Angry!

Angry. I was angry. Really, really angry. It was our wedding anniversary. We had planned a mini-celebration that evening for the “day of” because it was a weekday and we had to work. We had planned to have a staycation on the weekend to celebrate in style. But as I sat there thumbing through pictures of happy moments over the years, I was engulfed in grief and deep, deep anger instead of the joy I thought I should be feeling. The prevailing emotion was anger—rage, actually. It felt like all those happy moments were a sham. It felt like my happiness was all based on my husband's lies. Lies about his porn use and adultery—both in his first marriage and ours. Lies that he was done with all that. Lies that he was dealing with it and letting God heal him. And I had believed him. Because I was so happy and so in love with him. In those moments, after more than a dozen years of dealing with my husband’s porn addiction and all the accompanying issues, the last shreds of that facade of happiness came crashing down. I was left with deep hurt, betrayal, and growing rage.

 “Thar She Blows!” It wasn’t only the porn and adultery situation that made me angry, although that would have been enough. There was so much more. The lies. The betrayals, small and large. It was his several start-and-stop attempts to “get help," which were nothing more than a way to appease me for a short time and with which he had no intention of being involved for the long term so we could heal. It was because he refused accountability in one area; he refused accountability in ALL areas, which left him feeling entitled to do as he wished, whenever he wanted. He had quit his six-figure job in the middle of the pandemic shutdown, without another one to go to, right after we bought a house, without us agreeing about it. We had to drain our savings to live through covid because he couldn’t find a job, and then he had to find TWO low-paying jobs and was working 18-hour days to make ends meet barely. The business I had been building and was on the cusp of a breakthrough dwindled because now I had to spend my time trying to earn money instead of working on it. I felt helpless in all of it because He excluded me from all of his choices. Things were about to get ugly. The night of our anniversary, instead of a sweet mini-celebration, we had a major, violent, messy blowup of a fight. One that almost ended our marriage. One that I caused in my anger.

Aftermath. The aftermath of that night was brutal, and it has been long-lasting. But really, it wasn’t the aftermath of just that night. It was the aftermath of the undealt-with porn & adultery problem and its accompanying issues. And the aftermath of my un-dealt with anger. We lived in the same house but didn’t see or speak to each other for two months. He violated all the rest of our marital agreements. He got a lot of unsafe people involved in our situation and told them half-truths to try and build a case against me. Family relationships were destroyed. It was ugly, as I mentioned before. I knew something had to change in and for me, even if he didn’t decide to change. I began searching through all my coaching and counseling resources and found Debbie Laaser’s book, Shattered Vows, which I had read about ten years before. From there, I found Captives Free Online Spouses Support Group. I followed the advice I had given other women many times. I put myself into counseling, decided to join the Captives Free Online Spouses Support Group, and began working on my anger and the fallout of the argument. That was one of the best choices I’ve made about my life—and my marriage—in a long time. Ever so slowly, I, and we, began to come out of the darkness of that moment and the issues that caused it and move back toward the Light.

Dealing. As I progressed through the Grieving Lessons in the Newcomers Group, I saw how I had allowed many incorrect ways of dealing with my grief and anger to creep in. I had felt so alone in so many ways because I didn’t really talk about my husband's issues with safe people or how I felt about them because of the “dirtiness” and humiliation attached to them. How my deep anger was a fruit of unprocessed grief, and I began to grieve deeply and confront behaviors that were my way of numbing or pushing away grief and anger. I learned what it looked like to be angry and not sin—and it wasn’t what I thought. But, truthfully, I was STILL angry. And not only at my husband. I was angry at God—for many things, but primarily for “allowing” me to go through terrible trials because of my husband and his behaviors. For not sparing me the betrayal of porn addiction, adultery, lying, and him quitting his job and leaving us in a financial crisis. And, my husband not listening to me when I had told him of the better way, through the Lord and healing, countless times. After three months of processing with the Lord, the group, and my counselor and setting some excellent boundaries with my husband, I realized I was still angry. Finally, the breakthrough came.

The Breakthrough. Breakthrough came from a post in our online chat from my breakout group leader. One of the other great things about Captives Free Support Spouses Group is that the breakout leaders are also participants who are healing from their spouses’ addictions and behaviors. In this particular post, my breakout leader was sharing how she was asking the Lord about WHY her husband had had a relapse. If he had JUST LISTENED to her, it would have saved them a lot of trouble and pain. She expressed MY #1 unanswered, resentment-filled question to the Lord: WHY WOULDN’T MY HUSBAND LISTEN TO ME AND STOP THIS BEHAVIOR?! Here is what she shared: “I thought, ‘Why did he have to relapse again before the therapist could go there and/or before he could see it?! Why don’t the things I say penetrate?!’ And God, in His all-faithfulness, immediately answered, ‘Because he needs ME to penetrate his heart. If he hears it from you, sure, it saves you the heartache, but ultimately you would become prideful and take credit for MY work, and he would look to you instead of ME.” Boom. Those words were EXACTLY the answer I was looking for. They humbled me because that is precisely what was happening in my heart. Those words broke through my stony anger and helped me turn my anger AND my husband’s behavior and consequences over to the Lord. Over the next few weeks, I kept these words in front of me, reminding myself to allow the Lord to deal with my husband. Just that idea—that God WOULD deal with my husband brought me so much freedom. I could rely on Him, my group, and my good boundaries to keep me safe.

The Takeaways. Looking back at my journals during that time, I can identify three keys that helped me face, deal with, and release my anger. (Journaling is an activity that I HIGHLY recommend and is also part of the curriculum of the Captives Free Spouses Support Group.) The 1st Key. My anger was real. And, it was justified. In other words, I had a right to be angry about my husband's actions. But, I also needed to face that I was angry at God for “allowing” those things to happen to ME. Another thing I needed to face was that while it was right for me to feel angry about the things my husband had done, HOW I EXPRESSED that anger was NOT RIGHT. It was not God’s way of doing or being right. How I handled my anger was not “being angry and sinning not,” as the Bible says. It certainly wasn’t accomplishing the purposes I hoped it would, much less the purposes of God. The lesson on Grieving When I’m Angry: Allowing God to Use My Anger for His Purposes was beneficial. My first time through this set of grieving lessons was eye-opening. I learned so much about the many different types of anger expression—all of them not right. I used to think that if you were the “expression" type, where you expressed your anger, you were wrong, and if you were quiet about your anger, you were right. I learned that neither of those types of expression is correct if I stayed in control of my anger and Holy Spirit was not in charge of it. The Lord has instructions for how to be angry and deal with our anger HIS way. I learned what it means to “unpack” my anger with God—sit and talk with Him about every aspect of my anger. From WHY I am angry to how I feel and allow Him to take the weight of each part onto Himself. Then, let Him teach me HOW to be angry—His way. The 2nd Key. Setting good boundaries is vital. They keep you safe, hold you accountable, and keep your spouse accountable. I’ve found that setting boundaries I intend to keep helps me relax and trust the process because I know I have a boundary. I understand what boundary violation looks like, and I have people holding me accountable to enforce it when it is broken. With a boundary, I don’t have to always keep up a hyper-vigilant watch on my husband’s behavior to keep myself safe. The boundary does that for me. The great thing about Captives Free is that your group leaders are there to help you learn about boundaries and help you set them, as well as keep you accountable to enforce them. The 3rd Key. We heal in SAFE relationships. I’ve spent a lot of time being part of and leading healing groups for the last 25 years. But there was something about coming to Captives Free with zero expectations, just showing up and being around a group of women who not only let me be and feel just as I was but accepted me that way. I was allowed and encouraged to feel AND work through my feelings and wounds at my own pace. No one was afraid of my big feelings—they all had them, too. And importantly, I learned the difference, maybe for the first time, between what a safe place was and how to identify safe and unsafe people with whom I could share my struggles and feelings.

Finally. This is by no means the end of this particular story. My husband and I are still healing from his long-term porn use, addiction, and the aftermath of the “blow up.” It’s still messy sometimes. I’m still triggered when the Lord exposes some behavior of his that’s not right. But I’m also learning to trust the Lord’s process for me, him, and us. Because that’s the goal, God doesn’t just want to restore our marriage; He wants to REMAKE it so that it will accomplish His purposes for it and us. The best thing? My husband has joined the Captives Free Men’s group for men with sexual sin issues and has faithfully attended every week, even though he has to get up at 4:30 am on the weekend to do it. He’s growing and changing—in a way that I can see. He’s even talking about getting a counselor and a mentor/accountability partner when his time gets freed up, and he gets a better job. Thanks for reading a bit of my story. If you’re still reading this, and you’ve experienced the pain of betrayal by a spouse's infidelity, porn use, or another sexual acting-out, please check out the Captives Free Online Spouses Support Group. While it’s not a cure-all, it goes a long way to giving the support and help you need to recover and even transform after discovery. It will help you begin the healing journey and may even help restore your faith and hope. © LNI 2022