Daily Excerpt: He's a Porn Addict...Now What (Overbay and Shea): The Spiritual Questions - Should I Make Him Tell Our Pastor?
from He's a Porn Addict...Now What? Should I make him tell our pastor? Tony, the mental health professional: Remembering that ultimately you can’t “make” him do anything, I feel that it is reasonable to ask him to confess to your pastor, especially if he has truly been living a “double life” with regard to the addiction. Many addicts attend church regularly, which can confuse a spouse. “How can he worship God, or teach a Sunday School class, or hold any type of church responsibility and be acting out?” These are hard questions to process for the betrayed, but to the betrayer, this has been part of the shame cycle that often keeps an addict turning back to the addiction. Many addicts tell me that when they are in church, they are trying to be “all in.” They often say that they truly do compartmentalize areas of their lives, and when it comes to church, they often desperately cling to the hope that while they are in their “spiritual compartment” they will feel some hope. Oft...