We are truly in the midst of a pornography epidemic.
The porn industry in Australia has an estimated turnover of $2 billion per annum and world wide figures show that pornography accounts for 12% of all websites, 25% of all search engine requests, 8% of email traffic and 35% of all peer to peer downloads.
We are not immune to this is our Christian world and from US statistics we read:
* April 6, 2007: 70% of Christians admitted to struggling with porn in their daily lives. (From a non-scientific poll taken by XXXChurch, as reported by CNN).
* In a 2000 Christianity Today survey, 33% of clergy admitted to having visited a sexually explicit Web site. Of those who had visited a porn site, 53% had visited such sites "a few times" in the past year, and 18% visit sexually explicit sites between a couple of times a month and more than once a week.
These are hard realities for us to face, and I am seeing it in my counselling room each week. Christian men, active in ministry ,struggling with an addiction to pornography.
However shocking this is, I want to focus today on those whom I term the "silenced sufferers" - the wives of these men.
Not surprisingly, research shows us that women (and the minority of male partners of pornography users) are greatly affected by their partner's sexual addiction:
* 42 percent of surveyed adults indicated that their partner's use of pornography made them feel insecure. (Marriage Related Research, Mark A. Yarhouse, Psy.D. Christian Counseling Today, 2004 Vol. 12 No. 1).
However, what makes living with their partner's addiction doubly hard is their being unable to share this burden with anyone. The fact that one's Christian husband has an addiction to pornography is shaming, which silences them. Where they would usually be able to share and pray with their best friend about their struggles in life, this is one secret they are unable to share.
Added to this, they wish to respect their husband's privacy, and would not talk about this with anyone without his permission. Unsurprisingly, many of their menfolk have not come to a place in dealing with their addiction where making this knowledge public, even in a very limited way, is allowable. Furthermore, their husband may be receiving support through attending counselling and group therapy, which leaves the wife even more isolated.
Meg Wilson in “Hope After Betrayal” describes her shock as her husband fully confesses the extent of his addiction; "Dazed at first, I didn't see God: I could barely breathe. I remember feeling nothing except my legs shaking beneath me. All I could do was sit and listen, and shudder under unthinkable images unfolding before me". Another wife, Tammy, says that she felt as though she were covered in black sticky tar. "Shame was mixed with unbearable fear and dread".
Meg was fortunate to live near a church where there was a support group for wives of sexually addicted men. Sharing her pain and shame after an additional confession from her husband, Meg admits to seeing no hope in the situation, but their listening acceptance of her at that point was a "salve for her hurting heart".
Ultimately, with God's help, she and her husband found their way though and out of this dark valley of their lives. She had been warned by her support group leader to expect a five year period of healing which seemed like a lifetime to her.
Supported by the women around her, she also turned to God for ministry to heal her broken places. She learned how to show grace to her husband as he went on his own healing journey. The road was not easy, nor was it predictable, but the illumination for the dark places that she received along the way from friends, her support group and from God, assisted her passage.
Women like Meg, and their husbands, are in your church and mine.
