Every Tuesday we’ll be posting an article about restoring and strengthening marriages that have been damaged by sexual sin. Hope it helps.
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A Banquet Defiled
Several years ago, while teaching a marriage retreat seminar, I was taught an indelible lesson by one of the attending wives.
We’d split the men and women up for a few sessions, and I was leading a group discussion with the wives about betrayal. Most of them had spouses who’d committed adultery, so they carried and expressed every variety of wounding. Midway through, one of them said, “Words fail me. Can I draw my feelings?” At which point the others asked if they could do the same, so each withdrew to a quiet place with pencil and sketch paper, returning 30 minutes later to share the results.
As always, a thousand words couldn’t compete with a picture, one in particular. The wife had drawn a table that had been set with obvious care: elegant china, crystal glasses, a large turkey, vegetables, salad, the works. But what was prepared had been brutally discarded, thrown down and smashed into piles and glass shards strewn about the floor. Even the lace tablecloth was desecrated, smeared with the spilled food and hanging obscenely, half on the floor, half on the table, tattered and ruined.
In the middle, where the meal had first been laid out, stood a soda bottle and candy bar. Whoever had rejected the feast had opted for junk food, brushing aside something prepared with loving effort, dining instead on sugary trash.
That’s when I cried.
Men are often accused of being clueless as to what a woman feels, a charge we can hardly defend ourselves against, the evidence being so obvious. Nor do I think we’re required – men or women – to fully grasp the inner emotional workings of the other sex. But that day I felt a smidgen of the devastation a woman’s heart goes through when her man rejects the gift she’s so lovingly prepared, pledged to him alone, and wants him to have and enjoy. For her feast to be passed over for someone else’s gas station snack is crushing in ways only images can convey – beauty thrown over for junk; wholesome joy discarded for cheap thrills.
That’s a point husbands involved in sexual sin often miss. It’s not just that they’ve done a bad thing; they’ve also scorned a good thing, making adulterous behavior an especially cruel sin. The married man who gets drunk, gambles recklessly or flakes off on the job is wrong, but his actions are a rejection of his own responsibility, not his wife’s loving gift. But when the philanderer trespasses he not only tells his wife I want this. He also adds, and I choose it over you.
Ask him, and he’ll tell you something different. He’ll say, sincerely, that he loves his wife, had no intention of hurting her, but in a moment of weakness, he caved. And to a point I’d believe him. After all, over 25 years of working with such men, I’ve not met one who was indifferent to his wife.
Most, in fact, cared for their partners, viewing their own sin as a bad habit, not a callous dismissal of their spouse. But the fact remains the table had been set, the meal carefully planned and prepped, the fine china on display, all of it brushed aside for junk food. And if that isn’t an overt rejection, what is?
My hope, having seen the sketch on paper and in the faces of anguished wives, is that husbands honor the feast their women offer, appreciating the value of a healthy meal over fast food trivials, and considering what it’s like to offer your most intimate self only to have the recipient say, “No, not good enough. Next!”
That’s a pain we can all imagine and, I’m sure, avoid.
Comments
Barb Ribbens | Mar 6, 2012
Wow! That image fits so well how I felt, total utter senseless rejection. "How could you give up this for that?" Sadly he still doesn't get it. I doubt he ever will. Fortunately God led me out of that into a new marriage with a man who relishes the banquet and appreciates the intimacy! Thank you God for redeeming even that devastation and to enable me to care again and work to craft a new banquet table!!
Katie | Mar 8, 2012
This describes exactly how I feel. I have been having trouble figuring out how to explain it to my husband how I feel about his use of porn. I have told him how hurt and angry it makes me, that I feel like he has an affair each time he looks at it. I in counseling and a support group for me, but he refuses. I believe my marriage can be restored, I have seen it in other couples who struggle with this type of thing, but it is hard to believe right now. Thank you for posting this.
Jennifer | Mar 11, 2012
I definitely agree with this. I gave all of myself to a man who told me he wanted to marry me. Not just my body, but my love, my devotion, my weaknesses and fears - everything I had in me to offer another human. I stayed with him through periods of neglect, even periods of emotional abuse, because I didn't know what to do anymore besides to love him. He left me abruptly, and it came out he had been cheating on me almost since the beginning. He had my complete devotion, and from what I heard from his former friends, he was cheating with girls who were not in any way desirable. They weren't smarter or kinder or even prettier than me. They were just there. He rejected the totality of myself for cheap trash, all while claiming to love me.
After one of his affairs, he raped me. I was unable to admit it to myself until recently, but he had cheapened me beyond the level of thrown aside trash. Despite my pleas with him to stop, he continued, as if I was nothing more than an object with no feelings, put there solely for his pleasure. The worst part about the rape was that he continued claiming to love me after it, as if the ultimate disrespect of cheating and the degradation would somehow be erased. I don't know if cheating coarsens enough men to view forcing their wives, fiancees, and lovers into sex as acceptable, but treating all women as objects for a man's pleasure certainly doesn't help.
A Young Guy | Mar 14, 2012
I am a young adult male not currently in a relationship - more specifically I have had very little relationship experience myself, and especially I have not been married.
That being said, I am a listener and watcher. I learn second hand instead of making my mistakes on my own, I learn from others. One of my parents had been married prior to the marriage that bore me and he had remained faithful, but the marriage was a bad one. I have seen other marriages crumble - in my church, from coworkers, friends and friends of friends. It's something I always watch and listen to closely to see what I can learn to prevent making the same mistake.
One thing this article leaves out, as well as the comments, is the element of responsibility the women should bare for this kind of problem. People today don't like to take responsibility for their choices, especially not ones that are so close to the essence of who we are and requires so much vulnerability as love. But the men aren't the only ones to blame. Yes, they are making a bad and irresponsible choice and in many ways irrevocably harming the woman they are in a relationship with, but what is the woman doing to drive him away? Is she nagging? Is she withholding physical intimacy? Did she marry a man that she expected to change into someone else instead of accepting him for who he is? Is she herself dishonest about something in the relationship - be it finances, emotional affairs, or what have you? Is she having an emotional affair?
These are all examples of things I have seen women do but not take responsibility for. Regardless of these things, they are not to be taken as excuses for the man to do something else equally wrong in turn, but rather for the woman to examine and see if perhaps she is pushing the man away, causing him to look to fill the void she has created in his life. Men are not invincible and emotionless.
For the women that are truly victims of situations like this, I feel for them. The men that perpetrate such emotional crimes are awful people, and many.
Joe Dallas | Mar 14, 2012
Good points, and in an earlier post we did talk about wrongdoing on a wife's part, and how often it gets overlooked in all of this. (See here: http://joedallas.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/21/note-doghouse-honey-mouth/#comments) Thanks for your input.
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