What’s Love All About Anyway?
Over the past year I’ve asked this question many times. It was hard for me to believe that a man, who loved me and married me, would take our vows so lightly.
My husband is a sex addict. I had no idea! I thought that he was totally “sold out for God” and that he was so much more worthy than I. My husband pastored a large church in our area and was a community leader. We were both very well thought of and often looked like the “perfect family”. I had no idea that my husband had struggled with sexual torment most of his life.
As a very young boy my husband suffered from emotional, physical abuse and at the age of 12 years he learned to masturbate. He felt comfort from this act and has carried on with this practice our entire married life. He doesn’t have an issue with porn, but he fantasizes about men while comforting himself during times of stress and anxiety. Yes, my husband is attracted to men; yet he loves me and wants to stay with me and I want to be with him. After 29 years how can I not love him? To be very honest, I’m getting tired of my story. I just want to get on with things. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who has forgiven their husband and wants desperately to go on with our lives.
I’ve been reading the Love Dare, by Stephen & Alex Kendrick. I’ve tired to implement some of the suggestions from each chapter, but as I read, I realized that I started doing this things at the time of disclosure. It’s been 18 months now. I’ve done everything with-in my ability to correct my part of a wrong; yet here I still stand waiting…
Love is not something that comes from us; it only comes from God. It’s giving when you have nothing left to give; forgiving when forgiveness is not deserved; trusting when trusting seems to be an impossible thing to do.
I wonder how many of you feel like I do. I’d love to hear your opinion about what you have learned about love while you’ve been traveling this road.
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10 comments:
Hi Joyce,
I'm sorry for all the pain you've experienced. You've been on this road a long time. My marriage is ending--at my husband's request. We were married 26 years--he's a respected doctor in our area. In addition to his secret porn. addiction, he also was addicted to marijuana and in the past few years I have come to realize he has high functioning borderline (borderline personality disorder)traits. I've fought hard for my marriage, and believed God had a good ending for us. I'm realizing that my husband--due to his early wounds--is not capable of loving me. He needs to be enmeshed with a woman so she can fill his unmet needs. I stepped out of the enmeshment dance, and he couldn't handle that. He's now in a relationship with another woman and no, we aren't yet divorced. To answer your question--love--for me--now means loving myself AS MUCH as I loved him. That means standing up and taking good care of myself and valuing myself. I will always love my husband. And, I am starting to find the "Me" that has been buried for so long--the Me that God has been calling me to all along.
I wish you well on your journey.
I appreciate you comments. You're right. We are called to love ourselves and take care of ourselves. God is so good. He is always present and always loves us. I'm sorry that your husband is not able love himself and is willing to give up so easily. It is so hard for us as wives to continue being enmeshed in our husband's issues - if they could only understand that this is for our survival.
I know that you willbe empowered as you find youself. Many blessings, just remember that you are not alone,
Joyce
Joyce,
I was crushed when my husband of 27 years spent the last 10 years of our marriage frequenting parks and adult bookstores for reciprocal masturbation, oral sex, voyerism, and exhibitionism with other men. I only discovered he was doing this last August when I saw a text message response to a men seeking men Craigslist ad.
I tried to commit suicide but my husband stopped me. He is active in our church and preaches occasionally. I could not believe that my beautiful Christian husband could hurt me this way and betray me. He is now in recovery and has stopped everything he was doing. Things are so much better now and he has fallen in love with me all over again. It is really beautiful but I still have times when I feel the pain of betrayal acutely. It is hard. I forgave him because I love him and because God loves him too. He has made a complete change and continues to see a Christian counselor. I have hope that eventually, over time, I will not think about the betrayal as much. With God's help, I know the pain will diminish. All of the support groups I have gone to are filled with women whose husbands struggle with porn and prostitutes. It is hard to find someone in my same shoes. Thank you for sharing.
Oh Patty,
Thank you for sharing your story. There were 2 things that I desparately needed when my husband's disclosure occurred. The first was to know there was others out there who were experiencing the same thing that I was going through - I couldn't find anyone. The second, was to know that there was hope for my marriage - I couldn't find anyone who had survived this type of trauma to their marriage.
We need to stand together and lift each other up in prayer. "God can make a way were there seems to be no way". I encourage you to help me start a blog that is for the woman whose's husband suffers from SSA.
My husband, Al, is doing well. He still doesn't share much, but I am not feeling the urgency to be the "private investigator" that I was early on.
I know there are so many more women who could have some great input regarding this issue.
I will be praying for you by name. We need to lift each other up,(and our husbands -whether our marriages survive or not-).
Much love and blessings,
Joyce
I can so relate to this. Nearing only 5 years of marriage last December, I discovered my husband's contact - yet again - with men online via email. Swearing over and over - each time - that he never did anything physical, I decided that I had to find my own healing apart from his own. I demanded immediate deletion of several email accounts, began testing internet filters to find one I liked, and found a local support group. I was very blunt in telling my husband that I loved him but that I would not live with perpetual cheating - physical or virtual didnt' make a difference to me. He needed counseling - he needed to get right with God - and I was going to take time to figure out how to respond to his behavior.
He is making changes - some more evident than others - and after his living with this for over 20 years of his life, I am still asking God for an overnight miracle - knowing that God has his own timetable. =)
The same sex attraction is somehow more devastating. Can I - Do I - ever trust him to have male friends? Do I trust that another man in our church can mentor him - who isn't struggling with this or tempted by this? It's really awful.
And at the same time, I am finding my own relationship with God renewed - my love for my husband is being reshaped - and my commitment to my marriage is actually being strengthened. I don't ignore "slips" anymore and I don't pretend that we have a perfect marriage. His behavior is sinful - plain and simple - and until HE decides to commit to what God has for his life - I am just praying for him.
Debbie,
Thank you so much for sharing. One of the hardest things for me to do has been to let go and trust God. I kept praying for my husband and then picking my requests back up and worrying about them. I spent much of my day wondering if I could trust my husband until finally I realized that this just wasn't my problem. If my husband was going to be untrustworthy and betray my trust further, it was going to be his problem, not mine. He would have to answer to God.
I decided that I was going to be faithful to our wedding vows and that I would do all I could to bring him before the Lord every day. I found a wonderful book by Pamela Hines; Seeking God's Best For Your Husband - A Wife's Prayer. I have prayed the prayer of deliverance everyday. I journal my thoughts and prayers - I've been doing this for a year now. The only hope that our marriages have is God.
After speaking to several woman whose husbands suffer from same sex attraction, I have fornd that our stories are all pretty much the same. Our husbands were wounded and abused. The emotional trauma they have suffered as young boys is incredible.
Continue to pray, pray hard - I will be lifting you and you husband up before the Lord too.
Joyce
Debbie,
I will be praying for you too.
Joyce,
I agree that we need and blog for wives with husbands who have SSA. I haven't really learned to detach and this is something I really have to work on. I could use the encouragement of others in this same situation. I still don't understand sex addiction with SSA. I've read some research by NARTH but it doesn't really jive with my husband's situation. He was never physically or sexually abused and sees it as a stretch to say he was emotionally abused. He feels he was just dysfuctional as a child and developed very negative feelings about himself that led to a narcissitic view of life. It's really hard to understand why his SSA would remain dormant during the first 16 years of our marriage and then suddenly emerge as a response to the stresses of family and job.
He says he is free now to be a complete person. That my discovery and subsequent forgiveness of his unfaithfulness has freed him to give up his addictive behavior. I don't get it but whatever is happening is truly God's work. He says that his need to split himself in two to hide his activities was keeping him from loving me fully. Now he is more loving to me than ever before. I am truly amazed!
Thanks be to God,
Patty
Aloha Joyce. thanks for inviting me into this blog. After 12 years, my husband chooses to stay in his addiction which is daily getting worse He is totally in self denial and of course its all my fault. I have found this to be one of the hardest and most painful things ever in my life to have endured. The emotional pain is incredible. There aren't many who know or are interested in this kind of thing. I have found it difficult but for my self I have had to ask God to break the soul tie with my husband and do as many of you have done, Start taking excellent care of me. Through this I have found that God has surrounded me with such love and comfort that I have never known before.
My husband wants a divorce and that hit me pretty hard. I had hoped that maybe just maybe.... but. I have been working on laying my hurts, my losses at the foot of the cross but its not so easy. I find it so hard to face the loss of the relationship, my sexuality, my security, my dreams and my future I thought we had. Its alot of empty boxes. No more expectations of what "we" were or what I thought we were. Its like falling into a black abyss and not knowing whats next. You wanna be angry, scream, cry and run all at the same time. I feel like I am going crazy at times.
The old friends now seem divided and suddenly I am at arms length. Funny isnt it? What were good friends are now dodging me at every corner and awkwardly polite.
I am finding that God is so very good and so very loving. I can only take one day at a time. I feel so fragile and so broken. How could this have happened? Where did it all go wrong? A million questions while he is into just abut any and all of it. Basically we have nothing left but mounds and mounds of debt. No retirements, no money, only lots of loans and credit card bills.
Letting go is the hardest thing to do. I know God is speaking this to me. How I am not sure but sometimes I think just walking away and not looking back is the best move to make. Forgiveness is hard and God knows I can only do it through HIm
Patty,
Sex addiction with SSA is very complicated because you are really looking at the question of which came first. Because of this, each component needs to be looked at separately.
I have learned that not all narcisis are sex addictics but all sex addicts are narcisis. There are many resources that support this thought. There is also theory that trauma, of any sort, experienced as a child could affect the potential for the formation of addictive behavior. Actually, its the chemicals that are secreted by the brain that the individual likes. The behavior that they are involved in has a direct correlation between the encagement of the activity and the amount of neurochemical secreted. This produces a type of dependancy on the neurochemical. It is said to feel like a "hit of heroin".
I'm glad that God has done a miracle in your husband's life Certainly, God can do anything. But there are some who struggle and hid behind a mask of religiosity to cover the pain of duplicity that they feel, my husband was one of these men. He is in the process of learning to understand the whys and were fors of his SSA.
Hopefully, I will be starting an E-group for SSA wives this Feb. These issues will be discussed. My husband will be sharing his thoughts with us to help give clarity on the way an SSA man thinks, or at least the way he has thought. He will also help us understand how we can respond to our husbands in a helpful healing way.
I hope this will be helpful to you.
Meanwhile, let's keep the communication going.
Much Love,
Joyce
Hi Bonnie,
I'm glad you found the blog and I hope this connection is helpful to you.
I am so sorry that things didn't turn out differently for you - healing from this experience takes time. I'll be praying for you and your situation.
Love,
Joyce
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