While in Poland we spent time in the Cathedral Of St. Dominic (pictured left). This Monastery houses 90 men committed to the religious life. A surprise to me is that St. Mary Magdalene is their Patron Saint. St. Dominic fought the good fight by striving for Purity and reading the Gospel of Matthew every day. ~Margaret of Souls for Jesus
Following is my friends testimony:
Following is my friends testimony:
I
have decided to write this after listening to a homily this morning about the
human need to fill our souls with something and the only thing that will ever
satisfy it is to be filled with the love and grace of God. I am hoping by sharing this with you all that
it will be able to be used to help others who may be struggling in their lives
trying to fill their souls with all the various vices that surround us all
every day. Please feel free to share
this with your own children if you deem appropriate and also to send it along
to anyone in your lives who you think may benefit from it. One of the most powerful things in AA is the
sharing of personal stories. It brings healing
to the person sharing and hope to those listening. So, here goes….
My
husband’s addiction to pornography has finally cost him the ability to work and
also the end of our marriage. I met Joe
during a time in my life when I was in a lot of pain and confusion about my own
childhood wounds. I had left my first
husband and 2 year daughter 9 months prior.
When I met Joe it was a physical attraction and we started sleeping together
immediately. Within 6 months we were
living together. I was 24 years old and
had been sober for 5 years. I had not
yet done the 12 steps through the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and
therefore was still filling my soul with vice and not with God. We married in our 5th year of
being together (1996) because I told him I was not going to continue to live
with him without being married. The
following year I completed the steps of AA and as a result had a spiritual
awakening. I returned to the Catholic
church and we got married in the Church (1998).
Pornography
was always in our relationship but something that Joe did on his own and I
looked the other way. He did not flaunt
it in my face and neither did I ask him to stop. Once we married in the Church, I continued on
my spiritual journey and slowly stopped going to AA. The sacraments and dogma of Catholicism are
very much the same as what the steps in AA are all about. A Catholic priest was a very close friend of
one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Joe’s 2 sons and my daughter came to live with us a month after we
married in the Church. During that time
in our marriage I focused on raising the kids and teaching them the Faith. I continued my healing and conversion during
this time with frequent use of the sacraments.
I believed my husband was on the same path and life was good. I never had any idea that he was still
viewing pornography until I walked in on him using the computer in July of 2014!
Our
marriage was always a struggle with lots of underlining bitterness towards one
another. I always felt like I was myself
when I was not around him and that life was wonderful and worth living. I tried my hardest to be more loving, more
attentive, more kind, more merciful to him but it was so hard. I have always felt that “tired feeling” when
I was with him. Now I know it was
probably the oppression of pornography in our marriage. I felt full of energy and alive when I was
not in the presence of my husband but oh so weary when I was with him. I honestly believed and hoped with all my
heart that things would get better if we both treated one another better. I would never even consider the thought of
divorce because I was married in the Church for better or for worse. I did physically move out of the house
several times during our marriage and even before we got married but always
ended up going back to try again. If
only I could love him better, be kinder, gentler with my words, more merciful,
etc. Being sober over 30 years now, I
realize that you will never save anyone.
The person afflicted has to come to the awareness of their addiction and
admit it to themselves and God then ask God for the help to recover. As we say in AA, a drug is a drug is a
drug. It does not matter what vice you
have fallen into. They are all the same
and they are for one purpose alone. For
the devil to steal your soul and lead you straight into the pit of Hell. Our whole life is a spiritual journey and the
spiritual warfare is real!!
In
the past 2 years since I found out Joe is still using pornography, I have tried
to get him the help he needs to stop. A
week after I walked in on him he got fired from his job for fighting with a
coworker. Anger is one of the symptoms
of using pornography. Joe didn’t want to
be stuck in the vice and would feel so ashamed of himself. He was always lying to me about everything
and I’m sure he would feel angry about lying also. In our 16th year of being together
I had an outbreak of Herpes and was so afraid to tell him I had Herpes because
we had recently reconciled from a separation a few months earlier. Joe always accused me of being unfaithful to
him which I never was and here I was with genital Herpes and no idea where it
came from. I very cautiously told him about
it and he started tearing up and in a quiet voice said he has had it all along
and never wanted me to know because I might leave him. I was so incredibly hurt and a little
disgusted that he would lie to me our entire relationship about something that
would affect me in such a way. But once
again we went to counseling and talked about it. For those of you who are not aware, Herpes
can lie dormant in a person for a very long time so it did not mean that Joe
had to be sleeping around at the time I broke out with it.
So
here I was in NC far away from family and friends and my husband is not who I
think he is. It sucked! I talked to a priest that I trusted and asked
if under the circumstances I could leave my husband and move back to MA. He said yes and one of the only things I
remember from that conversation with him was he said to me “He cannot hold you
hostage”. So I told Joe that I was very
unhappy in NC and that he was falling apart being fired from his job and
viewing porn again. I told him I was
moving back to MA and that he could come with me if he wanted to. He was not interested in moving back with me
so I moved up on my own, got my old job back and found an apartment. I continued to keep in touch with Joe and he
often came up to MA to visit staying for weeks at a time. After a year of living in 2 separate states I
asked him to come back for the summer months and we would do some counseling
together to figure out where we should live together. We met with a couple who does the marriage
prep course at a local parish and talked about our struggles dancing around
pornography never having that be a big issue.
We were trying to hash out where we should live since he wanted to be in
the south and I in the north. I always
felt that I was not able to talk about Joe’s porn addiction to others because
it was his sin and I should not tarnish his reputation with family and
friends. So I lived in silence and
darkness. We decided to move back to NC
and I would try again because I figured it was a sacrifice of love in my
marriage.
Right
before we moved my 27 year old daughter told me she was 6 weeks pregnant and
the baby’s father would not be involved.
I told her I would come back before the baby was born and we could live
together to help take care of the baby.
I told Joe the situation and he agreed to the plan. Joe and I moved back to NC and spent 4 months
together talking about pornography and praying together for release from the
bondage of pornography. It’s the first
time in the 24 year relationship that we put it up front and worked on it
together. We read things together and
listened to talks about the addiction and what it does to marriage. It was a good 4 months and then I moved back
up to start working again and help my daughter move in to her new house. My husband was supposed to follow me
shortly. He kept dragging his feet until
I finally told him if he chose to stay in NC we should just get divorced
because I was not willing to live in 2 different states. After that ultimatum he came within 2 weeks. The baby was born a month after Joe arrived
and I was working full time. Joe has
never got any gainful employment after he was fired in the summer of 2014. He would do odd jobs here and there but never
worked on a regular basis. When he came
to live with us he started doing things around the house that needed fixing. My daughter did not want him around all the
time and I told him he needed to do some odd jobs for paying customers. He would say he wanted to fix things at the
house first then he would start making money again.
He
would work for a few hours here and there and then spend the rest of his time
outside on the patio or in his shed with his iPad and phone. My daughter always felt uncomfortable and a
little “creeped out” by his actions. One
night I woke up at 2am and realized my husband was not in bed beside me. I texted him asking “where are you” and he
replied “out taking a ride, I couldn’t sleep.”
I had no idea he was even gone, I thought he was outside on the
patio. Joe has never slept well and I
have always believed if you have too much on your mind you will not be able to
sleep. I on the other hand have been
blessed with rock solid sleep and go to bed early and rise early. Joe and I never go to bed at the same time
but he usually comes to bed by midnight.
I was shocked that he was driving around at 2am and thought to myself
that he is at a strip club or looking for a prostitute. We did not really talk about it; although I
told him the following day that I was concerned about what he may have been
doing and he brushed it off. A week
later he gave my daughter his iPad to help him decipher some instruction he was
trying to understand. He walked out to
do something and while she was looking at the web page her finger hit the round
button and the screen turned into small boxes of recently viewed websites. After she saw what the websites were she gave
me the iPad and said “here Momma I don’t want to see this.” That is the first time I was aware that he
was still viewing pornography since we had gone to counseling and were trying
to live together again. I talked to him
that night and told him what Cierra saw that day. She was not aware what the problems were in
our marriage until then. I told Joe that
I was not going to put up with pornography in the marriage any longer and that
we needed to go see a priest who he had talked to about porn a few months
prior.
We
went to see the priest together and I had said that “I always saw the problem
as one Joe would have to deal with on his own but now I realized we would have
to do this together if we were to remain married.” I left that meeting feeling energized to once
again keep the lines of communication open and start praying together for
release from the bondage of pornography.
The next week we left for vacation and arrived very early in the morning
after driving 16 hours. I went to sleep
for a few hours before I would run to the airport to pick up my daughter and
granddaughter. Joe did not come to bed
saying that he would not sleep that night if he slept now. My daughter’s flight got stuck in another
state and she would not arrive until that evening. I went back to bed and after an hour of
restless sleep decided to get up. When I
walked into the living room my husband was lying on the couch with his iPad and
I walked over to him and sat down. I asked
what he was looking at and he said Craig’s list which he does often to find
free things. I asked him if I could see
it and he quickly showed me the page which looked like a page of Craig’s list
listings. I then said can I have your
iPad and look for myself and he said “no, I’m getting you a surprise”. I told him this was an opportunity to build
some trust but he was adamant that I couldn’t look at it. So I decided to go get the grocery shopping
done and clean the condo before going to the airport that evening. When I returned from the grocery store, Joe
told me that he was looking at pictures of women on Craig’s list and I thanked
him for being honest with me. I then proceeded
to clean the house and take a short nap before going to the airport.
The
next morning I told Joe that I had had enough of the pornography in our
marriage and he needed to go to a treatment center or retreat that dealt with
porn addiction. I told him this needed
to happen within the next 10 days or else I was filing for divorce. We then had a pretty good vacation and did
not talk much about it. All the while I
am thinking to myself that there is no reason to look at selfies on Craig’s
list with all the other porn websites out there that have more beautiful and
provocative women on them. I wait until
the vacation is over and my daughter and granddaughter are on their way home
before I decide to do a little investigating.
During my entire marriage I never snooped around looking for evidence of
pornography. I really believed after we
got married in the Church that he was no longer viewing it. Then when I did find out in NC that he was, I
moved out.
On
our trip back home, I had the opportunity to look at the email account on Joe’s
phone when he was inside a store. The
email account was full of dating website emails. I immediately felt a sense of relief and
realized in that moment that I would drive the 16 hours back to MA with my
husband and let him sleep for a while when we returned then tell him I was
filing for divorce. We arrived at 2:30am
and I slept until 7am. When I awoke he
was sleeping beside me and I took his phone into the bathroom to look at the
sent emails from his email account.
There I found several emails to various women on Craig’s list looking to
meet. I went outside with my coffee for
morning prayer which has sustained me all these years. Joe woke up within an hour and came out to
the patio. When I finished my prayers I
got him a cup of coffee and then told him that I saw his email account and that
I was filing for divorce immediately. He
tried to say it was just talking but I quickly shut him up and told him to get
his things and move out that day. I told
him that I was so very sorry for him that his porn addiction has now cost him
his marriage.
My
message to you men who are struggling with porn would be that it will take
everything from you and lead you straight to Hell. I don’t hate my husband; in fact I love him
very much. However, I cannot save him
from the grips of the devil. I will not
continue to be degraded and lied to nor will I have my daughter and
granddaughter growing up in a home filled with the oppression of
pornography. I will pray for all who
suffer from this bondage as I continue to pray for my husband daily. To the women who may be involved in relationships
with men who are in bondage to pornography….RUN! It is so very harmful and painful. I have spent 25 years of my life trying to
love my husband out of it. Only God can
do that if Joe decides to have his soul filled with God and not vice.
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