Part 5: Sexual Addiction: Can you Hear the Bread Breaking?

In the beginning, you'll have to...stop talking.  Your tongue will have grooves in it where your teeth have had to come to a skid stop. But stop talking you must....so you can quietly observe the patterns of behavior in your marriage...You want to know what actions he's generating. ...you have to stop talking because your husband has learned that he can use talk as a way to manipulate you.... Talk is an effective refuge for those who refuse to change....Remember, he's been steeped in a world [of porn] where words are not the outward symbol of an inward commitment to action." [1] 

In prior posts I described the history of sexual addiction in my marriage - the early prayers, revelations and clues, and the nature of trauma.  Although painful, this dawning awareness of the addiction and emotional abuse was a gift from God - an answer to my pleas. I still lived in fear and, on some days, soul-crushing brokenness.  I had not known about the sexual behavior when I begged God to intervene, but now that I knew, I had to cling desperately to Jesus just to get out of bed in the morning. 

Laurie Hall's book, An Affair of the Mind, is one of the best books written for the wife of a sex addict. It is gritty and real,  focused on trauma and abuse rather than "co-addiction" and "co-dependency", and instructive on living out the gospel in a horrible marriage situation.  I trusted Ms. Hall's advice a great deal.  But the first time I read her book, I did not heed her advice to stop talking.  I wanted to scream and rant, or at least lecture and explain - not be silent!  

But this encouragement to quiet is exceedingly good advice, and biblical: "“When you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.” Psalm 4:4(b).  More than one adviser suggested to me early on that sharing words of vulnerability or explanation with a sex addict was like spreading pearls before swine.[2]

When my husband admitted to living "off-the-wagon" with porn and my life exploded for the second time, I re-read Ms. Hall's book and noted her call to silence (quoted above).  My husband uses withdrawal and silence to manipulate more than words, so I wondered how this would go, but I decided to be quiet.  My first surprise was that my husband was agitated when I did not talk cheerfully to fill the space between us. I observed that he took my quietness as anger, when in fact I was just, well, not talking. The quiet was diagnostic; my husband's withholding and withdrawal came into focus, and I was forced to wear the pain of his distancing. And he could no longer shame me by ignoring my words or suggesting my comments were uninteresting. "Not talking" was a giant spotlight illuminating his depriving me of all conversation that engaged me, or responded to me, or shared of himself.

The Psalmist does not mean that we should shut up and shut down our souls; silence is space for observing, searching our hearts, and listening. When I was quiet, I also began to hear from God. When I listened to the quiet whisperings of the Holy Spirit, my annus horribilis became a year of grace. God is so good and He has been taking very good care of me. Truly, wandering in the wilderness of crisis and pain is where Jesus finds us, as many saints have discovered.

And through crisis our misery is concentrated and we are re-tuned to God’s pitch and reshaped to His melody. Just as with a violin, it is nearly impossible to tune with noise in the background. Our husbands have not provided the care and protection our hearts desired and, facing the truth of sexual addiction, we learn that safety and protection must come only from Jesus. Once while processing an event of sexual physical violation, I lamented with self-pity that my counselors just didn’t understand what it felt like to be physically unsafe, body at risk. Jesus so gently corrected me, “My body was broken - for you; how can you say I don't understand?”[3]  In the silence, we can hear the bread breaking. 

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[1] L. Hall, An Affair Of The Mind, (1996) p. 182-83
[2]  Matthew 7:6.  Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
[3] Luke 22:19

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