My husband decided that castrating himself was the only way to overcome his addiction to porn.
Some of you may remember about two years ago my son posted on this site that his father had castrated himself because he believed it was the only way to stop his addiction to pornography. I had never heard of reddit before he told me what he posted. I’ve been following the site for quite some time now and have been wanting to post here but just hadn’t had the courage until now. A lot has happened in these past couple of years. We are now divorced after 38 years of marriage. Some of you were correct when you said he must have a mental illness. He was finally diagnosed with bipolar depression two years ago. Early in our marriage he had been diagnosed with ADD but after years of treatment his behavior was only becoming worse. Whenever I would bring up his behavior and urge him to talk with his doctor he would get angry and say he was fine. He would go to regular counseling with whoever was our bishop at the time and things would be better for awhile and then get worse again. About 5 years ago I had been teaching in primary and one of my students started asking some questions about the gospel that I couldn’t answer. I don’t even remember what they were, but I thought I better brush up on my gospel knowledge. I was in the library one day soon after and I came across a book titled Mormonism 101. Thinking it was a book about the basics of the gospel, I checked it out. It wasn’t until I got home and started reading it that I realized it was the author’s research into Mormonism. That’s when I first learned about Joseph’s polygamy, BOA, etc. things I’d never been taught. When I tried to tell my husband about it he didn’t want to listen. When he finally did listen he said that these things were disturbing but not faith destroying. I told him that if they were true then they were faith destroying to me. I went on to research more and just went further down the rabbit hole. He denies that church teachings had anything to do with him castrating himself but I know the church heavily influenced him to take that drastic step. So, one year divorced and he is engaged to be married in the temple this July. Our three oldest adult children are very active. Our youngest son, the one who posted on here, and I are out of the church. Right now I’m sitting outside the Bountiful temple thinking back on how hard these last few years have been and how I wish I’d never heard of the Mormon church.
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