Hello and welcome to Not So Molly Mormon podcast Minisodes. I'm so happy to be back reading your stories. I've taken a bit of a break from this, but I am going to slowly get to all of your submissions,

and please keep them coming. If you have a story you'd like me to share on the podcast,

please email us at Not So Molly Mormon podcast at gmail.com. We love reading and sharing your stories.

Today's email comes from Carly. Thank you, Carly. I'm just

going to hop right in. Oh, but before I do, I want to say that there is a bit of a trigger warning

for this. There is mention of a lot of sexual things, including sexual assault. So listen with caution if that's a trigger for you.

Mormon men aren't supposed to watch porn. It is forbidden to be aroused by something,

basically anything, except your spouse. When I was at college at BYU, Idaho, I started dating a

returned missionary. Let's call him

Steve for the sake of the story. I thought I had found the entire package. He was faithful in

church. He was elders quorum president. He attended all his meetings. He put God first. Oh,

lucky me. About a year into our relationship, he told me that he

had been struggling with watching pornography. I told him that I would do whatever I could to help

him overcome this. It was around that time that he stopped watching porn. However, he started using me as a filler. Instead of turning to

porn when he was stressed, angry, or upset, he started to kiss me passionately and touch me inappropriately.

He would then become totally distant and act like it was all my fault that he had initiated such a thing.

He yo-yoed my emotions frequently. The physical closeness made me love him more, but made Steve

push away from me. Eventually, Steve raped me. It has taken me a long time to come to terms with that fact. I've talked

myself out of using that word many times. I believed it was my fault because I had sex with him

after that willingly, or because maybe I didn't scream no, or maybe I had been too tempting. But that's what it was, rape. Because we had sex

willingly after that, we both talked to our bishops and agreed it wouldn't happen again.

This, by the way, was humiliating, intrusive, and inappropriate. Never once did the bishop

...