A Painful Confession

Bob Lepine: Dannah Gresh remembers her husband confessing something to her in their marriage that was very hurtful. She went out for a walk in the woods.

Dannah Gresh: I was like, “Huh, I feel like I should maybe be crying.” I was angry . . . but I was numb.

Bob L.: She called a friend who quoted Scripture as she was praying for Dannah.

Dannah: And when she prayed that very familiar verse over me, the floodgates opened, and I began to weep! The Word of God is so powerful! It is so active; it is so alive. It can take a stunned heart and perform CPR in seconds.

Bob L.: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, the author of Brokenness: The Heart God Revives, for February 13, 2023. I’m sure you may be asking yourself the question, “What is going on here, who is this? Why am I hearing a man instead of Dannah Gresh on Revive Our Hearts?

I’m Bob Lepine. I have been a long time member of the Advisory Board for Revive Our Hearts. I have been at every True Woman event that has ever been hosted. I’m here today because we have the opportunity to hear from Bob and Dannah Gresh, who have just written a new book called Happily Even After about probably the most significant challenge they’ve faced in their marriage . . . something that they’ve been very transparent about. 

And so, we thought instead of Dannah introducing this conversation to you, I would introduce the conversation to you. And of course, I’m here with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. Nancy, this is a subject that a lot of listeners are going to resonate with.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Yes, we think of the title of that book and how fairy tales often end with a wedding, and of course the phrase . . what is it? “And they lived happily ever after.” Well, Dannah’s book is called Happily Even After, because, as we all know (anybody who is married knows), it doesn’t always work out that way. Because the fact is, marriage is hard!

Single life is hard as well. God uses each season of our lives to refine us and to sanctify us. So when Robert and I went to the altar and we vowed to “love, honor and cherish” in the good times and the bad, well, as we stood at that altar, we had no way of knowing that afterwards Robert would have cancer. We would have things we would need to work through that we had no idea, at that point, what those hard times would look like. 

 

And I think, Bob, one of the things that we don’t anticipate early in marriage is how much we will need to forgive each other!

Bob L.: Yes. I heard someone say once that the ability to resolve conflict is the essential component in a healthy marriage. And, of course, that involves forgiving one another, overlooking transgressions as Proverbs says [Proverbs 17:9; 19:11], but then confronting and forgiving when we need to do that.

In Matthew 18:21–22, Peter came to Jesus and said, “How often do I have to forgive my brother when he sins against me? As many as seven times?” Peter was thinking he was being very magnanimous with a seven times forgiveness quota. And Jesus said, “No, not seven times, but seventy-seven times!”

So this principle of forgiveness is something that all of us have to learn to be generous about. And we should say here, the conversation you’re going to hear on Revive Our Hearts today includes some specific details of things in Bob and Dannah’s marriage that you just may want to protect younger listeners from.

So if you have kids who are listening with you today, you may either want to divert them or maybe listen back to this at a later time when they’re not around, because some of what we’re going to hear today is sensitive.

Nancy: The fact is, every marriage needs that forgiveness, because we are sinners who are married to sinners. But that forgiveness piece can be really hard to do when the hurt runs deep. You hear Dannah Gresh every day co-hosting Revive Our Hearts with me, and you may not have realized that Dannah and Bob have experienced some deep hurt in their own marriage.

I’m so thankful that she has been willing to be open about that to write this new book, so that they can share out of their journey in a way that I know is going to bring a lot of help and a lot of blessing to a lot of marriages.

Even if you’re not married, you have married friends, and you have other relationships, and you get hurt. So how do we deal with those hard times? We’re going to hear some rich truth about that over these next few days.

So recently, Bob Lepine had a chance to sit down with Bob and Dannah Gresh as they shared that story. Let’s listen.

Bob L.: Dannah, when did you first know there was an issue with Bob in your marriage related to pornography? 

Dannah: Well, I would say, “I knew before I knew.” Many women will tell me this, that they just had a hunch, or something was off. I’ve noticed in counseling them through the years that our bodies seem to know before our brains are willing to read what our bodies are reading.

Bob L.: What do you mean by that?

Dannah: Well, I experienced a lot of fatigue that just didn’t make any sense: muscle and joint pain. I had gone through a battery of tests. They were looking for autoimmune issues and not coming up with anything. I felt crazy! I was like, “Why am I tired and my body hurts!?”

Looking back, and now doing research and hearing testimony after testimony of women who have been in a myriad of similar situations, they tell me that their body told them, and we now know that. I’ve got to jump right in here with a word that I’m not comfortable with and I don’t like much. But there’s a term called “betrayal trauma.”

Any time you’re in a relationship with a mother, a father, a co-worker, a boss, a spouse where you aren’t feeling as safe as you should feel, you begin to feel—a phrase that gets very overused in our culture—some “emotional trauma.”

A lot of times we don’t feel it in our emotions so much as we experience it in our bodies. When you’re looking at a relationship and it doesn’t make sense and you feel confused, you feel stressed, your body produces inflammation. What is that for?

Well, it’s kind of like the skin of your heart saying, “Something’s not right here! Can you pay attention to the cues!?” And the cues that we aren’t reading as women are things like when our husband doesn’t make eye contact with us . . . and he’s with us! He’s talking with us, but there’s just not that same emotional connection.

Some women tell me that their husbands go into their “man cave” and never come out. Like, they’re just on their screens, their TVs. Some women tell me that their husband just isn't there a lot, and that might be shame taking him away from the house. He might be fishing . . . but in some cases women have told me that he was in fact with another woman during those absences.

And what’s happening is, your body is reading what’s happening and saying, “Are you not seeing this?!” You’re not, but you’re feeling it. So, I knew before I knew.

Bob L.: So on a mental level, on a conscious level, you weren’t aware, you weren’t thinking to yourself, Something seems off in our relationship.

Dannah: I think we both knew that, but I think we thought because we were busy . . .

Bob Gresh: We’ll actually, we’ve never talked about this before—about the physical stuff she was going through. But there were times when I would act out, and I would notice a change in her health, to the point where I would confess after a few days. I was like, “I’m bringing this into our household.”

I found that crazy! I think it’s a spiritual battle. I think it’s probably hard for people to understand. But I saw it happen. It actually sometimes pushed me over the edge, to realize I was bringing things into the house spiritually that were affecting my wife. I couldn’t ignore it anymore because if it’s not directly affecting your wife like that, it’s just kind of emotional, you can sort of justify things a little bit. “This is my problem. I don’t want to make it any harder on her. I don’t want to hurt her.” Then when it comes out physically, you’re like, “Uh, that’s a bad deal.”

Dannah: We’re one. God made it that way. We are physically, emotionally, and spiritually one. Whatever he goes through I’m going to go through in some way, shape or form.

Bob L.: And we should say here, not every woman who is experiencing physical pain or her body is not responding the way it normally does, she shouldn’t jump to the conclusion, “My husband must be looking at pornography,” right?

Dannah: Right. The pieces of our puzzle fit together. If you’re experiencing that, and you’re experiencing intimacy, friendship with your husband, don’t jump to that conclusion. But what we’re finding medically is that sometimes they are connected.

Bob L.: And, Bob, when you said you would confess it, you would confess it to Dannah? Or would you confess it to the Lord, or both?

Bob G.: Well, I always confessed it to the Lord and other men. I was very open about it with other men—a million times—and that became a ritual that just disn’t work anymore.

And that really hurts your faith, when you hear that the Lord will set you free. The name of our ministry is Pure Freedom. So that challenged my faith, in a big way actually. So I would confess to Dannah, sit down with her and say, “You know, I kind of have slipped a bit. I’m not doing as well as I should right now.” I would beat around the bush for, you know, ten minutes. 

Then I would tell her, “This is what I’ve been struggling with; this is where I sinned.” I’d apologize. That would create a whole bunch of emotions in the house. So all the sudden I went to shame. A lot of times she thought she had to take care of me so I didn’t go further deeper in.

It was just that amalgam of emotions that happens in both people in the marriage. It’s a really toxic thing. Because, where the husband at that point may need support and get out of shame and be affirmed and be loved and told, “We’ll make it through this,” it’s really not the time that the wife wants to do that.

I think that’s what’s so important about the book. It’s kind of understanding how to go through those conversations. That’s a really difficult time!

Bob L.: Tell me about the first time that Bob said to you, “You need to know what’s happened with me.” Do you remember that first conversation?

Dannah: Well, the first conversation happened before we were engaged. We went into my parents’ basement, and he said, “I need to tell you about something that’s been a battle for me for many years. I want you to know it.”

My husband was a virgin on our wedding night, and he was a virgin as he confessed this to me. Many people know my testimony. I was not at the time a virgin. No one knew that then. I was hiding in shame.

So in my mind, a man who told me he’s struggling with lust and pornography, in the category of “the hierarchy of sin,” mine was worse. We both naively believed that, “We will get married; he will be sexually active. This problem will disappear!” That didn’t happen.

Bob G.: I realized, going back through my journals that I thought, Oh, this is just a timeline issue. Once I can get married and actually have sex with a real live person, I certainly won’t want to look at pornography anymore.

And so even on our honeymoon, when I would notice things and think lustful thoughts, I was like, “Oh . . .” That was a bad moment. I felt like, “Are you kidding me!?” All those “dandelions” I planted in my head were multiplying. Every time I acted out, it produced more temptation.

So a lot of youth, teens, or adults, feel like when they get married, “It will go away.” And that’s absolutely not true.

Bob L.: And the reason it’s not true is because we can still experience conflict in marriage. To have sexual union with a marriage partner is maybe available, but can be complicated. And it’s not all that complicated to call up an image on your computer and have no resistance there, right?

Bob G.: Right. And the escape is there. A lot of times when you’re looking at pornography or dealing with lust or acting out, you’re trying to escape and medicate a feeling you can’t handle. That’s not the use of sex in marriage. It is the use of sex, a lot of times, outside of marriage.

It is the reason for the use of pornography and other things that people medicate themselves with. So actually having sex in marriage doesn’t really affect pornography addiction much at all. In fact, what using pornography does inside a marriage or before a marriage is create expectations, images and fantasies, that can be abusive, dangerous, unhealthy, and perverted.

Dannah: And the lie that many people believe is that, because married sex does not eliminate the medication and twisted use of sex through pornography and other things, many people believe the lie, “Well, if I use pornography, it’s not going to affect my marriage.” 

There are women listening right now whose husbands have been confessing, and they’ve been softballing it a little bit. I just need to speak directly, because as women we have a responsibility in our marriage to interface with our husbands on this topic in a holy and compassionate way, but with conviction.

We believe the lie sometimes that it won’t affect the marriage, but that’s not true. There’s incredible research to defend this. One example would be: when I started writing about sex and purity and intimacy in the year 2000, one of the most hopeful pieces of information that I saw in behavioral science was that the most sexually active people in the United States were middle-aged married people. They were enjoying their marriage bed beautifully!

That is not true today. The reason it’s not true . . . Many people are like, “Oh, look, teenagers are less sexually active, college students are less sexually active, young adults are less sexually active outside of marriage.” Well, that’s not entirely good news, because the reason they’re not is because they are using pornography.

Married men are using pornography, and they’re having less sex inside their wedding bed. That’s having an incredibly harmful effect on their marriage in terms of their unity and their oneness that God designed them to live in. 

Bob L.: So, Dannah, was there a long period of time from the time you got married until the time you realized, “This is still an issue in our marriage, in Bob’s life.”

Dannah: Well, the short version is this: in about the first three to five years of our marriage Bob and I were very open about this. We got some great counseling from a friend, Elizabeth Duncan, who kind ofguided us through a beautiful period of sobriety. 

Then we moved geographically and lost the community that we had that was helping us through that. And community is so important! God doesn’t want us to work through our spiritual darkness alone. He wants us to walk with other believers. 

And so when you move and everything’s okay, you kind of lose that. We did go through a period of what I would call (for lack of better terms) I started to think things were okay. I started to believe the lie that he had this under control, he was in accountability with men. 

That’s kind of where our book opens up, where I realized, “That’s not okay!” In fact, I started seeing Elizabeth Duncan again (over the phone) and said, “My body’s not okay!” And her first question was, “Has Bob relapsed?” 

And I said, “Well, no.” And that wasn’t true.

Bob L.: How did you find out that wasn’t true, at that point? 

Dannah: Well, for one week my husband nurtured and loved me in a way that few times in my marriage I’ve experienced his love. I injured my back very badly, helping someone move. He was helping me walk. He was feeding me. He was tucking me into bed at night. At two o ‘clock in the morning when I was getting emotionally, mentally distraught over being stuck in the bed, he was taking me for a walk in the moonlight. 

I mean, it was a sweet week! At the end of that week as I was beginning to feel better, I was waiting for him. We have these two red leather chairs in our living room. I was sitting in one of them. We were going to go to the county fair that night and eat junk food and listen to probably really bad country music. He came in the room and sat down in the other red leather chair. He started with the sentence, “Baby, I’ve been trying to find my way back to the Lord without breaking your heart. And I can’t find a way to do it without breaking your heart.” And then he broke my heart.

Bob L.: Wow. In that moment, what happened in you? 

Dannah: I was shell shocked. I was probably calmer than was reasonable as he got really real with me, I think to a degree that he’d never been before—of details, true, honest, raw, vulnerable confession. I listened and then I said, “I need to go for a walk,” and I left. I left him there sitting in the red chair . . . alone.

Bob L.: Hmm. As you look back on that moment—because there are listeners who have had similar moments like this—what did you do right, and what would you do differently if you could do it all over again?

Dannah: I don’t know if I’m the one to answer that question. Bob might know what I did right. I think one thing I did right was, when I went outside, I went to the Lord. I just said, “I don’t know what to do with this. Will You help me?”

I called a friend. I think that’s one thing I wish women did faster. I called a Christian friend, Donna VanLeer, and I said, “This is what Bob just told me.” And the funny thing is, I had been walking through the woods for maybe fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, and I was really numb. I was like, “I feel like I should maybe be crying.” I was angry, but I was numb.

And she quoted a Scripture verse to me in prayer. She said, “Lord Jesus, Dannah is in a dark place right now, but Your Word is a light to her path. Will You show her the next spot where she needs to place her foot?” (see Psalm 119:105)

And when she prayed that very familiar verse over me, the floodgates opened, and I began to weep! The Word of God is so powerful! It is so active; it is so alive. It can take a stunned heart and perform CPR in seconds. That’s exactly what it did in that moment!

And my friend Donna said, “Dannah, I want to ask you a question about a lamp. How much light does it give?” And I was still kind of stunned from everything, and I didn’t [really respond]. She said, “I’ll tell you how much light it gives you. It gives you just enough for the next few steps, so don’t expect more.”

“The Lord is not going to turn on His stadium light so that you know what the next.” How big is a football field? However many yards that is, “He’s not going to turn the sunlight on so that you can see to the end of the horizon. He’s just going to show you day by day, hour by hour, maybe minute by minute, as you go to His Word. This is the next step.” 

Bob L.: So, if a wife listening was to hear this news from her husband this week or next month or whenever she was to hear it, I hear you saying, “Go to the Lord, and call a friend.” Those might be the first emergency steps to take, you think?

Dannah: Absolutely! You can’t do this without the Lord. And in some ways, we tried to take some of our journey without the Lord. We just relied a little too heavily on the world’s resources, and you can’t do this work without Him. He is a Redeemer!

When your marriage is wounded by pornograpy and lust or infidelity (some people are listening and that’s their story), you need redemption! You don’t need recovery from the world’s marketplace of the best and the brightest psychologists. You need redemption, and the only One Who does that is Jesus Christ.

He can take what is hopelessly ruined and broken and not recover it or repair it, but redeem it. That means He makes it into something more useful, more beautiful, more hopeful, and, in our case, more happy!

We are happier, because we aren’t living under the cloud of those doubts and those lies and that confusion and his shame and my uncertainty. He’s redeemed us! I would not have been able to experience that redemption without friends.

One of the first friends I called was Nancy. I called her within a day. You can’t do this without community. James 5 tells us that God’s people are the ones who do the work of healing in our hearts. He does the forgiveness, but He’s given us each other for healing.

James 5:16, “Confess your sins one to another . . . [and then] you will be healed” (NIV84). And the context of that is leadership and authority in the church, elders. But we as women can experience that by reaching out to other women in our lives who have walked their path of faith well, who are further along on their path of faith, and who can pass on to us the things that we haven’t learned yet in the faith . . . to experience the redemption of Jesus. 

Nancy: Wow, aren’t you thankful that we have a redeeming Savior who is in the process of making all things new? That includes our marriages! You’ve been listening to the co-host of Revive Our Hearts, Dannah Gresh, along with her husband Bob, as they’ve been talking with Bob Lepine, who’s here with me now.

And Bob, I love the thought of marriages needing to be redeemed, needing to be transformed by Christ into something beautiful—and what He has the power to do, what we could never make happen apart from His grace.

Bob L.: It was Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth Bell Graham, who said once that a great marriage is the union of two great forgivers! That’s true for all of us. We all are going to be sinned against in marriage; we’re all going to sin against our spouse in marriage.

 

We’re going to have to figure out how we rebuild trust, how we pour grace on a broken relationship, and how we see God do a redeeming work. We’re going to hear more about that from Bob and Dannah this week.

They share their story in a book they’ve written called Happily Even After: Let God Redeem Your Marriage. It is a book that is full of hope and provides practical help. It showcases the redemptive power of Jesus to transform a marriage and “restore the years that the locusts have eaten” (Joel 2:25).

Happily Even After is our gift to you when you make a donation to support Revive Our Hearts, and we are so grateful for all of you who provide the financial support that makes this ministry possible.

Nancy: And, Bob, as you’re talking about marriages in need of redemption, I’m thinking about a woman whose marriage was in deep trouble, going back twenty-some years at different bouts throughout the last twenty years. But God has used Revive Our Hearts as a powerful instrument in her life day after day after day, as she walked through some seriously hard things in that marriage.

She was counseled to leave the marriage, but she just believed that God could redeem that marriage. She has pressed into the Lord, and today that couple is celebrating the power of God’s redeeming grace in their marriage! God used Revive Our Hearts as an instrument in that journey.

When you support this ministry, you’re making it possible for people like that couple to hear truth, to hear conversations like the one we’re listening to this week with Bob and Dannah, and to infuse in them hope and grace and wisdom about how to navigate the marriage God’s way. So, thank you for your support, making it possible for other marriages to be redeemed!

Bob L.: You can give to Revive Our Hearts. Go to ReviveOurHearts.com to give online, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Ask about the book by Dannah Gresh, Happily Even After.

Now, if you've ever touched a hot stove or hit your thumb with a hammer, you know that physical pain can be a gift that protects you from further harm. And tomorrow, Bob and Dannah Gresh will share with us about the gift of emotional pain and how God can use that in our lives. I hope you can join us for that in our lives. I hope you can join us for that here on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants you to walk in the freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness of Christ!