Healing steps

Over these many years of being aware of my husband's problem addiction, I never felt able to talk to anyone about it. It was my private, shameful struggle. How could I explain it to someone without them pitying me, criticizing me, blaming me, or telling me to leave him? None of those things helped. I was on my own.

There were times I wanted to talk to my bishop about it, since I felt like that was the one person obligated to listen to me. My addict husband wouldn't hear of it. He didn't want me advertising his secret. Probably even more, he couldn't accept that porn was not ok for me or our relationship. He wanted me to just get over it and be ok with it. If I pursued help, that meant I was serious about things not being ok.

This week I took ownership of my story and my recovery, finally. I had been feeling prompted to meet with my bishop, so I did. It was scary. I've never really done that before. Even worse, I had never even met my bishop! We moved into our ward a few months ago, and due to our church time and the size of our ward I've never spoken a word to our bishop. This totally wasn't how I wanted to get to know him, but hey, what can ya do?

The husband knew I was meeting with him and was supportive (yay for recovery). I've heard horror stories about meetings with bishops not going well - being blamed, chastised, or blown off. I was prepared for things to not go well. Thankfully, they went fine. It wasn't earth-shattering necessarily. My bishop seems to be a man of few words generally. But he listened and tried to empathize. He encouraged us to get some counseling and offered to have the ward help pay. He gave me a blessing. He asked us to meet with him together the next week. It was good. I felt good, because I felt brave.

Last night the husband and I met with him together. It was another brief meeting, but it was good because we went together. It was good because my husband had a good attitude. He was open and willing to do this as a team. At one point, he even volunteered the info of when he last acted out and what the bishop would like him to do in terms of sacrament and temple attendance. That was a surprise for me! We're going to get some counseling. We're going to have the bishop to be accountable to and to help us.

Keeping secrets is the worst. Keeping a secret that isn't even your secret but somehow becomes your secret is especially painful. Letting a secret both drag you down and tear you apart as a couple is ridiculous and heartbreaking. It doesn't have to be that way. Now that we've finally started TALKING, to each other and to other people, it feels like this secret isn't as powerful and shameful as we thought it was. Still, we have a long way to go, but I feel proud myself -- and of us.