My Story
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Our ‘Moment of Truth’ happened 4 years into our marriage. David had just returned from a Pastor’s Conference where he was convicted of his sin and called it what it was…SIN. On a rainy day sitting in a shopping center parking lot with our newborn in the backseat, I was delivered the news of my husband’s sexual betrayal. For David the sexual sin was around looking at internet pornography and masturbation. There it was…I was married to a sex addict. I felt my most sacred and intimate relationship was a lie. I felt I didn’t even know the man I was married to. This transgression had been going on for over four years and I had no idea…what else didn’t I know? I was angry for all the lies. I was angry that I trusted him so willingly and believed everything he said to me. I was angry that I was nave.
Even though the truth was out, I was still disillusioned. David’s confession was only the beginning of a long and terribly painful process. If only I knew then what God has shown me now…
He is enough and He can heal even the most wounded heart. While David was struggling everyday to try and remain sexually pure and to fight the old temptations, I was fighting a whole different battle.
My anger turned to self-loathing. My self-esteem plummeted. I told myself that if I were sexier this wouldn’t have happened. I told myself I didn’t attend to his needs enough and he needed more.
I told myself my body was unattractive, I was moody, I was damaged. I told myself that this was my fault. I allowed myself to put David’s sin on me. I felt so unworthy of God, yet He was all I could lean on. I cried out for God to forgive me, to take the burden from me. God gave me a verse to cling to for the next several years. And I even turn to this verse now whenever the old lies return. When the world tries to tell me I’m not good enough, or when other people don’t find value in me. I now know that the only opinion that matters is God’s. And His Word tells me that I do have value.
“For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; I know that full well.” Psalms 139: 13-14.
It didn’t take long before I realized that David’s ‘coming clean’ was not a quick fix.
Our relationship got worse before it got better. The next two years were worse than the first four.
We were spiritually and emotionally detached from each other. Our sexual intimacy was a constant struggle. I couldn’t look at David the same way I used to. I didn’t feel he looked at me the same way.
I didn’t know if I would ever look at him the same way I used to. I didn’t trust him. I took everything he said or did as a lie.
The life that I had envisioned a young girl was not the life I was now living. As many young girls do, I spent my childhood dreaming about the day that I would get married. I dreamed about the beautiful princess dress I would wear with delicate veil atop my head. I dreamed of a church adorned with flowers, ribbons and candles. I dreamed of two perfectly adorable girls scattering flower petals before me and a father that loved me and would ‘give me away’ with a tear in his eye.
And of course, when I reached the front of the church, there waiting for me was “Mr. Wonderful”.
However, it was not only the wedding I dreamed about but even more so the marriage itself.
I’m not sure where I formulated what this perfect marriage would look like, it was not modeled by my parents…or any other married people that I knew. But, my dream marriage was filled with walks on the beach hand in hand, long loving embraces, love notes on the fridge and flowers brought to me by a man that adored and cherished me beyond anyone or anything else in the world.
I grew up in a Christian home. We went to church every Sunday, listened to Christian music, prayed before meals. I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior when I was 7 years old while away at Bible camp. I lived my life as a good Christian child should. I was polite, respectful and obedient.
However, my home life was extremely dysfunctional. My parents didn’t have a marriage, they co-existed. My father had a distorted view of submission and my mother was emotional and physically abused as a result. My father was abusive and neglected me. He actually lived in the basement of our home for 9 years with very little contact with us. When I was in junior high my mother finally said “enough” and divorced my father. By then the damage to me had already been done, it would be years before God was able to start to repair my wounded heart.
I had a distorted view of what a man was supposed to be, because the only example I had was this man who fathered me…never cared for me, never supported me, never taught me anything, never showed me love, never showed my mother love. I had a fear of abandonment, because of the lack of relationship with my father. I had been sexually abused by my father. I was molested by two male babysitters when I was elementary school age. Everything I knew about men made me feel uncomfortable and scared.
I spent my High School years talking as though I was walking with the Lord but behaving as though I was not. As I grew older the male behaviors I had seen formulated my beliefs about what men were like. I became promiscuous as soon as I was out of junior high. I put all of my self-worth in what boys thought of me. I had to have a boyfriend and when I would go through a break-up I was so emotionally invested that I couldn’t deal with it. I tried suicide. I tried rebellion. My mother was at a loss about what to do with me and started me in family therapy, however the real issues had not surfaced and the real wounds of my heart were not dealt with.
I was engaged to the first boy that would have me as soon as I graduated High School.
The relationship was extremely volatile but for me at the time it was better than being alone.
After High School I went to college where things began to change for me. My mother felt strongly that I should attend a Christian College. I began to develop a stronger sense of who Jesus wanted to be in my life. However, I had developed a pattern of behavior that I didn’t realize was destructive or inappropriate.
I met David at Trinity College in 1988 and he seemed to me to be just what I had always wanted.
My quick devotion and attachment to David gave me the courage to break off my engagement. I felt David ‘saved’ me from this relationship. David was also the first person I ever shared my childhood sexual abuse with. I immediately put all my trust in this young man I only knew for a few weeks.
We began our relationship with a running start. We passed by holding hands and into an intense sexual relationship at record breaking speed. I neglected forming strong relationships with other girls on campus and spent every free moment with David. I thought he was perfect. He loved God and wanted to serve Him in ministry. He was knowledgeable about the Bible. He was charming and attentive.
I couldn’t imagine life without him. I just knew God had chosen him for me.
We dated several years in a very turbulent relationship. We argued a lot and there always seemed to be an unsettledness in our relationship. David struggled with insecurity. Although David struggled with feeling insecure about me and other men his insecurity was safely masked, or overlooked, by my ‘promiscuity’. David was convinced I was looking at other guys, or still having contact with my old boyfriend. The accusations of such things were so much that I began to believe that I was not worthy to be with him. But being that we were in a sexual relationship the connection was too intense to see things logically. I felt as though I wouldn’t live another day without him. I couldn’t see how his last girlfriend had broken-up with him. We got engaged after two years of dating. David graduated college, we got married and started full time ministry all within 2 months. It didn’t take long before all my dreams came crashing down and I realized that my expectations, realistic or not, were not going to be fulfilled.
We continued a cycle in our young marriage that had begun in our dating relationship and it was volatile. We fought more than we got along. We used hurtful words more often than kind ones. We had built up resentment and anger towards each other that would take a jackhammer to break through.
The intensity in our relationship grew to dangerous proportions as I began to throw things and even hit David in rage. We never shared our struggles with anyone. In fact, we did whatever possible to put on a faade of a happy newlywed couple. Quite honestly I think that we believed the faade that we worked so hard to portray to others. But, while I held my head up high and played the part of the happy pastor’s wife I was screaming inside. “What is wrong with me?” “Am I so hard to love?” I believed that I was the problem.
Then one day, about 1 to 2 years into our recovery, God’s voice spoke to my heart. Rebecca, you are not responsible for David’s sobriety. Let it go.” It certainly wasn’t that easy to just let it go. But I began to relinquish what I thought I had to hold onto. I began to release myself from the responsibility of what David did when he walked out of the house or when he was up late at night on the computer. As I started to find balance between allowing myself to feel the pain and not taking on David’s addiction, something started to happen. David felt as though I was slipping away. He was just as alone in his pain as I was in mine. Two years after our “Moment of Truth” healing could finally begin.
There were so many unhealthy patterns that we had lived in our marriage for so long it was hard to tell exactly where to start. We also had some very drastic changes in our life. First we moved back to the Midwest so David could get his Master’s Degree. I went back to work full-time and left our one year old everyday, which was extremely difficult for me. Shortly after this transition we found out that we were going to have another baby. We call Micah ‘the child that saved our marriage’. The birth of a son was a pivotal point for David in his recovery. It was also a pivotal point for me as I tried to learn how to put some of the unhealthy patterns in our marriage behind us. This was it, we were either going to figure this thing out or we were going to severely damage the lives of not one but two innocent children.
I found that I struggled greatly in two very important areas, the first was boundaries. I began to learn how to set boundaries partly to protect myself but also to keep myself from taking on what was David’s responsibility. One boundary that was put into place was emotional distancing. I did not intentionally place this boundary it just happened as God worked in my heart. Emotional distance for me was the best way to begin to untangle myself from the unhealthy enmeshment in our marriage.
It gave my heart a chance to finally rest after so many years of pain. It gave me a chance to evaluate where our marriage was and where it was going. But most of all, this emotional distancing gave my heart a chance to heal. It gave me a chance to find who I was in Christ. To realize that my identity was not in being David’s wife, or in the value he put on me. But rather, my identity was that I was a child of God and He loved me.
My other tendency was towards co-dependency. This behavior manifested itself in such trivial ways and even might not have appeared to be ‘co-dependency’. What appeared to be a loving and attentive wife wasn’t, because of the motives of my heart. In ‘taking care’ of my husband I was actually trying to make him happy or fulfill every need so that he wouldn’t turn to someone or something else to fill that need. I feared he would leave me and this was how I would ensure that he would need me.
I thought if I did everything right, if I never made him frustrated, if I was never moody, that I could fix the problem. When I start to doubt that I am ‘good enough’ in any one of these areas, I come back to who I am in Christ Jesus. I am a child of God, dearly loved, perfectly created, without stain or blemish.
There came a point when I realized that the only thing I could do to help David and possibly save my marriage was to work on me. I needed to look at what I brought to the marriage and how I might need to grow or change. I was able to forgive myself for my promiscuity years before. I was able to accept that God forgave me. I was able to accept my step-father as the “Dad” I never had.
I accepted God’s love for me. The good news is that there is healing. I came to a place where I accepted myself. I was able to rebuild my relationship with David and find true happiness.
I was able to heal as a woman, placing my self-worth in the hands of my Heavenly Father instead of the world.
Eventually, we learned how to be safe for each other. We learned to take risks. We learned to be honest. We learned to be humble. We learned to forgive and accept forgiveness. We learned to communicate. We learned to listen. We learned to be friends, again.