By Abigail Aguilar –
At the time, sustaining a polyamorous marriage seemed like the thing to do to Brianna Dysett.
“I was selfish. I was blind,” she assesses now. “It definitely pushed us apart because we were invested in other people.”
Ultimately, the open marriage brought the death of her marriage. Today Brianna (though she goes mostly by Anna) is a Christian who would never cheat again – openly or secretly.
Anna’s dad was an alcoholic. She suffered sleep paralysis as a child. “They would hold me down,” she says. “There was a lot of trauma and abuse in sleep paralysis. I slept with my mom until I was 12.”
At 14, she stepped back from her childhood Christianity and got involved seriously with a guy, who became her first husband. “I thought Christians were confused and brainwashed,” she says. “I had to go out and do my own thing.”
She fell into psychedelics and New Age practices. “Basically I preached selfishness, that’s what New Age does,” Anna says. “It teaches that if you’re happy, you’re on the right path and have to follow your happiness; if there’s resistance to what you’re doing, then you’re probably going the wrong direction.”
For a couple of years, she struggled to feel connected to her husband. “I wanted something different,” she admits. “I began to think, maybe you can love more than one person at a time. I thought maybe I can have my cake and eat it to.”
She proposed polyamory to her husband, and he agreed.
Ironically, one of the men she dated while still married was the man who became her second husband, Cody. He was in the world too but held to traditional beliefs, so when they married, they stayed exclusive. They had two kids.
Little by little, the spiritual hunger drove her towards God, but she approached God from the perspective of trying to prove he didn’t exist.
“I started doing some of my own research into the resurrection of Christ,” she remembers. “I was like, well if I can disprove that Jesus resurrected, then then I can disprove Christianity. Then I can move on with my life and try to figure out what’s next.”
Then, after years of dormancy, the sleep paralysis hit her again. “It was so bizarre because while I was doing my own selfish thing, I hadn’t had any sort of sleep paralysis,” she explains. “All of a sudden when I’m considering Jesus, it pops back up. I had a really rough three days of sleep paralysis.
“I knew that I had pissed whatever-it-is off,” she remarks. “I could tell they were super angry with me. After the third night of waking up in puddles of sweat and panicking, I was like, Ok, I get it. God was letting that happen to me because I needed to have that experience. What was attacking me was demons. They left me alone only when they had me where they wanted me. As I considered my faith again, they came back after me.”
On the third day, Anna repented of her sins and welcomed Jesus into her heart.
She was really nervous to share the experience with her husband; she feared he’d think she was crazy. “I was so scared to tell him,” she says.
After hearing her whole story, he embraced her and confessed his background in Christianity. He had walked away from Jesus.
“God took us in our absolute darkness.” Anna says. “He made one of the most shameful stories incredible. Now we get to lead our children in the right direction. We don’t deserve it.”
Related: to leave New Age was a relief, half of Gen Z does tarot, New Age is anything and everything Source: Anna Dysett YouTube
