Happily Ever After: Forgiven and Free

Today I have the honor of sharing an amazing story about forgiveness and freedom from a sex addiction. Thank you, Laura, for bravely sharing your history with us. May God use your marriage to bless many others!

"Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins." 

1 Peter 4:8

"My name is Laura and I was sexually abused when I was a little girl by a relative. When my parents found out they chose to keep it quiet and not seek justice for me. That made me feel unloved and unwanted.

I married at 18 to my best friend Adam. I didn't realize the abuse had an effect on me until we married. Every time we were intimate I either had some sort of flashback or just felt like I was being abused even though my husband didn't do or say anything to make me feel this way. On the contrary, he was always compassionate and gentle, waiting on me to lead the way.

             It was such a mental task to be intimate. I craved that kind of passionate intimacy everyone else seemed to have so I sought it elsewhere. When I was with someone else sex was just sex, no emotional attachment or mental task. It satisfied that desire but I had a guilty conscience..."

Happily Ever After: Stories of Marriages that Survived to Tell the Tale

Pornography. Adultery. Cheating. Lying. Abuse. Grief.

Divorce

It's rampant. Nearly every day we hear of another friend, co-worker, neighbor, or family member who is filing for divorce. Nearly every day we hear of another marriage that is in crisis because of unfaithfulness, drug or alcohol abuse, or simply an unwillingness to sacrifice self for spouse. Every one of us has been negatively impacted by marriages that are failing to uphold God's design of "one man and one woman for LIFE".

The outlook for couples who face a major breach of trust is bleak. What I hear more than anything from women who have experienced the heartbreak of an affair, a porn addiction, or any other marital crisis is this:

Hopelessness

These women want their marriages to recover. They want to forgive, move forward, heal. But they look around at other marriages that have failed. They look at their husbands, and they look at themselves. And it seems impossible. The wide chasm of hurt is just too great to overcome. And the harder they try, the wider that chasm appears. They start to realize that the road to restoration is even longer and rockier than they originally thought. And at some point... one spouse or the other gives up. They quit fighting for each other. They accept that their marriage has been utterly destroyed to the point that there is no hope of rebuilding. There is nothing left. So they walk away.

We hear all of these stories of marriages that have ended because of infidelity or addiction and what we hear is, "Marriages that experience these things cannot survive." And if they do happen to technically "survive" (AKA, do not divorce), then we hear, "Okay. They didn't divorce. But they will never be completely happy again." Or, what's worse, "They will never completely trust again." And then, when our own marriages face these things, that's exactly what we believe.

It doesn't have to end that way.