Porn Addiction, and How Our Marriage Survived: Bob and Dannah Gresh

Hey, Shelby Abbott here. Just want to give a heads up before you listen to this next program. Today's conversation on Family Life Today covers some sensitive but important subjects that might not be suitable for younger ears. So please use discretion when listening to this next broadcast.

Alright, now let's jump into it. I know some of you have actually already been to a weekend to remember Marriage Getaway, but we just wanted to make sure that you've heard that there's actually a lot that's changed. We have a new speaker lineup, an entirely different guidebook, and so much of the getaway has been changed and intentionally curated for you and your spouse to grow together. So right now would be a great time to head back to a weekend to remember. And now through September 18th, registration is actually 50% off. So you can find a date and a location that works for you at weekendtoremember.com.

That's weekendtoremember.com. Scripture warns us not to trust in other people, that we're only supposed to trust in the name of the Lord our God. That's who we trust. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean out on your own understanding and all your ways to acknowledge Him. So what this is saying is that I can trust God with what's happening in my marriage even when I can't trust Bob.

And so I'm going to put all my trust in God. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

You can find us at familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. So yesterday we ended our episode on kind of a traumatic note. A glass candy jar thrown so hard by a wife. I'm glad she missed. Because it ended up in the wall.

But if it's thrown that hard, it ends up stuck in the wall. That's pretty visual graphic. It was a nice slider or curveball. I don't know what it was.

It wasn't a change-up. Did you have to duck, Bob? I had to shimmy. You're talking like it was a baseball throw. I think it was more like the NFL. Oh, it was like that, Bob.

No, it was only about 12 feet. I'm glad it didn't hit me. It was a rough... No, we laugh about it now. And, you know, I want to know, you know, some people are at a place in their marriage story where that just is, how can you laugh about that? But that's how much healing the Lord's brought to our hearts, that we can look at that really bad day and be like, we were out of our minds.

And one of the things that caused that was kind of a trigger in our marriage at that point. Well, let us introduce you. Okay. People are like, who are we listening to? We're with Dana and Bob Gresh. You guys are speakers, you're authors. You do a lot in ministry to help people. And your most recent book is called Happily Even After Letting God Redeem Your Marriage. The topic was really about porn. And Bob, you revealed to Dana the secret that you had been holding on to that you've been struggling with porn. And Dana, I guess you didn't respond well.

Well, in the moment that he confessed to me, I did have a measure of real God control. I don't know how to say it other than that. I went into problem solving mode. Okay. Take us back to the conversation.

Bob, you were so scared to open this up. You talk about the red chairs. Yeah, the red chairs.

Is that where you told her? Yeah. Okay. These red chairs left the house for a while because we just couldn't have them in the house. Couldn't see them.

Yeah, I bet. Because of your confession. They were a painful thing. I couldn't quite get myself to put them on Facebook marketplace because we'd spent too much money on them.

They're expensive. But I moved them to our offices in a place where I wouldn't see them regularly. They were just a reminder of the pain and the work. You know, when you're working through this, you can have a great day. And then you see something like the red chair and you're like, oh, wait, that was this many weeks ago or this many months ago.

And we're still working on it. I'm not having a good day anymore. So, Dana, you said that you had this God moment where you were rational. Yeah. Ann didn't have that moment when I told her.

But I'm glad you did. Well, consider, I was praying for 18 months. Yeah. I think she was in shock, too.

Maybe a little bit of shock. Wait, wait, wait. You said 18 months? I had been praying for 18 months. I know you said you knew something was wrong, but it was that long that you were like, I don't know what it is yet?

Yes. And I know that sounds like I'm not a conflict avoider. I don't like conflict, but I really felt convicted that whatever it was needed to be covered in prayer. And every time my counselor and I would check in, she would say, you know, do you know what's going on? Is it just stress from work? Is it financial stress? Is it?

Because you had been having physical symptoms as well. Yeah. Yeah. It would come up once in a while, every few months. Like, are you struggling?

Have you fallen? Oh, Bob, she would ask you. Kind of. And when I say kind of, I mean, yes, she did ask me. I never asked it that directly. Oh.

How did you ask? I would be like, hey, you know, like, are you still, you're still, you know, you're still in your group. You're still, it was kind of a passive way of like, are you still in the wagon? You're good, right?

Yeah. I never said it directly. So, Bob, you know you're not good. What'd you say? I was like, I'm good. I kind of in my mind say, well, I'm good right now. It's been a few weeks or whatever.

And I would be equivocating that. But you didn't say to her it's been a few weeks. You just said, I'm good? I'm good.

Going to my group tomorrow. I just, I'd say something to keep the conversation off track, whatever. Dana, I don't know if you're like me, but then when it came out, here's what I said. You've been lying to me all this time? Are you kidding?

How can I even trust you? Did you feel that? Well, yeah. Women will say the porn is painful, but the lying is far more devastating.

Do you hear that guys? I can deal with the porn. I can talk with you about the porn. We can get the help we need for the porn. But when you lie to me, that's a trust breach. And that hurts so much more. I felt worse about the lying than I did about the porn.

Really? Because I thought the porn to me was like an addiction sort of thing. The lying was an integrity issue. And I wanted to be a man of integrity. I had these weird rules for how things worked, just total rationalizations. But I hated lying. I hated that.

Yeah. And you guys are leaders at this point in ministry. So it had to be so painful to not only confess, but to hear. And again, it's not like I'm doing this every day and not read my Bible. There was things happening.

This is just a distillation of the story. But there was always that nagging conviction. I would say that most couples who have had pornography and lesbian issue in their marriage recognize this cycle.

They may or may not both be aware of it. Maybe it's every three months. Maybe it's once a year. Maybe it's every two years there's a binge. Maybe it's every week. Or maybe it's every day.

But that cycle is a sign that you can't do this on your own. You know, I always think it's funny that Christians think they can get through pornography on their own because there's nothing about the Christian walk that is siloed. We come to Christ because someone leads us to Christ. We're discipled by someone into the disciplines of the faith. We are matured in the body. Everything is communal.

It is a communal experience. And yet when it comes to our sin, we silo ourselves off and we believe the lie. It's such a strategy of the enemy. It's such a strategy of the enemy. He walks around as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And years ago we watched lions hunt on the African plains and they don't go after the herd. They go after the one that's isolated away from the herd.

They go after the lone antelope or the lone kudu or whatever it is. And so that's what you're doing when you don't tell anyone. So when Bob told me, the first thing I did was I looked at him and I said, I need to process what you've just said. I'm going to go for a walk. And I went out in the woods, began walking and I thought, what do I know to be true? What do I know to be true?

What do I know to be true? I need to tell someone. So I called a girlfriend and I said, I'm just going to tell you word for word what my husband just said to me.

And they were really hideous words. And she said, okay, you're going to be okay. And then she said, I'm going to pray over you. And she prayed such a familiar verse, but I'm in shock at this point, right? I haven't cried.

I haven't been angry, no emotion whatsoever. And she prayed, Lord, Dana doesn't know what to do. Because I had said, I'm devastated and confused. But you say that your word is a light to her path and a lamp to her feet.

So will you show her what the next step is? And it was like a flood gate. And I began weeping and crying, but it wasn't just devastation. It was hope.

And that's what happens when you tell your girlfriends is the places where you're stuck and you can't see, they can. And they pick up the word and they begin to intercede with you and they begin to comfort you. And it gets you the next step.

And it really is the next step. How much light does a lamp give you? It's not like a stadium lights, right?

That are going to get you across a football field. It's enough light for the next two or three or four steps. And that's what telling someone will do is they'll get you into the word and help you know what the next step is. I like that you talk about that in your book about he gives us what we need for that day. That's right. It's like the manna. Yeah.

You know, he gives us what to survive, how we can survive that day. I mean, did you feel any reservation like, this is Bob's story, I don't have the right to tell somebody else? Or did you feel like, Bob, you were like, go ahead, tell them. Oh, I told her to tell people.

Yeah, that's good. I think some spouses think, I can't. Especially those in leadership. So it's got to be just us. And man, you know, you're not going to win, just you. You got to have community. You got to have community.

So that was a big move. I think if you want to guarantee that the problem will continue, that the cycle will continue, don't tell anybody. Keep it to yourself. But if you want to win and you want to have a great marriage, because I promise you, you can. We do have a great marriage.

You need to tell someone, he needs to tell someone, you need to get help. Yeah. And so, Bob, you went away, right? I went away for a few weeks. I actually went to the clinic that the stars went to. Well, of course you did. You're a star, Bob. Because you're a star. And I thought, I got to get the best help. You really did. You needed the best care. Someone in our church who had just been through cancer, an elder said, when I had this issue with my health, I got the best care that existed. It wasn't local. It was in whatever state it was.

Find the best help there is. So I got online the next day and I was like, here's the gold standard. Wow. And so I walk into this center and I didn't know anybody famous, but there were people that were agents to the stars and things like that. And that was a lonely place right there. That was a bottom. And it didn't work.

What do you mean? It wasn't Christian. It was just kind of tell your story and that'll heal you and go to group and things like that. And they didn't really want the wives to be involved. It was kind of like, well, your wife is codependent.

Scratch an addict and you'll find a codependent. And then all of a sudden the wife was kind of part of the problem instead of part of the solution. And so one of the things that we talk about is that it's kind of like I'm driving down the road and I run over Dana with a car. And when I slam on the brakes, I hit my chin on the dashboard. So the ambulance comes, takes me into the ambulance, takes me to the hospital and lets Dana laying in the driveway because I'm the identified patient. This is so true. But I'm bloodied. Yeah, you're laying on the ground still.

And I'm listening to the ambulance fade in the distance going, who's going to take care of me? And so this particular treatment program wasn't helping the wives as their website promised they would. And they were using labels like codependent. And I really think it's important that we say this. Codependency is a real thing. Like there are people, I think all of us have some measure of codependency in our lives, but it's a different thing to operate as codependent. So for example, if you know your husband uses the computer late at night when you go to bed and you passively just are like, okay, well, I'm going to bed. And you don't say, hey, where's your computer?

Like you need to put it under the bed when I go to bed. Like that could be codependency. It could be. But the research doesn't really bear out what they used to say about that, that if someone's an addict, there is a codependent person in the relationship. It actually does more often than not, that person has been traumatized by whatever the addiction is. And they might not be operating at their optimal self because they're experiencing betrayal trauma. And so for me to be told that I'm codependent, that I'm part of the problem and I'm like, oh, we were seeking missiles and we found each other because we were so broken.

Like that was just, but here's the thing. That is what one body of addiction recovery without the word of God in it will tell you. So if you've been hearing that and believing that, I'm not saying that you haven't behaved codependently. It's possible that you have to be brave and look that in the face and deal with it. But it's also really possible that you're experiencing the symptoms of betrayal.

And that's why you're not operating at your best self. Did you leave early out of the program? Yes, and I was kind of a rebel there.

But the thing he was rebelling against was that the wives weren't involved. Yeah. So, yeah, we both felt I was at home in Pennsylvania. He was there. And we both felt on the same day that God was saying, go somewhere where your help is clinical and informed, but saturated in the presence of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. Yeah. And then I left and went to a Christian counselor who we love. His name is Pete Kuiper.

He's in Colorado. And how we describe Pete is that he's clinically informed, biblically based, because there is more to it than just praying it away. Yeah. I also want to say this before we go further. Our story is our story. I responded in a certain way. Dana responded in a certain way. We get some criticism now and then for, well, it might have worked out for you, but it didn't work out for me.

Or even what kind of crazy lady are you to throw that candy jar? Right. Right. And so, you know, you need a group of friends. Yes. Godly friends to deal with your own particular circumstances. Right.

Because if you do what I did, it might not work out the way it did for me. But we feel pretty strongly that if there has been a cycle, okay, I imagine there's probably somebody out there who's used pornography and it's like, oops, that was a one time thing. We haven't heard from those couples. We've heard from the couples that are experiencing this cyclical thing. Is that the majority of people, do you think?

I think so. I mean, I haven't read anything that says it, but it's just everyone we talk to is just very familiar. Doing it one time is like eating one Cheeto. That's very rare. You know what I'm saying?

Very rare for a guy. Listen, here's the sad thing about it. Most times it started when they were young.

Yeah. When they were, the average age today is 11 years old. So when they were 11 or 13, they didn't know why their problem with their parents' divorce went away when they did that. They just knew that for a while there was reprieve from the deep pain that was in their heart. So at 11, 12, 13, they find this medicine for a really big problem in their life. Might just be being bullied at school. Not just, but I mean, it doesn't have to be a divorce.

It could be anything. And so by the time they're married, this is an ingrained cyclical addiction. It's become their coping mechanism. It's a coping mechanism. It's control. So what we really feel strongly about in the church is, yes, it has to be biblical care, but that marriage mentor at your church who's great at helping you not fight about your husband leaving the socks on the living room floor, not that anyone at this table would ever do that. Of course not. They're going to be in over their head when it comes to the betrayal trauma and the brain damage that porn can do to a person's thinking patterns.

You need someone that has some clinical understanding. That way, they'll be able to know when to apply scripture. A good example of this would be forgiveness. If you're telling a wife, oh, just forgive him, and there's been no repentance in his heart that this cycle is going to stop, you're just further adding to her trauma. That doesn't mean that what God's word says about forgiveness isn't true. That just means it might not be the right time. We've got to stabilize this pattern before we really sit down and verbalize that forgiveness in a healthier, probably facilitated manner.

And repentance isn't crying, you know, for a guy to cry and say, you're sorry, that's not repentance. You start to see new disciplines in his life, new ways of showing and rebuilding trust, and partly not expecting trust right away. That's the hard thing is obviously she's not trusting. She wonders where I'm at, what I'm doing, and I have to take that on as a consequence.

That's a consequence. I did that. I created that in her.

So you're not saying to Dana, you need to trust me. No. Once I got to that point, I was like, I own this. This is my fault. The trigger when the candy jar goes flying, I triggered that. So was it good to get the candy jar there? No, but I did that.

One of the things that happened, there are some triggers that happen when watching a movie or whatever. But one day when Dana was gone, I came home, I cleaned the house, did all the dishes, folded everything. I was so proud of myself. And Dana walked in. I'm standing there like, you know, hero.

Ta-da! And she is like, what's happening? And just was cold to me. I was like, what is going on?

Cold shoulder. And finally she said, this is the kind of thing you did out of penance after you acted out. He would fix things, run errands for me. So I never did that again.

Got a dirty house now. Dana, walk through how trust was rebuilt. Because it sounds like you both have put some work into that.

That was my struggle. Like, I don't know if I can trust you anymore. She had every right not to trust me. Just like you said, Bob.

I really wrestled as I was writing the book. I was like, have I really figured this out yet? And when you study the scripture, the scripture warns us not to trust in other people.

What do you mean? I mean, it says over and over again that we're only supposed to trust in the name of the Lord our God. That's who we trust. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean out on your own understanding and all your ways to acknowledge him. And there's several scriptures that says, do not trust in mere man.

So I was like, okay. So what this is saying is that I can trust God with what's happening in my marriage, even when I can't trust Bob. Because he's not trustworthy right now. He hasn't built a pattern and a history of being safe for my heart in this specific way. And so I'm going to put all my trust in God. But then you want to be in a marriage that's trustworthy, right? So as you trust God, how do you rebuild that together?

And Bob did something for me that was a great gift and the beginning of us building trust. And that was he had something called a personal craziness index. Well, Patrick Carnes had this in his book. And it's basically the concept is you've picked three or four things a day. Basic disciplines, you might be reading a chapter in a book or writing in a journal. And then you kind of score yourself.

The idea is that if a person with addiction or addictive personality, usually basic disciplines start to fall off before the relapse, the acting out. So one of mine to this day is making my bed. And so when I make my bed, when I make our bed, that's a physical sign every morning to Dana that I'm still here. I'm still this is still on my mind.

I'm still building this. And if I start, you know, there are times I want to get out in two days and I don't make the bed. In my mind, that's sending a message to Dana. And so there were little things like that, going to meetings, checking in with my accountability partners. There was certain things that showed her that I was earning her trust back. I think the biggest thing was at some point, you know, she wanted to know where I was and track the phone or whatever. The biggest thing to me was when I thought those are safety things for me.

I shouldn't rebel against them. That's not me getting upset that she's not trusting me. That's like she started to use the word. She feels safe when I do those things. And that was a good word for me.

I want her to feel safe. It wasn't I don't trust you. It was I want to feel safe. And that was a big vocabulary change for me. I should say it's not like it was idyllic.

And Bob presented these wonderful personal crazy index steps. And I trusted him explicitly. No, no, I withheld trust longer than I probably should have.

It became a problem. And here again, you got to tell people because I told my mentor, I don't trust him. I don't want to trust him.

He doesn't deserve that. So you could almost withhold it. Oh, I was withholding it. I was my counselor said, Dana, you know, there's such a thing as being divorced without having a piece of paper that's signed. And that's where your heart is headed.

That was a wake up call. And things would go great for three days, be really close. And then I'd come home and it was quiet and something had triggered her, whatever. So we went out for dinner with two friends, a pastor and my my mentor. And he just looked across the table at me and he said, I'm hearing a whole lot of things Bob's put in place that are evidence that he's trustworthy at this point. At some point, you have to decide if you're going to give him the gift of your trust or not. Give him your grace. And I decided that night I'm I'm going to give him the gift of trust.

But the reason is because of all these other things I saw. He's going to the small group. He's going to accountability group. To this day, Bob has a Christian therapist that he sees almost every week, at least twice a month. I call him a coach.

I've always had a I just think you have a coach for anything else. And all these other things. Now, there are days he forgets to make the bed. So I make my side of the bed. Do you ever think like, why isn't the bed made?

Does it scare you? Well, you know, it's not like one thing is the sign that he's off the rails. If I saw a lot of the things not happening. And there was an increased stress in his career at that time.

Those two things together would be like, hmm, someone better be checking in with him. I also want to say in a short program like this, it's easy to collapse everything into all the healing. This was a brutal year. This was a brutal year of high emotions, low emotions. I would say it was really two years. It was about two years until I started to feel normal again. I stayed out of the ministry for two years.

My board wanted me back. I said, I need to go above and beyond. So what happens if he falls? So I would expect him to tell me within 24 hours. I've told him that. Like I said, we're on 24 hour notice. I don't want to know three months or a week later.

I want to know in real time that this happens. And there will be grace. And it'll be another bump in our messy marriage. But at the end of the day, we want to have a marriage that looks like the love of Christ. And why does Christ love us? Why did he die for us? Because we are so, so messy. And his grace covers that.

So there will be grace if that happens. Are the chairs still hidden away? No, this is a cool thing about the chairs. In one of the books that Dana wrote, our daughter-in-law, Aaliyah, wrote the forward.

Not knowing anything about this. And talked about those two red chairs as being the place where we rocked our preemie babies. And they stayed with us for 11 weeks. And at the end she says, I consider those chairs holy ground. We read that. We're like, holy cow. It was one of the greatest redemption things I think that's ever happened to me.

The red chairs. I mean, just picking out the furniture. But it's been a great story. You know, each day I have to have discipline. One of the 12 steps.

I know some people don't like it, but I find a lot of biblical stuff in there. Is one day at a time. Not to presume your future. That you're going to be perfect. I need to be humble every day. And stay in my disciplines. And it keeps me tethered to the church.

Or else I think I could be a lone ranger and think I could do it myself. And I think one of the things that porn is doing. Satan always overplays his hand and uses counterfeits. And I think one of the things it's doing is causing men of God to get back in connection.

I think you're right. Guys, thank you for your courage. Thanks for writing this book.

Thank you for your honesty and your story. Dana, I'm wondering if you can pray. I'd love to.

That'd be great. Especially for wives that are listening that are like, I don't even. Yeah. Lord Jesus, you are near the brokenhearted. So the tears that are falling right now, you're catching them in a bottle and you're mindful of them. But Lord, we don't have to stay broken. That's the good news of the gospel. We can rise up through Jesus Christ to be redeemed from sin. And that doesn't mean we recover from sin. That doesn't mean we're repaired from sin. Redemption means we're made something entirely different and better. So for the woman listening, because she's a porn addict and she's saying, oh, it's not my husband, it's me.

And I feel so much shame because you're talking about the men again, but it's me. Father, there's redemption in Jesus' name for her. For the man that's listening, there's redemption. For the marriage, there's redemption. Lord, even right down to the chairs they sit in, Father, there's so much for them to be had. I pray that you would cause them to reach out to someone today and begin that walk of freedom.

In Jesus' name, amen. I just got to say, the topic we hit today with Bob and Dana Gresh about pornography and your marriage, this is such a critical conversation. I'm so glad they're talking about it and writing about it because it has catastrophic effects on a marriage. Yeah, let me just say to those of you that give financially to Family Life, thank you.

Seriously, it's one of the thoughts I had when it was all done is like, these shows don't happen without supporters and donors and people that pray for us and give financially. And man, this is a topic, I said it in the beginning, it's a secret. In marriages and in the church and nobody's talking about it, I'm telling you, it takes courage to go there. They wrote a book about it, we have the courage to say, let's talk about this and you make this happen. And let me also add this, if this is something that impacted you and I'm guessing you're going to share this with others because it's impacting so many marriages, I would invite you to join our family. Jump in and become a financial partner with us so that we can continue to do these kind of critical conversations. I mean, I'm just thinking somebody, some couple is going to hear this program today and they're going to say something to their spouse, the secret's going to come out and they're going to start a path to healing and freedom because we had the courage to talk about it and that's because you give, thank you. Yeah, I love that. Healing begins because of how God works and He has worked so often through family life today. I'm grateful for that. So you can go online to familylifetoday.com to make a donation or you can give us a call at 800-358-6329.

That's 800-F as in family, L as in life and then the word today. I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson talk with Bob and Dana Gresh on Family Life Today. You know, Dana has written a book called Happily Even After, Let God Redeem Your Marriage. In this book, she talks about how to forgive, how to live with joy and celebrate as you participate in your husband's redemption story.

You can pick up a copy of that at familylifetoday.com. Now coming up next week, how does marriage point us to God's love? What is marriage?

Is it sharing a home? Is it being in love? Is it a promise? Well, author Sam Albury is going to be joining Dave and Anne Wilson in the studio to talk to us about marriage but how it's much more than all of these things I just mentioned. Marriage is a special sign that points us to God's unique love for us. They're going to talk about that kind of love that keeps on going no matter what. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.