Coping With Previous Sexual History of a Spouse

[Anonymous]

Mfree, I am glad that this thread that you started so long ago seems to have been helpful to several others (and that’s just the ones we know about).

For the sake of some that might come along and read your last post, I want to add some clarifications.

1) Jealousy – I agree with you that this is probably not the best word. I prefer “mourning.” We can go through a process of mourning about many of life’s disappointments.

2) Sin next to murder – I understand this to be the traditional reading of Alma 39:5 (and the view currently taught in the BoM study manual). There is also a view where the sin next to murder is leaving the ministry and causing people to disbelieve the gospel because of your bad example. Regardless, I think that Alma the Younger is wrong. I think that Alma the Younger was influenced by his time and surroundings like all prophets. How much of what he said was fatherly wisdom and how much of it was the word of God/eternal principle? I think we can have some idea by testing the fruits. The sin next to murder rhetoric is deeply shame inducing at worst and attempts to alter behavior through fear at best.

3) Can’t be undone – I think that most things cannot be undone. I know that gossip is a traditional example of something that cannot be undone. What if I eat my sibling’s donut? That also cannot be undone. If I steal and pay back the money or tell the truth after I tell a lie – I do not feel that those “sins” are undone. I am attempting to repent and make amends and I would hope that these later “good deeds” would be taken into consideration but they do not “undo” the original act. Every minute of every day, we make decisions on how to spend our time. If I make a less than stellar choice on one day then I can always make a better choice on a subsequent day. However, that subsequent choice does not undo the first choice.

Except, we believe that the atonement really does remove these bad choices from our “permanent record.” Why should “sexual sins” be any different?

I know that in your situation these ideas were deeply ingrained and you could not simply change how you felt about them. I am just hopeful that someone will read that there are different ways to think about these topics than how we may have traditionally been taught.

[Anonymous]

mfree6464 wrote:

I am no longer a member of the church.

I know that this is not the subject of this thread but could you elaborate a little on this. Specifically, 6 years ago you talked about you and your wife coming from active LDS homes and attending the temple etc. You had a daughter in middle school and your daughter would be an adult now.

How did your leaving the church impact your family? Did your wife leave as well or are you in a “mixed faith” marriage? How have your kids handled it?

Incidentally, part of what we deal with here at StayLDS is the mourning that believing spouses feel when their spouse undergoes a change in faith. For many believing spouses (including my spouse) this can be a fairly long mourning process. The expectation of being united in faith forever was met with a different reality. I feel that in this there are some similarities to your own process of mourning when you discovered that your wife’s sexual past was more significant than you had been led to believe. The disappointment and disillusionment is awful and really, really hard.

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

I know that in your situation these ideas were deeply ingrained and you could not simply change how you felt about them. I am just hopeful that someone will read that there are different ways to think about these topics than how we may have traditionally been taught.

Roy, I couldn’t agree more. There are MUCH better ways to think about the topics I mentioned in my most recent post. I don’t share them because I believe them, I share them so that others might more easily understand why I felt such profound and immense pain. This thread incredibly has more than 30,000 views right now! If some people read this and start to think about the topics I just mentioned in a less-traditional way then that’s definitely a bonus :thumbup:

Roy wrote:

How did your leaving the church impact your family? Did your wife leave as well or are you in a “mixed faith” marriage? How have your kids handled it?

I’d be glad to elaborate on my decision to leave the church and also answer these questions. I was an ardent Latter Day Saint who KNEW the church was true for decades. I did not doubt. My wife and I did attend the temple and always had current recommends. It’s been 6 years since I first posted here and in that time the journey of life has taught me some things. To make a long story short, I now have a greater testimony that the church is not true than I did when I believed it was true. And for that reason I no longer attend. I know from personal experience as a believer that most people will likely assume I left because I couldn’t deal with my wife’s past or because I was angry at God over a perceived injustice. This is not the case. If God visited me tonight and told me this was His church and that I am sorely mistaken, then I’d be back this Sunday. The past has no bearing on my decision to leave. My choice is entirely based on whether I believe the church is true or not and right now I do not.

I’ve been fortunate in that I have not had to deal with much family strife over my choice to leave the church. When I first started to share my concerns with my wife she was scared and resistant. I told her that I didn’t know where this was going to lead but that if it ended with me not believing I told her I would honor the commitment I made when we married and remain a member if that was important to her. She was always the more nuanced member between the two of us and I think she was scared about being thrust into the role of being the strong LDS partner to me. I never pushed or prodded her in one direction or the other but over time she eventually lost her faith in the church as well. I honestly don’t know what that process was like for her but we are on the same page now and we got here with our relationship relatively unscathed, thankfully. As for the kids, they handled it remarkably well. If I was in their shoes I think I would have freaked out because I was a kid who really believed. We told our kids that if they wanted to continue attending we would support them but I don’t think any of my children had developed their own testimonies yet so they decided to stop attending when we did. Incidentally, when I posted 6 years ago my 3 siblings and both parents were all active members of the church. Everyone has their own path and unique reasons but today I only have one sibling who remains a member.

I do agree with you, Roy. There are probably a lot of similarities with how I felt after learning of my wife’s sexual past and how a believing spouse feels when their partner loses faith. From the outside looking in it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense as to why that might be painful. Someone might be tempted to say “just forgive” or “live and let live” but this kind of advice really doesn’t get to the root of the problem. You’re dealing with deeply held beliefs and eternal consequences. The stakes and emotions both run high. At the end of the day I’m REALLY grateful to be where I am right now. This is the right place for my family and I. I am not angry or sad. That said, I recognize the mission of this website and I want to make sure I say that I’m not “anti-Mormon.” In fact, I wish that my dad had stayed LDS because I think it was really good for him and something he needs in his life. If feel the same for anyone who finds that the church adds value to their life.

[Anonymous]

mfree6464 wrote:

At the end of the day I’m REALLY grateful to be where I am right now. This is the right place for my family and I. I am not angry or sad. That said, I recognize the mission of this website and I want to make sure I say that I’m not “anti-Mormon.” In fact, I wish that my dad had stayed LDS because I think it was really good for him and something he needs in his life. If feel the same for anyone who finds that the church adds value to their life.

Thanks for the extra information about the current situation for you and your family. I am happy for you that you all seem to be in a good place.

[Anonymous]

mfree6464 wrote:

LCWalker wrote:

Forgive her.

I wanted to take a moment to address this comment because this thread seems to find someone every year or two who is suffering like I was and advice like this, though well-meaning, is not helpful to those who are going through this.

I get it. If you haven’t experienced this type of challenge then forgiveness seems to be the answer. It is not. This isn’t about harboring anger over another person’s mistakes, it’s about sorrow. To use an extreme example: if a drunk driver wiped out your family you could forgive the driver’s mistake but that would not remove your sorrow. You would still mourn the terrible loss. Same thing applies here except I was never at any point angry at my wife for her “sins”. She was 16 years old and, like every human on this planet, made a mistake. I never assigned blame to her at all. Ever. I was simply heartbroken at the thought of what happened and, due to my OCD, couldn’t get it out of my head. Forgiveness does not apply to this situation though I totally understand why someone might think that it does.

What makes you think I’ve not been through something? Besides, I said more than “forgive her”. Please quote me in context.

[Anonymous]

After going back to LCWalker’s statement of “forgive her,” I see that he was referring to forgiving the spouse’s deception/lack of full disclosure.

LCWalker wrote:

How do you forgive her? By realizing that maybe she was afraid to be upfront for fear of losing you. Or getting in trouble. Or maybe she just didn’t want to face her own past.

I belong to a Facebook group for LDS sexual therapist Jennifer Finlayson Fife and the issue of dealing with a spouse who has been less than fully forthcoming about sexual history/issues is not uncommon. (interestingly men tend to more often feel betrayed by a wife’s sexual history prior to marriage while women tend to feel betrayed by a husband’s secret pornography use. Both feel betrayed by the sense of long term deception.) In that context – to attempt to forgive the spouse for not feeling safe enough to be more vulnerable while at the same time mourning the version of the spouse that in some ways was an illusion is some decent advice.

[Anonymous]

LCWalker wrote:

mfree6464 wrote:

LCWalker wrote:

Forgive her.

I wanted to take a moment to address this comment because this thread seems to find someone every year or two who is suffering like I was and advice like this, though well-meaning, is not helpful to those who are going through this.

I get it. If you haven’t experienced this type of challenge then forgiveness seems to be the answer. It is not. This isn’t about harboring anger over another person’s mistakes, it’s about sorrow. To use an extreme example: if a drunk driver wiped out your family you could forgive the driver’s mistake but that would not remove your sorrow. You would still mourn the terrible loss. Same thing applies here except I was never at any point angry at my wife for her “sins”. She was 16 years old and, like every human on this planet, made a mistake. I never assigned blame to her at all. Ever. I was simply heartbroken at the thought of what happened and, due to my OCD, couldn’t get it out of my head. Forgiveness does not apply to this situation though I totally understand why someone might think that it does.

What makes you think I’ve not been through something? Besides, I said more than “forgive her”. Please quote me in context.

LCWalker,

I apologize for only extracting the “forgive her” portion of your comment. My intent was brevity; in no way was I trying to be deceptive or misleading or misrepresent what you were trying to say.

My purpose here now (and the reason I continue to periodically check in on this thread) is to be for others what I needed 6 years ago when I was suffering so greatly. I can only speak from my own experience when I say that when people advised me to forgive her it only added to my anguish and did not get at the root of the problem. I don’t want someone who is struggling like I was to read that advice and suffer unnecessarily. In my case, the problem was OCD. In the simplest of terms, I obsessed over something that is very unpleasant and that caused me tremendous grief. For better or worse, forgiveness doesn’t fix OCD.

It’s a very long thread and I don’t expect everyone to read every word I’ve written but I’ve never at any point been upset or angry with my wife through this process. In fact, I probably would have made the same choices she did were the roles reversed. I completely understand why she made the choices she did and thankfully I now understand why I hurt the way I did as well. Additionally, with respect to your advice about salvaging my marriage – never was my marriage in peril and I don’t think I’ve written anything to that effect. In fact, this experience made my marriage stronger and that strength has continued in the ensuing years.

A couple years back I actually addressed the forgiveness issue and I’ll quote that here:

mfree6464 wrote:

When I first posted here I was seeking a safe place to talk. I had posted in one other location prior to this and was largely told that I needed to forgive and forget. I was told that I was disrespecting the Atonement. I was told I lacked faith. I was told that I was judgmental. I was told my wife deserved better than me. Just as it would not be helpful to tell an OCD sufferer that one hand-washing is enough and that 8 washings is crazy. Similarly, telling me that I was disrespecting Christ’s Atonement only added to my suffering.

So yeah, in retrospect it’s probably a little bit of a sore spot for me. I hope some of what I’ve posted here gives some understanding on why I feel strongly about the point of forgiveness as it pertains to this issue.

[Anonymous]

Very interesting to see the development of this thread. I remembered that I had a heck of a lot to say on the topic, but I suppose didn’t feel sufficiently motivated to take the time to keep my psychological hat on and add something helpful, and not just say c’mon, dude, grow a pair, which would obviously not have been helpful.

OCD explains a lot, of course, but that doesn’t just come out of nowhere. In my experience, there will be other areas where the OCD would also be obvious. And maybe it is.

I’m not trying to diagnose. What I’m trying to do is get to a word that has been tossed around a bit on this thread, with some denying they felt it. Jealousy.

When we look at neighbors who may have had some fun times as teens and they are now just like us, or possibly at the same spiritual level, success level, or whatever, when we were the good little boys and girls who did what we were supposed to do, that feeling we have is Jealousy. And that feeling can also become resentment towards the organization that told us we’d be happier doing what they told us to do.

Jealousy is also the feeling of sadness, envy, or anger that our spouse did something with someone besides us. Now, I don’t think the OP necessarily felt mostly jealousy over his wife’s premarital manipulations that she didn’t detail to him, rather selfish pain for not getting what he felt he deserved. It didn’t feel like selfishness, but I will call it what it is. I’ve been there, felt that.

But hey, she lied, right? Of course she lied. People lie. Why did she lie? She didn’t want to hurt you, but also wanted to get what she wanted, which was you. After a number of years, it probably didn’t seem like a big deal anymore. It wasn’t to her. She was a kid.

I don’t mean to minimize the pain. That’s real. And it’s hard to figure out why it’s there, because it doesn’t make sense to our rational brain. That’s because we’re being irrational. It’s an irrational assumption to believe we should get what we deserve, that others should always treat us nice, that our spouses should always behave in a way that helps us, etc. We think we’re feeling super sad because we were betrayed, but we’re really feeling super sad because of the irrational assumption that our spouse should never do anything sexual with anyone else, including before they know us and even when they are stupid teenagers, OR the irrational assumption that our spouse would never lie to us to spare our feelings or to get what they want.

Once we let go of the irrational thoughts and assumptions, we can see how her premarital mild infidelity doesn’t have to lead to our sadness. We are choosing to be sad, so we can reframe and make it a positive in some way. Learn and move on.

Back to jealousy. I think it has a lot to do with self-esteem, self confidence, and trust. Once I trusted my spouse completely, there was absolutely no jealousy. Part of trusting is also having faith. We don’t know. We’ll never know. Might she leave me? She might. Do I think she will? No. Why? She’d be a fool, cuz I’m awesome and I treat her well. How would i feel if she left? Devastated and awful of course, but it’s not something I worry about. She could tell me she made out with the mailman for fun, and I would not be worried she’d leave me for the mailman.

The UPS guy, however… hah.

I’m not trying to imply I have it figured out. I don’t at all. But I’ve been down some of these same roads and I’ve learned how to make them beautiful shiny avenues that are remembered fondly, not pot-holed paths we’d rather forget.

And how does this relate to staying LDS? When I figure that out, I’ll offer an opinion.

[Anonymous]

Cnsl1 wrote:

And how does this relate to staying LDS? When I figure that out, I’ll offer an opinion.

I think this all relates to staying LDS because of church teachings regarding chastity, virtue, and marriage. There are segments of society where past sexual experiences are completely inconsequential, perhaps even lauded to some extent. Heck there are segments where infidelity is accepted and encouraged (which would include some religions). When we contrast that with teachings of TCoJCoLDS which include sex outside marriage being almost as serious as murder and even that viewing pornography is akin to adultery I think for church members there are other considerations which affect our thinking and points of view.

[Anonymous]

You’re obviously right, DJ. The church as an institution does a poor job of teaching and preparing us to be sexual adults, but prepares us well to become guilty adults. Many church leaders have said some really deplorable stuff, and more will probably continue to do so.

But we’re also clearly encouraged to learn, grow, seek out the best knowledge, and have joy. We understand now that the chewed gum metaphor is horrible. Maybe the metaphor should be a polished rock. It’s smoother and shinier now. Not as rough. It’s been down a couple of streams, but now there’s more beauty in the stone.

[Anonymous]

Cnsl1 wrote:

Maybe the metaphor should be a polished rock. It’s smoother and shinier now. Not as rough. It’s been down a couple of streams, but now there’s more beauty in the stone.

Would that be a “rough stone rolling?”

For anyone that doesn’t get the reference, there is a Biography of Joseph Smith by that title. :thumbup:

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

Cnsl1 wrote:

Maybe the metaphor should be a polished rock. It’s smoother and shinier now. Not as rough. It’s been down a couple of streams, but now there’s more beauty in the stone.

Would that be a “rough stone rolling?”

For anyone that doesn’t get the reference, there is a Biography of Joseph Smith by that title. :thumbup:

Lol!

No, I was thinking more along the lines of a smooth polished river stone.

Not a licked cupcake

Not a chewed piece of gum

Not a board with a nail hammered in then pulled back out

A cool stone that’s a little more familiar with the rapids and feels better in your hands.

But I wanted to go down those rapids together!

You still can. Rapids aren’t ever the same twice. It’s still a new experience.

[Author]

Posts