Alan and Rebecca's Recovery Story

Video Transcription

Alan: “I am Alan, this is Rebecca, and we've been married for 15 years, and we have two beautiful twin girls that are six years old. They keep us on our toes all the time.”

Rebecca: “They’re our miracle babies. We decided about year to marriage that we wanted to have kids. Or maybe I just decided, where you in on that?”

Alan: “I was included, yes.”

Rebecca: “But it took us 9 years to get them, so we try really hard not to indulge them, but we really love them and they're the only babies we get.”

Alan: “They are absolutely spoiled rotten.”

Rebecca: “[Alan and I] ran into each other my first semester of college, and we didn't really know each other, but our families are both from the same town. Our parents knew each other, and our brothers and sisters knew each other, and we recognized each other as being part of the families that we were from.

We ran into each other at an Institute of Religion class in the hallway. Alan snuck up behind me, grabbed me, hugged me, and gave me beard burn on my face. I was like, ‘Who is this crazy person?!’ After that we introduced ourselves.”

Alan: “She didn’t like me at all.”

Rebecca: “He wore cowboy boots. I hadn't really seen any great examples of happily married people, so I just thought there aren’t really any men out there. I'll just go and get my doctorate degree and if, by chance, I found a guy who was great then I'd think about it.

We went on a road trip to Utah while we were dating. I had grown up in this chaotic, violent household. I was always waiting for my dad to erupt and I never knew when he would. On this road trip up to Utah, the trunk was packed with stuff, I don't remember where we were driving...”

Alan: “We drove a very small, small vehicle, a lot of stuff was packed in there.”

Rebecca: “We got a flat tire and I got really nervous because in my family there would have been a lot of swearing, and blaming, and it would have been a terrible experience. Then Alan says ‘Okay, let's change the tire!’ He got out and unpacked the trunk. He was singing a song, changed the tire, and we went on. That was totally foreign to my experience of car trouble. I thought ‘Well there is something really special about this guy who can change a tire without freaking out and having steam come out of his ears.’”

Alan: “Pretty much from about the time that our children were born, and I think this is common to just about anyone who has kids, and if they have twins or multiple children, it's just magnified, life gets really hard when you add those extra ingredients. There’s so many more demands on your time. I think that is when our relationship first started to really experience trials and difficulties that were trying for us. That is also the same time when we down the road leading to recovery. That was definitely the hardest part of our marriage, I think. Through it all, I've always felt in love with Rebecca. I've never lost the love that I had for her. It was always something that I was willing to fight for and keep. Even in the hardest moments, the most down times in my life, I wanted to be with her. I wanted to make it work, whatever it would take. I know at least for me I never fell out of love.”

Rebecca: “I’ve learned so much about love. My whole perspective of what love is has changed. [I used to think] that it didn't matter what we have, or what we're doing, all we needed was each other. We could be happy. We could go live in Sub-Saharan Africa and if we had each other that it would be awesome!

Then through this trial, through this hell of discovery of addiction, and of the shattering of my idea of what my life was, I was able to see that even when I didn't have a lot of love for Alan, or I didn't believe that he loved me, I learned a new definition of love. I learned a new idea of love, because he was willing, from the beginning, to do what I asked him to do.

I was pretty mean, and I was pretty up-front, and I was pretty pushy because I was so scared for myself and for my little girls. I said ‘This is what we're doing. We're going to intensive therapy. We're going to meetings, and you are calling the bishop right now.’ I really pushed, but he let me do that, he was willing to do whatever I asked him to do.

Then, as he gained some tools from counseling that helped him to stay calm with me and to not be defensive, I could see that it was such an effort for him. I could see the effort that he was making that he had really put his whole heart into recovery. I didn't feel the love coming from me or coming from him, but I could see his effort. Even using the script that his counselor gave him, though the words weren’t that comforting, [I could] see that he was really putting forth the effort. I could see that he was trying not to be defensive. I could see that he was really trying to listen. Now my definition of Love encompasses all of that, it encompasses the effort.

Now we're finally at the hard work. I think a lot of couples learn that in the first couple of years of marriage, that marriage is hard work and compromise and sacrifice. I never had that experience because marriage was fun and awesome. We didn't have to sacrifice. Now through this, I have learned that piece, and how powerful just choosing to be in love, choosing to love your spouse is.”

Alan: “I remember sitting in [addicion] education week and this person was talking about the effect that pornography or sexual addiction has on wives, specifically when they first find out about it. [The instructor] put up on the screen a picture of the Twin Towers with the airplanes hitting the Twin Towers on September 11th. She was silent for a minute. We were in a big auditorium, and she said ‘Look at that picture and remember how you felt. What does that take you back to? What did you feel looking at that picture on that day when that happened?’ I think everyone looked at that, and they were like ‘Wow, you struck right to the core of the heart of America. Everyone knows what that felt like.’ Then she said ‘This is what it feels like to the wives when they discover that their spouse has a sexual addiction or pornography problem.’

I think for the first time when she said that I was like, ‘Wow, that makes sense. I didn't realize how devastating that is, but I think that comparison is very real. I've seen that obviously, and it's not something that you can just snap back on and recover within a day. It takes a long time a lot of work to rebuild and put your life and a relationship back together.”

Rebecca: “I felt my life and my whole idea of what My marriage had been shifted. I felt like the whole concept I had had, this pride about how great my marriage was and how it was so much better than everyone else's marriage sifted. People would complain to me about their spouses and say ‘You guys are so lucky. You don't even know what I'm talking about because your husband is so great. He cooks and he goes to church and he's home with you and you spend time together.’

I suddenly felt like all of that was fake. Nothing was real. I couldn’t have put together what happened in our lives. I couldn't look back at the pictures because I would see his eyes and I would think ‘What were you thinking? Where were you? Were you really with me? What were you thinking about? Who are you? What were you doing? Where have you been?’

I could not reconcile my past idea what my life had been and the reality of what happened. I just tried so hard. I started reading everything. I read about addiction. I went to see my counselor. I was trying so hard to understand what in the world happened to [Alan] and figure out who I was really married to. I thought he was one person, and apparently he's someone else.

I really spiraled and ended up severely depressed and had a nervous breakdown about six months after I found out about the addiction. I got to the point where everything in our relationship wasn't real anymore and the future looked so bleak for our little girls. I felt like every man in the world was addicted, and wondered what hope there was for my children. I didn’t even want to go to church because all the men there were addicted. Everything was so bleak that I didn't want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to live anymore. It was really devastating and really traumatic.

Thankfully, I had been able to reach out to some people in those six months. They were able to come and help me through that time. They helped me to get where I need to be to see my counselor. I ended up spending a week at Canyon Ranch in Tucson. I was spending time doing yoga, meditation, and focusing on health, healthy eating, and being healthy physically, spiritually, and mentally. I discovered acupuncture and all these different tools that I was able to incorporate into my healing”

Alan: “Healing has been amazing. For the longest time We refused to talk about the future because we didn't know what the future held. I tried to talk to you about the future a couple of times and you were like, ‘I don't want to talk about the future. I don't want to think about the future. I can only focus on right here right now.’ That's a big part of recovery, the ‘One day at a time. I'm just going to focus on today. I'm not going to worry about the past and I'm not going to worry about tomorrow.’

It takes a while before you can get around to thinking about the future again. Now that we are at that point where happiness has come back in, the future is really bright. Living in recovery is amazing. I know personally, I feel like I have unshackled myself. Addiction was something that held me back. I was not who I wanted to be. I was not happy. It really limited who I was and who I could become because I was not interested in the things that make me happy. It held me down. It has taken a while to break out of that and remember who I really am and what I want to do and realize that there are no limits. The future really is bright and getting back to where we were when we first got married.

Rebecca said earlier that we almost joined the Peace Corps. I remember talking about that. We were going to sell everything we owned. It was going to be okay to go live in some crazy place and that would be fine. Obviously, we can't do that now because we have children, but the hope of doing things like that, knowing that's possible and that we would be happy, that we could be happy regardless of what our situation is because we have that love again. We know who we are and we know that the future really is bright.”

Rebecca: “Through healing I've been able to really look at myself, and to really examine my strengths and my weaknesses. I’ve been able to form a much more personal connection with God. I’ve been able to feel healing and hope. As I have gone through recovery, as we have worked on our recovery, I have had the opportunity to heal the tragic things even in my past. I would have a lot of traumatic memories that would come up that were so shaking for me, but because of where we were and the work that we are doing on recovery, I was able to find comfort even in those traumatic moments. I recognized that God was with me even when I was little and felt so helpless. I’m starting to gain that pride again. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm starting to feel proud of our relationship again. I feel that what we have is true.”

Alan: “Our love is amazing.”

Rebecca: “Our love is awesomer.”