“The kingdom of heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. But that night as the workers slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, then slipped away. When the crop began to grow and produce grain the weeds also grew. The farmer’s workers went to him and said ‘Sir the field where you planted that good seed is is full of weeds! Where did they come from?” Matthew 13:24-27 NLT
“Run from sexual sin!……..” 1 Corinthians 6: 18 NLT
This post is lengthy, but necessary for you to understand some of my experience. So, how does a 26 year marriage dissolve in to a divorce? Slowly. None of this happened overnight. Mistakes were made on both sides, but at the core was the choice to invest in some one or something else while divesting us. A house divided nor relationship divested can stand.
It was summer 2014. We had just returned from a vacation to the Gulf of Mexico. We had taken our daughter and her lifelong partner in crime—my grand nephew— on probably the last trip we would be taking as a quad. It was the summer between the kids’ junior and senior years of high school. College and jobs loomed ahead on the horizon. During our time away, my brother in law was hospitalized having required spinal surgery. He did not do well with anesthesia and required my sister to be with him 24/7. I arrived at the hospital finding my sister looking like she needed to be in the hospital bed beside her husband. I had never seen her look so run down and worn out. I took her spot as caregiver/guard and sent her to my mother’s where she slept for nearly 14 hours straight. It was the first inkling of how very ill my sister was. Within a dozen weeks we had a diagnosis we had never heard in our family—pancreatic cancer. Working in the medical field I knew that was one of the cancers with limited treatment success due to the advanced stages it reaches before producing symptoms. I hoped, I prayed fervently this was not the case for my dear sister. I will discuss what occurred with her in more depth later. Suffice it to say she was very ill and needed a great deal of help. My brother in law was not able to provide as much help needed due to his own medical situation.
What is important to this discussion is that I was with my sister a great deal during the next nine months. I worked, I followed my daughter in her marching band competitions and school events, and I took care of my sister. I was home to sleep, do laundry, cook via crock pot, and say hello and goodbye to my husband. It was a survival mode of existence. He was supportive and understanding of my need/desire to help my sister. He encouraged me to what was necessary. He initially did some household chores and even my daughter kicked in more. As I think now, he visited my sister about four times in that 9 month period. He never came with me for my weekend shift. He and I would reconnect when I was home, but were often traveling with our daughter’s competitions. We talked and texted multiple times a day. Looking back now most of that was what was communicated was updates on my sister. Discussions of what needed to be done at home and reviewing our daughter’s schedule were at the top of the list. Scheduling time together was not part of the plans made. There was little significant us time. I was stressed and in a crisis of faith due to the events surrounding my sister’s illness. I was not home most Sundays, so I was not attending church. He did not attend if I was not home. If I was home I was exhausted. All of this plus some self esteem issues my husband was having over his job, produces a perfect fertile ground for a spiritual dandelion. Little did I know that my husband had let an old habit, I thought long banished, to come back into his life. He had began to visit internet porn sites quite regularly. We had been here before at least four other times in our relationship and marriage. The first few times he confessed and asked forgiveness before I knew what he was doing. The fourth time, he was caught via my resetting the internet history on the family PC. Each time we had worked together and with counseling to repair the damage, secured our marriage. This time I had no idea, had never considered it as a possibility again.
I truly believe pornography is a spiritual dandelion. Porn initially appears harmless. A bit of fluff like the dandelion seeds swirling in the wind. It hurts no one and with the internet in our homes it can slip in unseen. The weed seed seeks fertile ground to sprout and grow. Before the user can begin to understand, it will run a root so deep it is nearly impossible to remove. The brain chemistry changes of an addiction set in. Have you ever tried to dig up a mature dandelion? Those things have a root that grows so deep it nearly impossible to dig the entire thing out. If you do not dig deep and work the soil around the plant, the root will break off giving up the visible parts, but leaving a partial root unexposed a few inches down in the soil. That root will immediately begin to grow until it peeks it’s head back though the soil to bring another fully grown plant into fruition. More fluff is produced and begins plantings of other weeds. As marriage partners we each need to guard our garden. The workers slept and the enemy came to spread the seed. We need to guard against the weed seeds. Filters to screen out porn type sites need to be applied to all internet capable screens. Not out of the lack of trust, but to keep accountability to one another. Internet access needs to be in the open where others are around and can see what the person is watching or doing. Books, magazines, and other reading materials need to be free of sexual content. The unrealistic and sexualized romance novel is porn in the female mind. TV and cable shows need to be scrubbed by filtering programs or turned off. We do not need to let those scenes into our homes–even if the kids are asleep. We must guard against those dandelion seeds for our spouses and children. Sexual sin is the only sin the scriptures tell us to run from. It tells us to stay away from others, but no running involved. This is one with such deep running roots we are to flee it before it has any opportunity for the seed to even settle. We must guard against it. We must be accountable to our partners to stay away from it completely. It is not old fashioned. It is not “religious”. It is life and death in a marriage and family.
My husband had began to seek a way to meet his emotional needs too. Porn can feed a physical desire, but leaves the user empty with the lack of genuine emotional connection. I was not always at home to talk, so instead of calling me, he chose to start chats with those he met on line. He had not kept any close male friends since college. When his college friends married he cut the ties to those relationships claiming the marriage changed the friend. He used his computer to make new friends. I found this on his old computer cookie list. He left it behind and it provided a timeline record of all of his internet activities. All the contacts were women and all interactions were quite innocent at first. Questions regarding antiques, crystal glasses, and such on sales websites he ordered from, became frequent emails and sharing personal information. The bloomed into assisting a new friend with listening during a difficult time in her life. It became an intimate friendship where he too shared difficulties with his wife. Another similar site produced another female friendship. This were not casual interactions. He shared the hopes and dreams with them that he had once shared with me. He talked to them more about his day than he shared with me. They shared inside jokes and the problems they were facing. These relationships crossed a line. These were emotional affairs. He was having his emotional needs met by these women instead of his wife. He was investing in these relationships exceedingly more than he was investing in us. Reading some of the unprotected emails, I actually had pity on the one woman and more anger at my husband, as it was clear she was in love with him. I pitied her because she had no idea of the life he was actually leading. I had more anger at him for hurting yet another woman.
These affairs were supplemented with a growing assortment of porn to meet increasing physical desires. Remember the addiction brain chemistry changes I mentioned? They are very real with porn use. Science has seen very similar reactions much like with drugs, with porn users. The porn use, like drugs require more and more to achieve the desired effects. He continued these practices for over 18 months without my knowledge. Nearly the entire time I was caring for my sister and for the year that followed. He fell further into the downward spiral with visiting actual dating sites. He had profiles looking for partners. He had social media accounts under alias names. He joined dating sites for European countries and even looked into a mail order bride from the pacific islands (yes, that does exist). He continued looking until he finally met someone across the ocean. Someone that did not care that he was married. Someone that seemed more exciting and fresh than the depressed wife he had. Someone he could run away with and leave all the old behind. That is what he began planning to do.
I suffered a great depression after my sister’s illness and was at a crisis in my faith with the anger I had over her suffering. Shortly after this my burden was increased due to my mother suffering a fractured hip and the multitude of complications that followed. She was hospitalized or in rehab for months and we nearly lost her twice. I was the caregiver again with less help than I had with my sister’s care. I was barely functioning in any other capacity. Meanwhile my husband was at home on his computer. Despite seeing the depths of my depression–the days I could barely get out of bed…..the days I binge watched TV in pajamas because I could not muster the drive to dress or face the world–he chose to not attempt to help his wife of 26 years. He chose to continue as he had been doing. It was easier to invest in the new rather than to try reinvesting in our relationship and helping me. It a nutshell: He took the easy way out.
It takes two people to marry and two people to divorce. I have heard people say each person in the marriage must give 50%. I am here to say each person must be prepared to give 110% every day. Marriage is work. Marriage is a partnership. If one partner is not able to give the other must pick up the slack. I was not able to give and unfortunately for a prolonged time. Most of that was due to my anger with God, a self imposed estrangement from Him, and the ensuing depression. My husband was willing to give some, but not the 110%. I knew my husband had previously let porn and even a couple of emotional affairs occur a few years ago, when I was not around as much during a second undergrad degree and then grad school. I honestly thought we were passed all of that given our previous counseling, maturity, and length of time we had been married. I thought we had invested so much in one another we were solid. I knew I was depressed, but did not fully see what was occurring around me. I sought some medical treatment, but not seriously nor steadily. I started some grief therapy, but did not find a counselor that clicked with me. I stopped going once Mother was ill and did not return. I didn’t seek God as I so desperately needed to. I chose poorly and tried to bury my feelings and frustrations. I was emotionally exhausted and spiritually depleted. I did nothing to attempt to take care of nor restore my own emotional and spiritual health. I recall one time my husband suggested I go back to counseling. I told him I didn’t know where to go. That was the end of the conversation.
Looking back well over 2 years after the divorce, I realize changing any of this would not have changed the trajectory the marriage was traveling. I may have been in a better place mentally had I gone to therapy, but it would not have stopped my husband from what he chose. It was not my depression that ended my marriage. It was my husband’s choices that ended the marriage. My diverted attention and later depression may have made of his initial choices easier to make, but he made the choices. He chose to abandon the garden. It was that choice which let the dandelion take root, multiply, and take over the garden. We fell asleep and the dandelions grew. The dandelions completely choked out the good seed we had planted, watered, and guarded.