From Sarah McDugal link to her Facebook post of Wilderness to Wild, a community for those experiencing abuse in the faith community:

Young women often face a painful question:

“I’ve discovered that my boyfriend/fiancé has been watching porn, hiding debt, sexting girls, chatting with other girls, not telling me he’s out drinking, gambling on the side, etc… “I love him SO much, and I can’t imagine life without him. He’s a really amazing boyfriend/fiancé, and he’s promised to get help. Should I REALLY break up with him/cancel the wedding? Shouldn’t I stick around to prove my support and commitment?” Sweet, beautiful girl — let me share some profoundly painful and hard-earned wisdom with you…

(No mentor or parent or friend can tell you what to do in this dilemma. You must decide for yourself what level of betrayal you’re willing to live with as your baseline of “normal”.)

But few will take the time to give you a raw, brutal glimpse into what very likely lies ahead should you decide to stay. Right now, I’m going to give you that gift. If you marry him now, here’s what I can almost certainly guarantee for your future.

You will:

  • live in fear, not in love.
  • keep experiencing these discoveries or disclosures over and over again, and they will NOT hurt less with time.
  • develop a mysterious chronic illness, cancer, or autoimmune condition.
  • become conditioned to doubt the goodness and safety of all men everywhere.
  • find yourself compulsively checking his devices, your bank accounts, and other data sources to try and reassure yourself that he’s currently not cheating or putting the family in debt.
  • work two or three jobs to help him pay off the debt incurred from reckless financial decisions and addictive choices.
  • live in constant self-doubt because his words and actions often don’t add up and you can’t trust your reality.
  • lose confidence in yourself as a human and in your value as a woman, due to his emotional abandonment and sexual mistreatment.
  • experience depression and anxiety, while also noticing that your children are showing symptoms of depression and anxiety.
  • have to care for yourself and your kids without his help (or even despite his disdain) when you are sick or in poor health.
  • live in constant fear that he may act out pornographic fantasies with your girlfriends or on your children.
  • flee for safety if/when he DOES act out those fantasies on your children.
  • spend the remaining years of your kids’ childhoods tethered to him via a hostile court system.
  • work your hands to the bone despite your chronic illness(es) to feed, clothe, and educate your little ones, while he continues to rack up debt and spend thousands on his addictions while dodging child support.
  • weep your way home after every court-mandated child exchange because the courts WILL award him unsupervised parenting time regardless of his addictions or proclivities.
  • yell at God and struggle with your faith because of the unrelenting years of double abuse and failure to be protected by those in power.
  • face mountains of legal, medical, and therapy bills directly resulting from trying to survive the impact of his behaviors.
  • or… you may never choose to leave, believing you are trapped in this because of your kindhearted and trusting initial vow, and live out your days a hollow, lifeless shell of the vibrant and beautiful woman you are now. If you choose to stay, if you choose to marry him despite what you’ve discovered, you are altering the trajectory of your next several decades of life, to very likely include a daily existence of deception, domestic violence, sexual abuse, betrayal, adultery, fraud, litigation abuse, and trauma for the next generation. Yes, you could survive it. Yes, you could become a warrior in the process. Yes, you may find healing on the other side. But if you already know what you know now, why choose to walk into hell? If there’s one thing you can do right now to love him well — it is to wish him recovery and walk away at the first sign of broken boundaries, double life, and addictive behaviors. He can get clean, find healing, and become healthy and whole — without you. Whatever dilemmas you face, precious young woman, make sure you ponder ALL the ramifications and make a fully informed choice. Your 40-year-old self will thank you. 💗

    Sarah McDugal