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josh12
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Posted: Fri Dec 15th, 2006 03:05 pm |
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| Has anyone out there ever kicked this habit without telling their wife and had total healing? Is that possible or am I just kidding myself? My wife will be devestated if I tell her I have fallen back into this. I don't think she could have any understanding of how powerful the temptation is.
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Ben
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Posted: Fri Dec 15th, 2006 03:58 pm |
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All I can say is from my own experience.
I used the same logic. I had been honest in the past, but then when i fell again having been free in the past I felt I couldn't tell her. I told brothers in the church. I tried to be accountable to other men. But much of this was in order to justify not telling me wife. I said to myself that she would not cope. That if I spoke of it, she would lose what little respect for me she had (so I thought) and I would not cope. She was once unfaithful to me briefly, spurred on by knowing that I was looking at pornography. I thought that maybe this would happen again, or that our marraige would not survive. And I became more enslaved to this sin than I had ever been before.
To my shame, in the end she 'caught' me looking at pornography. I very much wished I'd had the courage to tell her myself and face the consequences.
For me though, the 'exposure' was the route to freedom (its early days, but I am doing well at the moment). I am so thankful to have the burden of living a lie from my wife removed. It couldn't be a real marraige with this between us. I also couldn't really seek God whilst keeping this from my wife. So instead of getting free, I became more and more dominated by the sin. Now, God has begun to amaze me with what he can do in my life.
I don't know how your wife will react - as someone else said in these forums, you may need to get some support in this, and also decide how you are going to seek God and flee from this sin, so she can see you're serious. I don't even know how my own wife will react in time - she shocked me by responding in love and grace, but I know from the past that sometimes these things hurt more with her when they sink in or when times get tougher - and that might be weeks or even months ahead or just around the corner. But I know now that the route for restoration and freedom for me is in full honesty. I certainly can't beat this without living in the light.
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TimM
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Posted: Fri Dec 15th, 2006 08:33 pm |
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Josh,
I have told my wife, so I'm not the person you're looking for who recovered without that step. That said, may I offer my own opinions on this question?
I think we often make three mistakes when we think about disclosure to our spouses.
(1) We think we don't have to disclose.
But I have met many spouses of addicts, and I have never met one who said, "I wish my spouse had just kept me in the dark." Addiction is a disease of isolation, a disease in which we wall ourselves into a prison where we are separated from other people, from God, and from ourselves. What I think, and what everything I read about addiction seems to say, is that we have to connect with other people in order to heal. The walls of isolation and shame have to come down.
Can we really say, "Yes, I need to build emotional honesty with the people around me, but just not with my wife"? We are called to be one flesh with our spouses. Can we really do that while withholding from them the central emotional and spiritual sruggle of our lives? Doesn't that just maintain the structure of isolation and shame from which our addiction grows?
I think we do have to disclose.
(2) We think we have to disclose instantly.
But I'm not so sure about this. In some way, disclosure and repentance and making amends for our behavior happens at step 9 of the 12 steps, not at step 1. Further, disclosure is hard and scary, and it can be done in ways that harm either or both parties. It's important to do it right. I didn't talk to my wife until I had been attending 12 step meetings for 3 months and had some sobriety, until I had a sponsor and was working the steps, until I was ready to start counseling once I had her approval to spend the money, until I had read the book "Disclosing Secrets" and had talked with my sponsor at length about how to proceed. This gave me the confidence that I was doing things in the least painful possible way, and that I could demonstrate that I was serious about recovery.
To be fair, some people disagree with my answer here, and think that disclosure has to happen at once. They may be right. My willingness to postpone disclosure could be used to rationalize delaying years in order first to get sober, which seems clearly unacceptable to me. At the same time, I still think that early in recovery, we often need a little time to understand ourselves well enough and to have enough support in place that we do not cause even more damage by a bungled confession.
I think some delay, measured in months but not years, is OK.
(3) We think that confessing to our wives will transform us utterly.
But it's not so. I have read people saying that they have confessed to their wives and made their wives accountability partners and that now they are certain they cannot slip again, that slipping would be too unspeakable even to consider. Most of those people then proceed to slip. We addicts seem quite capable of causing pain in order to get our fix, quite capable of behaving irrationally in order to get our fix, quite capable of doing whatever it takes in order to get our fix.
Becoming honest with our spouses is part of learning a new way to live. We also have to learn to make friends, to learn to trust God, to learn to understand our own feelings, to figure out who we are, to discover intimacy and trust, to maintain honesty and connection with ourselves, our spouses, our friends, our God. Addiction recovery is about becoming a new human being, about being born anew. That birth is a long, hard, painful process for most of us. Just telling our wives won't do it, and it is grossly inappropriate to create a plan of recovery that makes our wives responsable for our sobriety.
We need to do a lot of things in order to recover.
That's my take, anyway. Not everyone agrees, especially on point (2). It's what I've done, and it's sure working for me, though.
I hope some part of that helps, even if it doesn't directly answer your question about recovery alone, which I haven't succeeded at and which I think never or almost never succeeds. Of course, I may be biased, since the recovering addicts I meet are by definition not trying to recover alone; the same bias may affect the psychologists I read about this stuff, too. I'd be surprised, though.
Tim M.
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RTK
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Posted: Mon Dec 18th, 2006 04:41 am |
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Josh,
From your previous post, you stated that you have a stong marriage. There should be no secrets in a healthy marriage. Sin can thrive where there are secrets. Your wife might be "devastated", but along with you coming clean, you'd better have a plan of action to stay clean if you want to keep a strong relationship. There are lot's of good resources with Blazing Grace about taking the right steps to get free of the talons of porn.
You also wrote about having troubles with movies... "I even watch movies with my wife and then calculate how long I need to wait before I can come on to her so that she doesn't think I am thinking about the woman in the movie." Have you established some personal boundaries for yourself? Establishing boundaries would be a good step in the right direction.
RTK
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gaylon
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Posted: Tue Dec 19th, 2006 12:25 am |
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I find that staying "in the open" daily works best for me. Every morning I tell my wife "I didn't look at porn yesterday" and "but I was tempted pretty hard" (if that was the case) or ("temptation wasn't too bad) and/or ("had some problems looking at girls, but overall did good"), etc.. Or, if I'm feeling pretty stressed, "could we talk for a few minutes". This helps her feel reassured, and helps keep the battle as an important thing for me to work on.
When I quit talking to her (regarding my porn battle) for a few months earlier this year, I finally fell. After a few days, I told her. She said she already could feel that there was a problem (women have this scary intuition), so she was relieved that I told her, and would rather know about it outright, since it hurt anyway, but she didn't know what she was hurting about... Doesn't make sense to me, but seems to work that way.
It could be different for different women, but this method helps both her and me...
And, as a note, every day I work my buns off to find a couple of things that will make her day a little easier or more pleasant. This says to her "I love you". And, it helps me keep a curb on the pride that is all too natural for me...
Also, and I know this is different for different couples, as a side effect our sex life is better than it ever has been (after the initial difficult weeks). I guess this makes sense, since I've been a porn / sex addict since I was 12 until now...
I still struggle every day, but can see a little light at the end of the tunnel (hoping it's not a train), and I think she can too...
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wifeofaddict
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Posted: Fri Feb 9th, 2007 06:28 am |
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I have a question:
Once a husband has confessed and repented, a year ago, what is your opinion on keeping her informed of the slips in porn and masturbation? I want to know, but he says he now doesn't think it is good for our marriage.
Thanks,
Linda
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TimM
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Posted: Fri Feb 9th, 2007 01:24 pm |
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I think it is absolutely your right to know if you choose to know. Period. Of course you may find what you learn upsetting, and so of course you should think carefully about what level of disclosure you need, but you're an adult human being and should be allowed to make your own choices in this regard.
My wife and I have evolved a fairly elaborate protocol in this regard. I know that if I slip, I may feel so much guilt and shame that I can't confess to her instantly, and so I don't want to promise, say, to confess in 24 hours, which is a promise I may not be able to keep. We have therefore agreed that after a slip, I will definitely confess to my sponsor within 24 hours, and that I will confess to her as soon as I can, within a week, and with my sponsor (whom my wife trusts a great deal) working to hold me responsible and to assure that this happens.
In this way, I am guaranteed to admit my problem to someone who can help me almost instantly, even if I can't yet bear to talk to my wife, and yet my wife is assured of getting information in a fairly timely way about what's going on.
Fortunately, we have only had to employ this protocol twice in the last year and a half, most recently in November of 2005, but it's still a framework that works for us.
Another thing I think is important is to maintain regular conversation about how recovery is going - how both partners are feeling, what has been happening in counseling and meetings releant to recovery, what you are sharing with other people, what seems wondrous and what seems hard - even if there isn't a slip. We're trying to be open and to share and to build intimacy, after all, and that can't happen while not talking. I think this sort of regular deep sharing is extremely important. If it goes on, then sharing about a slip will be scary and horrible, but possible.
Finally, another bit from my own exprience. Maybe 10 years ago, before I got serious about recovery, I confessed to my wife and tried to regularly tell her every week how I was doing. That's all I did for recovery, though. I didn't go to 12-step meetings, didn't seek out counseling, didn't talk to anyone else, didn't work the steps. And I didn't get sober. When I began acting out again, I made excuses why it wasn't a good idea to keep dragging my wife through my troubles (this worried our priest, and I used him as an excuse), though I assured her that I was doing well. My wife may or may not completely have believed this, but she accepted it, and I continued to act out just as freely as I had before for another decade or so. Recovery is hard work, and it almost always needs to be done seriously with other people, and it requires transparency, and it requires us to become whole new people. If those are not things you are seeing, then you may need to consider the possibility that your husband is just as dishonest as I. To me, not working hard with others is a red flag, not changing visibly is a red flag, anger is a red flag, and hiding is a big red flag. I'm not sure how many of those are present, but if some are, then working with your husband to find ways in which you can be reassured of his recovery and of your safety is entirely reasonable and appropriate.
Just my experience and not anyone else's, of course.
Tim M.
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mumof7
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Posted: Fri Feb 9th, 2007 03:10 pm |
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I pass my thoughts on as a wife of a husband who has never told me anything....he has always been 'caught' or 'found out'; this has always been devestating as you trust and then are lied to because you find out it has been going on anyway.I definately think it is an important step to tell your wife and would be concerned that you could be making excuses by avoiding it because of how she may react. I wished my husband would come to me and we could work at it together, dont underestimate Gods work in her life or the fact she knows and has said she would work with you, Im assuming that would be the case...
as a wife it is much worse to find out the deception had been going on than to be honest and come and speak to her about it, it also does speak of your willingness to work at it to her. So although she will be hurt initially which is understandable Im sure you will find her being more assured of your trying to walk a pure life. I brings back honesty to her when keeping it from her for her to one day find out brings the opposite. It is obvious that you are concerned with her feelings so therefore you will be sensitive and with this and the love you have for her and the hatred of what has happened will be evident to her.
I dont know all the circumstances but I do know that I definately would want my husband to come to me no matter how much it tore my heart apart...I longed for the openness and honesty because without that it is the opposite. Pray before for God's guidance and timing and then definately pray together.
May God be your guide in your actions
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Steve
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Posted: Fri Feb 9th, 2007 07:33 pm |
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Josh, my first question to you is:
Have you really been totally honest with anyone about your struggle? Doing such is going to be a key ingridient to getting free, at least based on my personal experiences in recovery cultures. What do you think? Any comments?
Now having said that, I think you ask a very tough question regarding disclosure to your wife. There are so many factors, but in general, holding any kinds of secrets with your spouse is going to be unhealthy for your relationship.
-Steve
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"Isolation is bad for any man, but for the sexual addict it is fatal." -Russell Willingham
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