• Intentional/voluntary – Husbands, enter an accountability relationship by your own personal intention, not just at the request or insistence of your spouse.
• Purposeful – The purpose of accountability is not to catch a man violating agreed-upon behavior boundaries. The purpose is to assist in maintaining proper/agreed-upon behaviors and to assist in maintaining integrity.
• Specific and comprehensive – Men, typically we know when we are most likely to act outside of our agreed-upon behavior boundaries; when we are most at risk for actions that we will end up regretting. Successful accountability identifies specific questions to be asked that determine if personal standards of integrity are being met, if specific behaviors are being avoided. Successful accountability is also comprehensive enough to ask if there is anything else occurring that produces shame or guilt, or that a husband thinks would cause emotional pain in his spouse.
• Scheduled/repeating/random – Successful accountability isn’t a one-time event; it’s scheduled, it’s regularly repeating, and sometimes even random. Schedule your accountability to occur on some repeating basis that works for managing behavior and for scheduling busy people.
• Personal/transparent/vulnerable – Accountability requires a man to discuss very personal matters. Many men are acculturated toward privacy, avoidance, and superficiality. Choosing an accountability partner is an intentional choice to be deeply vulnerable. Further, successful accountability requires choosing someone who can effectively hear a deep level of personal vulnerability.
• Not for everybody – When an accountability relationship becomes ineffective it needs to end or simply needs to be recognized as a friendship that no longer functions as accountability. Then another relationship needs to be established that does include accountability elements.
• Hierarchical – Holding someone accountable, and speaking encouragingly about responsibility creates a sense of reporting to a higher authority. For this reason, successful accountability cannot be a man’s spouse. A committed, intimate marriage relationship is a relationship between two equals.
• Honest – Successful accountability requires a commitment to be honest with the accountability partner. A lack of honesty is disrespecting of the accountability partner’s time, effort, and commitment.
• Trusting/confidential – Submitting to accountability questions requires a relationship of trust that is committed to keeping the vulnerable information confidential.
• Motivating – Living in a context of regularly scheduled accountability questions is motivation to maintain standards of behavioral integrity.
• Foundational for informed consent – In the case of couples in recovery from some breach of fidelity, her husband’s accountability partnership can contribute to her ability to consent to efforts of healing and recovery. However, this does not mean that an accountability partner should report specifics to the wife. I recommend that at the most, accountability partners simply state to wives that they are holding the husbands accountable. It is the husband’s responsibility to be honest with his wife about breaches of agreed-upon behavior boundaries. Accountability produces increments of trust and security.These elements, when implemented and maintained over time, generally result in success. We are designed for success, let’s use what we have been given. If you want an accountability relationship that is set up for success, inquire at a local church if a staff member can aim you in the direction of someone who would be willing to fill the role. Discussing this list from the very beginning will help in making accountability successful.

Disclaimer! I am writing this blog from the perspective that the partners in this scenario are working toward connecting, resolving, rebuilding trust, and healing/forgiving and that the person who has gone outside of the agreed boundaries in sex or communication* is genuinely showing up in good faith to work through the process. I am in no way proclaiming that a betrayed partner should stay in a relationship that is continuing to be deceitful, manipulative, coercive, or abusive.

Further, let’s address * the really long but kinder way to say betrayer, cheater, liar, or two-faced %@*&^%#$!!@#$! So, please allow me a digression before we start. While I can empathize with the pain of experiencing betrayal, labeling a partner with harsh and judgemental terms will diminish the potential for a positive outcome in the relationship. So, even if in the middle of the discovery of an affair and in the proceeding days you want to call the partner who went outside the boundaries a cad. My encouragement, try not to do or say anything that you may feel shameful about later. So for this blog, and potentially future clinical work, I’ll use the term unprincipled partner or UP to describe the partner who has gone outside the boundaries. Please see my blog titled 6 Principles of Sexual Health for further clarification.

So, without further delay, let’s get into it!

Specializing in couples overcoming infidelity, I frequently encounter ideas around honesty and privacy. If any of you have ever sat in session with me or read any of my other blogs, you know I’m a stickler for detail, nuance, and careful communication. Therefore, I think it is of near paramount importance to specifically define and understand what we are talking about when it comes to the above terms and why I choose carefully how I frame relational negotiations.

It is common for a partner who has experienced some sort of infidelity to become hypervigilant about the UP’s phone, email, social media, etc., and want to know everything about what he or she is doing. Even to the point of declaring the UP has forsaken any right to privacy because of what they have done.

Hold on, let’s back up a bit. Because I think it is imperative that we understand what we are asking of the UP when there is a declaration of no more privacy and complete transparency. Let’s start by taking a close look at what I believe these words to mean.

Privacy – Being able to experience thoughts and feelings and a cognitive process that my wife is unaware of. For instance, my journal is private. I leave it on the hearth next to my chair and I can say with a fair amount of certainty that my wife has never read it. I know that I have never read hers. I’m sure there is stuff in there about me that I would rather not know about! I’m sure, as she grapples living with a red-neck Navy vet, she has had to process through some difficulties. Even going so far as to gripe about me. I know I have in mine. Gasp! The therapist has written things in his journal that he wouldn’t want his wife to read? Of course. Just like I’ve had intrusive thoughts at times that I want nobody to know. This stuff is private. That doesn’t mean that I’m hiding anything, it’s just that I may need a place to process. I don’t gripe about her and leave it there, I work through it and land on the positive. But journaling and how to go about it is a whole other topic.

Secrets – I’m going to say that a secret is something that someone is intentionally withholding from another. I had a guy tell me in 2003 that the 1981 Dodge D150 I was looking at buying off of him, only had 3 things wrong with it. That dude was withholding information as there were many secrets I had to find out about that truck!

Transparency – It is frequent that a betrayed partner will demand complete transparency after the discovery of betrayal. He or she may want to track a partner or go through the UP’s email and phone, to make sure nothing is going on. It is an understandable reaction due to the pain and the safety that is being sought in the aftermath of discovery. However, this undoes the above right to privacy. I have had betrayed partners read through the UP’s journal or workbook, much to the detriment of progress in the relationship to say nothing of the betrayed partner’s own emotional well-being. So I avoid the idea of transparency for more effective concepts.

Honesty – I avoid this term as is easily convoluted by transparency and can be manipulated by an UP.

Authenticity – This is word is music to my ears. I love authenticity! Authenticity allows both partners access to the privacy necessary to process their own inner world and show up in the relationship with genuineness. Someone can be to the letter “honest” but still trying to hide something, maybe the right question wasn’t asked in just the right way. But a person who is showing up authentically is not trying to hide anything or manipulate a relationship by carefully withholding or disseminating information. Authenticity does not mislead.

Good-Faith – This is closely related to authenticity and is the representation of it. This is when individuals in a relationship are showing without trying to hide parts of themselves or their behavior from the other. This is when partners have each other’s best interests at heart and are fully aware that intentionally misleading and withholding is a recipe for extreme pain. This is throwing off the idea that if a partner knew everything they would leave. This is accepting that in order to lead healthy principled lives partners should know the essence or who they are in relationship with. Showing up in good-faith allows for effective consent and promotes safety.

So what? Everyone has access to a dictionary, why am I writing about this? Because I think it matters how we step through the process of recovering from unprincipled behavior in a relationship. I think the language we use and the nuances of communication can be some of the big factors in a positive outcome. I know this is a lot of information and I would love to help you through any of it you need. Please feel free to reach out to us at DWA!

806-780-0003 or timwhite@dwatherapy.com

Previously, I presented Proverbs 5 as God’s design for husbands to make sense of sexual temptation in marriage, and to further discover effective antidotes to prevent empowering the sexual temptation experience.  God’s design is to empower a man’s experience of his wife, thereby disempowering the experience of sexual temptation.  A husband needs to choose to rejoice in, be satisfied by, and be captivated by his wife, exclusively.  Wives are designed to thrive in a context of knowing their husbands are making these choices.  A fourth design parameter to consider comes from 1 Peter 3:7 where we find a verse stating ‘Husbands, be considerate as you live with your wives.’

Many of us husbands would see ourselves as considerate.  We think we are generally kind to our wives.  And, many wives would agree.  I would like to add a layer of depth to the idea to being considerate.  It’s one thing for me to behave in ways that I believe are considerate, but it may be very different to discover in what ways my wife would want me to be considerate.  She may want me to be considerate of her self-consciousness of some aspect of her body, of her desire for daily alone time, or of some peculiarity of hers.  Often these considerations seem minor, resulting in a wife not requesting them.  If God’s design states that husbands are to be considerate, then he must have designed wives to thrive in an environment of their husband’s consideration.  Thus, these considerations are not minor.  Husbands let’s step out in vulnerability and ask our wives what they would want us to be considerate of.  Then, let’s follow up with behaviors that demonstrate that consideration.

I believe that when husbands practice the choice of being considerate of their wives the repeated experience itself and the wife’s response to it empowers the experience of captivation and disempowers sexual temptations.  God designed our relationships for success.  A wife who knows that her husband has a focus on being considerate will likely have a positive response.

If this topic is something you would like more information on, please reach out to us at Dr. White and Associates. Experienced Christian counselors and therapists in Lubbock, Texas.

The scripture in Proverbs 5:19 states in most versions ‘may you be captivated by her love.’  Notice that the scripture does not include choosing to be captivated by physical characteristics.  It seems that the author is focusing on being captivated by the experience of her.  To captivate is to attract someone and hold their interest and attention.  Choosing to focus attraction to a wife and then choosing to further focus interest and attention to her has a powerful impact on the mind of a husband.  When a man’s interest and attention are focused exclusively on his experience of his wife, the low power of daily sexual temptation has little chance of distracting him to other choices outside of God’s design.

Another aspect of this scripture is that captivation is the third design parameter, following the choice of rejoicing in a wife and the choice of exclusive physical, sensual, and sexual satisfaction in a wife.  The experience of these two previous choices feed into the experience of captivation.

I believe when husbands practice the choice of being captivated by the experience of their wives, the repeated experience itself empowers continued repetition of the experience and disempowers temptations.  God designed our relationships for success.  A wife who knows that her husband is truly captivated by her will likely have a positive response.

If this topic is something you would like more information on, please reach out to us at Dr. White and Associates. Experienced Christian counseling and therapy in Lubbock, Texas.

The scripture in Proverbs 5:19 actually states in most versions ‘may her breasts satisfy you always.’  It seems clear that the verse is not about anatomy, but about the satisfying nature of bodily contact with a wife.  Notice that the scripture does not mention physical characteristics, age, or any other inclination toward a definition of beauty or sexy.  This verse is about making the choice to find satisfaction at home.  Again, if the verse is not about anatomy, I would like to suggest the application of this verse into the choice of finding satisfaction in three realms: physical, sensual, and sexual.  The husband’s choice is one that requires mutuality; what husband can experience the choice without his wife’s cooperative participation?  However, this is not a license to insist on that cooperation in the wake of her discovery of any degree of infidelity.

Husbands, making the choice to experience this satisfaction in a mutual way requires us to discuss with our wives what is physically, sensually, and sexually satisfying about our contact.  This may also include what is not satisfying.  Afterall, we couldn’t be truly satisfied in an activity that was not satisfying to our wives, could we?

I believe that when husbands are experiencing the enjoyment of physical satisfaction (holding hands, hugging), sensual satisfaction (non-sexual, but private touch), and sexual satisfaction (specific, agree-upon behaviors that are acknowledged as satisfying) that the repeated experience itself empowers a repeat of the experience and disempowers temptations.

God designed our relationships for success.  A wife who knows that her husband experiences physical, sensual, and sexual satisfaction exclusively in her will likely have a positive response.  See Part 4, Struggling with Sexual Temptation as a Married Man? for the next design parameter.

If this topic is something you would like more information on, please reach out to us for experienced and trusted Christian counseling and therapy in Lubbock, TX.

Rejoicing is not a common term for most of us in today’s culture.  What does this really mean in the Hebrew context in which it was written?  We need to know the meaning in order to live out the design.  Rejoice means to feel or to show great joy in or delight in something.  In Hebrew it also includes the experience of satisfaction in that rejoicing.  I would define it as developing satisfaction in something that delights my wife and then demonstrating that delight to her. 

Think of it like this: We men experience great joy and satisfaction in the experience of accomplishing something in sports, outdoors, or some other effort.  How does it make us feel when our wives make a big deal out of our accomplishment and brag about it to others?  It makes us feel loved, honored, important, etc.  There’s the goal; to show love, honor, importance to her.  In general, what does a wife do who feels loved, honored, and important?  She reciprocates.  God designed our relationships to work.

In application to your own wife, what is it that she does or represents that brings her joy?  Some ideas are her healthy practices (gym workouts, diet, etc.), career/academic accomplishments, style choices, wisdom, talents, or traditions.  Find something about her to make a big deal out of, to enjoy in a satisfying way.  If this doesn’t work, ask your wife ‘what is it that brings you joy that you would like for me to rejoice in?’  Over time the husband who spends time focusing on the joy that he takes in his wife will empower God’s design and disempower the sexual temptation in his environment.

God designed our relationships for success.  A wife whose husband rejoices in her will likely have a positive response.  See Part 3, Struggling with Sexual Temptation as a Married Man? for the next design parameter.

If this topic is something you would like more information on, please reach out to us for experienced and trusted Christian counseling and Lubbock therapy from Dr. White and Associates.