It’s Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you all can link up your own marriage posts in the linky below!
I received an email recently from a woman who is occasionally tempted by porn. She’ll go months or even years without looking at it, but then she’ll be tempted for about a week to look at it a lot.
She wants to stop; she confesses it to God; and she’s feeling really guilty.
So here’s the question: should she confess it to her husband?
I received another question recently from a reader who had developed an attraction to a man at work. She has now gone out of her way to avoid him, has made sure she never texts him, and is looking at leaving for a different job so that they aren’t thrown together in any way. But she still occasionally finds that she dreams about him. She tries not to think about him, but doesn’t always succeed. But she does love her husband.
Should she tell him?
I find these very difficult questions, and I’m going to give my opinion with the humble assertion that I truly may not be right. I don’t really know. But here’s what my gut tells me:
1. Secrecy when we try to hide things from ourselves and from God is always wrong.
If you are doing something you know is wrong, and you are running from it and aren’t trying to stop and aren’t confessing it to God, you’re in dangerous ground. You need to be honest with yourself and honest with God.
2. Accountability Needs Another Person
At the same time, as important as it is to be honest yourself, to keep us on the straight and narrow we usually need another person. We’re supposed to “confess our faults one to another”, as James 5:16 says. We are supposed to tell others about what we are struggling with so that they can pray with us and so that we can’t hide behind a false veneer of righteousness.
So I’d say that it’s really important to find ONE female that you can talk to (or male, if you’re a guy and you’re reading this). Find someone you can trust, whom you can also help keep accountable so it’s a two-way street. Find someone who will hold you to what God says, and won’t justify or pooh-pooh or rationalize your behaviour. And find someone who will pray with you.
3. Be Careful About Sharing with Your Spouse
But IF you’ve confessed to God, and IF you’ve put things in place so that you’re minimizing the temptation and preventing the sin, then I’m not certain telling your husband is always the best policy. You have to ask, “why am I telling him? Is this something that he NEEDS to know, or am I telling him simply for the sake of complete transparency?” And if it’s something that will hurt him (like having a crush on a co-worker whom you are now going out of your way to avoid), I’m not sure it’s really helpful to tell him. I think it’s far more helpful to throw yourself in to making your marriage as fun as you can and in wooing your husband again so that you feel attracted to him.
If you tell him that you’re attracted to someone else, someone that you aren’t pursuing and aren’t planning on pursuing and are now avoiding, you’re just hurting your husband when no real sin has taken place. Does your husband deserve that?
At the same time, I can see where certain things need to be confessed, like if you’ve really overspent and put the family in debt. You can’t try to hide that, even if you do the finances in your house. Or if you’ve been faking enjoying sex for years and years, and now you want to restart your sex life. I don’t know if you can really move forward in something like that unless you at least give your husband a bit of information about what’s really been going on. And if you’ve had a full-blown affair, I do believe that needs to be confessed.
So I would say that you have to ask yourself certain questions: will we be able to maintain a healthy and close relationship if I DON’T tell him, or is it necessary for me to tell him? In the case of a debt, for instance, not telling him will increase your anxiety and potentially cause major ripple effects. In the case of a crush which you have dealt with, I would think that real intimacy is better maintained by keeping silent with him but then pursuing an ever more romantic and passionate marriage.
What do you think? Does everything need to be revealed in order to be passionate and intimate? Is honesty always the best policy? Let’s talk in the comments!
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Write your own marriage post and then link up the URL to that post in the linky below! And be sure to link back here so other people can see all the awesome marriage posts!
You handled this well, Sheila. Plenty of people say that you should tell your spouse anything and everything, but in practice we don’t. We don’t tell them every single thought we have or action we take in a day; we select. Absolutely, we should not keep big secrets from our spouses.
However, I’m with you on this one: You need to tell SOMEONE, but that someone doesn’t have to be the hubby. Without knowing it, some years back, I followed your advice: I had an attraction to someone outside my marriage (at the time when my marriage was seriously struggling), avoided the other guy, and confessed to my best (female) friend. A year later, I had NO attraction to that guy because I didn’t feed it and I had accountability with a friend who was not just rooting for me but for my MARRIAGE. I do think a wife needs to select an accountability partner who really will encourage them and call them on the carpet if needed. Some friends are conflict-avoiders and won’t do that. Thankfully, I had a very wise friend at hand.
J (Hot, Holy & Humorous) recently posted..Confessions of My Sexy and Sex-Happy Hubby
And please be careful to have a female friend if you’re a woman and a male friend if you’re a man. My husband chose female, online friends, as his “accountablility” and it lead to an online affair. It has been two years since discovery and his habit of secrets with his “sisters” is so ingrained. Both he and these women whole-hearted believe that they are entitled to keep secrets and continue in hidden communication.
Isn’t the first example of the wife being tempted by porn occassionally simply just her being in a horny mood? Surely her husband could help her with that…
Athol Kay: Married Man Sex Life recently posted..The Red Pill Does Not Involve Cupcakes
Agree, Athol. Instead of freaking out, my first reaction would be to try to step up my own game. The type of porn she was drawn to, would give me a clue as to what I needed to do. I’d still expect her to quit but I’d look at it more as a diagnostic tool than a betrayal. The LAST thing I’d do is deny her myself in response to her porn use… that policy seems catastrophically counterproductive.
BTW Sheila… the fuzzy/blurred aspect of that finger on mouth picture, caused me to at first glance think it was something else. (WHAT is Sheila posting TODAY? That’s REALLY OUT THERE… Oh my.. Oh, that’s a finger, never mind!”) You might want to post the non-blurred version….
I read the title and thought, oh yes. My sunglasses were broken and we weren’t sure why. Hubby blamed our daughter, but I confessed that they may be broken because I got mad at the incessant crying whining and fighting of oyr older 3 children and threw the sunglasses in utter frustration. Then, I realized you’re speaking more deeply than broken sunglasses! Lol! Anyhoo….you may be right, but if a spouse ASKS, we should be honest with them.
You’re right. This is a tough one, and I’m not sure there is a clear Biblical guideline. Scripture tells us to confess our sins and seek forgiveness from people we’ve sinned against. If we haven’t acted on our impure thoughts, are they simply sins against God and not our spouse?
Gail recently posted..The Spirit Knows
I was/am in a similar situation as the second woman (still so in love with my husband, but feeling attracted to another man at church). Once I realized I had a crush, I knew I needed to tell someone, maybe even my husband, but I wanted advice first. So I asked my dad.
He assured me the attraction was normal, but that I still must flee from it. He told me not to tell my husband because that would cause unnecessary pain and strain. And then he told me I could call him anytime if the temptation became too much. God has also delivered me from temptation on several occasions (removing situations where I would have to interact with the man, without me having to say or do anything to cause the change). So asking God to remove the temptation is also an important step.
Wow, I do feel blessed to have such a great God, and a great dad, and a great husband.
After our first son was born, I had a crush on the pediatrician. It was a school girl type crush, not one of sexual fantasy. I was shocked by my feelings and a bit repulsed, but I realized they were probably a hormonal reaction to a man caring for my child. Of course, he cares for all of our children now and I am not attracted to him in the least. Still, I don’t think I would tell hubby. I never even flirted with the doc.
I think you answered this perfectly. Temptation isn’t sin. Giving into the temptation is sin. We are exhorted to confess sin, not temptation. We are all tempted but unless we give into it, we haven’t sinned.
Lori recently posted..Husbands Need To Confront
So I assume this goes both ways:
I can’t imagine the women here being so cool with that. This is way off. When you are talking about something serious, like an outside attraction, it needs to be confronted. These things don’t happen in isolation and cannot be dealt with in isolation.
In marriage we are supposed to help each other to reach heaven, not dodge and burn so we avoid the hard parts. This never works.
CL recently posted..The Paradoxes of Winning and Losing
I agree completely CL! This is exactly how my husband rationalized and justified NOT telling me his struggles with temptation and his sins. He didn’t want to “hurt” or “burden” me!
This is a double standard. If the roles were reversed, I’d totally want my husband to tell me, to share, confide, trust me, to pray, with and for him!!! This is exactly how men, well my man, my husband, has rationalized, justified, why NOT to share his secrets in the past. He didn’t want to “hurt” or “burden” me. But in the not telling me, he was still hurting and burdening me. 1)Because not only did I eventually find out, (and then was even more hurt that he didn’t share these temptations with me when we could have had accountability for it before it ever went any further), but also 2)that he carried around a LOT of guilt and shame and that changed him and how he responded or withdrew from me. He became violent and angry all the time as a result of carrying this guilt, this burden.
To say that a woman finds herself “attracted to a man” other than her husband, as stated above it is inferred that it was more than a mere temptation, is very much the same as using the words a man “lusted” after a woman. Why sugarcoat it? Why would we have a different standard? The ONLY reason I would think it different for women than men is this: 1)Women are created “relational” and typically, but not all, want to be aware/in the know of every facet of their husband’s brain-thoughts and feelings. Maybe not all you do out there, but I sure do. I want to know what makes him tick and be privy to his thoughts. It makes me feel closer to him, knowing him, for better or for worse, so intimately. And 2)and I’m not sure how to say this exactly, but society and even here, we are told basically that men’s egos are fragile and we wouldn’t want to make him feel any less of a MAN. But I think that’s flawed thinking. Heck yah, the truth hurts sometimes, but like a band-aid, I’d rather it get pulled off in one fell swoop, then dragging it out forever. A sliver so tiny you can’t even see it can be the most painful irritation. I’d want to be rid of it, or at the very least have a salve put on it to help pull it out. And that is what being honest with my husband and he with me is likened to. We assist each other. We are only as strong as our weakest link.
We need to bring secrets to the Light! Hiding things in the dark only allows them to bring death and decay to a marriage. If it were me, I’d tell my husband, not only because I want complete transparency (something we are taught as children of the Light) but in that even though it would hurt, healing could and would come through exposing it the Light of Jesus, and my husband, who is my closest friend and knows me better than anyone else. When we have complete honesty (and that is honesty with humility, tenderness, kindness, and a true genuine interest to be healed and rid of the burdens of temptation and sin), it helps each of us to know what areas the other is weak in, so we can help encourage, prepare them to be strong with the help of the Spirit of God, to overcome adversity together. Like a broken bone grows back stronger, so does our marriage, our relationship. And I’m speaking from experience as a woman who has weathered some of the most severe of storms of any marriage. And we are stronger and closer today than we ever were, praise God!
CL, yes, I would say the same thing to a man. If you’ve dealt with the attraction, you’re avoiding the person, and you have accountability, then does it help your wife to tell her, “I was really attracted to someone else at church?” So I don’t think there’s a double standard here.
re: “temptation isn’t sin”
True, but it is the doorway to sin, and keeping it to yourself only gives Satan more power to tempt you. Why would you not enlist your husband to help you fight that temptation? Will you wait until you actually sin before you confess anything?
Furthermore, how would you feel about your husband using such a blatant rationalisation? This is the exact reason men learn to lie to their wives. Women are hypocritical; she will withhold info about herself and will use everything she learns against her husband.
CL recently posted..Modern Women are Like God
CL, I would give the same advice to my husband and to men. And to me, the important thing is that my husband has an accountability partner, not that it is me. So I would be absolutely fine with it.
I think in those kind of situations, it’s best to first be honest with yourself. Something I’ve observed – both in my own marriage and in others – is that sometimes we rush to confess things to our spouses in an effort to alleviate our own guilt. We haven’t yet dealt with those feelings for ourselves. Does that make sense? When we’re honest with ourselves and with God, sometimes the things we’re dealing with become non-issues before we tell our spouse about them.
Melissa recently posted..I Appreciate…
Melissa, that’s a very interesting point, and I think you’re right on. Confessing to alleviate guilt often just transfers the hurt onto the other person.
Wow, this is a tough question to muddle through isn’t it? Perhaps one thing to keep in mind is this—would we want our husband to confess the same temptation or area of difficulty to us?
Kristine McGuire recently posted..Be Bold In Christ
That’s an excellent way to look at it. And honestly, if my husband were attracted to someone at work, and he had taken pains to avoid her and had confessed it to a friend, I absolutely would not want to know! It’s not a sin to be attracted; but it sure does make the other person feel insecure.
Melissa wrote: “…is that sometimes we rush to confess things to our spouses in an effort to alleviate our own guilt.”
Exactly. What is the biblical directive? Tell the truth in love (Eph 4). I avoided a big confession once for a long time, simply because I wanted to confess to cause hurt. It took awhile for me to come down from that and then I was given the perfect opportunity to confess. Still hurtful, but that was not my motivation anymore.
A very thought-provoking question! To borrow a quote from Jessica Harris (of beggarsdaughter.com): “Sin thrives in silence”, and I think the same holds true for temptation. Like others have already shared, telling someone that you trust, and who will hold you accountable is key. And being completely honest with yourself about it before God and (should they ask) your spouse has to be crucial to guard that trust and intimacy between you.
I’d agree with this, Greg – it’s great when our spouses CAN be our accountability partners, but there are times when it’s better that we confess / share with someone else – and sometimes, it’s appropriate that this person be of the same gender as we are. Sharing with your spouse about something like a crush can only lead to them being suspicious of you all the time, which is more likely to cause division than oneness.
I disagree with the ” and sometimes, it’s appropriate that this person be of the same gender “. Confessing a sexual temptation or attraction with a member of the opposite sex opens the door for inappropriate intimacy. I would be just as hurt by finding out that my husband was sharing this kind of temptation with another woman as with the temptation itself. Also, emotional affairs start this way.
I think telling your spouse that you are attracted to someone else would be a great way to sow the seeds of insecurity. Such a confession could unleash emotions that could be more damaging than the unacted-upon temptation. You might say “I’m attracted to …..” but your spouse might hear “I’m in love with …..” and thus a natural but fleeting moment of temptation becomes a marriage killer….or crippler.
I believe my wife knows I find other women attractive, I am, after all, a high-sex drive male with a visually triggered sex drive. If I find other women attractive, then simple logic tells me that my wife might find other men attractive even if her sex drive is different than mine.
Men and women are different except in one regard, we are human, so we are subjected to temptations everyday. However, we need to trust each other not to act on those temptations. If you are finding it difficult to resist those temptations, then confide in a friend or mentor who will keep you from doing something you will only regret later, but please don’t tell your husband, especially if your marriage is, or has been, a significant struggle.
Tough questions, Sheila!
Well, we are to grow in our one flesh union with our spouse so I guess I’d have to ask myself these questions:
By sharing the truth with him, will it cause us to grow closer together or further apart?
By not sharing the truth with him, will it cause us to grow closer together or further apart?
Will it hinder his walk with the Lord or strengthen it?
I always lean towards complete honesty in marriage but I certainly wouldn’t want to hear how my husband thought another woman was more attractive than I am!
Jolene @ The Alabaster Jar recently posted..She Said I Was Filled with Pride; How Ministry Shattered My Heart
Agree agree agree! I’d also like to add that there is a responsibility on the “hearer” as well as the “teller” of truths that are hard to hear. Many years ago, my husband and I went through a difficult time in our marriage. After the Lord restored us, I had to decide what truth I could handle and what my reaction should be in this healed and forgiven state. If my husband had betrayed me, did I need to know? If it was past and I had commited to forgive, was there value in details that could only bring pain? I told my husband that there were certain things I did not need to hear, even if I asked he needed to stop the conversation as the spiritual head of our home. If we want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but…we owe our spouses not a soft place to land, but a holy place. Don’t ask for information that you will be tempted to turn against your husband/wife.
I think I agree with you, Sheila. I have a friend who was on the other side of a situation like that, where a good friend confessed to having bad thoughts about her on a number of occaisions. It made my friend very uneasy about her friendship with that person.
I think it would tend to have the same unsettling effect on a spouse.
Asking yourself some important questions first (like, will this help or hinder our marriage) while at the same time investing in your marital intimacy is truly a double-chocolate cookie!
Lisa
http://www.TheCourageousJourney.com
Lisa recently posted..Lionproof Part 4: Strengthening Your Defense
To this lady who has cravings and yearnings for porn from time to time, it could be any number of reasons that this desire comes upon her – it might be psychological (and she may wish to dig deep to find the reason) or it may purely be the fact that maybe her sex life needs more visual stimulation?
For men sex is a very visual thing – often they like to “watch” but this is not easy for women because of positions (impossible to watch when doing it doggy style or from behind – though men get all the visuals there, and difficult in the missionary position unless you’re a contortionist!) – the way our body parts are arranged makes it difficult for women to get into a comfortable position to watch penetration.
While most women enjoy sex often through emotions and physical sensations, we are all different and there are some women who also need and like it very visual – so maybe if her husband agreed they could use a mirror or maybe experiment with positions so she could watch herself making love with her husband.
Visuals can be very arousing for women too and when this is deprived from them they may get these urges to deviate to fulfill a missing need.
It might not work, but it may just stop that desire and craving for porn if in her own real sex life she had more visual enjoyment from making love. But of course she may do this already, but not knowing the details, I offer it as an idea.
So let me get this straight: it is adultery if a man looks at porn, but if a wife does it isn’t even a sin worth confessing? Your moral compass is full of too many exceptions to be useful.
I don’t think I ever said that a man has to confess it to his wife. I have no double standard on this. If a man has an accountability partner and is truly being held accountable, I do not know that he does need to confess it. The key is that he has accountability, that he has repented, that he has confessed to God, and that he is avoiding the porn.
In the posts that I wrote previously about men and porn I was writing about a situation where a man is pursuing porn and is not stopping. That’s an entirely different situation.
Since I’m usually in the agreeing side of everything on this blog, I was very surprised the answer was “don’t confess to Hubby to save some hurt.” I have to say I agree 100% with Julie directly above me. It is way too easy to excuse away most confession under this premise.
I actually found myself in the position of having a crush develop towards an attractive guy that my husband is discipling. Awkward! While there weren’t sexual fantasies, I did find myself thinking about him often. I eventually told my husband…as well as what I was doing to “put off, put on”. I didn’t just say “fyi, I have a crush on someone else; deal with it.”
I told my husband that every time he came into my thoughts, I would tell those thoughts “no!” and turn my mind to something I love about my husband.
What’s funny about it, is after I told my husband, the crush feelings lost their power. I don’t think about this guy at all anymore. And my husband actually does have more confidence in me because I confessed to him at a “ground-level” of temptation.
Jen, that’s great that you and your husband have that kind of relationship! I don’t want to put a blanket rule on anything here, I just know of so many relationships where one spouse has been devastated because the other confessed a crush that they weren’t even pursuing. It just led to a lot of lack of trust in the relationship that took forever to rebuild. So I think so much depends on your communication, and the relationship.
I have first hand experience on this one. My wife told me about running into an old crush. I let it go, no big deal, and then two weeks later she confessed that she can’t stop thinking about him. It turned into a very painful week of nightly discussions. In the end,we realized exactly what you outlined. If no sin was committed, I don’t want to know . He faded away again, and all is good. It really highlighted to me how hard you have to work to keep your love focused on your spouse because it is easy and exciting to let that guard down when someone shows you some interest. It’s been said that a man is only as faithful as his options. I think that applies to women as well. The question is whether you are checking out your options or not. It’s hard work to get that excitement from your spouse, especially when it comes by the bucketful when an old crush flirts with you.
I appreciate this post. For my life personally, I have found that I have to be discerning about the situation as well as the season of life my husband and I are in.
I think factors such as personality can factor in too. I have a friend who has told me that if her husband shared something regarding an attraction to another woman, she would fight unhealthy thoughts.
“Is she prettier than me? ….Is he thinking about her right now?…Does he think about her when we have sex?”
In her case, him sharing becomes a stumbling block and a distraction from their marriage.
I, on the other hand, want to know everything my husband struggles with. Because of my own past experiences, I don’t see his struggles as something that is a reflection of my failures. I feel closer to him when he shares.
I don’t think that there is necessarily a one answer fits all with this.
I will say that though I personally share most struggles with my husband, having a close (also female) friend who I can share freely with and ask for accountability has made my marriage and my Christian walk stronger.