A lot of times you'll hear, "Well, if the wife was just ..." or "If the partner was just, you know, satisfying him, he wouldn't have to look at pornography. If the wife would lose a few pounds, or if the girlfriend would lose a few pounds, then he wouldn't have that problem." So I always had that nagging, "There's something wrong with me." I just thought that if I was more captivating and interesting in conversation and in person, then he wouldn't go looking. You start to take it personally. You start to wonder, "Well, what's wrong?" And I would even ask that. "Am I not fit enough? Am I not doing it for him? Am I not sexy enough?" It makes you feel like, "Why am I not good enough? Why--why is what I have to offer not enough?"

There was a lot of suppressing on my end because I thought if I was on my best behavior, then he would not act out. He would not even want to do it. Or if I gave myself to him more, then he wouldn't have this need. Or if I participated in ideas of his, then this need wouldn't be there. And so I was working. I was going to get there. Gym every morning at 4:00. Asking him what kind of clothes he liked. Dressing to his standard, if you will. I felt, "OK, it's because of my body, for sure." So then I took drastic measures to change my body and to be this perfect being that I felt like, "OK, now he's going to be attracted to me. Now he's going to want me, and he's not going to want these other women." I was trying to take what he said and incorporate it and make the changes that I felt like I needed to make. The sexier I was trying to become, the less sexy I felt. I was trying to make him happy, and he wasn't going to be happy unless he decided to be happy. No matter what I did, no matter how I reacted or how I behaved, he was still going to do it. They say often, "This has been crazy-making for me because I have felt that something's wrong with me. I ask him. He tells me there's not anything wrong with me, or he says, 'You do have a problem, but it's because of your weight,' or something else," when all along he's been the one who has really been creating the disconnectedness. And when you think about it, if you think about when the addiction started, it's not when he got married. It's when he was younger. So that is absolute, solid proof that it had nothing to do with the woman in his life. The history of his use went before I was even a part of the life--part of his life, which, at that point I thought, "Well, why wasn't I enough to make him stop, then? I should have been enough to make him stop." But I think the biggest growing part in it is knowing that it isn't me. And I really have had to kind of accept that, that it isn't all about me and I could never fix him. This really has nothing to do with me. It didn't take away the pain and the thoughts of it having to do with me and that it was because of me. But that's when I started to see, like, it really has no effect what I do. I felt like that was one of the only--only one of Satan's lies that I caught on to right away, was that "you're not pretty enough. You're not thin enough." And that was probably the only one that I was like, "No, it has nothing, actually, to do with how I look. It has to do with the addiction." You know, we women spend so much time not knowing that we're enough. You're enough.

You're absolutely enough. I feel like I'm a lot more powerful of a person. I'm realizing that I do have strength and I'm--that I have something to offer. Where the strength of my own self-worth comes from is from my relationship with the Lord. Beauty from the inside shows on the outside, and valuing who you are as a person and letting go of regret and shame. And it's not giving up; it's giving in. And I equate that to--to my Savior, and giving in to allowing Him to be the one that makes me feel beautiful.