If abusive men knew how deeply their actions affected victims, would they continue to abuse? Infidelity leaves lasting, painful trauma that can affect a victim’s life for years after the betrayal.
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Transcript: How Does Infidelity Harm Victims?
Hillevi was born in Valparaiso, Indiana. In 1993 she married her now-husband. Together with their five children, they lived a dream marriage until Hillevi discovered his secret life of infidelity in 2013, shortly after they moved to the mountains of Colorado.
Supporting Victims of Infidelity
Hillevi has listened to this podcast from the beginning. She has been a devoted supporter of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, not just emotionally, but also financially, by supporting the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast. I want to thank her for her continued support to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, because this podcast is due in part to Hillevi and women like her who support this podcast.
Hillevi: Thank you so much because you too have done a lot to support the rest of us women who have experienced infidelity, I listen avidly to your podcast.
What I Felt Was Like A Sisterhood
Anne: You said that you were listening from the very beginning where I was sort of a mess crying in the microphone. Fumbling around trying to figure this out. You have seen in real-time me come into my full understanding and power that I’m in now. Which is so different than I was four years ago. Just for our audience, you witnessing that real-time, what did you observe?
Hillevi: I felt like I was walking through everything I went through from the onset of my discovery of my husband’s betrayal, and what I felt was like a sisterhood. You were expressing things, feeling things in real-time. I had just passed through some of those emotions and was still struggling to find my way through this and maintain my marriage.
It was very much just kind of a give and take of: I hear you, I understand, I’ve been there, I’m going through that again. It’s not just a single straight path of a timeline. It was definitely great to have you along for the ride or me along for your ride.
The Codependency Model Blames Victims
Anne: And vice versa because we’re all in this together in this journey of healing from infidelity. It’s really cool to be part of that collective community. When someone has an epiphany and they let me know about it then I can podcast about it and that helps other women have epiphanies.
We’re all working together to come out of the fog. Also, I feel like all of us are genuinely praying for truth and for peace.
The Lord is guiding all of us sort of collectively together to find these things out. I think it’s interesting that so many of us started with a codependency model. Then we’ve all sort of independently or together found this abuse model. It really is the only thing that makes sense.
Hillevi: Oh, absolutely. I remember in the 80s I was dating a drummer. He was one of those off again on again, I love you now but now I need other women and then come back to me. A girlfriend gave me the book Women Who Love Too Much, and many people who listen know that book.
I didn’t know if that rang true or not, it just seemed like it put too much of the blame on me. Rather than, you know I need to just walk away and just stand up and stop accepting abuse. That’s kind of where I started in understanding the, just the codependency model was so, so wrong. It was blaming the victim.
Infidelity & Victim Blaming
Anne: So, let’s talk about that victim blaming that happened to you. It was around you in the 80s and 90s. Your bio mentions that you went to some workshops on “How to be a Godly Woman”, and about “The Total Woman Workshops”. I’m not aware of these. Were these really popular back then?
Hillevi: Oh, it was so popular. Maribel Morgan author of The Total Woman, appeared on everybody’s television from Donahue to whatever. Christian women needed to learn to totally submit. And also subject yourself to your husband’s whims and desires, and dress like he wants you to. That little scene in Fried Green Tomatoes, if you remember, when Kathy Bates wraps herself in saran wrap. That was from The Total Woman. I kid you not.
That kind of feeling that if you were a truly godly woman. You would take that one verse out of Ephesians 5, you know, and just put that as the idol in your home. You must submit. I just was too rebellious in nature to submit.
Indfidelity & The Concept Of “Submitting” Oneself
My father hated that; my father was alive at the time. I was very very fortunate to grow up with a dad who said you can become anything, anyone you want. There is no limit, there’s no glass ceiling, and so my dad really hated what he saw me becoming.
He asked me to please go back and read the whole Bible. I was very very fortunate to have dad, he really helped open my eyes up to that. Both my parents were World War II veterans, but they both went to college afterward. My mother was a journalist, and my dad was a businessman in the lumber business.
They were both educated, and he really guided me, my father did. My mom died when I was very young. My father and my grandfather also were very good guidance as to what love and a good husband are, I just didn’t find it…yet.
Anne: So, what did you try while you were in this sort of total Woman crazy trendy church teachings phase where you were kind of submitting yourself to these misogynistic ideas?
Misogynistic Ideas
Hillevi: Well, the first thing was when I got married. I toured as a Christian artist at the time, and he immediately wanted me to give up singing in public. He wanted me to stay at home, have babies, take care of the house, and to serve him. I was not to be elevated in public with the music.
We started a church for instance, and I would be singing praise songs in church, but my voice does carry. And if somebody would turn around and say oh, I love your voice, we wouldn’t go back to that church. He told me to step back. And let him be the sole source of devotion from everybody around him. So that was the first thing.
Dressing the way he wanted me to dress, cook the food he wanted me to cook, that kind of thing. If started talking about something and he wasn’t interested, said not interested. I had to just accept that.
It was a pretty hard time in my life. I rebelled and stood up to him. Then of course the people around us who were very much into The Total Woman said that I was truly a rebel, and I was not honoring God. They must shun me. So, they shunned me.
Anne: Spiritual abuse. Wow.
Hillevi: Yes, it was. It was.
Anne: Did you recognize it as that at the time?
Recognizing Abuse
Hillevi: Eventually I did. Not at the beginning. I thought it was just all connected, but it didn’t take me long. My grandfather didn’t like him, my father didn’t like him. As I said, they were really trying to help me find my own, but I was young and ignorant.
I was 18 when I got married. My life became very quickly filled with my children. I eventually just learned to walk away, to stand up. My friends from that era, we just kind of laugh about the stupid things we did at that time, thinking they were right. And that’s not to say that there isn’t a given take in a good marriage, but this was abuse. This was, you will do as I say. That is total abuse.
Anne: That’s really interesting, especially coming up in a different time period.
Hillevi: I just want to tell you that I’m not an old 65. My arm is in a sling right now because I had rotator cuff surgery last week. From a bad zip lining experience, so I’m one of the young 65 people.
Anne: Of course. Well, I feel like I’m a super old 43-year-old. I feel the opposite. I feel like I just want to eat pudding and lay on the couch. You know, how can I not walk up and down the stairs, you know, that kind of thing.
Hillevi: I just did my 10,000 steps yesterday. I’m back on my feet, getting ready to get this off I hope soon. I love life in the mountains and that keeps you young too. I have grandkids, and we do stuff together, and I want to be a young grandparent.
Anne: Yeah
Hillevi: I love it.
Generational Contexts of Infidelity
Anne: The reason I bring up that age difference is that we all have these cultural and perhaps religious scripting that is working against us. That we don’t realize, that is a part of our generation. It’s a part of our time. And right now, for the kids, you know the 20-year-olds, it’s like porn is normal. Infidelity is fine. You’re totally sex-negative if you’re not into porn, and if you’re not sexting. So that’s the generation they’re growing up in.
The one that I grew up in was that you are there to help a man and stay at home. I guess what I mean is you know when I was going to college, I never thought about what career do I want. It was what do I need to graduate in so that I can have a job where I can make sure that I can be a mom.
It wasn’t like what do I really want to do? I really want to be an astronaut, you know, or I really want to do this. Which I didn’t want to be an astronaut, but I certainly at that time was not thinking I want to be a porn podcaster, that’s for sure.
It Was His Secret Life
Hillevi: I know, am blessed that I returned to college. It is wonderful because while I loved the theater, I also became very fascinated with technology and media history. That began to open my eyes to a whole another realm of what we were doing.
The history of media and what it was doing to form our culture. Not in a good way, you know, in a very, very bad way. So, when everything came out with my husband, who by the way, helped put me through school. It thrilled him. He’d already been through college, so he knew I wanted to do it.
When everything came out about his infidelity, I guess I was prepared in many ways in that I saw what the music industry. The theater industry, the film industry, all of what it was doing and creating in our society. I just thought he was above that. I truly thought he wouldn’t have that kind of porn attitude, that he did, but it was his secret life.
Anne: And you discovered that in 2013?
Discovering Her Husband’s Infidelity
Hillevi: Yes. Yeah. When we moved here, he works out of our home, and I was really excited to work for Apple for a while. So I’m kind of an Apple guru. He got an Apple computer and I became his techie. Never in a million years thought he was going into porn.
He was involved with that before we were married when he was in the band. I had no idea because he knew how I hated it. So, it absolutely shocked me when I was doing some cleanup work on his computer. To all of a sudden pull out the preferences and find out that he had passwords for porn sites. Discovering his infidelity was a real wake-up call.
Aftermath Of Discovering Infidelity
At this point, you find out about his porn use. You begin, would we say decades of terrible counseling, or maybe just one decade of terrible counseling? You talk about the horror stories of trying to navigate through the “sex addiction” “pornography addiction” recovery world without the context of abuse. Why that was so damaging to you and also to your husband.
Hillevi: When you find these things out, that your husband is looking at porn and visiting prostitutes. You take a lot of turns. Infidelity is so heartbreaking. The first one you do is try desperately to find help. I was very fortunate, initially in that I went to my church, and my counseling pastor there said, oh, well, this is horrible.
We want to pay for you to get the kind of counseling you need. The woman he sent me to, we had sung together in the worship team, so I knew her, and I knew she wasn’t a crazy. I knew when I walked into her office and started crying like crazy, she was a comfort, she was a delight, she was helpful.
She helped direct me in great ways, but they paid for about six weeks of counseling right at the beginning. Through those six weeks, my husband hadn’t yet confessed everything. He had that lovely attribute of wanting to do the drip, drip, drip, we all know what that is.
“Drip” Confessions Of Infidelity
Anne: For listeners who might not know what that is, although I think everyone does, it’s where they just tell a part of the truth in a drip fashion. So, you’re just getting a little bit of the truth every once in a while.
Hillevi: Absolutely. When his infidelity came out, a lot of things happened in succession. He ended up in a one-week hold psychological evaluation because he said he was going to kill himself. They sent him there. And of course, he wasn’t really, he was just trying to get out of everything. He didn’t tell the truth the whole time he was there, but they did recommend a counselor.
The counselor asked to speak with me. He told me my husband was a lying SOB who was still hiding a bunch of stuff. This is a Christian counselor, so it was a lot for him to say that. So, on my way home from that, I said hey, we’re going to get a polygraph test, and he started backpedaling.
They don’t work, they’re not allowed in court. The usual excuses. And that’s when I knew that he hadn’t told me everything, but he wanted to leave that particular counselor.
Anne: Because that counselor was on to him, right, so he wanted a new one?
Hillevi: Oh yeah.
Victim Blaming Through Counseling
Hillevi: We went to another counselor for a very short period of time who immediately wanted to delve into his history, his family, and all of that blah blah blah blah blah. But he’s the kid that grew up with great parents. His mom warned me that Darry was a very selfish person, and she was very disappointed in his selfishness as an adult, but she was so glad that he married me.
Okay, so that counselor, I walked away from. Eventually, it landed us at Heart to Heart Counseling Center in Colorado Springs. For those of you who don’t know, that’s where Dr. Doug Weiss is in Colorado Springs, and we went to one of the counselors there who, how shall I say this, he started the same things all over again.
Well, it must be something connected to his past, his parents, and all that, and it wasn’t. He had said to me point blank, it’s because he’s selfish. It was because he had prostitutes and porn on the road when he was a traveling musician before he became a Christian. One day he just decided, I’m going to go in Sex World in Minnesota, that was a strip club type of thing, and got back into it.
He eventually had to come to grips with the fact that now I knew there were a series of prostitutes and everything. And so, he started going to a 12-step at Dr. Weiss’s facility, and things were coming up that I didn’t like, things that didn’t seem, how shall I say this, humbling. It was well, we need to have sex right away. Right after infidelity.
Anne: This was coming from a therapist there?
When 12-Step Harms Victims
Hillevi: Yes. Yeah. He had found that they were balancing the need to get right back into having sex again. I went to one 12-step group myself where they told me that I should not control his recovery. I am not entitled to the pain of being rejected.
Anne: What? Whoa, whoa, whoa. You are not entitled to feel the pain of infidelity?
Hillevi: Yeah.
Anne: Wow.
Hillevi: That’s an actual quote, and I needed to stop expressing my anger to my spouse. That we needed to make a sex chart, it was kind of a calendar, where we would decide who was going to lead sex every night of the week.
He Had To Take Responsibility For His Infidelity
Hillevi: It wasn’t so subtle. Extreme victim blaming. Then we started comparing notes on some things that were said. I tried to look at it in the light of what God says a relationship is. He started to listen. He still hadn’t confessed everything yet.
When he would be dismissive of something I would just stop him, and I say why are you dismissing my feelings? You were saying what you did doesn’t have an effect on me? He started to see how much he hurt me. My health deteriorated, and he had to take responsibility for me having a hysterectomy. For me passing out and hitting my head and suddenly having to get surgery with little holes drilled in my head. I had a subdural hematoma from the shock that he was dumping on me every time he’d make a confession.
So, these are big things that he had to find out, and he realized the counseling that he was getting wasn’t working at all. We eventually did find a counselor who anytime I would say something he would look at Darry and say, are you listening, are you listening, you’re the cause of this.
This Is All You
This is not her. This is all you, and he woke up a little. But until he really got to that point where he could hear what he was doing without making an excuse. When he could own the things that he had done without saying the word but I.
That’s when he started humbling himself truly, I will be honest there, but it’s not saying he immediately changed. It took years to get down the road. He said to me, I want to spend the rest of my life making this up to you. I want to do everything I can to show you that I love you and I’m willing to sacrifice for you, and that meant not making excuses, that meant learning how to tell the truth. He truly wanted to make his infidelity up to me.
One thing I’ve heard you say, and guests on the podcast say, it seems like telling the truth is the last thing to heal. Right after, you know, The Ten Commandments. The seventh is you shall not commit adultery, the eighth is thou shalt not steal, and the ninth is don’t lie, and they all work in there.
He was stealing from me in the sense that he was taking our marriage and his infidelity had made it into something it wasn’t. It was not an open marriage. You can’t be married with three or four people in a marriage. I think that’s the most important thing when we as women turn around and look and we want to stay in the marriage.
Honesty & Transparency Are Essential In Marriage
We can only stay in the marriage if the husband is willing to lay down his life before God and acknowledge everything that he has done to you, to your children. To those around who looked at him, respected him. It had to be open, and that meant, everybody knew what was going on.
Anne: The stories that you’re telling, about bad therapy, where they’re basically enabling the abuser and further harming the victim. Is that what you’re seeing?
Hillevi: Oh yeah. He did that with a couple of them along the way, but the only thing that really matters is that true transparency. This is why I couldn’t understand, I mean there were a bunch of other therapists we try one or two times, but they would not want me in the room to validate, you know, what he was saying. And how can you listen to just one side in this. When they’ve openly said yes, I’m a liar, admitted infidelity. I’m seeing women on the side, but that therapist believes everything he says?
Anne: Right.
Hillevi: Over anything else?
Anne: Absolutely not. We have found that even in the DV, which is domestic violence, a lot of people believe that the victim lies and that the perpetrator is telling the truth. Like well, this is the first time he’s done this, you know, that kind of thing. You’re like no, this has been happening for years. It’s just the first time she found out about it.
C.S. Lewis’s Work
Anne: I’m so happy to talk about C.S. Lewis. My son just read all The Chronicles of Narnia. How C.S. Lewis Helped Hillevi
Hillevi: I’ve loved C.S. Lewis since I was a little girl, and read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Someone gave it to me because my mother had just died of leukemia, and I was nine years old. I spent a lot of that first year after her death inside my closet, just hoping that I could get out into Narnia. C.S. Lewis’s work became so important to me.
In high school, I read The Screwtape Letters. Which for those of you who aren’t familiar with The Screwtape Letters. It’s a series of letters that really list very thoroughly, all the methods of temptation that the devil tries to lead us into and different techniques to rag our souls, our spirits away from the one true God.
Understanding The Different Types of Love
So, he talks about the way media has drugged men into looking at the ideal woman and he goes through the different time periods of how she dresses, how she looks, how she carries herself, but perceive the woman always as an object, and it was so eye-opening to me.
I really, really encouraged people to read C.S. Lewis’s Four Loves. When he talks about love, in the book he talks about storge, which is the affection, the appreciation of a person. It’s kind of the love from parent to child, it’s a humble love. Philia love, where we get the City Philadelphia, it’s the brotherly love, it is the friendship love.
“So Many Of Them Are Incapable Of Affection”
Anne: Before you move on, it strikes me that with sex addicts are incapable of even just the affection part, that basic type of love that you talked about. Like, step one, that so many of them are just even incapable of affection.
Hillevi: You’re right. You notice his first quote that I gave talks about you can selfishly wrap yourself up, and not even feel, but you’ll never experience love. And sex addicts don’t experience love. What they think they’re experiencing is eros, which we all know we all hear the words eros, oh yeah, that’s sexual love.
That sexual desire, but it isn’t. It’s an intimacy, a romantic love. A sexual desire without eros wants it, it wants just sex, right, the act of sex. Sex as the verb, but what eros really is, is eros, desires one being, the beloved. That’s what eros is.
What Is “Agape”?
It’s so misinterpreted. It isn’t just hey, I’ve got a great feeling, you know, scratch my itch and move on. That’s what we say today, that’s what we’re told love is, and it isn’t. You’ve heard the word of agape, right? That’s the Greek word, but that is the final of the four loves.
That is the divine selfless love, the giving love, and we think of that as Christ and his giving himself for us. That’s what we look at, but it is also the love that is described in Ephesians 5. When a husband must love his wife, that agape, and lay his life down for her, that’s what true love is.
It’s not something that comes naturally. It is something that is learned because you begin with storge, I mean to the affection, the philia, the friendship, and the agape is something we hope happens throughout life, that we lay down our lives for one another. That’s why when we see love on television or in a movie or read in a book, and the emphasis seems to be just on the sexual relationship, it is the most misguided use of the word love.
Using Art To Process Infidelity
Anne: I love talking with women who have been in trauma who have used art and literature, and you know theater in your case, in my case I garden a lot, or different modes of processing to help us move through the trauma. It also helps give us these epiphanies or these new things to learn and gives us a way to have that post-traumatic growth.
To grow through the experience. We can come out the other side better people and more knowledgeable and have more depth to us as a result of the infidelity.
Hillevi: The arts reveal ourselves. I mean, there are people who I think are misguided that say, “Well, we should show everything as an art, the good, the bad, the very bad, the obscene. I remember doing Oliver once, and I sat down with my students and we talked about the character Nancy and Oliver, and how she was a very sad and abused character, Bill Psyches beats her.
Anne: Isn’t she the one that sings As Long as He Needs Me? Everyone should listen to that and realize we’ve all been Nancy.
It’s Really Important That Every Woman Can Tell Her Story
Hillevi: Yeah. I played Nancy, yes, with a drummer, that first drummer I talked about. Yeah, he was in the pit orchestra, and I was playing Nancy. I talked with the kids about the abuse because we were going to have to act it out. We’re working with high school kids or middle school kids, and they have to act out this abuse that happens to her.
I always like to have a percentage of our profits of our shows go to some cause, some organization, and my kids 100% on their own said we want our profits to go to a battered women’s shelter, and my heart just sang because they understood. They understood that this was not right.
The actress that played Nancy in my school production was phenomenal. She has gone on to fight civil rights causes now. I absolutely am so proud of her for that. You know, we use art to teach. I mean what we do right here in our conversation, is the art of conversation, and it’s the art of storytelling. And it’s really important that every woman can tell her story.
Anne: And that’s what this podcast is for. That any woman with a story of abuse, of betrayal, who wants to come and share is welcome here. And that is what makes this podcast so amazing, I think, is that the stories are all very different. The details are different, but the patterns are the same and so as we hear story after story after story, we can start seeing these very clear patterns of abuse and what it looks like and that helps us make better decisions in our own lives.
BTR Helps Women Find Community
Hillevi: The women whose husbands are not going to be open and vulnerable and generous, generous with everything. If he wants to hold back money from you and not take care of you, that love that we just spoke about, that giving love, that’s not there.
So, you go through these years of abuse, these years of psychological fog we’ll call it, and then you go through years of bad therapy, and then you have a good therapist, which is awesome, and then you find Betrayal Trauma Recovery. Can you talk about how you found BTR?
Hillevi: Oh yes, sister. We were still in our yucky stage at that time. I was looking for anyone who truly understood what the abuse was, the pain I was feeling. Your tears transcended into my heart because I cried with you while I was driving. I was identifying with you.
To find you though, I was looking up every single podcast I could find that had to do with marriage, betrayal, and infidelity and there were a lot of them and there were a lot of bad podcasts. I had a 45-minute drive through the mountains and the beautiful Rocky Mountain forests to work, to teach, and 45 minutes coming home. And so, I would download my podcasts every single day and I went through so many really bad teachings.
Philia Love Means Understanding & Compassion
Anne: From other podcasts?
Hillevi: Yes, one guy that kept telling women how important it was that their body was. You know, their body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and is to be glorified by their husband. Oh well, you know, all the bad things that are out there, but there was nobody being vulnerable, and you were vulnerable.
I came upon you, and I remember just hearing you cry and crying along with you, and the vulnerability of the walks that you had. The one in particular that tore my heart out, was your trip to Disneyland.
Anne: Was it Legoland?
Hillevi: Maybe it was Legoland, but you’d had a big fight in the car outside.
Anne: Yeah. So, it was Legoland. This was after the fact. He wrote this letter telling me he was so sorry about the day he was irritable at Legoland, on July 3, 2015. Like this specific day, right, and that was all he was saying sorry for and sent me $300. Is that the one?
Hillevi: Yeah, yeah. That’s the one. Oh, I just wish I could have called you. Here’s another $300. What an absolute jerk. I’m sorry, you know I hate to keep jumping back to C.S. Lewis, but that philia love. What, you too? I thought I was the only one, right. I felt a friendship right there.
Victims Of Infidelity Deserve Love
You were being vulnerable and allowing yourself to share things that were happening in your life, and trying to find some sort of peace, trying to figure out where your life was going.
I was in that same space. Where am I going, what am I doing, how am I going to make it through tomorrow when I’ve got to go home tonight? I think the key was hearing the words, betrayal trauma, I had’t heard infidelity described that way. Then the word recovery because that’s what I was seeking. Betrayal trauma recovery. It became listening to you over and over every day.
Anne: Well, I’m so honored and so grateful. That I was the one that stuck with you because I felt like I’m just podcasting into the abyss. I didn’t know if anyone was listening, or if I even made sense, and you know, even now.
I have this sense that I have interviewed so many people and read so many books and, you know if I could get a Ph.D. in abuse. Essentially, you know, I have all this education now that I didn’t have before through this podcast. It has given me the motivation and the means to do that and interview all these incredible people.
I still don’t know what I don’t know. You know, I’m still on this journey. That for me is still a vulnerable place to be. I’m still podcasting, in real-time. I’m still saying, “Help me.”
Recovery From Infidelity Is A Process
Recently, some things have come to my attention that were huge that I didn’t know before about legal things and custody things There’s so much to process and to understand and to visualize and to, you know, put into infographics that we post on all the social media and stuff like that.
You can only really understand it when you’re living with it every day. It’s not the kind of thing that you can just go to a couple of classes and then say, oh, I know all about this trauma thing. I know everything that a victim will probably experience.
Because it takes years to gather up all this information and all the experience and face all the problems and having to problem solve this. Again, that’s why I’m so grateful that it’s a community because I hear what’s going on, and then I’m like, oh, you know, women are having trouble about boundaries, how can we teach this in a way that helps make sense of it.
That’s why I made The Living Free Workshop. I just don’t think that you can anticipate all of the problems a victim is going to face unless you’re actually a victim, actually going through it.
Hillevi: Absolutely, and each day is another step. If you listen to your beginning podcast where you started out and listen to where you are now, there are all sorts of steps we go through. The thing that disappoints me the most, not about your podcast, is that it seems like so few men really get it.
Your Own Husband Has Turned Into Someone Who is Harming You
Anne: I want to say here that for every man who does not understand this, for every man who chooses to defend himself rather than repent, rather than change his behavior. You have a woman and children being abused. This isn’t just a scenario where, oh, it’s too bad for him because he doesn’t get it.
This is a scenario where women, even if they’re divorced, are continually exposed to someone who is emotionally and psychologically dangerous for them, who harms them. It’s way more serious than just, oh, he doesn’t get it, or she wants me to change and I’m not changing, because the results are suffering.
Serious suffering throughout the world, at the hands of someone who should be really genuinely caring and protecting you. Your own husband who has turned into someone who is harming you frequently.
Infidelity Seriously Harms Victims
Anne: What I would like men to understand is that your refusal to repent is continuing to harm your wife and children or your ex-wife and your children.
Hillevi: Adultery is mentioned 52 times in the Bible, not including the 10 Commandments. The only sins that are spoken of more than adultery are pride, self-righteousness, murder, and placing other gods in front of the one true God. That’s it.
Adultery is right there on those top four. And interestingly enough, putting the God of self or idolatry is what leads to infidelity. And self-righteousness or pride also leads to infidelity. For some reason, there are writers out there in the recovery for men area that seem to think that the problems will be solved, that I still need sex, sex is a need, and they’ve just made an idol out of sex, and they don’t get it.
And their selfish righteousness, I’m going to be sexually successful. I think you and I both know who I’m talking about with that. It’s about humbling yourself, because everything else that you do is sheer torture to your wife, to your family, and to those who love you enough to tell you the truth.
Anne: Their actions are torturing their wife and children or their ex-wife and their children. And another word that I like in this sense is, women are being haunted by the decisions of the men in their lives. They cannot escape the negative consequences of that abuse on a long-term basis.
How Does Infidelity Affect Victims?
They’re trying to, they’re doing the best they can, but the consequences for women in this situation are pretty dire. We do our best to combat it and to live, you know, a peaceful life on our own . This is why God made these commandments in the first place. The consequences of infidelity are really, really bad to the victims.
I don’t think that the abusers feel the consequences that much. If they did, they’d probably stop. Because the consequences to them aren’t really that big of a deal. You know, why is she so freaked out about it. What’s her deal?
Hillevi: You hit the nail on the head. The initial conversation, I remember I was having with Darry at the very beginning, it was just sex. I just wanted different sex, it’s no big deal. It was just sex. Now, this is coming from a guy who’s been in church and on a worship team and knows all those commandments. He knows what the Word of God has to say about sexual purity.
It was like sex was nothing, and infidelity had no consequences on my heart. The idea of two becoming one, that intimate weaving of our flesh, of our spirits, of our minds. It was like, that was all out the window. At some point, his heart was so hardened, that he could look me in the eyes and say, but it was just sex. WOW!
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Anne: Hillevi, it has been amazing to spend this time with you. Like you said, just talking to my friend. We’ve been friends from afar but definitely kindred spirits, which is why I use the name Anne Blythe. So, thank you so much for coming on these episodes.
Hillevi: Thank you so much for asking me to be here and be a part of this wonderful ministry that you have.
Anne: If this podcast is helpful to you, please support it. Until next week, stay safe out there.
Cultural pressure to violence, hedonism, consumerism, chauvinism, disrespect, easy access to porn, unhealed childhood trauma, lack of boundaries and purpose and integrity all contribute to family or marital challenges. These stories help victims process details for more defined healing.