Riding the roller coaster

One bold message in the Book of Job is that you can say anything to God. Throw at him your grief, your anger, your doubt, your bitterness, your betrayal, your disappointment – he can absorb them all… – Philip Yancey

My poor husband. Yes, he had betrayed my trust and broken my heart. But the emotional roller coaster ride I was on caused both of us so much angst. We joked sometimes that it seemed I had suddenly become bipolar. I would also compare it to the hormonal craziness of postpartum days. Sometimes life seemed like it was back to normal. Then the smallest thing could just trigger me into a downward spiral. That is one of the ways broken trust is similar to the grieving experience after a death. I had already gone through a close loved one dying so this was not a new idea to me, but it didn’t manifest itself the same way since now my volatile emotions and frustrations had a focal point – my husband.

After the death of a very close loved one, I found that anything which made me sad or made me cry turned into grieving over the person gone. In the same way, anything that hurt or frustrated me about HB turned into just another failure making me feel unseen and unspecial. Things that might have always bothered me but weren’t a super big deal now blew up into insurmountable obstacles.

Our ability to deal with conflict took a huge hit through this experience. I have always been prone to need space for a while if I am upset about something. I do want to talk it out. Eventually. But after this breach in my marriage, HB also started to withdraw any time I was upset. He felt he couldn’t help because HE was the problem. So when I would be ready to talk, he wasn’t. And the more this happened, the more frustrated he would get and the more unwilling to talk conflict out yet again.

There was no magic formula for us in this. I cannot say we have totally arrived at figuring out how to resolve conflict. But most of all I must choose to not allow my own thinking to go down these negative trails that only lead to feeling unloved and hurt. This is a lesson I started to learn about our marriage even before the pornography issue entered. I can “take every thought captive” and choose not to dwell on the negative in my husband. When I instead choose gratitude and think of all the ways he is a wonderful man, my whole perspective shifts.

As with grieving death, it has taken time for me to stop going back to the fact that my husband betrayed me every time I feel hurt. But I would say I have arrived at the place where when a new conflict arises, that’s all it is. It does not have to have anything to do with what happened in the past.

Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ… – 2 Cor. 10:5