So from June 2021-July 2022 I set about doing what I have always done. I asked the Lord for answers. I also began to read voraciously and read over 30 books trying to make sense of the uncovered decade plus of built-up resentment, lies, and double life, hoping and praying to shed some light upon my confusion, distorted reality, and added layer of emotional and verbal abuse (see pre-discovery book list). It was here I found Leslie Vernick’s books and counseling ministry. She…made…sense. In June 2022 I reached out once again for counseling and within my first 2 sessions, my very intuitive, wise counselor, who specialized in addiction, recommended my husband to go to Faithful and True.
He first refused, denied, and raged, and then a few days later he signed up and uttered to me, “I have no choice.” I was more confused than ever. I had never heard of Faithful and True and had no idea why my counselor recommended him. When he told me “no” originally, I dropped it, and when he said, “yes”, and signed up and bought the plane ticket the same month, and then told me “I have no choice” I was even more bewildered. That same month, he went to the men’s Intensive at Faithful and True, came back with Covid & broken in every way…
Each discovery took a chink out of my perceived rose-colored reality–a very slow and painful dribble of discoveries that spanned 2 years. Then finally…—yet incomprehensible as it was and still is—that beautiful, intricately decorated, cracked, disheveled vase shattered into a million bajillion pieces on July 14, 2022, 15 days before our 16th anniversary, when I heard from my husband’s own lips that he was a “sex addict” and had yet another secret world.
That news hit me like I have never been hit. I am a survivor in every sense of the word “survivor.” I am a suicide survivor- a term used for someone who has lost a loved one to suicide- my brother who is forever 20. I am a victim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a distant relative. I suffered a miscarriage and ended up spending Christmas Day in the ER losing our first child, and now to be betrayed in the most intimate of all ways…sexual betrayal by the one who committed to “two becoming one…”
What’s not fair is that the betrayer gets to dump all of his sins onto the betrayed, which leaves the betrayer feeling free and cleansed, and he sleeps soundly at night. What’s not fair is the betrayed can then never sleep the same again. All sense of safety, security, and trust is taken away, ripped away in one dramatic blow.
I thought to myself…I was the virgin, I did it right- of course I’m going to end up with prince charming, of course I’m going to live “happily ever after.” Lord, why did you allow a woman who is so devoted to you- end up in a destructive marriage, married to a sex addict? What does this mean about me? Don’t good Christian girls get good Christian husbands?—is there something about me, that caused me to end up in this type of marriage?
In July 2022, my heart broke, and my body broke…15 days of steroids and complete breathlessness. The irony is—people just thought I came down with a bad case of Covid. Little did they know that my entire body was being was ravaged…not by the disease of Covid…but by the disease of addiction and at the hands of my most trusted and beloved attachment. I don’t think there is any greater pain than sexual betrayal between husband and wife.
July 22, 2022
I am married to a sexual addict. It is just horrific the more I know. I don’t know if he is really ever able or has ever been able to be honest. I’m not sure that he even knows what is true or untrue, real or unreal, fabricated or not, fact or fiction, fantasy or reality.
I am not sure if he can ever have an intimate connection with me. It is truly heartbreaking. I married a broken man. Now I am broken too. Broken people break people. That’s what happened to me. They don’t even know the impact of their brokenness and the decimation of all that is in their path.
I can’t change my past, nor can I leave…I am truly trapped for life. Trapped in a broken marriage…
Can you redeem and restore? Absolutely. But it can’t be me; it has to be him. So far, his response: “I have no choice.”
That doesn’t really advocate for change, Lord.
The Lord faithfully answered my prayers after a long-hard fought quest for understanding—and this new truth sent me on yet another year-long quest for the truth, and I read 40 more books (See Resources).
The Lord [will] bring to light the things hidden in the darkness. 1 Corinthians 4:5 (NIV)
Jesus said, “There is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known. Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.” Luke 12:2-3 (NIV)
