Timing

"Faith also includes trust in God’s timing..."

So many blessings come from consistent, seemingly small, daily efforts over time. One of the most important is daily study of the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Christ.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/introduction?lang=eng

Consistent daily prayer and study of the New Testament can have a similar effect. Learning the truth of one leads to knowing truth of the other. Both testify of our Lord and Savior. When it comes to overcoming temptation, the Book of Mormon contains more raw spiritual power but both can be effective with daily prayer.

Why the Book of Mormon? Because some needs and healing are only available from God. Read daily over time without fail and you will receive the multitude of blessings modern living prophets have promised. Get up earlier if needed or read together during meals. Find a way to make daily essential reading become a habit.

There is a reason that addiction recovery programs which actually work are based on faith in God.

Trying to fill our need for spiritual things and spiritual healing through other sources is something that often leads us to addiction. We are trying to meet spiritual and emotional health needs in ways which do not meet them.

Some childhood traumas, according to mental health professionals, cannot be healed. You can expect to never be normal and to accept it and learn coping strategies which you will use throughout your life. It is kind of like having a spiritual and emotional disability which requires you to compensate for it the same as you would compensate for other special needs. You just need to get used to adjusting to never being emotionally normal and never getting completely past those traumas.

God has a better way. You can be healed and healed completely as if the trauma had never happened. You can be made completely whole. You need to ask, and really mean it, and He will heal you. Sometimes we don't really want to change and we hang on stubbornly to our self-sufficient pride. We want to do this on our own without His help. Sometimes there is part of us that enjoys our unhealthy and dysfunctional ways of coping enough that we aren't really ready yet to give them up so we struggle on in defiance of His willingness to help. God will force no man to heaven. He respects our agency and will not help us against our will. When we finally tire of fighting against His will for us and we ask for help and really mean it, that is when we will be healed. God is the literal father of our spirits. We lived with Him before this life. As our Father, He is willing to help us but only to the extent which we are willing to allow. He hears us and will answer us if we truly and sincerely want His help. Our lives can be spiritually and emotionally easier and better if we accept His help. If we enjoy some part of our dysfunction and we aren't completely ready yet to give it up, He is patiently waiting for us to get tired of struggling and fighting against His will. He wants for us what is best but He also respects our right to choose. We just have to decide what we actually want. If we want to be healed completely and made whole, He will heal us but He will never do this against our will. We have to decide whether to ask and accept His help. We have to decide what we truly want, whether to be healed or whether we actually prefer to struggle. He is our Father and He loves us and wants to help but only if that is also what we want. We have to decide to ask Him and really mean it and then He will heal us. This is what it means to be spiritually reborn. It means allowing God's healing to happen in our lives if that is what we truly want. Whether we are ready to be healed or we prefer to continue being dysfunctional, He will respect our decision. God will force no man to heaven. Agency is part of His gift to us and He respects our right to choose.

There was a very dark time in my life during the years after my divorce. I tried to recover for a long time without going to God for help. He was there for me when I finally let Him. His healing is real.

Eventually, once I was healed and not before, He led me to meet a remarkable woman. I think it was important that I be healed first so I would be able to be emotionally healthy before we met. She is amazing. She is as much a miracle in my life as was my healing. When people see a picture of her or meet her, they take a second look at me with new eyes and their opinion of me increases. She is not merely beautiful in appearance but she is beautiful in every way. She is proof that miracles are real. My great blessing now is to strive to be worthy of such an amazing person. I could not do this without God's help. She is so beautiful and so amazing that I need God's help to even think of being worthy to be with someone like her. Each day with her is a miracle. She is amazing and beautiful beyond words. Incomprehensibly, I think she feels that way about me too. It took many years for me to heal and for me to quit being stubborn about trying to heal on my own. His healing was available as soon as I was ready to let it happen and to finally want to actually accept and allow His help. God needed me to heal first so I would be ready to be with someone like her. Miracles really do happen.

"Faith also includes trust in God’s timing..."

Selfishness

The cause of all divorces is selfishness. If both are willing, two unselfish people can work through difficulties and problems. Communication and honesty only happen to the extent that both parties to the marriage are willing to be unselfish. Root causes for being selfish are often born out of self-preservation. Unresolved childhood trauma can result in dysfunctional behavior while trying to protect oneself from additional harm. Honest communication opens you to being vulnerable.
Here is a link to a website which I found very insightful after my divorce:
https://www.liveabout.com/an-experts-experience-co-parenting-with-a-narcissist-1103119
It is helpful to think of how you would deal with a child. Books on parenting, sadly, can be a great source of information because communicating with someone that has experienced this kind of trauma is similar because they are often stuck at the emotional age where the trauma occurred. If you are not religious, the bad news is that someone who has been wounded this deeply will never be normal and will need to learn coping strategies to use for the rest of their life. They suffer from a permanent emotional disability which will result in the sabotage of any normal healthy relationship as they try to recreate the past dysfunction so they can act it out. They will often be doomed to feel normal only if their current relationship mirrors this past dysfunction. In this case normal to them does not mean being happy, it means they feel at home. If you are not cooperating in their unhealthy dysfunction, they will likely move on to find someone who will. This is not your fault and you cannot fix them. If they choose not to get help, there is nothing you can do. It is up to them.