A Story Of Grace and Restoration: Pain (Part 1)
March 1, 2019
by Jennifer Moodie
I rolled over in bed and silently sobbed into my pillow. My husband of only a few hours was blissfully asleep on the other side of the large king sized bed. My body ached and I felt like I had come down with the flu. I was feeling so many emotions and none of them were good.
It was my wedding night. It was supposed to be one of the best nights of my life. I had waited for this night for so many years. I had dreamed of this day since I was a little girl. My wedding day. But it turned out to be nothing like I had hoped or dreamed. My heart was shattered and I was glad we had a king bed that allowed for me to not have to have physical contact with the man to whom I had just vowed to spend the rest of my life.
So many things had gone wrong leading up to this day. First off, this was not the night I had lost my virginity. That had happened months ago. When my parents found out, we were told we had to get married and asap. Never mind that I had been kicked out of my family for 'leaving the umbrella of protection' by moving out at the age of 21. Never mind that during wedding planning I knew I was making a mistake and didn't want to go through with it. But I truly thought I didn't have a choice. I thought that because I had lost the only thing of value about me -my virginity- that the man to whom I had lost it was the only one who would want me. No one else would want a 'used' woman. I was told I didn't deserve a wedding. I wasn't allowed to wear white. My wedding was a day of shame for my family as well as a sort of relief to know that at least I got married.
So despite the fact that I had tried to break up with my fiancé after he controlled every. tiny. detail of the wedding planning, including picking out my dress without me, telling me how to wear my hair, and picking out my jewelry, I felt trapped. See, I had been taught that my worth was in my virginity. My purity. And because I had had premarital sex- which I am not proud of and affirm that it was sin- I had become unworthy of anyone else. No one of integrity would want me now. Only womanizing men who would use and discard me as I deserved would want a used up hussy like me.
And so as I lay sobbing and heartbroken on my bed on my wedding night, I thought that this was simply God punishing me; I deserved this pain. My new husband had ignored me while watching the CMT channel, making derogatory comments about me while watching the half naked women dance. "THAT is how you should act. See that look in her eye? THAT is sexy. This is how you need to act. Wow I really like blondes. Her legs are so long..." He had not been tender and loving as I had dreamed my new husband would be on our wedding night, but had been selfish and rude. And we went to sleep on opposite sides of the bed.
As time went on in our married life, I saw more that bothered me. The demeaning remarks. The rude comments and then the way he ignored me when I cried or told me to go away until I was done crying and being a baby. The flippant way he said it was no big deal to watch movies with nudity in them and I shouldn't be bothered by it. I mean, "it wasn't porn, it was just boobs. What's the big deal?" Taking me to Victoria's Secret with a gift card we got for our wedding and leaving the store with perfume because he found nothing there that he thought would look good on me. Yet he pointed out the power of seduction the girls on the ads and tags had and told me to try to be more like that.
I had been sheltered from actually having any sort of a normal relationship with any male before my wedding. Male friendships had been discouraged because it was impossible to 'just be friends', and dating was prohibited because that's what the world did, and it was dangerous. So I never knew how men acted or thought, and I didn't have any reference of what was good, bad, or normal behavior in a guy or a relationship. So marriage was like culture shock. Nothing about our marriage was how I pictured a healthy, Christian marriage to be. He looked and lusted and that was 'just how guys are'. Sex was for him. We did it when he wanted, how he wanted, and if I wanted it and he didn't....well too bad for me. I needed to look and act a certain way or I wasn't desirable enough and got laughed at. "Confidence is sexy!" he would say, while making me feel insecure about myself and laughing at my attempts to be 'confident'. I spent more nights sobbing either on the bathroom floor or into my pillow than I care to remember. The pain of his rejection was more than I could bear, and I wasn't prepared for it.
See, I had believed that men wanted sex every minute of every day, and it was my job as the wife to provide that for my husband. Which I did. I was told in marriage counseling that I couldn't have a headache, because if I didn't 'do my duty', my husband would find it elsewhere. So I never said no. And I tried my best to be his fantasy. I met him at the door wearing little and being ready to go. He got angry. Said I couldn't expect him to do that. I was so scared of him going to other means of 'release' besides me, that I demeaned myself to give in to his every whim. I had been warned not to 'let myself go', and so I shaved every day, showered and did my hair and makeup every day, tried to not dress frumpy, and tried to keep from getting 'too fat'.
I read books and tried to be a better wife. I hated how I felt about how I was being treated, but through what I read and what others told me, I believed that I just needed to make sure my heart was right; make sure I was being the wife I should be; make sure that I was respecting him and submitting to him. I prayed that God would help me to see the good and not the bad, and to help me not to make him angry. I felt so strongly that this was His punishment for our premarital sex, and I deserved all of this. I had left the castle* and this was His retribution. This was justice. So I put up with him calling me fat. I took the verbal and emotional abuse. I put up with his obvious lust for and flirting with others while I tried my hardest to keep his eye on me. I did whatever I could to keep his attention on me and not "let it wander". All the while resenting him more and more for having to do that. He treated me like his toy, not like a person with feelings, desires, and needs who desperately craved not only to be loved, but cherished. Sex was for him, not 'us', and I resigned myself to just not having any expectations of him caring about me. There were good times, of course, but because he was the man and I was the woman, his needs superseded mine, and I was just to be there for him, not him for me.
I remember the feeling of my heart shattering when I found the chat rooms. Then I found out about the porn. Then the fact that he had lied to me (by omission) about his sexual past, and that he had been seeing someone else while wooing me. I recall asking him over and over why he had married me. He had made it obvious that he could have had his pick of women, but for the life of me I couldn't understand why he had married me. Except that I believed he had to. Because my dad told him he had to. Because he had taken my virginity and had therefore inherited me.
But then there was the time he told me he wished he hadn't taken my virginity; he said he wished I had dated around because "then at least you would know what the heck you're doing". All the Purity Culture teaching that had told me that men only wanted squeaky clean virgins went up in smoke in that moment. That pristine, unwrapped gift I was told he would want had been smashed under his very foot. All the times I had been told that if I just waited and only had sex with my husband, I would have a happy marriage with sweet and wonderful sex. Lies. It was all lies. Sure, we had sex before the vows were exchanged, but I had still married him. I hadn't slept around... our sin wasn't that bad because we had married each other. Everything I thought I knew about marriage and sex- which wasn't much at all- (I didn't know much until my pastor shocked me and gave us 'the talk' before our wedding using terms for body parts I didn't know I had nor did I know their purpose) had been a sham. This wasn't how my life was supposed to be. I didn't sign up for this. I wanted out, but didn't think I deserved to be happy because of my past sin. I just needed to do more... Be more... Pray more... Love him more... and give him all he wanted... not give him any reason to look elsewhere for anything. Make sure he didn't need anything but me.
In the mean time, I was dying inside. I was focused on myself and my shattered dreams. I read and re-read Debi Pearl's book, Created To Be His Helpmeet, and determined that I had just married a 'command man' and this was the way he was, and I simply had to just keep from doing anything to set him off. His actions were my responsibility. We went to church. I tried to read my Bible. I prayed. We lived the 'obvious Christian life'. I waited for God to fix my circumstances, and when He didn't, I thought either He was just mad at me and I would never regain His favor after my sin of fornication, or, that He was not a loving God but a vengeful God and I just needed to work harder to earn His love. I lived for the moments when my husband was kind and loving, and even though he was verbally unkind and harsh, I believed he loved me, and I didn't want to lose him.
But as the years passed, that feeling lessened and I just wanted out. I selfishly wanted to be with someone who really appreciated me for me; appreciated the kind of wife I was trying to be. I wanted to have an affair, but didn't want to hurt my family with that scandal.
So, when my husband had a suggestion that seemed to benefit us both, I was all ears...
*I couldn't find any websites to link to this book besides Amazon and it didn't give a clear description. So I will try to briefly explain what I was referencing to here. The book, Stay in the Castle, was a book about a princess who was told to stay in the castle and her prince would come to her in the right time. Her father, the king, told her stories of this prince. She got tired of waiting and went into the village after being 'seduced' into leaving by a delivery man who came to the castle. She ended up with a man who didn't treat her right and he left her pregnant and alone while he partied. One day she looked up out her window to see the prince come to the castle for her and watched her father tell him she wasn't there. The prince looked out into the village and their eyes met, and as she saw the sadness in his eyes, she knew what she had given up by getting ahead of God's will. She had traded God's best, His will, for His second best, her will. Here is a video of it being read just so you know I'm not making it up. Skip to 2:45 to get to the actual reading.
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