An Update on My Marriage: A Broken Boundary & Growing Closer

I thought it would be a really good time to give an update on my marriage because things are going well. My last two updates dealt with some rough issues. If you missed them, you can read the first one here and the second one here.

We did experience one difficulty this past week. My husband chose to break a boundary that we have in our marriage. The boundary is that he will not be alone in a closed room with another woman. We learned this boundary in the book Hedges. It really is such a great book. It was helpful in opening my husband’s eyes to how openly he was living his life. Once we read the book together, it was obvious why certain boundaries are needed in marriage. It was also obvious how a lack of boundaries had led to many of the problems we were facing.

9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage Book Review

9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage is written by Sheila Wray Gregoire. It is an excellent book for any marriage. It contains new thoughts that can revolutionize the way many women think about their marriages. Sheila is the founder of the blog To Love, Honor, and Vacuum. Many times her posts have helped me in my marriage. Her perspective and wisdom on so many marriage topics is a true gift from God. I recommend all of her books.

Today, I would like to explain how one of the thoughts in her book changed my entire marriage. The thought is:

“I’m called to be a peacemaker, not a peacekeeper.”

Sheila explains how many women think that they are supposed to keep the peace in the marriage by agreeing with their husbands on the outside, but hurting deeply on the inside. In a way they think they have to let their husbands have their way with everything just to keep him happy and have a peaceful home. But, this isn’t real peace and in the end it is destruction.

This way of thinking led to many problems in my own marriage.

Sharing My Story: I Didn’t Believe My Husband

One reason I started Hopeful Wife Today was to share my story. I believe that when we share our stories to other hurting wives two things happen. One, we are releasing the hurt that is inside of us. Two, we are helping others to not feel so alone. I believe God wants us to open up our hearts in order to unite with others who are going through similar things. If you would like to read other stories from women who have bravely opened up their hearts check out the page Personal Stories. If you feel God leading you to share your story, please do so on that page.

If you have missed parts of my story and would like to start at the beginning, please see Discovery. This is an ongoing topic where I will be sharing important parts of my marriage starting three and a half years ago. That was when I first found out my husband was addicted to pornography. I’ll be sharing our story until I get to where we currently are. After that, I’ll be writing updates on how our marriage is presently.

Thank you to all who are following. I pray that you may find some hope in my story.

Sharing My Story: I Didn’t Believe My Husband

A thought entered my mind that I could not get rid of. He’s not telling me everything. I never questioned before that he wasn’t telling me the truth. But, now, it just wouldn’t go away! No matter how I tried to get away from it, I could only hear one loud message. My husband was hiding things from me.

Letting Go of Anger

I have had so many various emotions after discovering my husband was addicted to pornography three years ago.

• I had times of sadness and depression that would last for days. I was often confused and hopeless.
• Then there were times when I was thankful and happy that God led me to this discovery. I was joyful and blessed that my marriage was being restored.
• I was excited, at times, that my husband was becoming a new man.

But, the emotion that I feared the most—because it had total control of me, was anger.

Continue reading this on Covenant Eyes

A Weekend Prayer for Husbands

This is a post and prayer written by my husband:

As our weekend starts and we venture through the world going to work (if maybe we have a second job or work on the weekends), getting a cup of coffee at a local coffee shop, picking up supplies for a weekend project from the local hardware or auto-parts store, etc., Satan will try and get us. He wants us to look longer at what we shouldn’t be looking at, give a second glance to someone we shouldn’t, and take a step away from God. He wants us to build upon what we shouldn’t be thinking about in our mind and use those thoughts throughout the day. He wants us to talk too much, joke too much, and say things to other women other than our wife that our wife and our God would consider flirtatious.

My Husband is Tempted

My husband has been overcoming a lust and pornography addiction in the past three and a half years. He had this addiction for most of his life. There are times and situations that he is greatly tempted. Currently, he faces one of the worst situations at his second job. There are just so many temptations there. I would like to explain them all and also discuss how we work together to help this unavoidable circumstance.

Prayer for Husbands

This is a prayer for husbands written by my husband. It is based on the prayer that he has been praying each morning for two years. He uses this prayer to beat his struggle with lust and to stay away from all pornography. It is my hope that this prayer may help your husband too.

Prayer for Love

This is a prayer for wives when they are suffering from their husband’s pornography use or unfaithfulness.

Dear God,

I am coming to you today to ask for Your love. I am desperately in need of it. Right now I feel so unloved. I feel unworthy. I don’t know if I ever really was loved or if I’ll ever be loved again.

My Personal Story: Making a Plan

Once my husband finally admitted to me that he did indeed have a problem with lust, I knew I could start to help him. I was obviously deeply sad and regretful that what I knew all along was true. However, I was more excited than sad. I knew that God was confirming what I already knew anyhow. It’s just hard to hear it, even when you know it’s true.

That’s why I decided to place my trust in God. I knew God was leading me in this direction. I knew completely that God wanted to use me to help my husband be open with me. I know I’ve said so many times that honesty and openness is truly my husband’s greatest struggle. And at that point it was obvious that it was coming between him and God and him and me.

So, I placed my hurt feelings in God’s hands. I tried with all my strength to just understand why lust and pornography is such a problem for men and not to only react personally. The truth is, we never will fully understand this struggle that men have. We just can’t. We’re not made that way. And we have to come to the point where we accept that we won’t understand it. We have to know that God understands it and that’s all that really matters.

An Update on My Marriage

I would like to start a new post in which I periodically update everyone on how our marriage is going. This is so that I can openly share in a very real way how we’ve grown and also what we’re still working on. I also would like to use these posts to encourage all of you to update us on your life in the comments below. I pray that doing this will join us as a community of wives that are here for each other. I pray that it also helps hurting wives let go of some of that pain by sharing it with others who truly care. I thank God for each one of you. I am praying for you as you fight for your marriage.

Additionally, please check out the new page Ask My Husband.