Piecing together things that are broken

I am sorry. You have decided to stay in the marriage so unfortunately this is your war. You can choose not to engage but I will tell you with certainty that doing so will end in disaster and the greatest casualty will be your daughter. I know you blame her issues on this and that is true so either engage and fight or cut your losses now before any more damage is done to her. You do not have the luxury to sit and wait for your marriage to further implode because of what it will do to her. I know I am being harsh and for that I am sorry. I felt the need to speak reality here. Know that I am with you in prayer and will stand with you no matter what you decide.

at the moment the battle to even stay is hard enough. I battle daily to even remain here.

Has he shown any difference in his actions and behavior? Have you checked his devices for porn use? I wouldn't trust him on words alone. He is a liar until proven otherwise. Pray about this. God will suport you no matter what you decide. If you are meant to heal from this and stay in your marriage then God will see you through to the other side. If you are meant to part ways so you can heal, God will see you through that as well. 

I was just listening to a gentleman the other day. His wife divorced him and 8 years later after he overcame his addiction and went into ministry in this field, they met again, dated and remarried. Nothing is impossible with God. 

Do you not think there is ever a point where the cost suddenly becomes real to the 'addict' and the pain outweighs the pleasure p promises, and its enough to repel them from it forever? making it actually, the one sin they will never, ever, ever commit again? after all, repentence is a complete 'turning from'. It dosnt mean you no longer sin but you have had a wake up call to THAt sin and its lies will never, ever be lured by them again? It has to be possible, surely. If its not possible, if he will always be suceptible to degrading and violating women and lusting after things outside the marriage, then i'm done. Resisting tempation isnt enough for me. You can only be tempted by the desires of your heart, and if a man cannot stop desiring vile things, well, as a man thinks so he is, and I cannot, simply cannot be with someone who desires to indulge vicariously in satanic orgies, for any reason. If the susceptibility is there, its only a matter of time, I'm just waiting for the slip and that familiar feeling of things not adding up, followed by days of false confessions designed as damage limitation, and then more digging to find out the horrific truth of the man i am married to.

I have to believe there can be complete freedom from this particular sin .(If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation) I have had complete freedom from (literally) sickening compulsive behaviour, I was bulimic 17 years and i hated myself every day for it, I couldnt stop, never for very long anyway, and I couldnt even imagine a thought life that didnt revolve around bingeing and trying not to do it . but it has gone, completely gone, I can say in full confidence that it holds NO appeal in stressed times, or in lonely times or sad times or bored times or good times it is simply not a response that would 'work' for me anymore, nor would the world of bodybuilding 'work' for me anymore, even if i wanted them to!  I know its possible to break these maladapted response cycles compltely. If there is one more discovery, after all this,  I will finally give up my belief in freedom from addiction, and that will be day I  give up on my marriage.

Good morning Ellekay, I have been reading your posts and watched your testimony hoping to weigh in on your situation in a helpful way. I don't have a clear picture as to what your husband is now doing that hurts you so much. Is he still using,lying and rationalizing his behaviour or are you worried about what he may be doing based on his past failures?

My heart goes out to you as my wife has also experienced the pain and betrayal of my addiction. She has been an amazing wife and support to me. We are a team. I couldn't win this battle without her. My wife is my accountability partner. We work together to shut off every possible access to porn and she questions me regularly when she feels things aren't right. I have to say the improvement in the last year has been remarkable. I went from acting out with porn 10 times in a month to maybe once in 2 months over the past year. I have no access to porn on my devices as I use Covenant Eyes. My wife gets all the reports. I use no social media except FB and my wife even watches what I do there.


I am constantly learning about the roots of my addiction and we talk about why I do these things. Porn is not the cause of my problems it is a symptom. I am looking deeper into my past and dealing with the pain of my childhood. I am forgiving my parents and learning to show compassion to people stuck in sin and addiction. You see 3 years ago I sat in judgement over a group of men that were confessing their use of porn. I was shocked and also self righteous because since becoming a Christian many years earlier I wasn't using porn anymore. I judged them as weak lesser Christians. 1 year later I was involved in cyber sex on a daily basis. I have a whole new attitude about brothers and sisters struggling in addiction. Pride comes before a fall.

Now my wife does go through difficult days. We have an enemy that wants me to fall and wants my wife to think I'm using when I'm not. She can't sleep some nights because of terrible paranoid thoughts that torment her. We have to pray and fight our way through the deceptions and temptations that come. What keeps us going as we near our 40th anniversary this month? We both know for sure God brought us together for life no matter what happens. Our marriage has been difficult at times for most of those 40 years but by God's grace we are still together. I pray God will speak clearly to you both and grant you wisdom and strength. Have a blessed New Year.

this is the dilemma i have, you cant go forward without trust, and you cant trust unless you decide to let your guard down. The way it happened last time was not through want of filters and accountability reports etc, he was attending SAA and lying to everyone there, keeping a personal journal and lying through it for my benefit, there was no way i could have known, in fact i believe the only reason i found out was the holy spirit because there was nothing suspicious at all, not even in hindsight, nothing was off, he was walking a perfect example of a man doing his best to make up for past wrongs , being humble and patient and demonstrating trustworthiness and prioritising our relationship visibly, walking with God with faith into our future, leaving everything that gave us security, our business and our home and our church for a new start because we were 'being called by God' to do so. Then in the middle of all that i find this impossible stuff and we split then he gets the job and now we have moved 400 miles away and he is in this ministry position and i am 'the Godly man's wife' and he is off at all these prayer meetings with the local people while i sit at home still reeling?

even yesterday i was chatting to him about how we have no plans on new years day and thinking we were having a mutual conversation because he is responding as if we have the same reality (i.e no plans) , then later that evening he is reading email and tells me he is going to a prayer meeting, it looks as if he has just got the email, but i have a read of it see it had already been agreed, so then i ask when was this agreed? Last sunday. Why didnt you mention it when we were chatting about the following days plans? Oh i just didnt think of it. Sounds to me like i had a 'virtual conversation' that may as well have been with myself because HIS reality wasnt present in it at all. .....only mine.... that may seem like an overreaction of something completely commendable , but i live with this constant threat that my daily life expectations are carefully observed by him then packaged up and fed to me as reality, while true reality is something that is hidden until exposed by me finding a loose thread in the virtual reality in front of me.