8 Things that Destroyed Our Marriage- Part 8
I have to be honest and say that I have wrestled with this final post all week. Trisha and I have intentionally saved this final mistake for tonight. I am not a psychologist and I am not a counselor…heck…I am not even a pastor at this point in my life. But here is what I believe with ALL of my heart…every single mistake that we have talked about thus far are simply SYMPTOMS of this final mistake. So often in the church, in our relationships, and in our own personal walk with God it is much easier to treat the symptoms of our problem than to identify and treat the problem itself. This post is as honest and as vulnerable as I can be and I hope it inspires you to fight for this principle in your marriage.
When I graduated Bible College, I had such big dreams for my role in the Kingdom of God. I wanted to be used by God to change the world. I didn’t daydream about getting married, starting a family, moving to a suburb of Indianapolis to launch a church with 12 people that would grow to over 700 people, only to have an affair, and lose everything. When we were charting our future and our plans, that wasn’t something that I envisioned for our future. Who ever envisions their life, their marriage or their ministry going that way? Not recognizing this mistake paved the way for the previous seven mistakes and almost cost me my relationship with God and my relationship with my wife and kids.
#8- I bought into the lie that by withholding truth from my wife I was saving her and my marriage from needless pain.
When Trisha and I began counseling, we went to fix the brokenness caused by the affair. But what I began to see was a pattern of withholding truth from my wife. The affair was what got the attention…it got the headlines…but it was only the outcome of years and years of withholding truth from Trisha. I had so much brokenness in my heart and so much hurt in my past that I had never discussed with her. I experienced sexual abuse as a child, and never talked about it with her. I had an addiction to pornography that I struggled with for 10 years that not only did I not admit, I flat out told her that I didn’t struggle with sexual sins and lustful thoughts like other guys did. I struggled with pride and arrogance…but not those sexual sins.
Here is what I have learned about this principle of withholding truth. You and I were created to be ONE with our spouse. God says that we “will leave our father and our mother and we will become ‘one flesh’”. When you withhold truth from the one that God has ordained in your life for you to be ONE with, there is something that gets fractured in that relationship. I don’t care if the withholding of truth is small or if it is significant, that “oneness” is compromised. What happens is that we learn as married couples to live with the absence of God given “oneness”. We learn to live with the version of oneness that we can create. But for so many couples, distance in our relationship with our spouse becomes the norm and we just resign to the fact that this must be as good as it will ever get. What I want to tell you tonight is that you are buying into a lie that is straight from the pit of hell. We convince ourselves that if we share these dark parts of our heart that we will lose everything, but by not sharing it, we begin to lose everything. That is not how your Heavenly Father longs for your marriage to be…he longs for unity and holiness and oneness.
When we started on this journey 3 ½ years ago, this was a huge step for us. But we have both committed to not withholding anything from one another and for this to work for you it will take a commitment by both you and your spouse. Sometimes it will be painful. It isn’t easy to sit up until 2 AM talking about struggles, fears and past mistakes…it sucks! But we have found it is MUCH more painful to withhold those things from one another and would rather have pain in the short term and intimacy in the long term.
Maybe for you, like me you struggle with being a truth teller. Maybe you have denied your weakness or you haven’t come clean about your addiction or shameful habit. Maybe you haven’t even gone there with your spouse because you are afraid of their answer. Maybe you have withheld a truth from your spouse since the day you met…maybe you had sex with someone in college that you have never told your spouse about…maybe you have charged up the credit cards and you have kept your spouse in the dark about your finances…maybe you have lost your job and it is over at the end of this quarter and you are too ashamed to share that with your spouse…maybe you have feelings for someone in your office…and you think you can handle it.
When we withhold TRUTH from our spouse, as hurtful as we think that truth might be, we forfeit intimacy and oneness. As we come to the close of our blog series, I want to encourage you to trust in the power of God in this area and allow him to restore a level of oneness an intimacy to your relationship that you both crave. It will cost you something now, but what you will gain in the end will be more than you could ask or imagine.
16 Comments to “8 Things that Destroyed Our Marriage- Part 8”
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Thanks so much to both of you for your honesty and courage. Praying God blesses many through your testimony!
What an incredible series. So honest and forthcoming, amazing to think considering lack of straightforwardness and truth were so much of what clouded your marraige in the beginning. It is humbling to think God gave you the courage to share simply for the benefit of the rest of us. Thank you for that, I know these are valuable messages I will refer back to often. God is good.
Polly
Where can I go hear you speak instead of reading blogs?
3 1/2 years ago, we shared your pain and loss of our church home as we knew it. In the aftermath, we discovered that we too were making these 8 mistakes. And like you, the biggest mistake was truths that were with held about my past and the life I lived before I even met my husband! When I finally had the courage to tell my husband everything, it almost destroyed my marriage, but through God’s grace and mercy we have built a stronger and more intimate marriage! I am so thankful for the two of you sharing your journey. I pray that it will help my husband and I move to an even better place. It is also refreshing to at least read what still seems like a sermon from you! We have missed you both terribly!
Thanks for sharing your story with such vulnerability – both of you. It’s challenging me to relate differently to my husband, and to walk in light rather than concealing the ugly parts of me. Thank you for letting me learn through your pain and for helping me be spared some of the same.
While it has been emotional at times to retracel this road, there has been a sense of joy and gratitude in knowing that God is using it to bring hope to people. It has been an honor to share our story so that He gets glory for what He is truly capable of in a marriage.
just found you from an @reply from perrynoble on twitter. your story means more to me than you can imagine. thank you so much for sharing.
I also had to learn this…
I now feel so much freedom when im open to my wife about my struggles, life etc now.
Great reading
@Jermayn…thank you for your comment! It is something that you wish you didn’t go thru but are so glad that you did all at the same time! God’s best to you and your family!
Justin
Wow I didn’t realize that not telling my husband about our finances would hurt our marriage. I still have not found a way to share with him about it, but I am praying that God will give me a way. See it has been a slow journey of compounding debt that has gotten us were we are. I am scared even though we did it together, he doesn’t pay the bills so he doesn’t know. Thank you for sharing this with us this will help me.
Oh Jessica! I hope that GOD will help you find a way to be open and honest in this very important part of your marriage. It sounds so familiar to me…but I had no idea it was as bad as it was. It has all but destroyed mine. Lost our house, our apt, our future…. Just remember that the 3 of you together, can do ANYTHING….even when it comes to finances. One deceit opens itself to more deceit…that is not what GOD intends for us, for our marriage. I will lift you in prayer.
thank you so much for your blogs. I see where we have gone wrong in all these 8 areas! My husband and I had been to the counselors, read marriage books,etc. Yet we both became so bittered and hardened due to just daily letting these 8 things set in. And I the "spiritual" one who always wants to make a change, or try harder, was so bittered to even think of doing one more thing to please or show love to my husband. I am ashamed. But thank God for his grace, he let us get so broken, so like you said we had a good marriage, the best we could build. Now we are letting God build, and I am so excited abou that! Your story really helps and your honesty! God Bless.
Where can I go hear you speak instead of reading blogs?
I'm a little different: I withhold truth from my husband for fear of the "pain" he will inflict on me. He goes from normal to red hot screamin' angry in about 1 second. It's totally unmanageable for me and I don't want to even engage so I don't always give him the full story.
I have been searching for weeks for help on trying to explain my husbands reactions to finding out he had an affair. There is SO much to our story…..mostly involving lies…lies about money, lies that cost us our house, an apartment, and our financial future…about his secret drinking, and now about his love for me by having an affair. My world shattered a few weeks ago when I found sexts (sex texts) between he and a woman he met on facebook, then went to see her, then continued the sexts. I confronted him and he has been nothing but defensive….even to the point of telling me that if I contact her, he will leave me. I do not understand my reaction…why I did not tell him to leave! I am struggling to find GOD, he doesn't want any part of GOD. His belief is that everthing would have been alright if I just had not "snooped" and found out. I do not know how to handle his attitude….his lack of remorse…his refusal to repent…..and his continued desire to lie about everything. …Continued…..
….continued……
I am broken to the point of not wanting to live (although I am too chicken to end my life). I continue to pray for things to change…beginning with me. We are seeing a counselor once a week (my husband is a truck driver and only home 1-2 days a week)….and I find that counseling is not going well, or at least it seems that way, when I see no changes, no efforts from him…he does not think we need counseling. Oh how I long for what you both now have, and how I am praying for God to come on the scene with TIm in a MIGHTY way. Your story gives me hope …. I am so tired already and need that hope to help me go on. Thank you for sharing it…..thank you for your prayers for everyone that has found it…Thank GOD, for everything…yes, even this.