D-Day, Part 1

On January 10, 2013 my world came crashing down like an avalanche of rock, crushing me beneath its rubble.  My husband and I had been struggling for months and were currently in counseling to learn how to better communicate with one another, and to save our troubled marriage.  Our problems had begun years before, a slow and painful decline. On the evening of this day the real reason for our issues was uncovered.

We had gone our customary several days with little communication after yet another of our many recent conflicts surrounding intimacy.  That morning I left to visit with a friend who had invited me to her home.  She was in the process of divorce and I went to share some time with her, seeking the Lord together and getting to know each other better.  The visit was enjoyable and refreshing, despite my thoughts being shadowed by my own, private struggles.

Later that evening, my husband asked if we could talk.  He had gone ahead a little ways in our assigned book (our counselor gave us homework to read together: Hold Me Tight – Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Sue Johnson) and had read about “raw spots.”  He said that we had been touching one another’s raw spots and felt encouraged that we could get past this current one if we forged ahead in our assignment together.

We started to talk, but in the back of my mind were things I had been researching about our current intimacy/sexual problems.  Much of what I had been reading kept pointing to pornography as being a source of many of the very issues we were experiencing.  I had been dismissing that as being a cause, for since I’d known him he had been so against pornography.  He had told me early on in our relationship that during his young adulthood and past marriage he had used porn as well as indulged in other unhealthy and immoral sexual outlets.  He came into our marriage determined to put all that behind him and two years after we married, committed his life to the Lord.

But things just weren’t adding up… his behavior, anger outbursts, isolation, our lack of intimacy and sexual dysfunction, etc.  I knew there had to be an explanation.  Finally, I took a breath and asked him, “Is there anything you have been keeping from me?  Are you having an affair?  Have you been using pornography?”

He paused, and then said yes, he had used pornography.  Suddenly a sense of sick dread washed over me, and I actually felt time slow to a snail’s pace.  My heart started beating very quickly and I became nauseated.  I then felt a sort of detached calmness come over me as I realized I had to tread very carefully, for we were in major trouble… much worse than I had ever imagined.

I’ll finish this story in my next post, D-Day, part 2.

Until then, “may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13).”