Marriage in the Cross Archive

Re-Building Trust & Dealing With Insecurity

– February 12, 2012Posted in: Marriage in the Cross

Letter from a wife:

For four years I have dealt with my husbands porn addiction and my hyper-sensitivity! Our marriage was horrible, but I too took those vows and I took them with meaning! I took them before the eyes of the Lord and there was no turning back.

I was hurt, always broken in constant paranoia, not able to enjoy the life of our lil girl! Scared of what was next and then the unthinkable happened.

I had a knock at the door. The cops cuffed him. At that moment I wanted to pack my bags and take the first flight back home, but God put in my heart that I needed to stay that I needed to support him. I couldn’t imagine supporting him after all he has put me through. This is his sin, I thought, let him deal with it.

This was the last straw, but God told me otherwise. He was arrested for voyeurism, masturbating in a parking lot where a women and 16-year-old girl saw him and called the police. I knew it! I just knew that was it, when his parents tried to defend him I just kept my mouth shout.

So I was obedient to our lord and I stayed and that week he accepted the Lord. It has been about a year and half and he is on fire and serving the Lord. It feels so surreal.

I often tap into my hyper-sensitivity mode, but God is working in his life. He is ready to mission and our radio station never changes from anything but Christian radio. He gets mad that the bible studies are at the same time because he cant take them all.

He is my “Beauty After Rain” as you would say. Sometimes God allows these hard times because through them breeds goodness! Through it all I am overjoyed but it is so hard to move on without me constantly checking the computer history and letting him drive somewhere on his own.

He has changed! God has changed him. Why can I not accept it? How do we ever let it all go? I have been reading your blogs and I would think I was reading my bio! I have been trying to cope and understand porn addiction and how it isn’t about us, it’s not that we aren’t good enough, it is an addiction! Through Him it can and it will be overcome, in Romans it says “In all things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” Your blogs are amazing it’s nice to hear another women not sugar coating there life. None of us are perfect and it’s nice to find another imperfect women in the world!

My Response:

I love that you stayed to support him and love him through it. I know how hard that can be, especially when it’s hard to find people around you that you feel comfortable opening up to and sharing your heart with. So many women try to hide behind lies to make themselves feel better. It’s not that big of a deal. All men do it. As long as he comes home to me I’m okay with whatever he does. I look at other men too. All of those thoughts are so destructive to a marriage and they are only going to make this circle of lust/impurity continue on its cycle.

When I was going through the healing process I remember reading somewhere in a psychology book that it often takes double the time to heal to the amount of time spent in deceit. For example, if my husband spent three years hiding things behind my back, lying to me, covering up phone bills, etc., then it would take six years for me to completely heal … and that’s assuming he truly changes and makes an effort to show me that he is trustworthy.

The DNA of Relationships for Couples by Dr. Greg Smalley & Dr. Robert S. Paul is a wonderful resource. Let me share an excerpt from this that I absolutely love (about trust):

We were all created with a longing to be intimately connected to others. This connection works best when we feel completely safe. We are then able to relax, let down our guard, and just be ourselves without having to worry about being hurt, judged, ridiculed, or rejected. It is in this open, honest, and exposed state that deep intimacy truly flourishes. Much like being with someone in a beautiful garden where the weather is ideal, there is no hint of danger and you feel completely safe.

If we commit ourselves to creating an umbrella of safety over our marriage, we will have a shelter under which we can relax and openly and intimately enjoy our life together. Our relationship becomes a sanctuary, a safe harbor, a place we long to come home to.

You are trustworthy when you fully grasp how valuable and vulnerable another person is, and you treat that person accordingly. To the extent that you treat the person as precious and irreplaceable, you are trustworthy. And to the extent that you don’t, you are not.

Every one of us has a part of us just like a clay figurine: of infinite worth and value like a priceless work of art, yet easily damaged and easily devalued.

That’s a little bit from the book. My point with all of this is … it is normal for you to not be able to move on right now. I wouldn’t expect you to! Your husband has obviously changed and I am so, so thankful to hear that. But it took me almost three years of watching George change and seek true purity before I could fully trust him again. I have a post coming up soon on this blog which goes into that part of our relationship — how I couldn’t trust him when he went to a store alone to now when a thought of distrust rarely enters my mind. We have overcome this and created the sanctuary mentioned in the excerpt above.

I feel safe because my husband proved to me that I could feel safe. He stopped stepping on my heart and lying to me and showed me that he truly, truly cared about me. Now, I don’t worry when summer approaches and clothing gets skimpier, because I know that he loves me and I know I can trust him.

I think you will get there too! It’s going to take some time and effort from both of you, but you’ll get there. I still have my moments of insecurity, but it has gotten so much better. The hyper-sensitivity will go away. I promise. Keep seeking God and truth and real beauty … and hopefully your husband will do the same. I would LOVE an email from you when you feel you have truly crossed to river from shadows to light. Please keep in touch!

Hugs from afar,
Ashley

Tags: forgiveness, insecurity, trust

Personal Insecurity vs. Relationship Insecurity

Ashley Weis

– February 10, 2012Posted in: Marriage in the Cross, Your Heart

When George and I went through this we both made a lot of selfish mistakes. He didn’t always do the right thing. He didn’t always make me feel good. And he definitely didn’t always make me feel like I could trust him. But he was trying. That’s more than I can say of most couples we talk to. Husband’s are often so consumed with their own “rights” that they don’t even care about their wife’s bleeding heart. They make a mess in her heart, deepen her wounds, and then expect her to clean it all up overnight, without his help.

It doesn’t work like that. It takes time to mend these wounds. Time and a lot of understanding. Just like his porn addiction isn’t solely about his wife, a woman’s insecurities and trust issues are not solely about her husband and his past lying/betrayal. It’s deeper than that. She has a desire to please her husband, which is good, but it becomes distorted. This world feeds us lies. We need to be this kind of wife, that kind of wife, something. We need to be more beautiful, have sex more, clean the house better, stop yelling at the kids so much. And these insecurities run deep. We begin to feel like we are completely lacking in our womanhood. We don’t feel good enough.

This not good enough complex drives us mad. We want to be better. We go on diets, fasts from magazines, etc. We are always trying to be good enough, better. And while the spiritual life is a progression toward holiness, it’s not about this constant striving to fill our gaping wounds. But this need to fill these wounds, to be good enough, will drive us crazy. And it will create issues within a marriage that has suffered from porn with a husband who is now trying to pursue holiness. Which is why I want to clarify something here.

You can have a husband who is willing to change or a husband who is constantly lying and throwing this in your face. Either way, your personal insecurity should get out of your heart and stay out. The relationship insecurity will remain and go away as the marriage progresses toward purity and self-sacrifice, but right now … get the personal insecurity out of your heart. Here’s what I mean:

Personal Insecurity is wounded pride. It’s a longing for something to fill a need that only God can fill. The need to be good enough, the need to be beautiful, clean, smart, funny, a good mom, etc. These are personal insecurities. We have an array of them that began in our childhood and worked their way up and another set that happen later in life when people tell us we’re not good enough. This insecurity is pride. This is why flattery and compliments can often be detrimental to the spiritual health of a person. We are to seek holiness. Seeking holiness means seeking The Holy One. The more we seek Him, the more we realize exactly how inadequate we are. He is all we need. We can’t function properly without His grace. Therefore, this not good enough complex is really just the devil’s game to keep us running in circles chasing our tails. It really is a good ploy … get them to chase after something they cannot attain and meanwhile make them thing being good enough is the goal.

Being good enough isn’t the goal. Being completely captivated with God’s goodness is the goal. Through our love for Him we will be better lovers. Through our captivation with His holiness we will know that we are weak and in need of Him. The more we try to convince ourselves that we can ever be good enough to anyone on this earth, is the moment we lost sight of our ultimate goal. To store up treasures in heaven, were moths and rust do not destroy. Embracing our weaknesses and reaching for Jesus is when humility will reside in our hearts. Now, that being said, there is another insecurity that you can’t just “get over.”

Relationship Insecurity is a wounded relationship. Someone has taken a picture of you and your husband and torn it in two. His lies, his issues with lust, they tore the picture a little, then you finished it off out of your pain. You couldn’t bare to look at it anymore. You can’t trust him. You are always worried. You’re anxious. You don’t know what he’s looking at when he goes to the grocery store. You check the scene when you walk in to a restaurant and assess the women there. Your comfort around your husband is based off of other people. This is personal insecurity seeping in to relationship insecurity, those things need to go. Anxiety and worry is not something God desires for you. He wants you to rest in Him, not your husband.

However, and this is a big however, forgiveness doesn’t mean trust magically reappears. And broken trust is the root of relationship insecurity. The sad thing about this is that relationship insecurities play off of personal insecurities, and it ends up becoming a big huge mess. Your husband’s goal should not to be to make you feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. His goal shouldn’t be to praise you and make you feel better about yourself. His goal should be to sacrifice his life for you and love you as though you are his very body. His goal should be to love God more, and in turn, love you more. He should desire your holiness, not your personal security in feeling good enough.

Sadly, this is not always the case. Sometimes the husband is after his own interests. He creates false needs based off of his perversions. He blames her and resents her for not healing overnight. He goes on and on about how he has changed, but he really hasn’t given his life to God. She suffers and the relationship suffers. But here’s the ticket. You, dear wife, don’t have to allow the broken trust and relationship insecurities to make you feel horrible about yourself. Your relationship will be rebuilt when your husband chooses to help you break down walls of distrust and put his arms around your heart to protect you. Until then, you will have relationship insecurities. You will not always know what he’s doing. You won’t trust him. You won’t be secure in your relationship, knowing that he’s going to come home to you and only you. You can’t create something that’s not there.

But it’s really important for you to differentiate between personal and relationship insecurities. Really, it comes down to this. Personal insecurity dies when you stop desiring something outside of God’s will. Relationship insecurities die when both people are repentant and desire to work to restore the torn picture.

Don’t let the torn picture keep you from believing that you are precious to God. You are not meant to be good enough in this world, so stop striving. Rest in your weaknesses and strengths, knowing that God gave you both for a reason. Pursue holiness by pursuing God and letting the world and your self-centered desires fall from your grip. There is so much beauty and freedom in God’s design for your life. Seek Him. He is the only one who can fill you. And don’t be so hard on yourself for not trusting someone who is still beating you into the dirt. Your desire to trust him again and your willingness to hold no record of wrongs is what’s needed. Trust will come when he’s ready.

Tags: for men, for women, God, healing, insecurity, latest, marriage

Christ’s Bride: An Affair with the Devil

Ashley Weis

– February 10, 2012Posted in: General Articles, Marriage in the Cross, Understanding Him, Your Heart

A beautiful Groom. The most beautiful Groom … with the most broken Bride. The most scandalous Bride. She cheats, she runs away, she uses Him and she prolongs her affair with satan, meanwhile desiring her Groom to stay there in the shadows in case she needs someone to fall back on.

I refuse to capitalize satan, by the way. I don’t even want to give him the honor of a capital letter. He is the most annoying thing in the world, and yet, through all of that … I still feel sorry for him. I have a strange love for him. Not in the worship-sense, but in a pity-sense. He is so lost that his only way to feel better about himself is to make others as lost as he is. He wants Christ’s Bride to run away with him, and the saddest thing of all … She does.

Now, we can look at this one of two ways. We can focus on the affair with the devil. We can gossip and mope about how horrible it is that She would do all of these things to the most perfect Husband in the universe. We can talk about the affair, the evilness, the brokenness. Or … drum roll please ….

We can focus on the Groom and the fact that through all of this, He still loves His Bride. We can focus on the faithfulness, the beauty, the hope that is to come in the next life. We can focus on the beauty of a Groom who refuses to allow His Bride to forget about Him. He is Love. And that is what we should focus on. Yes, Christ’s Bride often chooses the devil over Him. Not consciously all the time, just a subconscious nod to the attachments and pleasures of the world. She so often desires admiration from the world (or herself) more than she cares about God’s opinion of her. She rests in His faithful love, but refuses to work on her side of the marriage. She enjoys being loved, but thinks it is too difficult to love in return. It involves an undivided heart… and so often His Bride is divided between the pleasures of the world and His love. She wants His love, but still clings to the world too much to really grab ahold of all that He wants to offer her.

It’s so easy in our marriages to focus on the negative. To dwell in the past. To dwell in our own issues, in his issues, in everyone around us who has issues. It’s easy to be depressed, to be controlled by our evil desires, to desire things we can never attain. It’s easy to get caught up in the lies and want to stay there, believing that we are to spend our lives in search of someone who loves us for us, without the slightest desire to love people for who they are, sin and all. Isn’t it funny? Husbands and wives so often desire to be loved amidst their flaws, but aren’t willing to give the same love to the other. She wants to be loved regardless of physical (and personality) flaws, but she won’t love him regardless of his sins against her. He wants to be loved regardless of his sins against her, but he won’t love her regardless of how many times she brings up the past in pain and anger.

We are willing to receive, much too often, but not willing to give when it hurts. And loving those who love us is not what truly makes a difference in this world. It’s being like Jesus and loving a spouse who consistently wrongs Him, without ever whining about how He isn’t loved in return. His love is that big. And that’s the love we are called to model through the grace He gives us when we ask.

The key is asking.

But first, we have to turn back to our Groom, our Jesus, and give up our affairs with the devil. We need to strip our earthly attachments, prides, and desires, and desire Him and everything through Him. We need to renew our vows to our King. We need to remember our first love, and seek Him with all of our hearts. If we continue to focus on our affair with the devil, we will never be able to love our King… and if we can’t love the most perfect Groom in the universe, then we will never be able to love our flawed earthly grooms.

It starts with our faithfulness to Christ. And through that faithfulness we can learn exactly how much grace we need. How much sin is in our own hearts. And when our Groom takes us back with loving arms… we will understand what we are supposed to do when our spouses hurt us and then come back to embrace us. We will understand how to love and foster our earthly marriages only after we learn to love Christ with our heart, soul, and mind, and foster our marriage with Him above all else.

Tags: hope

Your Marriage Can Be Beautiful Again

Ashley Weis

– February 10, 2012Posted in: Marriage in the Cross

If you really truly love someone, how in your right mind could you be unfaithful to them? How can a man truly love a woman and break her heart to pieces?

Let me try to shed some light and hope into these swirling negative emotions you may be going through as a woman trying to heal from her husband’s betrayal.

First, remember that women see porn/lust as betrayal/unfaithfulness. God sees it as betrayal/unfaithfulness. Men don’t always see it that way—that’s why it’s so easy for them to lust, especially before you find out. They are trained to believe it’s all “fantasy.” It’s not reality, they don’t bring it into their reality, and they live in a culture where it’s normal for women to dress sexy/sensual and for men to lust in front of their wives/girlfriends.

But … it is possible for a husband to truly love his wife, yet be grasping for air in the quicksand of lust.

He married you — not a porn star, not a Victoria’s Secret model.

You.

He knows air-brushed models aren’t real. He should know that many porn stars are abused and faking their pleasure. It’s all fake, all fantasy, all created to make some money. It’s just how this culture is. It makes women want to look like something impossible, and it makes men lust over something impossible (fantasy). It’s a great little trick the devil has going here. It gets so many people. Women spend more to look good and men spend more on some sort of lustful material. Both women and men are deteriorating their hearts by chasing after these fantasies. But love is possible in the midst.

Your husband can love you, even if he’s looking at other women. He really can. He married you for a reason. He just hasn’t always viewed this the same way you do, but hopefully now (or with time) he will see it the same way.

Your intimacy and marriage cannot be healthy, pure, and truly one until your husband learns to value you more than his addiction. And you, as the woman, must learn to see your value through God’s eyes, not the world’s.

How, once a man is fully aware of the harm of the addiction and had confessed it to you, can he relapse?

The same way we go back into thoughts of not being good enough and comparing ourselves to other women. Think about how quick and easy it is to compare yourself to a model on the cover of a magazine. Or to walk by Victoria’s Secret in the mall and for a split-second wish you could look like that. That’s why I wrote the post “Overcoming the Porn Itch.” To show that it’s just as easy for a man to lust as it is a woman to think insecure, not-good-enough thoughts. You know the harm these thoughts do to you … but you continue to have them. It’s the same thing with a man. They are breaking a horrible habit. They’re trying not to scratch an itch they’ve subconsciously scratched for many, many, many years. (George, my husband, has a post about this, coming soon.)

So, that’s how it happens. That’s how he can say you are everything to him, you are the woman he loves and wants to be with … and continue to lust. The good thing is that you are now aware of his struggle. It’s out in the open, and he knows it’s wrong (I hope!). It will take time for him to break his habit fully, even if he is better now. It will also take a lot of time for you to 1.) feel secure with him and 2.) stop thinking negative thoughts about yourself and your marriage and your husband.

This process isn’t easy. I truly think it’s one of the toughest things a marriage can go through, but I hope my words do one thing for you. I hope they show you that there’s not only beauty after rain, but that it’s possible to see beauty in the rain.

It’s possible for your marriage to one day be on the other side of this pain. To have a much stronger marriage, a much more pure intimate life than most couples in this world. Your relationship can once again bathe in the light of the hope you had when you said your wedding vows.

It’s beautiful to be on the other side of the storm, but there’s something beautiful about struggle, suffering, and commitment through tough times. Sometimes the best place to be is in the rain. I think that’s why God puts us there. It teaches us, refines us, and changes us. And then … it makes us appreciate the sunshine even more, instead of taking it for granted.

Your marriage can be beautiful again. But your husband has to be willing to cut out his eyes and receive new, pure eyes. And you have to be willing to cut out these pieces of your brain that go back into negative thought patterns, and instead, you need to focus on things that are pure and lovely.

I have hope for you.

And remember … none of us are good enough in the world’s standards. There are too many comparisons. Too many impure perceptions of things. To God … there are no rating scales. We’re all unique. We all individually radiate His glory and beauty in our own ways.

We are so caught up in wanting to be “good enough,” but what we don’t realize is that we’re not supposed to be striving for the perfection of the world, especially in our marriages. The world gives us unattainable standards so that we will chase after them forever. Instead of chasing after the wind, we love each other through our flaws, strengths, commitment, and selfless love. We love each other because we are perfect for each other, not perfect in comparison to the rest of the world. Rating scales are dangerous and depressing. Stay away from them. And it’s time to throw away the “not good enough” mentality and see ourselves through God’s eyes.

It’s normal (so, so normal) for you to go through these stages as you heal. It’s okay to have moments of “I hate him, I hate what he did.” He cheated on you, lied, and treated your marriage vows with as much importance as we treat our garbage.

You treasured him, loved him, gave him all you had … And he gave part of himself to other women—at least that’s how it feels to us.

But if he’s climbing up a ladder toward purity, you have to focus on the future or you’ll never get there with him. You’ll keep pulling him down into negative thought patterns. Remember … your marriage is a treasure—even if the devil is trying to snuff out your flames. You must always remember how much of a treasure your marriage is. Don’t let these negative thoughts ruin you or your hope.

With time … I hope you learn to see the beauty in this rain. Trust me, there is a lot of beauty in your life right now … it’s just hidden by dark clouds.

But I have hope for you. I really do.

Tags: healing