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Brian Angels
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| Joined: | Mon Mar 26th, 2007 |
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Posted: Sat Mar 31st, 2007 01:17 am |
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Hi all,
I am so at a loss. My wife can not forgive me for my addiction to porn and how I betrayed her in the past. She feels our entire relationship (from dating to marriage) was a lie. If you read my first post on this forum you'll see that I began my change and was delivered from porn over two weeks ago when I said enough was enough after a week and a half of complete separation from my wife (no calls, no emails, no text messages due to a temporary restraining order.) I'm so lost and lonely I don't know what to do. I really hurt her and killed all trust over the past 6 months.
She said she doesn't believe my sincerity with my change and deliverance from porn. She is VERY hostile whenever she sees me and we talk about or situation. She says she cares for me but doesn't love me anymore. She won't even let me touch her. Should I just walk away or should I keep fighting? Reason I ask this is because I am slowly killing myself with grief and constant wondering. I can't live like this anymore. Porn got me here so of course I will never go back to it.
I really love her but she can't trust me and doesn't believe my effort to change. I don't believe in divorce. I feel we have a hope and so does our pastor. Her hostility is normal but whenever we argue, she walks away or hangs up. That is very immature.
Ideas or thought?
Last edited on Sat Mar 31st, 2007 01:19 am by Brian Angels
____________________
Brian
The key to a successful marriage is not finding the right person, it's learning to love the person you found. - Mort Fertel
2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!&q
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truthseeker
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| Joined: | Tue May 16th, 2006 |
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Posted: Sat Mar 31st, 2007 02:25 am |
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Hi Brian,
Have the two of you been meeting together with your pastor or a counsellor? If so, does she walk away in the middle of those meetings? If not, it may be a good idea, if she is willing, to get a neutral third party involved. Have you asked her if there is anything, a given amount of time without acting out for instance, a certain length of attending counselling/recovery groups, that would begin to re-establish some trust? Does she seem determined to end the marriage, or is she just not ready to resume it, and doesn't know when she might be? I'm glad that you are seeing how important this is for your future, wherever that path leads.
Praying for you...
TruthSeeker
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Brian Angels
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Posted: Sat Mar 31st, 2007 03:14 am |
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Hi Truthseeker,
She refuses to meet with me and my pastor just yet and not sure when she'll be ready. In December, we saw a marriage counselor but my wife didn't want to go back because the counselor told her to lower her standards, meaning, the flawless, ideal man she is looking for doesn't exist. Now I made many mistakes in the past with pornography, and I take full responsibility for my actions. I am on bended knee to her asking for her forgiveness and promising to never betray her with pronography ever again. People see how sincere I am with this but she just doesn't believe me.
I ask her all the time if we can meet with the pastor biut she says no, because when she talked to him she thought the pastor was making excuses for me. Well, maybe he was just trying to tell her I am a human being with an addiction. There are plenty of women who would love to have me as their husband, and I know that for a fact because I've been told by several. I open the car door for my wife, I tuck her in bed every night, I have class, I cook, I clean, I'm good looking, and I have a great career. My flaw is the lust and pornography -- but the porn is gone. She doesn't believe me.
How long do I put up with this childish behavior and hostility? When I say childish behavior, I mean today I drove 45 minutes to pick her up at work and take her out to lunch. During lunch, all we talked about was what I did in the past that betrayed her and how she can't forgive me. Well, one insult after another kind of made me upset so I said "lets go." She got up and started walking away but I was still sitting buttoning my cuffs. She saw me still sitting and just left. I mean she left the restaraunt and walked back to work. It was a 15 minute walk. I didn't know where she was so I was walking around the mall for 20 minutes looking for her, calling her cell, texting -- no response. Talk about making me worry and acting very childish. I'm 29 and she is 24, if that helps.
I don't know if I should keep pleading with her or just throw in the towel. My heart can't handle a divorce or never being with her again. A separation where we don't talk would put me in a deeper depression I'm in now. All this for porn.
____________________
Brian
The key to a successful marriage is not finding the right person, it's learning to love the person you found. - Mort Fertel
2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!&q
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truthseeker
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Posted: Sat Mar 31st, 2007 10:37 am |
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Hi Brian,
I hope some of the guys here will jump in here with their perspectives, because I am about to give you a dose of tough love. You said, "How long do I put up with this childish behavior and hostility?" I say, at least as long as she put up with your disfunctional behavior and betrayal. Was it not childish too? Try to put yourself in her shoes. If, for most of the first few months you were married, you kept finding her in another man's embrace, not bed, but kissing, maybe touching, and each time she swore it would never happen again, you would probably want to punch the guys' lights out, right? She can't even say anything to the women you were looking at, never mind punch them like she would love to do.
Who does that leave to take the full brunt of her pain? You. If you are going to talk to her at all, you are going to have to toughen up and let her vent. Two weeks is definitely an accomplishment, especially to you, but to her it is little to nothing.
What I hope is good news is that I do not hear you saying that she is getting a lawyer and drawing up divorce papers. And, at risk of insulting you, I strongly suggest that you NEVER tell her how many other women think you would be a good catch. She might just suggest that you pick one of them.
Whomever your third party is, it needs to be someone with whom both of you are comfortable. Neither of you will feel safe to share your deepest feelings if either of you feel that the counsellor is taking sides.
Perhaps meeting for now should be put on hold, unless she initiates the meeting. It sounds like you are trying too hard, and she, still broken-hearted and confused, is feeling pressured, pursued.
In the meantime, I have found many excellent articles on marriage at:
http://www.growthtrac.com
Many of them give insight about how women differ emotionally from men, and share the kinds of things that make women feel loved. The flip side of the coin is her respect for you, which you do not have right now, and with good reason. It is going to take time, IF this relationship can heal, which I pray it will, but, should it not, as we do often have to live with consequences of even forgiven sin, you will have grown immensely from this very painful experience.
Continuing to pray...
TruthSeeker
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TimM
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Posted: Sat Mar 31st, 2007 03:22 pm |
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Brian,
I pretty much agree with truthseeker. It's going to take a long time. It won't be done in a couple of weeks, or a couple of months, or a couple of years. I'm 2 years into recovery now, and my wife still sometimes gets overwhelmed by something I say and we end up spending a few uncomfortable days trying to understand one another and feel OK again.
A woman on another board I frequent says she thinks she will have full faith in her husband when he has been sober 2 years for every year he was acting out, and this seems to me fairly to reflect the gravity of what we have done. By my reckoning, I'll be 112 years old when that happens. I don't expect to see that day.
What you've been dealing with for years is all new and horrible to your wife. The revelations are horrible. The discovery that she didn't really know you at all is horrible. The separation is horrible. Whatever led to getting the restraining order and her involvement with the police and courts is horrible.
She's having completely to rework her understanding of you, of herself, and of your relationship. She's dealing with the fact that you have lied to her again and again and again and that she has bought it.
It takes time to do all that stuff.
I'm not blasting you for doing anything I haven't done, Brian. I'm just trying to put across how it probably looks to your wife.
Before we get serious about recovery, we have illusions about ourselves. Often we think we are basically fine guys with just some small superficial blemish. We'll get rid of the blemish and go on being the same unchanged basically fine guys, we think. Even early in recovery we may think that - I'll beat this (or even, I have beaten it) and go back to being my normal self.
I don't think it works this way. What was normal for us led us to addiction and hell. We are damaged much deeper than we realize. We need to change in profound and fundamental ways. That's fantastic. It means we have hope for a life full of new blessings we don't even imagine, and those blessings come to people like you and me. But it takes us time to learn and solidify a whole new way of being. It takes years. Read Patrick Carnes' "Don't Call it Love" for his description of SA recovery in each of years 1-5 to get a sense of one expert's view of the process.
So relax, be calm, and don't rush. Listen to your wife, feel her feelings, and don't silence her. That's part of learning to be intimate and learning to feel your own feelings. Probably it will be a few months before life stops being a complete emotional roller coaster and you begin to get some sort of stability at all. Right now, your job is to own what you have done, to stay loving and connected and attentive as she shares how she feels, and not to allow anger and defensiveness and a desire to move on right now to poison a healing process that may be starting. That's hard. We have to talk about things we hid all our lives. We have to experience feelings from which we fled all our lives. But we have to do that to heal our relationships and our selves.
Work hard on yur own recovery. Do everything you can. 12-steppers often talk about attending 90 meetings in 90 days. Try that, or work that hard at recovery some other way. As you learn to feel, learn to trust, learn to face yourself, learn to put aside fears and resentment, you'll become visibly a different person. Perhaps yur wife will see that and begin to trust it. Perhaps she will not. You can't control that. But whatever she may decide to do, you still need to get better yourself. Do that, and let her manage her recovery herself.
It's tough, but you're doing great stuff and making a lot of progress. Keep doing the next right thing, one day at a time.
Tim M.
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holdsworth
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Posted: Sat Mar 31st, 2007 03:24 pm |
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Hi Brian Angels
First thing..I am not married but know how much Lust/porn has affected realtionships and those I love.
As an imperfect Christian Guy I am offering you my thoughts, this is from someone you have never met or spoken to.
It is clear your wife feels hurt and let down and it is clear that she feels very angry.
Maybe if you pressure her now for a quick resolution, this might well push her further away.
She needs time restore her confidence in you and this will take time! maybe a lot of time.
'She says she cares for me but doesn't love me anymore'. She might not understand any of her feelings right now!!
You might well question where God is in all of this, thats O.K but never give up and I meen 'NEVER!' quit bearing your soul before JC and seeking him.
Hold your wife up and yourself.....try and let go (i don't mean let go of the marriage). If there are things in your home that are triggers....get rid of them, maybe you don't even need to explain why. Cable, Internet with no accountibility or filters etc , etc.
It is true there is no such thing as a perfect Christian Guy but unfortunatlely certain Christian circles and books build false expectations into womens minds about Guys. That is not to say that as Guys we don't fight to avoid things that are sinful and damaging and seek to be better people.
I hope and pray that you find the resources and guidance you both need to get through this, do not sit back and underestimate how much of an effect this will be having on your wife. I hope and pray that you and your wife will find healthy dialogue in a way that releases both of you into a new and good chapter of your marriage.
Dinner and flowers and gifts are not going to fix this. This is a different level. (don't meen to be patronising)
I think that you have a lot of soul searching and self examination to do, as do we all.
Please forgive me if any of this is out of place or unhelpful....just my thoughts.
Holdsworth
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justme
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Posted: Sat Mar 31st, 2007 08:36 pm |
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Brian Angels,
My husband cheated on me throughout our marriage and I found out a couple of years ago, so maybe I can give you a perspective from the wife's point of view. A lot of women over the years commented to me as well that my husband was such a good catch. He's also good-looking, a great cook and cleans house sometimes, too. Those women weren't seeing the whole picture, just as the women who long for a husband like you aren't seeing the whole picture. A woman with a healthy view of herself wouldn't seek out a man who had all those good qualities but was possibly going to cheat on them either with pornography or other women.
I'm not your wife, so I don't know exactly what your wife hears when you make comments like that, but if my husband told me that a lot of women thought he was a good catch, I'd be wondering if he wasn't looking around trying to find a replacement for me. You might think that's far-fetched, but you had already in a sense, found a replacement for her with the porn. She has been deeply wounded by your behavior and is going to be super-sensitive right now to any comments you make. I wouldn't make any comments about other women liking you unless you want to drive her further away.
She is in a lot of pain right now--I know, I've been there, done that. One thing that helped me a lot was a small group of Christian women friends who had been through similar things. I could talk to them, cry with them and pray with them and that kept me from having to unload everything on my husband. If she doesn't get the pain out by talking to someone else, it will come out eventually--probably in a very destructive way.
A wound as deep as the one you caused in your wife takes a long time to heal. It's not something you can see physically, of course, but if you want to think of a physical analogy, think of a deep wound to her heart made by the claws of a wild animal. That's the way I felt and I know it takes a lot longer than two weeks to heal. I hope this makes sense and none of this was meant as an attack on you. I just hope this helps you to begin to understand what she is going through.
Just me
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mkap60
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Posted: Sat Mar 31st, 2007 09:56 pm |
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Brother,
Six months ago, my wife found out about my profound sex addiction. The information put her into emotional shock followed by profound hurt and anger. I am finally back in her good graces. Throughout our separation, I lived by these truths.
1. Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.
2. Praise, Pray and Repent all the time.
3. My wife had a right to all her thoughts and feelings. I listened to all of them and respected her needs. I was always aware of how much my selfish behavior had hurt her. If I did get angry at her, I would quickly apologize to her.
4. I never argued with her when she said she might want to end the marriage. However, I did always tell her about the man that I was trying to become and the husband that I wanted to be. I have "walked the walk" and have been accountable to her and Jesus Christ. I asked her to give me time so she could see and feel that it felt different to be with me.
Be patient and humble, Brother.
God bless,
Marc.
ps to all, I have done most of my posting as forthelord33. I could not log in with that account. Sorry for any confusion.
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