With all the anxiety, uncertainty and free porn (courtesy of porn hub) floating about, the epidemic of porn in the church is only going to get worse. Pastors are required to step up to the plate and deal with this crisis head on. Here are over ten years of personal and professional experience of successfully dealing with porn addiction condensed into 50 mins from husband and wife team Mark and Rosie Makinney. 

Telling your kids the truth about what is really going on in your marriage is daunting for everyone. In this episode we share candidly our own experiences to give you hope that this is not only doable, but extremely beneficial for your entire family. We also share practical resources that we found useful to facilitate the conversation. 

Identifying codependent ways of interacting that have been negatively impacting your relationship is both daunting and liberating. Join us discussing one of our favorite topics. This is where true transformation begins! And as Miranda says 'choosing to look at your codependency is the least codependent thing you can do!'

In this episode we give you the inside scoop on what it's really like to be part of a wives recovery group. As daunting and scary as it was walking into our first group, all of us agree that the fellowship that we gained through recovery was absolutely life-changing. Recovery groups are real, and precious, not to mention avenues of healing - they will ruin you for other groups!

Against the typical advice you may get from a friend or well-meaning counselor, a period of celibacy is highly recommended at the beginning of recovery. Having more sex is not the answer, especially in the weeks following a full disclosure. Your husband’s altered expectations around sex need time to reboot, as does his warped view of reality. The suggested time frame for celibacy is normally ninety days. This provides time for husbands to “dry out.”

You’re probably familiar with the concept of detox or “drying out” in relation to drugs or alcohol, but you may not be aware that it also applies to porn. Drying out from porn is a difficult and gradual process. You can’t just pour your secret stash down the sink and be done with it. It’s stuck inside your head, available to get you high at any time.

But your husband is not the only one who will benefit from a break from sex. Recovery also means reclaiming those aspects of your own sexuality that have been impacted and damaged by his addiction. Taking time out to heal your sexual wounds is critical. Ninety days is recommended guideline, not a rule.

In this episode we demystify another aspect of recovery and talk about preparing for unexpected patches of extreme turbulence before they happen. The time to think about what to do if your husband relapses is not after the event, but before. A safety plan is a personalized, practical plan of what to do if your husband looks at porn again. The point of the safety plan is not to punish him but to help you respond in a healthy and effective way.

The Partner Response Survey is a self-assessment form that helps you identify ways that your husband’s compulsive porn use has affected you mentally, physically, sexually, and spiritually. In a supervised session, you read your answers aloud, and your husband is not permitted to respond or defend himself. He simply has to hear you. Without name-calling or blaming, you express your hurt, pain, frustration, anger, and disgust without fear of contradiction or reprisal. Exploring how your husband's porn addiction has affected you is critical for your healing. Sharing it with your husband in a safe and controlled environment is also crucial for his healing. In terms of building intimacy and restoring trust, feeling able to expressing how you feel is key. Filling in the Partner Assessment helps facilitates a hard honest conversation that has to happen. 

Disclosure a pivotal and powerful moment in recovery. It's both terrifying and transformational.  Often describes as ground zero--or the moment our marriage truly began--it can also be an extremely daunting and painful experience.

Disclosure is a planned facilitated event where a husband reads out a prepared document to his wife detailing his sexual acting out with porn or other people. In this episode we share honestly about our own experience and give practical ways to prepare beforehand. We also reveal that although the whole process was extremely challenging, we are extremely grateful that it happened. 

Reaching out to support that is safe and qualified to speak into you life is crucial. Listening to well meaning, but ill-informed friends and family, or even counselors or even pastors can derail your recovery before it has even got started. Learn from our experiences and mistakes, and find comfort in the fact God will not leave you in the desert, without the right help. 

Both the betrayal and the deception aspects of having a porn addicted spouse is devastating. In this episode we dig deep into our experiences of restoring trust, and share how, in the process, we discovered a whole new level of intimacy in our marriage. We also explain how getting into recovery forced us to look at some of our own issues that were getting in the way of our own ability to be truly vulnerable and communicate effectively ourselves.