The Desire to Cover Up

Recovering from Husband’s Porn Addiction (Photo used under Creative Commons CC0)

God prepared my heart to receive my husband’s confession about his years-long habitual pornography use. The night I asked him and he confessed, God overflowed my heart with grace and compassion. Instead of anger, I felt love. I saw my husband’s brokenness and pain, I saw that he never meant to hurt me the way he had, I saw that he hated himself and had been trapped in a vicious cycle. God gave me the strength to respond lovingly in a way that did not heap more shame onto his already heavy burden.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel the searing pain his betrayal caused me. 

As we talked that first night, I suddenly realized (and said aloud) that I wished he had never, ever seen me naked. I wished I could go back through our entire marriage and cover myself whenever I’d been exposed. I wished he’d never watched me deliver our second son. I wished I’d never let him in.

And even sitting there on the couch fully clothed, I felt myself pull the pillow to my chest, as if I could buffer my body against his betrayal. I wanted to hide myself.

According to our culture’s standards, my body is far from perfect (I’m still working on only measuring myself according to God’s standards). I have carried and birthed two boys, nursed them both past a year, and not truly exercised in a few years. Genetics are both on my side and against me; I’m naturally tall(er) and thin(ish), but my hips and thighs are thick and cellulite has always been my enemy. But I’ve never really hated my body. I have always been pretty proud of what it has been capable of: bringing children into the world and nourishing them. I saw my body’s flaws, but I easily overlooked them because my body was healthy, strong, and capable.

Yet that night (and still today, to some degree), I suddenly hated everything about it. Knowing that my husband had spent years pouring over and lusting after the perfectly airbrushed, photoshopped bodies featured in pornography made me realize that he must hate my body, too. He must hate that my breasts aren’t full and perky, that my stomach is soft and flabby, that my thighs are chunky, and that my skin is pasty. Not to mention the fact that my girlie bits have birthed a baby, haven’t seen cosmetic surgery (yes, that’s a thing), and aren’t perfectly manicured.

When I whispered the words, “I don’t ever want you to see me naked again. I wish you had never seen my body,” to my husband, he sobbed. I think that was the very first moment he realized that his “harmless” porn use had wrecked me in ways he could never have comprehended.

I wish I could say that a couple months later I’m over those insecurities. I’m not. I’ve spent time praying about them, I made a list for my husband to read, and we’ve had to talk through my physical insecurities multiple times.

However, we have both been working incredibly hard to reestablish a safe, loving, accepting environment for each other’s bodies. We are striving to get to a place where we can both be naked and completely unashamed. It’s not been easy for either of us (because porn use destroys the user, too), but God has been working in this, too.

We have taken time to gaze at each other’s bodies. We have prayed over each other’s body parts. And slowly, but surely I’ve gone from hiding my naked flesh from my husband to allowing him to see and enjoy every part of my body. I still backslide, and I imagine that I will for some time, but his acceptance of my body, the fact that the sight of my nakedness arouses him, and the way he talks so lovingly about my body have all gone a long way in helping me to slowly put those insecurities to rest.

I’m working hard to love, accept, and rock the body that God gave me!

Much love,
C.

Also, I LOVE this post over at Intimacy in Marriage called A Body That Never Quits. Go read it, because it’s beautiful!