Because I'm a fighter and because I'm strong, I wanted to fix it. I wanted to fix him. "He needs help. And who else is going to do it? I've got to do this." And so I would read books and articles and all sorts of things, and I kept looking for a new solution. "I've read this before. It's not worked. What's the solution? Where is the solution?" I was on the phone for hours, trying to find someone who knew about sexual addiction. We went to a couple of 12-step meetings together. My nature is, "I have grit. I can do this. I can take care of things." I just picked it up and really ran with it. For me, I thought, "I have to do something. I have to control his behavior. You know, I have to--this is how I will contribute, is force him to be righteous. That should work, right? That's a good plan." Someone else had that plan before. It didn't actually work out.

I would leave him lists all over the house of things that he can do for fun or chores that, you know, when he's bored or when I'm at work or school. And I really thought that was going to work. Sometimes wives can feel that they have to be the enforcer, that they need to police their husbands' behavior. And that's not usually a healthy role to take. His behavior is being monitored constantly by her. He feels controlled. She feels that if she doesn't control the situation, that then he's going to act out. So she feels responsible, even, for his recovery. I had this perception that if I made it so he couldn't make a wrong choice, then I would be helping him. That was the best thing I could do as a wife, was if I looked at the router every day to see what internet sites he'd been on, if I drove past our house when he didn't think I would, just to see if he was home or something. I had this impression that that was me helping him and guiding him. And so the woman who is feeling like she's got to manage and control the situation, or else it's all going to fall apart, starts to feel like "If I do this, then maybe he will change." Or "If I do more of that, he'll change." All of a sudden, I realized I couldn't carry the weight of somebody's agency. I definitely couldn't carry the weight of my husband's agency, and it was not my responsibility to. The husband needs to take primary responsibility for addressing his problem. But the wife can play a valuable role in being an encourager and supporting him in his process. And he--he'll choose his recovery or not. But it's pretty amazing to choose my recovery, and he chooses his recovery, and then we recover the marriage. Instead of me reading the scriptures and saying, "Oh, I really hope my husband sees this. He really needs this. This is really good for him," or listening to conference and thinking, "I hope he's listening, because this will solve all his problems," I needed to start listening and reading for myself. And as I read the scriptures for myself instead of for him, as I started to pray for myself instead of to change him, it started to open up for me. And the only peace I found was when I recognized that Heavenly Father has already provided a plan for him, and I didn't need to solve his problem. Jesus Christ was going to carry that for him. I could only solve myself, and I had to look for healing for myself. I had to read the scriptures for myself. I had to stop doing it at a surface level. We have nurturing hearts, and we want to be a lot more loving. And yet with addiction, we can't love them out of it. We can't love them more to help them want to stop. What we can do is set boundaries and really understand the addiction and help them in the most appropriate way. The Sunday School answers are the right answers. We pray, we read the scriptures, we go to church, and we keep the commandments. But that's step one. I needed to pray with the intent to communicate with my Heavenly Father. And I needed to read and study with the intent to learn something. And I need to worship with the intent to be sanctified. And I needed to be obedient with the intent to become what the commandments are intended to help us become, and not just checking items off a list. When I started using my agency to let Heavenly Father know that I wanted the Atonement in my life, the help came. And it came in greater ways than I ever could have imagined.