselor that he had a problem with porn I expected the counselor to turn to me and ask me “how does that make you feel?” but I got nothing.  No one cared how I felt about all this.  I finished out our sessions but still felt no one cared about my feelings.  I was like a fly on the wall at those sessions.

At one point the Bishop sat us down and told us he wanted us to work on our relationship by holding hands, dating, etc.  I was concerned about my daughter and her attitude about Young Women’s so I started attending with her.  One Sunday as we were walking into church one of us took the others’ hand, however, once we got to the outside door he dropped my hand to open the door and after we were inside I took his hand again and he made this comment to me “What you trying to do prove to the Bishop we are holding hands?”  I thought to myself, “He’s not going to change.”  During YW that day the lesson was on the good and bad things we have in our lives and what to do about them.  One of the bad items listed was Abusive Relationships and the solution was to get out of it.  It was like someone had slapped me in the head and saying “duh” to me.  I went home and talked to my mom and a couple of friends about what I was feeling and during this time I had been praying for an answer as to what to do for my family.  After all of this I came to the conclusion that the best thing for my family was to move on and if that included a divorce then I needed to do that.  I struggled with that decision because of what we are taught in the church but I also decided that in order to make things better in my home it was a necessary move.  So on November 28, 2015 I asked my ex to move out and told him that I wanted a divorce.  He wasn’t happy with that decision and at first decided to get back at me by taking the only car we had and left the house.  I prayed at that point and asked my HF to let my ex know that this was the right thing to keep our family together.  Two days later he returned my car and agreed to the divorce.  We were divorced on January 25, 2016.

I still get emotional telling my story to people because it makes me sad that my children had to go through all this because my ex felt that porn was more important than his family.  During all this my doctor had told me that in order to reverse my type 2 diabetes was to lose weight and change my diet so I got serious and in one year I lost 65 pounds, got my blood sugar under control and changed my eating habits.  I still have faith that someday my family will come back to the church and that we will be together forever but it does get challenged too.

Before the divorce was final I met with my Bishop and he told me that he wasn’t going to try to change my mind because he knew I had already decided what I was going to do yet he proceeded to do just that adding “I’m scared for your eternal salvation.”  Why would he say that just about me and not about my ex?

I don’t believe that my Bishop knew how to handle this situation and I believe that they need more training when it comes to helping families that have been affected by pornography or anything else that is so damaging to the family unit.  I don’t feel that the decision the Bishop and Stake President made was the right decision for either my family or my ex because it did not repair the damage that was done but made it worse and it destroyed our family.  Even to this day I feel like my Bishop does not treat me like a member of the ward and that he feels that I destroyed my family.  I feel that the decision was a slap on the wrist and that it was a NO BIG DEAL to the Bishop and my ex.  I feel that the Bishop treated me like I was the bad guy in this situation when I should have been treated as the victim.  I still support my local authorities but I still have feelings about how this situation was handled and that it needs more attention for the sake of others that go through the same thing.

Continue reading about Jennifer and the effects of pornography. Click Here for the Effects of Pornography Blog Post…

 

 

I gave up Facebook for Lent. I chose to do this because I needed to make room for better things and most of all for God.

This is the first year that I have given up lent and have made it the whole 40 days. I have had so many people ask me why I’m doing Lent since I’m not Catholic. A couple of my friends at church thought that Christians shouldn’t observe Lent since it is a Catholic observance.  One of the reasons I did this year is because I felt that God wanted me to  devote more time to Him.  Facebook was consuming my time and I didn’t realize how much time until I did Lent.

I scoured through Amazon to find Bible studies and I bought some and I’m getting ready to start one called,”When God doesn’t fix it… Learning to Walk in God’s Plans Instead of Our Own.” I came across this one by Laura Story and I have no doubt that God has something to teach me. I’m really good at doing things my way. If it doesn’t work out the way I think it should, I can come up with all kinds of reasons or excuses about why it didn’t work out. I’m pretty sure that the main reasons why is because I’m a big time control freak.

As I prepared for Lent and taking time away from social media, I didn’t know what God was telling me to do. I had to trust Him fully and see what God’s plans were. I was in deed of a major detour that would direct me away from Facebook.

One of the things about Lent and one of the main reasons I felt I needed to give up something that was interfering with my own relationship with Christ.  I don’t know why I used Lent as a reason for giving up social media for 40 days, since I needed to have a period of reflection, repentance and to get back on tract with my prayer life and studying the Word of God.

This was the perfect opportunity to re-align my life and focus on God. We are supposed to sacrifice whatever it is that distracts ourselves from God and distracts me from my own selfish desires of the heart.  My objective was to seek to live a more faithful life and get closer to Jesus Christ.

I knew I needed to have a period of reflection, repentance and to get back on tract with my prayer life and studying the Word of God. This was the perfect opportunity to re-align my life and focus on God. We are supposed to sacrifice whatever it is that distracts ourselves from God and distracts me from my own selfish desires of the heart.  My objective was to seek to live a more faithful life and get closer to Jesus Christ.

For years, I always thought of Lent as a way of sacrificing something. I didn’t know many who did anything for Lent. Many friends of mine from church couldn’t understand why I observed Lent this year since for the most part it is Catholics. Giving up social media wasn’t a sacrifice for me since I would get flustered over a lot of it. Mainly because of the political stuff and the faith-based arguments.

I couldn’t 100 percent walk away from Facebook since I still had to do things for my church on there. I didn’t realize how much time I wasted when it came to watching those cure viral videos about puppies and kittens. Then the whole scrolling though messages from others that had to do with their political and religious views.

One of the most important things I learned during this 40 day hiatus from Facebook is that social media is “TOXIC”.  I don’t spend time on Twitter or Instagram, so my break was from Facebook.

If I had one word to describe what I think about social media, I would say it is “toxic”. When I went directly to my Facebook page instead of my churches, it was kind of depressing. The reason I say that is because of the negativity.  The Facebook statuses was filled with political/faith-based arguments, complaints about how horrible this person or that person is, and people who share cute pictures(meme’s) or viral videos.

For the most part, many of the messages were political and fake images, fake news and fake pages. I hate the term, “Fake News”.  When I hear people say that or I hear it on the news, I hit mute. It isn’t just the news that is spreading fake news, it is people in general. People will share fake pictures that have been photoshopped, lies, fake websites and all kinds of things before making sure it is true. I have shared things before making sure it is true and when I find out it is a lie, I delete it or post the accurate story. People don’t care if it is true or not. I will be posting a blog with a number of fake stories and photoshopped images.

It takes less than five minutes to research a story and find out it is garbage. But, they don’t care because it is funny to them. I have one friend who only watches Fox News. I also have friends who watch either local news, CNN, MSNBC and whatever else. In my opinion, when a person uses only one source for the news, they are getting just one side. Then there are those who has this idea that everything you read or hear on the internet is the truth. I haven’t missed any of this on social media.

Before I stepped away from Facebook, the pictures that are posted below were all over Facebook and I come back yesterday and they are still being passed around.  Then the hatred that is going on with the students from Parkland Florida is horrible. I just want to hit people over the head with a hammer when it comes to common sense. I’m sure I will have some friends and even those who I go to church with who will gasp when I tell them that I don’t believe the spins coming from any of the news station. If people can learn how to post a comment on Facebook, they have the ability to look and see if is story or a picture is true.

When I checked out the stuff on my Facebook page last night it made me sick. It was like a soap opera. It doesn’t matter how long you are away, the same thing goes on. I plan on spending less time on Facebook because of the nastiness out there, I will have to still do things for my church since we need to reach out to the world.

I told myself a number of years ago that I wouldn’t unfriend someone because they voted differently than I did or because they didn’t share the same faith. I still stand by that, but I will unfriend family and friends if all they can do is spill hatred and lies. Nothing can be accomplished by these kinds of things.

One of the biggest things that I learned during Lent is that I’m not out to please the world. My faith and personal relationship with Christ is the only thing I am concerned about. It’s a waste of time arguing with people about politics and faith. I will continue to share my faith with others, but I’m not going to get into a tit for tat kind of mentality.