When I sought healing after discovering George’s porn struggle it was hard to find people to relate to. Everyone told me, “It’s not a big deal,” and that I just had insecurity issues. But it is a big deal. And it’s one of the major reasons women have insecurities in the first place.
Sometimes I wished George would’ve told me before we got married. I think the marriage makes it worse, because you said vows and the other person broke them. But really, the pain is still the worst pain in the world because even if you didn’t say those vows, you still said them to each other at some point or you wouldn’t be together.
It took me over a year to initially “heal.” Honestly, I don’t know if you ever fully heal. This is a choice both husband and wife must continuously make in order to make a relationship last.
Your husband needs to do whatever he can to earn your trust back, and he must do it every day of his life. He’s going to fail sometimes, and that’s where grace and forgiveness comes in on your part, but he really needs to prove his heart to you. And over time, your trust for him will rebuild and your “requirements” of him will lessen.
For example, when I first found out … being the extreme person that I am … I asked George every single detail of every single temptation he ever had. (I don’t recommend this.) If he looked at a woman, I wanted to know. And because he told me, this helped. But honestly, these details broke me even more. I think I was nuts to even ask, but over time — when I loosened my insanity a bit — he loosened a little, saw my heart, and started to change.
The most important step for guys in this is to cut out their eye. Yes. They have to stop going to places like the mall. They have to stop watching movies with crud in them. You can use pluggedinonline.com to gauge the sexual content before watching. All of these things play a part in porn … and he’s not going to rebuild your trust by snuggling up and watching Angelina Jolie get naked in front of your marriage.
A lot of men aren’t willing to make these sacrifices, but it has to happen for 1.) his heart to find purity and hold onto it and 2.) your trust for him to rebuild. When you see the change in his heart and when you see him repeatedly showing you that he is seeking purity AND that he values you more than other women THEN your trust will rebuild.
This took me a little over a year. Now, over three years later, I don’t have the same crazy feelings. If he goes somewhere without me I don’t worry about what he is seeing. If he goes to the mall I don’t imagine him staring at Victoria’s Secret. The devil still likes to plant lies, but I don’t listen nearly as often. I trust my husband again. I honestly do.
That said, it’s not just about your husband/boyfriend changing and rebuilding your trust. It’s also about you realizing your value and not placing your worth in his hands. Place your heart in his hands, but not your worth. When he (or anyone) does something to hurt you, pull your heart from their hands and say… “Listen, this hurts and I don’t know if you are being careful enough with my heart.”
That doesn’t mean you leave or get angry or lash out (which I’ve done way too many times). It just means that you realize that although your boyfriend/husband may fall and look at another woman at some point in his life … you are still beautiful. You are still loved. And you are still more valuable than he may sometimes treat you.
Fact is, our spouses cannot love us like Jesus does. They can’t show us our value. And if we place our value in their hands … we will always feel crushed, broken, and hurt. We will always feel like we don’t measure up. Jesus is the only one who will ever treat us as the valuable hearts that we are.
That’s easy to know, but hard to feel.
Your boyfriend/husband is the only person in the world who can affect you the way he does. He’s the only person that can make you feel more alive than you’ve ever felt in your life, and also more broken than you have in your entire life.
But the same is true of us. We can also not treat our husbands as the valuable hearts they are. And by focusing on ourselves and our insecurities and PORN, we are not loving them more than ourselves. The husband, still, in this situation needs to rebuild trust if he wants a successful marriage, but … the woman should be working on love and sacrifice.
Porn is a lot deeper than a man’s struggle with lust. The people in the industry are majorly hurt and broken and deceived, much more than we can imagine (the wives/women and husbands/addicts). And they don’t have husbands to work through this with … they have men after men after men who abuse them, treat them like trash, then tell them they will NEVER be good enough.
Porn is deep. And men, sadly, play into it by giving in to lust. Satan knows what he is doing here. Some wives even justify this because it’s “what men do.”
No … this is killing our hearts. All of us. And when men view that stuff they not only kill their own hearts and their wives, but they are also using those poor girls as a drug to get a quick high. They are not caring for a porn star’s heart and soul.
You. as a wife/girlfriend, have an important role. Because you are in a place of sacrifice. Of being like Jesus. Of choosing to forgive and work through this. To love at a cost, at a risky cost of being hurt again. It’s hard. But it will get easier over time — the more he proves his faithfulness and the more you learn your value doesn’t depend on anything in this world.
I’m still learning that one. I still struggle with negative thoughts.
It may never end, but the beauty in it is … what do you do with those thoughts?
Do you continue to focus on yourself, or do you stop and say, “Hold on self, I care about you, but your value is not dependant on anyone’s perception of you. So, please, step aside for a few minutes so I can love my husband/boyfriend more than you.”
This entire process, for me, has been about selflessness and also taking care of myself. Learning to see my value to Jesus and not to this world and living in that. AND learning to love my husband even when it hurts. To look through my insecurities and see a man who is struggling in this world to be pure when the world makes it next to impossible.
It really isn’t about me.
And fully understanding that has made all the difference.
