Note: This post is part five of a six-part series on desire. It has been adapted from my book, 10 Lies Men Believe about Porn, available now wherever books are sold.
You can find beginning of the series here.
Even if you aren’t married yet, please read this because it may save you from massive heartache in the future. Fair warning, though: You are fully accountable for what you know. You won’t be able to unlearn what you’re about to read. It may haunt you until you deal with it, but it’s all part of God’s plan to make you the man—and the husband—that He wants you to be.
Still here? Good.
If you are hiding your pornography addiction from your wife, it is more than likely causing her to feel distant from you. She probably senses that there is something wrong with your relationship but has no idea what it is. There will likely come a point where she will ask you why the two of you aren’t close (if she hasn’t already). In order to keep the truth hidden, you will need to lie.
If you claim to have no answer, she will assume the issue must be with her. This was the path I chose in my marriage, and it’s one of the greatest regrets of my life. I watched my wife’s happiness deteriorate before me as she frantically tried to figure out whatever it was she was doing wrong in our marriage. Continuing to lie and withholding my true self from her was perhaps the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. How could I approach my wife, who was hurting so deeply, and ask her to love me when I knew my sin was the true reason she was hurting? I couldn’t. So I tightened my mask and went back to porn.
But here’s the deal. You will never experience intimacy with your spouse if anything remains hidden. Anything. True intimacy requires being fully known, and you cannot be fully known if you are withholding any information about who you are. Any lie or hiding, no matter how insignificant it may seem, will destroy the intimacy in your marriage. By attempting to protect yourself and appear worthy of acceptance, you are actually creating an environment where intimacy cannot exist. The world will tell you there are secrets you take to the grave, but we are not of the world. You must confess your lies and hiding to your spouse or your marriage will never thrive.
I would encourage you to prayerfully ask God to reveal to you anything you are hiding that is standing in the way of your intimacy as a couple. There may be some extremely difficult things you will need to confess to your wife, but please trust God as He brings these things to your mind. I’d encourage you to talk over your list with your pastor or a counselor first. They can help you develop a plan, offer suggestions on how to proceed, and provide accountability so you are less likely to back out. Above all else, pray about how God wants you to handle this in order to minimize the damage as much as possible.
There will never be a “good” time to confess these things to your spouse. No matter when you do it, it will be hard. But the longer you put it off, the worse the damage will be. I would suggest mentioning to your wife that you have some difficult things you need to discuss and asking her when she would be ready to sit down and discuss them. Be prepared to do it right then if that is her preference. This will hopefully eliminate at least some of her feelings of being blindsided.
There are no guarantees of how this will go—other than it being extremely hard and painful. Make no mistake—this will be a bomb going off in your marriage. You will need the help and support of others to survive this. But the reality is, if your marriage has been built on deception, the foundation is nothing more than a Jenga tower. You can live the rest of your life taking a block from the bottom and moving it to the top, but the wall will only be getting weaker. The only way to truly fix the foundation of your marriage is to rebuild it on a firm foundation of openness and honesty. However, understand that this confession isn’t about magically fixing your marriage overnight. It will be like ripping a scab off an infected wound to let it drain and heal properly. It’s a disgusting image, but it’s unfortunately accurate.
Once the wound has been cleansed and you both begin the long and tender process of healing in a new environment of transparency, you will hopefully begin to experience the seeds of intimacy in your marriage for the first time. You will realize that any love you are receiving from your spouse is being offered to the real you. She now knows everything about you—warts and all—and is still choosing to love you. The energy you previously spent keeping your mask on is now freed up to protect, serve, and lead her—all of which will encourage you in your true masculinity. You will constantly be thankful and grateful for her forgiveness, which will pour out of you as love. To paraphrase Jesus, the more you’ve been forgiven, the more you love (Luke 7:47). These are just a few of the many reasons why marriages that survive trials such as these have the potential to become the strongest marriages.
We cannot ignore the very real possibility that your marriage may not heal from this. But the truth is, the pain that your confession will bring up is already present in your marriage—it just hasn’t been labeled yet. The damage was done when the sin was committed. Confession is what will allow you to finally accept responsibility for that pain. It will allow your wife to understand what she—and your marriage—will need to heal from. It will allow her to stop blaming herself. If, however, you choose to continue hiding things from her, you will only be causing her more pain. You will be choosing your own desire for control and safety over her happiness and emotional stability. Your marriage may remain intact, but it will never be healthy.
I wish I could say I took my mask off, confessed everything to my wife, and we lived happily ever after. However, as you know from “My Story” at the beginning of this book, it took me a long time to gain the courage to be completely honest with her about all of my lies and selfishness. Ironically, my continual lying and deception—the very things I was doing to protect myself—were ultimately major factors in what pushed her away. In the end, I don’t believe she left because of my pornography addiction or even because of my adultery. I believe she left because she couldn’t trust me. I had lied to her about who I was for far too long.
By waiting until after we were already separated to come clean about everything, I never gave her the chance to see God working in me. By the time I finally faced the full reality of the pain I’d caused her, it was too late. In her mind, our whole marriage had been a lie. The man she thought she’d married didn’t even exist. The only “truth” she knew about me was that I had been willing to sacrifice her well-being for my own protection.
I truly believe that if I had told her everything when I first felt God leading me to come clean, things would have been different. We still would have been living together in the same house at the time, and I believe she would have been more likely to witness the changes that God was working in my heart. She might not have been able to trust me, but perhaps she would have been able to trust the signs of God working within me.
But even if I knew back then what the end results of my confession would be, I still would have gone through with it. In fact, I would have done it much sooner, because confessing everything to her ended up being the single biggest turning point of my life. It was the moment that I finally trusted God and began to experience the true intimacy I had been looking for.
Don’t get me wrong here. I hate how much pain my addiction caused my wife over the years. I pray daily that God would heal the pain that I have caused in her heart and remain hopeful that someday, she may even be healed to the point where she becomes open to reconciliation. But even if she doesn’t, I know that God will provide me—and her—with all the love and intimacy our souls will ever need.
Continue on to Part Six: How Does This Help Me with Porn?
