“My wife was sexually abused as a child.” If you’ve made that statement, or if you could make that statement, then you have likely also asked numerous “when” questions. When will my wife get over her depression? When will she start trusting me? When will her nightmares stop? When will she not always feel like hiding? When will we have…
In the current issue of Time, editorialist Laurie Penny identified questions that many people are prone to ask in response to the recent #MeToo trend; the declaration of being a victim of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, or sexual harassment. Could this [referring to childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sexual harassment] really have been happening to so many women…
Thousands of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted were emboldened last week. On Monday, a Huffington Post entry communicated that the “#MeToo quickly became the top trending Twitter hashtag” as sexually abused and assaulted women were emboldened to inform the world that they too had been affected by this blight. According to…
Childhood sexual abuse produces effects on the survivor and poses affects for the spouse, husband in my case, of the survivor. For students and writers, the difference between affect and effect is grammatically important. For husbands whose wives are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, the difference between the two is relationally important. Bear with me for a really quick grammar…
One of the most challenging things for a husband whose wife is the survivor of childhood sexual abuse is to forgive his wife’s perpetrator(s). It seems scandalous and ludicrous. How can the husband of a childhood sexual abuse survivor possibly follow the biblical command to, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form…
In my last blog, I wrote about the Distorted Perceptions inflicted upon the survivor of childhood sexual abuse. The family of the survivor, on the other hand, often adopts Selective Perceptions. With our selective perceptions, we interpret information in a way that is congruent with our existing beliefs. For example, most people who voted for Trump view his first 100…
Childhood sexual abuse inflicts and imprints a distorted lens through which the survivor interprets – or misinterprets – life. The distortion affects the survivor’s perception of life, God, men, themselves, sexuality, etc. It is difficult to identify an aspect of human life not affected by this imprint. That is not to say that all survivors have a distorted perception of…
I wonder how many of us husbands were raised by non-communicative fathers? Kyle, a friend of mine, and I were having lunch the other day at Applebee’s. His dad is experiencing aging issues that include some behavioral changes, some expected and some not so expected. Kyle said that his dad has started talking about his feelings – that’s an unexpected change.…
Caleb stood in the hallway and poked his head into the room, enough to see in but not enough to be easily seen. He was deciding whether to attend my breakout session at a men’s conference or the breakout session on pornography – how men are enticed into it and neurologically affected by it. My breakout session focused on helping…
Tina Zahn experienced dissociative moments common to many survivors of childhood sexual abuse. In her book, Why I Jumped, Tina described how her stepfather ordered her to their dark and dingy basement. She recalled how she hated her stepfather’s breathing, being held down by him, and the smells that emitted from him. As her stepfather went through his abusive ritual,…