Lies, Lies, and More Lies
The following is an excerpt from Vicki Tiede’s new book, When Your Husband Is Addicted to Pornography: Healing Your Wounded Heart. Published by New Growth Press. Copyright © 2012 by Vicki Tiede. This Harvest USA resource can be used individually, in a one-on-one discipling relationship, or in a small group. You can obtain this resource at our bookstore: shop.harvestusa.org.
“Trust was definitely lost and took years to rebuild. There have been times of relapse, and those have taught us how to rebuild trust on a continual basis. Initially, I felt like I had lost my husband. I didn’t know who he was anymore. Were the vows we made years before even valid? I had been lied to for so long.”
– Jessica
Be∙tray∙al, noun: the breaking or violation of a presumptive social contract, trust, or confidence that produces moral and psychological conflict within a relationship amongst individuals.
Falling in love is an indescribable feeling. Do you remember when you fell in love with this man you call “husband?” When you stood in front of the minister and made a covenant before God and others to love and honor this man, I’m sure it never occurred to you that giving your heart away to him gave him the ability to break it. While the official definition of betrayal describes the breaking of a contract, trust, or confidence, the practical definition should include the breaking of a heart. When your husband’s addiction to pornography was revealed, you learned firsthand that the betrayal of love and trust doesn’t happen only to other people. It can happen to you. It did happen to you. As you sort through the debris in the aftermath of the discovery you find your heart lying in the rubble with deep, painful wounds. And you may wonder if you’ll ever trust again.
Let’s get one thing clear: Acting on a pornography addiction constitutes a betrayal. If your husband, well-meaning friend, or a misinformed therapist told you otherwise, he or she is wrong. God designed sexual intimacy to be enjoyed within the covenant of marriage. As soon as sexual pleasure is sought outside the marriage—whether with a partner or in self-gratification while looking at porn—it is adultery. Such choices will devastate trust and have repercussions in the marriage and in the husband’s relationship with God. Sexual infidelity is a tremendously difficult betrayal from which to recover, but there is hope.
Did you hear that? There is hope. The journey of a broken heart on the road to healing will take time, and broken trust leaves scars. But remember, a broken bone is stronger after it has healed than it was before it was broken. In the same way, in time your heart will heal to be stronger than it would have been if it had never been broken at all, especially if you understand that time will not heal your broken heart, God will. I know you are up for the journey or you wouldn’t still be reading this book. Persevere. In time, you will reach your destination, and God will heal your wounds. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3, ESV).
Lies are the backbone that supports an act of betrayal. You have no doubt heard your share of stories. When you asked, “What were you doing up until 2:00 a.m.?” or “Why did you have the office door locked just now?” your husband wouldn’t look you in the eye. He gave a vague response, and your trust was damaged. (When I confronted my husband about graphic sexual photographs I’d found in his filing cabinet, he claimed he was doing research for a book. My husband had a very respectable career and was not a writer [neither was I at that time in my life], and if he had written a book describing what I saw on those pages, it could have been sold only in an adult bookstore.)
When the full spectrum of the betrayal was revealed, your damaged trust in your husband was exchanged for full-blown devastation, and you were ushered into the present crisis. Let’s consider for a moment what possessed your husband to lie in the first place. I’m going to be honest and give you the bottom line first. Your husband lied because he could and because, for a time, it worked. In addition, he lied because he was self-deceived, he hoped to avoid conflict with you, he feared the consequences of you knowing the truth, and he feared the possibility of not being able to “have it all”—you and the outside sexual opportunities. Ultimately, it backfired. As you know, lies are the tool of the devil because they kill trust.
I wonder if, like me, you find yourself creating new categories of time: before I knew about the addiction, during the unveiling, and after the fact.
I know you did not sign up to travel on this road. It stinks. At times, it may even feel unbearable. I recall many nights of crying until I was physically sick. A broken heart is agony.
You don’t need to spend much time in your Bible to recognize that God knows precisely how it feels to give his heart to someone, only to have her give her heart to someone or something else. God made a sacred covenant (like marriage) to the people of Israel, and throughout the Old Testament we see them reject him again and again. They committed spiritual adultery, and God was hurt, angry, envious, and betrayed. Does any of this sound familiar? Yes, I thought so.
Yet he, being compassionate,
atoned for their iniquity
and did not destroy them;
he restrained his anger often
and did not stir up all his wrath.
He remembered that they were but flesh,
a wind that passes and comes not again.
– Psalm 78:38–39
The real showstopper is that very little has changed in the last four thousand years. The Word of God chronicles a wild rescue story. First, there is a need for rescue (Genesis 1—11), next the rescue is proclaimed (Genesis 12—Malachi), at last the Rescuer arrives (the Gospels), and finally the rescue is fulfilled (Acts—Revelation). You would think we would all bask in our glorious freedom from the chains of the enemy, chains from which the Rescuer saved us. You would think—but that’s not the case, is it? Instead, we betray our Rescuer every time we run back to the lies and temporary pleasures with which the enemy tempts us.
Yet despite our repeated betrayals, God stands with his arms outstretched, waiting for us to turn to him so he can forgive us and welcome us back into his arms. God doesn’t differentiate between his prodigals. He longs for all of us. Whether we bear the title “betrayer” or “betrayed,” God is waiting for us to turn to him so he can begin the relationship again. That’s what God does in the face of betrayal. He begins again.
God could choose to grab us under the armpits, pluck us out of our rebellion, and stick us safely back in his arms where we belong. He could, but he wants us to call out and move toward him. He could force the restoration of our relationship, but God allows us to be responsible for our actions. Thus, it is the responsibility of the unfaithful one to own his actions and take the steps to restore trust.
Likewise, you must surrender your attempts to control your husband’s life. Let him be responsible for the choices he makes. It is his responsibility to take the first steps to restore trust in your relationship. He will have to earn your trust by demonstrating trustworthy behavior. This isn’t going to be a ten-minute tidy. His past lies have probably caused you to question the truth about absolutely everything he says or does, so you can expect that the cleanup from those lies and the rebuilding of trust will take time.
Trust is an asset we don’t fully appreciate until we don’t have it in a relationship. Before you were aware of your husband’s addiction, you may not have given trust a second thought. Since the unveiling, however, you conjure up countless possibilities in your mind every time your husband walks out the door, or you walk out the door leaving him alone, or he gets on the computer, or he pauses while flipping channels, or he . . . . You get my drift. It’s torture.
You and your husband will not rebuild healthy trust unless you are both sure you are heard, understood, and loved by the other. It is liberating to know you are known and accepted by your partner. Then and only then can you be who you are—without pretenses. That is what it means to trust.
Trust is when you are secure enough in your relationship that you don’t need to edit everything you say and explain everything you do. You can be yourself without fearing that the relationship will end if the other person sees your flaws. This is your goal.
You will choose to trust your husband when you are ready. Don’t worry— trusting and forgiving are not the same thing. Rebuilding trust will probably take much longer than it will take to forgive. You will know it’s time to trust when your heart helps you choose to believe that he will make the right choices. His behaviors will become your trust barometer. If he wants to demonstrate his trustworthiness and he is making right choices, he will have no problem being accountable and undergoing a reasonable degree of scrutiny. (This does not give you license to be the porn police!) If, however, he insists that you should be able to simply “get over it” and take his word that he’s “done doing that,” and he resists accountability, you should be cautious about trusting. This is a direct indication that he is not serious about healing from his addiction and restoring trust in your marriage.
I can’t promise you that this will be an easy road to travel. Nor can I assure you that if you arrive at your destination and choose to trust, your husband will not fall again. But I can tell you that God will heal your broken heart.
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