This is a testimony from another wife in the Unveiled Wife community who felt compelled to share the most difficult moment in her marriage surrounding the topic of pornography, passionately desiring to give others hope who are facing the same devastation!
Robi writes:
(This article discusses my first encounter with my husband’s pornography addiction. At that time, I felt very alone and sometimes I still feel like there are no other Christian wives that go through this pain. Yet, I know there are many wives that are experiencing this difficult trial in marriage. I pray and hope to unite wives that are going through this.) 
I could never forget the exact moment my whole life became broken. It was a very ordinary day that I stumbled upon the discovery that my husband viewed pornography. I remember everything I felt all at once. My happy, perfect marriage, my friendship and love with my husband, our faithfulness in marriage all became exposed in one second. Everything in the ten years that we had been married for came down to one huge lie.
My husband was addicted to pornography.
After that first moment of intense shock, everything about our marriage started to make complete sense. As horrified as I was, I felt like God was revealing piece by piece a mystery of who my husband was. I realized the late nights every weekend, the way we could never fully be intimate, the feeling that there was something hidden about my husband, how I never really felt as one with him, were becoming clear. I concluded that I did not know anything about my husband. This secret was so meticulously hidden from me for over ten years! Everything was so carefully deleted and covered. I was so blinded that I did not even know my husband struggled with lust!
How could I possibly have been so fooled? That is what I wanted to know.
I met him at a very young age, while I was still in high school. I grew up in a Christian home and had strong Christian beliefs. He grew up in a secular home that was void of any belief in God. His upbringing was completely opposite of mine. In my life, we prayed together, followed the Lord, and shared everything with each other. How different my husband’s life was! God was never mentioned. Each member lived a private life with selfish ambitions. That did not matter though in our life! My husband gladly accepted my beliefs about God. He wanted nothing more than to follow God and live a “good Christian life” with me. I married him right before my twentieth birthday.
We were best friends, soul mates, lovers, and now husband and wife. I wanted nothing more! We had just started our happily ever after! I could not wait to reach each anniversary! I was in my absolute dream world. However, I was clueless that my husband was very slowly losing his battle with lust. Each day he was deeply ashamed of this secret he kept from everyone. He felt there was not one in the world he could ever tell and definitely not me, the person it would hurt the most. So he kept on trying his best to be good and overcome. He never could. He did not know how without help and the Holy Spirit.
After my realization, I confronted him with tears that night. He was the only person I could go to. He was so deeply ashamed and scared. He cursed God, his parents, and his whole life. He never wanted me to know. He never wanted me to ever find out this terrible secret that was part of his life as far back as he could remember.
And honestly, I did not want to know anything. I was so hurt, betrayed, angry, and scared all together. I did not want to deal with this! Not in my perfect marriage! I cried out to God all day long!
Dear God, this was never ever part of my plans! How dare You permit this in my life! I hate all of the pornography and anyone who is involved in it! You knew this God! You knew this about me! How could You ever let me marry him?”
I cried to God for almost two years. It took two years for my husband and I just to start working through all the pain. He had ten years of hidden sins to reveal. Many hurtful things he knew he would never tell me, he was now speaking them plainly to me. He revealed pornography use our whole marriage, internet chatting, phone calls, and living a lustful life every day. It also took these two years for me to find a way to work through my deep sorrow. I felt so alone. I had no person I could speak to about this. We only had each other and God.
Pornography addiction is a carefully hidden sin in the Christian world. It is rarely openly discussed and it is many times condemned. However, God talks openly about lust in the Bible. Over the two years, God started a complete transformation of my marriage, my husband, and me. When I look at the people we are now, I cannot recognize many things. Each painful day, God pushed us closer to each other by bringing us to Him.
God opened my eyes to so many things about marriage. I saw so deeply that marriage can be very painful. So painful, that at times I could not even breathe deeply. I could only ache deep in my heart and cry out to God. He also showed us that we cannot go through life without a daily reliance on him.
We began to read God’s word and rely on daily Bible verses to help us. We started our own devotional and prayer time every night. We use that time to talk about our day and anything that came up in which we might have previously kept secret.
We are now going to be married for thirteen years. When I bring my pain and sorrow to God he shows me the meaning behind my unexpected events in my marriage. God gently shows me that He brought me to my husband to guide him into the man of God that he is right now. The sins of my husband’s life that took fifteen years to root and then ten years of marriage to grow have brought him into the repentance and walk with God that he is in now.
I know that the sacredness of marriage is that no other person except his wife, the love of his life, could have moved my husband to repentance. It was the deep pain that he caused in our marriage that caused him to turn away from sin. God is daily growing me into the wife that He wants me to be. It is a beautiful plan and definitely not one that I ever expected.
– Robi Smith
