Confession and Healing (Part 2)

This post is a continuation from here.

Confession or being caught doesn't necessarily secure a happy, walk away from my sin ending. There's far more to it than that.

Exposing the sin is just the beginning of a complex process. The spouse with the figurative pornography noose around his/her neck has to want to remove it.

By the time my spouse confessed, he was already fed up with himself. He desired change and spent too many years trying to do it on his own. Confession freed him from the burden he carried alone, but it wasn't easy and it sometimes comes with a cost.

But sometimes, a spouse is sorry he got caught instead of being sorry for the hurt he's caused or the sin itself. What do you do then?

I can't speak from that experience specifically since everyone's journey through this looks different. But I can tell you that sexual betrayal, via adultery or pornography or lust, impacts your marriage and requires healing for both husband and wife, whether there is repentance or not.

Dealing with the pain of betrayal is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but the work was necessary. My husband's sexual addiction became an opportunity for me to do some self-examining.

And since I chose to stay and fight for our marriage, I knew my attitude towards his healing would effect everything. I could remain withdrawn, bitter, and angry or I could become his biggest ally. Neither option was a guarantee that he would not slip again, but one could lead to more hiding and the other encourages open communication.

If you suspect your spouse is struggling with pornography or sexual addiction:

• Talk to him about it. Show him you are a safe person by the way you approach/respond to him.

• Share/confess your own sin. God knows you struggle, too! Does your spouse know you're not perfect either?

• Find help for both of you — good counseling, a marriage weekend/retreat, an addiction program, Every Man's Battle, addiction recovery support, healing from betrayal

• Establish accountability to protect him from temptations. Who can he call on when he's feeling tempted? Who can both encourage him and help pick him back up if he falters?

• Become partners/allies/teammates — together fighting against temptations. Can you help guard his heart? How can you help establish/support healthy boundaries for him/for both of you (what he sees, reads, hears)?

Fantasizing About Mr. Right

I'm not sure why, but my parents didn't talk much about the birds and the bees.

I learned about relationships from television and movies. I took notes on kissing from the soap operas the women in my life watched daily.

And I read romance novels. They certainly appealed to my blooming curiosity.

After a while they became quite predictable. Girl meets boy, they flirt, they fall in love, and everything is happily ever after. I was so enamored with that.

Every girl imagines finding the man of their dreams! And romance novels stirred my "knight in shining armor" desires and set me up with unrealistic expectations.

As I "matured," so did my taste in romance novels. And they became racier and racier as you can imagine.

My real life wasn't going so well then. My relationship with my new husband was shaky at best. I knew the Lord, but I wasn't in relationship with Him. And I was just coming to terms with the ramifications of childhood sexual abuse. There was a lot of turmoil. It's safe to say I was quite unhappy in my life and in my marriage.

Betrayal had shattered my trust of men. I started using fantasy as an escape — imagining in my mind the perfect life with an adoring and affectionate mate that would always chose me over anything else that happened to be going on. It was a welcome respite from the chaos and emotions of my real life.

I thought nothing of it then. But many years later, as my marriage relationship improved and we began the long road of healing from my husband's infidelity and sexual addiction, I realized what I was doing was wrong, too.

If my husband was going to be accountable for his lustful actions, so should I. And reading romance novels and fantasizing about Mr. Right in my mind were not honoring my spouse.

As much as I wanted to downplay it, explicit romance novels are a form of pornography (check out the definition). Although we may turn to romance novels, fantasizing, or other forms of pornography to find "fulfillment," all they serve to do is make you dissatisfied, especially with your spouse.

I believe pornography can be a struggle for women. And I have met women, even some in good marriages, that fight the urge to fantasize. If you can relate, please know you aren't alone.

I have not read "Fifty Shades of Grey" and I don't intend to. Call me a prude, but I don't want to get caught up in author EL James' personal fantasies.

My husband has worked so hard to protect himself, why shouldn't I?

In the same way that I want to be the focus of my husband's affections, I need to focus my affections on him.

So if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's better to enter eternal life with only one hand or one foot than to be thrown into eternal fire with both of your hands and feet. (Matthew 18:8)

If you're confused about the role pornography may play in your marriage, read this article from Covenant Eyes.

Be honest with your spouse. You are teammates fighting for your marriage. Help each other, encourage each other, and try to avoid situations that lead to temptation.

And if you cannot avoid it, protect yourself from it. Do not allow yourself to be drawn back in. Stop the thoughts before they take you down a road you do not want to take.

The catalyst for me was experiencing true intimacy with my husband, both physically and emotionally. At that point, I no longer felt the need to escape because the real life we were working to build together was much better than anything I could dream up.

Why I Wasn't Enough, Part 2

Part 2, continued from this post…

I knew some of his "sorted" past when I started dating him. At that point he had mastered the art of hiding. No one knew his secret struggles. He let no one know of his pain.

Sexual pleasure was like a drug. It consumed his mind, it dictated his choices. It was all about when and where the next opportunity would arise. He knew it was wrong, but it became like a noose around his neck — squeezing ever tighter, not letting him go. How would he ever be free?

To him, sexual addiction was like trying to fill a bucket with water, not knowing there was a hole in the bottom. No matter how hard he tried, he could not keep the bucket filled. And it became increasingly more difficult to fill it up. He had to find new and different sources, but nothing ever satisfied.

It was easy for me to think that his infidelity had something to do with me — who I was, whether or not I fulfilled him. The truth was, nothing fulfilled him, not even the sexual pleasure he was searching for.

I stopped accepting blame when I began to understand sexual addiction (reading Schaumburg's book, "False Intimacy" gave me great insight). It also helped when I tried to see the innocent boy inside the hurting man.

I began to realize how rooted the infestation was and found, to my surprise, compassion and a desire to help him.

Sexual addiction doesn't happen overnight. It wouldn't have mattered who he had married. The temptation to stray was more about filling the bucket, then about me.

I would never be enough until he broke free from the chains of addiction and started a path towards healing.

How Could You? (truth from the story of Tamar)

When someone has hurt or betrayed you, one of the first questions you may ask is, "Why?" or "How could you have done this to me?" This type of betrayal may never have crossed your mind. It is most likely something you would never consider perpetrating yourself. It may be the furthest thing from your mind. Sexual sin may not make any sense to you. So you spend your days wrestling with the "why's" and the "how could you's", but it just doesn't make sense to you no matter how hard you try.

After studying the story of Tamar in Genesis 38 something struck me that I wanted to share with you.

This is what Genesis 38 is about in a nutshell: Judah had 3 sons. He found Tamar to be the wife of his first son. But his first son was wicked and the Lord killed him. Then Judah told his second son to sleep with Tamar in the hopes that she would have an offspring for the first son (who is dead). But the second son doesn't want his inheritance to go to the offspring of his older brother so he misuses Tamar and does not make it possible for her to conceive a child. Because of his wickedness the Lord kills the second son. Judah does not see that wickedness killed his sons so he decides he does not want to risk giving Tamar to his third son and sends her back to her father's house. Basically, Judah has sealed Tamar's fate because without an offspring she has no hope and no one to take care of her in her old age. Although Judah is responsible for taking care of Tamar (as his daughter-in-law) he has shirked his responsibility to her. Many years later, Tamar decides to take her fate into her own hands. She dresses like a prostitute and waits along the roadside for her father-in-law, Judah, to come by. He solicits her and they have sex. He does not know it is Tamar. Because he thinks she is a prostitute he offers to send her a goat as payment to which she agrees. However, she requires that he give her something as collateral until the goat is sent. So he gives her his seal, cord, and staff (which would have been of great value back then, even more valuable then the goat he would send). When he returns to give her the goat she is no where to be seen. She becomes pregnant with Judah's child and is accused of being a prostitute (because she has no husband). The "authorities" tell Judah about her adultery because by law she belongs to his family. He hypocritically tells them to kill her for her sin. While Tamar was being brought out to be killed she told Judah that the father of her child is the man who belongs to these items and reveals the seal, cord, and staff. He, of course, recognizes these as his and realizes all that has happened. He says, "she is more righteous than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shelah" (verse 26). He then takes responsibility for Tamar and she bears him twin sons.

The truth as it relates to trying to make sense of how someone could betray another person in this way comes in verse 18 when she asks for a pledge until he can send the goat and he offers her the seal, cord, and staff. Since we know how the story ends we can easily see how stupid a choice that was for him. Why would he give her things of such value? It doesn't make any sense to us. Like Judah, to satisfy our own lustful desires we are willing to give away things of great value and importance. I found this truth oddly encouraging. A reminder that we often want to make betrayal about us, our value and worth in the other person's eyes. That if they had loved us, valued us, thought our marriage, our relationship, even intimacy was truly important then they could never have given it all away so easily.

Proverbs 14:16
The wise watch their steps and avoid evil;
fools are headstrong and reckless.

We are all foolish in our sin. Foolishness doesn't make sense to the "wise". When we are caught up in sin we make choices that don't make a lot of sense to others. We don't think clearly and we are definitely thinking only of ourselves. This thinking results in reckless behavior and the foolishness of giving away things of value to get the sinful desire we think we need.

God has a plan. He had a plan for Tamar and He has a plan for you. If this has happened to you then it has a glorious purpose in your life. The reason you were betrayed may never make sense to you. You may need to change your perspective on it and agree that it will never make sense. Your betrayer, in their sin, was acting foolishly. Sexual sin was tempting enough to give it all away, sometimes to the point of losing everything that really matters. Although you should take responsibility for your own sinful actions in your marriage relationship, their betrayal was about them (not you) and does not reflect on your value and worth as a spouse or as a person.

A God-shaped Hole

Sexual addiction probably doesn't just happen. You don't wake up one morning as a "sex addict". Like any addiction, I believe it is a symptom of a deeper issue. Humans are not whole. We are broken, messed up, hurting people. I think the only way to be whole is through God. We all have a bunch of holes; a Dad that was never there, a deep loss or death of someone close to us, poor self-image, a critical parent, abuse, and the list goes on and on. We journey through this world looking for something, anything to fill the holes; drugs, alcohol, food, sex, relationships, shopping. When it's all said and done, though, after the initial high there is always a low. A time when we return to reality and the guilt of what we impulsively did. It's in this yucky, dark place that we usually run straight back to the thing that sent us there in the first place. Back to the "hole stuffer". But each time you turn to the food or drugs or sex you need more and more to get the same high. The truth is, we can stuff and shove and ignore what we're doing to fill the holes. We can even live in denial or not even see what we're doing. We can trick ourselves into thinking it's not a big deal. But in the end, it will always catch up to us. And we will NEVER be satisfied. Like an unquenchable thirst, the things we use to mask the pain inside or the people we use or the expectations we make, will never be enough. They will never meet our need. The holes are God-shaped. Like a puzzle piece He fits perfectly into the holes in our hearts and it is through Him and only Him that our holes can be filled and we will find the satisfaction we're longing for.

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.(PSALM 63:1-5)

I'm not saying you will not be tempted to return to your old ways. We are sinful humans, after all. But there is always hope. Hope in Christ Jesus. The blessing that you are never alone in the struggles. That He will help you. The first step, is admitting you have a problem and letting Him in to the deepest recesses of your soul to the holes you don't show anyone.

If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.(1 CORINTHIANS 10:12-13)