I don’t know of any assignment more difficult (but more worthwhile) than the job of regaining a wife’s trust.
She trusted you enough to marry you, but the bond of trust has been broken. So many men just walk away when they have failed and broken the heart of a loving spouse. They think it’s better to walk away and start over than do the work to heal a wound that is so deep. Many men think they will be better off, but they won’t. They walk away and take their shame—and the knowledge that they walked away when they most needed to step up. In fact, research shows that those who walk away are not happier later than those who stay and work through the problem.
Using the National Survey of Families and Households, a team from the Institute for American Values (comprised of Linda J. Waite, Don Browning, William J. Doherty, Maggie Gallagher, Ye Luo, and Scott M. Stanley) developed a 2002 report titled Does Divorce Make People Happy? Findings from a Study of Unhappy Marriages. Couples surveyed in the late eighties who rated their marriages as unhappy were surveyed again five years later—after some had divorced, separated, or stayed married. The findings were very convincing but seemed to have little impact on the way the world viewed divorce as a solution for unhappiness. The world seems to remain unconvinced. Here are some of the conclusions reached from the study:
• Unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married.
• Divorce for unhappily married adults did not reduce their symptoms of depression, raise their self-esteem, or increase their sense of mastery, on average, compared to unhappy spouses who stayed married.
• Two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended up happily married five years later.
The obvious point here is that divorce does not fix things. But I have to add that staying together without doing the needed work does not fix things either. And without work, no trust will be regained.
If you have become dependent on a lifestyle that lacks sexual integrity and now want to be free forever, you’re embarking on a path that is highly possible and being lived out by thousands of men. If you are married, your wife is on a path also. The best thing you can do to help her heal is to build a life of consistency, predictability, compassion, and connection to her heart. She has been through a lot. Don’t expect her to just simply “get over it.”
I am so glad you obtained this book and are on a path to healing and rebuilding trust in your marriage. You may not realize this, but in the process you are also rebuilding the core of your manhood. You are constructing a new man who is free of addiction and obsession. You are building a man you can count on and be proud of when you look in the mirror. You are building a man of integrity, consistency, and clarity—a man who can be counted on and trusted.
You are that man or you can become that man, and this book will provide a path to help you be and remain the man God wants you to be.
In 1999 I was grateful to receive a phone call from Fred Stoeker with an invitation to help him write Every Man’s Battle. The book later became a series, which to date has sold over three million copies. As the Every Man series developed over many years and numerous projects, I saw, witnessed, and heard from thousands of men and women who were on a path of sin and destruction who are now healing, growing, and living a life of freedom. One of the needs that became obvious from the books and the stories of these struggles was the need to help men rebuild and regain trust from their broken spouse. When Jason Martinkus developed the relevant and powerful information contained in this book, I was more than happy to help out. Both of us want to see you walk with a new sense of purpose and meaning as well as to break free from any shame that might drag you back into a relapse.
Over the years I have made a few discoveries that have helped me in my own journey toward wholeness and healing. One of those discoveries is the power of shame. Shame is the cancer that can completely eat away a soul. It is most likely what kept you from getting help long ago. You probably believed that the shame of being known and openly dealing with your problem was greater than the shame of leading a double life full of secrets and duplicity. Shame kept you in the problem for other reasons too. Every time that shame started to overwhelm you and drive you toward the worst of who you had become, you had an instant fix for the feeling. You acted out or “acted in,” filling your mind with the forbidden. And every time you did, shame grew just a little bit more, took a little stronger hold, and continued to erode at your life and your connections with others.
I think shame is one of the more powerful triggers to bring a man back into lust and unfaithfulness. It makes us feel unworthy of God’s love or the love of a spouse. So in our secrecy, isolation, and pain, when we feel like we don’t deserve the taste of transformation we have experienced, we jump right back into the cycle that created all of the shame in the first place.
Once I was counseling a minister who had fallen from the pinnacle of ministry success. There was no one more respected in his community; no church was bigger or growing faster; no man felt more pain as a result of God’s amazing gifts to him bearing such amazing fruit. When he came to me, he had been out of ministry for some time and he really wanted to change. I could have given him a Life Recovery Bible or a textbook on addiction. But instead I suggested we study shame. I wanted him to understand everything he could about shame so he would grasp the condition that had kept him down, as well as the enemy that would drive him to relapse. And he did. I believe his recovery has been strong because of his willingness to follow a restoration plan coupled with his great knowledge of shame.
If you are struck by a club, a rock, or a fist, it lands on the outside of you. The damage is painful but will heal. But shame is something that hits your soul from the inside. It doesn’t heal. It scars and rips you up from the inside out. It becomes you, and you become it. You feel shameful, and so you predictably do shameful things. And while you are engulfed by shame, life feels so hopeless, because there is no place to take it and deal with it, and because the added shame of being known would be too great to handle.
When I paid to abort a pregnancy that was a result of my own addiction, I woke up with an overwhelming sense of shame for what I had done. A man’s role in reproduction ends at conception, and then it is his duty to provide for and protect the life he has created. But I did not do that. I woke up realizing I had moved to destroy my own child because I was too much of a coward to do the right and responsible thing—providing for my baby and being there for her and her mother. My internal shame injured my health, and I ended up with about seventy ulcers that would kill me if something did not change. I lived as if the worse I made myself feel, the more deserving I would be of God’s forgiveness. Of course I could never do enough, and my shame distorted the man I was and cut me off from others. And it cured nothing. I could not feel enough shame to stop the addiction. So, sadly, I went back to my promiscuous ways after the abortion.
To turn it all around, I had to surrender my pride and shame as well as my efforts to fix myself or earn favor from God. I sought help and began to open up to my parents, a minister, a counselor, friends, and my boss. And as I brought my shame into the open, its power began to erode.
I hope you have discovered that the sickness of your secrets and the power they have over your life diminish greatly when you simply open up rather than stew secretly in your shame.
The reason this is so important is that a shame-filled person is not a trustworthy person. When shame is the definer of your life, integrity won’t be. That powerful shame will grab you when you least expect it and drag you down even further.
I challenge you to look at the shame you still possess within you. Open up about it and do whatever you can to resolve it. God does not want shame in your life. It separates you from God and from those you love. And life is so much easier when you don’t have to work to compensate for it.
You have made a decision to change your life. You are making an impact on the world simply by showing that transformation is possible. People around you have seen that what you once valued most is now meaningless to you. I honor you for these bold moves. But the toughest move you may face is regaining the trust of your spouse. It takes more time than most people want to give it. It takes an ironclad commitment to consistency, predictability, and accountability. But every time you are where you say you will be and do what you say you will do, you build security in her heart that will enable her to trust you again.
I am praying God’s blessing upon you and your wife. I want her to trust you and respond to your dedication to winning her back and becoming the man you need to be.
If you have any comments or questions, I would love to hear from you at sarterburn@newlife.com.
God bless you each day of your journey.