Struggling with the EMOTIONAL warfare while living with Porn Addict
I am constantly bombarded with my H's sadness and isolation within our home. I have come to realize that I am a codependent of his addiction, and ALWAYS believed that I had to apologize for expressing my feelings of sadness and loneliness in our marriage.
The Lord is the face I have to look upon to just sit BY my H in our own home. My H, to my knowledge, sees that his manipulation of threatening suicide three weeks ago to get me to surrender to my boundary of having him leave...has held its weight against my heart.
Through COSA (Codependents of Sex Addicts), Boundries (Bible STudy), Christian Counselor, etc... I have come to the realization that I AM certainly NOT in control of my H's recovery! And that I stand in the way of God's natural consequences for my H's actions by having continually made it "o.k." because I knew the fall out would be emotional abuse and neglect on myself and our two children.
So, here is my question. It is immensely challanging to remain in this home with my H. He is attending SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous), but has shared with me that he just can't get thru Step Two, because he would not be able to control the outcome (e.g. myself and my children might "leave him") He reports that he knows that if it is God's Will, then it's the right thing for all of us...if separation or devorce needs to happen. But, he simply will NOT give this addiction and control over to the Lord!
Often, he asks me with darkness in his eyes, "Can we talk?" and the presence of the enemy in our home thru him continues to "thicken" the air in the house. It is so apparent to me that (I sleep in a separate room from my H) I have to open a window to be able to just BREATH at night...even tho it is winter and quite cold here in Oregon!
How do others deal with this same daunting feeling when they have to be "at home" or feel that the darkness and oppression is so thick in the home that there is fear having the children in the house when I'm not there.
Please advise or could you pray for us? I need my Christian Sisters and Brothers to help me bear this burden :-(
Comments
I do understand what your saying and I do care. People have given some good advice, but what I have found is that you cannot change anyone, but can only change yourself. It sounds that your hubby is trying to pull you one way and I have found the only way out of that swirl is spend more time with God, seeking God for what He has called you to do.
If we focus on problems, problems increase and becomes and endless cycle. Try not misunderstand what I am saying here. I am not minimizint the problem, but suggesting a proactive way to deal with the problem. What is needed is that your in the position of leadership and as such if your focus is on God and His purpose for you, then the focus changes from one of problems to working towards the solution to that problem.
God gave us a lot of things. For example whatever we focus on in life increases and that can be good or bad depending on what we focus on, but whatever we focus on in life will increase. If we focus on the problems in life they increase and if we focus on the things of God then those things will increase. What we set our hand to will increase as well.
I don't know where your at with God exactly, but can tell you if you do decide to focus and God and His purpose for you or what He has called you to do and then ask the Holy Spirit to come upon you, it will be like the difference between night and day. As you begin to talk to God's Spirit which is really His heart a relationship will be formed and in that as you lay the whole thing on Jesus (because we are to cast our cares upon Him for He cares for you) don't pick up the problem, but let God deal with it and you stay focused on God and His purpose for you.
Praising God in music or if you have CD's drives the bad spirits nuts. One of my favorites is Darlene Zschech. Touching heaven changing earth is probably one of my all time favorites. I used to have cassette tapes of my favoites. I made the tapes and put all my favorites on them and listened to them all the time. I can honestly say that in doing so it will change you and your situation. Here is the promise. When light and darkness meets, light will always win.
The other form of praise and perhaps even higher praise is when you speak or write anything (as it comes up, not forcing, but as it comes up) speak things that God has done for you. For example instead of speaking need, speak "God has and or will supply all my needs." If your not sure of things make statements like, "I am trusting God with everything I have for Him to deal with problems." Most of these can be found in scripture and by speaking them, it is praise but also releases the power of God to do things.
Not knowing where you are with God, I don't know if your aware that you can cast bad spirits out of your house. Part of what God has given us is the power of God to cast out demons and even command the angels. You can also in doing so command God's angels to dwell with you in your house and literally drive bad spirits away.
The other thing you can do is bless your husband. Ok I know it sounds strange, but in speaking blessings on a person, well let's say it releases the power of God on a person.
There are many other things that can be done, but the best way to find those things is by building the relationship between you and the Holy Spirit, because He will show you things that you could not know and lead you and your family to where He wants you and your family.
I really do hope and pray that this helps you, but the best answer to me at least is to really be seeking God and His presence and His purpose for you,
Sarah
God does have a plan for everyone and everyone is called to be a part of ministry somewhere. All jobs in ministry are important as it is designed by God to be a servant and save lives. God gave us so much, but how much do we give Him in return?
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Ghostess I hope/pray you are well.
I haven't added many "friends" here, but you are one, so I am praying for you friend.
Dawn
When my husband had an unconfessed porn addiction sin in his life - I knew it. My spirit would be so mad that evil entered our home.
I really believe and live out Proverbs 31 - Wife of noble xter. I think what we as wives need to remember is that our husband's are slaves to this stuff and their master isn't about to give up easily.
My strategy was to pray over my house regularly and then I read the book by Stormie Omartian - Power of a Praying Wife - For each of the 30 days Stormie approached another area of marriage and husband's make-up. I took a note book and wrote my own prayers specific to our marriage and my husband, then I used this daily to pray for my husband and marriage depending on what was most urgent on the agenda for that day.
It is your job as a wife to pray for your husband as he is too weak to do it for himself when he is being controlled by the addiction. Your prayers are a vital role on his road to recovery not just to start the process but also as he works through stuff.
Standing on the word helps lift your spirit aswell as helps you reclaim the peace of God in your life aswell as your home.
(On a side note and this is a little harder and I am quite a strong woman but I would not tolerate porn in the house, and I would expose this to my husband every time I found it. I'm sure some women would just put it back where they find it and hope it will go away. I would leave it out broken and unusable and watch his reaction. I have just asked him if he felt that it was helpful or beneficial me doing that, and his reaction was at first he had real mixed emotions - anger- that I had gone through his personal stuff and then remorse that he had abused my trust and our relationship and hurt me. Now that he is in recovery and I find something he is just full of remorse and apologises that I found it before he had chance to remember where he had actually hidden it. So I'm not sure now whether that this is actually helpful. I guess it is individual. For me exposing the hidden porn I wanted my husband to know that no matter how clever he thought he could hide it God would always help me to expose it.)
God Bless you from across the pond and my husband and I will pray for you.
I have had to deal with the heaviness of oppression in my home quite a lot. That specifically is not the reason I chose to leave my husband, it's more complicated. but I want to share with you a story.
I have been fortunate that I have had a very spiritually strong church to attend through my darkest times. One thing all of the elders and Christian sisters would tell me is to play Christian music, and praise and worship music in my home all the time. And pray over my house as I went about my daily activities. I would sing and hum as I went about my work. (I now keep my radio station tuned to the Christian contemporary station usually 24-7 and it has made a great impact on me and my now 17 year old son.)
Although I still went through many difficult times at home, God showed me his protection over my home in the way of an accquaintance I had. Briefly, she was someone I knew from work who had told me she was in a certain "W" spiritual sect. I was familiar some with it's beliefs, and although she knew I didn't agree with them, we went shopping on an occasion or two. After visiting her home one day I found the extent of her belief in the form of dragons everywhere, but I really didn't feel fear as much as a chance to understand her belief to be a witness later to others.
A couple of weeks later she came into my home and while wating for me to get a few things, she kept rushing me to leave. The next time she came over to drop some things off, she wouldn't even come on the porch. Later she told me she felt a strong presence surrounding her driving her out. I knew instantly that it was the spirit of God! Although I didn't feel like a very religious or spiritual person for what I was going through, I knew that by praising God and asking His presence to fill my home and by opening "Christian" doors, He had truly answered my prayer. Enough to see the results of this woman "driven out" and afraid to enter my home.
Even if you don't feel the presence of God in your home, by asking Him to come in and praising Him, and allowing His Word to be even musically filling your home, He will be there.
When I said, "No pity parties here. No crying in our soup"......
Actually, the Lord always allows me 5 minutes to get it all out. LOL Then He says, "Okay Marchel. Let's go. I know how You feel so now, let ME do something about it for You because we are on the same page and you are believing that I Love you as much as I say I do."
I have a feeling He's saying the same thing to you Ghostess.
The Lord LONGS to have your husband's whole being- mind, body and soul- as His own even more than you do. He has "exclusive rights" to us because, just as an artist has over the works they created, so does God over us as humans He created.
We can CHOOSE joy, independent of any person, because our joy can be found in God. He's crazy mad in Love with your husband and He will allow "whatever" needs to occur to woo him to that realization. That moment is reserved for God. Funny thing is, your husband is closer to "that moment" now more than he ever has been in his life so... find JOY in those truths and LIVE in them.
If I have said anything that is untrue, then disregard it. But if they are true to His Spirit within you- then TAKE HOLD and "Be still and KNOW that I am GOD."
Wow... I must remember all these things myself.
**Up front, before I say anything, I want to make sure you understand that my husband and I still have a VERY LONG way to go in our recovery. I'm in no way suggesting that you SHOULD do what I did. I have seen the way the Lord worked through my marriage though and wish to share it with you.**
Several years ago, I found a large amount of porn history on our family computer, right after I found out I was pregnant with our second son. You know from your experiences how I felt -- and here I was with his child, growing in my body. I couldn't get away from him if I wanted to! Over the course of the next two and a half years, I continued to find history both on his cell phone and our home computer. We were having other problems and the pornography definitely made things more complicated.
Last January, I took our two children and left. Last month, the three of us came back home and reunited our family. Through that time, we were able to get some things going in the correct direction. Many good things came about from our time away - I found myself again as I had died to serving him and putting myself (my health) aside. We were able to somewhat get our finances going in the right direction. He says he has been able to get past many of his hang ups where pornography is concerned thanks to Celebrate Recovery - but since I wasn't here, who knows. At any rate, it's a start. For us, it has seemed to at least give us a chance to hit RESET on our marriage.
1. The whole time we were apart, I stayed fixed on Jesus and asked Him to be the center of everything I did on a daily basis. I also prayed for our family to be healed and for us to come back together for His Glory. I prayed daily for a hedge of protection around myself and my husband so neither one of us got involved with someone else during the time of separation. The bible talks about not being away from each other sexually for extended periods of time because of the danger of one or both partners straying - to stay in constant prayer during that time. I know that passage in particular wasn't talking about a marital separation specifically but I felt it could definitely apply.
2. I got myself into an accountability program through Celebrate Recovery so that I would have another Christian woman to talk to about things. It was also a way to make sure I stayed on track with my bible studies and a check and balance for how I was leading my life. She was able to help me keep my attitude and focus correct - not bashing my husband, keeping me on the path of reuniting. Through CR, I was also able to discover that, I (like you) are co-dependant. It helped me to know why I was doing/acting/saying the things I was. It's a daily struggle as you know, I'm sure!
3. I was able to heal emotionally. Through my service to Pink Cross I was able to learn how to forgive. I mean TRUE forgiveness. I would have never been at the point emotionally or psychologically if I hadn't been at the point in my life that I was in last summer. Ultimately, that true forgiveness is why I was able to forgive my husband for things he had done to me and my family and ultimately bring the family back together.
HOWEVER, during this time, many things came up that I wasn't expecting. For example:
1. Trust issues. Hello as if I didn't have enough of those where he was concerned before I decided to leave! Then I decided to go a state or more away and had to rely on my faith that God had my marriage in the palm of his hand. I had to take my husband's word for everything. I toyed with the idea of getting a private investigator while I was gone because of my lack of trust. I constantly wonder if he strayed last year.
2. Anger and anxiety overcame me during several arguments and at one time hired a lawyer in order to get advice on what I should do where the children were concerned. Well, there goes $2k that I can't get back. What a waste of money! I was filled with a feeling of desperation and did what I thought was best instead of lifting the situation up to the Lord at that time.
3. Decisions were no longer made together and I had to deal with that. My husband decided to purchase a new car while I was away and now we are having to deal with that decision now. I wasn't involved in the decision making on that purchase but now, I have to make the finances work so that we can pay for a vehicle which is WAY over our budget. I have to deal with the consequences that come along with the separation.
I could go on forever on both sides. I write all of this to support my main point which is this. Whichever way you chose to get through this -- PLEASE stay fixed on the Lord. Make sure that you are staying fixed on what HE says a marriage should be. Keep your heart pure and always on reconciliation. In doing those things, you will be in obedience to God and he WILL bless you!
In the book of Daniel, God paints a picture of purification and strength. There are several ways a person is delivered from pain and hard times. From the fire, through the fire and by the fire.
From the fire: It's completely within God's power to take my (and YOUR) husband's porn addiction away overnight. That would be pretty amazing huh? No doubt you and I would both be amazed by the Lord and we'd have a testimony to tell about how the Lord spoke and our porn problem was taken away.
Through the fire: I'm sure you've heard the analogy of metal being made stronger by fire. When it's heated and cooled repeatedly, it becomes strong and less flexible. The fire in our situations is the repetition of porn in our marriage, the pain, the disappointment, the loss of trust...all of those things heat up our lives and our marriages to where we think we will just melt away to nothing. And then the Lord graciously gives us a break and helps our recovery to be on the up and up. What happens after that? A relapse, a secret divulged. The temperature rises once again. This happens many times until finally, we (our marriages) are so strong that we can take on anything. :) And after all is said and done, we can use our experiences to help other people because we have been there, done that and this is the way it happened. Here's how we saw God work in this situation and our faith is built because of this method.
Here's another mental picture. I HATE grating cheese. It just really annoys me to have to spend the time on it. I'd much rather buy the pre-grated cheese but sometimes it's cheaper to buy the block and do it myself. So, there I sit, with a scowl on my face, grating cheese. I hate the process but am so thankful I spent the time to do it when I sit down to eat a taco or make omelets. Same thing in my marriage, I hate the pain and the hard times, but in the end, I love the bond and communication techniques that we have developed through the fire. We have also developed a greater sense of respect and love for each other. I feel more secure in our relationship because I know that even through a year separation (almost to the day - 2 weeks shy), we were strong enough with the Lord's help to make it through. If we can make it through THAT, we can make it through a bunch. Before the separation though, I wasn't sure and had my doubts. During the separation I wondered if he was filing for divorce behind my back...now I know that he wouldn't do that. I feel secure in us now more than ever before.
By the fire: This is when God takes us out of the situation by the fire. He brings us out of our situation and right by his side in heaven. We definitely are relieved of the burden, but we are no longer around to give our testimony.
Now, I know from experience that going through the fire really bites. I have hated every minute of the fire time and supremely enjoyed the cooling time. I have even prayed asking for God to deliver us FROM the fire. But you know something, I have built a faith and trust in the Lord because I have been able to see first hand that HE IS FAITHFUL and He is ALWAYS listening and working things out in the best way -- which doesn't always match up to my way, mind you! Whatever you chose to do, make sure you do it with a pure heart that is ever searching for the Lord's guidance. Always keep your eyes/heart/mind on the day you all are at the beginning of the end of your troubles. Because I promise you, the day we came back together -- it was WONDERFUL! It lived up to all of my expectations. If I hadn't stuck in there, if I had thrown in the towel sometime throughout this past year, we wouldn't be able to enjoy the blessings that resulted from being heated on high. It would have all been for nothing!
I heard somewhere this saying: The hotter the fire, the bigger the blessing. I really feel the same way, having been through what I feel like was a pretty hot fire. It was all worth it! I can say that because I'm at the beginning of the end of our separation. I want the same thing for you, sweetie! You can do it! If you are in harms way, if there is abuse going on, I'm not saying you're less of a Christian to take some time off, just do it with a pure heart! I promise God sees your heart and your motivation and you will be helped and blessed if you act on the right motivations.
I read your thread to Ghostess and was so pleased for your commitment to God in your tough time. My husband has not only been addicted to porn but sex with other women, initally at the beginning of his recovery I was ok with our sex, it has always been rubbish - he has never had to instigate sex nor arouse a woman - one night stands and hookers don't require foreplay but wives do. Anyway recently I have really been turned off by him. He can't arouse me for toffee - porn education teaches jack about sensuality and then I am struggling with my mind's eye - I have been scarred by the stuff that I know about and have seen and can imagine. This has turned me off sex. I have tried praying about it, but with no change. He too finds keeping an erection difficult too with 'normal' sex. What addict likes to have the same woman twice eh? and the same positions!! We are in a double edged place - for me I need to have sexual love as part of my love languages - non intimate touch just isn't enough for me, it tells me that he really loves me, so not doing it I loose out and for him not doing it only leaves his sacks full and prone to slipping up, he also is trying to abstain from wanking as this only drives his urges on weak days.
Can I just ask - did you or are you experiencing similar emotional / sexual difficulties now you are back with your husband?
Also do you fully trust him? I don't yet and it drives me nuts. I am about to go off to train for 9 months in another part of the country and we will only get to see each other on the weekend I'm not sure how I am going to cope. Obviously I will be praying but I have become so isolated I just don't have any confidente women to cry on.
Can you tell me more about this Celebrate Recovery - I don't think we have it in the UK? Is it face to face or online?
Blessings
smartcardriver
Go ahead and check your private messages. I hope my response helps in some way. :)
Andrea
Moderator
Pink Cross Team Member
Hi.
I just wanted to let you know that I am sorry you are having to deal with all of these issues in your life and marriage, just as I am in mine.
BUT... we can remember that when the Lord said, "ALL things work together for GOOD to those who Love God"... well, that is exactly what He means.
I knew the pornography/sex addiction problem was big but I had no idea it is as big as it is until my wonderful, passionate for God, Christian husband left me under the pretense of "finding another Christian wife". My heart aches and in some ways, my head is still spinning as I thought all of that was behind me after a first Christian marriage.
My hearts aches for the youth. The free availability of it all is so deadly because there was a time when pornography brought shame along with it. I mean, one actually had to get embarrassed to ask for it behind a counter or even pay for it. Now, it seems easy to get and so "accepted".
Anyway, I am praying for you, your husband and your kids. For as ugly as pornography is in that it devalues everything that God esteems as precious, sacred and worthy- we must always remember that the ultimate sin of it all is: a lovelessness for God.
To Love God is to value another. To Love God is to respect another. And honor. And serve. So, if your (and my) heart is greived over this and how it affects our lives... think of how the Lord must feel a thousand times over!!! It truly is ultimately an offense against HIM- not you, me, our kids/stepkids, etc.
It is for these reasons, the Lord is using this ministry- along with the truth of Who He is- to go into the depths of this lovelessness and gather them out. Yes, pornography/sex addiction is HUGE... "but God" is the "Someone Stronger" in Luke 11.
Oh how our hearts LONG to watch Him show His glory and reveal His Love to a loveless world and in loveless marriages. So... no pity parties here. No crying in our soup. Let's grab our popcorn and watch God work as we do everything in our strength (that we can't take credit for) to allow Him to do that and be part of the solutions as "gatherers"... all the while remembering that His ultimate GOAL and LONGING for us is- "to KNOW (be intimately acquainted with) the Love of Jesus Christ" and in turn, He promises that while we seek to know and ACCEPT/EMBRACE His great indescribable Love, "He will DO MORE than we can even ask or think!!"
WOW! Okay, I'm ready... Sign me up! But watch out... I have a BIG imagination God because YOU ARE HUUUUGGGEE!!!!
Be blessed big today!
BIG Love,
M.