The third kind of denial women like us on the journey can experience is a bit different. It is not a denial of your husband’s sexual addiction but a refusal to acknowledge the pain and loss his behaviors have brought in your life. In my experience, this kind of denial shows up outwardly in two ways in a woman’s life: consuming anger and frantic busy-ness.

Let me try to clarify something about anger. Anger is a normal part of the grieving process. In a healthy grieving cycle, anger comes in intervals lasting a few minutes to several hours. Sometimes these are periods of intense, murderous rage that demand some physical action. These are the times you feel like hitting him or hurting him in some way. Other times the anger is less explosive but more pervasive. You might feel like you’ll vomit if he touches you, that you can’t stay in the same room with him. As long as you are talking through your anger with safe people, journaling, exercising, or using some other physical outlet to deal with your anger, and feeling other emotions besides anger, you are probably experiencing the normal anger that comes with grieving. There is a different kind of anger, however, and it lends itself toward denial. Let me explain.

When we are angry, our bodies respond physiologically, preparing to act in some way. We feel more powerful, more in control, and less vulnerable. Getting angry at your husband’s sexual sin and betrayal is normal and healthy. Staying angry is not. Why? First, anger keeps you from feeling sympathetic emotions and prevents you from connecting with others. When you are angry, you are on the defensive. All self-protective walls are up and you have two goals: to protect yourself from getting hurt and to attack the one who is trying to (or already has) hurt you. This consuming anger keeps your husband as the bad guy, and you are unable to see yourself clearly. It also shields you from feeling the pain of your losses. That’s where the denial part comes in. Your heart says, “If I don’t let myself feel the painful stuff, if I stay angry, I won’t have to suffer and I won’t have to acknowledge that my life as I know it is over.” Of course, that’s all a subconscious process. We’ll talk more about anger later this week, but I do want you to be aware that if you are struggling with constant anger toward your spouse, you are also denying yourself the opportunity to feel the real losses you are experiencing and to heal. (You are probably also damaging your body greatly. Chronic anger and good physical health cannot co-exist.)

–Melissa Haas, The Journey: Book One

I don’t want to belabor this point, but let me give an illustration from my own life.

When I rejoined Troy a month after his abrupt dismissal and departure, I was in a very vulnerable position emotionally. I had just been through a very difficult delivery of our second child—he almost didn’t make it—without Troy there. I had packed all of our stuff alone, said good-byes, left the home in Africa we had come to love and fellow missionaries who had become our family, and Troy had disclosed some of his sexual sin to me. I was very lonely. I felt like no one could possibly understand all of my losses and the one person who I had given my heart to had let me down in a big way. All I really wanted was for Troy to love me again and for everything to be okay between us. If our marriage could be saved, I felt like life could go on. I didn’t know if I could make it without Troy.

So, my first response to the man who had by his actions ended my missionary career, exposed me to sexually transmitted diseases, cared more for himself than me or our children, damaged the good name of God and the reputation of our mission—my first response was to wrap my arms around him and to say, “I love you. I forgive you. Everything will be okay.”

Three weeks later when I began to feel some of the anger for all of the losses, I exploded at Troy. His response to me was, “You said you had forgiven me. It’s not fair for you to keep bringing up the past!” The problem was that I had not even dealt with the past. It was a very hurtful and confusing time for both of us. I realized then that I had “forgiven” too soon. The forgiveness I had offered Troy really wasn’t true forgiveness. It was an attempt on my part to manipulate his feelings and emotions so that he would meet my need for love. I had not truly released him from the debt he owed me. I didn’t even truly understand what the debt was.

–Melissa Haas, The Journey: Book One

Some women are truly blown away by the discovery of their husband’s struggle. They may have felt a little disconnected from him or had some conflict in the past, but the idea has never crossed their minds that he is struggling sexually. Usually in these situations, the truth is discovered accidentally (i.e. the wife finds pornography on the computer or discovers receipts or charges from an adult bookstore or strip club) or through some crisis brought on by the addict’s behaviors outside the home (i.e. being arrested for soliciting a prostitute or getting fired for looking at porn on the job). This wife may experience denial in other ways.

She may choose to forgive him immediately (or after a day or so) and let the past be the past—as long as he promises never to do it again. There are several problems with this reaction. The first big problem is that a guy who has been struggling with sexual addiction for months or years and has been deceptive about that struggle is not trustworthy. He won’t keep his promises. He hasn’t been keeping them all along. A wife who chooses to believe a man she knows has been lying to her for an extended period of time is in denial. She wants his promises to be true so much that she is willing to ignore what the facts are telling her and believe her husband’s words instead.

The second problem with this response to a husband’s sexual betrayal is that true forgiveness is not possible without mourning the losses. Why do I say that? Because in order to offer forgiveness with integrity and true commitment, we have to know what we are forgiving and also be able to accept the debt we will bear as a result of our forgiveness. To forgive prematurely is to sabotage not only a true work of repentance in our husbands’ hearts but also God’s healing work of grief in our own.

–Melissa Haas, The Journey: Book One

Trust me on this one. (We’ll look at God’s perspective at the end of the day.) It is very necessary for you to take a good long look at the painful stuff in order to remain in truth and walk with integrity on this journey. The opposite of acknowledging your losses and the pain they are causing you is denial. This is the aspect of the grieving process I want to focus on today.

What exactly is denial? A look at the dictionary will tell you that denial is a disbelief in the existence or reality of a thing or a refusal to recognize or acknowledge. All of us as wives of guys struggling with sexual addiction will experience this aspect of the grieving process in some form.

You may be thinking, “Wait a minute, Mel. I’ve never buried my head in the sand about his addiction. Since I found out, I’ve been more concerned about his recovery than he has!” Okay. What about the months or years before you found out? All of those times your gut told you something was really wrong and you dismissed it? What about the “choice” you made just to forgive him and let the past be the past? What about the fact that you rarely cry and struggle with a little bit of anger or a lot of anger all of the time?

There are a myriad of ways we protect ourselves from facing the reality of the situation. Many of us suspected for years (or were even certain) that our husbands were relating in inappropriate ways to us and others sexually. Only after sexual sins became public knowledge or some behavior was so offensive or hurtful that we couldn’t ignore it anymore did we really face the fact that the worst was really true. All of that time we spent telling ourselves things like, “No, I’m just crazy. That can’t be true;” or “He would never hurt me like that. I’m just being overly sensitive.” All of those times, we were experiencing denial. Our instincts and God-given discernment were screaming at us to take notice, to act on truth, but we dismissed them for whatever reason—a husband telling us that we were just over-reacting, feeling unable to face the pain of the truth, having our own agendas that were more important than the truth, being scared that no one would take care of us or love us if we acted on the truth.

–Melissa Haas, The Journey: Book One

It’s important for you to know that you cannot speed up the grieving process. The losses you have experienced are very real, and your wounds will need time to fully heal.

Think of it in terms of an injury. Your brother has disobeyed and in the process cut you deeply. Hearing your screams, Daddy runs to you. Taking in the situation, He looks straight into the eyes of His son, His eyes filled with fire and tears at the same time.

“Son,” He says in His deep, authoritative voice. “Wait for me here until I come back. I need to take care of your sister. You have hurt her very badly.”

Turning His attention to you, Daddy cries, “Oh, my girl! You are bleeding!”

He picks you up in His strong arms and carries you to a safe place. Very gently He explains, “Honey, I have to clean this wound out, and it is really going to hurt. I’m sorry, but if I don’t clean it out your wound won’t heal, and you will get very sick. Do you trust me?”

Your child’s heart wants to trust, wants to believe that Daddy has your best interest at heart, but when the first little bit of antiseptic hits the wound, the pain cannot be denied. “Daddy!” you scream, “It hurts!”

“I know, Sweetie. I wish I could make the pain go away.” And as tears drip down His face, He carefully but firmly cleans out the wound and bandages it.

“Daddy, hold me,” you cry as the tears subside and your sobs turn to shuddered sighs.

“I’m sorry, my love. I’m so sorry.” And as He rocks you, He begins to sing over you and you fall asleep in His arms.”

–Melissa Haas, The Journey: Book One

Everyone’s grieving process is different because we are all different. Some women feel a great deal of pain and loss initially while others are consumed with anger and have trouble feeling sorrow. No matter how you are wired, though, you will need to experience all of the aspects of the grieving process in order to move towards healing.

These include:

• Denial

• Bargaining

• Anger

• Despair

• Acceptance

I do want to make one more comment about the grieving process. It is not linear. That means that you don’t necessarily start out with denial and then do the bargaining thing and then feel anger which changes to despair and eventually get to acceptance. Unfortunately, grieving is much more complex. So, you are more likely to find yourself numb one day, furious the next, kind of okay a couple of days later, then back to trying to change yourself or change your husband to get rid of the problem, and the next week so depressed you can’t get out of bed. The grieving process is circular. You will cycle through all of these feelings many times (sometimes multiple times in a day). And you know what? You are not going crazy and you are not “unspiritual” if you keep experiencing all of the elements of grief over an extended period of time.

You may be wondering at this point how long it is going to take. I know I did! You are not going to like the answer, so brace yourself.

There is no set time to grieve.

Each heart heals differently. From my own experience and the experiences of others I know, you can expect to be working through the grieving process for a minimum of six months. That’s a best-case scenario in which your husband is working on his stuff, you are both involved in individual, joint, and group counseling, and you have a strong identity in Christ. A more average time for grieving would be one year, and some women do not move out of the grieving process until close to the second year.

–Melissa Haas, The Journey: Book One