I Married a Christian Porn Addict: 123 Days of Fighting Back

By E.M. Merritt

Christians have always known that pornography violates the teaching of Jesus not to look at someone with lust. But now even secular sex experts are waking up to the reality that rather than enhancing marriages, porn is destroying marriages. Young men on YouTube are confessing that they don’t want to be porn addicts anymore. They want to be able to perform when they’re with a real woman and porn has undermined that.

This book isn’t written by a porn expert. It’s not written by a therapist, a counsellor or a pastor. This book is written by a theology major. This is the story of a Christian marriage that was put to the test and eventually destroyed by porn. And it is the story of spiritual abuse. Rather than admit that he was going against his Christian faith, Martin (not his real name), a lifelong Christian and father of five, used scriptures to justify his addiction and to abuse his wife.

This is also the story of a jealous God who wanted Martin’s wife to know, this isn’t Me! This is something wicked! The same is true is if you have been abused by a priest, a pastor or any trusted person who God set up to be responsible for taking care of you, not for abusing you or taking advantage of you.

God wants to talk to you. This book by a victim of domestic abuse may be your first step in hearing his personal words to you. Through a life of seemingly random events, including an unexpected trip to the Holy Land, Elsie Merritt learned that prayer can be a two-way conversation.

Let Elsie’s story draw you into the greatest love story ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Nov 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781489726445

Book preview

Day 1      75497.png

Enough!

I’m starting at the end.

One day, quite unexpectedly, I was in the kitchen when I heard an interior voice say, Enough! I even had the sense that a mighty being had slightly stood from his throne as he had pronounced this one word directly to me. I knew with certainty at that moment that my marriage was over. I just didn’t tell Martin. In fact, for a couple of years, I just carried on as usual. Silly me.

I was afraid of divorce. I was afraid because I didn’t have any money to get out on my own. (In addition to pointing out the obvious fact that there is such a thing as alimony, Kanna showed me that I should make decisions based on God’s will, not on money. When I needed the money, the money would be provided.)

What happened that day was dramatic- and surely it represented some kind of change in an unseen world- however, despite that, nothing changed outwardly.

But, of course, nothing of any great spiritual significance had seemed to happen back when I was 26 and had decided that I was going to marry Martin.

Would you believe that back when I met Martin, I had never asked God whether or not he wanted me to marry him? I had never asked because I simply didn’t care. I was going to marry Martin whether or not God wanted me to. And God let me. No tsunami stopped me. (Although I do recall that before the service started, a fire alarm went off and we all had to go stand outside and wait until it was determined that the building wasn’t on fire.) So God had let it run its course.

WORDS OF LOVE: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

(Galatians 1:3-5)

FIGHTING BACK: What word is God speaking to me today? Does the word comfort me or terrify me? Why?

Day 2      75497.png

I’m sick of being abused.

One of the first things that came about after hearing that word, Enough! was the awareness that Kanna himself was being abused in the bedroom. I found that he was not just with me, he was actually doing the sexual acts that Martin insisted I perform.

Kanna was allowing himself to be humiliated along with me.

On one occasion, I tried to point out to Martin that what was happening in our bedroom could be witnessed by God and all the heavenly host. But Martin outright said that God wasn’t in our bedroom.

But I knew he was. I also knew there were angels. Later, I learned that there had probably been demons as well. A lot of Christian teachers believe that pornography and masturbation (and Martin masturbated regularly, usually when he thought I was asleep) are entry points for demonic activity.

Why does it even matter though? Why not include pornography and masturbation in a marriage?

Kanna told me that people in the Church don’t go to hell because they don’t pray enough or because they enjoy a particular television show. They go to hell because they refuse to be Jesus to those around them.

Why would anyone not want to be Jesus to others? For the simple reason that it interferes with their own desires. And pornography and masturbation are all about our own desires. (And women can fall into the same damning sin when they want their men to look and act like something on the cover of a romance novel.)

When I finally did leave Martin, Kanna warned me to never go back. I’m sick of being abused, he told me.

WORDS OF LOVE: By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me - a prayer to the God of my life.

(Psalm 42:8)

FIGHTING BACK: Am I being abused? Is my abuser becoming a better or a worse person for what he is doing to me? How can I help my abuser become the person he was meant to be?

Day 3      75497.png

Love him but don’t trust him.

Love your enemies, Jesus said in Matthew 5:44. How do you love someone you want to hate? I was still going through the abuse when Jesus answered the question.

The answer came like a breath of wind. Treat Martin the way I would treat Jesus.

I had never gotten a more unwanted insight in my life.

Did I carry it out with great success? No. But it was something to aim for. Even now, I can test myself. Am I treating that person like I would treat Jesus? Of course not. If he or she were Jesus, I would fall at his or her feet and kiss them like the penitent prostitute.

But I know Jesus wasn’t asking me to worship Martin. Just to treat him with courtesy. Like a human being. Like a human being loved by God.

And I realized the genius behind it. If I could treat Martin, of all people, like a beloved child of God, then I would be free. As long as my life was made up of small acts of sabotaging Martin’s life, it would still be centred on Martin. If I could treat Martin like I would Jesus, then my life would be centred on Jesus.

Jesus had been with me through the toughest time in my life. You would think that I would have wanted to repay him by making him the centre of my life. But I actually wanted to revolve my life around making Martin’s miserable.

It was true that Martin had been the main one to destroy our marriage. But God gave me a grace - he showed me that if I had married a Godly man, I would have been the one to have destroyed the marriage. I would have done it with my selfishness. Being a victim had squashed that selfishness but it hadn’t eradicated it.

The only way I could benefit from being a victim was if I stayed humble, even after the abuse ended. (Not humiliated, but humble.) And if I learned how to forgive. But learning how to forgive meant joining Jesus up on the cross and understanding how he could ask his Father to forgive those people who had put him there.

To love Martin didn’t just mean to treat him like Jesus, it meant being Jesus when I was with him.

WORDS OF LOVE: This is my command: Love each other.

(John 15:17)

FIGHTING BACK: Love is my best defensive and offensive weapon. What can I do today to love the person who has hurt me the most? (Keep in mind, loving someone doesn’t require trusting them. Kanna told me, Love him but don’t trust him.)

Day 4      75497.png

Suffering

There was a temptation to run from suffering in general once God had alleviated my own suffering with Martin - to go out and enjoy myself to make up for all the years of misery. But instead, God invited me to share in his suffering. I can’t say it was an invitation I was delighted to receive, but how could I say no? He had shared in mine.

The life of suffering is one of choosing God’s ambitions over our own. Our own ambitions are often formed by the world and when we choose God’s ambitions over our own will and the world’s desires, it’s a form of suffering. I wanted to get my life back. I wanted to get a new hairstyle, get a new wardrobe (I had tossed out all the things that Martin had liked me in), maybe even get a new man. But Jesus came to me and I felt him give me a choice - I could have a life or I could have him. It was a real choice. I actually thought about it. And then I decided that I would have him. It took me awhile to realize that the choice had been between having a life and having Life. I still feel chagrinned that I actually had to think about it.

God shared his heart with me. Those who suffer because of the mercilessness of others are close to his heart. His own son had entered into that darkness on the last day of his life. I knew that kind of suffering from some of my nights with Martin, not as intensely as Jesus felt it, of course, but enough to know it must have been absolutely awful to have been Jesus. I could be a compassionate intercessor in prayer for all those hidden away in darkness, both literally and figuratively, prisoners of disordered desires and merciless indifference to their suffering.

Now when I encounter any kind of suffering in the news or in the lives of those around me, I say, Jesus, I share your suffering. It’s something Jesus taught me. He had accompanied me through many dark and terrible nights. It sobers me to think how much he endures accompanying other people in their journeys of pain and hopelessness.

WORDS OF LOVE: May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

(Galatians 6:14)

FIGHTING BACK: Does the cross of Jesus scare me? Terrify me, even? I won’t shrink back. By living with a porn addict, I’m already carrying sin, just like Jesus. God will use this experience to [conform me] to the image of his Son …

(Romans 8:29)

Day 5      75497.png

How to pray for your enemies

I really wanted Martin to end up in hell. One day, I overcame the feeling enough to actually pray, Have mercy on Martin and help him to be in Heaven.

I was surprised when Kanna replied to me, You really want a rapist to be welcomed into Heaven?

No, I most certainly did not.

Instead, Kanna taught me to pray that Martin would repent. (Martin holds the view that the Church is weak for not teaching about the authority men have in their homes, including over the bodies of their wives. He feels that it is a sign of lack of submission to scripture. It should come as no surprise to anyone who has encountered someone like Martin that while he firmly believes in his own authority, he believes that no one, except for God, has any authority over him. Pastors are worldly men, wolves in sheep’s clothing, making their livings off of the people they supposedly serve. Government authorities, while powerful, are corrupted and on the side of the feminists.)

Although Martin wasn’t abusive toward the children, his general attitude of I’m right and everyone else is wrong bothered them. As they got older and tried to engage him in discussions about faith or the world in general, they got more and more frustrated. His tactic for handling any discussion about faith was to repeat the same scriptures over and over and ignore any new ones that had been introduced.

With regards to the government and the world in general, he assured his children that he understood human nature and no one was to be trusted. There, his scripture was John 2:24, But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. Ironically, Martin wanted his kids to trust him.

They reached a point where they didn’t even want to see him in Heaven.

I took the matter to God. What else could I do? Secretly, I agreed with them. God shared with me the wonderful information that when we all saw Martin in Heaven, we wouldn’t even recognize him he’d be so changed.

It became almost comical as the kids and I thought ahead to the day when God would introduce us to Martin and we would say, Do we know you? You seem familiar.

My pray was that God would use an extraordinary man to speak to Martin. Martin certainly wasn’t going to listen to me or the kids since we were all under him!

WORDS OF LOVE: Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.

(1 Peter 3:8)

FIGHTING BACK: There are men in the Church committed to living Godly lives, porn-free, and they can help me and my family. If my spouse doesn’t want to admit he has an addiction, I can get advice from a man I trust- a father, a brother, a pastor. They understand the struggle to stay pure and will help me approach it in a way that will benefit both me and my spouse.

Day 6      75497.png

Your eyes are not your own

Have you been spiritually abused? If you have, your abuser twisted scriptures. An authentic interpretation of the Bible can never be used to justify abuse. For years, Martin told me that my body was not my own, paraphrasing 1 Corinthians 7:4. He used it to justify sex whenever and however he wanted it. When I protested that the rest of the passage says that his body is not his own, he told me that he was fine with me raping him. That left me speechless for years. I had no reply to that.

Many years later, when his teenage kids caught him looking at porn on his laptop, he was embarrassed, naturally. But he blamed it on their mother’s lack of submission in the bedroom. Once again, I felt shame. By this time, I had moved out of the bedroom but was still living in the same house until I could find a better place for me and my adult-sized children.

Martin still had the power to make me feel like a bad Christian, like I was the cause of his sin. It only got worse when he began explaining to the kids that in a marriage, your body is not your own and for the sake of Satan not tempting believers through their lack of self-control you weren’t supposed to withhold it from your spouse.

Your eyes weren’t your own! I burst out. It was something Kanna just gave me in the moment. Martin’s eyes weren’t his own in our marriage. They were mine and they shouldn’t have been used to look at porn.

Matthew 5:29 came to my mind. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. In my twenty years with Martin, I had never combined that with 1 Corinthians 7:4.

Rather garishly, Kanna told me, You should have gouged those eyes out. I think Kanna was making a point rather than rebuking me! But he did make his point. Martin, such a fundamentalist when it suited him, still had both of his eyes - having never practised that scripture himself.

Kanna was actually showing me something important. My cowering submission to Martin had actually prevented me from being any real help to him. The lack of eyeless Christians tells me that none of us take Matthew 5:29 literally. (It’s also repeated almost word-for-word in Matthew 18:9). But if those passages are to have any meaning, they do require some kind of action. The best thing I could have done for Martin was to have shown some spine and smashed his laptop the first time I caught him looking at online pornography. Or just taken the laptop from him.

God hadn’t given Martin the laptop so that he could look at pornography. God hadn’t given Martin eyes so that he could look at pornography. Ironically, we can’t appreciate God’s gifts until we know God first. If we don’t know God first, we will misuse his gifts.

WORDS OF LOVE: Praise awaits you, our God in Zion; to you our vows will be fulfilled.

(Psalm 65:1)

FIGHTING BACK: Do I use my eyes to serve God? Do my eyes see people the way Jesus sees people? Even if I’m not a porn addict, I can use my eyes to abuse others with looks of indifference or contempt. Let people see the love of Jesus in my eyes!

Day 7      75497.png

I won’t go back in there with you.

I moved out of the bedroom shortly after we celebrated - not exactly the most accurate word - our twentieth anniversary. But I remained in our home because I knew God had a better plan for me than to dash out and take a minimum wage job and rent an apartment for me and the four kids to squeeze into. He wanted me to leave when I had enough money for a downpayment on another house and a reasonable separation agreement.

As I applied the principle Jesus taught me - to treat Martin like I would treat him - despite that Martin was perpetually miffed, we did start start to talk to one another as human beings rather than as oppressor and oppressed.

A lot of it had to do with prayer. I was praying and fasting for peace and a supernatural peace came into our house and remained. The effect it had on me was that I started to get the feeling that maybe we could work things out in the bedroom.

However, Kanna had told me, I won’t go back in there with you. I read that in John 7:1, … Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. We don’t have to put ourselves in dangerous positions!

The thought of going back into the bedroom without Kanna was unthinkable. By now, I was so used to the presence of this friend that it would have been like giving up oxygen to go into a room without him.

Martin had spent years trying to blame his problems in the bedroom on the fact that I was unsubmissive and saying that God had given him the right to punish me in the same way that God had punished Israel for her lack of submission to him. (The fact that Israel had engaged in spiritual fornication and that I was just crappy at being an expert in certain deeply uncomfortable sexual practices frequently featured in pornography seemed to be on par with one another for Martin.)

Kanna showed me that my participation in my own abuse in the bedroom was only slowing down the work that God wanted to do with Martin.

Martin was never going to find what he was looking for in porn. And I knew this from experience. I hadn’t found what I was looking for in false comforts - overeating, overspending, binge-watching my favourite DVDs. God had made me see that I was looking for him in places that he wouldn’t meet me. He wanted Martin to learn the same thing.

WORDS OF LOVE: And Mary said, "My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

(Luke 1:46-47)

FIGHTING BACK: Am I uncomfortable with what my partner wants in the bedroom? Is it because my partner has learned about sex primarily from pornography? If so, then God is not at