Currently Being Moderated
Nov 20, 2009 11:52 AM
Hi, I'm here for the first time searching for help. My husband and I have been married 12 years and we have 4 kids ages 8,6,3, 4 months. I feel like I really need some godly counsel. I'm not looking to go to a psychiatrist or psychologist. I just need to get some life coping skills so I can be a better wife and mother and I'm wanting to see someone who is going to give me godly advice from a covenant marriage standpoint. I feel really low about myself and feel completely deflated and unable to get much accomplished...I guess depressed over my circumstances. The big trigger to all this is that my husband has a problem with porn. He has hurt me over and over throughout our marriage by continuing to secretly turn to it. I think for the time being, he's staying away, but the last explosion of mine was so big because he had promised not to use it anymore, but then he went and got a virtual lap dance/striptease while I was at the gym. He asked for forgiveness and I calmed down and never once did I deny him sex - even right after this. I've tried everything Shauti Feldhan advises in her book about understanding the inner lives of men. It's definitely helped me keep the peace, however I don't see where he's changing despite my efforts. My resentment is surfacing again because I feel neglected, and in just the last week alone, he's told me how he wishes he had taken pictures of me "back in the day" when I was good looking and he misses my breasts from when they were pretty large when I was nursing our third child (due to hormone birth control that I no longer believe in and will never use again), and he asks me what I can do to get large breasts again, and I had strep throat earlier this week and he was actually very mean to me and said some unloving things not believing I was sick, AND he still was tiptoe-ing around this one website - not viewing the movies but looking at the still images that represent the movies. I've been so patient and caring and absorbed as much as I could from the Focus podcasts and poured through books and resources searching for knowledge and wisdom and understanding. I've shown him forgiveness and love and even been sexually available to him MORE as soon as 3 weeks after our baby was born. It seems to be feeding the beast. So, bottom line, I don't want my marriage to suffer like it is, and I'm willing to get help for myself and would really like to get help for our marriage but he is dead-set against marriage counsel, and is tells me I'm forbidden from going to counseling on my own - and says as the head of our house I must abide by this. I feel controlled and I feel like this is an abuse of power. Does anyone have advice for me?
