Susan felt as if God were telling her, “Don’t stop. Your life and marriage depend on your keeping on, one step at a time, no matter the pain.”
— Mark Galli
As they drove home, light from street lamps and store signs flickered across the dashboard and over their faces. Susan Hyde, slight with pale red hair, sat across from her husband, Brad, an associate pastor of Calvary Assembly of God in Regina, Saskatchewan. They were returning from a birthday party for one of the women of the church, another activity in another hurried week.
“We should go to the new Pizza Hut,” Brad said.
Now? thought Susan. Brad had mentioned he wanted to try it out, but she was stuffed from the party, and she didn’t think Brad needed more to eat. “We can’t. We’re paying a babysitter. We need to get home.”
“No, let’s go to Pizza Hut.”
Susan didn’t get it. It was already past ten. But she was in no mood for one of their fights. Maybe he just wanted to be alone together. That would be nice, she thought.
Inside the restaurant, the smell of fresh upholstery and newly-laid carpet hit Susan before her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. Brad pushed himself into one side of a booth, and Susan slipped into the other. Except for a couple across the room, the place was empty.
They ordered a pizza, something with “little sausage things that Brad likes,” Susan later recalled. When the waiter left, Brad put his hands on the table and leaned forward. Susan realized there was an agenda.
“Susan, do you remember what you were telling me earlier, about what you talked to David about today?”
She felt a fight coming on. David was her counselor. She had convinced Brad to go with her for a while, but he had laid down a condition: “We’re not going to talk about anything sexual. Nothing.” And when he first talked to David, he had said, “We’re not going to talk about sex. We don’t need to. Everything’s great. There are no problems there.” Still, Brad had stopped going after a couple of months. That morning, Susan had talked to David about her unhappiness with their sex life. Before the party, she had mentioned it to Brad.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time,” Brad continued.
Susan raced to figure out what he was going to say. His round face and dark eyes were nearly lost in the dimness. He didn’t seem angry. Maybe this is it, she thought.
For months, she had been expecting to hear about an affair, especially after one winter day when Brad brought home a copy of The Myth of the Greener Grass by J. Allan Petersen, a book about marital infidelity. The long hours, the lack of sexual interest — it only made sense. She narrowed down the possible candidates to one or two church women with whom Brad had been especially demonstrative. After Brad admitted his affair, she had decided, she would still love him. It would be hard, but it would be okay. She would find out what he had done, with whom, why. They would change churches, of course, and start all over again. But it would be okay; at least it would be out in the open.
“All these years,” Brad continued, “I’ve been struggling with something.” Susan’s hands felt moist. She braced to hear a woman’s name. Lord, I need grace. Whatever he says, I just have to think about grace, and that it will be okay.
“All these years, it’s been pornography.”
Susan couldn’t breathe. Brad stared at the Formica table and rubbed his hands back and forth. Susan twisted her napkin and fought with herself: I can’t cry in a restaurant.
Not-So-Perfect Marriage
By that night, Brad and Susan had been married for just over eleven years. The first year of marriage was a long honeymoon, and the next three a blur: Susan bore three children in three years (and two months, and six days, she says).
By the time they moved to Regina five years into marriage, something was missing. They rarely did things together — Brad had his church activities, and Susan, hers. Brad read his books, Susan, hers.
They rarely talked about their relationship. When they did, they fought, not for an hour but for two days.
“I find our relationship empty,” Susan would begin. “Don’t you?”
“What do you want from me?” he would reply.
“Well, the same thing you give to people at church. I want that for me.”
Brad gave the best part of himself at church, often for eighty hours a week. He looked parishioners in the eyes and displayed obvious pastoral concern. When they came to the front of the church at the end of worship, he gently encouraged them and prayed for them. But he would come home drained; he had nothing left for her and the children.
“You’ve got to understand,” Brad would argue, “this is for the kingdom of God. When we were called into the ministry, we knew it would mean sacrifices.”
“But who’s doing most of the sacrificing? I don’t mind not having lots of money and having to work part time, but it seems ministry gets the best of everything!”
Then they would fight about whether it was godly to be driven, if that was really furthering the kingdom.
Susan worried about what Brad’s schedule was doing to their three children. During one feverish period, Brad had missed a string of family dinners. When he finally broke free one evening — with the understanding he would have to return to the church later — 6-year-old Katy, with childlike sincerity, greeted him, “Dad, this is such a surprise. This is just great! I’m so glad that you took time to visit us!”
Susan and Brad also fought about sex. Brad just didn’t seem interested.
“Brad, why don’t we ever make love? What’s the problem?”
“Nothing. I’m happy the way things are. You’re just imagining a problem.”
“I don’t think so. I think we have to deal with it.”
“Then, deal with it!”
“Brad, is there a problem with me, something that stops you from wanting to make love to me?”
“No.”
“How come you can go for days and days and not feel any stress or lack of fulfillment?”
“What do you want from me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Listen: stop looking to me to meet all your needs!”
Susan was dumbfounded — where else was she supposed to go to satisfy her sexual desires?
They battled over these issues so much that Susan felt they had memorized each other’s lines; they didn’t even need each other to fight.
Not all was misery. When they avoided talking about their relationship, which was most of the time, life could be good: slow walks together through the nearby ravine, rounds of family wrestling on their queen-size bed, family trips to Blue Lake for hotdog roasts. They probably seemed a model pastor’s family to the congregation.
And it wasn’t as if they never made love. It just wasn’t as much as Susan wished, and sometimes not as Susan liked. Some nights she wondered if it was to her that Brad was making love.
Many nights, after he rolled over and went to sleep, she sat up in bed and thought, What is wrong? Our marriage is so empty. She would rehearse a litany: His shirts are always ironed. His meals are on time. I support him in church work even though I don’t like him being there all the time. She often silently wept, Why this emptiness?
Still, she admired Brad: his passion to do something significant for God, his bottomless reservoirs of energy, his ability to put on a happy face no matter what they were going through. She often wondered if Brad was right. Maybe she was the weak one. Maybe she needed to stop whining. On their tenth anniversary, in fact, it looked as if things were getting better after all.
Brad went all out. He found a sitter for the kids and rented a plush room at a freshly remodeled hotel in downtown Regina; millions had been spent to capture the golden aura of the 1890s. Gorgeous was the common description of it. The evening was a complete surprise for Susan.
As they made their way through the lobby, Susan craned her head at yards of lace and rich, dark green fabric covering everything in the Victorian aura. When Brad opened their room, on the bed were a dozen red roses. This is perfect, she thought.
They went downstairs and had a leisurely supper. Susan was feeling like a woman, a woman someone wanted. As they lingered over tea, she thought, Maybe there’s hope here.
When they returned to their room, Susan took off her shoes, loosened her belt, and sat on the bed. Brad walked past her and picked up the remote control to the TV. He started flipping channels; he hit on an adult channel and started watching a graphic sex scene.
Susan blinked and then turned away. Surely he’ll flip it off. Brad kept watching. She walked over and turned it off. His eyes on the blank screen, Brad punched the remote control, and the TV popped back on.
Susan felt sick. She wanted desperately to avoid a fight, but she couldn’t just stand there. “Brad, I don’t feel comfortable with that on,” she said calmly. Then she shut it off again. Brad turned it back on.
Sadness enveloped Susan; she walked into the bathroom, put on her nightgown, and crawled into bed. Brad watched awhile and then joined her, the TV still flickering the obscene images. He stroked and kissed her; soon he was making love to her. For Susan it wasn’t the perfect evening anymore.
Brad’s Story
The waiter set down the pizza and the dinner plates; they clanked on the table. Susan looked across the room; Brad gazed at the steaming cheese.
“Is everything okay?” the waiter asked.
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Brad said.
The waiter walked away, and Brad started talking: he’d been clean about six months, but he’d had a problem since childhood when his brother brought some porn magazines into the house; after they married, he thought he was through with a phase, but since they moved to Regina, it had become a problem again.
Susan counted the eight wedges of pizza. He wasn’t eating any pizza! What would the waiter think? She took a bite, but the warm cheese just lay lumped in her mouth.
Brad said he used pornography mostly when she would go away for a weekend, and then he would binge. Sometimes when he was angry with her, he would go to a local store, buy a Penthouse or whatever, and take it somewhere and masturbate.
Susan stared at a button on Brad’s shirt. If I look at his face, I’m going to cry.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a long time,” he said, “but I didn’t know when the time would be right. I’m telling you now.”
Susan swallowed hard and started crying.
The waiter returned. “Is everything all right?” Only two bites were missing from the pizza; their glasses were still full.
“Yes, everything’s all right,” Brad said. The waiter left.
Susan dried her eyes with a napkin. “We’ve got to go home. We can’t stay here.”
Brad motioned the waiter back and asked him to box up the pizza. The waiter leaned over. “Is there a problem?”
What do you think? Susan thought. I’m crying. We’ve not eaten a thing!
“No,” Brad said. “Nothing’s wrong with the food.”
On the drive home, Susan kept dabbing her eyes and cheeks. After paying the sitter, who walked herself home next door, Susan went to their bedroom and fell on their bed. She started sobbing. Brad sat beside her.
“It’s all right,” Susan said. “I’m glad you told me. I just wasn’t expecting to hear ‘pornography.'”
That started a long conversation, mostly Brad talking; he told her about what he’d discovered about himself over the last few months.
He had discovered his anger, for one. That April, as part of a masters degree class, he participated in a small group. The group of pastors and seminary students were asked what made them angry. When it was Brad’s turn, he blurted out, “There’s a lot of stuff! Church people make me angry. There’s one deacon — I’d like to walk up to him and tell him to go straight to hell!” Brad was as startled as the rest of the group, but in the following weeks, he realized that though outwardly he played the gracious and patient pastor, inside he was a “seething cesspool of foul language and anger.”
He had recognized his drivenness — how the memory of his dad’s lectures (“Consider the ant, O sluggard”) and his religious culture (which applauded eighty-hour work weeks as sacrifice for the kingdom) had wedded his yearning for approval. He had desperately hoped, by heroic labors for the church, to become acceptable to others, to God, to himself. The pressure had been enormous and had partly led to his fascination with the smiling, willing, accepting women of Penthouse and Oui.
As far as pornography, he admitted that his rationalizations (“It’s harmless; I’m not hurting anyone”) were self-deceptions. He had taken the intimacy and passion to be reserved for Susan and had squandered it on pictures of naked women and on masturbation. Worse, he was being racked with guilt and self-recrimination. Whenever he got close to God, he thought, Brad, just who do you think you are? Don’t kid yourself. You’re vile. You don’t deserve God.
The last domino fell when one afternoon in his office he watched a video, an interview between Christian psychologist James Dobson and Ted Bundy, the mass murderer. Bundy said that his killing spree had been nurtured by years of using pornography. Brad suddenly saw that the same evil lay in him, and he was overcome with remorse.
A colleague tapped on the door, stuck his head in, and glibly asked what Brad was doing. “Why don’t you shut the door and sit down,” Brad said. And he confessed to him his addiction to pornography, how it had been at the core of his life, how it had blocked him from getting close to God and his wife.
That was just a few days before this night, which was already into the early hours of the next day. A pile of tissues lay next to Susan. There seemed to be nothing more for each to say. Susan’s head ached, and her eyes and cheeks burned.
Brad said, “I’ll go brush my teeth, and you can get ready for bed.”
Susan suddenly felt awkward. It didn’t seem right to sleep together, but they had no spare rooms. Her mind raced as to what to do.
In a few minutes, Brad returned and sat on the edge of the bed. “Honey, this may seem strange, but I really need to make love to you tonight.”
Susan took a deep breath. Yes, it is strange. If I ever needed grace, it’s right now.
Somewhere between brushing her teeth, washing her face, and putting on her nightgown, she found the grace she needed.
Rapid Improvements
The next morning, Brad made another odd request. For some weeks, Susan had planned to take the kids and spend the weekend with her parents. It was Friday, and she was going to leave that afternoon.
“When you come back on Sunday night,” Brad said, “you’ve got to ask me if I’ve used pornography. I don’t want to put you in the place of having to do this all the time. But this time, you must ask.” When she returned, she asked, and he told her.
After his family left, Brad had said to himself, “I know exactly where I am right now.” Before he returned to work, he went to a park to read his Bible, but after a few minutes put it down. He just didn’t feel like reading it. “But what do I feel?” he asked himself.
“I feel lonely. I miss my family,” he muttered. He saw again how much he had used pornography to cover his pain.
He knew now that it was a question of appetite: I know I’m lonely and have a hunger for diversion, he thought. So after work, he decided to rent a decent video, one that would allow him some healthy diversion.
He walked to a local store, which happened to be the store where he had rented X-rated movies. Brad, you’re a fool to go into this store, he thought. Go to a different one.
“Don’t be silly,” he said to himself. “I’m through with that. I’m going to rent a decent video.”
He started looking through the videos, but his eyes kept moving right. A large movie poster cordoned off the adult-movie section, but through a two-inch gap between the poster and wall he could see some of the video boxes with their flesh-filled covers. A battle ensued:
“Brad, have one for the road. You’re going to move on now; you’re going to be free from it. You already told your wife.”
“No.”
“Go ahead. Just get one. It won’t hurt anyone.”
“No!”
“Then get an R-rated comedy. How can you be responsible for a few errant breasts?”
“Maybe.… No, I won’t.”
“What’s the harm?”
He stood there for nearly fifteen minutes as this inner war raged. He wondered what the proprietor was thinking. Then he thought to pray silently, Lord, what am I going to do?
Brad said it was as if the Lord said, “Whatever you rent, Brad, I will watch it with you tonight.”
That startled him. He couldn’t very well watch something X-rated with the Lord next to him on the couch, he reasoned. With that, he turned and walked out of the store. He arrived home pretty beat up. But he told Susan he felt as if angels came and ministered to him.
Susan felt she was going to like the new Brad.
Alone Again
The week following, the dam burst. Brad shared his addiction with another staff member, who in turn confessed to Brad the same struggles. Over the next few days, four different people came to Brad for counseling, each confessing a battle with pornography. Some days Brad spent his whole day talking about pornography.
Susan spent her days trying to figure out the emotions rushing through her. There were flashes of anger — about what, she couldn’t exactly figure out — yet mostly a desire to forgive. God was obviously working in Brad’s life; she needn’t spoil his recovery by dumping her anger on him. She wanted Brad to know that she had forgiven him.
Suddenly, fourteen days after his confession, Brad came home and announced, “I’m done dealing with it. I feel peace about it. It’s all dealt with. I’m done with it.”
Susan was incredulous. “How can you say that? We’ve struggled with this issue for six years. We can’t be over with it in two weeks.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to be there, to help work this out.”
“I’ve done everything I can. I’ve confessed it to God. I’ve confessed it to you. I’ve told the senior pastor and our counselor. What else do you want from me?”
“I can forgive six years of fighting and feeling like an idiot and thinking it was all me. But we need to pick up the pieces. We need to rebuild.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. There’s nothing more to say.”
Susan felt checkmated. I haven’t even begun to say all the things I need to say to you. But she didn’t argue. Brad had made such progress. She didn’t want to make him angry. She didn’t want him to think she hadn’t forgiven him.
What scared Susan more was Brad’s reluctance to become accountable. Brad had never promised he wouldn’t look at pornography again; Susan was enough of a realist not to expect that. But he had promised he would find someone to hold him accountable, so that if he did fall, he could recover immediately. For the next three months, as gently as she could, she kept reminding him of his promise.
“Brad, have you found somebody to talk to?”
“No, I don’t need to.”
“Brad, you need to. What are you telling the people who come in for counseling about pornography? Don’t you tell them you’ll hold them accountable? Who’s holding you accountable?”
“I don’t need anybody. I’m clean. You need to know that.”
“Yes, I need to know that, Brad. But if they need to be held accountable, why the different set of rules for you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
And the conversation would cease. It took three months before Brad relented.
Long before that, however, Susan had begun to feel isolated.
After Brad confessed, she had mentioned she needed to talk to another pastor or another woman about her feelings. At first, Brad refused: “Don’t, please! You can’t trust anybody, and if this gets out, my job could be in jeopardy.”
Soon he relented and said she could talk with the senior pastor. But when Brad made the initial contact, he refused: “I don’t counsel spouses of colleagues. It just gets too complicated.”
David, their counselor, thought Susan might find help in the Leadership article, “The War Within,” about a pastor’s struggle with pornography. She searched the article for his wife’s feelings, seeking just one word of how she felt — her anger at her husband, her hatred of the women who bared themselves. Nothing.
Brad arranged for her to talk with a woman elder in the church. But after the woman and Susan got together, the woman said, “I don’t get it. What’s the big attraction about pornography? And why is it so available?” She turned it into a moral issue.
All the while, Brad was receiving encouragement. Staff members reminded him that his sins were covered, that he was in their prayers, that he would make it. No one said a thing to Susan. She had no one to talk with — now not even her husband.
So, she grieved alone with her journal: Why had Brad taken all those years to “discover” his anger and his drivenness? Why hadn’t he listened to her? All those years — wasted.
And when he did reveal his turmoil, it had been to relative strangers, not to her.
She recalled the afternoon Brad talked to his colleague in his office. Brad was supposed to take off work early and do something with her and the kids. She kept having the secretary buzz him while she tried to keep the kids entertained. “Just a few things to wrap up.” “Be right there.” “Just a couple more minutes.” Put on hold while he shared his deepest secret with someone else.
It wasn’t as if she had been insensitive. Susan remembered the weeks after Brad’s pastor had put him in charge of a city-wide anti-pornography campaign, a few months before he confessed to her. Brad made speeches in Sunday school and church. He organized petitions and planned boycotts. And he seemed even more distant and cool and agitated than ever.
One night as they lay in bed, Brad said, “Are you ever scared that you’ll be found out?”
“Found out about what, Brad?” He stared at the ceiling. “That you’re not a good minister?” Brad shut his eyes. “You’re a good minister, Brad. You love the people. If anything, you give them too much. But you err on the side of being good, not on the side of being bad.”
“But would you be scared if they found out?”
“Brad, what are you scared of?”
But no matter how gently or carefully she probed, he never revealed himself to her.
Now, as the weeks turned into months, she wondered how the marriage was going to make it. She wondered how she was going to make it.
As she journaled, she kept groping for words, for images that expressed her feelings. One day, she remembered a bitter winter night years earlier.
In Bible college, she and Brad had helped lead a children’s ministry. The ministry team of six drove three hours to a church where the children gathered. To get there, they crossed a bridgeless river. Most of the year, they took the ferry; in winter, after the river froze, cars simply drove across.
One winter night, halfway home, they hit a fierce storm. The temperature dropped to 40 degrees below zero; the wind chill took it to 60 below. No tail lights led them, and no headlights came at them — they seemed to be the last car on the road. Their own headlights illumined only the driving snow ahead.
As they crossed the frozen river, the car hung up in a depression. Brad got out to examine the situation. They would need a tow; someone would need to walk to get help.
About a quarter mile ahead, they saw a house. Brad and Susan volunteered to go. They walked gingerly over the ice; the cold bit through their jackets. Finally, they stepped onto the porch and pounded on the door. No answer. They called out, “Is anyone home?” No answer. They turned and trudged back to the car and warmed themselves.
On a hill about a half-mile behind, they spotted another house, this one with lights shining through the windows. They were sure someone was home. But half a mile, through that cold wind.
Brad and Susan warmed themselves a little longer then stepped out of the car and faced another icy gust. They plodded over the river; they trudged up the hill, holding on to one another. They didn’t dare stop to rest; slowly they made their way to the lighted home.
That was how Susan now felt. August to December was a wintry time. But she also sensed God telling her, “Susan, don’t stop. Your life and marriage depend on your keeping on, step by step, no matter the pain.”
Angry Love
Loneliness wasn’t the only bitterness she tasted. She was also beginning to see the depth of her anger.
In a rare moment in early August, Brad had revealed some disturbing things. Once, he said, he had gone to a store near the church and had looked through the adult magazines. When he walked out, he looked to his left: there stood a member of the church. She had walked by the store but hadn’t turned in.
Brad thought, She could have easily turned left, walked into the store to buy some gum or something, and you’d have been standing there.
“That’s right!” Susan now muttered to herself. If he had been caught, the whole family would have been humiliated. He could have lost his job. Then what would they have done? He risked all that to glance at trash!
She recalled all the years Brad had made her feel so stupid, as if everything were her fault. She remembered Brad saying, “Your clothes are too dark; I want you to wear brighter clothes.” And “Why don’t you wear bigger earrings?” And “Why don’t you use more makeup?”
At the time, she couldn’t understand why he wasn’t satisfied with her. Still, she wore bigger earrings and shorter dresses and tighter blouses. Maybe he will spend more time at home. Maybe he’ll want to make love. Now she boiled at Brad’s demands and her naiveté.
More than anger, though, Susan was plagued with self-doubt. For years she had fretted about what was wrong with her — what about her turned Brad off? Now she discovered that when it came to a choice between her flesh-and-blood and a glossy photo, she lost.
Sometimes she wished he’d had an affair. Instead of one woman, there had been hundreds who had passed through their bedroom. At least with another woman, Susan could compete. Brad would have eventually discovered another woman’s flaws. But how was she supposed to compete with picture-perfect fantasies? She wasn’t built like them; she didn’t smile like them.
Her confidence was shaken. She and Brad went to the mall one evening, and as they entered the main door, they were confronted by a six-foot-high billboard: on it was pictured a woman selling underwear, wearing only a low-cut bra and panties. Susan flushed with embarrassment. She wondered what Brad was thinking, and how hard he was thinking it.
On Sundays, she would watch Brad at the front of the church, praying with people after the service. Once, a woman wearing something she shouldn’t be wearing, let alone in church, approached Brad for prayer. Brad, a foot taller than the women, stood a few inches from her. What was he looking at? What was he thinking about? Susan fought the jealousy but finally got up and left.
What confused the whole issue more, and kept her from sorting things out, was a terrible childhood incident: a visiting evangelist had molested her as a child. She had brought this up months earlier to David and to Brad, but she still hadn’t figured out how to process it. Somehow it threw a sticky web over her relationship with Brad and his addiction to pornography.
Now she couldn’t untangle the mess. More and more, she needed to talk with Brad, but he had forbidden it. Susan felt increasingly trapped.
One night in late fall, they started talking about their sex lives. It had been many days since they had made love, many days since Brad had even touched her in any way. Susan asked why. Soon they were digging trenches and lobbing shells; an argument erupted.
In the middle of the fight, Brad said, “Look, I’m just going to have to try harder at being interested in you sexually. Maybe if I start journaling, I can begin to figure this out.”
Susan exploded, “What? I can’t believe it! You had plenty of passion for those women in the pictures! You risked everything to experience sexual fulfillment with them! But you have to journal and struggle to even touch me?”
Susan shook with an anger she didn’t know was in her, but she felt she had already said too much. The fight moved on to other areas and lasted past midnight. When they started going in circles, they quit.
At that point, Susan quit. She dressed, got in her car, and drove away. She hadn’t packed, but she didn’t intend to return.
It seemed pitch black out; tears clouded her eyes. Soon she was crying so hard she had to pull over. “Brad, why can’t you love me?” she sobbed. “What am I supposed to do!”
She began pounding the steering wheel. “Damn you women who took off your clothes! Damn you!” Waves of anger and hurt and despair swept over her. She sobbed and pounded and screamed for an hour. Finally, she muttered, “Oh God, what am I supposed to do?”
Utterly weary, she took one more step in the cold dark: she turned the car around and headed home.
December Get-Away
In late December, Brad’s parents visited. Brad had arranged for them to take care of the children so he and Susan could be alone. Brad thought it was merely a weekend away. Susan, though, had an agenda.
After her weeping explosion in the car, she knew she had to tell Brad about her anger. From August to now, she had carefully avoided telling Brad about the ugliness seething within her. Now she was going to tell him about it even if he became angry, even if it tempted him to go back to pornography. She didn’t care: if he couldn’t live without it, so be it. She would buy him a subscription to Playboy! But no longer was she going to act as if nothing was bothering her.
When they got to the retreat center where they were staying, they took a walk. Susan broached the subject: “Brad, I need to talk to you about this pornography business.” Brad rolled his eyes. “Brad, you don’t understand how angry I am.”
“Well, then deal with it. But don’t bother me!”
Susan retreated. That’s it. It’s not worth it. She stewed for a few moments. Then she thought, No. You’re at a crossroad. If you retreat now, you’ll never deal with it. If you advance, maybe there’s victory on the other end.
“No. You brought it into the relationship. All those years you told me I was the problem — and I believed it. But it wasn’t my problem, it was yours! Now you’re going to help me work through my anger about all this. Tonight you’re going to listen!”
Brad sighed, but he said nothing. Susan went on. She didn’t shout, but her words were filled with plaintive passion: “Brad, don’t you understand what you’ve done? Don’t you understand what this has done to my self-esteem? All those years, I wondered why you wouldn’t come to me for sex. I was more than willing. It wasn’t as if I was saying don’t touch me.…”
They talked for six hours that night, mostly Susan talking. She told him of her resentments at the risks he took, about being rejected for glossy photos, about his blaming her, about her tear-filled nights, about his stupid requests for her to wear new outfits, about their spoiled tenth anniversary, about her sexual self-doubts, about how jealous she had become, about how violated she felt.
And Brad listened.
Little Piece by Little Piece
Susan and Brad still engage in some impassioned fights, trying to sort through the residue of denial and anger. Sometimes Susan wonders if Brad will ever find fulfillment in her as he did with pornography. Sometimes she resents the time and energy the rebuilding takes. But Susan is more hopeful than ever, partly because of that talk, partly because of a dream she had a couple of weeks later.
In the dream — God-given, she believes — she and Brad stood at the front of their church’s sanctuary, though not close together; they were with many other couples, all facing the seats. Suddenly a creature appeared in the center aisle. It looked like a person, but it wasn’t a person; Susan knew it represented pornography.
A huge distance separated her and Brad; neither of them said anything. Susan sensed that Brad felt defeated, but she was simply frightened. Her heart pounded.
The creature started yelling and screaming, and filth came out of its mouth. Nobody did anything — a whole crowd of people, and nobody did anything. They were just watching.
Susan finally shouted at the creature, “No! You won’t do that! You don’t have any power in our lives anymore!” Instantly, the creature’s body flew away, but his head was left sitting on the floor.
Susan thought, There’s no power left. The body’s gone. I don’t have to be scared any more. They weren’t moving physically, but the distance between her and Brad became less and less. Susan thought, I don’t need to be scared.
Suddenly, though, she was frightened again: more filth started coming out of the creature’s mouth. Again, she waited for someone to say something, but no one did. She realized the evil would only be defeated if God helped. So she prayed aloud, “O God, help us! Defeat this creature. Save us!”
A small piece of the head fell away and disappeared. She wondered why the whole head didn’t disappear at once. So she kept praying, and the more she prayed, the more little pieces fell away and disappeared.
Finally, the head was gone. She and Brad stood together at the front of the multitude of couples. There was no more fear or sorrow; everyone was filled with hope.
Susan awoke, and she began pondering the dream. She realized that though the practice of pornography was gone, its power remained. The struggle to recapture their marriage would be a hard one. But she and Brad were not alone — other couples struggled as they did. With God’s help and with fear and trembling, they had begun to reveal themselves to one another. Now they were closer than ever.
It would take a long time, long enough to make her wonder sometimes. Yet Susan was convinced that if they kept working at it, little piece by little piece, the creature would be defeated.
Copyright © 1994 by Christianity Today
