Filter by: Products Articles
Filter by:
Do you get our FREE Magazine?

Q + A From Our Mailbox

June 17, 2022

Dear Pearls,
I have been living with the effects of my husband’s porn use for over 16 years. Sexual violence was normal for me and it got worse and worse until I finally said no. I forced a separation for 60 days after catching him using porn in the house at night (it became more than just about me; it became about the children). Sadly the porn use and lying still continue to this day. It has been almost 3 years. We co-parent, but I don’t leave him alone with the children for exactly the reasons you state in the foreword and “The Third Woe” article (March -April 2022) , and he has a separate apartment on the property while I sleep in the locked house with the kids. It’s an awful way to raise children, but he won’t stop!
I’m crying I’m so thankful that someone finally said it’s okay to be mama bear toward the children’s daddy. The church doesn’t recognize the wives and the children affected by pornography in the home. They support the addicts but ignore the destruction they cause.
Please, if God lays it on your heart, write to churches to encourage them to reach out to the wives who day after day endure the consequences of their husband’s perversion. It’s terrifying to be in a position where divorce is encouraged by my peers, but I fear that if I do and he gets unsupervised overnight visits with the kids, they will end up his next victims. It’s so hard to have to be a mama bear in my own home, but I can’t just leave them defenseless.
God has compelled me to stay, and stay I will. But it’s sooo hard. It’s hard knowing he’s still actively looking at porn. It’s hard knowing he’s an influence on the kids. It’s hard being around the man who sexually abused me hundreds and hundreds of times. I feel horrible that I didn’t say no sooner, but I thought women were supposed to be quiet and that we weren’t allowed to say no. But things got so gross and I was in so much physical pain from the abuse that I finally had to.
So thank you. Thank you for recognizing that the world is a different place and that, indeed, the rules have had to change.
~ Mama Bear

Leave a Reply