Telling the wife.......

I promised in the “Victory over Sin” post that I would talk about telling my wife about my former addiction to pornography.

I have in the past tried telling her things of this nature, albeit less extreme, and it usually seems to be a mistake. My desire has been to always be absolutely honest with her. But in the storm after one relatively minor incident, she said “why are you telling me this?” I took this to mean that she would prefer it if I didn’t tell her.

So my secrecy about the main addiction was not all down to shame and guilt, it was partly to protect her as well. I saw it as MY problem, and MY responsibility to sort it out. I did still feel very guilty coming home after a session, not telling her, but I simply didn’t have the guts. She would say “why are you late” and I would reply “I got engrossed on something on the computer and didn’t notice the time”. True – but not the whole truth. Just the part of the truth that I felt she could handle – or perhaps the part that I could handle.

Anyway, I don’t want to repeat the previous post. The nearest I came to telling her was when we had a new computer installed at home. I sat my wife down and showed her all the Google safe-search facilities, and all the ways she could access my history lists, cookies etc, to check that I had not been looking at anything unsuitable. She said “I only want you to look at me”. Here in print it doesn’t sound strong, but it was accompanied by hurt and determined voice and facial expressions that warned me that she was not at that time in a place where she could understand my problems and help me through them – she would only see the offence against her.

Some time after all of this, my wife was going through a sort of mid-life crisis. Her youngest child had gone to school. She had tried unsuccessfully to enter into the church’s children’s work. She had tried to get secular employment but having been a housewife for 10 years could not get a suitable person to be a referee.

But then we heard about fostering, and felt that the lord was calling us to this work. This will be the subject of another post. I mention it here because the training for fostering is extremely intense and soul searching. As part of this, because there is so much secrecy in cases of child abuse, we were required to draw up a “no-secrets” policy for our household. I asked my wife if this was what she really wanted, since some secrets can be hurtful if they come out. This raised her curiosity, and she realised there was something that I was keeping from her. Time to let it all out!

Initially she reacted very well, perhaps because it took time to absorb what I was saying. I said that she had my permission to speak to counsellors at the church if she felt the need. But by evening she was very hurt and resentful woman, and I was sent to the spare bedroom for the foreseeable future. She objected to the pornography, but more to the fact that I had not told her about it. I have always made a point of openness and honesty, telling her off for white lies. Now she saw me as the biggest hypocrite of all. And she felt very deceived. She did not at all accept that I had not told an actual lie but just avoided parts of the truth.

Over the next few days and weeks the relationship deteriorated. Seeing her pain I bought her flowers, but she thought I was trying to buy her love. She started to shout at me for even little things. Life was becoming impossible. The thought crossed my mind that I should start looking at adverts for small apartments to rent, just in case I needed one in a hurry.

Then in one morning’s ranting at me she said something about “when you come home”, and I replied “at the rate we are going I won’t be coming home”. This was not intended as a threat, it was an observation of the direction in which our relationship was heading. I simply didn’t feel wanted in the house anymore.

That day at work, I had to go to the kitchen, out of the way, as tears welled in my eyes. I called a colleague from my workplace Christian fellowship, and asked him to go on a prayer walk with him at lunch. Emotionally I told him the story in detail from start to finish, and that I thought my marriage was falling apart, and we started to pray. We had barely started when my mobile phone rang. It was my wife. But she was a different woman – like a cloudless day after a hurricane. She said she had been to the church and had prayed with her friend and cell group leader - the alpha course leader. She promised me that there would be no more storms. And we told each other that we loved each other.

I was simply amazed that I hadn’t even finished the prayer when the answer came!

That night I did go home, and we kissed, and shared a bed. But it would be wrong for me to suggest that all was instantly OK between us. She had been deeply hurt, and her confidence in her own attractiveness had been battered. She felt she had to prove herself to me and went to the opposite extreme. It took her a long time to feel good about herself.
Also we had more rows about fostering – another post – but we are together again, and more deeply committed to each other because of the hard times. And we know that God was in it and restored our marriage, because he answered prayer