Should You Keep Your Husband’s Sexual Sin a Secret?

I’m not advocating a wife take to Facebook to share her pain or make a phone call to activate the prayer chain. There is no healing to be found there. But she should be free to get the help she needs in the light of this devastating revelation, and it’s time the church came alongside her with their full support.

Yes, she should be cautious who she shares with, and certainly it would be considerate of her to share her intentions with her husband to get outside help. But if a husband attempts to use his authority as the spiritual head of the household to discourage his wife from getting help, then someone needs to call that out for what it is: spiritual manipulation, misuse of authority and unloving, self-centered sin.

There is nothing that strikes at our own core more deeply than our spouse’s sexual sin. Marriage, by its very nature—the becoming of one flesh—means the husband’s struggle is now the wife’s struggle. So if a wife wants to talk to someone about his struggle (which is now her struggle), she should be encouraged to do so, regardless of her husband’s discomfort.

A husband might wonder why his wife would even want to share her painful story with anyone anyway. It is something most husbands have tried so hard to hide. They don’t like to acknowledge its ugly existence, much less have conversations about it. Here is what husbands need to realize:

• Wives don’t like talking about it; we need to talk about it. When we get the thoughts out of our heads and express them and hear feedback, it helps us grieve. It is like a valve releasing some of the pressure that has built up.
• Talking about it helps us feel less isolated and alone.
• Talking about it helps us organize our thoughts and emotions that feel out of control. Any sense of control is calming in the midst of this storm.

I believe there are thousands of wives sitting in our church pews each Sunday, suffering alone in silence. What can churches do to release wives from being their husbands’ secret-keepers?

• Become a congregation where people are real, where suffering in this world is understood to be inevitable and where the body is involved in helping broken people heal. This example will give courage to couples that are afraid to share their brokenness.
• Give wives a safe and confidential place to share.
• Hold husbands accountable to their positions as spiritual leaders Sunday through Saturday—do this from the pulpit, on the golf course, one on one and in small groups.
• Don’t support a theology of secret-keeping.

Think about it this: Who do we partner with when we help hide sin? In 2 Thessalonians 2:7, the Bible says the secret power of lawlessness is already at work and will remain at work until the man of lawlessness is completely removed. Church, we partner with our very enemy when we encourage sin to remain hidden. To do so under the cloak of “respect for spiritual authority” is a joke. And the enemy is laughing while our marriages are dying.

Leaders of the church, free these wives. Encourage them to get the help they need. If that means exposing their husbands’ secret sin against their husbands’ will, then so be it. It is the most loving and respectful thing they can do on behalf of their marriage.

Marsha Fisher and her husband, Jeff, are the creators of Inside Out Ministries and Porn to Purity. They are using their marriage recovery story as a platform to shed light on the growing problem of pornography addiction within the church and the gospel-centered resources available for those who want to find freedom.

For the original article, visit pastors.com.