Many guys report that restitution is vague and hard to figure out in the context of a relationship. My goal is to shed some light on it here as well as give you some practical examples of how to make restitution while rebuilding trust in your relationship.
Let’s first define what we mean by restitution. Black’s Law Dictionary defines it as “the return or restoration of some specific thing to its rightful owner or status.” It can also be used to refer to “the disgorging of something which has been taken or to compensation for injury done.” The gist of restitution is making the injured party whole.
I believe the defining characteristic of restitution is that it will cost us something to right a wrong we’ve committed. It’s not just about paying back something gained unjustly, but we must lose what’s been gained in a tangible way for the other person’s sake.
In matters of law, the word restitution is associated with contractual agreements where one person benefited from breaking the contract, thus damaging—or at least not benefiting—the other party. A typical remedy is a court order to transfer the benefit to the injured party. That could mean returning profits gained illegally, or it could mean compensating the injured party to make them whole in light of the damage they suffered.
If we apply the legal sense of restitution to our relationship with our wife, it means we have to give back what we took, repay what was gained unjustly,or make up the loss that was incurred. But loss of trust has no monetary equivalent. Therefore, we have to decide what we’ll use for repayment.
What profit might we have gained that we could surrender to make our partner whole?
The first thing is freedom. Violating trust through a breakdown of sexual integrity implies that you used your freedom to the detriment of your wife. You’ve broken the marriage contract that requires both of you to use your freedom for the other’s benefit.
In order to make things right and thus restore your wife to her previous state, you’ll need to give up your freedom, including your privacy. (We’ve already discussed this in chapter 8 with regard to open access.) At this point your freedom is not a virtue but a liability, because your misuse of freedom violated your wife’s heart.
I urge you to surrender the freedom to come and go as you please, the freedom to have privacy, the freedom to talk to whomever you please, the freedom to be online at any time, the freedom to live without accountability, and the freedom to be lackadaisical in your relationship with your wife and with God.
While one side of the freedom coin is relinquishing your rights, the other side is permitting your wife to have freedom:
• freedom to ask any question at any time and for any reason
• freedom to feel any emotion at any time and for any reason
• freedom to be cynical, skeptical, and incredulous
• freedom to hold on to unforgiveness
Restitution requires you to give your wife permission to be authentic with her feelings rather than fearful of how you might respond, including your defensiveness.
A second way to make restitution to her is to restore respect. Violating your marriage vows by sexual misconduct disrespects your wife. You’ve injured her by launching an all-out assault on her respectability. Making restitution here means giving back the respect she is due.
Think about the areas of life where your wife warrants your respect. Where can you willfully choose to respect her? Here is a short list: In parenting. In service to God. In service to you. For perseverance in the relationship. In her professional life. In her heart. In her character. In her fears and anxieties. In her insecurities. In her emotions.
An area where I consistently see men disrespect their wife (and I’m guilty of it too) is in dealing with her emotions. Frequently, when a wife expresses fear, anxiety, or concern, I’ve seen her husband shoot her down by showing disdain for her emotions (justified, real, or perceived) and utterly disrespecting her. Some wives respond with anger and boldness. Others shrink back with quiet reservation. And some seem to be so tired and broken in spirit that they hesitate to express anything else. This is just plain wrong.
We’re created in the image of God, and he is emotional. In the Old Testament you’ll see a God who feels happy, jealous, angry, and content. In the New Testament we see Jesus, the God-man, displaying similar feelings.
We are entitled to our emotions. They are God-given.
We are designed to feel.
If you want to build trust, you have to pay emotional restitution to your wife. It means not only allowing her to feel but encouraging her to feel. It means drawing out her emotions rather than hoping they don’t get displayed. Ask her to share her anger and disappointment with you. You need to be a willing recipient of her heart and the messy, difficult emotions that come with the pain you’ve caused.
Another area of restitution is protection. Violating trust means you’ve violated your wife’s sense of security. Thus she feels exposed, vulnerable, fearful, and insecure. And her insecurity is not just concerning you but often includes the world at large.
It is not uncommon for a wife whose trust has been violated to become anxious about many things unrelated to sexual integrity. She might begin to fear for her or her kids’ safety, about airplanes crashing, auto accidents, or about your home being broken into.
It’s as if insecurity emotionally and relationally breeds a sense of overall insecurity. This is another area where we see how our marriage relationship resembles the relationship God and Jesus have with us. When the protective covering of God seems in question, it’s easy for fear and anxiety to haunt us. But under the security of a loving God’s outstretched arms, we find solace and a sense of well-being.
For me, when I sense God’s protection, I can deal with the chaos of a broken world. Even though everything else is not okay, I know I will be. Here’s what the psalmist (many think Moses) said about God’s covering:
You who sit down in the High God’s presence,
spend the night in Shaddai’s shadow,
Say this: “GOD, you’re my refuge.
I trust in you and I’m safe!”
That’s right—he rescues you from hidden traps,
shields you from deadly hazards.
His huge outstretched arms protect you—
under them you’re perfectly safe;
his arms fend off all harm. (Psalm 91:1–4, MSG)
When we marry, God passes the baton of protective covering to us to be coproviders with him of security for others. We men are under his umbrella of protection, and our family is under ours.
For a wife, when her husband violates the marriage vows, he destroys her protective covering of security. Thus the effects and vulnerability can be far reaching. To pay restitution means to restore that protective covering.
There is a nuance here worth identifying. For many, the covering of protection over a wife or family is discarded for self-protection. That is the damaging and hurtful violation that adds insult to injury. Have you forfeited protecting your wife in order to preserve your self-image, ego, or pride? Chances are that if you’ve compromised in the area of sexual integrity, you have.
Looking at porn after a conflict with your wife is a form of self-preservation. Visiting a strip club after a bad day at the office is another type of self-preservation. Using masturbation as a sleep aid is self-preservation.
At an airport recently, I witnessed a husband’s self-preservation at the expense of his wife. A family went through the security line and forgot to put a couple of their bags on the conveyor belt. Once they were on the other side of the scanner, a security agent realized the problem with the bags and asked the husband to go back, put the bags on the belt, and pass through the scanner again.
On his way back, the man was obviously embarrassed and exclaimed condescendingly that it wasn’t his bag but his wife’s bag. He said loudly that she had forgotten it. He threw his wife under the bus to preserve his sense of pride. He didn’t want to be criticized for holding up the line by failing to go through the process correctly, so he loudly blamed his wife. You can see how hurtful and embarrassing that was to his wife and how unprotected she probably felt.
To make restitution regarding her protection is to surrender your self-preserving instincts and instead offer your covering at the risk of your own discomfort.
You may be thinking, Okay, so how do I offer protection to my wife again? That can take on a myriad of forms depending on your situation. Instead of trying to explain it, I’ll give some examples:
• A wife has been hurt by condescending statements or insults from her in-laws. At the next family gathering, the husband is keenly attuned to any such comments. When a hurtful statement is made toward his wife, he points out the hurtful comment, asks for an apology, and puts a boundary in place by saying that his family will leave the gathering if another similar comment is made.
• A husband who has anger issues and is typically rude to people (for example, waitstaff, cab drivers, front-desk people, door-to-door salesmen) embarrasses his wife when he causes a scene. Now, learning to manage his anger issues and to protect her, he is careful about his words, tone, and body language with other people. His intention is to leave interactions with people positive and upbeat, leaving behind the best impression of his family he can.
• A husband leads a family bike ride and usually rides faster than everyone, crossing streets and making turns the others aren’t expecting. Now that he wants to demonstrate protection, he rides with them, slowing before street crossings or traffic areas and alerting the family to upcoming route changes.
• A husband, the wage earner in a single-income family, accesses pornography from his work computer where he cannot only lose his job but also his security clearance. Should he be fired, he would not be able to provide for his family and likely would find it difficult to secure a new job at a similar salary. Now that he’s focused on protecting his family, he chooses to stop looking at porn, get help, and focus his energy on work while at work, striving for promotions and raises.
• A husband often shirks his agreed-upon responsibility regarding auto maintenance. Instead of taking the cars in for oil changes and repairs, he leaves the burden on his wife, who feels incompetent and inept at communicating with the mechanics. Each time she leaves the repair shop, she feels exploited and overcharged. To protect his wife now, her husband takes on that responsibility and consistently looks after the maintenance of the cars.
There is no script for protecting your wife and family. Each situation is unique. Just know that now you want to find ways to provide a strong covering of safety and security for your wife and family—and then follow through.
Now I want to put a slightly different spin on the concept of restitution. To me, there is a more serious aspect that is often overlooked in the definition of the word. If we think of restitution as only making the other party whole, it seems we’re only getting back to zero. There is a sense that our work is done once we’ve given back our unjust profit or replenished what someone lost as a result of our actions.
I think that misses the mark. Our understanding is based firmly in a cultural notion that balance and fairness are of highest value. But we must realize that in Jesus’s upside-down economy, fairness wasn’t the governing principle he applied to himself or the people he was trying to reach. What if Jesus had said in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will but … wait, this isn’t fair! I’m outta here. Getting hung on a cross is not what I signed up for, God.” What Jesus received in terms of crucifixion for our sin was not fair, and there was no balance to be found. His act and the love of the living God were entirely unbalanced and lopsided. We were the sole beneficiaries of the pain, disrespect, and utter embarrassment Jesus endured. He modeled what it means to pay restitution by taking on extreme punishment he did not deserve so that we can receive mercy and grace we do not deserve. He sacrificed not just so that we could avoid eternal pain and punishment but also so we could enjoy life to the full here on earth (see John 10:10). In other words, restitution as Jesus modeled it means doing more than just making the beneficiary whole; it means providing a benefit over and above what the other party already had.
If you’ve been on a date with your wife and had a bad experience at a restaurant, isn’t it nice for them to comp your meal? It is nice, but if we’re honest, we probably would’ve preferred there to be no issue so we could’ve just enjoyed the meal. Comping the meal merely placates a disappointed patron. After all, the restaurant should do that because it’s only fair. Right? But that is a very limited view of restitution. Jesus-style restitution goes above and beyond. The restaurant would not only comp this meal but also offer you a voucher to cover a future dinner for two that includes everything, even the tip. How would you feel if the restaurant did that? You might even joke that you’re glad they messed up your order in the first place! Do you see the difference? One makes the person whole while the other makes the person more than whole.
Paying restitution to your wife does not mean you spend the rest of your life in a subordinate position, with no voice or respect and a lack of input. That’s punishment, not restitution. The reality is that some wives want to punish their husbands like that. So you may have to endure such treatment for a while. However, if you faithfully pay restitution with your life, your wife will likely move away from punishment and toward forgiveness and peace. Remember, the key to restitution is to make the other person more than whole. I urge you to think of ways to do that in your relationship. Write them down, be accountable, and put them into practice.
INSIGHT FROM STEPHEN ARTERBURN
Restitution
Sometimes confession is not enough to relieve us of our guilt and shame and settle the matter in the mind of the offended. Your wife may be struggling to forgive you because, from her perspective, you betrayed her, got caught, went through some kind of treatment, and now wish to reestablish the relationship as if nothing has happened. You also may feel like you have an obligation to do more than just confess. If that is the case, I hope you will consider taking the bold move of making restitution.
Restitution is a profound biblical principal we see carried out in the life of Zacchaeus. Fortunately for him, all he had to do was make some monetary calculations once he reached a point that resolving his sins—not repaying money—was the priority. If connection and regaining trust are your priorities, it may be more difficult to find what it is you can do to make restitution.
The place to start is to tell your wife that you want to do more than just tell her you’re sorry. You want to make up for the pain you have caused. Ask her if she can think of anything that would help you make restitution. If she can’t think of something, tell her that if she does come up with an idea in the future, you want to know and will do what you can to comply. In the meantime, you will be working on ways you know to pay back what you have taken from her and the relationship. It is a powerful move that will help her to trust you more. And it will also move you both toward closure on a past you don’t want to repeat.