Welcome and Introduction to the Episode

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John de Lynn. It is October 1, 2020, and I am super excited to have you with us today. Today we have a super important topic. Over the years, what I would say has been a plague to Mormons almost everywhere has been what the church has billed as an attempt to help people. So basically, for a long, long time, the LDS Church of the Mormon Church has forbidden masturbation and pornography. And then because it has become such a plague in their eyes, they have implemented not only bishops interviews and worthiness interviews, but then eventually a 12 step program. Sometimes it's called an addiction recovery program. Pornography addiction. There are other names for it as well. But consistently over the past 10, 15 years, I have heard that this pornography addiction and recovery program has been responsible for either causing incredible distress for individuals and for marriages, and in some cases has even been a primary cause of divorce, of. Of ruining and ending marriages. And for a long, long time I've wanted to cover this topic. I actually put out a call on Facebook recently and had several people email me and tell me their stories this morning. I've been reviewing these stories and they're harrowing. But. But today we're going to be interviewing a wonderful couple that's willing to do something very vulnerable and courageous, which is to tell us their story of how the LDS churches a pornography addiction program almost ruined their marriage and how they, how they sort of escaped or recovered or survived that program and how they became way healthier together after. After stopping the program. And so that's what we're going to be covering today. We are live streaming to Facebook and to YouTube. So we want to warmly welcome anyone who wants to share your comments or suggestions or feedback or concerns or anything you want to share. We want to invite you to please comment either on YouTube or on Facebook. And then also, if any of you want to be courageous and want to help a lot of people right now, please share this stream on your social media, Instagram, Facebook, wherever and let people know so they can join us. But we're. Without any further ado, we are super excited to have on Mormon Stories podcast today, Nick and Donna Berry. Hi, Nick and Donna. Thanks for joining us.

Dawna Berry [00:02:55] Hello.

Nik Berry [00:02:57] Howdy.

John Dehlin [00:02:58] This is super courageous to talk openly about things that we have been conditioned to feel so ashamed about for so long.

Dawna Berry [00:03:08] Absolutely. It has been quite the journey and I'm all about being authentic and vulnerable. So when I saw your post, I knew we had to do something, something to help.

John Dehlin [00:03:21] Well, I'm grateful And thrilled that I know you're going to help a lot of people.

Dawna Berry [00:03:26] Thank you. Thank you.

Dawna and Nik's Mormon Backgrounds

John Dehlin [00:03:28] So let's begin by having each of you share. So we'll start with you, Donna. Just tell us like a minute of your kind of Mormon background, just so people know kind of your Mormon background. And then, Nick, we'll have you go, and then we'll get into the church's teachings and messages around sexuality. But just give us your kind of quick Mormon bio. Is that okay?

Dawna Berry [00:03:51] Perfect. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:03:53] You go first, Donna.

Dawna Berry [00:03:55] So I am an Allred. That is my maiden name. So I was born and raised in the church. Been a member for a long time. And I'm the oldest of four girls. And it was kind of just my job as being the oldest, just to be the example. And so that's what I was growing up in the church. I did everything I was told to a T. Always, always attended, always went to Mutual, always went to girls camp. I even went to efy. That's where we met all four years. And so that. That's just me. Always, always, always in the church every week. If we didn't go to church, you know, we didn't go to grandma's for dinner. If we didn't go to Mutual, we didn't go out that next weekend. Always, always going to church.

John Dehlin [00:04:45] Okay. So super faithful.

Dawna Berry [00:04:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:04:48] Where'd you. Where'd you grow up?

Dawna Berry [00:04:49] Mesa, Arizona.

John Dehlin [00:04:51] Mesa, Arizona. That's kind of like Provo, Arizona. I mean, Gilbert. I'm sure Gilbert and Mesa kind of compete for. For how Utah ish they are. Is that right?

Dawna Berry [00:05:01] Absolutely.

Nik Berry [00:05:03] In. In high school, it kind of became Queen Creek, was the new version of that. But yeah, for most of our childhood and even now, still, there's a lot of Mormons that live there and just.

Dawna Berry [00:05:15] We call it mini Provo. That's what we call it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:18] Yeah. Okay.

Nik Berry [00:05:20] A few blocks without seeing a church building.

John Dehlin [00:05:22] Right.

Nik Berry [00:05:23] All right.

John Dehlin [00:05:24] So, Nick, tell us your Mormon background a little bit.

Nik Berry [00:05:26] All right.

Nik Berry [00:05:27] Well, mine was the complete opposite. I didn't really know anything about the church. My mom was an inactive member, and I am number two out of four. There's my oldest brother, me, and then my sister and then my nine years after her baby brother. So the three of us, including my little baby brother, I guess we were all baptized at about 8 or 9. I was baptized, but had no idea what was going on. I just met my uncle at a church building and he dumped me in some water. And then my dad joined the church around the time my brother was born. When I was 12. And then we became active Mormons and started going to church. And I remember a few instances where I would show up to church as most religious sacrament because my mom had a calling. And the second they were kind of done and my mom said it was okay, I promptly turn around and start coloring. Didn't pay attention. So I came in with like a few weeks left of primary and was completely confused. Had no idea what was going on. Then, you know, just kind of plunged into this world. And it was definitely a culture shock for me. My brother chose not to be in it at all. My. My sister is, you know, married and all that. I did the whole thing after that. You know, I did all the. The callings that you usually do. As a young boy, I was a deacon. I don't remember now. Deacon, teacher, priest, got ready to go on a mission. I actually got sent home about a week into the mtc, came back and then for about a year, year and a half, tried to go back out, did. Came home

John Dehlin [00:07:19] and I imagine we'll probably get into that. That probably relates to your story a little bit, right?

Nik Berry [00:07:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:25] Okay. Okay. So. So it sounds like, Donna, your. Your upbringing was super Mormon, and Nick, it sounds like you were kind of Mormon on the periphery, but then kind of got. Got more into it as time went on. Is that right?

Nik Berry [00:07:38] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:07:39] Okay, so, Nick, let's start with you and let's. Let's try and follow a timeline a little bit. So in your childhood and adolescence, do you remember messages that. That you received at church or in your family? Around, you know, sexuality, around attractions, around even pornography, masturbation? What are your memories? Let's just say up until age 15 about that sort of stuff or is there any.

Nik Berry [00:08:13] Well, nothing really from the church, because I didn't really go to church until I was 12.

John Dehlin [00:08:18] Okay.

Nik Berry [00:08:19] But from that point, yeah, there were some very awkwardly structured messages in some of the Sunday school and the priesthood meetings and stuff like that, but I don't really know what they were necessarily talking about. I was exposed to pornography at a very young age. My dad, not being a member, you know, had some pornography magazines hidden around the house that me and my brother discovered. And so that kind of introduced me. And then we got a computer and, you know, you. Unrestricted Internet and friends and, you know, junior high and high school inevitably led to, you know, a lot of interesting websites and stuff. So I had found it, my parents had found me looking at it, and then they had, you know, the talk and explained that, you know, this isn't love, and Such. And you know, I knew that it's pretty obvious that it wasn't, but

Dawna Berry [00:09:23] it

Nik Berry [00:09:23] became from that point a whole thing around just shaming me into this is wrong. Don't even think about it. Don't ever look at it. You know, you're not. You're just supposed to suppress these feelings. Even though all my friends in junior high and high school talk about it like it's normal, I was getting a very different message from both sides of the aisle of being in the secular religion, telling that you need to just rise above this and that's the natural man. Whereas every other man I saw, you know, this is just a normal part and they don't really focus on it. But the more it was tried to push down in church, like, the harder I had a time really just treating it like it was nothing. It became the whole thing of don't think about an elephant, you think about an elephant. That was their message consistently. And so that really kind of became a weird thing where, you know, it was suppressing just a natural thing at that age.

Sexuality, Shame, and Bishop Interviews Growing Up

John Dehlin [00:10:29] So at what age did this start to become an issue for you at church?

Nik Berry [00:10:35] When I started holding the awkward interviews that they kind of get you ready for the mission and stuff like that and to start doing the sacrament. So when I became a priest at like 16, the bishop started asking, you know, about my sexual history. And then, you know, for the first time, they really asked me that question. I told them, you know, outright. And it was a very much of. It wasn't anything of comfort, it was just basically shame combined with the instruction

Nik Berry [00:11:09] to just have faith, pray, read the scriptures.

Nik Berry [00:11:14] And I at times would just, every time it would happen, I just pull out my scripture, just read for hours, just trying to get my thoughts off of it. But I end up reading the same passages over and over. But trying to suppress it was just. It wasn't working because it's. It's not natural. So it just forced this weird thing on me in my adolescence.

John Dehlin [00:11:39] I'm just, I'm just like, I'm just reflecting on this idea that you're 16, 17 year old boy, and, and I, for some reason I think it's worse with women or girls, but the idea of a man sitting you down and sort of auditing your sexual history, like when I think about Scientology and the audits that they do, you know, for those who have studied Scientology, it's deeply problematic, especially how the Church of Scientology uses information they gather on you to then threaten or extort or punish you later. But, but I I just. I'm stuck just reflecting on how odd and bizarre and weird that is that a man gets to sit down with you at age 16 or 17 and starts prying into your sexual history. What was that like then? And, I mean, can you talk about how you would talk about your sexual history with a grown man? I was an adolescent, awkwardly.

Nik Berry [00:12:39] It was extremely awkward. And I didn't even really have that relationship with my own father. And then some random guy that would change positions every now and then. And we moved a few times. So I never really developed a relationship with most of my bishops other than I would go in their office and confess to, you know, the sexual stuff. And it started to become the normal after a while, which is weird in its sense, in itself. But at the very beginning of it, it was awkward and it was uncomfortable, and it created this whole thing of. I saw him as a representation of, you know, God and Christ, you know, as the speaker for me. And so I just. Any sort of sexual arousal being around girls at school, girlfriends, anything. At that point, it started become, I think you said the term of, like, religiosity, whatever. Anytime I had an erection, I felt like I was sinning, even if I wasn't looking at pornography, just the thought of it, I felt like I was breaking the law of chastity. And I started to come to the bishop a lot more often. It just. Again, it just. It created a weird thing for me in my adolescence where I had a hard time even talking to girls. And it didn't really come out of my shell to where I could start dating and stuff like that. Until much later, in my teens, when most of my friends had already had girlfriends, they already had their first kiss. I had a really hard time just even talking to girls because I felt like if I got aroused by them, that somehow that would be breaking the law of chastity. And it wasn't really called that, you know, to me, I didn't really get that term until, you know, started going to the temple and stuff. But I felt like I was breaking that rule that God had made for me. And so it was just really hard at all to be normal. And I'm lucky I broke out of my shell when I met her. But before that, like, most of my relationships have only lasted a few weeks, a month at the most, because I was just so awkward. So that. Yeah,

John Dehlin [00:14:47] we're getting some great comments in, and I'm just going to share a couple. Fred. Hey, Fred. Fred writes even worse when that man is just the local car dealership. Owner. And I think the point Fred's making is these bishops, it's like they're trained mental health professionals. They're not even trained clergy. They're just thrown into this bishop role. They could be a plumber, they could be a teacher, they could be an accountant. And all of a sudden, he's sitting in front of you with no training, talking to you about your private parts and where you touch yourself and who you touch and how. And it's just sometimes you get a compassionate, thoughtful bishop, but sometimes you get a pervert or sometimes you get someone who's just harsh and super orthodox and mean. And I guess that leads to a second point. You know, I. I've gotten in trouble before comparing the total aggregate pain between our LGBTQ members of the church. And obviously there's a massive problem with LGBTQ Mormons and the depression and the anxiety and the suicide rate. But, but there, there is also a massive, like, it's. I think this is a problem that's been under. Discussed and, and underemphasized because in the past five, 10 years with Prop 8, with same sex marriage, with. With LGBT rights, there's been a deservedly significant conversation about all the pain and suffering caused to LGBTQ people in the world and in the US and in Mormonism. But. But there is a massive amount of pain and shame and suffering, mental illness and even suicide over just this very simple thing of just how the church treats masturbation and pornography. And I love it that you talk about how, like, it. It literally stunted your ability to have normal, healthy, just developmentally appropriate relationships with women because you're so freaked out about, like, oh, my gosh, did I have a bad thought? Did I have an erection? Oh, I can't think about thought. Let me just shut down it. I guess it's. It'd be easy to underestimate how profoundly harmful these teachings can be on a developing young, young boy. Is that fair to say?

Nik Berry [00:17:10] Even now, I still have issues with it. Just talking with co workers and, you know, store clerks and stuff like that. Just, it still affects me to this day where I have a hard time just talking with women one on one, because there's always that thought of just like, is someone going to perceive this in the wrong way or am I sinning? Even though I'm long removed from all of those. Those things that were shaming me, It's. It's just this weird thing that was built into me at such a young age that I have a hard time escaping it. And it's taken a lot of years

Nik Berry [00:17:40] of just working through it, going to

Nik Berry [00:17:43] therapy, trying to push myself out of my comfort zone and just get over it. But it still is a very.

John Dehlin [00:17:56] It's still affecting you. Now you're saying yes.

Dawna Berry [00:17:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] Yeah. Dennis writes a really important point. He says, At 12 years old, my bishop unwittingly taught me how to masturbate in my first priesthood interview. And this is a theme that we're going to get to, but, like, the church creates this problem by saying that pornography, that masturbation is evil. And. And then they say, don't masturbate and don't look at pornography, which you guys have already mentioned, that makes you want. That makes you become aware of pornography and masturbation. And then the combination of making you aware of it and talking about it all the time with then the making it forbidden, like, don't go in the closet, don't think of the pink elephant. It actually creates and amplifies the problem that it says it's setting itself up to. To fight. Is that fair to say?

Dawna Berry [00:18:48] Absolutely. Absolutely.

Nik Berry [00:18:51] It became a perpetual thought of just don't, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it when, you know, if it wasn't so taboo, it wouldn't have been nearly the issue that it was,

John Dehlin [00:19:03] and if they weren't talking about it all the time and obsessing about it. Right.

Nik Berry [00:19:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:08] Yeah. So let's talk. Let. We'll come to Donna in just one sec, Nick. So talk to us about, like, going up until you're interviewing for your mission, and then. And then. And then we'll pause, go to Don, and then we'll come back to your. Your MTC experience. Anything else you want to share about your upbringing related to Mormonism and sexuality?

Nik Berry [00:19:31] Just the fact that I've heard it mentioned before in your podcast of how. I mean, you brought it up, but it's definitely a roulet of who you get, because I had bishops who, like you said, were somewhat perverted and how they wanted to know all the details, and it's very uncomfortable talking to them. There were some that were very compassionate, and they're like, it just. It doesn't matter. Just, you need to pray.

Nik Berry [00:19:53] You need to read. Just.

Nik Berry [00:19:54] Just do the good things and the bad things will go away. Which is not necessarily true because everywhere else in the. In the war, they're teaching this thing, you know, and in general conferences and in priesthood and stuff like that. So there were some really good bishops, and they were trying not to make it as Big of an issue. But everybody else didn't get that message. And then there's the ones that just didn't care.

Nik Berry [00:20:16] They're just, okay, you did it.

John Dehlin [00:20:17] All right.

Nik Berry [00:20:18] Don't take sacrament for two weeks. And I recently watched the movie Don John, and it kind of. She hasn't seen it yet, but he goes in there and, you know, he. He's all proud of himself that he didn't do any masturbation that week. And it was the same, like, know, 10 Hail Marys and whatever. And he's like, it's the same.

Nik Berry [00:20:39] Well, how is it the same?

Nik Berry [00:20:40] You know, like, sometimes they give me this. This, I don't know, discipline or punishment, whatever you want to call it, of not taking the sacrament when I felt like I had done better. And I'm like, really?

Nik Berry [00:20:50] Like, I. I thought God would want,

Nik Berry [00:20:52] you know, to me feel better that I was improving. But no, it's just.

Nik Berry [00:20:56] What error.

Nik Berry [00:20:57] Just. What's the movie Don John?

John Dehlin [00:21:02] Have I seen that?

Dawna Berry [00:21:04] It's older. It's older.

John Dehlin [00:21:06] It's just a regular movie.

Dawna Berry [00:21:08] Yeah.

Nik Berry [00:21:09] Yeah. It's a very interesting movie about pornography

Nik Berry [00:21:12] and its effect on people.

John Dehlin [00:21:13] Oh, wow.

Nik Berry [00:21:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:15] I haven't heard about it.

Nik Berry [00:21:16] It's. I remember the name of the actor, but it's.

John Dehlin [00:21:19] You like it, though?

Nik Berry [00:21:21] Yeah, it really spoke to me at times. I was crying because I felt the pain he was going through.

John Dehlin [00:21:26] Wow. Yeah. Another comment from one of our great listeners viewers. Alyssa writes, not every bishop interview is the same. Some are just as uncomfortable as you are and want to get through it quickly. And then, sadly, there are others who pry excessively into your personal sexual life when you're a minor. It's not okay. Thank you for sharing, Melissa. And, yeah, it seems kind of unacceptable that the stakes are so high and the training and the rules and the guidelines are so sparse. There. There should be a consistent experience. The church should have a training on sexuality, and then everyone should follow it. It shouldn't be that. That some. Some perverts or mean people or super orthodox people are able to be so mean and inappropriate. So. So tell us, Nick, just any. So you talked about the variability and who you saw. Anything else you want to talk about in terms of the preparation for your mission?

Nik Berry [00:22:27] I mean, I was doing everything I could to get over this. I decided to follow Moroni's promise. You know, like, maybe God would remove this from me kind of thing, and, you know, through the spirit, he'd show me how I could do that so I could be a good missionary. Because I really wanted to be the best. I just wanted to be what God wanted me to be. It was coming from a very sincere place. And I felt like this thing that was just always infecting my mind was the only thing holding me back. But I got to the point where I went up to like a mountain and prayed for like eight hours, just, constantly, just repeating over and over, please remove this from me. Please remove this from me. And in Arizona, it's not a good idea to go on for eight hours. I mean, I was pretty cooked.

Dawna Berry [00:23:18] And

Nik Berry [00:23:21] I unwittingly walked like three miles to get to this. I mean, you call it a mountain. It was tall hill. But I almost passed out and died on the way home.

Nik Berry [00:23:28] I don't, I don't really remember how

Nik Berry [00:23:30] I got home, but I was just

Nik Berry [00:23:32] so desperate and really all it was was just this constant, perpetual shame cycle

Nik Berry [00:23:38] that was just, just breaking me down and never really building me back up again.

John Dehlin [00:23:45] Yeah, we have a, we have a comment from a listener. He's calling himself Bishop Smith and he says bishops are imperfect men who are trying. That's true, Bishop Smith. And I'll just also say that the LDS Church is a, almost a trillion dollar organization at this point. It's a hundreds of billions of dollars organization. It has the money to develop and implement high quality training. It has the money and the ability to train up its bishops and have policies that will prevent this pain and suffering. This stuff has been going for, for 50, 100 years. And the amount of pain and suffering that could be prevented by training and better policies is unacceptable at this point given how incredibly rich, you know, the Mormon Church is richer than God at this point and so the church can do better and so it's not good enough. Bishop Smith, just to say that the bishops are imperfect. This is at the feet of the church and they need to do better with training.

Nik Berry [00:24:54] And like I said, there were really

Nik Berry [00:24:56] good bishops that gave me a pathway to something better than just read prayers, you know, read your scriptures, pray. I was introduced to the church's 12 step program through Bishop, which was a better step than where I was. And we'll get there and we'll talk about that. And which, you know, then led on to the, the a, the essay programs and stuff like that. And so there were really good bishops. But yeah, they shouldn't really be handling this. They should be. When I started going to therapy, that was the thing that really helped me is to really dig into like, was the cause of this because I had some, some issues as a child and

Nik Berry [00:25:38] Just a lot of the sexual shaming that this became a crutch.

Nik Berry [00:25:43] It became a way for me to kind of just numb myself at a certain point. And it didn't, it shouldn't have been that way. It really should.

John Dehlin [00:25:54] Right. One more comment and then Donna, I want to jump into your story. My, my dear friend Allison writes I had a bishopric who I remember him going on and on, on how great his sex life was. That sex, the icy, that sex was the icing on the cake of marriage. It made me so uncomfortable and made me to feel so small at 13. So Allison saying as a 13 year old girl, she's sitting alone with the Mormon bishop as he goes on and on with about how great his sex life is with his wife. So she says to think of any man talking to one of my daughters about that makes me sick. And it should. Allison, thank you for sharing your awesome. And again Bishop Smith and others, this is the point is that someone like that should be disciplined, not, not allowed to continue as a bishop. And it's not okay just to say they're trying their best. So anyway, we're going to come back to your story, Nick, but Donna, let's get you in here. There are lots of things that come up when, when I read these narratives and a lot of it has to do with how sex is taught to females and how messages around body and sexuality to, to young women is profound. So let's tell, let's talk about your experience talking about and absorbing messages, messages around sexuality as you grow up. As you grew up a Mormon girl.

Damaging Messages Around Modesty and Women's Bodies

Dawna Berry [00:27:24] Oh man, I, I've had to go to therapy to help with this but the messages so damaging my shoulders that if I showed my shoulders that it would give men bad thoughts and that it would be my fault that the message was, was that men can't control themselves so we have to take care of them. And do you know how heavy that is as, as a woman going out there, as a girl, as a teenager trying to just be, be a person. And I have to check all these boxes to make sure that it's not my fault that it's not my fault that he's having a bad thought or the other kid in my mutual class because of me, you know, not showing my, my knees. That was another thing. Growing up, my mom always made sure that our dresses went past our knees but if we sat down they still had to go past our knees. They couldn't, they could not come above our knees when we sat.

John Dehlin [00:28:30] Donna, take us back. So, so these girls, they they. These Mormon girls, they be. You know, they reach the age of 12, which means they start going to beehives and then laurels. They probably changed those names recently. But, I mean, back in our day, it was beehives and mayonnaise and laurels. You go to Sunday school and you. And you receive. And you go to the young women's and you start receiving these messages, right?

Dawna Berry [00:28:55] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:28:56] And so it's. It's. Tell us how it's framed. Is it framed? Is it law of chastity? Is it modesty? What. What is the experience of a. Of a Mormon girl and teenager as she is. Is receiving messages from the church around these sorts of things? What's that like?

Dawna Berry [00:29:15] You know, it was just heavy. Heavy would be the best way to

John Dehlin [00:29:18] put it, but it'll just be. It'll be a Sunday school lesson, or how does it get introduced?

Dawna Berry [00:29:23] It would be a lesson on modesty and chastity. It would be at mutual. We would have Runway shows where we would bring something immodest and then we would try to. Everybody, like, just bring their favorite clothes, and then they'd, like, bring something immodest and try to then, like, patch it up to make it modest. Like it was. It was just so pushed on us. And in a lot of young women's lessons, just to make sure that we were covered and that we didn't give boys the wrong thoughts and that that was on us. And it's just. It's very, very. It was so heavy. I held that for so long. You know, make sure your shirts aren't too tight and your pants aren't too tight and your pants aren't too low and that they cover your knees and that they cover your shoulders and they don't come too low. Just so much pressure. And the reason was so we could take care of somebody else. Not so that I could look good. Not that I'm saying teenagers need to go out and flaunt themselves. But the message stuck. It stuck for my whole life until obviously, recently. But it was just so damaging. And I couldn't even be myself. I was just a person. And I had these checklists that I had to do to make sure that other guys could go on missions. Because, of course, as a young woman, I needed to marry a returned missionary in the temple when the time was right. And the only way they could do that was if men kept pure so they could go on a mission. You see how it all just stemmed back.

John Dehlin [00:30:56] What's it like to be going to church? And young women's activities and combined activities and to like every minute you're thinking, is the boy looking at me? How is he looking at me? What if I caused a bad thought? What's that like to just kind of try and just being, I mean, being a teenage girl is hard enough. What's it like having that burden of worrying about everyone looking at you and are you dressed right and are you sending off the wrong message? And then the added burden of the responsibility of other boys thoughts and worthiness and you're carrying around that burden. What does that do?

Dawna Berry [00:31:37] It was exhausting. It was exhausting. And like, I couldn't actually become friends with boys. I wasn't friends with boys. I didn't have any guy friends because I was always afraid that I was going to do something wrong. Even like right now, like, my heart is just so. Is racing so fast just thinking about all of those moments, you know, just, just being a fun kid and. But, but the pressure, the pressure and the requirement to be perfect. And that's what I struggled with my whole life was just the requirement to be perfect. And I put myself up there. I made sure that I was perfect. I made sure that I did all the right things. And it was exhausting. It was so exhausting. And also there were girls that would, you know, disobey their parents and take clothes to school to change into that were what they liked, but not, of course, what was right. And I also, I would look at them and I would, unfortunately, I mean, let me just put this forward. I apologize for a lot of what I did and said when I was Mormon, because I would judge them and I would have pity on them and I would feel bad for them and I would put them lesser than me because they weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing. And then that's, you know, not any fault on my own because that was placed on me. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:33:03] Yeah, it does. It does. We have some, we have some good comments coming in. I'm just going to share a couple of them really quick from, from different listeners because they help illustrate. So, Karen. Hey, Karen. She's from Scotland. We interviewed her on Mormon stories a few weeks or months back. She writes, we used to have a test where you kneeled on the ground and raised your arms. If the skirt didn't touch the ground or the top rows up to show your midriff, it wasn't modest enough. Physical exam.

Dawna Berry [00:33:41] She writes, I had that a few times for mutual. I had that a few times not the kneeling down, but the raising of the hands. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:48] Yeah. Another writes, this is true truth life seeker. As a young teenage boy, I was asked to come talk to the young women about how important it was for the boys that the girls would dress modestly. How does that. How does that sound to you, Donna?

Dawna Berry [00:34:05] Oh, that just makes me so upset that people are telling me how to be. How that somebody else, a teenage boy, like, I want to give him a hug, you know, like that's not his job. And. And what an awkward position for him. And. And then as a woman sitting there, of course, like, of course I. I want. I want to do what I'm supposed to do and I want to make sure that you're okay and I want to follow the rules. So. Okay. Well, I, you know, like just all the pressure, you know, And John, this also carried on through my life of always feeling like I had to cover up to. I went through a lot of body dysfunctional dysmorphia when I was going through my transition out of the church because I felt so. I. I felt like I was going to cover my body and that I wasn't allowed to show it to where I didn't even have a body anymore. And I struggled so hard to be. Me too.

Nik Berry [00:35:05] We. We went. Sorry to interrupt, but I was there for her when she went shopping for her first pair of shorts that went above her knee. And I could just see just the mental distress she's in contemplating making that purchase. And she looked great in them. She still does, but I was amazed. Like, they're a pair of shorts.

John Dehlin [00:35:28] But one of the consistent messages I've received is how the church's approach to modesty and chastity leads women to hate their bodies, to be ashamed of their bodies, and to kind of have a lot of self loathing. And I guess. What else do you want to say? You were kind of starting to talk about that. Is there anything else you want to talk about? How these messages caused you to hate your body?

Dawna Berry [00:35:58] Just that I have struggled the last four years trying to figure out my body. Trying to figure out what? I feel comfortable in trying to figure out what makes me look good. Not that I have to show off anything, not that I need to do that, but just so I feel comfortable, because I've been trying to peel off the layers and all the things out of the backpack that the church put on my back of. Make sure you cover your shoulder, make sure you cover your knees. Don't give boys a bad thought. Make sure it's not too tight. You want to go to the temple, you have to all those things. And of course going to the temple and the garments, you know, that just added to it. But it, I had a hard. I still, I'm getting better and every time is better and better, but it's still a struggle to even accept my body as it is, that I am a female and that I am a woman and that I am me and that I'm not owned to anybody and they don't get to tell me what to do. So that is a lot of carried on for years and years and years and years. So there we go. We're talking

John Dehlin [00:37:17] and I can see you're starting to feel strongly and of course you should. A couple other good comments coming in. Melanie writes, our young women leaders would keep ugly long shorts in the mutual closet in case someone came to mutual in shorter shorts and they would make us change or even go home if our shorts didn't touch our knees. Even visitors would have to wear long shorts or be forced to change or go home. This was super shaming.

Dawna Berry [00:37:43] Yeah.

Nik Berry [00:37:44] Well, did you have a story about a famous actress who was shamed to go home?

John Dehlin [00:37:50] Because, yeah, basically I. So Renee Zelliger, the Academy Award winning actress, she was in my high school. We were close friends all four years of my, of my high school in Katy, Texas. And I, you know, I think it was my junior year I finally got up the nerve to ask her on a date. And so I took her to, of all things, a Mormon steak dance, like a New Year's Eve steak dance. And she was dressed up beautifully and I was dressed up and we went. But her dress was right off the shoulders and as soon as we walked in the door. Now remember, this is an investigator. She's never been to a Mormon church before. I'm bringing her to the first exposure she'll ever have and probably has ever had since with the Mormon Church. We walk in the door and immediately the girls start looking at her weird. And then leaders come up and pull me aside and say, she either needs to wear a blazer like a man's blazer or she needs to go home. And we had driven like 30 minutes to the chapel and she of course left the chapel sobbing and I took her home. And, you know, she obviously never had any interest in doing anything related to the Mormon Church again. And that was heartbreaking for me. So that, that's my story about modesty, culture and shaming. Go ahead.

Dawna Berry [00:39:13] Sorry. Just. I just wanted to make it clear in the sense that all of these requirements and these pressures then causes People to judge others instead of letting the church of Jesus Christ a Latter Day Saints and let Jesus Christ be the judge and let him be the one to look at that. It created a sense of us having to judge others whether we meant to or not. It was still under there, you know, lying thing, which is just so awful.

John Dehlin [00:39:50] Yeah. And there's actually a great, a great quote from, or a great comment from one of our listeners. Our listener Emily writes, modesty culture pits women against women.

Dawna Berry [00:40:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:40:02] Not only do you have to worry about what you're making the boys think, but also you're at the mercy of shame from your female peers. Was that your experience, Donna?

Dawna Berry [00:40:11] She took the words right out of my mouth. So yes, Emily, yes. That's exactly, exactly it.

John Dehlin [00:40:17] Yeah.

Dawna Berry [00:40:20] Not alone, though. I'm glad, like, because part of me, like through all this process of peeling off the layers and becoming me, I have to peel and go through all this muck and it's comforting to know unfortunately, that Emily and I are not the only ones, you know?

John Dehlin [00:40:35] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Going back to this, this issue of body, you know, self loathing and body shame, there's a comment from Jennifer. I had so much guilt because of my body shape. It was this odd mix of I wanted to look good and be happy with my body, but my body was evil because of how it looked and how clothes hung on me and I couldn't hide my chest enough. Yeah. For, for girls and women who develop with, with larger breasts. How do you, how do you not just be driven to want to wear baggy things, saggy things, potato sacks, basically. And how could that not end up seeping into your image of your body? That your body's bad, that your body's dirty, that your body causes problems, that it needs to be covered up. And I think that, I think that can cause, just like we talked about the, the, the shame on men, Nick, with, with, with shame about their sexuality, shame about their sex drive, shame about their attraction others, shame about, you know, if they ever masturbate or whatever. It just seems like this self loathing about your body is, is a real significant problem with, with Mormonism and for women.

Dawna Berry [00:41:49] Yes. Yeah.

Nik Berry [00:41:51] And to just kind of add a point too. It wasn't just the girls that were getting this message. We in the priesthood were getting this message too, to support the girls. I mean, they, they framed it like that. But basically, you know, it's basically shame

Nik Berry [00:42:07] the ones that don't dress modestly and don't date, the girls that don't dress

Nik Berry [00:42:10] modestly and you know, it's. Without really saying it outright, it's their fault that you're getting these thoughts, which ended up being a really difficult thing

Nik Berry [00:42:22] for me, kind of battling in my own head while I was on my mission. And I don't know if you want to jump into that.

John Dehlin [00:42:28] No, not yet. Not yet. But let's go back to Donna's experience for a second. So, Donna, there's another. There's another sort of theme I want to talk about because it's come up in a lot of the narratives that. That we've talked about, and that's the messages around sexuality towards girls. If you're the gatekeeper, if sex is bad and you have to keep men pure, and if your job is to dress right and act right so that you can keep the boys pure so that they can go on missions, number one, there's so much sex negativity around that. But then also, number two, it doesn't even acknowledge a girl as being a sexual creature. And so. And you can talk about this if it's relevant for you. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves and jump to how it affects you once you're married, but there are so many problems with this. The girls are not sexual creatures, that their bodies aren't to give them pleasure, that they're not even to think about the fact that they also have urges and drives. It's only the boys that have the urges and the drives and the girls. That's not what girls do, because that's not even discussed, let alone forbidden talk about to what extent this may or may not have affected you in terms of you developing to think of yourself as a sexual creature, as a sexual being, and of sex being not only healthy but important part of your life as a developing young girl and young woman.

Dawna on Sex Education, Marriage Expectations, and Assault

Dawna Berry [00:44:05] You know, it's funny. I'll just say a family member when I was younger was on the phone with another family member, and I. How old was I? I don't remember. I was 10, 12 years old. Nah, probably 10. And. And they were laughing, and me and my cousins were in the room with her with. With this family member. And she said, oh, it's nothing. Just sex feels good. And I remember being a kid like that. Of course I was a young kid, and I was like, that's gross. Why are we talking about this? But then to go into the other things in my young woman's life time, just all the shame on that it was that that moment with the phone call has stuck in my head for so long. And it was just like this back and forth, like how could she say that? But I'm also supposed to hide everything and I'm not supposed to feel anything. And like I don't understand where the jump happens, you know, like of course as a teenager, you know, people don't want you to go out and being promiscuous. But where I didn't understand where that jump happened from what I'm being taught to how this person is now feeling this way. It was, it's very, it was very confusing of like, well, how am I ever going to feel that way? Because I'm supposed to cover up my body and I'm not supposed to be a sexual being. And that is definitely something that I have strong struggled with, especially in our marriage. We've been married for 11 years. That is something that I'm now starting to peel away and peel and dig at to like I'm allowed to be a sexual being. I'm a woman. I'm allowed to be me. And how freeing that has been taking those steps. But yeah, that it's just, I guess in young women's, it was never talked about in that sex is good or you know, that sort of thing. It was just like here and then. Now I want you to focus on making sure that you don't give boys the wrong thoughts.

John Dehlin [00:46:17] Yeah, yeah. There's a great comment by Eden. Eden writes all these restrictions and shaming for young women from the time they are literally 12 years old produces women who feel shameful of their bodies after they're married. It produces sexual shame and horrible embarrassment which leads to terrible sexual dysfunction for a woman in the bedroom once they do get married. At least that was my experience. And Eden, I want to thank you for sharing that and also say many of the people who have written me, many of the women who have written me said that all these sex negative body negative messages led to terrible dysfunction, especially when the wife is trying to. We'll talk about this when the wife is trying to police the husband's porn use and so she doesn't want to act like anything in a porn movie. I've got these women talking about how they just lied there listless in sex because they didn't want to ever make their husband have the types of thoughts that would make them want to turn to porn. And it just goes back to this idea that it's the woman's job to police the man's or the boys sexuality. Donna, let's, let's stick to the teen years. But yes, but, but I Will remember whatever you want to say about that later too. But

Dawna Berry [00:47:41] it does have to do with the teen years. I'm just trying to figure out how to talk about it.

John Dehlin [00:47:46] Sure.

Dawna Berry [00:47:49] So it's her. Her comment is just strikes me.

Nik Berry [00:47:58] So

Dawna Berry [00:48:01] we're just here talking, right?

John Dehlin [00:48:06] Diamond Ranch wrote Eden nailed it. So yeah.

Dawna Berry [00:48:10] Yes.

Nik Berry [00:48:13] If anything, it makes for a really awkward honeymoon.

John Dehlin [00:48:15] Yeah, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. So, Donna, collect your thoughts.

Dawna Berry [00:48:19] Okay, collecting my thoughts. Here we are. Right before Nick and I started dating, I was raped by a classmate. And I went over to help him with his homework. And it happened. And. I thought it was my fault. I wore the sleeves, I wore the capris, ugly capris. I was not being promiscuous. I was not doing anything that would allow him or to tell him that he was allowed to do that to me. And I remember feeling so terrible, I couldn't leave. I was never asked yes or no. I couldn't say no. I left my body in that moment. I remember leaving my body and standing in the doorway watching it happen to me because I couldn't move. And the whole time it was my fault. So much so that I left his house and I called my bishop, who was the ward auto mechanic at the time, and I left him a voicemail and went the next day to his office. And I was the one that got in trouble. And I tried to give some grace, some compassion to him, that he just went off of what I told him, which is another thing that needs to be addressed in young women's and young men's. And so in that moment, I was the one that had the sacrament removed. I was the one that couldn't pray in front of people. I was the one that had the consequences. And I just think that we could do better for our young women, that it's not our fault and that we are not responsible for men's thoughts. Because in that moment, I was doing everything right. Everything right. And that is something that, like what Eden said, that part did affect. So when our relationship, when we talk about that, we talk about how porno pornography comes up in our relationship, that moment comes back up and fear and shame and guilt all play in. Luckily, we had already been talking. And at that moment, he just came and held me that night. He just held me while I cried. And anyways, that was just.

Nik Berry [00:50:51] Even in that point, I had a hard time just understanding how the bishop made it her fault and just was flabbergasted as I was. I was holding her and she's sobbing that she was raped and yet she's in trouble.

John Dehlin [00:51:10] I'm so, so sorry. Donna. Thank you for sharing.

Dawna Berry [00:51:15] I just, you know, like, that's an uncomfortable story sometimes for people to talk about and for me, it's only been the last couple years I've been able to talk about it, but I just want, if there's somebody listening to know that you're not alone and that. Yeah, so we can do better by our young women's and not make it so damn difficult.

John Dehlin [00:51:39] Yeah. Thank you for sharing, Donna.

Dawna Berry [00:51:43] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:51:44] That's hard stuff. Any other, any other things you want to share? Just about your adolescent years. Did, did you, did you even think of yourself as a, as a sexual being? You know, a lot of the men that we talk to struggle with things like, you know, pornography and masturbation. Did. Was that even in, was that even in the, in the milieu for you at all or were you just kind of like not even thinking of yourself that way?

Dawna Berry [00:52:18] Nope. I was just a person that had responsibilities. That's what I was.

Nik Berry [00:52:26] I remember before that time for a bit, we, we went on a few dates and I did notice that it affected her and she really struggled with her own sense of self after that experience. And every time we would be together and you know, we're teens and we kissed, I did feel noticeably that she started to become absent. She was having a lot of out of body experiences just because she felt like she was just a horrible person. And we talked about that in therapy and just, you know, conversing over the years about that experience and how it affected her and, and that, that, that was the case and into our marriage, it, it, we struggled with getting over those thoughts, you know, and, and to become more intimate.

John Dehlin [00:53:20] Right.

Dawna Berry [00:53:21] We'll get there.

Nik Berry [00:53:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:24] So, Donna, anything else you want to share about your adolescence as a, as a Mormon teenage girl and around sexuality before we jump back to mix?

Dawna Berry [00:53:34] No, just that I was the golden child and I did all that I was supposed to and everything. Right. Because I was afraid of getting in trouble. So I did it. Right.

John Dehlin [00:53:46] Right. Okay. Thank you, Donna. Yeah, lots of, lots of really great comments from our listeners, basically thanking you. So Julie writes, oh, Donna, I'm so sorry. What a horrific nightmare. No one with the heart to actually help you. This was not your fault. Kristen writes, thank you for being so brave to share your story with us. It's not your fault. I'm so sorry. Jennifer writes, me too. You are not alone in being assaulted and being punished. That pain is real and lasting. I'm so Sorry. You are not alone. You know, Red writes brave lady. Jay writes so much strength. Rewrites. I'm so, so sorry. Lots of. Lots of love, Donna, for you. So I always kind of feel like it's silence that's kind of the killer.

Dawna Berry [00:54:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:54:49] That the only way that we learn and we grow and get better is when we talk about these things. And it takes a lot of courage and strength to talk about it, but that's why I want to be here when we do. It's. It's the only way that things get better. So thank you, Donna, for being willing to share.

Dawna Berry [00:55:04] Yeah, you're welcome.

Nik's Early Struggles, the MTC, and Being Sent Home

John Dehlin [00:55:07] So, Nick, let's go back to you. So let's talk about you going to the MTC and what got you sent home, and anything you want to talk about leading up to the time you met Donna?

Nik Berry [00:55:21] Well, we had actually met. Just bumping into each other in seminary, and then we really kind of got to know each other efy. So it's very Mormon framed introduction into each other, and then it's gonna kind of date us. But we got chatting on MySpace, so. But, you know, we really liked each other. But I knew, like, I was. I'd already graduated when we started really kind of to dating. And I knew I had a very short timeline before I was going to leave on a mission, so I didn't really want to develop a relationship with her, but she's just an amazing person, and even then, I knew early on that I loved her.

Dawna Berry [00:56:04] This was three months before he was supposed to leave on his mission. Like, he was turning in his paperwork when we met, like, started chatting on MySpace.

Nik Berry [00:56:12] Yeah. So, yeah, we met that summer. I took her on a few dates in September, and then I was supposed to leave for the MTC in January, so I'd gotten it back in, like, November, that when I would be leaving. And so we had dated. You know, we were very attracted to each other, and, you know, we made out quite a bit. But I, you know, I'd also had a few girlfriends, and at that point, I had just become an expert in just not telling the whole truth in interviews because I just wanted to avoid the awkwardness. So I started just lying, lying my butt off, because every time they would tell me, I'd have to go through the whole shame of, you know, confess, sit awkwardly next to my family and pass the tray along, which I get, you know, side stares from my mom, you know, wondering what was going on,

John Dehlin [00:57:09] and talk about that really quick. So this is. This is a theme that comes up a lot Basically, the church has these really strict and almost obnoxious rules around touching yourself, you know, touching other people, anything related to sex. If you make a sin, you have to go talk to your bishop. You're supposed to go talk to your bishop, and then that's embarrassing. But then also they can give you punishments. And so basically what you're saying is, the bishop says you can't take the sacrament. Talk about what that's like as a Mormon kid, sitting in church with all your friends and your parents and your siblings all around you, and then the. The sacrament tray comes to you, and everybody's, like, expecting you to take it. What's that like? Kind of try to explain to people what that's like for those who don't know.

Nik Berry [00:58:05] Well, especially at that time, because I was a priest and there was some times where I wasn't allowed to even, you know, bless the sacrament. And there was only four priests, so we would go on a rotation. When I had to not be on there during my rotation, it was obvious, you know, why I wasn't up there. And just as much as in the audience, you probably felt like everyone's looking at you, and most people aren't. You know, it's just that everyone sees me.

Nik Berry [00:58:31] They know.

Nik Berry [00:58:32] They know when reality. Probably no one noticed except for the two people sitting next to you when you take and pass it along. But I had to go up and I had to say the words and bless the sacrament and pass on, and I wasn't able to do that. So it became really, people did notice. The priest notice, the leadership notice. My family noticed. And when I was awkwardly sitting with my family instead of being up there and then had to pass along, my mom knew I was doing something I shouldn't have, and she caught me a few times looking at pornography. So she put two and two together and knew that's probably why I'm sitting down here instead of up there. And the closer it got to my mission, the more the weight of being the good one kind of fell on my shoulders because my older brother was not having the church at all. You know, at this point, he was living on his own, had tattoos, just doing his own thing. And I was kind of marked as like the. The good child instead of the prodigal child. I had to keep all the rules. I had to do everything right. Every time I'd mess up, I felt like I was failing my parents. I was failing all my leaders that put their faith in me. I was just failing in general. Most of all was failing God and So it was really difficult. The closer I got to putting in papers, doing all those interviews, to really be honest, I just lied. And the more I lied, the more guilty I felt, the more. More shame I felt, which then pushed me to do it even more, because that's the only thing that I felt was like a relief from it and became this perpetuating cycle. And by the time it came to. Oh, and the other thing was they had a lot of things they wanted priests to do, like go around and give sacrament to the disabled people and stuff like that. And there was always this constant feeling like that I'm unworthy, my hands are unclean. And that just really kind of messes with your head as, you know, a young, young teenager going out and doing that. So I just always had a thought. Even if I looked at a girl wrong, my hands are unclean. I shouldn't be doing this. And then when I just inevitably do it because I didn't want to be in trouble anymore, that I felt even worse about myself. I'm lying to God, I'm lying to this person. They're not going to get the fuck full benefit of this blessing I'm giving them. And then going through the temple and just feeling like eventually this spotlight's gonna pop on top of me. It's like, intruder. So. And every single time they ask the question this in. In the. The endowments, it's been so long since I've been. I don't remember what it's called, but if anyone is unworthy, you know, you can leave now. Oh, man. That. Every single time they'd ask that, I just. It stabbed me in the heart and I'm like, I should stand up, I should get out. But I wouldn't, because that would be the most awkward thing to do, is stand up and leave a group of people in the temple. And so I just. I just kept lying and just. I became numb to it. I. I didn't feel anything after a certain point where it was just lie and turn to pornography to feel anything. And I just was drifting through life at that point. So I go into the mtc, and

John Dehlin [01:02:03] can I just say really quickly that that's really, really common, just this. This idea that people learn to lie. You think that a religion is gonna teach you to be honest?

Nik Berry [01:02:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:16] And I think the Mormon Church wants to teach people to be honest. But this pornography trap, this masturbation trap, this pornography trap, this law of chastity trap, count. Account after account after account that I've received, people just say that what they do is they learn to lie because they can't stop, or they do normal things, but they have to confess and they don't want to lie to God or Jesus. But then they go and they try and confess and it. They either get caught in the shame spiral or they keep going back, or they can't stop because they're doing normal, healthy things and they learn to lie. And that is one of the most damaging things, I think, from this whole experience is that the church teaches you to become a liar. And that's super unhealthy for all the reasons to your mental health, to your anxiety, to your depression, authenticity, vulnerability. Learning to lie and to hide and to cover up begins downward spirals of depression and anxiety and just toxic living. Because health and honesty and openness leads to health and happiness and lying and hiding in shame are toxic and they ruin people. Is that fair to say?

Nik Berry [01:03:33] Oh, yeah. And I was never really like skinny per se towards the end of high school, but I had just turned to so many coping mechanisms. I was just eating so unhealthily. I was looking at pornography, just coping mechanisms. And I ballooned up. Like I look at my mission picture. Leaving the first time, I was extremely overweight. I was extremely unhappy. I just, at points I wanted to just end it. I didn't want to live anymore because all I felt like was this is all that there is for me, is to just go on a mission and just put in my time and come home and hopefully the rest of my life will be okay because I just didn't want to let anybody down. And the closer and closer I got, the more just intense, just shame and everything that was put on me.

John Dehlin [01:04:32] And I want to get back to where you were going in the story, but I also just want to make this point that, that the depression and the sadness and the shame and the guilt can get so serious that people want to end their lives. And in fact, many, many, many young Mormon men and women, and even Mormon adult men and women have ended their lives over the guilt and shame. And so, Nick, I just want to, like, I want to ask you to repeat and maybe go into tiny bit of depth. If somebody says to me, john, you're exaggerating, you're using hyperbole. This is not a matter of life and death. I believe it's, it's a, it's. It's a epidemic of very serious proportions. What would you say, Nick, if somebody were to sort of say, john, you're being dramatic here?

Nik Berry [01:05:24] No, there were times where I was so Depressed that I. And just in so much shame that I was living this way, like lying to people out of one side of my mouth and then, you know, on the other hand, in my own room, looking at pornography, masturbating, and just building up this image of myself that wasn't really me. It built such a split in me that I became so numb that the only thing that really made me feel alive was ending it. That there were times where I would fantasize about how I would do it. I didn't want anything that my family would have to clean up. I didn't want anything that, you know, would be painful. I. A few times it researched it a little bit, but I just. I couldn't go through with it, luckily. But there.

Nik Berry [01:06:20] It was times where I would just

Nik Berry [01:06:21] cry myself to sleep because I couldn't go through with it because I just wanted it to end. I hated living that way. That I'm supposed to be this person, but I'm not. I'm down here. There's, you know, dirt worm, and then the men, then me. I'm the lowest possible thing I can be, but I'm supposed to be up here.

John Dehlin [01:06:42] Yeah.

Nik Berry [01:06:43] I hated it.

John Dehlin [01:06:45] Yeah. I'm so sorry. Life's so short. You know what I mean? Like, life's so short. And. And as we're taught in the church, even life is to have joy, but. But with good intentions of the church just keeping people out of trouble or helping them be their best person. These rules that the Mormon Church puts on its youth and young adults ruins and destroys lives. And it's such an irony because I don't think the church means to make a young teenage boy suicidal. And yet they're doing it. Tens and hundreds of thousands of. Of youth every year are feeling this way.

Nik Berry [01:07:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:30] So do you want to take us? Is. Is your mission the next thing to talk about or what's the next thing in your timeline to talk about, Nick?

Nik Berry [01:07:36] Yeah, so it, you know, it comes time, I. I say goodbye to her, you know, and my mom is awkwardly being the. The. I don't know, the. The lineman to defend her from getting too close to me, you know, as we're getting closer to leaving. But I still snuck out and spent time with her and. But, you know, we drive up and my parents do the whole thing in the big room at the mtc. And, you know, I go in and I meet my roommates, and I immediately just. I feel like I don't belong. And within a couple days, they. The. It's probably that day or the next day, I blocked out a lot of it, to be honest. But they. They do this interviews for all the incoming people. They. They ask me, you know, if there's any things that I haven't confessed. And then the guy opens up to a page that he's bookmarked and specifically reads about, you know, being promiscuous for the opposite sex and pornography and masturbation. And I feel like at that time, like God speaking through him. To me, it's like, this is the time to finally confess. But I had just built up such a, you know, quick reaction to lie. And I go, no, I'm good. Then I go back to the room and I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep for three or four days. I lived in this whole self torture that I had lied when God spoke directly to me through this person. And I. I don't even. Again, I don't remember it because I was malnourished and I wasn't sleeping. So finally I went in, I confessed. And that was one of the more awkward interviews because they were asking specifics. And that was the first time I ever heard the term Levi sex. And just all sorts of reasons.

John Dehlin [01:09:24] Tell us what that is. What's that tell? Tell our listeners what that is.

Nik Berry [01:09:28] It's basically grinding on each other while still wearing pants.

John Dehlin [01:09:33] How did that come up and why

Nik Berry [01:09:35] he brought it up? I didn't bring it up. He asked if I had Levi's sex, and I was like, he had to explain it to me. Again, very awkward. Which it somewhat happened. You know, it's the whole kind of thing that I heard you mentioning in the. The Scientology stuff, where they kind of make you think you had this other life where I started confessing to things that I hadn't really done because I was like, well, kind of.

Nik Berry [01:09:59] So I guess I did.

Nik Berry [01:10:00] And, you know, I made out with girls where they're sitting on top of me, so I thought that was Levi's ex, and different things like that. So I made it probably a lot worse than it was because he was digging into things that I hadn't even brought up. And then they had to bring in another person. I had to confess to that guy. And then they put me on a plane and I came home and I was met at the airport by my parents. My dad was very understanding, very, you

Nik Berry [01:10:32] know, he joined when I was 12,

Nik Berry [01:10:34] so he'd only been in a short while. And he's always kind of been a very, you know, go with the flow kind of guy. But I was clearly upsetting my mother at this whole process.

Nik Berry [01:10:48] There's a comic that someone mentioned in

Nik Berry [01:10:49] Mormon stories called Love and Sex and I relate with it a lot, but he put it into words where I was essentially the Abrahamic covenant for my mom. I could tell that like I was her redeeming thing, sending me out on a mission and me being like her legacy of like I did something good in Mormonism was what she was kind of banking on. And I could feel that and awkward car ride home. They had already rummaged through my stuff within a week. So I had no possessions. I didn't even have a room anymore. They turned it into a guest room and made me sleep on a broken futon in my little brother's room. So I'm a 19 year old man sleeping on a broken futon next to a bunk bed of a nine year old.

John Dehlin [01:11:34] Let's back up for just a second. I just, I can't. This needs to be its own series on Mormon stories just about the trauma that missionaries who enter the Mormon missionaries who enter the MTC experience because it's such a huge deal. You're taught your whole life that you, you exist to serve a mission and then to go get married in the temple. Like those are the two things you literally exist for. And that you're a messenger of God, that you're there to serve God and that you know other people's salvation is at stake and that this is one of the most important things you'll ever do. And you have this huge send off where you get all the clothes and your ward sends you off and you, and you're honored and you have a farewell and everyone gets excited when you get your call and then everybody's excited to send you off. And you are excited because you're like, I get to serve the Lord and I get to two years and it's my. It's almost like military service but for God. So it's even better. And you're sacrificing, your parents are paying money and your siblings are all proud of you and your leaders are proud of you. So then you go off to the MTC and immediately, you know, it's like they've got these leaders that are like grilling you to like find out if you've been lying and making mistakes. And you know that if you are honest, you might get sent home and just have that incredible walk of shame where you have to go home and everybody immediately is going to know why you got sent home. You're disappointing your parents, you're disappointing Your siblings. You're disappointing yourself. You're disappointing your entire ward community, girls, their parents, your leaders, and all of that's bearing down on you at the MTC while you're just trying to. Like. And it's a. By the way, this is a volunteer. It's not like they're paying you. Right? You're volunteering to do the church's bidding, and yet they're putting you through this psychological meat grinder as. As you're. You're volunteering yourself for service. And then. So you're experiencing that meat grinder of these grand inquisitors, who are. These men are probably masturbating themselves and looking at porn, and yet they're putting you through a psychological meat grinder. And then you're feared you might get sent home. And then, in fact, you do get sent home, and you have this incredible walk of shame that you have to do where you go home and you disappoint mom, you disappoint dad, you disappoint your siblings, you disappoint all your ward members. That in and of itself is incredibly psychologically abusive in. In my view, that whole thing, and it's super, super common. Is there anything else you want to say about that? Because I don't think people really understand the intensity and the difficulty of what you explained to them.

Family Shame, Lying, and How the Church Rewards Silence

Nik Berry [01:14:43] Yeah, I had become essentially Quasimodo. My mom wanted to hide me away in a bell tower so that she wouldn't have to live with the shame of me being around. She didn't want me to go to church with her. She wouldn't let me use the phone, the Internet. She was immediately looked at as the enemy because she was my girlfriend before I left, even though most of the stuff I confessed wasn't even about her. You know, I mentioned a few things,

Dawna Berry [01:15:09] like, of course, we were teenagers. We would kiss, make out heavy. We never had sex, though. So there we go. A Mormon story so that everybody knows and who judged me back then, because I lost friends. I lost people. I had nasty messages, too, because I was a girlfriend. So, of course it was my fault. But, yeah, it was. It was traumatic. He was only gone for five days. It was traumatic.

Nik Berry [01:15:34] That was the strange thing about it, is there wasn't a whole lot. You know, there was. There's the immediate shame of, like, oh, he came back. There wasn't a whole lot of fallout on me, but there's a lot of fallout on her. Losing friends, being judged by my family, her family. It just. I thought it was insane that she was getting punished for me coming home. And the reality is that she really wasn't the whole thing behind this. It was.

John Dehlin [01:16:03] It was.

Nik Berry [01:16:03] The pornography was me lying for months and months and months about it, you know, and all the priesthood and interviews leading to it, and a girlfriend before we started dating that I had, you know, spent time with. I never had sex with her, but there were other things that were involved that he. He dug very extensively into. And it became just this thing where I was just this creature, unworthy again. Back to the Quasimodo thing. I had to meet with a state president so many times, you know, like every month, sometimes twice a month, and he'd give me these really weird assignments, and he told me that I wasn't allowed to date her, as if he had that authority. And my mom got so bad on trying to lock me down and trying to make me what she was trying to make me again that it got unbearable. I had to move out. I took the little money I had and found a crappy job cleaning carpets and moved into a very sketchy apartment. The worst man with a glass eye is my neighbor who reeked of smoke. And a guy that was basically on hospice living below me. So I had to, like, tiptoe. Otherwise, he kept complaining. And just a studio apartment with a carpet was disgusting and just had to just kind of just live in a. Because I was still trying to go back out. I still wanted to do the right thing. I hadn't been, you know, like, you know, screw you guys. I'm going home. I voluntarily went home. I was voluntarily going through all this because I still wanted to do the right thing. And so I was going to all these meetings. I was going to YSA meetings as much as I could and trying to do what they asked of me. At the same time, just. The depression kept getting worse and just trying to eek by.

John Dehlin [01:18:14] And if I could just say there are two things that just really stick out for me in addition to everything you're sharing. One is how the church rewards the liars. Because there are those missionaries that just don't admit. They just don't admit to doing anything. And they don't buckle under the pressure. And so they just. They just say, keep saying, nope, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. To the. To the MTC pressure cooker. And then they. They just get to go out on their missions and become district leaders and zone leaders at aps. They don't. They don't have to take that walk of shame back. And so. And since the church leaders don't have what we're all taught, the spirit of discernment, lying gets rewarded and honesty gets punished with that walk of shame. So that's one thing that is just so twisted and perverted. You're incentivized to lie and you're punished when you're honest. But then the second thing is, is how shameful it is for the girl if there was a girl involved, you know, and everybody knows that the missionary had a girlfriend, and especially if she was a Mormon girlfriend or a girlfriend from the school, or even if, like you said, even if it wasn't Donna, if it was someone else, everyone's still going to assume that it was Donna or everyone's going to talk about Donna. And it's not just the missionary who gets shamed. It's any girl that might have been involved with that returned missionary. And so it's just this really twisted, sick shame casserole that gets spread throughout, you know, all the different people involved, not to mention the parents that are shamed because they have a kid come home early. Donna, do you want to talk at all about any of that?

Dawna Berry [01:20:03] You know, it was that. That was. That was it. You know, I knew that we had kissed heavily and been in a relationship. And so the night that he was set apart, I remember sitting in that room and I. In. In inside of me. I was like, say something, say something. Say something. I wanted. I was trying to get the person that was going to set him apart to say, does anybody have anything? Speak now or forever hold your peace. And I was just like. Or maybe they did say that. Like, I can't remember. Like it's this, this, like I said, this super traumatic experience my brain's trying to put all together. But I was like, do I say something? And I chose not to say something because I didn't want to be an embarrassment. I was just like, okay, well, let's just keep going. Which just like you said, adds to the fact that liars get rewarded. Except, you know, in this situation, we. It eventually, you know, beat down on him so much. Yeah, it was an awful experience. I got a call from my bishop on that five days after and had to go meet with him. And that's when he told me that my boyfriend was coming home from his mission and did I have anything that I wanted to confess. And I then had the sacrament taken away from me for months. I mean, this was a long time. And just like how Nick had said, you think that maybe nobody's looking at you, but people are looking at you because I. Because I had gone through that experience and I became a person that looked at other people. Again, I'm so sorry for what I did, but it just instilled this judgment. And so I had the sacrament taken from me and I had to pass that. It was really, really hard. I was actually even removed from my calling in laurels because of it. And so it was. It was traumatic. It. My grades that semester went way down the tube. I didn't go to school. My parents were a lot nicer and were not as hard. They would let me come to work with them if I didn't want to go to school, but they didn't want me to be alone because that is when depression started for me. That is when I. One of the lower part of my lives ever happened. And like I said, like he had said was I lost friends. I lost people. I had people texting me never to see him again, don't ever talk to him again. That I was dirty and terrible. And I wanted to tell them, like, but. But it's not my fault. Which because of the story that I shared earlier when I was raped, anything that happened after that I felt like I had no control over. And not that he did any of that to me, but just anything sexual, I kind of even just making out too much, I would leave my body. I would, I would not be present because that was such a traumatic experience. And so that plays into my life for the next 10 years. And yeah, it scars people.

John Dehlin [01:23:20] And what's crazy, what's so crazy about it is you didn't even have sex. Like, not that sex is terrible. It's developmentally normal. And you could argue, some could argue it's actually healthy for, you know, young men and young women to learn to have healthy, you know, sex lives that, that could even be good for an eventual marriage if kids or young adults learn to understand their bodies and what makes them happy and what, what is they're compatible with, etc. But put all that aside. Put aside the awful fact that you as a young woman are sitting alone with a adult man as he's grilling you about sex in a, in a room alone with a, with a married grown man. And your worthiness is being put into question and that you have to talk about sexual details with a married grown man that isn't your dad. Put all that aside. You didn't even have sex. And yet the way you're being treated throws you into serious depression. Like, it's just so what who's benefiting who in the world is benefiting from the way the church is dealing with all this? And why is it acceptable?

Dawna Berry [01:24:36] I. Yeah, exactly. Why is it acceptable? Why is it a thing? Like, let's not make it a thing anymore. And yeah, that was, that was the thing. People assumed. They assumed the worst. But I couldn't even go tell them, you know, like, it wasn't something. I don't feel like I should have to. But. But it was assumed. And, and that's just as damaging. It's just as damaging.

Nik Berry [01:24:59] And they don't really give you a platform to come out and explain your site. I can get up in testimony meeting, like, all right, this is why I came home. Yeah, just the rumor mill starts happening.

Nik Berry [01:25:11] And then Bree.

John Dehlin [01:25:12] Yeah, one of our listeners, Bri, makes a really good point. She writes, I don't understand why they sent him home when he confessed to stuff. Isn't that the point at the mtc to get it all out and then be better moving forward? I don't know much about missions, though, so anyone who knows you can explain. Bri, you bring up really two important points. One is why couldn't they just deal with this at the mtc? Why did this have to be some huge walk of shame? Why can't they just deal with it? There's, you know, and then why does it have to be something so terrible, so awful and so, so dramatic? It really does make no sense. And then I'm just going to make the point once again that not only can some young men or women lie and just go on and have a great mission and they're rewarded for lying, you'll get this bishop or branch president roulette where some bishops or branch presidents will be like, oh, no worry. I'm compassionate, I'm progressive. You know, you're okay with heavenly Father, go on and serve a great mission and they're let off scot free. Whereas if you have a more strict bishop or a harsh bishop or more orthodox bishop or Brand's president, then you drew the bad, you know, ecclesiastical lottery and you get sent home. And so it's totally random as to who gets punished and who doesn't. And that's not fair at all.

Nik Berry [01:26:35] And to kind of a weird point, I mean, I, I served my mission in Japan and it's, you know, basically the population of the United States crammed into California. So there were a lot of people there, but I ended up serving in areas that were outside of the metro area in Tokyo. So we would just be walking or riding our bikes through Miles of fields of rice in, you know, to go to the next town or we'd be riding on a train and it'd be like us and maybe a couple other people in that car that were going. So I ended up talking with companions a lot. And inevitably it kind of comes up like, you know, what was your life before? And there were confessions, both first and, you know, I guess third party, about people who had done things way worse than me, you know, multiple sexual partners. And I think one had even had his girlfriend, had an abortion where they

Nik Berry [01:27:37] just, you know, came on a mission.

Nik Berry [01:27:39] Anyway, some lied, some didn't, and their bishop was just still understanding. And so I, I was just, it was conflicted. I was like, why did I get punished so hard for what I did when these guys. No problem.

John Dehlin [01:27:53] Yeah. It's not fair. Okay, so did you end up going back on your mission, Nick?

Returning to Mission and Enduring in Stasis

Nik Berry [01:28:00] Yeah. So that was a weird thing is just kind of sitting in stasis. I had a job, clean carpets, and then ended up leaving that and working at another place. But I couldn't really get anything too permanent, so I didn't take any classes. I didn't really. I got an apartment for a while, but I made sure to find a place that didn't have like long term leases.

Dawna Berry [01:28:22] Well, let's also add in the Russian roulette has stake president. He came home to, told him, well, you're not going back out. So go ahead.

Nik Berry [01:28:29] That was the bishop.

Dawna Berry [01:28:30] Oh, that was the bishop, yeah, bishop, go ahead, go ahead and get married, go to school, all this kind of stuff. And then it changed, like he switched wards or he got released. And then that next stake president was like, no, absolutely, I can work with you. We can work on this. Let's do this. You can go back out. So it's just not consistent.

John Dehlin [01:28:48] Oh, yeah, yeah. And I just have to say, I know people like this. Some people's lives are ruined and they're real. I know this. We're not even getting to the 12 step program yet. But this is all so important. Imagine you're a Mormon youth, you grew up Mormon and you want to go on a mission. But then either you're you, you get sent home early and you get the bishop or stake president that just says, don't bother, you don't go back out.

Nik Berry [01:29:14] Or,

John Dehlin [01:29:17] or you never are allowed to go in the first place. Right. That can wreck your life as a Mormon kid because all of a sudden all your friends are going on missions. You're not. So you have that shame. You feel worthless and Bad, though. Everything that you've prepared in your life to do, now all of a sudden, you can't do. So you feel terrible about the bad human that you are. But then also, you're in this ward. None of the. None of the girls want to date you or boys. None of the parents want you around their kids because you got sent home from your mission or didn't even serve a mission. And that can send you on a very different path in your life. Instead of going to byu, getting your degree, getting married, having a successful life, maybe you don't go to college, maybe you feel so bad about yourself, you take a very different path. And this sort of decision about, do you have the right bishop, how do they handle you at the MTC or not? And do you. Are you allowed to serve a mission or not? Can really be catastrophic to, you know, other. Other parts of your life. And I just have to mention that because I know people whose lives were derailed for five or 10 or 20 years because of how they were treated around their mission.

Dawna Berry [01:30:34] Yeah.

Nik Berry [01:30:34] And to clarify a little bit more what she was saying, I. I experienced that roulette at a very extreme level because she only kind of touched on it. So to clarify, when I came home, they have to do the whole process of releasing you from your. Your missionary calling and turn you back into whatever, you know. So I met with my bishop because

Nik Berry [01:30:59] my parents had moved when I left. They. They were in the process of moving as I was leaving. So we were in one warden stake when I left, and then they moved, and we were in a different warden state coming home just in that week. So my whole life kind of changed coming back. And so my. My bishop that I had known for a long time and worked with, he was very understanding, very cool. He's like. He understood that I'm not gonna be working with him anymore. He's like, I got hope for you, man. You're gonna do it. You know? He had developed a relationship with me, and he was a good guy. He gave me hope. Then I went and met with the previous stake president, who had been new to the calling, and he's like, oh, man, you really messed up. If you had been. If you're still in my state, we probably would be going through disfellowship and possibly excommunication. I don't think you'd be able to go back out on a mission. But it's not in my hands anymore. So that threw me for a loop immediately. I was like, wait. My bishop was just saying he has Hope for me to go back up. Why would you be saying that? And then I go meet with my new bishop and he's like, well, you know, I. I know a lot of guys who've come back and they don't really ever make it back out. So I wouldn't really put your stock in it. You should probably just go get a job, go get an apartment, start going to school. You know, you might, but it's doubtful. And then I go meet with my stake president and he's like, well, we're, we're going to try to get you back out there, but it's going to be a long, arduous process. So I just. In the span of like a week, I'd experienced four different opinions about whether or not I'm gonna be going back out. And I was just in a tailspin of like, what do I do with the rest of my life? Am I gonna be going on a mission or not? Should I get a job? Should I not? Should I move out? Should I not? So I was just in a really weird holding pattern. I didn't know what to do. And so I just tried to just get counsel for them as much as I could. And it was really difficult. For the next year, it was 16 months. 16 months. See, she's the one with who knows all the dates. And then out of nowhere, you know, he, he kept telling us we're not supposed to date again. Like he has that, that right. But, you know, we try to keep it to letters where I try to get it ready for me going on a mission. So we wrote letters back and forth and, you know, I'd meet up with her and we have, you know, quick little secret date on her birthday and Valentine's Day and stuff like that. And, you know, I still loved her very deeply and we spent a little bit of time together and again, never really trying to be in private because it was trying to, you know, we were always meeting in public places like the park or, you know, at like a ice cream restaurant or something. But I got the call out of nowhere after not really having much hope that it would be coming anytime soon, that I could either leave that week or in three months, because that was the cycle in the MTC for the Japanese speaking missionaries is they're there for 12 weeks. And so I didn't want to. I'm like, well, I've been waiting this long. I don't want to wait any longer. So within like four days, I, I quit my job, which made it so I can never work At Walmart. Again, it was not advanced notice. And then I packed up the stuff that had just kind of been sitting in storage forever and I'm back in the mtc. But again, not really feeling like I belonged. I never felt like I belonged. I still just tried to get over that feeling as much as I could.

Nik Berry [01:34:39] And

Nik Berry [01:34:41] at that point I hadn't had really any issues. What I did have, I confessed, or at least I tried to, but it just became a cycle where I couldn't even remember all the things I was doing wrong because I just felt like I was doing everything wrong. And so I went back out and I really struggled with it. I struggled learning the language. It didn't really come easily to me. Like I felt like it did other people and just trying to talk to people in the street. And I felt like it was because of me, that I was a problem, that if I had been what God expected of me, if I didn't do these mistakes, that people would be like lining up on the street corner to come talk to me and hop in a, you know, a bathtub with some words. And so I just live with that for months and months. And I had pushed a lot of my companions to breaking point, doing these things called hundred hour weeks. I thought that if I could be the hardest working missionary, that maybe that would make up for it. So we do these things where there's the normal schedule where you wake up, you do the. We had three hours, you self study, companion study and then language study for an hour and you have lunch and then you head out and you would proselyte for, you know, several hours, maybe grab a dinner and then be home by 9, 9:30 at the latest. Well, we got special approval to where we would leave our apartment and skip our studying and all of our meals in our apartment and be out there trying to talk to people from 5 in the morning until 9:30 at night because that was the most they would allow us. Honestly, I would do more if they would, but I had grown up doing a lot of manual labor jobs and doing a lot of sports, so I kind of developed an endurance for this. But some of my companions were passing out as we're in the church making copies of flyers. So I pushed them to the breaking limit and caused a lot of relationship issues with them.

Dawna Berry [01:36:49] He just thought that if he worked hard enough that God would forgive him and that he would then be able to baptize people, that if he just proved it enough. So that's, yeah, what you're saying.

John Dehlin [01:37:00] It's just that whole worthiness, hustle that they put you on the cycle, where if you're hyper religious, almost scrupulosity, if you're hyper religious, somehow you can atone for your mistakes and prove your worthiness. Right?

Nik Berry [01:37:13] Yeah. And, you know, we're supposed to be, every night we're supposed to call our district and depending on if you're the district leader, you're supposed to call your zone leader. But you know, we call in and report our numbers. And that was something our mission president came up with because he wanted to make sure we're actually working. So every night I had to report that we didn't have any, you know, teaching, didn't have any of this. Didn't have any of this. And I just kept feeling like a failure.

Nik Berry [01:37:41] Sorry.

Nik Berry [01:37:42] And even though, you know, I'm out in the middle of the sticks and these people had been, you know, it's the same people see the missionaries because it's at the train station. That was the easiest place to find people. So these people had seen missionaries a thousand times over, heard the same thing over, and they just become callous to us. So it wasn't anything my fault. It's just constant full of white guys coming in, trying to tell them about Jesus to where they'd see my name badge immediately go, oh no. This is like a look of disgust when they'd see me because we just hammered some of these areas so hard. And it all felt like it was my fault. And that was hard to shake that feeling. And I'd read scriptures like an alma where if, oh, if I could, you know, the Trump of God, I'm paraphrasing, you know, I'd shake the earth, but I'm a man and I should be happy, but I'm not happy because I am a sinner.

Nik Berry [01:38:33] Actually, I added that part on my own.

Nik Berry [01:38:35] And the, the big kind of breaking point of my mission that had to do with pornography and the 12 step program and everything to kind of bring this kind of full circle is we were in the middle of 100 hour week and again, I'm just in a bad state. We're doing, we're four days into it, I'm sleep deprived. My companions constantly complaining, hadn't really eaten much because we're just trying to be out talking to people as much as we can. So we're just eating scraps and I go into a bathroom in the park and someone had left a porn, porno magazine in there and I just immediately clung to it and was looking at it and I masturbated And I felt like I was the worst person in

Nik Berry [01:39:25] the world, that,

Nik Berry [01:39:29] that I should immediately be sent to hell, that I should be stricken down with lightning. And I was severely depressed that I, I gave in to it, that I struggled to sleep for a couple days. I called my mission president and had to do kind of an awkward thing where I was in a room without my companion in a small little Japanese apartment and, you know, said I needed to meet with him and kind of told him a quick little thing. And then we end up going like three different trains to the mission home. And I confess to him and he has this awkward meeting in the living room in the mission home where he's calling down the power of Jesus to heal me from this. And he's wanting to hear me pray so that I can prove myself otherwise. He's going to send me home again for the second time.

John Dehlin [01:40:18] What the heck.

Nik Berry [01:40:20] Yeah. And he was doing what? Oh, it's the most awkward, just like calling on the name of Jesus, you know, prostrating ourselves kind of thing. And I was just, I didn't know what to say. I was like, lord, heal me from this. I, I'm so sorry. And I had to be as repentant as I could in front of him. Otherwise, you know, he's like, I, I'm struggling really right now and sending you home, Elder. And for masturbating.

John Dehlin [01:40:50] Yeah.

Nik Berry [01:40:52] Because I looked at pornography in a bathroom and masturbated just once after several hundred hour weeks. And the other thing too is that for people who haven't been on a mission, you have to write a weekly letter to your mission president and tell him how you're doing. And it was always from a place of just self deprecating, just, I feel like I'm not doing enough, you know, so I'm really just trying to be my best. And I'm hoping he's seeing this and. But at this moment it was clear to me that he didn't care. It was all about the rules. And he almost sent me home, he said, but he decided to give me another shot. And then awkwardly, he gave me the punishment that I wasn't allowed to take the sacrament for two weeks. So having to be in, you know, congregations as the missionary and pass the trade, and that actually happened as I was up there having to give a talk. So I was in front of everybody and I had to pass the trade and they passed it back and I had to pass it again.

John Dehlin [01:41:56] So you're, you were allowed to pass the sacrament but not take the sacrament?

Dawna Berry [01:42:01] No, he had to, like, pass it

Nik Berry [01:42:03] across as the tray was going across, as I was sitting up in.

John Dehlin [01:42:06] Yeah, yeah.

Nik Berry [01:42:07] Stand. I don't know what you call it. To give a talk. Yeah, the tray was passing by during one of those two weeks, and I had to pass it to my companion. He's like, oh, you grabbed me. I'm like, no. So, yeah, that was extremely. Just humiliating and depressing and just the shame had become even worse to where I just became lethargic, and I didn't want to be there anymore, but I didn't really want to go home. I was just going with emotions. And one of my companions had just yelled at me for an hour. He's like, just go home or do something. And so I just. I put on a face and I just existed for the next. It was about a year left on my mission when this happened. And so I just put in my time and felt like a failure coming home. And that sat with me for a long time. That, yeah, I served a mission, but I was a failure, that I shouldn't have been out there. I was wasting the Lord's time and resources. Even though my parents were paying for it. It was the Lord's resources. And that these people that I had interacted with are now, you know, gonna be hating me in the afterlife because I was the one who talked to him instead of somebody else that it should have been someone else who would have had the spirit and gave them

Nik Berry [01:43:40] the message that they deserved.

Nik Berry [01:43:43] So I just always feeling like that every time I go to church, that

Nik Berry [01:43:48] I was just lesser, that I was

Nik Berry [01:43:50] not the right person that I should be. Which carried into the rest of.

John Dehlin [01:43:56] Right. Yeah.

Nik Berry [01:43:57] Living at home.

John Dehlin [01:43:59] Let's read this quote, really, from. From a listener. Dusty writes, aren't the general authorities aware. Why are you guys laughing?

Nik Berry [01:44:07] I'm reading it.

Nik Berry [01:44:08] Oh.

John Dehlin [01:44:09] Dusty writes, aren't the general authorities aware that all missionaries masturbate? Aren't they aware that the ones who don't report it are just lying? Are they really that clueless, or is there something more sinister behind all this? I mean, I think it's hard to know people's motives, Dusty. But I think at some level, I think lots of Mormon church leaders have good intentions. I do think there is this reality that if you get these people on the shame cycle where they feel horrible all the time, then you need Jesus, and thus you need the church to be better, to feel better, to do better, and to atone and to make things right. So I do think it's in the church's self interest to create this problem, to create this shame, and to create this desperation, because it makes people, many people, feel like the church is their only salvation.

Dawna Berry [01:45:02] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:45:03] It makes people extra committed. So in that sense, I don't know that that's intentional, but I do think the church, intentionally or not, benefits from the shame that. And the. And the sadness and the desperation. But I just also want to just call again.

Nik Berry [01:45:22] The.

John Dehlin [01:45:23] The fact that, Nick, you probably were doing better than most of the missionaries, that you probably went longer than a lot of these guys, and in some sense you should have been like, hey, look how long you went without doing that, and look how hard you're working. But instead you're, like, made to feel horrible, threatened with going home. And it spoils so much of the rest of your mission and sets you up to feel after your mission like you're a horrible, awful, terrible, perverted person. And then that's going to bleed into all sorts of other areas of your life. And this is all literally made up. Like, it's literally made up. You're doing normal behavior. You're literally just being a good person. Like, how many. How many young men in the world spend two years of their lives in service paying for it as a volunteer like you, as a, you know, other kids are being selfish or, you know, doing bad things or just living. Living normal lives? You're, like, dedicating your life as a servant of God, trying to help people. And because you do something super normal, super infrequently, you're made to feel like you're worse than the dirt of the earth. It's so. It's so incredibly twisted and unfortunate and sad.

Nik Berry [01:46:46] Yeah.

Nik Berry [01:46:47] And having known a lot of my companions stories and their, you know, their. Their previous companion stories and hearing through the grapevine about missionaries that had, you know, given into having sex with, you know, investigators or sneaking out of the apartment in the middle of the night to go, you know, find a prostitute and stuff like that. Like, I. I should have not felt as bad as I did, but I did. I. I felt like I was worse than all these people because that somehow they were excused from this because they. They weren't really out there for the right reason, but was trying and I failed. And so I don't deserve the spirit, you know, like the whole more is given, more is required kind of thing. And so it was just a really a constant struggle to. Of comparing myself against other people and what I have perceived them to be and something I kind of wanted to bring up as well, about Talking about the whole, whole. The modesty issue that we, we brought up earlier is that in Japan they don't have really public schools, they all have private schools. Which meant that every single school girl walking around was wearing like the Catholic school outfit, school school girl outfits, which as a, a missionary who's not allowed to. They had a rule, you're not even allowed to talk to girls. So very tabooized, just the female form in general. And you know, people are walking around in Catholic school outfits that it's a very non puritanical society. So they're wearing very European and, and I say reviewing, but it's just normal clothing. But to a very, you know, beat in to me that, you know, modesty is the best kind of thing that I'm basically in Babylon and struggling with these thoughts. And it was a constant thing to avoid this when it shouldn't have been that much of a taboo. And them saying you can't even talk to women made it even more of a taboo because it was like they had cooties. It was such a weird environment to be in as a missionary and trying to live this high standard.

John Dehlin [01:49:13] Yeah, it's awful. Okay, so anything else you want to share about kind of your mission or coming home from your mission? Anything else? Kyle? Nick, that's important part of your story.

Completing the Mission and Reuniting With Dawna

Nik Berry [01:49:26] I mean during this whole time I had kept in contact with, with her and we had been writing letters and prior to my mission she was basically treated as like part of the family. My family loved her. And then coming home that first time, they all like immediately hated her and she had to fight to be.

John Dehlin [01:49:51] Because it's her fault, right? Yeah, because it's the girl's job to police the boy's immorality. And so it's not your fault. It's. It's Donna's fault.

Nik Berry [01:50:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:01] For. For corrupting you. What a toxic, awful message that is.

Nik Berry [01:50:07] Yeah. And we were only allowed to call home during Mother's Day just once a year. And that first Mother's Day I knew that she wasn't allowed to be at my family's house. So I kind of broke the rules a little bit and called her first and talked with her because I really wanted to talk with her. And then I called my family and had the whole Mother's Day conversation and then the, you know, the next Mother's

Dawna Berry [01:50:37] Day and Christmas, Christmas too.

Nik Berry [01:50:38] It was Christmas. Okay, so it was twice. Twice a year. I forgot. But yeah, so she had to fight to even be at my parents house to just, you know, be on A phone conversation. Because somehow the phone conversation would cause me to, to come home somehow.

Dawna Berry [01:50:52] And you know, before we end the mission stuff. Yeah, he did Dear John me because he was trying to be a person perfect missionary and do all the right things. So he did Dear John me.

Nik Berry [01:51:04] I was that committed to doing, checking every box and being exactly what I was supposed to be that you know, one of my companions had talked me into the fact that like me having a girlfriend at home was not having both feet in my mission. So despite the fact that I loved her, I love getting letters to her from her. She was the one that I look forward to to the most because honestly nobody else really wrote me. I would get the occasional blue moon letter from my mom and maybe another member of my family but she was the only correspondence I was receiving. So I knew that once I had written her off and wouldn't be getting anything from her, I was on my own. I'd be out in the dark and not really have any contact to people home that I cared and loved about, cared about and loved. And so it was very painful for me to do that. And for a good portion of the mission we didn't have contact with each other. But as I got closer to the end, I decided that I didn't really want that anymore. That I was just so lonely and depressed that I wanted to talk to her. So I sent her an email and then we started writing letters again.

Dawna Berry [01:52:13] He came home and then we got married six weeks later. And now we're on to the next part.

John Dehlin [01:52:19] Six weeks later.

Nik Berry [01:52:21] Yeah, she was there for my homecoming little party at my parents house and you know, we had, you know, met back up again and talked about, you know, is this something we still want to do? Because we had talked about getting married before. During the 16 months that I was home there were a few times I contemplated just giving up and me and her go getting an apartment together and just moving on with our lives. Because I always wanted to be with her, I wanted to marry her. And that didn't change during my mission. So when I came back I wanted to marry her and I asked her is this still something you wanted to do? And so we both prayed about it. I went and had a temple.

Dawna Berry [01:53:05] Gosh, don't use that term please.

Nik Berry [01:53:08] You know, I went to the temple and you know, I didn't really receive any, you know, heaven's parting kind of thing but I went off of the whole adage of, you know, good feeling because it was always a good thing to me. I always wanted to Marry her. So we, so, so let me, let

John Dehlin [01:53:27] me just ask Donna, anything you want to share about while you're waiting for him on his mission? Are you, are you aware of all this torment that he's experiencing? Is there anything going on in your life that's important, important to the advancement of the story, or were you self developing? Were you putting yourself on hold? Did you have any other experiences? Anything you just want to share for that time period?

Dawna Berry [01:53:51] Not, not really too much of significance. I was a waiter dater is what they were called. And on Facebook they had like missionary girlfriend pages. So I was a missionary girlfriend. So I still dated. And

Nik Berry [01:54:08] I, I had told her I didn't want her just to sit on her thumbs. I wanted, you know, her to go date and live a life.

Dawna Berry [01:54:13] Yeah. So I went and dated guys, but none of them stuck. Obviously. Nothing more than just, nothing more than just dates. And then, yeah, then I also, but I also. While he was on this mission, there was also, also the pressure that he's excelling. You know, he's going up in, in his spirituality. And so I also have to go for my spirituality because if not, then he's going to come home at this level and I'm going to be down here at this level. And so I went to the temple and I did baptisms. When I went to Utah and visited one of my girlfriends there, we went and temple hopped and went to all the different, you know, baptismal fonts and tried to go do baptisms for the dead. And you know, like, I was just trying. I was super active in church, still super active as a YSA member and leader. And so I just wanted to be the best that I could because I didn't want him to come home and not want me anymore. So. But nothing much of significance to the story.

John Dehlin [01:55:18] Okay, so let me just ask you, Donna, really quickly. Like, you know, one of the, one of the. Sometimes there are these Mormon girls that are like, I won't date or marry a guy if he's ever looked at porn or masturbated. They have these super high standards and they'll reject a guy. And again, that rewards the guys who lie most often. But, like, what made you willing to even stay connected to Nick, to stay wanting to be with him? Why didn't you just sort of say, hey, he's been unfaithful, he's had a problem with porno masturbation, I'm going to go find a better guy. What kept you even interested?

Dawna Berry [01:55:57] Because he's always been good to me, even Though I knew that he looked at pornography, he never treated me poorly. Like I said, when I came home that night and he just held me, I felt like he could have left me at that point. And he just held me and he was, he was just always so good to me. And there was one time in the 16 months that, that he was on

Nik Berry [01:56:28] hold

Dawna Berry [01:56:30] where he came and confessed to me that he looked at pornography. And I didn't know, I didn't know anything about that. You know, like, I didn't, I was just like, okay, don't look at it again. But that was it. Like I didn't view him as lesser because of the way that he treated me. He, he's always just been a stand up guy. And so when I went and dated other guy, when I went on dates with other guys, it was dumb. It was dumb because I did feel like I needed to be the one that led them the right way. Like there was a guy that wanted to go on a date with me, but he listened to Metallica and really heavy metal stuff, stuff. And so I told him, I said for a week before you go on a date with me, you're not allowed to listen to that. And so I, I guess he did. I don't know if he lied, I mean he could have lied to me, but like I, I just, I, I, I viewed other people that did other things that were wrong as worse than him. Whereas there was a connection between us. There was already something between us that was already there. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:57:34] Like it's kind of sweet. I think it's kind of sweet. So, so even though it was a traumatized courtship, traumatized mission, when he got home, you, you loved Nick and wanted to marry him.

Dawna Berry [01:57:48] Loved him so much.

Nik Berry [01:57:50] And still do we, to, to kind of frame it a little bit better. The reason we got married so fast is because I got a letter while I was on my mission for BYU Advertising that they had a program for return missionaries who go through a language. And I would be coming home April 29th.

Dawna Berry [01:58:10] Yeah, 4:29.

Nik Berry [01:58:12] And they were starting, you know, their summer session for this program where you could take a class and pass off three years of Japanese. Essentially I'd be jumping in at 300 level. And then once I completed it, I could take a class and get 24 credit hours. So I looked at as like, oh cool. I could, you know, double major and get Japanese.

Nik Berry [01:58:34] And at that point I'd become proficient enough where I felt like I could

Nik Berry [01:58:37] do it even though I, all my friends from all the missionaries I knew from Utah and who went to byu. I saw them as super Peter Priesthood because I had grown up pretty rough around a lot of my dad's family and I struggled to not cuss. And, you know, I had a companion who constantly hit me every time I'd say something inappropriate. So I, again, I didn't really feel like I belong there because I didn't grow up in. In the primary. Yeah.

Dawna Berry [01:59:05] But we just didn't want to wait any longer. Like, it was either he goes to BYU and then we can't get married until August or September. We already did the whole mission the 16 months prior. Like, it was just, I don't want to keep on waiting. My life has already been on hold for so long, so.

Nik Berry [01:59:21] Same.

John Dehlin [01:59:21] Also, you don't want to screw up and have sex again, right?

Dawna Berry [01:59:25] Yeah, kind of. But I was also way too terrified to have that happen because there was such pressure to get married in the temple. And if I didn't get married in the temple, then I would die, like, on the way to the reception. So there was immense pressure. So I wasn't worried about screwing up again because we had already gotten in trouble before. So. Yeah, it was just like. Yeah.

Nik Berry [01:59:49] And honestly, in the back of my head, I thought marriage would fix it. That I thought once I'd be married I wouldn't need pornography, masturbation anymore, that it would just magically go away. And so I was excited to finally be married and have that part of my life be done with. And I thought it was the magical pill that would just save me from all these years of depression and awkward interviews and having a lie through my teeth and that I could at the same time be married to a girl that I really admired and loved and, you know, had really developed a deep relationship because we had been separated so much. We were writing these really lengthy letters, her more than me getting 11, 12, sometimes 20 page letters. So we really got to know each other really well. And I was just excited to marry her. So we, like had four weeks to put a wedding together and then we had a quick little honeymoon in Scottsdale and then we're off to byu. In the dream, in the married ward,

Getting Married and Early Years of the Relationship

John Dehlin [02:00:55] this is, this is probably delicate because they're still Donna's in laws, but I'm just. My mind is wondering how Nick's parents became okay with Nick marrying Donna, given all the past drama. Right.

Nik Berry [02:01:09] Well, I specifically remember telling my mom and her immediate response was, no, Nick, no.

Nik Berry [02:01:16] This is two weeks after I came home and I'm like, hey, mom, good News. I asked daughter to marry me and we're going to get married.

Nik Berry [02:01:22] And that was her response.

John Dehlin [02:01:24] Did she say why? Because that's not a great way to start a marriage. Right.

Nik Berry [02:01:29] She wanted me to wait.

Dawna Berry [02:01:30] His family. His family is very big on education and schooling. My family is very big on the. Get married in the temple, have babies, do that. So we had two very opposite families. So my family was ecstatic and, well, and his family was fine with me. The day that he was on the plane and going back to the mission the second time, it was still a little bit awkward. And so that's why that first time, it was a little bit hard that first phone call. But, yeah, his family, the day that he went on his mission, again, like. Like, driving to the airport was hard, but coming back from the airport, they were like, fine with me.

Nik Berry [02:02:07] So she's no longer a threat?

Dawna Berry [02:02:10] No longer a threat. But, yes, we got married, off we went. But I also, you know, to his mother's, you know, side. I have a son myself, you know, and I love him. And, you know, he just came back from his mission, and she probably just wanted a little bit more time with him, you know.

Nik Berry [02:02:26] Sure.

Dawna Berry [02:02:27] So.

Nik Berry [02:02:27] But at that point, I. I forgot to even mention this because it was so traumatic that I blocked it out, but I just remembered it. But I had really not put a lot of stock in what my mother thought of me anymore, because coming home from my mission the first time, I guess. Well, yeah, so when I got sent home, rather is the way to say it, but

Nik Berry [02:02:48] I remember my parents fighting,

Nik Berry [02:02:49] my dad defending me and my mom to telling him basically to just go deal with that because that is not my son. I don't love that. So I heard. I overheard that. And that really kind of struck me deeper than most things have ever really hit me in my life, is that

Nik Berry [02:03:08] my own mother, in the time that I was the most depressed, just couldn't love me because I had made one mistake that I was struggling with and trying to work through that. I was just nothing to her. And so at that point, I didn't really give a. What she said.

John Dehlin [02:03:28] So.

Nik Berry [02:03:28] Sorry to swear, but that's. She said that and I just kind of laughed. It's like, you have no opinion in this matter.

Dawna Berry [02:03:35] So we got married, and off we went.

Nik Berry [02:03:38] And, yeah, it was definitely an experience to jump right into. Byu, married Ward, all that kind of culture.

Nik Berry [02:03:50] We felt probably the most alone we've

Nik Berry [02:03:52] ever been in our life living there,

Nik Berry [02:03:54] because most of the people that were friends in that ward

Nik Berry [02:04:00] had known each

Nik Berry [02:04:02] Other from the singles ward.

Nik Berry [02:04:05] And let me.

John Dehlin [02:04:07] Let me jump back and ask you guys. So your wedding night, right? Like, I. I don't mention that because I desire any details. I'm. I'm fine. I'm fulfilled. I don't need details. But this. This whole idea of, like all this sexual trauma, Donna, you're, you know, your assault or your rape and then all this, all this baggage around modesty and sex and shame. Do you want. Is there anything you want to share about, like, once you're actually able to have sex, you know, is there anything you want to share about that?

Dawna Berry [02:04:46] Yeah, I would leave my body. I was not present on your.

John Dehlin [02:04:52] On your wedding night. And.

Dawna Berry [02:04:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:55] Yeah, you want to do. Can you talk about why or like, what. What that was like for you and why that was your experience?

Dawna Berry [02:05:02] Just the trauma from the rape.

John Dehlin [02:05:05] Because I didn't reminded you. It reminded you of that it would

Dawna Berry [02:05:09] put me back in that situation because I never healed from it. And so it reoccurred every time. And so, yeah, it was kind of weird. It was weird to go get married and then go to that next step. I was like, I'm allowed to do this now. Like, this is kind of weird. But then, yeah. So every time for the next, I don't know, six years, five. Five or six years of our marriage, it price seven, actually. I just wasn't present. So it. Yeah, it was just that it was not pleasant. It was not fun.

Sexuality in Marriage and the Role of Pornography

John Dehlin [02:05:51] Okay, so. So not a good wedding night experience or not a good experience in terms of sexuality for the first several years of your marriage?

Dawna Berry [02:06:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:03] And Nick, how about for you? Anything you want to share about that?

Nik Berry [02:06:11] It was just I. I didn't really know what to go about it because

Nik Berry [02:06:15] I knew what I had watched in pornography was not how it happens in real life.

Nik Berry [02:06:18] So I more or less just kind of was asking her all along the way, just, you know, ready for this?

Nik Berry [02:06:27] We want to do this.

Nik Berry [02:06:28] Just.

Dawna Berry [02:06:30] It was just an interesting experience. Very basic, very. You know, we were kids, so, yeah,

Nik Berry [02:06:36] we were adults, you know, who had kids. Minds not knowing what they were doing, not properly educated.

Nik Berry [02:06:43] It was awkward. We didn't have any idea really how to go about things. But the good thing was is that we both had a lot of communication, so it's. It didn't cause any issues, you know, other than the fact that she was having a lot of outer body experience in this because she's reliving her trauma. And I could tell that to a certain degree, like some at some point she was just gone. And I didn't know what to think of that. So it kind of confused and frustrated

Dawna Berry [02:07:15] me a little bit.

Nik Berry [02:07:16] Like I, I, like I was doing something wrong. It took us going to therapy to really work through that.

John Dehlin [02:07:24] And I just have to, I just have to say, just like, what sex should be is a healthy and awesome thing that a married couple can share. That's what sex should be. It should be like, hey, we get to build a life together eventually we're gonna have kids and we get to have awesome sex and we can explore our bodies and have fun and become more intimate and it'll drive us closer together and it feels good and what an amazing thing. And what's just so ironic is the church believes and it teaches that it's about joy and this whole history that the church puts you through of shape shame, body, female body shame, male, shame about intimacy, forbidden messages about porn. They don't teach about consent. They, they leave women sometimes vulnerable to rape and sexual assault because, because of, of, you know, they don't teach about consent. And, and then all the blame and shame and all the mission shame and all the ward shame and the in law shame and the parents shame. It, it, it takes something that's supposed to be beautiful. It takes something that's supposed to be an awesome enhancement to your life and it spoils it for years, if not for decades.

Dawna Berry [02:08:53] Well into that. Like, I didn't know how to be a sexual being either. I was just terrified because I knew that he looked at pornography that one time while, you know, on his hiatus. But I didn't really know how much of it was an issue for him. But I didn't want to be that from the screen. I didn't want to cause him to have impure thoughts. Like, I didn't know how to have that without causing him impure thoughts. And I didn't want to be my fault and I didn't want to be what I assumed was on the screen. I didn't want to be a trigger for him. I didn't want to do something wrong that would cause him to have to go to the bishop. And it was just, there's, yeah, putting your hand. They put their hand in where they shouldn't have and they could do better in helping us to be just people and sexual beings, which is why we're here, you know. So, yeah, it was, it was a, it was rough. It was like, I don't know how to be me and a sexual being. Right. Without doing it wrong.

John Dehlin [02:09:52] Yeah.

Dawna Berry [02:09:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:53] And I, and I. One of the Harrowing comments that I read in one of the narratives preparing for this interview. A woman wrote, and I've kind of referenced this before, but I'm reference it again, that she would lay still during sex. She was afraid to make any sound. She was afraid to show that she was into it. She was afraid to try other positions because in her mind, anything that she did that was more than just lie there and allow the act to happen, she was potentially becoming porn. Like.

Dawna Berry [02:10:33] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:10:33] And then that would, then she feared, encourage the husband to get back interested in porn again. And so years and years and years of sort of listless, lifeless sexual activity out of that terrifying fear that she would either do something pornographic or do something that would lead her husband to start looking into pornography again.

Dawna Berry [02:10:57] Absolutely. That same experience right there. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:11:00] I just. I never even thought of that before.

Dawna Berry [02:11:03] Yeah. Yeah. So that was us getting married. Then everything was great for the first year, and then we moved around, did the whole pest control for the return missionary thing in California and, well, kind

Nik Berry [02:11:20] of taking a step back just a little bit. We were only. When are we moving to Cambridge?

Dawna Berry [02:11:30] A month after we moved there.

Nik Berry [02:11:31] Yeah. So after only having lived, you know, married for about a month and a half already, the kind of little bug in my head was wanting me to kind of go back to the old things. So marriage, in my head, I knew immediately hadn't fixed it, that, you know, pornography was. Was still a thing.

John Dehlin [02:11:51] You had hoped that if you got married, you would never think about porn again, never think about masturbation again. And in some sense that might make sense to someone who's never actually experienced life, that, oh, you. You could have sex with your wife whenever. Whenever. You could have sex with your wife whenever you want. Why would you ever want to masturbate? And why would you ever want to look at porn? Porn, you've got a real life human right there, and people just don't understand. I mean, can you explain why that. I mean, it's natural. I'm not. I'm agreeing with you that that's not how it works, but that's how someone who's just trying to think through it logically would assume it would work. So can you explain why that even occurs to a married man or why it occurred to you when you had a wife you could have sex with, in theory, whenever you wanted to? Right.

Nik Berry [02:12:38] Yeah. It honestly was. Was just a coping mechanism again. I built that so much as a kid that it turned from taboo to

Nik Berry [02:12:47] coping mechanism to any time I was, like, stressed or sad or depressed or

Nik Berry [02:12:52] Any of the negative emotions that became something exciting that I could do, that then became something that gave me any sort of feeling. And so I started to turn to it every time we'd have little fights or she was just feeling emotionally distant to me. Like I had built it up in my head that we get married and we just like be best friends and we'd have sex all the time and that it would be the best thing ever. But it turned into a lot of fights of who's going to clean this? And that's not how I.

Dawna Berry [02:13:28] Normal life.

Nik Berry [02:13:29] Yeah, that's. That's not how I put the clothes away. So you need to put her to go away this way. And you know, I. For the last several years I had lived with just white shirts and ties, so I didn't know how she arranged shirts. And it became a big fight. We had a lot of big fights, a lot of big makeups. But there were times where I just. We weren't getting along. And the coping mechanism of it just kept digging at the back of my head. And not just that, but every other coping mechanism I had of just over

Nik Berry [02:14:01] exercising and overeating and just looking for

Nik Berry [02:14:04] something else rather than fixing the thing wrong in me and just something to shove in that. That hole that had been dug in my. In my soul from all the shame and just the trauma of all that stuff that the church had done to me since I was a little kid and got exposed to this. It became a thing that just kept gnawing at my core. So I just turned. I turned back to that. I turned back to eating. I came back from my mission the skinniest I've ever been in my life. Like my suit was hanging off of me. And within three months I had again ballooned up to a huge person, severely

Nik Berry [02:14:42] just overweight, which caused more depression, which

Nik Berry [02:14:45] caused me to go to more pornography. And because I knew that it was a taboo thing, I wouldn't tell her about it. And I feel shame about that. She would find it and I would just. I was so good at lying and blaming it on.

Nik Berry [02:15:03] Oh, some website was on it, it put a pop up on there.

Nik Berry [02:15:07] So it was all circumstances blaming it. And then I feel bad for lying

Nik Berry [02:15:11] to her about it.

Nik Berry [02:15:12] And then eventually, you know, I'd confess to her and I confessed the bishop and feel worse, but feel good for

Nik Berry [02:15:17] a little bit because I got it off unburdened myself. But then I just dumped all that onto her.

Nik Berry [02:15:23] And so then she started feeling like she needed to police me, which then caused even More of a conflict in our marriage where she was always looking at everything I did. And I always felt like I was always being watched and judged and couldn't do anything without getting any sort of a side glance from her. And it was not a happy marriage. It just kept getting worse.

Dawna's Experience Discovering Nik's Pornography Use

John Dehlin [02:15:51] Let's flip it. Donna, what was it like for you the first time you discovered that Nick had looked at porn or masturbated? And then what was it like for you as you realized that this was something he was going to be. Going to be doing?

Dawna Berry [02:16:05] I was devastated. I was absolutely devastated. Because I, too, also was under the impression that if he got married, then he wouldn't have to look at it again.

Nik Berry [02:16:12] Right.

Dawna Berry [02:16:13] And. And we had been married for just over a year, almost a year and a half when I had first found it. And I called him up, and I was mad and I was angry. I called out of work. We went and sat in our car on a part on an empty lot somewhere and cried. I'm yelling at him. He's crying. He's yelling. I'm crying. Like, it was just. I just couldn't understand. Like, we did all the right things, and this was here. And it was hard because I felt like now all of our temple covenants were gone. How was I going to get to the celestial kingdom if he was going to be like this? Maybe I don't want to be with him anymore. But I still loved him like that. That was. That was the hard part, was like, I loved him, but I didn't know how to do this. And, you know, I just felt disgusting, which then also made me feel like maybe he's always viewed me like that. And so is this really just a hard.

John Dehlin [02:17:12] Maybe he's always. What?

Dawna Berry [02:17:13] Maybe he's always viewed me as the girl on the screen and. Which. He's never treated me like that, but it was just.

John Dehlin [02:17:21] What would that mean for him to view you, like, the girl on the screen? What does that mean?

Dawna Berry [02:17:25] An object, an item.

John Dehlin [02:17:27] Okay, got it.

Dawna Berry [02:17:29] And so that's all I was to him. He didn't love me. Me. So there was. That was a really hard time in our marriage.

John Dehlin [02:17:36] Wait, really quick. What. What. What are some of the thoughts that go in your mind when your husband's looking at porn? I don't want to, like, seed it, but they're very common reactions Mormon women make when a husband looks at porn. That means, like, the church teaches us certain things that really raise the stakes, that really make it seem way more traumatic and dramatic than maybe it really should be. Instead of it just being, oops, he did a natural thing that humans do, they raise the stakes by, by what they say it means. For what. What it means when a husband looks at porn or masturbates or there are things women often conclude about what it means or what it's equivalent to when a husband looks at porn or masturbates. Do you know what I'm getting at? I don't want to tell you what it is. I want to hear you say it if, if you know what I'm talking about. Otherwise, I'll just say it.

Dawna Berry [02:18:35] No, I can't. Other than the fact I just felt like he was unworthy.

John Dehlin [02:18:38] Okay, so some women, some women say that it feels like cheating.

Dawna Berry [02:18:43] Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:18:44] Okay, talk about that. Talk about that.

Dawna Berry [02:18:46] No, I felt like I was being cheated on and that he was having these relationships with computer screen and that I, Yeah, legit. That is what I felt, was that he was cheating on me. And that's how it felt the whole time that we've been dealing with this, with this mentality that the church puts on it was that he was cheating on me. I felt like I was married to a cheater and that he would then. And I, I, because of, I over dramatized it into what was then going to happen was now he was going to cheat on me and now he was gonna, you know, all these terrible things, you know, and yeah, because he looked at pornography. That's, that's how I felt. And it was hard. It was so painful. Especially because a few days later we found out we were pregnant with our first child. And now I'm like, I, I'm married to a cheater, but I'm having a baby with him. And it was very, very hard. I h, I'm so sorry. Like, I just, I keep on just apologizing to him over the last couple years just of how I was, but also I feel like it's not my fault. That's just how it was taught to me to be, you know, and the,

Nik Berry [02:20:01] the culture of the church, you know, had, had built in her head that, you know, she needs to be a certain, like, dress a certain way to not cause thoughts. But then at the same time, when I would look at porn and she would see what I was looking at, it all hurt her self image even more because she started comparing herself against these women and thinking that I wanted them more than her because of this feature or that feature or they looked a certain way or did a certain thing that I somehow looked at them because I wanted them more than her and that she was not enough in some form, form, or fashion.

John Dehlin [02:20:40] There's a comment from Ali. I think she's talking about what her response was when she found out her husband looked at pornography. She says, I. I viewed that I was not attractive or sexy. So it made. Ali's saying, it made her feel like she wasn't attractive or sexy.

Dawna Berry [02:20:56] Exactly. Yeah.

Nik Berry [02:20:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:20:58] Which is ugly or you're not as good as. And then we'll get a lot of comments coming in, kind of challenging both your reaction, Donna, and my question. Michelle writes, is it like, cheating? And then Rebecca writes, it is infidelity. And then Rebecca writes, it is cheating. And then Rebecca writes, because he is taking his sexual desires to another woman. And then she writes, and breaking God's commandments. So I don't want to jump. And then Rebecca. Okay, Rebecca is a great example of Mormon church rhetoric. Now she's saying he is ultimately cheating on God. So not only is now he cheating on you, he's cheating on God. And. And then Rebecca finishes by saying, there's no excusing this, as if the atonement, even in Rebecca's mind, means nothing. So, like, Rebecca's doing her job of representing church shame. I don't want to jump to the end, but. But since we're just talking about it and. Donna, I'm not. I'm not trying to force you to say the right answer.

Dawna Berry [02:22:03] Nope, you're not.

John Dehlin [02:22:04] These women are saying he is cheating. It is awful. He deserved to feel terrible. Why are you apologizing, Donna, to him for. For being mad at him for basically cheating on you? What would you say to these women who are responding like, you know, it's funny. Here's another one. Jonathan writes, rebecca is an idiot. And, Jonathan, I just want to say to you that I don't like that answer, Jonathan, because this is all Mormon women. All Mormon women feel this way. So, no, Rebecca's not an idiot. Rebecca is a Mormon. A Mormon woman. Or she's a Christian woman. I'm guessing. Because this is every Mormon woman that's ever lived. I'm guessing. Or almost everyone. So, Donna. What? What? Since we're on it, and I don't want to get ahead, but why. Why are you not. Why are you apologizing to Nick for reacting like he's cheating when Rebecca and all these other people say it is cheating?

Dawna Berry [02:23:04] Because I did the best with the knowledge that I had at the time. I did the best with that. It also turned me into not a nice wife. It turned me Into a badgering wife. It turned me into a hyper, hyper sensitive, over protective, always on his shoulder. I wasn't nice. I.

John Dehlin [02:23:27] But, but people are saying, you should have. It's his fault. They're. They're thinking it's his fault.

Dawna Berry [02:23:32] Because I have, because I have learned and I have researched and I have studied that we can talk about later. But no, I, I don't now with the knowledge that I have, I do not feel like that is cheating. It's taken me a long time to come there. But no, I'm sorry for the way that I acted back then. I was acting out of trauma, out of pain, and I was acting with shame. I was shaming him and I was guilting him. And that's something that I wouldn't wish upon anybody. I don't want that anymore in my life. I don't want to have that. And I'm disappointed that the church does that. But I was doing the best that I could with the knowledge that I had. And I just disagree. I disagree. But I was, Rebecca, at one point, I was there. And so I hug her and I say, you're doing the best that you're doing. But I disagree. I disagree.

John Dehlin [02:24:27] So I know we're going to jump tiny bit ahead. But just to answer this question, instead of viewing your husband looking at pornography as cheating, how do you look at it now in like a sentence or two?

Dawna Berry [02:24:39] I think that it's a natural desire, a sex. He's a sexual being and I'm a sexual being. And. But we're not the same. We're not the same people. And so I don't, I don't view it as a sin anymore. I don't. Is that your question?

John Dehlin [02:24:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't view it as a sin. You don't view it as terrible. So does that mean, does that, you know, does that mean then that we all are like pro porn and love porn and think everybody should look at porn? Is there, is there something in the middle there?

Dawna Berry [02:25:12] No, this is, it's about communication. It's about consent. But I know there's definitely a middle. Yeah. Because porn isn't for everybody. There also is terrible things out there, and it's just some. It's a gray area that you have to do in private. It's something that really I can't tell anybody to do and they can't tell me not to do or to do it. So it's.

John Dehlin [02:25:36] It's like picking your nose. It's like blowing your nose. There are things you're not going to do, you're going to do. Privately there are things you have to work out. Privately there are things you do that aren't great. But instead of it being like cheating next to murder, sinning against God, you may as well have just slept with a woman. Yeah, like, it's like downgraded. It's like this is something that you have to work through. I have to work through. We have to talk about it, we have to come to an understanding. It's something that's private. But, but we're going to get to why this sort of language of calling it adultery, calling it next to murder is super counterproductive and it just hurts everyone. Right.

Dawna Berry [02:26:21] And I don't want people to just jump off now because the meat and potatoes is coming, you know, the, and

Nik Berry [02:26:27] to kind of, to frame this, I'm talking about it just very, just, you know, thousand feet level. But I didn't want to do it. Every single time I looked at porn, I masturbated. I mean they, they were coping mechanisms that were compulsory. I was living in such deep rooted hidden depression and shame of this that I would have an out of body experience a lot of times where I didn't even know how I ended up on these sites that I would, I would go to. And it just became something that I had built these pathways in my head that when I feel bad, it happens. And I would struggle for hours, days, weeks, months even to just don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it. Sing a hymn, read my scriptures, go talk to my bishop. I'm really struggling right now. Well, just read and pray. And it was never something I was like, I'm excited to go home to go look at porn and masturbate because I knew how it affected her and I knew that I might end up on the couch because of it, because she just didn't feel like she could, you know, be in the same bed with me. So there were times where I was living on the couch where I would wake up before the kids and you know, clean up the bedding and stuff like that before they got up. And there were stretches of a few months where I was out there, but I was willing to do everything I could because I loved her and I wanted to be with her. I didn't want this other thing. And the only way I could really analogize this to the people that don't understand how this kind of happens is it's like eating. I mean, if a person just keeps eating and eating Eating. They're not really choosing to do that. A lot of the, the people that get overweight don't choose to do that. People like to look thin, they like to be the, you know, the Victoria's Secret models and you know, the buff ripped men. But it's because of stresses in life and they develop a coping mechanism that a lot of them end up severely overweight. And then it just becomes a perpetuating cycle where the only thing that solves the problem is the thing that's causing the problem. That's where I was. And at the same time I was an overeater, which was also feeding into it. When I wasn't looking at porn, I was eating. When I wasn't eating, I was looking at porn and I just was spiraling into it.

John Dehlin [02:28:48] Yeah. Learning how to do healthy coping. Right?

Nik Berry [02:28:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:53] So really quickly Oil Stories writes, is it also a false concept that pornography objectifies women? Just turns them into parts and pieces? This is what I've heard, heard from some recovered lds men in arp. And I'll just, I'll just say very quickly, this, this show is not like pro pornography. I'm not pro pornography. There are all sorts of problems with porn. The health and safety and well being of the sex workers involved, the objectification of women, the fact that it can make people's expectations of sex totally unreasonable, it can be degrading to the people involved. It can cause people to try and force others in their real life to, to be or act in degrading ways. There's child porn, there's sex trafficking. Like I, There are all sorts of problems with porn in the porn industry. This is not about that. I acknowledge all that. I agree with all that. There are people, Natasha for Parker will say, there are couples that learn to incorporate, incorporate erotic video materials or audio materials into their sex life in ways that can be enhancing sexuality. That's not something I've ever really been involved with. I'm not like a big porn fan or porn advocate. I'm not, I, I see and acknowledge all those problems. For me, as a, you know, a psychology, a doctor of psychology, as someone who's worked for over 10 years with people dealing with these issues, My biggest problem is that the way that we talk about porn, the way that we talk to our young men and women about porn makes the problem worse. So if you hate porn, and if you hate people looking at porn, then you need to know that when you call it a sin, next to murder, when you tell people never to look at it, when you shame People for looking at it. What you're doing is you're increasing the likelihood they're going to look at it and use it. And you're, you're, you're increasing the frequency with which they're going to look at and use it. And so the, that's sort of the important, that's sort of the important thing here is that if what you want is people to look at it less or stop looking at it or to have it be less of an addictive, problematic thing in their lives, you have to understand, you need to stop talking about it like it's evil. Stop talking about it like it's life. Ending adultery next to murder, evil and sinful, because you're making it worse. That's my point. Yes, Donna, you tell me if you agree or not.

Dawna Berry [02:31:35] Absolutely. If you can take the shame out of it, that's where the healing begins. That is where the healing begins is the shame that not this next step that we're going to talk about with the 12 steps of the church that was more damaging. I don't know if that's where you're wanting to go next, John, but yeah, I agree with everything that you just said. I, I don't condone it. I'm not saying because all, there's all the terrible things, but we've got to stop treating it like the people that view it, whether they want to or not. Because the way that he treated me, he's always treated me great. And I'm not trying to be, trying to make him look good, but he always has. And I know that in his heart he didn't want to. It was a coping mechanism. But once. But I was, I was so mean about it and shameful about it, and so it just caused him to, to curl into a ball and in a, in a cave and, and try to survive. And, and that's just because of the rhetoric from the church and the way they do things. So. No, remove the shame. And that's what needs to be done. And that's why we're here. That is why Nick and I are here is because we want to help remove that shame. We want people to not feel alone and to change it.

John Dehlin [02:32:51] Yeah, yeah.

Nik Berry [02:32:52] I tell you how many bishops approached me because I, I made it very

Nik Berry [02:32:56] clear towards the enemy being in the church that I, you know, every bishop I meet, I tell them I'm gonna, a 12 step program that's not part of the church. And I, you know, well, let's, let's,

John Dehlin [02:33:07] let's actually get into that so, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I. Let's go ahead. I mean, we're two and a half hours in an interview and. And we haven't even started talking about the 12 step program yet, so. So Donna and Nick, really quickly, how much time do you guys have? I. I don't know that I asked you. Okay, okay, so let's talk about it. So you guys are on that park bench. You're freaking out, you're screwed. Crying, you're sobbing, you're terrified. Donna's being the police person. Nick's feeling shameful. Tell us how the story progresses to the point where. Where the 12 step program becomes a

Entering the LDS Addiction Recovery Program

Dawna Berry [02:33:43] part of this between 2010 and then 2013. So three years, it was on and off again. I would constantly find things. Every three months. I was not present for my first two children. I kind of just like. I don't remember a lot of their baby years because this took up so much space because I was still like Rebecca. I viewed it as he was cheating on me. And it was traumatic and it was hard, and I would find things, and then he would sleep on the couch and. And it was damaging for our relationship. We would go to bishops and they would just tell him to not look at it again, go to the temple, read the scriptures. They would tell me that it wasn't my fault, but I didn't under. That didn't compute. It didn't make sense that it wasn't my fault, but yet my husband was looking. That didn't. It didn't make sense. And they were just doing the best they could, but that also wasn't helpful for me. And so it was. It was just three years of that. Really. If we just want to cut to the. The group, I mean, there really isn't much more to that than.

Nik Berry [02:34:56] It had come to a point where she was so fed up with it that she had threatened our marriage that if I looked again, she demanded perfection at that point, that it like, no more or I'm leaving you. And that just scared the crap out

Nik Berry [02:35:16] of me that I.

Nik Berry [02:35:18] That something I've been struggling with my. My whole adult life, that all of a sudden I just had to just never do it again. Even though I've been struggling for years and years and years to never do it again, that I had to just now do it perfectly. And of course, that. That set me up for failure. It inevitably happened. And I did the typical thing. I went and talked to a bishop, and this bishop had. I don't know why all the other bishops didn't know about it because apparently it's been around for decades. But there he introduced me to the church sponsored 12 step program. Specifically there was one called Passage Porn. And I don't know, I don't know what the acronym means, but porn and

Dawna Berry [02:35:58] sex group, porn addiction, I don't know. Support group, something like that.

Nik Berry [02:36:03] Addiction support group. Yeah, something like that. But they had a regular addiction group. But because it was still very taboo, specifically in the church, they created a men's only group that met and was for porn addicts. Porn addicts, sorry. And so I heard about it. I went and found a meeting and was there, you know, a few days later. And immediately I felt like I was not alone. And it provided a huge sigh of relief because I felt like everyone else had this problem licked. Why couldn't I fix it? Everybody else is getting the same advice that I know of. Just read and pray scriptures and no one's talking about it. So it just must be me. I am the center. I'm the cheater. I'm the horrible person. I'm not worthy. I can't do all the other things. I'm not going to get callings. We're not going to be able to go on a mission. I'm seeing my future dwindling away as you know what I expected of the endure to the end. Because I did all the steps prior to this.

Dawna Berry [02:37:06] And that's also. Before we get too far into that, I too, I would go to church and I would sit in the church pew and I would be looking around at all these other women and these other men. I'm like, why is my husband the only one? Why did I get stuck with him? Like, I'm not kidding. I love this guy more than anything. But there were moments where I struggled and I hated when his family. Oh, I love his family. But his, his grandma has said to me a few times, you are. Nick is so lucky to have you. You guys are just perfect together. And I would sit there in my head, I'd be like, are you kidding me? You don't even know what I have to deal with. Like, I'm suffering over here because it was such a taboo subject that people didn't talk about it. Which I don't really know how you would incorporate that into church, but. But I would look and I'd be like, what did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? I have him and nobody else. Everybody else is sitting there in their church pews with their hymns open and they're just happy and they're holding hands and they have their beautiful kids. And I felt so alone. I have never felt more alone in my life than that moment. Moment. And it was hard. It was so hard. So he did one last time. Look, he went and talked to the bishop of course, when he, when we walked out of church and he said, I have a meeting with the bishop in an hour. I immediately go, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? And I was, I was not. I mean, I'm just being honest here. I was not a nice wife that day. I was looking all over the Internet. I was looking, trying to, trying to figure out what he did, what did he do wrong. And, and I, I did, I took the kids and I left for a night because I didn't, I couldn't see myself getting to the, the celestial kingdom if he kept on doing this. And I didn't understand it. That was the problem was I didn't understand it. And so because, because the way the churches, church talks about it is just so wrong and damaging. I didn't know how to act about it. And so I did, I left and stayed at my parents house. That's the only time I've ever left him for the night. And. But I did, I came back and I said, you cannot look again. And I was actually kind of mad at the bishop because I was like, well, if you say that it's an addiction, then that kind of removes any responsibility from him because if you're saying an addiction like then where, where is his responsibility? And so that kind of irritated me and I was mad at the church for that. And I actually wasn't happy with the Passage group for a while. For a long time actually. But yeah, that leads us to joining Passage. He would go to the, the porn addicts. I eventually found out that there was one for spouses so us women could get together. There was also. There's also ones for couples who have porn addictions.

John Dehlin [02:39:58] Can we, can we back up for a second?

Dawna Berry [02:40:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:40:01] So it started out with Nick going to Passage, is that right?

Dawna Berry [02:40:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:40:05] And that's a Mormon sponsored thing.

Dawna Berry [02:40:08] Yes.

Nik Berry [02:40:08] Yeah.

Nik Berry [02:40:09] They meet in a seminary building of all places. At least in Mesa. I know other places like I've been to one in Utah where they just meet in a church building and some of them do that. But I would show up at a seminary building the back of a high school, which I imagine some people would probably have an issue with. They knew what was going on.

John Dehlin [02:40:27] But it's a group of how many people.

Nik Berry [02:40:31] It was surprising how many people showed Up. I thought it was going to be a group of like three, maybe four people, but it was a lot of times we had to go steal chairs from under the room because there was 20, 25 guys that would come in. Sometimes we have to split it into two groups of like 15 people each.

John Dehlin [02:40:49] And is this the same thing as ARP, the addiction recovery program?

Nik Berry [02:40:53] It's a sub group of it. It's. This is the men's only version.

John Dehlin [02:40:57] Okay. So the church has a addiction recovery program. It's based on the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step program. But as I understand it, that that program is for anyone who has any addiction, including drug, drug addicts, etc. And so they have a version of it for just men who are into porn and masturbation, right?

Nik Berry [02:41:20] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:41:20] And that's called again, what?

Nik Berry [02:41:22] Passage pasg.

John Dehlin [02:41:24] And so the person who leads that

Nik Berry [02:41:26] is what they are. Just random folks called to be missionaries. They.

John Dehlin [02:41:32] It's like old, older couples that are not trained professionals. I hear they get one day of training, if that. And these older couples are thrown in to lead these groups of 10, 20, 30 men with no training, no mental health background. It's like these senior missionaries that know nothing about what they're doing. Is that fair to say?

Nik Berry [02:41:56] They. They have a book and that is it. Much like much of how the. The church runs is they hand you a book and expect you to know what you're doing. But yeah, the lucky for me, in the first passage group I went to, the missionary was a guy who was a sex addict. So he understood what we were going through. He led the meetings in a good way. He related with us. They pushed a sponsorship program which was in itself kind of damaging, which I'll get into in just a second. But at first it was a bomb of relief from my soul that I could be amongst people who understood me. I could talk through my problems. And it unloaded a lot of the depression, the shock, shame, and the guilt that I felt from it that stopped the spiral that I was in so that I didn't go to the coping mechanism.

John Dehlin [02:42:49] And that's. And that's a confusing thing because. And I actually saw this. You know, conversion therapy is something that I've studied a lot about, which is, you know, going to these therapy groups or support groups to try and ungate yourself. And we all know those are condemned by all the mental health associations. However, every gay or lesbian person that I know that's gone to one of these groups would. It would say that there was something good about it. And like, you Said just knowing you're not alone, having a place to talk about this, having a place to express and just the feeling of being in it with other people, it's confusing because that does give you some relief and some joy. And so there's going to be people that say these groups helped me. And you're saying that there was some benefit to you, right?

Nik Berry [02:43:37] Yes.

Nik Berry [02:43:38] And that week, you know, in the same missionary mindset that I was in, they, they were pushing a sponsorship program that they called the 90 day program. And anybody who's ever been to this, and I heard from subsequent groups that I went to that included a lot of former passage group members, it was just an intense boot camp of shame because they take the 12 steps and cram it into 90 days and kind of advertise it as if that's, that's just gonna fix you and you're on your way. So a lot of people naturally go right to that. But the first couple steps of it is based off of, you know, Narcotics Anonymous and stuff like that where a lot of people couldn't really relate. And it's asking them these really just heart wrenching questions about. Because the first step is basically realizing that you're nothing, that it has to break you down because a lot of people that are actually addicts think that they're all high mighty and they got this handled. But this step would make people feel a lot of shame and depression. So most people that went through this program would drop out after a week, two weeks, because it's just too intense of a shaming thing in the first couple steps. And then you get to step four.

John Dehlin [02:44:55] Okay, wait, so let me just go ahead and see if I can put on the screen the 12 steps. Okay, here it is. So for, for our listeners, for our viewers, I got this from the church's website, the 12 Steps of the Addictor. Oh, go ahead.

Inside the Twelve Steps and Confession Culture

Nik Berry [02:45:13] These are kind of the one word summarizations of it. The, the ARP guide actually has a bit little, little bit more elaborated version which would kind of help frame it a little bit better.

John Dehlin [02:45:23] So what I, well, I'll read what's here for those who are just listening and then you can elaborate. So honesty is one hope, trusting God, truth, confession, change of heart, humility, seeking forgiveness, restitution and reconciliation, daily accountability, personal revelation, and then service. Okay, so go ahead now and talk about, you know what, what your experiences were with, with those steps.

Nik Berry [02:45:52] So step one through three in a quick kind of summary is, is to basically realize in the honesty portion is that I am not enough hope is that, you know, God can be enough and three is to just give it to him. So you know, done properly, those are very hopeful, uplifting. But the way that it was structured in the 90 day program and sometimes in the passage meanings, the way that people will talk about was basically just a whole self deprecating like you suck and you're never going to be good and you're never going to have this thing. Your only hope is, is to give it to God. Which you know, depending on your religion and your beliefs is what a lot of people believe in. But that's not what you, you, you want to hear when you're in a shame cycle and this is your coping mechanism is to just pile on to that and make it feel even worse. The way that the, the actual 12 steps frame it are much more supportive and hopeful than, than what I experienced going through the church's 12 step version. And it's not necessarily the church's fault. They borrowed a lot of that from the, straight from the AA book, the big Book as people would call it. But they, they did plenty of editing to it and the missionaries would, would always do their own interpretations of it and people in the group would do their own interpretations. And it's just kind of this, this, this Mormon culture is to always just knock ourselves down. And it became like when we go through those because each week we would read a step and talk about it. When we go through those steps I would always hear the Mormon just self, just annihilating talk. And it was painful to be amongst that among, you know, when I'm trying to be better myself. So once you, if you could make it through that, then you get to step four. And this was definitely the gauntlet because step four and five are where most people would relapse and relapse meaning you get back into your coping examination, your, your addiction because what you're doing is you're going and doing a self inventory. And again the way the 90 day program and the 12 step group is, it's heavily about everything you've done wrong and why it's your fault and what character flaws you have that cause that. And in the actual 12 steps it's supposed to be a very enlightening experience. But again it's just very self deprecating, self annihilating kind of thing to go through this. And some of the 90 day sponsors, they want you to write 300, 400 lines of this, of everything possibly that could be wrong in your life and why it's Your fault and what character weakness it has to deal with. So you get this massive list of things that. Again, kind of back to the Scientology thing of coming up with things that aren't necessarily true, but you talk yourself into it. I got to the point where I was running out of things at like 200, and that was stretching, but my sponsor kept telling me to keep going, and I blamed my fear of spiders on. I don't remember those. The only thing I could think of is, you know, the thing that was my fault, that was wrong in my life. And it gets to confession, and you're supposed to take this list and go and talk to your bishop, who some. You know, again, these guys are just. They were like me, you. They were just sitting in the audience and they got called to be a bishop. So they're not trained to do this. And then I bring in this six page list of everything wrong in my life that I need to confess now. And just. Their eyes were just glazed over after about 15 lines. But they. I tried to get them through the whole list. And then you're supposed to also do the same thing with your sponsor, which then turns into step six and seven

John Dehlin [02:49:48] is tell us why. Tell us why that's damaging. You know, several people wrote in and said truth and confession were the two most damaging parts of the 12 step program for them, what's so damaging about doing this massive inventory of all the things you've ever done? Why was that damaging?

Nik Berry [02:50:09] Because having been through other 12 step programs and really looked into what the heart of this whole thing had come about, because AA actually is a very beautiful thing, and I'm not knocking 12 steps as a thing, but the church's 12 steps are very broken and misconstrued because at the heart of step four and five is it's supposed to go both ways. It's supposed to be everything you did wrong and everything you did right. Everything that's a character weakness that you need to work on, and everything that's a character strength. But that whole other side over here is never focused on. I think I maybe spent 10 minutes on it because it was just this, like, list a couple character strengths. But it was 300 lines of everything I've done wrong.

Dawna Berry [02:50:52] Well, and that's hard also when you're going through a program like this, because now you're thinking about it again, and that elephant is now in the room again. And all you want to do is make. Make your bishop, your wife, your ward members, your family members proud, and you don't want to Ruin your marriage. And here you are having to dig that all up again. Think about all the minute details. I can't even tell you where he was when he was writing this because he wasn't even like present. Like he was non existent floating through several weeks trying to dig and dig and dig. And I've never seen him so depressed. I also in that moment was like, he better step it up and he better do this. But it was so hard to see. And looking back, it was so damaging. I mean it just, it doesn't make sense. It does not make sense. I have to go through that and just relive every single thing. And it's like, well, but didn't I. I already like confessed those things to the bishop. Why am I having to of like red and white, as white as snow. Like, like why am I having to dig this all back up again and just. I guess I can kind of see, you know, like. But, but it also was damaging at the end of the day. Damaging.

John Dehlin [02:52:08] Got it.

Nik Berry [02:52:09] And, and because it's, it's supposed to be an inventory of your life, just an inventory. But the way they frame it is, is an inventory of everything you did wrong, essentially. So you're going at it with a very colored view of your past where all you see is every negative thing you've done from the moment you were born. And then you start to kind of look back. And it brought me to a suicidal point a couple times, like, why should I even be here? Look at all the shitty things I've done to myself, to other people. I don't deserve to live anymore if this is how it's going to keep on going. And really you have to, because a lot of the times as a way to save ourselves from ourselves, our mind will come up with excuses. But in this particular way of doing it, you were coming at it with, this is my fault. How is it my fault? The time that this person threw a cup at me because they were driving by randomly, that's my fault because I wore a T shirt that invited that and I suck at dressing. It was just way stretched out ways to blame everything on myself and just really just push myself down as much as I possibly could to the point where I didn't want to live anymore. Again, I was back to where I was before my mission, just wanting it to end. And I had to take several breaks from it because I was reliving all these experiences and blaming myself from it and figuring out what was wrong with my character as at the core that would cause this to happen to me and just couldn't see anything past tomorrow a few times, because I was living 24 hours at a time to just get through today. I don't want to do this anymore. And you're supposed to do it in three weeks. 300 lines in three weeks. Just all the time, just coming up with new things. And my sponsor was. Was breaking the rules a little bit with me and allowed me to do it over the course of two, three months. So luckily, I had a couple breaks where I could pause and. And continue on with it. But confessing it to him and him going through it, it was. There wasn't anything.

John Dehlin [02:54:14] Talk about that step of confession.

Nik Berry [02:54:16] Yeah. Confessing it to the bishop again, you know, I mentioned he just eyes glazed and just astounded all the things I was telling him, because it was all just a negative view of my life. You know, if.

Dawna Berry [02:54:31] If.

Nik Berry [02:54:31] If anybody could go back and watch their life and just see only the negative things, you know, they would probably be astounded as well. But he was only getting this one version of me, and he hardly knew me. You know, he knew me from the couple times I came in to confess. And we'd only been in that war for, you know, a year or two. And so he. All he saw of me at that point was that version. I gave him no character strengths, no things I did right. It was just everything I did wrong in my life. And then confessing it to my sponsor. He'd been through this several times, so it was all just, you know, process and procedure for him. He's.

John Dehlin [02:55:06] Huh, huh.

Nik Berry [02:55:07] Yeah, don't worry about that. It wasn't really any comforting of, oh, I'm so sorry that that happened to you. You know, it's just. Yep, keep going, keep going. Yep, do it. Whatever. And so I finally got to the end of it, and I thought I'd feel relief, but I just, like, again, going through it all in one sitting and coming out of my mouth. Mouth almost made it worse with the bishop.

John Dehlin [02:55:30] And you're going to the bishop in this excruciating vulnerability, and he's like, you're the 20th guy this month. Like, can we get through this? Like, he's looking at his watch like, and he's not trained, and how is this even supposed to help you? And I can just see why that would just be humiliating or degrading and just not helpful.

Nik Berry [02:55:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:55:53] Is that right?

Nik Berry [02:55:54] Yeah. And we did not. Not exactly that, but a similar thing where we went through a. I don't know, basically, we gave a timeline to our therapist and she having been trained, she having knowing what to do, was able to, to coach us through the hard.

Dawna Berry [02:56:10] We weren't in therapy yet.

Nik Berry [02:56:11] Yeah.

Dawna Berry [02:56:11] Yes, going, yes, we had the other side.

Nik Berry [02:56:14] So to kind of compare it of like a bishop who has no idea what he's doing to a third therapist who does and is trained in this, was able to comfort me and to give me next steps and to help me reframe it in a correct way and to help me deal with the trauma related to it. But yeah, it was, I, I somehow survived it. I know a lot of guys who didn't, which then moved me on to step six.

John Dehlin [02:56:37] What do you mean? What, what do you mean they didn't survive it?

Nik Berry [02:56:40] A lot of guys, they just get so much into this that, and hating themselves that, that they. So the 90 program has like basically a flunk out way. So if you, you have to have a perfection of no relapsing or, you know, giving into any sort of pornography or masturbation even to some people, if they confess that they had, you know, a wet dream, that counted. So they, if they did that, they had to confess that to their sponsor and then they were kicked out of the 90 day program for a period. The guy who's kind of running the whole thing would send him an email of shame saying when you're ready to take this seriously, let me know. And then he, you know, basically just berate you and let you in one more time. I've known guys who've gone through it four, five, six times dealing with this guy and they just developed this deep hate for him because he was just expecting perfection out of him, which.

John Dehlin [02:57:46] So you're kind of shamed and humiliated if you drop out.

Nik Berry [02:57:49] Oh yeah.

John Dehlin [02:57:52] How is that Christ? Like, how is that in any way Christ?

Nik Berry [02:57:54] Like, Exactly. And this isn't necessarily church sponsored, but everybody who was in this program was, was on board with it. They're supporting it, they're pushing it. The missionaries would push it sometimes.

John Dehlin [02:58:06] And so what do you mean it's not church sponsored?

Nik Berry [02:58:10] The 90 day program wasn't necessarily started by the church. It was started by a guy who was in a program and started it. But a lot of it was derived from the 12 steps that the church came out with and just the way that people would talk about themselves in the meetings and stuff like that. It was all just this whole big weird culture of just expecting perfection when you're in this program.

John Dehlin [02:58:33] And again, so I may have missed or lost track. So are you talking about a program different than the church's 12 step program?

Nik Berry [02:58:42] Yeah. Within the church's 12 step program there's a. They don't really push for sponsorship. So a couple guys got together and created sponsorship program that they called the 90 day program.

John Dehlin [02:58:55] Got it. And is that, was that just local or is that nationwide or.

Nik Berry [02:59:00] It was nationwide. I was assigned a guy who lived in Scottsdale who was an hour and a half away, which it's kind of

John Dehlin [02:59:06] an appendage to the church's 12 step program that. Because the church doesn't want that accountability.

Nik Berry [02:59:12] Nope.

John Dehlin [02:59:14] But. But having sponsors is kind of a key part of the Alcoholic Alcoholics Anonymous Anonymous experience.

Nik Berry [02:59:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:59:24] So it sounds like this is like an unofficial official, sort of like add on to the church's 12 step program. And in that culture of what's it called again?

Nik Berry [02:59:37] The 90 day program.

John Dehlin [02:59:38] The 90 day program, there's sponsors, but it's very harsh and shaming.

Nik Berry [02:59:44] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:59:44] But you would say a decent percentage of Mormon men who go through this program participate in this as well.

Nik Berry [02:59:53] Pretty much everyone I met. It was almost a expectation that if you're really serious about it, that you were in it.

John Dehlin [03:00:01] So it's kind of a, it's like unofficially official.

Nik Berry [03:00:05] Yes. And then there were several missionaries that were like, you know, this is not church sponsored, but I, you know, go to. And when it comes out of the mouth of the missionary, you're like, oh, I should do that.

John Dehlin [03:00:15] Oh. So even the leaders of the. These are Mormon proselyting, 19 year old missionaries. These are the church called missionaries. Missionaries over the 12 step program. The Mormon sponsored 12 step program telling you to get in the 90 day program even though it's not officially part of the program.

Dawna Berry [03:00:35] Correct.

John Dehlin [03:00:36] I mean this sounds like a weird legal maneuver. So the church can do the sponsorship thing but have no liability, honestly.

Nik Berry [03:00:42] Exactly. Yeah, it was, it was all very weird. But it was all weird, you know, to begin with because this is something I've never really been part of, never experienced.

John Dehlin [03:00:52] And these nine, this 90 day thing, it has really harsh, perfectionistic, super judgmental kind of tough love, but be super mean and you couldn't cut it. And when are you going to get serious? And if you're not committed and you don't love God and you don't love your wife. Is that the type of rhetoric we're talking about here?

Nik Berry [03:01:12] That's exactly the rhetoric, yes. Yeah, that's exactly what I'd hear from everybody else that I met that had. Was in it or had flunked out of it. And it's Just super shameful, just how it was running. And at the core of all the other anon groups that I know about and have participated in, a sponsor is not supposed to be some random person. Like, it was. There was a time where I was assigned a guy who was going to byu, so he was a state away. He was, you know, at that time, I think, four or five years younger than me. Didn't have a wife, didn't have kids. He didn't. He couldn't relate to me on. On any level. And it was a struggle just to really kind of talk to this guy. But he was supposed to be my sponsor guiding me through it. And he's only been there for 90 days or, you know, thereabouts. So he hardly knew the steps at all, but he was supposed to be the one guiding me through. Even though I've been going longer than him, I was older than him, I had a wife and kids. So it was such an awkward, weird program to be part of. And he ended up relapsing and couldn't be my sponsor anymore. So the person I was building a relationship ended up having to get a new sponsor and start over with somebody else. So it's just very weird, very awkward.

John Dehlin [03:02:35] And what I've noticed, and what I've noticed that's particularly disturbing is that none of these people are trained mental health professionals. Not the missionaries called to lead the group groups, not these sponsor people. So none of this is being done under the supervision of a licensed mental health professional or someone who's trained. And then these. These sponsors. And sometimes these groups can be really deeply abusive, and sometimes they can give horrible recommendations like, you know, like, they can. Like I have. I have someone close to me who's a part of. Who was part of a program with his wife in, like, the Sandy Draper area where, like, the group would. Would tell a wife to kick the husband out. They would. They would. They would put pressure. They would put pressure on the couple to potentially even end the marriage. Taking that, you know, that's something a therapist would never do. A licensed therapist would never, ever. Even if there was abuse, they wouldn't say, leave your husband or leave your wife. But these groups, because they're unsupervised, unsupervised, untrained, no ethical oversight at all, sometimes really super harmful and even extreme advice or counsel would be given that could. That could ruin a marriage potentially.

Dawna Berry [03:03:55] Well, and that's exactly what happened with me. I went to the woman's support group, and that was. The advice given was, well, if he slips up, then make him sleep on the couch and you know, don't let him anywhere near you. And just very punishing in consequence. And you know, it was just, it was hard, it was really hard for me to go to these women's groups. One, because I felt like I wasn't the problem. Why am I in a 12 step? It was a weird 12 step group for women. Like they tried to like change that 12 steps into what we needed to do as the spouse was so weird. And it was weird. And then I would go and these women would just bash on their husbands. And the whole time and I'm like, well, I'm not even getting anything out of this. All I think is how I need to be mad at him. And so it was damaging. Like I did almost leave him again. And that, you know, like, it was the end of 2013, beginning of 2014 where I was just like, well, he keeps on having these problems. It's not going to work and I just deserve better and I'm not going to get to the highest kingdom. And, and so, you know, I, I, I can't be with him anymore. And it was, it was so hard.

The Toll of the Program on Both Partners

John Dehlin [03:05:09] And let me just ask, like, go back to that situation where you as the wife are being told to like, okay, I, and I've heard people in these groups, you know, don't let your husband sleep with you in the bed anymore. Like they tell you, kick your husband out of your bed, no more sex. Right, Right.

Dawna Berry [03:05:29] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:05:29] Shame him. You're evil. You're dirty. Now you have to sleep on the, an air mattress or you have to sleep on the couch. You're in the doghouse.

Dawna Berry [03:05:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:05:38] What does that do? How does that, Nick, you're trying to get better. How does it help you to be kicked out of bed and to be cut off from any sexual intimacy at all? Does that make you healthier? Does that motivate you? Does that make it more or less likely you're going to look at pornography corner, masturbate, you know, in that scenario,

Nik Berry [03:05:59] most of the time, you know, I was on board with it. I was trying to keep my marriage together. And you know, I loved her and I, I wanted to be with her, so I was willing to cooperate. There are a few times that I was just like, no, just because you think something's one way doesn't mean that's the way. And we get in huge fights and she would, you know, relay something she'd gotten from a group or a therapy. And I'm like, that's not Us, though, that's. That's them, that's not us. You don't need to do what they're

Dawna Berry [03:06:30] telling you because I didn't believe anything he was saying. I was then, like, well, then he's obviously doing A, B, C and D. If he was looking at porn, then he was doing all these other things. So are they teach.

John Dehlin [03:06:38] They teach that, like, if you're an addict and you are a liar and you're in denial, and so the person who's doing very normal things, even Mormon bishops are masturbating and looking at porn. Like, we know that. Stake presidents, mission presidents, all of them, probably general authorities, right? It's. It's so pervasive in our culture. It's happening all the time. But when you're subjecting yourself to this sort of vice grip of shame, then, like, the. The whole culture of these groups is that you're a dirty, lying, dishonest scumbag. You can't be trusted. You're worthless. And they're feeding those messages to the. To the wife in this case. And so she thinks you're terrible and horrible and can't be trusted. What does that do to the mental health of the people involved and to the marriage? What does that do?

Dawna Berry [03:07:34] It was so hard. I was on alert all the time, watching his every move. I. Like I said, it was hard for me to be present with my girls in those early years because I was just so focused on this, and it was damaging. It was so damaging for our relationship. We struggled, almost ended it, and because I thought that that was the right thing to do, because obviously I could go find another man that wouldn't look at pornography, that could take me to the celestial kingdom, because that was my goal, to go to the celestial kingdom. And the only way I could do that was to get rid of him and to find another man that would do better.

Nik Berry [03:08:14] And.

Nik Berry [03:08:14] And there was a period where she felt she had to go on antidepressants because it was getting so bad. And for a while, I had a wife who was just vacant. The antidepressants just numbed her so much. And it made me feel even worse because it felt like I was causing that, that I was causing the depression and that, you know, I was even worse of a person because I'm killing my wife. You know, I'm causing her to have suicidal thoughts and be depressed and pushing her to the breaking point just because I can't fix myself, like Joe Schmo, you know, in three pews ahead of me, you know, like, I'M just a horrible person. And it would go through these cycles where I would be fine, you know, I'd be doing great, I'd be moving along the steps, I'd be meeting with my sponsor. And then something would make me think, a provocative thought. And it just became this infection in my mind. And it didn't even have to be anything. There was, like, ads on Circle K for people going to the lake because I was suppressing my sexuality so much that just seeing pictures of, like, people

Dawna Berry [03:09:26] in bikinis, anything which regret.

Nik Berry [03:09:28] Yeah, just. I was trying to suppress this so much that anything would set me off. And it became compulsory. And then I, you know, would have to do the whole process again where I confess to the bishop, I confess to her, I go sleep on the couch for a week, a month, you know, however long it takes until she feels comfortable with me being back in the bed. And several times I just kept wondering, I was like, what's the point of continuing on with this? You know, Like, I. I'm being honest. And that's the thing is I. I knew other guys who were just doing it because they wanted to and were lying about it. They weren't getting punished, but I was, because I was being honest. I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to make myself better. And, yeah, I felt like I was just constantly just getting the hammer down on me because of that.

Dawna Berry [03:10:19] It was very interesting because the. Like I said, there's couples groups as well. And so we went to those a few times and it was just so depressing to see the guys just not even be present. And the wives, we'd all be sitting next to them sobbing and. And terrified that here we are. But the men were never present. And it was just so sad.

John Dehlin [03:10:41] What was that about?

Dawna Berry [03:10:42] It was just. It was like a couple's group working through the job.

John Dehlin [03:10:46] Why were the men. Why do you. Why do you guess? The men were not present because of

Dawna Berry [03:10:51] the shame they felt. Shame that they were having to sit there and that their wives brought them there and they were doing what they could to save their marriage, I'm assuming. But. But, yeah, they were just not even present. It was just shame.

Nik Berry [03:11:04] Like, it was clear from the way their demeanor and the way that they were. They're sharing that they weren't there because they wanted to be.

Nik Berry [03:11:11] They were there because they had to be.

Nik Berry [03:11:13] It was that or get a divorce.

Dawna Berry [03:11:15] Sad. It was so sad.

John Dehlin [03:11:18] And. And mo. Even most importantly, does it work? Did it. Did these groups help you, Nick? Did they make it better? Did they help you change your behavior. Was it effective in any way?

Nik Berry [03:11:32] It helped for a while because it was something new and it was something different that I could cling to. And the more I felt like I wanted to go back to the addiction, the more I go to that instead. So I was calling my sponsor a lot. I was trying to do this and trying to do that involved in the program. I was trying to build relationships with people in the program because I figure if I could be friends with these other people and have talks with them, that we could talk ourselves out of it. But it was very clear that when I would go to these 12 steps groups that these, a lot of these guys were just there because they had to be. Their bishop told them to be, their wife told them to be. Everybody would show up and just immediately just bolt. Nobody wanted to be there to make

Dawna Berry [03:12:12] friends, make relationships, because the opposite of addiction is connection. And that wasn't there.

Nik Berry [03:12:18] There's a great TED Talk about that, about how people come out of the hospital for months having been given essentially medical heroin and yet they don't turn into addicts. And you know, there's a big debate about it, but it's true. When I was having connections with these people and when I felt like I wasn't alone and when I felt like I was working towards something better, like it wasn't something that I needed, but when I was alone, when I was depressed, when I was struggling, my brain had built those pathways to go right back to that coping mechanism. And so it was just something that I would compulsively do. And the more I fought it, the worse it became.

Dawna Berry [03:12:59] And there wasn't the connection in the church's 12 step. It wasn't until we found the next program. And that's where he found the connection. But the church's 12 step program was go in there, check off a box, and let's get out. No connection.

John Dehlin [03:13:14] Kind of like home teaching, kind of like church, Boy Scouts, right?

Dawna Berry [03:13:18] Even just Sunday, go to church three

John Dehlin [03:13:20] hours and go home checking the boxes. I'm going to bring in some comments from, from some of our listeners. Akeem writes, the shame is the reason why it doesn't work. If you don't feel accepted for the way you are, you can't go on and move beyond your current state. You stay bound to it. That's, that's, that's a good comment. Akeem Truth, Truth Life seeker writes, My 12 step program told me that I should voluntarily separate myself from my wife and kids for six months with no contact If I masturbated. Think about that.

Dawna Berry [03:13:54] I knew wives like that that went through that either their husbands voluntarily left or they forced their husbands to leave and have that no contact for six months. I know women.

John Dehlin [03:14:06] This is like, this should be illegal. Like groups or coaches that are telling husbands they're not worthy to be with or why, you know, telling husbands or wives that they're not worthy to be with their husbands and wives that they need to separate from the kids so the kids don't have a parent, one of their parents in the home and they need to have the extra expense of go living somewhere else and all that shame. That should be illegal. That should. Someone should be prosecuted and put in jail for, for breaking up a family that way and adding that much stress smudge. But, and it's not, this isn't just like isolated incidents. This is happening all in all up and down the Wasatch front. It's happening in Arizona, in Boise, it's happening all around the U.S. i don't know about internationally, but like that stress that's being introduced to the marriage and to the children and to the family is, is heinous and it should be

Nik Berry [03:15:03] illegal and it's perpetuating a horrible cycle. I mean, I, I, I've seen news reports about the fact that the highest pornography use is in Utah and that that makes sense because it's such a shame culture built around it that just feeds in itself and it just keeps the user going.

John Dehlin [03:15:25] Absolutely. So Oil Stories, and I think she actually served as one of these missionaries. She writes all of this is suddenly reminding me of the member custodian program. The LDS Church is too cheap despite having over 120 billion in the pocket to make sure 12 step program actually has professionals running it. So Oil Stories is saying this is a great use of 120 billion plus dollars in reserves. Why couldn't the church invest a little bit in a legit program that has professionals running it so that marriages and lives don't get wrecked?

Dawna Berry [03:16:04] Yes.

Nik Berry [03:16:04] And it was very clear that those missionaries didn't even want to be there. That they felt like they were dealing with lesser people. You know, they, it's a calling.

John Dehlin [03:16:13] Right?

Nik Berry [03:16:14] Leper colony, you know, and it still bugs me to this day the fact that there was this, this, this couple that was serving in an ARP group.

Dawna Berry [03:16:25] Yeah. Because we also went to those too. Like I was trying to be a good wife. So we also went to like the regular addiction group from the church together because you both men and women could

Nik Berry [03:16:34] go there together and this particular program, it started out where they would go around and they would introduce themselves by first name and their addiction. And if you're not comfortable saying, you're just saying, I'm an addict.

John Dehlin [03:16:45] Hi, everyone. I'm John. I'm an addict. Right?

Dawna Berry [03:16:47] Yeah.

Nik Berry [03:16:48] So, you know, hi, I'm Nick. I'm an addict. And hi, I'm Susie. I'm an alcoholic.

Nik Berry [03:16:52] I am.

Nik Berry [03:16:53] Whatever. And they go around the room and, you know, gambling, you know, legitimate addictions, people that wanted to be better. And then it got to the missionary couple. And for some reason, this guy felt he had to make a joke in that moment every time. And he'd say, hi, I'm Elder. What's this? I'm addicted to being addicted. Oh, it bugged me so much. I'm like, why are you making fun of these people? These people are hurting. And you're, you're. You're mocking it.

John Dehlin [03:17:22] Why?

Nik Berry [03:17:22] What do you get out of this?

John Dehlin [03:17:24] Yeah. And by the way, like, the porn kills love group or the, you know, there are these groups that really do say that the looking at pornography or masturbating is the exact same neurological process as being addicted to cocaine or meth or heroin. And as a psychologist, you know, sorry, as a, As a. As someone with the PhD in psychology, it's not at all the same. It is not the same. Like, that's like saying somebody who drinks, eats food three times a day is an. A food addict. Like, the neural pathways, the neurological processes for needing some sort of sexual release on some sort of regular basis, and the use of images sometimes as a way to facilitate that, and is in no way comparable to the chemical processes involved in drug or alcohol addiction. They're not even comparable. So it's damaging to make them comparable. And it's comparable to take something so natural and healthy, which is finding some sort of regular sexual release and pathologizing it and putting on the level of a drug or an alcohol addiction, it's just, it's in no way the same thing. And it's dishonest, unhelpful, and harmful to put them on the same level.

Dawna Berry [03:18:45] Abs that's. That was one of the most harmful parts of it all, was just the trying to compare it and make it so equal to something that isn't.

Nik Berry [03:18:54] And, and on that same point, like, there are legitimate sex addicts, I believe, because I've been going to SA groups for a number of years, and these are people who legitimately need to be there. They need that in their lives. But the way that the church Just kind of bundles in everybody who looks at porn on a semi regular basis.

Dawna Berry [03:19:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:14] Like a lot of these guys will go three or they'll go three or four weeks without masturbating and a lot of them are cut off from any sex with their wife at all. So any of you out there triangle a month with no sexual activity as an adult and you're not allowed to masturbate and your, your spouse isn't having sex with you because she's been told you're evil. That's you know. And so these, some of these men are calling themselves addict addicts when they, they might have an orgasm once a month. Right?

Dawna Berry [03:19:43] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:44] That's not an addiction on any level.

Nik Berry [03:19:46] No. There's been many doctors who've written books about it that, that support that, that are psychologists and they, they've dealt into the whole neurological pathways that are built with it and pretty much everything, every single thing I've read on it is that pornography is not out there. It's when you go much, much further and dealing with all this kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [03:20:12] Right. So comments Justin writes unfortunately not even the trained church services or healthy LDS Family Services or a lot of therapists that bishops will refer to were awful experiences and just reinforced everything I was hearing at church. So a lot of the therapists and counselors, whether or not LDS Family Services is still around, a lot of the therapists that are the Mormon believing therapists that bishops are comfortable referring to do not treat this in an ethical way. They treat it in a religious way and they do more harm than good. Is that your guys experience as well?

Dawna Berry [03:20:48] Yes. Yep.

Nik Berry [03:20:50] Well I think you've actually been to one of those therapists, haven't you?

Dawna Berry [03:20:54] When he got sent home from his mission the first time, my bishop referred me to his brother and who's a therapist. I don't know if he was Family services or not but it was, it was a just. I went to two sessions with him to try to get therapy from this and it was just shame ridden. I had to read the Miracle Forgiveness. I you know all that awfulness and I didn't. I just went back to his office the third time and dropped off the book and a different book but I dropped off his book. I was borrowing and, and left. I couldn't go back. It was just so much shame and guilt. So that was my only experience with, with an LDS therapist later. And that's what we're going to go into is, is what happens next.

John Dehlin [03:21:38] Okay. So just a couple other thoughts. Wendy says increased shame is like pouring gasoline on a fire when it's being told it is the solution. All these groups that amp up the shame are just. They're making it worse. Right?

Dawna Berry [03:21:50] Y.

John Dehlin [03:21:53] Let's see. Jonathan writes, my dad was a great doctor, but he struggled with getting close to us. He went to a Mormon therapist and he told my dad to withhold love and attention to me and my brothers for leaving the church. He didn't speak to us for a year. We never recovered. In the end, he knew he was wrong, but we never reconciled. And my dad had a massive stroke and died. What if that untrained Mormon therapist had told him something else? So that's not specifically about porn and shame and masturbation, but it's about how unprofessional some of these Mormon trained therapists can be. Oil stories writes, we're all doing open heart surgery on each other not knowing what the heck we're doing. Oh, well, there's another cadaver if you mess this one up. And that's true. This isn't just drama. Lives and families and marriages are at stake. And this is all just super serious. Okay, so Donna, why don't you take us to what's next in your story? And where did you guys go from these awful, terrible 12 step programs the church was recommending?

Crisis Point and Finding Professional Therapy

Dawna Berry [03:22:59] Well, you would think that maybe the church might make me feel better about it. I actually became heavily suicidal and. And I didn't know who to talk to. I didn't know what to do because I thought that if I could just leave, then he, I, I wouldn't be the problem anymore because I still thought that I was the problem, that I wasn't good enough. And. And so I met a friend at a park one day and I was too ashamed to say pornography. So I like, whispered while our kids were playing, and I was like, have you ever heard of the P word? And I'm so thankful for her because she pointed me in the direction of a therapist, an actual therapist who could help me. Now that is where a lot of things changed for me. That started February of 2014. And I went to therapy. I had individual therapy, I had group therapy, and then we also had couples therapy. And Nick did some of his own therapy there too. But to get out, she helped me to heal from the damages of what the church had put into us with the 12 step program and all the shame and all the guilt. I had a ton of anger. I had so much anger towards him. And pornography. And I was sad and depressed and she was the one that was Able to help me get out. And I would have never found her had I not asked that friend at the park. I'm just so thankful for her pointing me in the right direction. And with that, I don't remember how he found out about it. I think it might have been a friend from therapy introduced me to her sister who her husband has, was then going to some SA groups or SAA, one of the two. A non church affiliated, a non denominational 12 step program. And then Nick started to go to that. So I was doing therapy. I stopped going to the couples therapy because it was just so damaging. Everything that you said. I mean, I don't even know how you know this stuff, John, but yeah, everything you said to. To make him sleep on the couch, to, you know, maybe he needs to go stay with his parents for six months. We, I mean, I thought about that, like what would be the logistics because we couldn't afford a new place. But then he'd have to go stay with his parents. And we already know what happened last time that he got in trouble with his tail between his legs when he went to his parents. So I didn't want to put him through that again. So yes, all of that stuff was happening. So I had to stop going. I had to stop going to those spousal groups and. And start to find help and, and to start healing. And so I started to go to therapy. He started to go to SA groups.

Nik Berry [03:26:03] She said couples therapy. She meant the, the couples like groups that like the church sponsored. Right, because we went to couples therapy with the. The therapist.

Dawna Berry [03:26:12] Yeah, no, we did.

John Dehlin [03:26:13] Couple. Yeah.

Dawna Berry [03:26:13] With a therapist. That's what I was saying earlier. I was talking about the couples passage couples addiction group.

Nik Berry [03:26:19] Just want to clarify that point, that couples therapy was very beneficial for us with an actual therapist. But the couple's groups.

Dawna Berry [03:26:25] Yeah, with the church's program.

Nik Berry [03:26:27] Not good.

Dawna Berry [03:26:28] No. And so that's when I started to find things. And the interesting thing through all of this was my therapist, she. Because I had so much anger and I was just not able to get past it. One way that she helped me to get through it was to write letters. And so I would write letters to him in the back of a notebook he's never. He's never seen before and he will never see. And I just wrote out all my anger. Wrote it, wrote it, wrote it, all of it. I was just pouring it into the letter. And she said, I want you to write four letters. I want you to write a letter of anger. I want you to write a letter of Sadness, a letter of acceptance and then a letter of appreciation. Like, I don't know how I'm ever going to accept and appreciate this. I think you're off your rocker. And she's like, no, just, just go with me on this. You might go between anger and sadness and write many letters of both, back and forth, back and forth. But stay with me. And, and so that's what I did. I, and we can talk more about those letters later. But I went through therapy, worked on those letters, worked on healing and, and he went to the groups.

Nik Berry [03:27:46] I, I started also seeing really quick Donna.

John Dehlin [03:27:49] So, so number one, the most important thing you said is finding a licensed therapist who is a specialist and who knows what they're doing. And unfortunately, they probably need to be. It's probably important that they're not Mormon, unfortunately, or that they are really well trained in this because. Go ahead. Because like, what if, how do you know if you have a good therapist? So like, let's say, let's say you're sitting in front of a good therapist, a trained therapist, and you're like, my husband's terrible. My husband looks at porn. He's a cheater. I want to kick him out. I've kicked him out. What's a good therapist going to say that's different from the way the church or these 12 step programs handle this sort of thing? How do you know when you're dealing with a healthy, effective therapist? What do they say?

Dawna Berry [03:28:45] You know, and the interesting thing was that she was Mormon, temple going very, you know, but it was that church was never brought into the therapy room ever, ever. Scripture was never used, that sort of thing. So I felt like I could trust her because I was still very active. But just what, what made me feel like she is a, was a good therapist was just that she could validate me and she could help walk me through the pain. She didn't disregard my pain. She didn't, you know, shut me down. There was one thing that was said at one point was just that men don't need sex. And unfortunately I kind of did run with that, but it didn't feel right to me. But that was the only thing out of all my years with her, her as my therapist that I, you know, scratch my head on. But other than that, I, I don't, I don't know how to answer, I guess, per se if there was a good therapist or not, but just that I felt comfortable sharing these deep, dark moments with her. And she didn't shut me out. She didn't make it Sound too easy. Like she sat with me in those moments and helps guide me through those moments. And she still valued my husband like I valued him. Like, she still, she still knew that he was important to me. She didn't just say, kick him out, da da, da, he doesn't deserve you. Like, like that's not what she did. That wasn't her rhetoric. So, but she, but she, like I was trained as a licensed marriage and family therapist. Sex addiction, those type of things. So that's why I went to her. And, and the story just gets better.

Nik Berry [03:30:33] And she didn't have like a scripted agenda of this is how a woman is supposed to be. This is how a good LDS woman is supposed to be. She listened to her and address what she was talking about and never try to be like, well, that's not how you're supposed to think. You're supposed to think this way unless it was something clearly wrong, like you wanted to commit suicide or something like that. But it's not like, no, you're supposed to always support your husband.

Dawna Berry [03:30:58] No, it was definitely life changing. And going to see that therapist was what helped to change our marriage and to save it. Because that was not what I was getting at. The 12 step groups.

John Dehlin [03:31:10] Yeah, a licensed, A certified sex therapist is a great. Because they are taught about sexuality and healthy sexuality and they're taught about this idea that porn addiction really isn't a thing. There are people that compulsively look at porn or compulsively act out with sex. I'm not saying that those people don't exist, but what the Mormon Church causes, what the Mormon Church calls porn addiction does not exist. It literally doesn't exist. Yes, it's just healthy men and women who occasionally need some type of sexual release. And so sometimes they choose to do that through masturbation. Sometimes looking at images helps them. It's not an addiction. It's not even a sin. It's not a problem. And a licensed, a competent mental health professional and certainly a licensed sex therapist is going to be able to understand that. And anybody who treats just normal sexual behaviors as an addiction, it's, it's kind of malpractice. It's completely irresponsible. So, so, so, Donna, just having someone listen to you helped you start treating Nick better. What, what were the things that turned you around in terms of how you were thinking about Nick and how you were treating Nick?

Healing Through Therapy and Reframing Shame

Dawna Berry [03:32:35] It was, it was a journey through therapy. That's where I was actually able to view my rape as a rape and to see what it was and to stop owning that and carrying the burden, which then also enhanced our sex life, because I was able to remove that and I was able to be present. Then it led to.

John Dehlin [03:33:04] Let me just be clear about that. You had unresolved trauma.

Dawna Berry [03:33:08] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:33:09] And a lot of. I'm guessing a lot of the spouses, and I'll say wives in this case, who are most traumatized by their spouse's pornography use, sometimes they have unresolved trauma in their own lives. And if you don't get treated for a rape or an assault or sexual abuse by a parent, that can really amplify the negativity in the relationship between you and your spouse. And so you seeking treatment for your past assault or rape is going to help heal you so that then you can show up better with intimacy in your marriage, which is going to be part of the solution. Sorry, I just had to repeat that.

Dawna Berry [03:33:54] No, absolutely. That's absolutely. One of the first steps that led us into the. The right direction was then I could then see him as my husband and not as my abuser over and over and over again. And so. And then also that my therapist also helped me to. To separate Nick into two people. There was the person that was acting out in shame and looking at pornography, that was stuck in a cycle that was placed on him at the church. But then there was also my husband. My husband that loved me, that took care of me, that treated me so well and treated our kids so well. And so by. Instead of always just seeing him as an addict that was never going to get anywhere, that God could never forgive. Side note, I know that there are some LDS people that might be listening to this. Even my mother might be listening to this. And I know that she would say that the atonement is there and that Jesus will heal everything. And that's what the atonement is for. Until you've lived in this, that isn't exactly what is told to you. They might tell you that to keep you going. But underlying it's like, well, you still did this and pounding on and on and on. So, yes, I understand that some might believe in the atonement, but that's not what's taught in these. And so I was able to separate my husband into two beings. Instead of being one, he was two. And I was able to forgive and work through this person that was the addict. And that. And I say addict like this. In that moment, he was the addict, because that was the rhetoric I had. And then I was able to see my husband and I was able to differentiate the two of them, which was able to bring healing because I was able to separate them because. Because it's true. When he. When he was looking at pornography, he wasn't always present. And. But. But he was still my husband, and he still loved me. It was a very weird thing to go through, but also super healing in the process. And so I went through that. And then the. The part that really started to make me forgive him. And whatever your question was, I cannot remember exactly what the wording was that you use, but how to view it differently? Is that what the question was, or

John Dehlin [03:36:17] how does it view him differently?

Dawna Berry [03:36:23] It was me starting to question the church. I had questions. What makes me better than Nick? Why, you know, why would anybody else? I mean, if I look outside my window right now, there's five other houses I can see, and all of them. I don't know how many of them are Mormon, if any at all. So what makes me better than any of them? Why would I get to go to some high part of heaven and they wouldn't be able to go to heaven? So I started having some questions with the church and with God, and I started to just ask these questions, and it wasn't feeling right to me. The November 15th policy, you know, why. Why should they get to have any say on who gets baptized? Just because. Because their parents, you know, have a different sexual orientation than the church would like. And so all of these questions just started to, like. I started to pull back from who I used to be, and I started to say, what are you doing, Donna? Like, why are you thinking like that? Like, you are no better than anybody else. That car driving on the road next to me, they also get to go to heaven because guess what? Jesus died for him. Like, if that's. If that's what you want to believe, that Jesus died for him, why. Why wouldn't he be able to go? Because he'd have to be Mormon to go. I just was so confused, and I started questioning, and it all just blew up. And by doing so, I then stopped being a judgy. Judgy Mormon and let Christ do the judging, right? And let him do all of the thinking and the fixing and the solving and the knowing how to. And I just became Donna, and I just became his wife. And I remember there was one time, because he would. He would come to me, you know, and I have to confess some things, and. And it was hard for years. It was really hard. We had to make boundaries. We couldn't talk about it in the room. In our bedroom, because that's our sacred spot, you know? So I had to be in the office. And so he. He'd be like, donna, can I talk to you in the office? I was like, yep, okay, I know what this is. And I would get so upset all those years, but now it was changing. And I remember the first time he came and he told something, and my reaction was different. And I said, okay, is there anything else? And he's like, no, that was it. I was like, okay, do you know that I still love you? And he just sat there, and it was a moment that I saw things

John Dehlin [03:38:57] changing

Dawna Berry [03:39:00] because I didn't view him as a terrible person. And it didn't matter.

Nik Berry [03:39:07] Like.

Dawna Berry [03:39:07] And I don't want to be. I don't want to make it sound, like, trivial, but it didn't matter anymore. Like, it was. It was. It was no longer my responsibility to shame him. It was no longer my responsibility to do that to him. My responsibility was just to love him. And that was. That was it. And so my journey continues out of the church, and here we are.

John Dehlin [03:39:37] No, that's beautiful. So, Nick, how is that for you? Instead of having her get ragey and mad and angry and want to kick you out or yell at you, what was that like for you to have her response be I love you?

Nik Berry [03:39:52] It was startling, to be honest, because I had become used to, all right, it's, you know, get yelled at time. And, you know, there were times where I would just try to hide it as best I could. But eventually, I just. I knew she's gonna just find out because I would always feel guilty, and she could almost, like, sense me, and I didn't want to carry that around with me. And so I would, you know, like she said, we go to a place, and I'd tell her, and it became just a, you know, always I'd sit there and just take it.

Dawna Berry [03:40:25] It was not healthy, you know, so damaging. And that's where I am. Sorry. Yeah.

Nik Berry [03:40:30] And so I just take it and take my licks and, you know, just feel crappy that I did it, but happy that, you know, we. It's not on my shoulders anymore. And then when that happened and she didn't react that way, and it was just from a place of love instead of shame, I was just shocked. I was like, wow, this. This is how it can be. And I felt like we were at such a better place in our marriage immediately that she was seeing me for who I was instead of who she was expecting me to be and constantly berating Me for not being that person. And the shame had just lifted off of me. And I knew that I didn't have to fear her and fear my actions. And it again, like when I first started going to ARP programs, it stopped the shame cycle. I wasn't going to that, you know, to my coping mechanisms anymore. I started going to her more because I felt like I could trust her, that when I would tell her something that I wouldn't get the. Why aren't you being the thing that you're supposed to be? This, you know, Peter Priesthood thing that I had built up in my imagination,

Dawna Berry [03:41:54] the thing I wrote down on my young woman's list of all the things and the qualities that I want in a husband. He wasn't meeting those.

Nik Berry [03:42:00] Yeah.

Dawna Berry [03:42:01] And now I removed that list.

Nik Berry [03:42:02] And she, she was loving me for me and at the place I was, which allowed me to. To finally start crawling my way out of this, this spiral that I've dug myself into for years. And it enhanced every aspect of our marriage with. We started talking about things that we could never really talk about because I didn't feel like I could trust my inner, deeper, darkest, most secrets with her. Even after being married for seven, eight years, there were things about me she still didn't know because I felt like if she did know, then that would be it. Because I felt like we were always on a razor thin edge of she's just gonna fall over the edge and just leave me. But I felt like I could talk to her about my past finally and try to relate a little bit what I was dealing with. And when I started doing that and getting digging deeper to not just the symptom of wanting to go to my compulsions, going to my coping mechanisms, but what was actually causing started to just heal. I could heal and we could talk about the traumas and the stresses and everything we were going with. And we grew as a couple. So much more than we, I thought could ever be possible. After eight years, I'm finally getting to know my wife. So it's been amazing.

John Dehlin [03:43:29] Yeah. And you know, we're getting a lot of, a lot of beautiful reactions from our listeners. Knight Rider says, nick, that was powerful. Moon Man, 55 writes, you guys did the hard work. Amazing. Let's see. Juliet's day two says, my heart so beautiful and full of love. Alyssa writes, so many couples need to hear this. Oil stories writes from a place of love instead of shame. Reminds her of people don't know how much. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Beautiful thoughts, Nick. Knight Rider says you two are awesome. And I'm just gonna say amen. I, I, I, I had an almost identical experience with, with Margi. I'm one of those weird guys. I never masturbated before I was married. Not even on my mission. Not once, Never. But then after I got married and after we had our first kid and I would sometimes I started and I went, I don't know, 10, 15 years and did that privately. Felt awful, felt dirty, felt terrible and at a really low port in our marriage. I wanted out of the marriage and I wanted to undermine it. And so I just figured I'm going to undermine it with the truth. What I'm going to do is I'm going to tell Margi that I sometimes masturbate and look at images and she'll be so sad and angry at me that she'll kick me out. And then I can get out of the marriage because I'm not happy in the marriage. And what was just so mind blowing is almost an identical experience. I told Margi that I sometimes looked at porn and masturbated defiantly. She cried, but then she said, I love you anyway and it's okay. And, and you know, if you do that, I'm not going anywhere. I don't judge you. And she did say, hey, but let's talk about it. If there are ways we can have a better sex life or if there's a way that, that I can meet your needs more, I would love to just work on having a better levels of intimacy. But I, I love you no matter what and I'm not going anywhere. And what was so mind blowing for me is that I had tried for years and years and years. You know, I wasn't looking all the time. I wasn't even looking every week. It would be something that would come and go, it would be occasional. I do it for a little bit and then stop for a long time, but, but I was never able to like, stop, stop. And what was mind blowing to me is as soon as Margi said, I love you, I don't care, I love you anyway. From then on, you could just see my frequency just drop. And I just, the levels of desire or the pull or the drive or the obsession went from high to almost never. And it's never really come back. And once I was able to be super vulnerable with Margi and tell her my deepest, darkest secret and she loved me anyway, we were able to start building levels of emotional intimacy that we had never had. Before. And from that Low Point in 2011 to today in 2020, we've had nine years of just this amazing ascent into a better and a better and a better and a better and a healthier marriage. And what I'm just surprised at is how much my messed up thinking around sex and shame and pornography just almost disappeared once I was able to start having emotional, healthy, emotional intimacy with my wife. It's been like. It's the closest thing I've experienced to magic in a relationship. And it's all been by doing the opposite of what the church taught of thinking about things in an opposite way. And I hate to. And I'll just bring this point up, too. I'm not saying the cure to this problem is to leave the church, but something you said, Donna, was really powerful for so many people. Whether it's obsessive compulsive disorder, scrupulosity, compulsive pornography viewing, the answer is to lose your faith in the church only because it is the church's toxic messages about the high stakes about sex, sex indiscretion, being next to murder, deeply sinful, evil addiction, all of that is toxic and damaging and makes the problem worse. And if you can find your way to just stop believing in any of that, all the high stakes goes away, all the shame goes away. And ironically, you find yourself thinking about and doing the toxic behavior behaviors less because you're no longer believing all these toxic messages about shame and about sexuality. Now, that's my experience. Shaking your head, nodding your head.

Building a Healthier Relationship and Leaving the Church

Dawna Berry [03:48:41] I feel like I'm just a bobblehead over here while you're talking. Yes, yes. You know, and. And whoever made that comment earlier about doing the work, I'm not gonna say that the work was easy. I'm not saying that this happened overnight. I went to a therapy session. It was fixed. No, this was a long time coming. This was another. Let's see. I started therapy February 2014. Then it probably wasn't for another two years, two and a half years before I was able to say that it was hard. And while we were in the work, there were many times that I would fight with myself. Let's just go back. I. I know that life back there. I know that. But I had come so far. I couldn't go back through that again. And so I knew the only way to get through it was just to keep going forward. And it was hard. I am not saying that it was easy, and I'm not saying. And I don't want to undermine or make any women feel less it wasn't that I was like, you. Yay, he looked at porn. No, it still hurt a little bit. But I still had to tell him how much I loved him, because that was the truth. And so it was work on both of our parts. We showed up every day and we showed up and we did the damn work and we got here and that's where we are. And it was not easy. So it wasn't the church's 12 step program that saved us, that nearly ruined us because I held him at such a high standard. And I, I would not wish that upon anybody, anybody in the moment. I thought that it was working, but really it was just ticking away at me and, and, and damaging us and knocking us down, and it was not helpful. So that's, that's where we are.

John Dehlin [03:50:41] And, And Nick, from. Did you experience a decrease in desire as your. As, as Donna showed to you unconditional love and acceptance, and as you guys started to build a healthier section, as Donna got healthy with her past trauma and with her own body and her own sexuality, as you guys started to have better. Started having better sexual intimacy and better, more importantly, better emotional intimacy, and as Donna showed to you unconditional love and acceptance, even if you looked at porn, even if you masturbated, what did that do to your desire to view porn?

Nik Berry [03:51:22] It was, it's just like you're saying, where it first was. I mean, we, we had rough patches in our marriage and it was sometimes out of defiance, you know, And I just. I didn't want to be married anymore. Maybe if we're not married anymore, I could just do this because I. We were having such, such always a battle about everything. And when we finally started to really work on ourselves and each other and she came to that perspective of love instead of anger, because I, I felt the anger. She said she just had so much anger for me and my addiction that I felt it. It was, she was, wasn't. I don't know if she's trying to hide it, but she wasn't doing a good job. I just felt always like my wife was so angry at me, and so I, I didn't want to be part of it. And then when it's. It did that complete turn. You know, not overnight again, but each time I would talk to her and it would be less of a shock and anger from her. And then eventually she just, okay, I still love you. That it just started to go away. It had been very deeply embedded in my brain to where that was a thing that my brain Goes to for its, you know, coping mechanisms. The same with, with food and with other things, but it's not like it was before, where immediately when my boss was getting on my back, you know, pull up my phone and start doing things, because that's what I trained my

Nik Berry [03:52:53] brain to go to and stuff like that.

Nik Berry [03:52:56] So I actually much healthier now that I'm working on myself and that we're working on each other, that I sit in it. And that's the best thing to do, honestly, sometimes to just sit in it and figure out what is causing all this pain and stress so that you can actually work on getting better at it. And that came from years of therapy and doing the steps the correct way and really working on a committed relationship with her to where I am working on myself instead of just jumping right to the thing that's supposed to make me happy, but in reality was just making things so much worse. Not just for our relationship, but for me.

Dawna Berry [03:53:37] Can you imagine that? Like, he's actually working on this stuff and we're no longer part of the church's 12 step program, which is what they kind of were going for. Maybe like, it's just, it's so different now. Life is so different.

John Dehlin [03:53:52] It's so beautiful. And I just want to add something that people really struggle with is they have it in their minds. The goal is never masturbating again and never looking important again. And I'm just going to tell you, as a psychology PhD, as someone who's dealt for 10, 20 years with couples in this problem, the worst thing you can do is have a goal that says they'll never masturbate again and never look at porn. Even if you hate, even if you believe, even if you believe that porn and masturbation are evil, it is still the worst thing you can do to have the goal that they never look at porn and never masturbate. Because that is literally going to increase the likelihood that they're going to look at porn and masturbate. So the best thing you can do is never set that at a goal set as your goal. Unconditional love and acceptance, unconditional positive regard, improving your sex life, improving your emotional intimacy with each other. And what you'll find is that the desire will go down and the frequency will go down. And if you don't think that a reduction in behavior is an improvement in any other thing, eating, you know, eating too much, drinking too much, whatever the thing is, wouldn't you want a decrease in consumption of alcohol if alcohol was a problem, wouldn't you want a decrease in overeating if eating was a problem? And what I'm telling you is if you can show, if you can take this leap of showing unconditional love, showing unconditional trust, getting yourselves both well, learning that better sexual intimacy, learning how to develop better emotional intimacy, you will see significant decreases, if not an elimination in the bad behavior, you'll see significant decreases. And that should be something that we all want. That shouldn't just be something that, you know, that should be something that we all want is just significant reductions in the problematic behavior. And you're not going to get to that by having a zero tolerance abstinence mindset. You're going to have. You're going to get to a significant reduction by having unconditional love, by having great intimacy and connection, by getting rid of the shame, and by showing love. That's my view.

Nik Berry [03:56:14] And the reason it doesn't work is because you're just dealing with a symptom of the actual problem. For, for most people, it's shame. For a lot of people, it's trauma. And it's also just built in unhealthy coping oceans and coping mechanisms that you've just told your brain, this is how I seek the happiness, the dopamine. And so the reason it doesn't work is you're just dealing with the very end product. It's like saying, don't get hives. Well, what do you do when you get hives? You know, you eat something you're allergic to or something like that. You don't just say, don't get hives. You don't. You do the things necessary to prevent it. So in the same way, I had to deal with what was causing the shame. And so I worked on dealing with my traumatic past. I worked on retraining my brain to not immediately go to it, but instead seek out the connection with my partner and with other people and really just get rid of the things in my life that are causing shame. And I ended up following the same path I was for a long time. I don't know how much further you want to go. We're almost.

Dawna Berry [03:57:21] I wanted to say this really quick. The, the things that didn't work for us was the church's 12 step program and our bishop. We had a bishop one time tell me that. And granted, he, he's. He's one of my favorite bishops. So nice. But he just told me that something that works for another couple in the ward is that that the wife is ready to have sex at any Time that the husband needs it so that he doesn't look at pornography. So if he calls you at lunch and needs to have sex at lunch, if he's having thoughts that you need to be ready for him. Now, we never went that route because this guy respects me, and he's like, I'm not doing that. I'm not using you as a tool and an item. That's not going to work. But those methods do not work.

Nik Berry [03:58:09] Yeah, she's the mother of my children. That's. That's a horrible way to think about it.

Dawna Berry [03:58:12] So anybody that's like me, you know, if you still, whatever your ideas are, like, the church's 12 step program doesn't work. And, and having sex and getting married to have sex doesn't work. Like, you have to heal from the inside out and you have to have a connection, because the opposite of addiction is connection.

John Dehlin [03:58:31] And so emotional connection.

Dawna Berry [03:58:33] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:58:33] And again, that's. That's putting the burden on the wife. It's not the wife's job to be sexually available. So the husband will change his behaviors in some way. No, it's it. That's just like the modesty messages and the rape culture. It's not a woman's fault. No matter how she dresses. If a man decides to rape, that's on the man. And if Nick has to learn healthier coping, if Nick has to learn better distress tolerance, whatever, Nick has to learn to heal from things. It's not Donna's job to make herself sexually available. Now, having said that, I think it's also true that increased emotional and sexual. Improved emotional and sexual intimacy will fill our souls and needs in ways to. Where we'll feel less of a desire to look for unhealthy coping. But that's not Donna's job. That's each person's job to get healthy and then to get a healthy relationship between. Between each of you. Yeah, really quick, Donna, there's. One of our listeners is asking, how did you get over looking at porn as cheating? How did you get beyond that? And then she also asks, so is porn okay? Are you basically saying porn is awesome? Is. Are you. Are we all not pro porn porn? We addressed that earlier, Donna. Why don't you go ahead and address that now?

Dawna Berry [04:00:01] How did I get over the idea that it wasn't cheating anymore? It was through. Through therapy to learn that it was not my fault and that it was his own choosing, that I was not in any way connected to it? So, you know, sometimes when spouses cheat, it's because their wife or their husband pissed them off and they want to go find better. They want to go find that connection. They want to go do that with somebody that's going to make them feel better or whatever. And so I was able to separate and realize that's not what he's doing. Like, this is a coping mechanism, a trauma response. And that's. That's. That's where he's going with that. It just took a lot of years for me to just stop owning it. I just kind of had to separate. I didn't want to be involved with the addict over here. I wanted to love my husband. So I was no longer dealing with either one of. With both of them. I chose to deal with my husband and look at him as my husband and to heal my relationship from the addict and to remove myself from that. It was not overnight. It is something that we have still dealt with, that we had still been working on. And it's just been. Every single time, it just gets easier in the sense that I no longer view it as cheating. I no longer view him as doing awful to me. He is still my husband. And that's. It's just practice and repetition and going through it and forgiving him. And just honestly, when he would tell me that, I would sit here and I would kind of build like kind of a wall, kind of a wall to the addict person, right. And I just wouldn't let his stuff come to me. I made him own it, and he held it and he kept it himself. And then I was safe behind this wall where my husband sat with me. And it no longer affected me in that way. Now, is it always easy? Every time that he comes and tells me that, yes, he looked at pornography. We also don't have that kind of relationship where he has to come and confess anymore. So that kind of has made it easier. Sometimes, you know, if I'm not in a good spot, I'd be like, might not feel the best, but it. It lasts for two seconds and then it goes on. Like, I don't.

Nik Berry [04:02:34] I.

Dawna Berry [04:02:35] No long. I chose. I made the choice. Let's just end that there. I made the choice to no longer put myself through that crap of having to look at it as cheating, period. That's what it was, was. I chose to do that. He couldn't do that for me. I chose to do that through my healing. That's what I needed to heal was to not own it and look at it as cheating.

John Dehlin [04:02:58] Yeah. And I'm going to recommend. I'm in a second. Something I heard you kind of say offhand a little bit. In my relationship with Margi, it. It's no longer something that we talk about. It's not. Margi doesn't. It's not Margi's job to be a Catholic priest and hear my confessions. Like, what I do in the bathroom is my business. And I'm not saying, like, because Margi and I have such a great relationship. My desires to masturbate, look at point porn, are very, very low. So I'm not saying that this is like compulsions and extreme behaviors at all. But I'm just saying that we have a relationship now. That that's basically what I do is my business. What Margi does is her business, and we have a great sex life together, and that's it. But this idea of, like having to report it and confess, my suggestion is get rid of that. It's private. It's. It's per. It's like I don't go tell Margi when I blow my nose. I don't tell Margi when I burp. And what I do regarding that stuff, it's. Margi doesn't want to hear it. She doesn't want it. She's not my police officer. And I'm in charge of my sexuality. Margi's in charge of hers. We have agreements about what that means in our marriage, which means faithful to each other in our case. And then all the other stuff is private. And I'm going to say for those of you who are orthodox believing Mormons, it means that this is almost like a non. It's a non issue. Yes, it's a non issue. Because I have almost zero desire to do any of that stuff now because everything's so healthy. Now. That may be different for other couples, but I would just recommend to couples drop this idea of confessing and, and reporting and policing each other's sexuality.

Dawna Berry [04:04:51] And that does not mean that I live in denial. That does not mean I live in denial. It doesn't mean Margi lives in denial. It means that I am choosing what is going to affect me and how I'm going to be affected by it. And we have chosen through communication. We also communicate. Our communication has been like the best we've ever had. And with that we were able to communicate. He doesn't come talk to me. If he views, I might want to ask, might talk about it for a minute, but he doesn't come and say he has to confess. I'm no longer the police. I no longer have to wear that burden. And so I'm going to release it and we have had a better life. It has not been easier, it has not been easy getting, getting here. But it has been better than what we were 10 years ago when hit the fan. Because I think it was two weeks from now. No, it was this week when hit the fan 10 years ago. And so how therapeutic how, how beautiful that we are here to change, try to change something and to share our story and be vulnerable.

Nik Berry [04:06:02] And from the other side of it, when you decide to label them as a cheater on the same level of people who go out and you know, prostitute or you know, another woman at work or something like that, to put it on the same level of that really kind of shuts down any sort of lines of communication and inevitably might end up leading to them doing that because you were just putting a wall between you and them of any sort of discussion that can happen, any sort of communication, any getting past this, this symptom that might exist down to a deeper rooted trauma of why they're even going through in the first place. I mean it may be that, you know, they, they wanted to do it, but it also could be like me in a very similar situation that they're dealing with some severe stress or trauma or you know, deep rooted things from their childhood that, that is their coping mechanism. And when you label them as such, it, it just shuts it down, just immediately pushes them away. And you, you, I don't want to say this but you might as well just end it there if you, if that's all you're going to see them as. When she started to separate me from the addict and see me as me and grow in love of me and realize that there's this other thing that just kind of happens with me that I'm struggling with and working on. Then we had that line of communication opened and, and it grew to the point where we talked about.

John Dehlin [04:07:32] I love it. Couple comments. Really quickly, Oil Stories writes two adults in marriage are exactly that. Two adults. It's amazing how many people think they should change or parent their partner. And Natasha Heler Parker's talked about this that it's not sexy for their, for a marital relationship to be a parent child relationship. It's not healthy, it's not good for romance, it's not good for anything. You don't want a teacher as a spouse, you don't want a boss as a spouse. You don't want a parent as a spouse. You want a lover.

Dawna Berry [04:08:09] That's what I was, I was his mom for a while because that's what the church told them, was that he had to come and confess to me and, and I had to watch him and view his computer and lock the computer and, you know, don't let him have any access. Like I was the mother. It did not make it for a sexy relationship.

John Dehlin [04:08:27] Right? Yep. Knight Rider writes, so basically you stayed in your own lane and decided to be an adult and allow him to be an adult. And she's not, she's not being sarcastic. It's just basically. And. And someone else writes, by the way, that this is Moonman. Moonman 5355 writes, confessing, reporting, and policing is so fostered and reinforced by LDS Church culture. So basically we're all kind of victims in that we learn this from the church and so we repeat it in our private relationships. Right. Danny Wilde writes, as soon as we drop the whole confession thing, our relationship got so much better. And then Jonathan writes, this interview should be required viewing by every engaged couple. And I think that's totally true because it'll make your marriages healthier and happier and it'll save people just so much time and money and effort and energy and pain, let alone depression and anxiety and divorce, let alone the impact on all the kids that have parents that have such a volatile relationship and whose marriages often end unnecessarily. And by the way, Dusty writes something important. He writes, and for the women, they're both victims. Women are victims too. And by the way, not only men masturbate. Not only men look at porn. There are women who masturbate. There are women who look at porn. So all this stuff applies in reverse as well. This is not just a male problem or this is not just a male dynamic. There are women with higher sex drives than men. There are women who have to find ways to, to get their needs met when. When they're not able to in certain situations. And so, you know, we're talking about the, the male female situation. In the past, we've had Mormon Stories listeners on where it was the female with the higher sex drive or was the female with the, the masturbation or, or the porn use. And this is something that knows. No. No gender, so to speak.

Nik Berry [04:10:30] Well, that was a surprise of mine. I went to non church groups that just the SA and saa. I was surprised at how many women were there because I thought this was predominantly a male issue. And it goes both ways. I mean, we both have. We both have it in us that we want to have sex. And any gender can develop that as a coping Mechanism So it's not just a plight of the men.

Dawna Berry [04:10:58] Yeah, I, you know, and I did want to say I forgot one thing when I, when my, when we were pregnant, when I was pregnant with our third child, we found out that he was a boy and our first two were girls. And I can't tell you how hard I cried because all I could think about now, when we were pregnant, this was in the, in the church's 12 step program stuff. And, and when I found out it's a boy, I was like, great, now I'm gonna have to have, I'm gonna have an addict. And he. Is he gonna go rape somebody and is he gonna be terrible to women and cheat on his girlfriend, cheat on his wife? Like I had all these terrible, nasty things that, that don't have to happen. And I remember crying to my friends because I couldn't really cry to him because I, I didn't want my, my son to turn out into an addict and abuse women. But that doesn't have to happen. If we can communicate and talk with our kids and have an open dialogue. Communication is the one thing that we just both agree on is life saving. And if we can just talk to our kids and not shame them and not make them feel like they're terrible beings, you know, with our kids, we're changing that. We are going on a different path. We are going to have a different relationship than what our parents had with us and it's going to be different. And I'm hoping that that will just keep on spreading.

John Dehlin [04:12:27] You're basically saying the cycle stops here, right?

Dawna Berry [04:12:30] Does it? Does, yes. And you know, I left the church four years ago and with that have been able to look at my husband differently, look at other people differently, view God differently, and to not hold all these high standards that are so unattainable. And you know, he was still a member at that time and that, that's part of our story too, is just working through that and. Yeah, well, and then, well then he has eventually left too. And with that he said that even you can go ahead with the shame once you were able to leave.

Nik Berry [04:13:16] Yeah. So once we, once she left, I mean, she tried to have the talks with me and we just gotten, you

Nik Berry [04:13:26] know, we had communication where we wouldn't like really fight about it, but we had some very heated discussions about the church and I was very, just dug in. Even though I knew life outside of the church, but it just. Shame built around it that if I leave then it'll be even harsher of a punishment. So I just wanted to kind of exist in the background. Even though as she left and I stopped feeling shame coming from her then the only shame I really felt coming from, from was the church. And a lot of people on, on Mormon stories talk about how they found this and they found that and, and they were so shocked about the history. I didn't really grow up learning about the history or really, you know, committing to this person or that person. I thought Hinckley was a pretty cool guy from, you know, when I would occasionally listen, you know, on, on the broadcast and stuff like that. But my family wasn't super rare religious so I didn't really get as deeply invested into it until my mission. But the reason that I ended up believing was because I didn't feel Christ. It's supposed to be the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And yet all I felt like it was the Church of Latter Day Saints. I didn't feel like Christ was there. I felt nothing but shame and just a facade. So I didn't feel like I belonged anymore. And that was my next step is to remove, remove the shame coming from the church. And then we did that. It was about October when I really started really contemplating leaving of last year. So it's been almost a year and then we submitted to quit Mormon back in March. And then I'm still going through the process of removing, shaming myself and there's still such a deep rooted thing from all those years of I'm not worthy, my hands are unclean, I'm lesser than that person that I'm still working through on my own. But slowly but surely I'm removing the things that have kept me in such an oppressive bubble of shame where I couldn't see how much better life could be to where. I mean, as she mentioned, we're not living like these. I don't see them as high standards. I see them as impossible standards. We're enjoying life. There were so many hours I wasted on doing ridiculous callings that were just meant to keep me busy and knocking doors and visiting people that clearly didn't want to talk to me on my mission and at home when we go visit inactive people as part of a weird program that my stake started. But I'm no longer part of that cycle of shame. And I feel like I'm living life. I'm not living a checklist that I'm never going to be able to check

Nik Berry [04:16:21] all the boxes off.

Dawna Berry [04:16:22] Now some might be able to stay in the church and be just fine. That's fine. If you can do that. Just remove the shame. The shame is what we have to get rid of. The shame and the guilt and the fear. All of that needs to be removed and really removed. Not just talked about, like how God loves everybody and we're all his children and we'll all blah, blah, blah. Like no, it, like you need to still remove it and not just gloss over it. So removing the shame, it's been a hard work, but we've done that. And it's not, it's. It's a non issue anymore. And I, I feel bad saying that it. Making it sound easy. It wasn't easy. But here we are and it's possible. It's possible. If you put in the work, then you can get there.

John Dehlin [04:17:06] Amen. Amen. So powerful. So I think this, this, this whole your stories, Donna and Nick are going to be healing to so many people. And I think we're going to save some. We're going to save some families, we're going to save some marriages, and we're going to prevent a lot of people from a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering.

Nik Berry [04:17:31] And so my hope with all of this.

Final Reflections and Recommendations for Listeners

John Dehlin [04:17:35] So is, are there any final recommendations or suggestions or just feelings or thoughts that either of you want to share as we kind of, as we finish up?

Dawna Berry [04:17:47] You know, I talked earlier about the letters that I had to write. And it was brought up in a therapy group that I'm going to about journaling and going through the transition of leaving the church and how to manage that. And I remembered those letters, they were way down the bottom of my dresser drawer. And. And so I looked through and boy, was I angry. And I was very sad. And I, you know, like, I just hugged myself and I just loved myself for what I went through back then. And then I've accepted it. And I realized that now at this point, I have a preference. Appreciated it. And I haven't told my therapist yet about that experience, but I am shocked that one day I would appreciate it. And I do. I did. Because it has made our marriage stronger. It was hard to get here, but it has made our marriage stronger. I also learned to think for myself instead of always being told what to do, how to act, how to behave, how to consequence, how I should treat Nick. And so by doing that, it has led me to this more fulfilling life. And so in the end, I joke with him, but I'm like, I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for the hard times that we had because it has made something beautiful. We have this beautiful diamond now. From all the pressures that we went through and the hard work that we did and we didn't give up and we just kept going. So I just have to finish the appreciation letter. I love it.

John Dehlin [04:19:20] That's so beautiful. You wouldn't think it's so counterintuitive. It shouldn't be that you have to lose your faith, leave the church to improve your marriage and to get healthy individually and as a couple someday. It won't be that way. I'm sure it's not that way for everybody. But for as long as. For as long as the church continues to teach toxic messages about sexuality and shame, as long as the church continues to drive wedges between couples, it's going to drive more and more people out such that the only way they're going to find health and healing and happiness is by losing their faith and leaving the church. And it's sad that it has to be that way, but that is the way it is right now. And until the church changes, I know it's going to continue.

Dawna Berry [04:20:09] Yeah.

Nik Berry [04:20:10] And to just kind of talk to anybody out there who is still active, is semi active, is decided to leave whatever it is, and they relate with me on a similar issue. If you haven't yet sought out the therapy for this, find one. Because that was one of the most pivotal things for this is to help deal with the trauma. That gave me not only a line of communication to someone who was willing to work through the trauma with me, but the tools and some. Some techniques in order to. To. To. To deal with it. There's a lot of really interesting things that I would never would have thought on my own. There's two chair, there's. There's emotional releases and stuff like that. That. That really just helped me dig deep and pull out the thing that was really just that thorn that was festering for years. And not only that, but on a personal therapy and couple therapy helped us to learn how to talk to each other where we're not going to fight every single time. Again, there's tools and techniques we learned about the drama triangle and things like that. A therapist will be able to teach you out and you can Google, but we. We learned when we're getting into this weird triangle, this perpetuating cycle of drama and talking to each other that we were able to remove ourselves from that and actually have grounded conversations that weren't getting to such an emotional level that we could just talk and get past any emotion or backseated trauma related to it and do the work to build that part of us and to be able to express our needs, our wants, our desires, our frustrations and all the things that were really the root of all of this. And that has been the thing that has caused healing to move past this thing that the church shames and doesn't do anything about. So that's just my advice. Find a therapist and work with them. And it will get better. It will be hard work, but it will get better.

John Dehlin [04:22:27] Well, Nick and Donna, you guys are, as far as I'm concerned, you guys are modern day heroes, your modern day saviors. You're going to save so many people so much from so much pain. And you're going to save so many children from having to see their parents go through so much pain. And you're going to save many families from having to get separated or divorced because of your vulnerability and your courage. Let's just face it, it's not easy to go on the public Internet and talk about porn and shame and masturbation and regrets and marital strife and all the things that you guys have talked about today. So I love you guys. I'm so grateful for you guys. Your stories are not only inspirational and courageous, but they're healing. And on behalf of all our listeners, I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being so courageous and kind and compassionate and vulnerable and strong, frankly.

Dawna Berry [04:23:27] Thank you.

Nik Berry [04:23:28] Thank you for this opportunity, John. Things only start getting better when we talk about them.

Dawna Berry [04:23:32] Yes, communication is key.

John Dehlin [04:23:34] Amen. All right, well, we love you guys. Thank you, Nick and Donna Berry. I can't thank you guys enough. Love you guys. Thanks to all our listeners today that participated shared their thoughts and feelings. Please continue sharing on Facebook or on YouTube. Your thoughts are these comments can live forever. So everyone please feel free. I did share a couple links. If you go to the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast, there are episodes. It's@mormonfaithcrisis.com There are episodes on masturbation and pornography. There's episodes on how to parent your children after losing your faith. There's episodes on just healthy sexuality, how to talk to your kids about sex. There's great episodes there. I put all the links in YouTube and in Facebook, but go to mormonfaithcrisis.com and you'll find lots of good episodes from me, Natasha Alfred Parker, who's a licensed sex therapist. And for Margi, feel free to reach out to Natasha Alfred Parker. She's a great marriage and family therapist and a sex therapist. Margi and I do coaching as well. We're super busy, but we'll find you the support that you need if we can't support you. So do find a good therapist.

Dawna Berry [04:24:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:24:48] Stay away from the church's 12 step program. Stay away from any therapist that brings religion into the therapist room and find a good professional and you guys will do great.

Dawna Berry [04:25:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:25:00] And stay away from the church's 12 step programs to find healing, especially the 90 day program. Especially the 90 day program. All right, Nick and Donna, love you guys. Thank you so much. Thanks to all our listeners. And if you like this programming, Please go to MormonStories.org Click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor. 10, 50, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. Your donations in the US Are tax deductible and your support will make it so we can continue this programming and we will for as long as you value it. So please donate and support us if you can. All right, everybody, take care. See you guys. See you. Nickodonna.

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