Worth the Fight: Substance Abuse in Relationships, Fight the New Drug, Mine and My Husband’s Addiction by Amelia

Part I: The First Date Phase

He was my best friend’s brother, six years older than me, and the mysterious cute guy who occasionally showed up to church. I wasn’t even a senior in high school, and he must have had lots of life experience by then. But I wanted to get to know him. 

Two years later, I walked down the aisle to the handsome man I was too scared to talk to a few years before. I was a young bride, only 19 years old, but I knew that was where I wanted to be.

We have been through so much together and many hard trials have come our way. No matter what, we have always been ones to come out on top and fight our way through — together. 

Our first date was set up by my best friend, who is now my sister. We watched Green Lantern at the movies with twelve other people. I was nervous, and it turns out he was too.

I sat next to him and held my hand palm up on my leg, just in case he got the courage to hold it. He didn’t. I kept looking at him, in case he got the courage to talk to me, or even look at me.

He didn’t. When the movie was over, he went with his cousin and sat in his truck while the rest of the group stood outside to talk. I was upset. What the heck was wrong with him? 

Well, I did what any insane girl would do. I walked on over and climbed up in his truck with him. It was awkward. Everything about the next little bit was awkward.

I am pretty sure we talked about zombies and haunting people when we die. 

I thought for sure the date was a bust. I went home, bummed more than ever.

I laid in bed that night wondering why in the world I would ever have said the things I did. There was not a chance in heck I was getting another chance with that hottie. 

A couple hours later, he added me on Facebook, and he sent me a message! I woke up my sisters, screaming with happiness! All night long, he sent me the cheesiest pick up lines he could come up with.

Guess what? It worked. I fell for him. Weird, I know. But that’s how our story begins. 

Part II: Diving In Despite Adversity

A few months later, I was reading my horoscope with my friends, which said “You will go on a dream vacation with the love of your life next month.” Not only had I only been on one date with this guy, but there was no way I could ever get away with going on a “dream vacation” with him. 

The next morning, I woke up to a text from him asking if I would like to go to his family reunion with him.

Of course, I said yes. So we got to spend the weekend camping together with his very large and accepting family.

He must have been so excited I was coming that he forgot to tell me there was no electricity or showers. Nonetheless, when we returned from the camping trip, he told me he loved me.

I was so shocked that I didn’t respond. I had no idea what to say to that! Turns out, years later, he didn’t even realize I didn’t say it back. It was weeks later when I finally said it and he didn’t even notice. Men. 

My dad did not like the idea of my husband in any way when we first got together. Not only was my husband six years older than me, he had also made a big mistake in his life that cost him some of his freedom.

He was on probation. No dad ever wants to hear his baby girl is dating a felon.

He wouldn’t even meet my boyfriend, not for a very long time. Now they have a great relationship.

My dad has even referred to us as “my son and his wife.” Yes, I was just as shocked as you. Rude. 

My husband and I fit together so well because we were both raised in the LDS church and still made some pretty bad mistakes in our life. We understood each other a little and what we had been through.

We were patient with each other’s mistakes and even still have the same temptations that we promised to work through together.

We loved one another and we weren’t going to give up on each other. We were married a year (almost exactly) after we started dating, still promising to build each other up to become better versions of ourselves.

We just didn’t understand at the time how hard that was really going to be. 

Part III: My Husband’s Addiction

When we were still dating, I was going to college eight hours away from where he lived. I would come back often to see him and then cry the whole way back to school.

My dad used to send my four-year-old brother with me to see him, just in case we thought we would try any funny business. 

One trip home, we were at the baseball field playing ball and had just taken some super cute pictures. He took my brother out onto the field to throw the ball (I know, cute right?) and so I grabbed his phone to look at the pictures we took.

Well, I found more than just the pictures I was looking for. 

I was heartbroken by the beautiful naked girls he kept saved on his phone. Heartbroken isn’t even a deep enough work to describe what I was.

I took my brother and I left, trying not to cry and let me brother see my pain the whole hour drive home. 

It didn’t take him long to call me to apologize. I could tell he was so upset that he hurt me, when that truly wasn’t his intention.

It took a long time to rebuild the trust we had lost, but he put the work in that I needed from him and showed me that he would fight for me. 

I knew I loved him and that we would work through this together, but it still hurts. The thought of those feelings still hurts me today.

The addiction never really went away. It has been eight years and it is still a negative part of our marriage.

We have grown together through it and have learned to communicate more efficiently and more intimately. So much progress has been made and I am proud of him for what he has been willing to do for our marriage. 

Part III: Fight the New Drug

I remember one time when I was little, I was introduced to pornography because a neighbor’s older brother left his playboy out where we could see it. There was another time in high school when it popped up on the computer and I couldn’t get it out of my head. 

Besides that, I had never really been introduced to the world that comes with this type of addiction. Throughout the healing process with my husband, there were times of failures and fallbacks.

During one of these times, I was tempted to look and see why he felt he needed it in his life. Turns out, I liked the feelings my body went through while looking at some of what might be going through his mind.

I was confused, and angry, but I still very much enjoyed the way my body felt. It didn’t take long before I looked for other ways to obtain this feeling.

I am tempted by erotic fiction and will find myself so engulfed in a book that I will ignore the fact that my husband is right next to me, willing to make me feel that good. 

It was hard work overcoming the desire to read books that hurt my marriage. That temptation still has not gone away, and it’s possible it might not. I am thankful for my husband’s patience with me to overcome hard things. He lifts me up when I need it the most. 

Part IV: Commitment through Substance Abuse in Relationships

Shortly after high school, my husband started smoking cigarettes. I hated it.

I hated the way he smelled, the way he had to keep leaving me to go outside, the way he prioritized smoking over other things in his life. We occasionally struggled financially, but you can bet he had cigarettes with him at all times. 

After we were married, he tried to quit several times. I saw him struggle and go through the pain of ending an addiction. It was hard both for him and for us.

He was stressed and often yelled or was short tempered. I took it, because I knew it would be worth it for him to be healthy again. 

Time after time, he went back to smoking. It was too hard.

When we started talking about children, it pained me to think of the boundaries I would have to set to keep our children away from the smoke. 

In June of 2015, we got pregnant with our first baby. Two months later, he stopped smoking, and has successfully stayed away for over four years.

He is around smoking all day at work and still comes up talking about how easy it would be to start again. But he doesn’t, and it is one of the amazing ways he shows his love to our family. 

Part V: Bonding through Failure and Faith

Our families both raised us in the same religion. It was how we met each other, and it was why we had so much in common.

Not only did we both have the same faith and beliefs, but we both strayed from those beliefs when we were young and experimented with lifestyles that opposed the way our families wanted us to live. 

We decided while we were dating that we wanted to raise our children in the church we were raised. Both of us agreed to help each other with the struggles that would come our way.

Three years ago, we moved to a new town. For us, this meant going to a different congregation.

It was a hard transition and somewhere in the middle, we both lost our way. We turned to drinking with friends occasionally, slacking on our lifestyle choices, and distracting ourselves with entertainment that we would never have considered acceptable before.

Together, we were letting ourselves go. 

It wasn’t long before my two year old daughter was asking when we were going to church. That’s what it took to whip me back into shape.

I didn’t realize how far we had traveled from the path we wanted to take. I made it a goal to get back to church each week and cut the other distractions from our lives. 

While I was so determined to make this change quickly, my husband has not been so motivated to change. He stopped going to church almost two years ago and has only been back a handful of times.

He still lives a different lifestyle than I do, but he is growing. He is slowly working back to the man he was. It hasn’t been easy to work through our differences. We are making progress though, and each day we grow closer together. 

We now have two children, and we are more united in our marriage than ever before.

Though there are still nights I cry myself to sleep thinking of his addiction and our differences, I do not regret the decision to marry him and be his partner through our struggles.

He is the best daddy to our two little girls, and I know that if anyone can turn his heart around to focus more on our family, it will be his two angels.

He has worked hard to provide for our family even though he has to be gone from us so much. Every day he comes home from work and I am truly happy to see him, and not only because I have been left alone with two wild children all day.

He is my best friend, my lover, my happiness. I love him, and I have no doubt in the universe he loves me. 

Thank you to Amelia for sharing her complete marriage story, trials and all. Thank you for being vulnerable and honest.

If the question “what about my husband’s addiction?” is keeping you up at night, you’re not alone. You might be able to fight through this together, and if not, you have people who love you who will help you move forward with your life.

Whether the addiction requires you to fight substance abuse in relationships or fight the new drug of pornography, there are resources all around you to make the seemingly impossible journey much easier. Check out our resources or Google search local marriage resources near you.

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