Sara Walker currently lives in Amity, Oregon. She served in the Chicago Illinois North mission, met her husband at BYU-Idaho, and has a been striving to improve her marriage and help her husband overcome his addiction to pornography.
Enter Sara…
Dear Bishop,
Thank you for your service as a bishop in the Church. I believe you were called of God to your calling for such a time as this. We need people who are willing to be on the front lines in the battle for families and individuals against sexual addiction. I am hoping to give you some insight into what women with husbands involved in sexual addiction (SA) need from you as an ecclesiastical leader. I have talked with many women who are dealing with this in their lives, and their stories are varied and poignant. All the women who shared their insight did so knowing that I would be submitting this to you. Out of respect for them and the battles they continue to fight, I won’t use names or specific details.
The feelings and thoughts expressed in this letter are my own, although not every item listed has been applicable to me and my situation. It is my hope that you will use this letter—as well as the spirit of discernment—when counseling with individuals and couples, as each situation is somewhat unique. There are, however, a number of similarities between them as well. I will be attempting to address those.
I feel like it’s important to begin this by sharing with you some attitudes and attributes of the addict. Many of those who come to you with SA will be men—although not exclusively. Therefore, I will use the term addict and husband interchangeably. When a man comes to you admitting he has looked at pornography, please consider the following:

* Most men do not fully confess everything the first time, or the second, or the third…
* They may say they don’t have an addiction, that it was just a here-and-there problem.
* They have likely struggled for years, and are only coming to you because they got caught.
* They have lied to themselves and to their spouse for so long that they believe many of their own lies.
* They are so programmed to hide everything that it usually takes a “hitting rock bottom” moment before full confession happens, and sometimes not even then.
* Often there are things like masturbation and infidelity that they are not talking about.

As a bishop, please consider asking the difficult questions. Be specific. Ask: Do you masturbate? Have you had virtual relationships or physical relationships? Do you go to strip clubs or porn shops? How often? For how long? Do you use your phone or tablet? Do you call hotlines? And so forth. They do not need to be graphic in the details of what they do, but they do need to be accountable. Many of these men have a distorted sense of time. They will say the last time they looked was a few months/weeks ago. In reality, it was likely sooner and for longer than they would admit. They are most likely in something referred to as “addict brain” or “addict mode.” Unless they have been actively working at recovery, they are in addict brain. It gives them a distorted sense of reality. (For more in-depth discussion of addict brain, see the book, Like Dragons Did They Fight.)
Dealing with someone who lives much of their life in addict brain is difficult. When we—the women dealing with this—come to you for help, we often have no one else to turn to. Begin to educate yourself about the nuances of SA. Each of the below items is just a brief overview; this is meant as a starting point and not a comprehensive document. Please consider the following as you seek guidance in counseling us:
1. Do not imply or flat out say that if we would give our spouse more time sexually he wouldn’t have this problem
This is probably the number one source of depression,