(The following article consists of excerpts from Chapter Three of From Heartache to Healing: Finding Power in Christ to Deal with a Loved One’s Sexual Addiction, which Phil and I co-authored. It is our hope and prayer that the harmony of our testimony will be a blessing to all those who are battling the onslaught of sexual addiction that the Liar, Satan, is mounting against the Saints. We are sharing from our own experience as a husband and wife who have survived this scourge and have found access to the Savior’s grace for both of our sakes through the LDS version of the Twelve Step program. The sections of text in Phil’s voice will be indicated in the sub-headings. We have used pseudonyms for the sharing contributed by other sisters dealing with this challenge.)
When a home has been invaded by pornography or other sexual sin, the very foundations of a marriage can be shaken. Both partners look at the other as the source of their pain and suffering. She looks at him and says, “How could you bring such trash into our home, into our lives?” And he only sees her words as yet another source of shame, often another reason to turn to his addiction. Love in the home is replaced by fights and recrimination. Both people begin to wonder if their marriage will survive this dreadful division between them.
“The battle seems futile at times. I know it is the adversary. Through this experience he has discovered my Achilles heel and my husband’s. What better a way to destroy a family than to make us both wallow in the bitter battle of addiction, compulsion and obsession? I know where to turn for strength, but the futility of repeated patterns has left me tired and weak –Lois.”
Satan has established a beachhead in the family, a frontline within the home.
In the spiritual realm—just as the Savior taught—there is a legion of evil spirits in league with Satan who desire not only your husband’s destruction, but yours as well. He is the one who is doing all he can to turn you against each other–blaming and accusing and shaming each other. He is the one who would drown your husband in lust and you in despair. He is the one who would destroy your potential as individual children of God. He is the one who would like to see you become so despondent that you develop addictions of your own as you try to cope with your fear and pain. He is the one who hopes the effects of your unhappiness will drive your children to resort to some kind of addictive behavior.
And when the addiction is revealed and recovery has a chance to begin, he often intensifies his efforts.
Maybe Satan feels like we are slipping away from his grasp because we are getting into recovery. He knows how to destroy our family. He can entice my husband to choose to follow him until he is an addict. He can encourage me to be so angry and resentful that I am filled with contention and have no desire to forgive. He can give me every opportunity to become thoroughly overwhelmed so that I can’t mother my children – and if I can’t do that, I can’t protect them from his snares. –Cathy.
Of all the people alive today, we, as Latter-day Saints, are potentially among the most fortunate, even when the battle with pornography has entered our home. Why? Because of the eternal perspective on life provided to us by the doctrines of the Restoration. We say “potentially” because our doctrines do us no good if we either don’t learn them or if knowing them, we don’t apply them in the “trenches” of our real lives. This is a spiritual war, being fought in the spiritual depths of men’s and women’s souls. We must be willing to step back from the immediate heartache in order to see the big picture of what’s really going on and to recognize our common enemy.
Drawing on Gospel Truths to Reveal Our Real Enemy
According to the scriptures, Satan was once known as Lucifer and actually began a “war” in heaven. This was not a war of flesh and blood, but a war of heart and mind. It was a time in which each of us decided how we felt about agency. Did we agree with Lucifer’s offer to save us from the painful, messy consequences of agency? Obviously, since we’re here in mortality, we agreed with Heavenly Father’s plan, which required us to humble ourselves and participate in a fallen, imperfect world that we can only escape from by allowing the Savior to rescue us.
And when Satan’s offer was not accepted, he became enraged at God and at those of us who chose to follow our Father’s plan and to trust Jesus to redeem us. Satan is the one who still encourages these very same attitudes of bitterness and resentment in our hearts today toward life on God’s terms—those terms being agency, imperfection and humility. This becomes especially true when we must deal with the reality of addiction in our own life or in the lives of our loved ones.
Coming to Know the Unfailing Love of God, Even in the Darkest Times
There are so many ways that the adversary is literally drowning the human family in lies in this day and age. We can hardly get through an hour of our day without something discouraging and disheartening bombarding our hearts and minds with negative thoughts. Thanks to our modern media and technology, the whole world has become the equivalent of a tiny village where we can hear (almost instantly) about enough sad, traumatic things to last a life-time! And then, to find out that the influence of the adversary has reached right into the heart of our marriages and our lives–it is enough to crush every hope we have. And that is exactly what he is working for and planning on—to convince us that life isn’t worth living.
The only thing that saved me from this lie when I was going through the darkest times in my first marriage was coming to the Savior, personally and directly–the way Alma the Younger did in Alma 36:17-18.
. . . I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world.
Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus,
thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.
Of course, in Alma’s case he was suffering for his own sins, but the truth is that sin–no matter who commits it—has the potential to drag us all down into the “gall of bitterness” and the “everlasting chains of death,” unless we can turn to the Savior and call on Him for salvation.
As I went through those terrible, dark years, there was only one way and means by which I could find “rest to my soul,” and that was by establishing my faith securely on the Lord Jesus Christ Himself—not just on being a member of His true Church. Membership and activity alone were not enough to save me. I needed Him. I needed to come to the veil and converse with Him, sometimes every hour, in order to receive His Spirit and His guidance about what He would have me do each day.
It was also during this time that I was delivered from Satan’s lie that God is a stern and punitive being who will not bless me if I am in any way “unworthy” or unfaithful in my own thoughts and actions. I was so grateful to learn, instead, that my Heavenly Father and my Savior are both “big” enough and spiritually secure enough to handle my anger and bitterness, even if, in the midst of my pain, I direct it toward Them. I have learned by my own experience that literally nothing can separate me from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39).
The Sacred Act of Holding Nothing Back from the Lord
Yes, you heard me correctly. It really is okay for you to admit to Heavenly Father that you’re mad at Him, or at the very least, that you’re really confused and frustrated toward Him and His “great plan of happiness.” After all, He knew your husband had this problem, and He didn’t warn you about it. It’s really normal to question why God would not have warned you and kept you from ending up in such a marriage.
I have learned that to harbor any negative thoughts or feelings of any kind while trying to pretend them away, is to fall once again into the Liar’s trap.
You see, the adversary doesn’t want you to go to Heavenly Father with your whole heart and pour it all out, right down to the “dregs,” right down to the very last drop of sorrow, sadness, regret, resentment, bitterness, confusion, and anger. Satan knows that if you do, you will discover for yourself just how loving and compassionate Heavenly Father really is. Unlike Satan, He will not attack you with accusations and doubts. And I have every confidence that you will find, as I did, that He will continue to love you, even if you are full of anger and disgust at your husband, yourself, and even at Him, for what has happened.
Some years ago, as I was pondering what it means to fully surrender my will and my life to the Lord (as Step Three in the Twelve Step program invites us to do), I realized that I had to be willing to lay all the pain I had ever felt on the Savior’s willing and capable shoulders. On that occasion, I wrote the following words in my journal:
When I have finally come to the end of myself and I have lost the battle and given into my fear, anger, frustration, impatience and bitterness, I find nowhere to go but to the same God I’m so tempted to blame for not saving me from “this hour.” How amazed I am at the humility of the Lord in the face of my feelings, as I hear these words come into my mind and know they are His:
“Let me have your pain, Colleen. Your anger and your bitterness as well.
“Lay it on me. I can take it. . . . in fact I have taken it.”
“I’ll step in between you and the pain.”
“I’ll take a ‘bullet’ for you, even if you need to fire it.
“Blast away.”
“Get it all out. Get all the pain out.”
“Don’t hold anything back.”
The peace the Lord offers comes only when we’re finally willing to let the Lord be the one–the only one–to save us. This is the greatest truth either you or your husband will ever come to know—just how much you are loved by your Savior, even in your addictions and your confusion. Our message, as you will hear over and over in this book, is that these feelings, as well as all of your other challenges, can be taken to the Lord. His mission was and continues to be to “bind up the broken-hearted” (Isaiah 61:1). We hope to convey to you the sure witness we have that comes from our own personal experience: He stands ready and waiting for you to cast your burdens upon Him so He can bear them for you. This connection with Him is exactly what Helaman was describing to his sons in Helaman 5:12. We offer this “likening” of Helaman’s testimony. It is our testimony, as well.
And now, [dear sister], remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you [in the form of all the devil’s lies], it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo . . . (Helaman 5:12, emphasis added).
Satan is just as real as God. He wants to destroy my husband and by so doing hopes that he can destroy our whole family unit. He is whispering things to me constantly, wanting me to feel discouraged, fearful and hopeless. I refuse to let him win! . . . This is a burden that either I chose or the Lord chose for me to carry in this life. I don’t know how it will end. I hope it will end happy and positive, but if it does not end up that way, I know that before I was ever a wife to an addict, I was a daughter of God and I will always be a daughter of God! As long as I am true and faithful he will take care of me and my family. Everything will turn out in the end.
–Lynnette.
Escaping the Lies Satan Has Snared Us With
It’s pretty interesting that Satan is called the “father of all lies”(2 Nephi 2:18), not the father of adultery or even murder.
It is also interesting that Satan thrives on secrecy–whether it be about an episode with overeating (my drug of choice) or with porn. Once we start doing our “thing” in secret–eating, spending, or whatever–we’ve crossed a line into his territory and cut ourselves off from the fellowship of Truth.
One of the most prevalent lies Satan perpetrates on the human family has to do with his own self–what he looks like and what he has the power to do to us. Since the beginning of all mythology and superstition, he has encouraged us to think of him in a variety of terrifying forms, holding all kinds of magical powers to cause things to happen in the physical world. In one simple statement, the Prophet Joseph Smith revealed the truth about Satan’s influence:
All beings who have bodies have power over those who have not. The devil has no power over us only as we permit him (Words of Joseph Smith, p. 60, emphasis added).
In other words, all Satan can do to harm us is whisper negative, discouraging lie-based thoughts into our minds and hope that we will believe him and act out our beliefs toward ourselves and toward each other. That’s what he did in the garden when he lied to Eve, and it is what he did when he convinced Cain to kill his brother, Abel. He lied and convinced them to take action based on those lies. And so it has been from the beginning. As Ether 8:25 teaches us, Satan “is the father of all lies; even that same liar who beguiled our first parents, yea, even that same liar who hath caused man to commit murder from the beginning.”
If Satan can’t take control of us through our fear of his power to hurt us, then he goes to the opposite extreme and tells us there is no devil: “I am no devil, for there is none” (2 Nephi 28:22). This belief that there is no spiritual realm or spiritual influences such as God or the devil is the position of secular science and humanism, including social sciences such as sociology and psychology. It is the prevailing “world view” (belief system) that we have been immersed in for the last 150 years. And we are reaping the whirlwind of the human family embracing and acting upon that lie.
—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance [except through seeking and embracing the Atonement of Jesus Christ]. (2 Nephi 28:22)
And his tactics haven’t changed. They can’t. Even today, He has no other tactic against us to resort to except to lie. Satan is still trying to drive the lie of blame and shame between every husband and wife like a wedge, just as he tried to do in the garden between Adam and Eve.
Some of the Lies Satan Uses against Women
Satan’s desire is to make you miserable, to discourage and dishearten you, to bring you down in every way possible. So what are the lies he uses against you? Here is a partial list of lies I’ve either believed myself or heard other women express about themselves. See how many of them you recognize in your own thoughts:
You’re not pretty enough.
You’re fat.
You’re old.
You’re plain.
You’re flat.
You’re too much.
You’re not enough.
You’re the problem.
You don’t do enough.
You don’t do the right things for him in bed.
You don’t care enough.
You don’t keep yourself dolled up enough.
You’ve gained weight.
You’re too skinny.
You’re the wrong size, shape, color.
You’re boring.
You caused it, you know.
You weren’t enough to get him to stop using pornography when he married you.
You could cure this if you’d just change.
You can control this if you just scream at him enough.
You can control this if you just stay up late enough and get up early enough.
You can control this if you just keep track of him closely enough.
This wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for you. He’d be a faithful husband if you just hadn’t:
Let yourself go.
Gained weight.
Yelled at him so much.
Needed him so much.
The lies could go on and on and on and on and on. There’s no end to them. And as soon as you try to respond to one (by believing and obeying it), a hundred more spring up. You go on fighting, swinging, flailing, slashing, trying, and trying to conquer the lies by fighting them. You snap at the kids. You can’t open the drapes. You begin lying to everyone you meet—pretending you’re fine—when inside your soul you’re dying from the spiritual infection caused by these lies.
For me, it helps just to recognize where these feelings (of bitterness and discouragement) are coming from. If I can recognize that it’s just the adversary working on me, it’s easier to put those feelings in their place. I realize that these thoughts aren’t some weak, bad part of me… This is warfare and the enemy is firing on me! If I get wounded by a bullet, I don’t have to run around wondering how I could have been so silly as to get shot and blame myself for having a bullet in me. I realize that the enemy has attacked me, and I can take myself to the surgeon to be healed.
–Margene.
Phil: Some of the Lies Satan Tells Men
Of course, women aren’t the only ones Satan lies to. He lies to men just as much as to women. Some of the lies are the same–some are different. You may recognize some of these in your husband’s excuses. Maybe you see them in some behavior of your own. At any rate, let’s get more explicit about the lies he’s telling the guys:
Sex is your most important need.
You are never going to get enough.
No one is really going to take care of your needs.
Even if your wife is a willing partner, you need more.
You are being kind to her by taking care of your needs, yourself.
It’s important that other women besides your wife find you attractive.
But you’re not attractive to others.
You’re a loser.
No girl would want you.
Go ahead and stimulate your own sexual feelings. No one cares. No one knows. Just you.
Go ahead and do it–get some pictures and do it. It won’t matter.
You deserve to know what it feels like.
You deserve to know what is going on in the world.
Go ahead and look. They’re just pictures.
You’re not victimizing these women in the pictures. They enjoy expressing themselves.
You’re not hurting anyone.
You’re only hurting yourself, so it’s ok.
This is normal. All men do this.
You’re not normal if you don’t look.
In Clean Hands, Pure Heart, I wrote about the double whammy Satan throws at men, first enticing them to sin, then shaming them for giving in:
“Satan actually twists the enticing of our own conscience to defeat us. Unlike the Lord, he doesn’t respect us and he doesn’t have any integrity. He doesn’t fight fair. He entices us to sin, saying “Hey, this will be fun, this will be great–come and try this out! It’s not that bad. It won’t do any harm.” Then when we give in, he turns on us and sneers in our face, in a cruel, sadistic imitation of our conscience: “You sinner! You scum! You are the biggest slime ball in history. No one could possibly tolerate you (let alone love you) if they knew what you are really like.” On and on it goes. Is it any wonder the adversary is referred to as “the accuser of our brethren” (Revelation 12:10)? The really sad part is that after a while, we take up the cry ourselves, becoming our own accusers. Our enemy has convinced us to join his side against ourselves, exactly as he intended. He knows if he can confuse our perception of our conscience enough, if he can get us to identify ourselves as sinners, we are that much easier to coax into sin. We act as we believe, and if we believe ourselves to be bad, we are much more likely to act badly. We say to ourselves: ‘Why shouldn’t I do (whatever)? That’s just the sort of person I am. There’s no point in expecting anything better from me.’ Thus our negative beliefs contribute to our own defeat. As the scriptures tell us, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).
”
Too often, when we are in a marriage, we look to the other person for our strength and inspiration and are disappointed when we find that they are just as human as we are.
This can lead us to look elsewhere, to things that can become addictions for both the husband and the wife. It doesn’t matter to the adversary which direction he takes to bring us into bondage, as long as he gets us away from the truth.
Phil: Satan’s Lie that You Are Each Other’s Ultimate Source
As I’ve counseled with my brethren over the years, I’ve observed that some men–I believe under the influence of Satan–begin to twist the often rehearsed idea that women are spiritually superior to men into an excuse to indulge in their baser inclinations. This tendency to put women on a pedestal is further reinforced by the cultural stereotype that women are, by nature, more spiritually sensitive or spiritually inclined than men. This generalization has been portrayed for years in the media, as movies and television series have shown the wife taking the children to church while the husband stays home. We often repeat statements like, “Behind every good man is a really good woman,” or “my wife is my better half,” thus implying that the wife is expected to carry the spiritual “load.” Even in the Church this attitude is encouraged, despite the fact that it is the husband who represents the Lord and His priesthood in the family.
I have to seriously wonder how this stereotype contributes to the way a married man addicted to pornography may shift the responsibility for his addiction to his wife, expecting her to keep him on the spiritual “strait and narrow.” And on the other hand, how much does this stereotype contribute to the way a woman often believes that it is her mission to rescue her husband from “himself?”
As always, the best antidote for a lie is the truth. The truth about a man and woman who share the sacred covenant of marriage is that neither of them qualifies to be the source of inspiration and power to the other. The truth is neither of you belongs on any pedestal. You are equally mortal, equally lost and fallen “fellows” in this life, and thus you are both equally in need of a spiritual rebirth into a close, personal relationship with the Savior. The major healing that needs to happen in your life and in your husband’s life will only begin when you both stop looking to each other for salvation and look to Jesus Christ instead. Only in Him will either of you find the strength and wisdom (personal revelation) to protect you against the adversary, the father of all lies.