In our series “For Better or Worse,” married couples share their stories of love, challenge, and resilience. In this feature, we meet DeVon and Danah. After establishing a relationship based on solid Christian values, they had to face a hurdle they never saw coming: conquering one partner’s addiction to pornography. Together they learned to overcome through their faith, the support of counselors, and the embrace from a trusted community of married couples.
Couple: DeVon & Danah Artis
Location: Chesapeake, VA
Wedding date: June 26, 2004
DeVon: At a young age, I was exposed to something by caregivers that I should not have been exposed to, and I think that was where the door was opened. I was very young, and I wasn’t consumed with it then, but later on, that curiosity became more and more intense in my life. The addiction became full-blown when I was in college. I reached out for help – pastoral counseling and prayer at my church, but I needed more. Since I previously dealt with depression as a teenager, I knew about counseling, and I reached out to a counselor about what I was feeling. It wasn’t anything taboo for me. I was tired of my guilt and wanted a counselor to give me some keys to freedom from what I was feeling. During that time, I had not connected the dots back to my childhood until one day, I was praying and asking God why I was dealing with what I was. At that moment, I felt like God pointed out my childhood to me and what I was exposed to. Until that point, I had not connected the dots.
Toni-Ann Craft: Pornography can be a very loaded subject. Some people argue that it can ruin marriages and lead to sexual addiction. While others encourage it and believe that it enhances sex lives. When did you realize that it was a problem in your marriage?
DeVon: Three years into our marriage, my wife discovered something that I looked up on my computer. The turning point was when I realized how much it hurt her. I felt like I had let her down. I felt like most guys did this, even though I felt guilty. But I felt like I really wanted to get free from it. Actually, until that point, I thought I had a handle on the addiction back in college, but it wasn’t until our marriage that the door was opened again.
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Toni-Ann Craft: Danah, walk me through your feelings when you learned that your husband was struggling with a pornography addiction?
Danah: He told me about his addiction before we got married, but he also said that he had a handle on it and dealt with it. I was good with that. But on that particular day, I was minding my business and came across this site on his computer. I was in a state of total shock. He was at work at this time, and I called him blazing mad. He couldn’t really talk about it until he got home, and I went through a range of emotions. It felt like a betrayal to me. It felt almost like an affair — he was looking at another woman, and I felt our trust was broken. I was devastated. I was furious to the point where I was ready to call it quits. I was going to take our daughter and leave.
Toni-Ann Craft: Why was pornography such a deal-breaker for you?
Danah: We’re a Christian couple, and scripture tells us that this is a sin. We built our marriage based on God’s word. Until this point, I thought we had a Christian marriage. Finding this out made me feel like our marriage was a lie. We did everything by the book until this point. DeVon knew that before meeting him, I was in relationships that were not biblical, where I had premarital sex. When DeVon and I got together, we didn’t even have sex before marriage. So getting to this point was something I didn’t want or expect for our marriage.
DeVon: I was embarrassed and ashamed. I was sad that I had violated her trust, and I was terrified about what would happen next.
Toni-Ann Craft: DeVon, did your addiction and this experience ever make you feel like you were less of a Christian?
DeVon: I don’t think it ever got to that point. I understood the struggle since I had been dealing with it for a long time. I just didn’t know what it was like to be totally free. I knew I wasn’t watching anything hardcore, and I thought I had to get a handle on it. I knew I had to change when I witnessed how much it hurt my wife. At that point, I felt a release because all of my cards were on the table now. I couldn’t act like I had it all together anymore because now I could honestly say she knew everything about me. Before, I struggled behind closed doors, and now it was all out in the open.
Toni-Ann Craft: DeVon, you mentioned that you were previously diagnosed as clinically depressed. Did you find triggers between your depression and your pornography addiction?
DeVon: I believe so; I think pornography was a way of escape from reality for me. I learned that this was how I somehow subconsciously dealt with stress. Oddly enough, it wasn’t necessarily a sexual thing for me. I think it was my coping mechanism for stress.
Toni-Ann Craft: So now that things have shifted, what is your coping mechanism for stress?
DeVon: One is being transparent and honest with my wife. I also have a few hobbies now that I turn to. At first, it was video games, even though I was married with a kid at that point. It was something I enjoyed when I was younger. Now I also enjoy kayaking and going to the range. It gives me a competitive edge, and it’s something I enjoy.
Toni-Ann Craft: If there was one moment that you could pinpoint as the darkest part of your journey, what was it?
DeVon: Losing my mother was the most challenging part of my marriage. We prayed earnestly for my mom to get better, and she didn’t. It was a shock, she had health issues, but we didn’t expect it. I had lunch with my mom and talked to her that day, and that night she was gone. It was unexpected. So there was a season of my marriage when I didn’t want to pray. My identity as a Christian was very shaken up. I felt like God let me down. I didn’t know how to be a husband or father. My wife gave me the grace to check in and out as I needed to. She gave me the grace to grieve.
Danah: The pornography addition was the darkest time for me. When it happened, I was questioning everything. Previously I was a success in corporate America, and I stepped away from my job to be a full-time stay-at-home mom and wife. And I felt if I left him, I had to start from ground zero with a 9-month-old. I did all of that for my marriage, and he did that to me. It was overwhelming for me. I felt like I should have never quit my job to rely on him 100% only to find that out.
Toni-Ann Craft: What did the process of overcoming addiction and rebuilding your marriage look like for both of you?
DeVon: For me, it came down to our faith. It was the only thing that got us through that. I had to be dedicated to doing the work to get free from the addiction and figure out the triggers.
Danah: We went to counseling specifically for that. We had books that we had to go through.
DeVon: Yes, I highly recommend a book called “Every Man’s Battle” by Stephen Arterburn and a companion guide for women called “Every Woman’s Battle.” We had a workbook and everything. My wife didn’t ask me to do this, but I took extreme measures to make sure that I did not succumb to the addiction again. I told my wife that I wasn’t going on the computer late at night; if I did, it was in an open space where she was there. I knew that I had broken the walls of trust, and I had to do whatever I needed to build them back up at whatever pace my wife set for me. I knew that if she was going to keep me around, I had to give her the space to deal with it in her own way too. I pleaded with her to stay with me and help me through it because I knew I loved and needed her. Our rebuilding period took approximately one year. We had a strong church community at that time also.
Danah: I remember being at a conference, and a woman randomly gave me a scripture that still resonates with me to this day. It was James 2:13, which says, “mercy triumphs over judgment.” It was such a prophetic word for me. When she gave me that scripture, I held on to it. God had given me that scripture well before that lady gave it to me. It was a turning point for me.
We always tell couples that it’s so important to have people around you who you trust that you can go to about your relationship. If I was ashamed to tell anyone, we would be divorced because I couldn’t see beyond the hurt or pain. I couldn’t see anything good coming out of it. But because of the advice I got from wise married women, I could get through it. I met a woman that had a husband who was going through the same thing, and she explained to me that this was a sickness like an alcohol or drug addiction. It’s not something that he was doing intentionally to hurt me. She said she would have never thought about leaving her husband because of it. Talking to her helped me see that we had to get it right and do the work.
Toni-Ann Craft: I love that you mentioned the importance of having a solid community. How can couples know when they can be authentic and share their struggles with others and when not to?
Danah: The most significant thing we learned was that sharing our issues with family was off the table. No problems in our marriage are ever discussed with our family. We knew early on that we may forgive our spouse for hurting us, but our family won’t have the grace and capacity to do that. Even when we went to counseling and dropped our daughter off at DeVon’s mom’s house before she passed away, we never told her that we were going to counseling. We kept it vague and said that we were going on a date. They had no clue that we were going to counseling sessions or experiencing the issues we had at that time.
DeVon: When it comes to people we share our issues with, we knew we wouldn’t broadcast it to the world. In the midst of it, you have to find someone who is trustworthy and has the lifestyle that you’re trying to achieve. For us, they needed to have a successful marriage and could give advice to help us get through it. We also only sought happily married couples that were married longer than we were. It takes getting to know people and having a community. We sought out that caliber of people.
Toni-Ann Craft: What are some specific ways you supported each other during your dark times?
Danah: It didn’t happen overnight. I still had an attitude and told him at one point that he was going to support himself. Once I got some wisdom and understanding, we had regular check-ins to see how each other was doing.
DeVon: Number one, she stayed! She prayed for me and began to understand where I was coming from. She supported me.
I supported my wife by helping to rebuild the trust. I was completely open about everything. In my sobriety, I learned what I was dealing with. Sometimes you don’t know how to go through something until you get through it. It was different walking through it by myself when I was single. Still, in retrospect, I felt like maybe this was something I needed to go through with my wife to completely overcome it. I began to empathize with drug addicts because although the stimuli may differ, what happens chemically in the body is the same.
Danah: I remember thinking through the triggers, and my husband said he would struggle more when I traveled. Sometimes I would be gone for the entire week. That was when he had his heightened struggle. So I knew I had to take care of my husband before I left so that he wouldn’t be tempted when I was gone. I realized that I could have contributed by not being more intentional with my husband to lessen these opportunities. I know I’m not to blame for it but let’s be honest, sometimes in relationships, you have to look at contributing factors.
Toni-Ann Craft: At what point would you consider the light at the end of the tunnel?
DeVon: When she agreed that she would stay and that I wasn’t going to lose my family. I remember bartering with God saying, “God, if you fix this, you won’t ever have to worry about me doing this again.” I remember randomly getting powerful prayers from people who didn’t even know what we were going through. It felt like a big embrace from God. I think the second biggest light at the end of the tunnel for me was when I got to the point where I realized that I didn’t want anything to do with pornography anymore. Nothing I gained from it was worth anything.
Danah: The proactive things he was putting in place, going to counseling, going through the workbook, joining a men’s group, doing what he said he was going to do, was my light at the end of the tunnel. He was always a man of his word. That’s why it was so hurtful because he wasn’t even the type of person to lie to me before this.
I know now that I also had a lot of work that I needed to do internally. I had to learn not to be judgmental and critical. I had to learn what mercy looks like and how to love someone despite what I felt. It’s easy to love someone when they’ve been everything you’ve ever dreamed of, but it’s another thing when that person hurts you.
Toni-Ann Craft: What advice do you have for couples facing a similar journey?
DeVon & Danah: Definitely read the book!
DeVon: Deal with life, don’t avoid something and allow it to take you out of reality. Walk through life with one another and don’t try to find things to escape reality. Have difficult conversations and deal with what you’re trying to run from in your relationship.
Danah: Speak to someone else, a married friend or coach. Find a happily married couple that has been married longer than you. We only spoke to couples who had been married 10 years or longer. Don’t try to fix it on your own. Before, I was so one-sided in my viewpoint that I wouldn’t have been able to see the bigger picture on my own without the advice from other trusted couples.
DeVon: Mental health is so important. Taking care of your mental health is a massive part of recovery. Deal with trauma from your past with a counselor. I also want couples to know that sometimes the only way to fix something is to go all the way through it. What happened on the other side was difficult. It was hurtful, but we’re more powerful now because we went through it together. When we first went through it, I thought that was the end of our story, but we are now married for 17 years, and we’re still writing the story. We’re more powerful now because we went through it together.
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