Toxic Shame

My dear friend wrote a moving piece about toxic shame. I felt like her thoughts could have come straight from my head as they mirror feelings I've identified with. All of the painful feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness have attacked my soul. I battle with my story, and believing I am  enough. I will also be constructing a reply to toxic shame.  It will be coming in a couple of weeks.

I need to keep myself centered, in the moment, and reality to stay humble and maintain the Spirit. I also have to accept my story, all of it, while loving myself, having self-compassion and self-empathy.  These things are going to be critical to correcting the shame and healing my heart. To shed the shame and heal my heart, I am going to need to use the voice God gave me and share my story.

             I allow toxic shame to dictate to me every time I allow myself to step out of authenticity. Every time I “sell-out” by seeking to please, appease, or control I give up a piece of myself to be used, even by myself. Whenever I allow what I think is expected of me to override what I know or feel is right for me, I am in toxic shame. I internalize it when I feel ineffective, unimportant or unnoticed; when I allow myself to believe I am a hopeless and worthless, ignored, and invaluable.

             It eats away at my soul and poisons my hopes and faith. Then it lies and says I will never be “enough” and I will never get out. It cripples me with fear and hopelessness, setting me up to fail with emotional disconnect and unrealistic expectations of perfection. It says “I/they/you will love you when _____” and never fails to move the finish line just as I reach it.

             I feel it constantly some days. It is relentlessly destructive and pervasive. It tells me I am a disgusting, ugly idiot and always will be, that I am a piece of trash and a complete screw-up. It also tells me I am better than everyone else because I have been so picked on and survived. They will never understand and love me. Just take care of myself and never trust anyone.

             I see it and hear it everywhere, coming at me like rain. Sometimes it sprinkles, sometimes it pours. It comes in waves that drench me, or as bullets to my heart.

It hurts

I want it gone

I want it to stop

It just wants me dead.

So now what? How do I stop playing into it and get out? It’s hard, I can’t lie. I'm not out, and I'm not sure that is even fully possible living this life. This junk is seriously so interwoven in our thoughts, feelings, society and culture, it’s like trying to learn to breathe underwater. Nevertheless, I have learned a few things. I need to keep myself centered, in the moment, and reality to stay humble and maintain the Spirit. I also have to accept my story, all of it, while loving myself, having self-compassion and self-empathy.  I have to limit interactions with people who would destroy my faith, hope, dreams and self worth. Sometimes I have to completely cut off those relationships to save myself. These things are going to be critical to correcting the shame and healing my heart. I am also going to need to use the voice God gave me and share my story.

To do that, though, first I have to be honest about and embrace my story, release the anger, resentment and distortion and find the Truth. It’s hard. I’m blessed to have some great guides, the most important being my Savior and the Spirit. 

I am so thankful for them. It makes everything more bearable to know they are my constant companions and that I have angels on both sides of the veil who care about me and want me to succeed. It’s hard to trust that sometimes. I do NOT like trusting people, and I feel even more grumpy about real vulnerability. Until I get through it, then I am so thankful. As much as I hate to admit it (and know I will deny it!), I am thankful for both trust and vulnerability. I don’t have to expose anything to anyone who is unsafe and unproven. Living in the shadows and corners just isn’t working for me anymore. I miss people and I miss feeling, so I’m coming back, a little at a time. Healing the deeply rooted shame messages I have heard all my life has been such a gift and blessing. Hard work and seriously excruciating at times, but such a blessing.  So here I am, using my voice to tell you, this is so worth it! And that God loves us. He is aware and He is watching carefully so that His precious silver will not burn, but instead perfectly reflect His own image of Patience, Love, Compassion and Hope. His Grace IS sufficient, as long as our hearts are willing.

The day my soul shattered

I saw my heart. It was falling. There was nothing I could do to stop it. It felt like an eternity. The earth stop moving. Time was frozen in place. I was grasping trying to catch it, trying to hold onto it. It was so fragile. I was powerless.  I braced for the impact. In slow motion I watched as it hit the hard tile stone.

I knew what this impact was going to do. I watched my happiness flash before my eyes. All the laughter, all the joy, all the moments that had defined my carefree loving spirit, they were all in jeopardy. Every hug, every kiss, every embrace, every night filled with laughter; all the joy I had known was in peril...

The impact resulted in thousands of shattered pieces. I looked at the destruction in horror! Forget how I was going to fix this! How could the Lord repair this? There was no fixing it. There was nothing left to piece back together.  It was beyond repair. Only a miracle could reconstruct my dead and shattered heart. I lied there weeping, broken, dead.

I tried wrapping my head around my new reality. 

 My heart was gone. 

Why was I still breathing?

"God how is it I'm still standing here?

My heart is shattered?

I'm looking at it. There it is, in a thousand pieces across the floor!"

I WAS breathing. It was such a confusing feeling. I knew I was supposed to be looking down at my dead body, and yet my physical heart continued to beat. My soul was dead, and yet still encased in both my physical body and in this world. I was supposed to stay. I was no longer here. Part of me lost and completely absolutely broken.

I went numb. I could not move. I could barely breathe. 

It all made sense. All the struggles, all the pain, all my longings for my marriage. I had my answers, I knew why I had felt so unhappy. I understood all the warnings, and the promptings that something was wrong, and had been very wrong for years. Even with these warnings and my struggles they were not enough to take away the devastation of the state of my heart.

-Disclosure-

My joy died that day.

Just as the Provo tabernacle burnt down to the ground and how the saints all mourned and grieved the devastation, and wondered how anything good could come out of the ashes, I looked at my heart and wondered if I would ever feel joy again.

I look at my feelings and I see how much pain and agony I was in that day. It seems so long ago. I remember the day. I remember where I was, what room I was in, the weather outside. I remember the time of day. I remember the minute. Traumas like this don't leave the mind very easily. They are not healed quickly.

Cody and I went to counseling. Nothing worked. He'd get into sobriety. He would go just long enough in between relapses that I would start trusting again, only to repeat the process. My heart never did crash again like the first time. But every relapse and confession felt a little more raw. There was no heart to heal, yet I still felt each sting. Why was that? As my heart was gone, I never did engage my heart in trusting him with it again.

After a little over two years time we enrolled in a recovery program and found ourselves sitting in a meeting with other couples devastated by sex/lust addiction.

I was shown the trauma women go through when their loved ones are engaged in sexual addiction. I learned that it was okay for me to hurt. It was okay for me to feel my pain. I had been through a 

Real. Significant. Trauma.

And now I heard for the first time that it was okay to feel angry. And Oh was I angry. I had never felt anger in this manner. I emulated a mist of darkness five feet in every direction and I was the pit of rage in the middle.

I walked around the city in this absolute black, angered, enraged place. I was captive. I could not break out. I started attending 12 steps. I was prompted that it was time to forgive.

I did not feel ready. I had been betrayed too many times. I struggled to accept this forgiveness. But, my soul longed for peace. As was contrary to my nature my whole being begged me to not remain angry and to come back into truth with myself. I needed to honor the congruency of the soul I am. Slowly I turned my heart to the Lord. He was able to soften the pain, and the rage. I was able to see my husband through His loving eyes. 

He showed me a window into heaven and I saw all of my husband's immeasurable worth and the unconditional love the Lord has for him. This helped and my feelings of intense hurt and anger evolved to the feelings of pain and acceptance. I was still pained but no longer raging or seething. 

Before my heart shattered, my interactions with others were jovial, fun, carefree, and playful. Now I was stoic, calm, and guarded. I mourned the loss of my joy and my happiness.

Slowly, I met other women who were going through the pain of living with an addict and the things they did to justify their addictions. It all looked different for each of us, but we all knew the crazy-making that addiction created in our marriages.

Being in recovery for woman struggling through betrayal trauma did wonders to my eyes. I was able to see my part. I saw where I had come into the marriage already defeated. I was trying to validate my worth through a loving marriage. I saw marriage as a crowning achievement. Something to be sought after with all my might.

However eternity with a man who blamed me as the source of all his resentment, and constantly being shown all my weaknesses to keep him justified in not engaging in recovery was now no longer a possibility, regardless of my eternal marriage to him. That anger and resentment coming in from him had a detrimental impact on the eternal seal of our marriage, and I knew it.

I went the next year struggling with his resentment and blame so that he did not have to face himself at the end of the day. My recovery kept being shaken, bumped, bruised, and retraumatized.

I was using my tools, and through therapy I was getting stronger. I was growing and taking some large steps towards peace within my heart. As a result I was reaching new levels of health. But my marriage was not. I was progressing. Cody kept his heels dug tightly in the ground.

I went to the Lord to ask him what was to be done. I was told to leave.

It was an incredibly peaceful time. I was held very lovingly and protectively in the Lord's loving almighty hand.

I moved to another state.

And I began to heal. I still had the raw and tender memory of my heart shattering two years earlier, but things weren't as raw and painful.

I saw where my heart had been before it shattered. I started to question what it was that had been destroyed. Wasn't my heart sick and broken for all the years previous. Why was I holding on so hard to the shards of a sick and ravaged heart?

My Savior bent down as I hovered over my shattered heart and my pain. He held me as I crouched guarded on the ground next to the pieces. He did not ask me to move until I was ready. He was just caring and right next to me at my side. Once I was ready I took a great big breath. I turned away from the shards and looked into His eyes, His face, and nodded I was ready to move on.

He helped me to stand, and he pointed me in a new direction. I was shown all that I stood to gain from this new direction. 

I am traveling through a new destination. It has been lined with trials, sharp rocks, and treacherous cliffs, but as I have remembered that  I am in His Hands and His tender care, all of the sudden the trials are lifted. The razor sharp points of the rocks are dulled. The treacherous cliffs become gentle sloping valleys. Surely I have had him ease the load I carry so that I can not feel its weight upon my shoulders.

I have been separated for two months, and with only myself and the Lord to account to I have found healing. And in this healing something amazing started to happen. I started to feel joy returning into my soul. 

It was new. It was different. At first I denied the happiness creeping into my life. I saw the brief moments. I saw my good moods. I saw the joy I found in speaking to my beloved friends also in recovery. I stood back unprepared to call it joy and called my emotion a happy moment. I was okay if I had a moment of happiness. It was okay to feel contentment. I continued to be guarded.

And yet this joy kept creeping in. With each new benchmark I found in my own recovery, my heart healed just a little more. A blessing here another one there.

And just as night falls and is dark and you can not see your way...the sun begins to rise, casting out the darkness, and the worry, the fear, and the pain.

It is a new day. It is different than the last, but it is okay. The sun is a little more glorious from having gone through the dark of the night. It lead to experience.

My joy is new, fine-tuned, loving,  understanding and whole. My heart is better off because it is born of a different substance. My heart no longer feels broken. My heart feels genuine. It is strong and vibrant. Knowing how to avoid these treacherous cliffs, I am able to create safety that I was unable to create before it's fall. I can see the direct Hand of the Lord. He helped contstruct this new heart with me. 

I am now experiencing joy in my every day life. I am looking forward to the small moments when they come. I am serene and contemplative of this joy. I hold it differently. I know the darkness of the night. I treasure the moments of light. I give thanks for them.

My joy is emerging as wondrous as the bitterness was to my pain. And in the opposite I have learned what a prize happiness and joy are. They are a gift from a loving Lord. 

I still feel like I am under construction. But I can see the end product. Life everlasting with my God, and that is exciting. I have new eyes. Everything shines that much brighter and vibrant. I can see clearly. My joy has a new home in my heart. This new, reborn heart, has been healed. I see the pierced hands holding my heart, and I know my heart could not be in a more secure place.

I have experienced a miracle. The Lord is very good with broken hearts. My shattered, devastated, dead heart was no match for His everlasting and eternal atonement. Nor was it too much for His love or His power to heal. 

Lust addiction and women

"Basically, I have a crush on a man who isn't my husband."

The words rang loud and clear in my mind. These words shook me awake. It shattered the illusion I had been living in. I broke out of my denial. There I sat  looking reality in the face.

I am attending a trauma recovery group with a special group of women who have endured the destructive force of lust addiction. I sit with women whose lives have been shaken through the addictions of their loved ones.  I had been attending weekly meetings to heal the betrayal trauma that I was going through as a wife of a man with sex addiction.

I had been in my own recovery for over a year when I heard the above words. But they are not the only words I heard. I listened to my friend own up and hold herself accountable around a man who was not her husband. She recounted how well she had done managing herself when she found herself in close proximity to him...and then for a brief moment, she slipped. She was coming clean.

What I heard next was pure light and knowledge from My Lord and Savior.

Our counselor replied,
"That is not a minor slip. This is serious. You know how dangerous it is. You have to stay present. It very much is a betrayal to your marriage covenant."

I don't know if those were the exact words our counselor spoke, but they were no longer being spoken to this woman. These words, though directed to her, were exactly the words that the Lord needed me to hear that day.

I had been drowning around the feelings I had for a neighbor I had recently met. When I met him for the first time I felt like I had been punched in the stomach, as well as been hit with a bolt of lightning. He was charismatic, friendly, charming, the most handsome man I had ever seen, and most importantly...  none of that mattered. He was not my husband.

As I was going through the pain of trying to connect to my husband, and going through the trauma that reaching  and trying to connect to an addict and the pain it was continually being shot down, I felt lonely and vulnerable.

The more the months went by the more I would look forward to seeing this man at church. I would enjoy watching him with his children, and watching them dote on him. The more pain I would feel at home, the more I would slip into fantasy with this man. One day I realized I could not get his face out of my head.

After one very triggering, emotional, painful Sunday afternoon at church, I had come home, gone into the bedroom to sleep it off, and this man's face came into my mind. I felt better. I fell asleep thinking about his smile.

Next Sunday, the same thing. I watched other members of my congregation whose lives were all put together nice and neat, and listened to them dodge the hard questions about morality and sexual purity which enraged me. How in the world are women supposed to manage their lives if the topic of sex addiction is too taboo to speak of honestly in church?

Again, I went back to my room, and proceeded to shut it all out, and numb through a nice afternoon nap. Again his face entered into my mind more specifically his eyes. But this time it was not as pleasant, and did not have the same numbing effect like last time.

It was on week three that this happened, that I started to panic. What was this? What is going on? Please Lord! Take this from me! I do not want this man's face in my mind, and it's all that I can see when I feel rejected, shamed, or alone. I can not stop this on my own!

The very next week, I sat in my woman's recovery meeting and heard the words, "I have a crush on a man who is not my husband."
That was the week that I learned about sex addiction and how it manifests itself in women. That is the week the Lord had been preparing me for, for months. And I was ready to hear.
I had spent over a year in recovery, and never knew that women could go through lust addiction, just like their husbands.

You see where my husband had been acting out in a physical way. THAT was how I had always known lust addiction. It was my only understanding. And it is how addiction manifests itself in men.


I did not understand what lust addiction was like for a woman.  I held a temple recommend, had never so much as looked at a magazine, websites, gotten into chat rooms, read romance novels,  or self-stimulated.
THAT is what I thought lust addiction was for women. The things that can get their temple recommends taken away. I was not at all in favor of that. You see I had made covenants with the Lord. I could rationalize and justify everything like the pro my husband had become in his own addiction.


And satan KNEW he could not take me out coming in through the front door.

His attack was much more subtle and deceptive. He would not wage an all out assault. He would come in at me over time, with multiple exposures. Certainly thinking a man is attractive is no problem. Certainly watching a movie because the actor is handsome is no threat. There is no harm in looking at a man's face. That is all I am attracted to anyway.

Do you hear them? The soft, subtle, snares carefully crafted and placed by the adversary?

I did not hear them either, until I was ensnared. Until it was too late, and I was in all out lustful behavior.

My experience not being able to get this man's face out of my head no matter how much effort and prayer I put in to it, if heard by anyone knowledgable about addiction, would clearly tell me, the ritualization, preoccupation, and acting out behavior was lust addiction.

What? I have been true and faithful to my eternal companion. I have NOT betrayed him like he betrayed me.

That is not the truth however, and the Lord had an important lesson to teach me.

I went straight to my bishop. There was nothing that needed to be taken care of through the priesthood, so he encouraged me to go to the temple.


That week I went to the temple to get clear about what I had heard, and to see what I could do to overcome my feelings around this man. I went with my husband. It was a busy day, the session was full. We would need to wait an hour until the next session.

I was able to sit in the chapel for over an hour. The peacefulness and spirit of the Lord were very tangible. It was my first time watching the new endowment video. I had strong emotions and promptings watching it for the first time. I had an incredible sense of peace. The Lord kept reminding me about the covenants I had made. It was impressed over and over as I listened to the words of the covenants that if I had been really living my  covenants  and had taken them seriously, if I had been attentive, I would have never become so ensnared by satan. I kept feeling the impression remember these covenants. They will keep you safe.

The session was almost over. I was only seconds before I was to pass through the veil when the thought went through my head..."You are not worthy to enter into the Lord's presence. You are unclean and have not done all that is required for repentance."

I started to panic. What would I do? As these thoughts went through my head I was being asked to come up and wait at the veil. I looked left in desperation. There was the door. I knew I needed to just excuse myself and walk through that door. How could I walk through the door? I had come all this way? I panicked, I was too embarrassed. All these people would see me bail.
In my shame I caved. I did not leave.
Feeling defeated I stood there bargaining with the Lord. Please Lord! I was not ready. I did not know. I would have never entered into your house if I had known my worthiness was in question. I will do what I need to do so that when being brought into your presence, I will not wish to shrink, or to cease to exist. I felt that awful crisis of the wicked being brought to make an account of their lives before their maker, and I KNEW I was not worthy of the kingdom of God, and what's more. He knew it.

Before I knew it I went through the motions and I was through the veil. As I stood in the Celestial Room I just wept. The Lord did not abandon me however. Even though I was being taught a very valuable and symbolic lesson he never did leave my side. He let me know it was time to cleanse my vessel. It was time to take my addiction seriously and not to come back until I had clean hands and a pure heart.

You see the Lord cares very much about our covenant marriages. He also knows HOW a woman can become addicted. Lust is no respecter of gender. It just manifests itself differently in women. The Lord understands this. He anticipated it. Here are His words about it.

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a (man) to lust after (him) hath committed adultery with (him) already in (her) heart. -Matthew 5:28

This is certainly what had happened with me...and I didn't even know it. I wasn't even aware. I had been completely deceived.

I have often heard the adage, Women give sex to get love, and men give love to get sex.
There is great truth about the genders in old cliche. What is more men and women manifest lust addiction in very different ways. A righteous woman would not willingly cheat or enter into an extramarital affair with a man. Before that happens an emotional connection has to be made. And Satan knows it.

He takes the beautiful connection that happens when a man and woman connect emotionally, the deep spiritual connection that a man and woman can feel with each other and the Lord, and he destroys it and perverts. He does this with women in the same manner as he does with men as he takes the physical intimate relationship that ultimately connects the marriage to the Lord and he subverts it, twists it, and destroys it. When in his hands, this natural, beautiful, intimate connection, saved and ordained under the marriage covenant becomes a tool for the destruction of marriage and soul.

Women can get just as great of a hit of dopamine, seratonin, oxytocin, estrogen, as a man can while he is looking at pornography. When she is engaging in emotional intimate thoughts, fantasies, or preoccupation with a man outside of her marriage it is just as ensnaring as any other addiction.  The chemicals and endorphins released in her body when she goes to connect with someone inside her mind, when she goes to that fantasy of leaving her marriage relationship, are the exact same chemicals released in the brain of a drug addict or alcoholic.

The potency is just greater with her because the chemicals are produced by the body and not synthetically re-produced.  In the case with illegal drugs or alcohol that is an example of a synthetic drug. The body is better equipped to break down its own natural chemicals. Thus making lust/sex addiction harder to overcome than other addiction because the body is really good at breaking down its own naturally produced hormones.

Now, just because I was aware of my addiction, and I had this experience at the temple, it did not make me perfect the next day.

If this was the case all addicts everywhere would just be able to Stop It.  Stop ritualizing, stop fantasizing, stop obsessing. No, I had all the same seeds of shame that are requisite to feed addiction.

I got accountable and responsible, got a sponsor, went to 12-steps, reported to my woman's group. I worked closely with my bishop. I prayed, fasted, and worked hard to regain admittance to the temple.

Instead of seeking his attention at church, which I always got because he simply talked to everyone, I would avoid the classes he would be in. I would sit on the very front row so I would not have to avoid looking at him. If we were forced to speak, I would not look at his eyes.
Those were not my only boundaries or bottom lines.
I had to place boundaries around my behavior, so that I could not even go into the North end of the house to look out the window across to my neighbor's house.

 I still slipped. Many days I cried in frustration. Many times I got on the phone.  Many instances I went to my knees.  I would call a sponsor. Some days I would go into full blown relapse or binge behavior.

Instead of panicking I learned that with every slip, relapse, or binge I learned more about myself. It gave me information so that I could become aware of my own shame, get honest about it, and place better bottom lines on my own behavior. I could avoid getting so stressed and numbing my pain.

I did not like my marriage, but it did not give me permission to leave it. My reality is mine is broken, and it is not okay to look to another man to numb my pain.

And now I share my story. I share it because it is not something discussed in young women's. It is not spoken from the pulpit. It is not recognized for the evil it is. Because it requires secrecy to feel the shame and perpetuate the lies of Lucifer, it needs never be given a name.

But it has a name. It is lust addiction. And I am recovering from it. It is real and it is destructive. It would have kept me from the presence of the Lord, and that is very serious. Anything that would prevent a woman from being able to look her God in the eyes is definitely worth telling my story for. If it has helped even one woman, then I feel gratitude for my experience.

Slipping Into Neutral

After writing about the shift,  unfortunately I discovered there was no momentum and my marriage went from moving forward, to slipping into neutral. My first car was a 1980 Ford Tempo stick-shift. When it would slip out of gear there was a whole lot of revving of the engine, but the wheels were not going anywhere.

This is what I had been apprehensive about for my marriage. I knew that I could see the words of healing, and I was extremely happy to hear new words from my husband, but I could not trust the words yet. I am aware that I am going to need much more time with many more safe words and safe behavior before I will be able to trust my husband.

Unfortunately, the behavior did not find it's way into my marriage. I heard the words of safety. My experiencing the shift was a whole lot of revving without any forward motion.

My husband's behavior for the next four weeks has not been of creating safety. The words were there, but the behavior or the momentum stopped.

None of my safety needs have been met for weeks on end.

During this time I was in my ConneXions group and I was told that I get to chose what to do when someone comes and dumps mud in my house.

I have reached the point of health that I get to tell them how it affects me. I get to ask them to clean it up if they want to remain in my life. Not only that but they have been coming and dumping all this mud for years and I am no longer going to clean it up, or willing to open the door when they come over.

"Yes," my counselor replied, "but you also get to chose how close you let that person show up in your life. Are you going to invite this person into your innermost circle? Are they safe? You get to create an appropriate boundary not only of whether or not you open the door, but if they are allowed on your property, if you accept phone calls, all things that are determined by how safe the person is for you.

It started clicking.

On Monday I was speaking with a different betrayal trauma counselor and we were discussing what love is.

Here was her list.

Love upholds boundaries.

Love is safe.

Love is responsible.

Love is honest.

That is quite a basic list. And my marriage has none of that.

My eyes opened up. All the denial; gone.

Wow. Cold, sobering, reality. The person who has been throwing mud is Cody. And I get to figure out how close I invite him to be to me.

I also saw that he is not holding any boundaries for himself. When he refuses to do this it is unsafe, dishonest, and irresponsible.

I looked at how I show up in my marriage. Have I slipped back into my role that I played in my family of origin? Did I decide to create myself into a lovable person so I could be worthy of love?

Love like this is conditional, and it is not the love I want in my marriage. The love i am searching for is not controlling. It is unconditional and responsible.

With sad realization I saw my marriage does not posses the four qualities of boundaries, responsibility,safety, or honesty.

My emerald glasses fell off.

 I decided that I needed to separate from Cody. I felt really good about this possibility. I felt a great deal of comfort.

 I took my decision to the temple to figure out how to proceed.

I was expecting to find confirmation about my decision to ask Cody to leave. In all honesty, I had my answer before I entered the doors. I really just wanted validation.

I was surprised by my additional answer.

I was going to ask my husband to leave, and yet inside those Holy walls, I was the one being asked to leave. I was given confirmation and peace around my decision to separate. The peace about it came from the Lord. This answer did not look like how I thought it would. However, I went home confident in my answer.

Hours later after talking to my bishop, I sat in bed trying to figure out what In the world had just happened? Had I really felt what I had? Me leaving? Going to Idaho?  What about the children? Really? Who was I to uproot my family and move across state lines for my safety? 

 It made NO sense. Period. I thought I had completely lost my mind!!!

I sat there and my intellectual, logical, thinking brain rationalized:  No, I had been mistaken. The Lord wouldn't want me to do this, I must have been caught up in the moment and felt something and had only supposed going to Idaho was right.

Upon waking up, I still felt horrible and anxious inside. I was still letting the shame of, "who are you?" eat me up.

I had two hours before my couple's counseling, so I decided to go back to the temple for clarity.

Going back was a good decision.

 I took the answer to the Lord and said, I can not figure this out, or see my way. I took ten steps back and asked for a clean slate. All I needed was to feel the Love of the Lord. I did not want or desire to think about moving. I just wanted to feel the Spirit.

At the temple I read D&C 101

16 Therefore, let your hearts be comforted...for all flesh is in mine hands; be still and know that I am God.

Followed by

36 Wherefore, fear not even unto death; for in this world your joy is not full, but in me your joy is full.

37 Therefore, care not for the body, neither the life of the body; but care for the soul, and for the life of the soul.

38 And seek the face of the Lord always, that in patience ye may possess your souls, and ye shall have eternal life.

Wow! That was a prompted and timely scripture!!

I was being reassured and comforted. I felt like it was the Lord's way of saying "Relax. I've got you right here in My hand."

After the scripture I again found the Spirit prompting me to return to Idaho. I felt the peace and Spirit of the Lord just as strongly as the night before. This time I was paying attention to the words being said. During this time I had a strong impression that it was okay to trust myself. I heard the Spirit witness that I HAD indeed been guided and directed.

So now what does that look like? It is me taking a step into the dark and unknown, but I feel supported and I have not been left alone. I feel like I have been given all the support I need to make this move. The support is Divine and beautiful. What an amazing gift He has provided for me.

I was also shown why our marriage had slipped into neutral. Cody is very upset and feels victimized for coming out and telling me about his sex addiction. He does not believe that he did the right thing and tells me this is what he gets for being honest because now look what is happening. I am looking. It has been so good for me. I am getting stronger and breaking out of my codependence and he resents it. I was shown this great resentment and anger that is keeping Cody stuck.

I was shown that it is his resentment and turning away from God and towards his own shame that is the reason the Lord is asking me to leave.

Cody can not create safety for me if he is secretly pissed off at me and himself for the way his life is going.

The Lord showed me at the temple that the resentment and anger are why we have never shifted into recovery for our marriage.

What next... Well, I got rid of my Ford. It was too unreliable. It was constantly slipping out of gear. I worked my tail off and bought a reliable car that would take me to the road I wanted to be on safely.

The same thing has happened in my life. I have made the move across state lines. I am living as a single mother with four young boys. It is just me. It is all on me to be the mother I can to these precious children. I am no longer worrying about depending on a reliable car. I have found safety in the Lord. 

I feel at times lonely, and tentative of the unknown, yet through it all, I am being supported by Heavenly hands.

I was given and shown love and support when I got sick during the move. My new neighbors knocked on my door and brought food for my family.

There have been miracles all along the way. I feel sad today. Unknowing what tomorrow will hold, and wondering will my marriage make it? So far it does not look good. But, regardless of the sad state of my marriage the Lord has me in His loving and capable Hands. I will put my trust in Him, and surrender the future to Him.

Overcoming Betrayal: Part two (years 5-10)

Upon moving and living in a new house with no one to turn to, I almost had a mental break down. I realized I was not at all happy in my marriage so in all my wisdom as a woman in pain, I concluded I needed to either, A) have an affair to fill the need for love, B) divorce to save my heart, or C) forget myself and my needs and pour myself into just loving Cody so that he would be able to love me. If I could just love him enough, then I would be worthy of  his love as well.
I had made a marital covenant with the Lord so A) was out. I did not respect my covenant so much to Cody, but I was unwilling to go through with betraying God. We had 3 beautiful children who needed a father, so I threw B) out as well. I had no tools at my disposal to help me with this decision. I thought that only selfishness was at play if I called it quits.

All I had left at my disposal was the deep and complete codependency of option C. After all I had the ability to make someone love me right? This giving of myself to find love had been my crutch before while I was growing up. I put my entire soul and started engaging in super human efforts of perfectionism so I could find love in my marriage. I poured my whole heart into fixing myself so that I would finally be worthy of love. I could control my being lovable. I could control being connected. I could control being valuable. If I would just behave and exhibit these qualities, THEN I could finally be happy and find my worth.

I started going back to school in order to improve myself. I started work on sex addiction and completing courses at the college that would aid me in my goals to become a counselor.

This is when I started cluing into my problems with Cody. I would go to classes and workshops about sex addiction and I was given very basic information that did not sit well in my heart. I would come home and ask my husband why he was okay. I knew that he had all these signs and symptoms. How was he alright when I knew pornography had been such a problem for him before? It made no sense in my brain.

I would come to him and I would ask him. Needing to feed his addiction, he would lie straight to my face and deny everything. He got so good at lying to me. He had been engaged in continuous betrayal for eight years. He was able to lie and not even so much as flinch a muscle to get away with it.

I sensed something was off, but he would lie so convincingly and tell me everything was fine. He had no answers for me. He did not know why he looked like an addict, spoke like an addict, and behaved as an addict. He professed and swore up and down that he was in no way an addict. He loved me too much.

Oh uniqueness.

It allowed me close my eyes and allowed me to stay in denial.

This could not happen to me, especially if I had been abused and betrayed by addict after addict before I met Cody. I had chosen so carefully. This could not be my reality.

He could place the seeds of doubt and lie so expertly that I chose to listen to my denial. I was UNIQUE you see. The situation was different because he did not hurt me like my past abusers. He had not sexually abused me in any way. He was different. He respected me.
My justification and rationalization served my denial well.

My heart and my head still knew. Inside, as a woman, I knew. But he was my husband. He would not lie to my face right? I desperately wanted to believe his lies. I held on to my hope. I could not imagine the alternative. This whole time inside my heart, I knew, but I would not let myself see.

I was pouring myself into marriage, family, and relationship classes. I was becoming the perfect person for him. I was studying the leading cutting edge marriage experts. I went around making his life completely easy, and was carrying the weight of the whole family. I received very positive, rewarding reinforcement for my perfectionism. He definitely he did not have addiction. It was all in my my mind. I was paranoid. He was my best friend. AND we had the perfect marriage. I was creating this for my happiness. I had stopped feeling, but surely my super human efforts were going to work. I could control his love if I was just lovable and charitable enough. After all there was my misinterpretation of Christ's words of love that kept me going.
Matthew 10:39 He that findeth his life shall ^blose it: and he that ^closeth his ^dlife for my sake shall find it.

I just needed to forget all those moments of severe rage and anger when he would throw something and it hit me. He was not aiming at me, and he never intended to hurt me you see. It was an accident.
I just needed to forget all the times he would throw the children when he was in a rage, or pull them across the house by the ear. I needed to forget his face when he looked like he was going to kill the children and yell at them when he was out of control.

I just needed to forget all the holes in my doors and walls and the multiple broken chairs, over turned tables, and wall decorations that shattered and had to be thrown out. If the potty training seat had been thrown in his rage and given me a black eye, it was not his fault. He still loved me. I just needed to close my eyes and remember that I was the problem. I was not providing for his needs. I was not enough. I had not lost my life life like God had instructed. It was me. It was all on me. My marriage had to be perfect remember, so I could feel love, so I could be worthy of being loved.

I would go to school, and he would binge. I would go to three hours of church. When I was not with him, he had two hours to go home and binge. If there was a work trip or a baby blessing he would go by himself and binge. He was in all out binge behavior every opportunity that would arise.

And still he was not the problem. It was me. It was my selfishness. In marriage if you are considering a divorce it is because of selfishness. We kept learning about this over and over in our celestial marriage and family theory classes. We kept getting the conference talk given to us about selfishness being the primary reason for divorce. I did not see the addiction. I never knew it was in play. I only saw my own unhappiness and if I would just take up a positive attitude, stop being selfish, lose myself, and love and serve and find Christ-like love for my husband, then I would find the peace and happiness that always accompanied happy, eternal, connected marriages. I sustained this for three years. I completely lost myself in trying to be charitable. I could do this. I could pull our family through. I could make him love me. I could lose myself in order to make this happen.

I was completely addicted to being the perfect wife. I would not stray. And when I did Cody would rage, and get me right back in line.


And then a miracle happened.

After a tragic death of one of our friends, my husband came to grips with his own mortality. He saw that if he were to be called home he would be taking a terrible secret with him to his grave. It was not so secret before God.

The possibility of his own death shook him to the core. It was two weeks later that I was feeling very disconnected and asking him AGAIN why he was okay. I was learning all these amazing things about sex addiction, and he had all the symptoms. I was crazy for answers. I was deeply troubled that his words were incongruous with his behavior. Never satisfied I had been continually asking him almost monthly.

After the funeral where Cody had just been brought to a terrible consciousness of his own guilt, and finally after eight years of marriage he was honest with me about his addiction when I asked him if he was looking at pornography.

He confessed as much as he was prepared to share with me at the time. He minimized his addiction. He did not share with me his fear of the fact it was getting completely unmanageable. Sex addiction is progressive. It wants more. It wants different. What is potent at one point in time, can no longer excite or arouse in a few months, and the drug gets deeper and the behavior more risky, tuned out, and destructive.

He did not have the tools at the time he confessed that day in order to do a full confession, or even to express his fear of losing himself to the frightening things he was contemplating in his addict mind. He just knew he HAD to stop.
Maybe if he told me it would keep him from spiraling out of control in addiction. He took the risk. He needed my help. After all I had been holding everything else. I could hold this. He came out of the closet and I was pushed inside.

At the same time of the confession, I had been doing hypnotherapy to understand why my body was not letting go of weight. Just days before this confession, I had undergone some serious trauma around finding my fear around food. I had been punished severely with physical abuse as a toddler. The trauma of remembering this blocked out child abuse, as well as the betrayal trauma of my husband's confession, were a one-two knock out that knocked me quite literally off my feet.

My life stopped. My whole world crumbled. I remember watching my heart falling in slow motion towards the ground. I could not stop its fall. I remember the horror of seeing it when it hit the ground. My heart was glass, and it shattered into thousands upon thousands of pieces.
I could not get out of bed. My pain and my agony where felt through out my entire body. I could no longer function day to day.

At that moment I was not equipped to handle all my previous trauma as well as what had just been dropped on me. There were many other major traumas that I had held for so long and had not dealt with, that these two events back to back were enough to break and shatter my whole soul.

My husband did not even know enough to make a one time confession. He confessed, and then felt better. He would get a little more trust with disclosure, and would disclose more and more over the months. This was extremely painful to me as I got to live the emotional infidelity over and over again.

Not only that but my mother would come over to my house and not understand the pain I was in over the physical abuse I had endured while growing up. She would tell me how much she loved me, and would touch me in soft and gentle ways, and I would panic. I was not equipped to tell her what had happened with the hypnotherapy. I just silently suffered the blissful ignorance on her end, while it would just smash the pieces into the ground of my already shattered heart.

This double betrayal took me completely out of commission. I could not get out of bed for the next 2 and a half years. No one knew why. I had no idea what was going on. I thought it was depression. I remember the image of my heart shattering, but I never equated that with being bed bound. Betrayal trauma was not a thing anyone knew anything about in my circle of friends or amongst the doctors and counselors I saw. Depression is a symptom of trauma. All anyone saw was the obvious depression. No one dug deeper to find the cause.

Just because my husband had confessed it did not keep him from slips, relapses, and binge behavior during this time. We went to a counselor that had been a major source of knowledge about addiction up on the campus I attended. He was the best BYU-Idaho had to offer. He had given me the tools to help me identify the addiction in my husband, but he was NOT a sex addiction recovery specialist. He was not trained with specific skills to help overcome sex addiction. He was pioneering his research alone, but never acquired the knowledge to really be of a benefit for my family. This left us just enough rope there to hang ourselves, our marriage, and my heart.

He was knowledgeable to an extent, but during this time of counseling with him, he would blame my depression, being bed ridden, and shattered heart on me behind my back in his one-on-ones with my husband. He told my husband that I was indulging in my depression. He would enable my husband in siding-with-the-enemy behavior telling Cody my trauma was just as addictive and just as bad as the destructive sex addiction behaviors Cody had been involved in. This was so destructive and brutal for our marriage. He was not justified to treat me however he wanted. He was being told he was enabling me in my depression.
This is the same thing as being told that I was enabling him to push my head into a great big tub and hold it there while I scrambled and fought for air, and it was my fault because I was panicking. 

We also got no real feedback on Cody's rage addiction. During my time under his care I was just retruamatized over and over again, and had no clue it was happening.

The anger I felt around what was said during counseling was a huge red flag that this counselor was not right for us. The trauma of being thrown under the bus with my husband by this well-meaning, but uneducated counselor was too much pain to handle. We stopped going to him.

Cody during this time went into sobriety. He held his breath for a whole year, and so I thought the sex addiction was far behind us. I started to trust again. The year before we had our fourth son. I was starting to heal as the sobriety date was getting further and further behind us. I started right back into my perfectionistic routine. I did not know any better. I did not know any different. I had no real tools for recovery.

Right before my 30th birthday Cody dropped a bombshell on me. He had relapsed. But big. He was so sorry.

I was just as crushed as before, but went straight into numbing it all out. I continued in my, "love will cure everything," addiction. I could love him out of being an addict.I would strike my selfishness down and charity and the gospel of Christ would heal this.

The very gift that was my biggest strength and has been my biggest and greatest treasure from God was my capacity to love. I was good at finding charity and love for everyone. I had continually done this over and over again as I did not know how else to handle sex addiction or any of my trauma. My greatest strength was now my biggest weakness.

So on we went with our life. Cody started reading the ARP 12-step book from our church. He talked to his church leader. He was obtaining forgiveness. He got his temple recommend taken away. But he was really sorry. He was never going to hurt me like this again. Que 16-months of Cody white-knuckling his sex addiction and holding his breath while I rescued and enabled bad behavior.

I remember so clearly the day he came to me with the news of his last relapse. Again I saw my life flash before my eyes, but I had a new image that had now entered into my mind. This time I saw a house of cards. A beautiful mansion of cards stacked one on top of another, carefully with so much expert precision and love. The cards were our marriage. The cards represented my efforts in reaching out in love and trying to construct a beautiful marriage. Each card was a different value I had decided would enrich and bless our marriage. Each card represented my denial and my efforts to control Cody's love.  And now I watched in horror as this beautiful creation of cards came crashing down around me.  I tried to hold them. I scrambled to stop them from falling and flying everywhere. I could not stop it. It had all been an illusion. I had based my whole life on this shaky foundation. And when the slightest wind blew my beautiful masterpiece gave out and came crashing down. It was all over for me. I felt like our whole marriage had been a lie.

All my work going to school for my family studies. All of my best super human perfectionistic efforts. All of my forgiving and charitable ways. It had all been for nothing. The house was gone. It was all exposed. There I stood in my pain and there was absolutely nothing I could do.
NOTHING could beat this addiction. We were always going to be like this.
It was never going to get better.
And his rage was getting worse. No one we talked to about this problem would take him seriously. He was after all, "a really good guy."

We were so lucky and blessed to be given at this time another miracle.

We found LifeSTAR.

It is a program of specially trained sex addiction and trauma recovery therapists who offer a three phase group therapy program designed to educate, counsel, and rebuild marriages shattered by sex addiction. It is two fold. They not only are specialized in sex addiction but are trained to help a woman through the trauma of living with a sex addict.

The LifeSTAR counselors were the first ones to look at me and to see what it was like to be the wife of a sex addict. I was taught all about the trauma  and crazy-making a woman goes through trying to connect only to be met with rejection. All those years at BYU-Idaho, nothing like this was ever mentioned. All those years in counseling and going to bishops, no one knew. This was the first time I had ever heard about betrayal trauma in relation to what I experienced. The lens was no longer on Cody or his addiction. We were now after ten years finally looking at my recovery as well as his. I had never heard the word recovery before. I finally had faith in something again.


I ate it up. I was so hungry for it. I did not know what to do with all of this knowledge. I felt so validated and understood as for the first time I spoke to other women going through the same thing I had gone through. Each of us found support through each other.
I was given my first lessons of self worth. I was taught that I did not cause the addiction. I can not control it. I also can not cure it.

I was taught to detach from my husband and to learn to start doing self care and for the first time in my life take care of me. Because of this self-care I felt very prompted that this was the answer I had been looking for and this would heal me. I was shown that if I took care of myself that I would no longer need my antidepressants. I was able to go off of them. It has been over a year. I have not needed them since.

If I were to describe that woman who walked through the LifeSTAR doors that first day, I would say she came in absolutely starved and beaten. She had no idea of what self care or taking care of her needs even was. She had never considered it in 32 years. She was drowning and had lived her whole life in a life-and-death struggle to keep her loved ones from holding her head under water.

She was so severely neglected in every self-loving way. In fact I am sure that her self-loathing was the strongest it had ever been when she walked through the LifeSTAR doors that first day.

As I started to have my mind opened to the possibility of recovery, and to see everything I had gone through, I saw I was experiencing severe betrayal trauma very much as destructive as a man with PTSD who had been through combat. It started clicking inside of me.

Oh and I was angry. For the first time in my life I was mad. VERY mad. I was furious. I did not know what to do with this emotion, and I held onto it with all of my might for two months. It was nothing I had ever experienced before. The rage. I could see, finally see how unmanageable my life had become and how terribly I had allowed myself to be treated and I was angry.

Now comes the self care, boundary setting, affirmations, dailies, 12-step groups, and weekly counseling sessions.

It saved my life. In every single way. I was saved in a big way. Not only was I being taken care of, validated, loved, and provided with connection, I was able to pull away from Cody and see myself as a separate identity. You would think this would happen quickly, but took me a year to finally look at myself, and my stuff, and let go of the control of Cody's addiction. It has taken all this time to just relax and learn to take care of myself.

I felt like I took off. My life made sense. I knew exactly the avenue my own schooling would take. I knew where I wanted to work. I knew how everything in my life was preparing me up to this point. I finally had a clear knowledge. It all started clicking and making sense. I was given my own personal inspiration about my future life work in addiction recovery therapy.

The first three months of LifeSTAR even though miraculous and life saving, did not mean my marriage was all of the sudden a good one. In fact it got the most destructive during that time. Cody crossed sideways into his rage addiction. I was starting to sustain the worst of the physical and emotional abuse. It did not stop with me. It spilled over to the children as well. He threw Jordan across the room and he hit Matthew on the head for not being able to get the proper container. He was completely out of control from August-Oct. Finally, one night after being cornered in my room while he was raging out of control, I remembered my affirmations about how I was worthy of respect and no longer had to live in fear of rage and abuse.
In his anger Cody threw the phone, it missed my face by an inch, and put a dent in the wall right behind me. I had already reached out to two different men to come and get him because I was scared. I had already worn his bruises. I was not okay with the bodily harm that throwing the phone would have caused me.

As soon as he threw the phone he went straight into denial and full out rage. He screamed, "I did NOT throw the phone!!" I had said nothing the whole time. I was paralyzed. I just shrunk into the smallest ball possible wishing to escape his wrath. As I saw his wind up, I had quietly slipped away and locked the kids in their rooms with hugs and kisses, and communication to stay in their beds because daddy was angry and I was fearful for them.

As his mood continued to deteriorate as he fed his toxic shame the affirmations from my recovery replayed in my mind. All these words from my work doing dailies and from my LifeSTAR workbooks repeated over and over. I took courage and picked up my cell phone. I told him that I was scared and I needed him to stop or I would call 911. This just enraged him more. I saw the fury in his eyes. It was as if he had become possessed. He continued to rage on and in my fear for mine and the children's safety I called the police.

It was the safest I had felt in years. I could not believe I had people coming to rescue me. I had finally advocated for myself. I was not okay living in fear all those years. Making sure to never move right or move left. It was liberation day. I was finally free to not live as a victim to his rage.

The police came. They asked him to leave and said they would not press charges if I didn't.

Hours later he came home at 2 in the morning because he had decided that his car was not comfy enough to sleep in. I kept my cell phone in my hand the rest of the night and slept very little.The police told me that they would be patrolling and would come get him if he came back. They did not come back for him, but he left again at 8 that morning.
I did understand affirmations, but I had not yet set boundaries and bottom lines. If I had been given that knowledge, the cops would have come back and re-escorted him out because I would have called again. I did not know how deep that boundary was crossed and how irresponsible the behavior was until months out of the situation.

I did have enough knowledge at that time to let him know if he EVER hit me or the children, or threw anything in rage, or swore, or threatened in any way, or broke another piece of furniture, or shattered one more mirror, or put one more hole in the house, I would be calling the police and pressing charges for assault or battery. I felt a new safety that I had not had in 10 years of marriage. I felt very liberated. I did not have to live in fear for one more second from physical violence.

He of course was mad and thought I had gone nuts, but that did not matter. I was finally beginning to stand on my own two feet.

I changed all the locks on the door and I asked him to move out. I was not a popular person at this time with either of our families. My name became a dirty word with all of my family. Margareta was doing Satan's therapy. My LifeSTAR education was absolute trash and evil.

I have to laugh because I finally started standing up for myself and was no longer standing in the shadows of codependency. It was the best thing I had ever done for myself, and my family of origin reacted and keeps reacting violently by cutting me off when they do not like my boundaries. If I am going to behave in a way that is healthy for me, I can do it by myself. They do not offer support. 

As the pressure from our family systems pressed down on me when his company laid everyone off that December, and offered us a job in Utah, we fled without even a thought of what we were getting ourselves into. We just ran and didn't look back.

I now found myself living smack dab in the middle of Utah County. What had I been thinking?

Overcoming Betrayal: Part three (years 10-current) is in progress.