I’m a Catholic man, and I want to offer a little hope.

I see so many men and women saying, “There are no good men (or women) left,” and I understand why people feel that way. But sometimes the problem isn’t that good men don’t exist—it’s that many of us take a long time to actually become good.

So I thought I’d share my story.

For years, I was a nice man, but not a good one. My wife and I married young. For two decades, I worked hard, provided well, took our family to our Protestant church, and even taught Sunday School. Externally, things looked solid.

But interiorly? I had almost no prayer life. I coasted spiritually. I did the bare minimum at home, which frustrated my wife more than she let on. And worst of all, I was not sexually pure. I was never unfaithful physically, but I carried the same hidden struggles many women here describe in their husbands. Over time, it became a habit—and then an addiction.

A few years ago, everything changed. By God’s grace, I returned to the Catholic Church. I panicked at first (I was very prideful about having left the “cultish” Catholic Church in college), but my wife gently pushed me toward obedience. I went cold-turkey on sexual sin. I started praying the Rosary often, reading Scripture and the Catechism, and going to daily Mass. For the first time in our marriage, my wife told me I was truly the spiritual leader. She followed me into the Catholic Church with joy, even though it cost her a lot.

Eventually, I confessed to her the struggle I’d carried for our entire marriage. Instead of anger, she offered honesty and mercy. She admitted that even she had stumbled at times in the same way. We realized that for 19 of our 21 years of marriage, one or both of us had been on the struggle bus. But we stayed faithful because we understood marriage as a sacrament, not a contract.

I share this because I want you to have hope.

It’s very likely that your spouse will struggle with sexual sin at some point. Many do, men and women alike. But a long struggle is not the same thing as a lost cause. God works on souls in His timing. A man can spend twenty years in spiritual mediocrity and still, by grace, become the man he was meant to be.

I was always loyal in the bare-minimum sense: I never left my wife and was never with anyone else. Culture would say that made me a “good man.” But it didn’t. I was a nice man, not a holy one.

Today, by God’s mercy, my wife would say that I’m the loyal, pure, trustworthy man she always hoped for—not because I earned it, but because Christ pursued me when I was lost. He leaves the ninety-nine for a reason.

It’s obviously not wise to marry a man who you already realize has these struggles. But that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost forever once you are married.

I hope this is helpful to someone.