372 - Healing From Sexual Abuse w/ Marnie Ferree

Foreigners. Welcome to the Pure Desire Podcast, your biblically based and clinically informed approach to breaking free from compulsive sexual behavior and healing from betrayal. I'm your host, Nick Stumbo, and you are listening to episode 372 here. Joining me today is a guest co host, Mr. Tyler Chinson. Tyler, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Nick. It's good to be here with you.

Yeah. I have to ask a question, Tyler. Have you ever hosted or co hosted a podcast before?

That would be a negatory Ghost Rider.

Yeah. Well, hey, I am always excited that we can be a part of introducing people to new experiences.

I'm looking forward to it. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. You did a great job today. Tyler, for those who don't know, is our clinical director here at Pure Desire, oversees our team of 17 clinicians and staff and does a great job. And Tyler, today we got to have a really powerful conversation with Marnie Faree. Marnie is the executive director and founder of Bethesda Workshops and has recently retired. We found out today, I didn't realize that about her story, but she has a very wonderful organization. People hear more about that, but really it's her story today of sexual abuse. And her ability to process that as part of her story, I think is so powerful. So tell our listeners a little bit about what they might expect today.

Yeah. Marnie has experienced healing and restoration from a horrific season in life where she was taken advantage of, she was sexually abused. And she speaks of the paradigm shift that occurred in her life that began the healing process. And from my perspective, she has a riveting story of God's redemptive power and really value that time with Marnie. She's wonderful.

Yeah. Yeah. I think our listeners are going to get a lot out of this. It's as we talk about in the episode, a scenario that's more common than we realize and expect. And often because of the messages that those who are abused have listened to about themselves, about their situation. I think that's what was, to me, really stood out about the conversation, is Marnie's clarity on her story and kind of reshaping that narrative that led her into healing. And that's my hope. I think for listeners today, whether this is their personal experience or as they're a part of, you know, the healing of others, sooner or later, if we're helping, if we're in a group, leading a group, part of a church community that addresses this, we're going to hear stories of abuse. And I think Marnie's story is going to equip all of us to have a little more insight and understanding into what's happening in sexual abuse and what the road to recovery might look like. Well, so listeners, here it is. Tune in. This is our conversation with Marnie Faree on healing from sexual abuse. Marnie, it is such an honor to have you on the Pure Desire podcast. I know we've been trying to schedule you for almost a couple of years now. We are big fans of yours at Pure Desire. Many of us on our staff and those connected to Pure Desire have gotten to know you through the PSAP training, the pastoral sex addiction professionals through itap. And so I know for that crowd, they're going to be really excited to have you on and we're just glad to introduce you to so many others in the Pure Desire family and in those that follow the podcast. So for those that may not know a whole lot about you, and we shared a little bit in the introduction, but tell us about who is Marnie Faree? What do you do for work? What is your ministry and organization about? And then we'll jump into your story.

I am a licensed marriage and family therapist. I founded Bethesda Workshops, which was one of the earliest intensive models for treating sex addiction in the beginning, then expanded to partners, to couples, eventually to teens and families. I am newly retired and have turned the reins over to a fabulous new executive director and am really enjoying that retirement. Surprising to everyone, including myself. I'm passionate about healing. I'm just passionate about redemption, about spirituality in the broadest sense, about what God has done in my life and the incredible opportunities that I've gotten to be a witness and a partner with others who are healing.

Yeah. And we are so thankful at Pure Desire for Bethesda Workshops. As a lot of our listeners know, we don't do intensives. We have a one year clinical program. We have the groups. But many people are looking for maybe that additional care or the nature of their situation really requires it. And you and Bethesda have been a go to resource, particularly because of the breadth of people you help from men and women, teens, strugglers, betrayed, like you've had so much to offer there. And we have a really high level of confidence in what you all provide.

Oh, thank you. It's been a great relationship, Nick. Very symbiotic. We don't do that ongoing counseling in groups. So with the great outreach of Pure Desire and the high level of training and wisdom that y' all have, we feel really good about sending people back to you or telling them about you in the first place, to continue their journey through either counseling or online groups or those kinds of things. It's great.

Marnie, thank you for being here. We're grateful you're willing to come onto the show and tell your story. It's a heavy one, we know. As we begin exploring your story about sexual abuse, can you tell us how it first started?

I am a preacher's daughter, so I grew up in a very conservative Christian denomination from a deeply beloved pastor and Christian educator who deeply, deeply loved God and helped thousands and thousands of people and also struggled all of his life with sexual addiction. So I. I grew up in an addictive family system. My mother, who would have been, therefore the spouse of an addict, though in the 1940s and 50s there was no language about any of that, of course, had her own, of course, challenges with my father, and died when I was three years old.

Wow.

So that's so impactful about my story. The context for the sexual abuse is that my father just had such a gift of hospitality and generosity. And we lived just a couple of blocks from this Christian campus where he was academic dean and then associate provost, and our house was Grand Central Station, and he loved that. So literally thousands of college guys cycled through our home as I was a child and adolescents and through my adulthood. And several dozen of them actually lived in the house. And most of them were either benign or were good, meaning helpful. It's interesting to me, I'm still connected to two of those men who are now in their late 80s, who were very kind and safe with me when I was a child, and that's dear to me, and others of them were not. And one in particular came into my life when I was 5 and he was 20, and he came to go to the school, and he lived in the house with us. And he was my primary sexual perpetrator. And so he took a real interest in me. I spoke with him about my dad because my father was never, ever home. He was completely disengaged from his family while he was out doing wonderful things for God, was how he viewed it. And part of that was his culture, I'm aware. But it was also his shame. And so I said to this guy, if I was a better little girl, would my daddy spend time with me? And he said, oh, honey, it's not your fault. That's just kind of what preachers do. It's what he does, and you deserve it, Daddy, and I'll be a father for you. And he was. And he taught me how to Ride a bicycle and how to roller skate. And he really fostered my writing. I think of myself as a writer probably more than any other professional title, even than clinician or administrator. And so there began a relationship. There also began grooming. And I didn't understand that at all. We never talked about sex in my father's home. And so I was about 10 before that grooming escalated. I recognized this must be something about sex. And I was 16 when we actually fully had sex, which was my real definition of sex. Again, within that. That constraints of that. Of that culture, that was kind of the. The huge line that when crossed, one could never, ever go back. And by that point, of course, I did understand the biology of sex, and I certainly understood that that activity was wrong, that that activity was outside the bounds of what you were supposed to do, which was save any of this for marriage, which, you know, I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just saying when you don't have any other context about any of these things. And so I actually never framed this as sexual abuse. Again, he was kind to me and loving and very attentive and very affirming and tender with me and emotionally and supportive in every way and the most important person in my childhood and adulthood until I entered recovery after my father. But he was much more available to me than my father. And so I just internalized that shame that I felt that I had began feeling before we were fully sexual. Because, again, you know, the older I got, the more I realized what was happening. And I just thought that this was my fault. So I did not frame this as sexual abuse until much later in my life.

Yeah, it occurs to me in so many stories we hear, there's always a context, right. That sexual abuse doesn't just occur out of the blue. I mean, it certainly can. But even as you talk about your home situation, what's going on with your dad, ways in which you were not appropriately protected or provided for as a child, that in a healthy God's kingdom world should not have happened. There were things that were setting you up for that that were completely outside of your control. And then as it happens, it's all within that context. And I think for so many people and what we've found in the counseling journey and pure desire groups, and I'm sure in the intensives, it's helping people understand their story that helps them make sense of it in a new way. And I just. I always appreciate how well you've put those pieces together. Tyler, thoughts on that?

Yes, Marnie, it Sounds like there was a need, a need for connection and a need for.

Absolutely.

And a need for nurturing that this individual happened to meet with such a broad age disparity. And that young girl, she didn't know, she just had the feelings of. Yeah, I'm being attended to.

Exactly, exactly. I really believe with all of my heart that it was that lack of nurturing, lack of, if we use a clinical word, attachment, lack of healthy bonding, lack of attention and those kinds of things. Again, this was an upper middle class home, highly educated, so it was not like I was neglected in those ways, but in terms of that real emotional presence and pouring into their, it was just nearly completely absent. I very much raised myself in many ways. And so today I am just absolutely certain that while our topic is focusing on the sexual abuse, and I'm certainly glad to continue, of course, talking about that, and there's so much more to say and explore about that, but the underlying core of that abandonment is absolutely key. And at some point in our conversation, as we get toward the end, as we're talking about healing process, I really want us to circle back to that because we can do that practical work and emotional work and spiritual work around the sexual abuse itself, which is the starting point. And if we don't deal with that deeper work around the pit of despair, of loneliness, of existential terror, am I worth anything? Then our healing is incomplete and not what God would desire for us.

Yeah, we'll launch into that. And I appreciate, even as you're already saying it, the ways in which I think everyone can find themselves in some of this story or for those that have been abused, they can find that there are some common roots, that yes, the abuse is a unique, maybe distinctive feature of their story, but it ties back into some things that we are all experiencing to some degree. And I think that for some people can maybe be helpful to know. While my experience may have been pretty unique, the needs or things I was wrestling with underneath are very common. And there are some really helpful steps that people are taking. So let's keep moving towards that in your story, kind of share with us. Maybe the next phase is of at what point did you identify it as sexual abuse? What were some of the signs that made that clear for you? And what would you say to others that maybe are analyzing their story and starting to wonder in their journey? Like, have I maybe misinterpreted my own story and just called something normal or okay, that I need to recognize was actually me being taken advantage of at a vulnerable state in My life as a child. What? Unpack that a little bit for us.

Yes, that's exactly how it happens. My discovery that it was actually sexual abuse was quite a dramatic thing for me. And I'll get there in just a minute. But the context is that with this setup of such loneliness, such deprivation, such truly emotional deprivation that this perpetrator poured into, I also found that that was very easily exploited from others as well. And I was so desperate to replicate what it felt like being with him. And we're not talking about sex though. That was fine. I'm talking about the, the emotional affirmation and things that, that provided for me. The comfort, the nurturing is what it felt like that that provided for me. And I found that there were plenty of guys on this Christian college campus who were real willing to tell me I was fabulous and spend some time with me if I just be sexual with them. And I was very willing to be sexual with them again because I unconsciously learned sex equals love. Yeah, I didn't understand that at all. But, but I was operating out of that false core belief. Regardless of the fact that I didn't know I had that belief. That's how trauma works. And I was willing to be sexual with them if they would just spend some time with me and tell me I was okay. So probably by the time I was 18 or 19, I was a full blown sex, love and relationship addict. And again, I didn't understand that story. I just was full of shame for being promiscuous was the only word I had for that. That's a fine word. But I think I was also addicted to.

Yeah.

And so I carried so much shame from that. So that that permeated my life from probably 18 or 19 until I was 35. I married really young at 20. We had no skills for relationship. We ultimately divorced at. I was 24. We were both 24. And I had multiple affairs in that relationship. Very quickly remarried, thought now he would be the right one and was. Was completely faithful to him and, and genuinely happy. At least happier than I had ever been before. We did life together really well. We had two young children and that process. I'd gone through a lot of spiritual abuse around the divorce and completely backed away from the church and, and things and I, I got back into a different denomination. But that's so important to me. And life was just really, really good until huge stresses started. And at that point my husband was. Was ill equipped to be able to provide any emotional support. We could do all the practical things. But there Was not again an emotional connection which I did not realize at all. What I knew was that once again I felt abandoned because there were huge crisis in our lives deaths. My father's acting out and his exploitation of young men was exposed and front page news in the newspaper and just all kinds of stuff. And at that point I began acting out again with multiple, multiple affairs. Funding had consequences, health consequences. Cervical cancer caused by sexually transmitted disease. Such shame, such anxiety, such depression, such PTSD that there came a day I just came unglued and very seriously and sat there with a bottle of pills, wanted to take my own life. And I know that God intervened and did for me what I couldn't do for myself. Because I called somebody, which I would not have typically done. And I called a dear friend and kind of poured out this story and she said, I'm coming and I'm going to get you help. And she did. And she came and sat in my kitchen floor all day long that day. And she heard my story and I confessed to her, I'm in an affair and it's multiple affairs and here's what that cervical cancer was about. And I just kind of vomited out all this stuff. And she just said, I'm so sorry. And I was undone. No one had ever seen my pain before. And as we sat there literally on the kitchen floor through the day and she heard more of the story, she was the first one who said to me, marnie, you didn't lose your virginity at 16 to this guy. She knew this man. She had been attached with our family for a long time. She had had Thanksgiving dinner with him. And, you know, she knew so much about, about my life and my story and my family. She's like, that's sexual abuse. And I really was just the, the world shifted in a heartbeat and I was, that's what. And she said, that's sexual abuse. And just in an instant, my perception of myself changed, my perception of the whole story changed. And for me, for many people, it's a devastating thing to find out they're a sexual trauma survivor, a sexual abuse survivor. For me, it was freeing. It was like, oh my goodness, this wasn't my fault. It actually helped the shame in the beginning to know I had been exploited, I had been violated, this was a perpetrator, this wasn't my best friend. I consider this guy, 30, 15 years older than I was, to be my best friend. Even when I was 35 years old, we were, we stayed close, we talked on the phone, we. That was before email, but we wrote letters back and forth and, and it was just, it was a pivotal moment, you know. Now then after that, the real hard healing steps happened. But in terms of that initial realization, for me, that was a positive. And, and I'm grateful, I'm grateful for that. And I'm so grateful that she was savvy enough that she immediately recognized that.

Marnie, it, it sounds like that paradigm shift was a life changer for you.

Absolutely.

And, and can you unpack that paradigm shift just a little bit for us? Your, your story is riveting. Help us understand that shift.

The shift. I'm going to use a word, and I hope this is okay with pure desire. It's not a terrible word, but it's a graphic word. Was from whore to sexual abuse victim. Now that's, that's a big paradigm shift because, you know, the promiscuity, I, I early started thinking of myself in this degrading term and, and then having affairs in a marriage and then being divorced, which was anathema in the, the denomination I grew up in, and then remarrying and having children, and again having affairs, which was worse in my hierarchy of sins and of consequences. And so that deep cloud of shame, which I had no understanding really of emotions and feelings, now they were volcano ing out all over the place. I don't know that that's a word, but I just made it one. Spewing out all over the place. But to understand them or to have specific language for them, I didn't, I didn't have any language for them, so I couldn't have called it shame and I couldn't have called it loneliness, but was just, just broken, just so, so beaten down inside, though, so uber functional, you know, on the outside. And so to have that shift, there is a reason for all this and holy cow, it's not my fault. And so it, it was, it was really seismic.

Yeah. Yeah, thank. Thank God for that, friend.

Yes.

And thinking about in so many situations, that's the power of what we all do in terms of groups, counseling workshops, intensives. It's creating space where people give voice to their pain and their story and then hear people speak grace and truth to create new awareness of what happened, what we walked through, and being able to see yourself through an entirely different lens. I'm so thankful for that. And I'm thankful that in our world we're starting to become aware that in any situation where there is a power differential, whether it's an adult to a teenager, a teacher to a student, a pastor to a parishioner that we're talking about cases of abuse because in those situations, the person being influenced or groomed or manipulated because of the power dynamic is not able to fairly or appropriately understand. I shouldn't say understand, to have the responsibility of what's happening in the relationship, because there's such a power dynamic at play. And I think as we see that and recognize that it does give us an ability to help people in those situations have voice and not feel like, well, I went along with it and I'm just as much to blame or no, you are really not in that position of power. And we need to look at people in those roles and say there's a responsibility on you if you are the adult or the teacher or the pastor to. To behave differently. And I think unfortunately for many people, probably in that era of time, that just wasn't even on our collective mindset to think of it that way. But I'm so thankful that a friend did help you start to address some of that and see your story differently, which again, is, I think, the power of what we do in helping people address their stories.

That's exactly right. And it's also the power of having trained Christian helpers, you know, folks like Pure Desire folks, other good people across the country and the world who do understand these dynamics, who, who are not going to blame the victim, who are not going to say, you're 16, did he have a gun? You know, or those kinds of things? Or even you're 35, you know, did the pastor tie you up and make you do these things? And so to really understand all of those dynamics. And again, though, to. To get now internalize those kinds of truths as a sexual trauma survivor was quite the journey. I grew up in a home of uber responsibility. Things were always my fault. And, and so to really, I. I needed to be told it felt like a thousand times by my counselor. And again, there's such a story. God provided the perfect Counselor, who in 1991 was maybe 2. One of two dozen people in the country who had trained with Dr. Patrick Carnes, who knew how to frame this story, and she knew the. The trauma roots because Pat and then within the Christian community, dear Mark Laser, were talking about those things, um, and. And she had to tell me and tell me and tell me and tell me and tell me, and then others had to tell me that it truly wasn't my fault and, and had to keep telling me until. Until finally gradually, and that was a year or two process. I. I didn't automatically have to go through all of that mental calculation to realize this wasn't my fault. It was a replaced truth, a rewired hard drive in my brain that said, no, I was a victim here. And that was the beginning of making the shift to a survivor.

Marnie, curious, what was the process between your friend speaking truth into your life and you initiating healing and to address the trauma? What. What was that? What were those steps like for you?

Again, for me, and this kind of suits my personality, that was an almost instant process because my friend said after she was explaining to me that this was sexual abuse, and she said, I'm working with a Christian counselor and I think she could help you. And. And so within a week, I was in that woman's office. So that part began almost immediately. What then in that part of the story, and I think is true for. For all of us who are abuse survivors. It's also true for us who are abandonment survivors. But it's often more dramatic when we're abuse survivors, as I was. What was harder was not necessarily dealing with the sexual abuse again, because that was also immediately healing. You mean this wasn't my fault? And. And coming to understand family systems and all of the unhealthy dynamics within my family and all the unspoken rules and a lot more about my father's own acting out and all of his complications. That's freeing. That's energizing work. The harder thing is to deal with how am I coping with all of this? And of course, for me, it was affairs. It was multiple affairs at an addictive level. That was the harder journey. That process was almost a year before I was really willing to look at this thing called sex addiction. As a woman in 1992.

Yeah. Wow.

How often? I'm just curious, Marnie, as you share that, and as people are thinking through maybe their own journey or someone, they're trying to help a loved one. In the terms of work you've done at the Bethesda workshops, how often do you find that someone who has experienced sexual abuse in their childhood will then kind of flip to becoming a sexual addict or acting out sexually as kind of a pattern in life? Is that a pretty direct correlation? Is it? Occasionally. What have you seen in terms of people recovering from childhood sexual abuse?

I see it as an absolute direct correlation. Pat Carnes did some early research that I'd love to see replicated now showing that I don't have quite exactly the right figures in my head, but my memory is 97% of adult sex addicts are sexual trauma survivors. It's over 95. I'm not positive it's 96 or 97 or 98. And acting out with sex and with food are the two go to coping mechanisms for untreated sexual trauma survivors. Because they're all. Our sexuality and food are. So we have to have those to live. That's how. How we're created to be. Those are core human, not just desires. Those are core human needs. At least we're created as sexual beings. You can't escape that. And. And so those are just absolutely. I did my own master's research in 1994, 95, on the connection between childhood sexual abuse and later addictive behavior. And there was, of course, almost nothing out there about that, but there was a whole lot about alcohol and then later addictive behavior.

Yeah.

So it's. It's absolutely common today. We don't see, at least at Bethesda workshops, quite as many overt sexual trauma survivors. I would say it's probably. This is completely anecdotally. I'm not aware of studies. At least Bethesda has not done any. It's probably dropped to between 50 and 75% of that overt sexual abuse. But today, what's so abusive is our culture, the sexual saturation of our culture. And so that also has an impact. But in terms of that very specific overt kind of sexual abuse, it is not quite as prevalent as Karn's research showed in the upper 90s, but it's not too far off.

Yeah. And I think what a healing message for a lot of people when they realize that what's been done to me and what I've experienced is often the context of what I've learned to cope with. And then the things that I'm shaping myself with. Why do I do this? What's wrong with me? Someone gets into group or into counseling or walks through a workshop and there's this awareness, the light bulb of, oh, there's some reasons here. And that's not to mean I'm not responsible for choices. I mean later. Or that I get a free pass of, oh, I just get to do these things because of my trauma. No, it. But sometimes having an explanation, sometimes having a why can help us, just like in your story, stop shaming ourselves and instead become empowering to see. I just learned a really unhealthy way to respond to equally unhealthy things done to me. And then walking into that healing journey with a different mindset of not like you said. And I think it's very appropriate of going from seeing Myself as the whore or the loser or the things that are wrong with me. And instead recognizing I was abused, I was a victim, I walked through some really hard stuff. And one of the things we bring out a lot that even in good Christian families that might be happening where we don't necessarily. We're not trying to label mom and dad as bad people. I mean, sometimes even very good, well intentioned people create very difficult, traumatic circumstances that we're now reacting to in the way we learn to cope with it. And it's again, not to cast blame on them, but to see our story, I think really gives us then the power to start dealing with it and healing in a better way.

Amen. You're preaching to the choir on that one. I absolutely believe that with all my heart. That's a core tenet of how we approach things at Bethesda workshops, that we have got to deal with the trauma, and the trauma informs later unhealthy coping behavior.

So as you talked about that being a longer healing journey. And now you're in this unique place, which I think maybe a lot of our listeners can find, where you've had a story of sexual abuse in your history, but you're also dealing with your own negative behaviors or addictive behavior as an adult. What were hurdles in that journey of recovering from both and kind of having the two be simultaneously a part of your story?

Right.

Both were, were full of shame. Of course, the sexual addiction was. Was much more shameful because I still felt like that, of course, was my fault. And that was something that I was going to have to actively stop a lot of behavior and. And clean up a lot of messes that I. That I had made. So shame was, was one of it. Being a woman who was struggling with sexual acting out was also hugely impactful. Again, since 1992, people weren't talking about sexual addiction in general, and it was always men.

Yeah.

And so I would tell Patrick Carnes or Mark Laser, you wrote great books and the pronouns are wrong. I felt so much that I was the only one. So there were a lot of specific challenges about that that have gotten better for female addicts today. But those were big challenges. I think, again, that the hardest was building enough of a support system that I could tolerate the anxiety and the loneliness and the pain of withdrawal from what at that point was a very significant relationship. It was an affair, it was wrong, and it was very significant. And he actually was the one who supported me through my sexual trauma recovery. So there was so much complicated about all of that. And so to become appropriately abstinent from that relationship, then to figure out what am I going to do about my marriage. All of those things were extremely difficult.

Just curious, Marnie, what's the time frame? I mean, for you, for your experience, what was the time frame, the window of recovery?

It was a very intense first, probably two years. The first year working on the trauma recovery and the second year working on sobriety and abstinence and, and the practical things. My family and I moved because the man with whom I was involved lived next door, so needed some, some physical distance there to support that process. So people talk about, and I believe with all my heart this is a lifelong journey. I'm still on this journey today. So that's true. But what's also true is that there's a very intense time at the beginning and it's not as long as many people think. At least it wasn't in my experience. You hear often, at least in the, the sex addiction community particularly, and even Patrick Carnes would say this three to five years or hold up five years as, as a. It's going to take that long. I don't find that to be true particular and not even just not for me, but I think just in general, particularly for people who are willing to say yes and be all in to this process. Even the messiness of extricating themselves from their inappropriate acting out, whatever that is, pornography, affairs, whatever their thing is, even the messiness of that. I'm not saying that necessarily you're going to kind of like the proverbial drink. I'm going to put this down and I'm never ever going to have one again. Even if it's a messy process like mine was to, to always be about that process, to, to have that hunger for healing and then to put in the work to, to do the intensives, to do the, the pure desire groups, to do the counseling with people who know what they're doing, to create support systems, to, to do all of that. I always tell people, you can do this the hard way or the hardest way because there's not an easy way.

Yeah, good point.

But, but to just think, well, maybe I'll go to counseling once a month or maybe I'll go to counseling, but I don't want to do any of those groups. You're not going to get well doing that and you just prolong the agony. So to be all in the 12 step programs, talk about willing to go to any lengths to just absolutely be all in truncates the process.

Yeah, yeah. I think I've absolutely seen there can be momentum and a sense of freedom and a new season that comes much, much sooner. But that commitment to say, man, I'm so grateful for this new pace I'm learning, but I need to stick with it because I think we've seen, and probably you have, too, that someone gets early momentum and freedom and release, and they kind of feel like, I did the work. And after six months, they think they're done. And it doesn't take long for some stress to come back into life or a difficult thing or just an unexpected, maybe opportunity. And the brain, the body, the soul, maybe haven't walked in that new way long enough that they're headed right back in that direction. And so getting that momentum early can happen and then sticking with it. Like you said, it's a lifelong journey. Tyler, I'm curious from your perspective, too, as you work with clients, what do you see in that area of someone who's dealing with both sexual abuse and wanting to recover from their own behaviors or addiction? What are some keys you've seen for people to be kind of walking in both of those healing journeys?

Nick, I believe it starts with understanding one's story.

Yes.

Understanding one story. And that takes work because it's challenging. Oftentimes, people run much of their lives away from their story.

Sure.

Because they may have felt like it's their fault. Yeah, I deserve that fill in the blank. But, yeah, I think that's where it begins. And that's a core issue that we have to address in order to truly walk in freedom and restoration.

And I think, Nick, to continue the. The great points that you were saying, that's what I mean by the lifelong part of, of the journey. And, and usually that's where it's dealing with. With still that core, core, core inner work. I know I started this healing journey at age 35 as we're taping this. I'm 68. It's a long time.

I have done our listeners do the math. We won't do it for you.

That's all right. I'm glad to be 65. Goodness gracious. I don't want to be 35 and go through all that again. But I have done more intense and deeper work in the last five and a half years in my life than any other period. Now, the first year and a half or two years in that early, early beginning point, it would rival that. But there were so many fires to put out in the middle of all of that. I mean, that was just such chaos. I had Been doing this work not from a place of chaos and still from a place of great need of just realizing that there's just so much still unsettled inside of me even after so many years. Loneliness and different things. And a lot of that was, was around my marriage that came to an end because of that, that work. I came to realize that, that the deprivation and emotional distance in my marriage of 40 years was replicating that abuse in my childhood. And I could not continue. And I separated. I had no plans to divorce, was not involved with anyone, had been sober for forever and had. Had just wrestled with God for 15 years and particularly for five years around, around that relationship to the point of I could just say God just will you help me? I stopped telling God what I thought help looked like, you know, would you fix him? Would you do this? Would you do that? To finally just will you help? I can't live like this. And I separated and felt immediate relief and was grateful for that. And it was about a year later that I made the discovery that my husband had been acting out sexually for decades, wasn't looking for that. I was shocked about that. And it makes sense with his own story. Sure, he had never taken any steps of healing with me, despite all kinds of entreatments to do that. And I divorced. So I am now at 68, have been divorced for a few years. And while it was not a path that I wanted, in fact I wanted absolutely this attachment bereft, desperately lonely, abandoned little girl, always just wanted someone who would cherish me. So this ending was not what I had anticipated or hoped for. And God is really cool and amazing and gracious and graceful and loving and kind. And I am truly living my best life. I'm not partnered. A man is not the solution to this, this deep inner, inner work of. I've done a lot of body work, a lot of somatic work. The body, the body keeps the score, the body carries our trauma. And I still had so many just of those clutches in my spirit, around being abandoned, around not being enough, that my marriage had only amplified because it was proving to me again and again and again that I wasn't worth investing in. And so doing all of that work and that has been the deepest spiritual work that I have ever done. And in the beginning the spiritual work was God really cares about me and will help me and will extend grace to me. And that was just life changing to come into that part as a 35 year old. This here at what I see these as the bookends of the Story again, not that I'm done, but, but two huge demarcation points and this one has been about God is truly enough. Truly God, just God and some healthy people, of course, that, that God has brought into my life and activities and a wonderful therapy dog that you can't see that's here curled at my feet. He's my best guy ever. But, but I have this in my bones. Since God is enough, would I like to be partnered today? I'm healed enough that, that I am sure I would be open to that. Let me tell you, I'm not. I'm not going to find a partner on social media or any of those modern ways. I'm not necessarily judging folks for whom that's worked out. For me, that would not be healthy at all. So, so God would have to absolutely just like bowl me over with, with someone. And I'm, I'm not looking for that. You know, that would be, that would be sweet I think, if it happened and was, was the right person. But, but that's not going to make me any happier or any more fulfilled. And that is a vast again, internal shift that is fully spiritual to feel full, completely alone in terms of a significant, you know, partnered romantic marital relationship.

Thank you, Marnie. Gosh, we, we, we love your story. We love the story of growth and opportunity and it's a lifelong story.

Yes.

If we can circle back around, some of our listeners may have experienced similar to you or other forms of sexual abuse. I'm just wondering in the moment, Marty, how would you encourage them right now?

I would encourage them first to tell someone to ask God to bring that safe friend. He'll sit in the kitchen floor with them, metaphorically to, to begin telling someone the story today. Fortunately, there are lots more great resources out there, many books and podcasts and groups and a lot of things that weren't available to me and I had what I needed. But I would say to them to, to know that whatever happened, it was not your fault, which sometimes people may need to believe before they'll dare to, to tell anyone. And then, and then start telling the story. Find a healthy support person that's almost always going to be a professional as well as just your regular, you know, friends type support people, perhaps family, if they're healthy enough to do that. Start the journey.

Yeah, there's so much opportunity for growth there. You know, when I think of a word of encouragement, I really believe, and maybe it's an internal lie, but I also think a strategy of the enemy. I believe there is an active Presence that is working against God's work in our lives. And that enemy wants to say, you are alone and there's something wrong with you. And those are the voices that make us want to sit in that. And just like you talked about, women expressing challenges with sexual addiction was so uncommon. I think we're still seeing for men, the idea of bringing up sexual abuse as a boy is just not viewed as positively in our culture. That there is more of, well, you know, toughen up or, well, if you let that happen to you, there must have been something wrong with you. And men, I think, are really tempted to just try to ignore that part of their story when the truth is, you know, sexual abuse happening to boys is very, very common. And many of those cases, unfortunately, it is male on boy sexual abuse that create some of the complications of, well, I'm now having maybe same sex attraction issues or desires. Is there something wrong with me there? And if we see the abuse patterns, it's like it makes sense. It can create incredible clarity. And so whether you're a man who's had sexual abuse in your story or a woman, there has to be that freedom to hear people who care say, you're not alone. It's not because there's something wrong with you. You were hurt, you were taken advantage of, you were a child. And those that in God's perfect, if God had a perfect world that we lived in, things that you could reasonably expect to be provided to you for protection, for security, for affirmation weren't given to you. And in that scenario of a fallen world, some things that should never have happened, happen. And the more we're able to bring those out in safe environments and hear, oh, I'm not alone, and it's not because there's something wrong with me. Our healing journey can really go to new places.

Absolutely. Yes.

Yeah. Marnie, we're just so thankful for you. We're thankful for the work you're doing. And we know that not only did it become your story, but your story became a lot of the starting point for Bethesda Workshops and what you guys do there. Tell us a little bit more about Bethesda Workshops and if someone was interested in finding out more, how could they do that?

Bethesda Workshops is a nonprofit. We offer short term, usually four day clinical intensives. They're very intense early morning to in the evening programs for populations, male sex addicts, female sex addicts, partners of addicts, couples who are struggling. We have had a teen and family program. It is on hold right now has been actually since the pandemic. And our new executive director has every hope and intention to revitalize that and, and restart it hopefully beginning next year. We come from the highest clinical standards and yet from an overtly Christian standpoint it is a very grace based environment, a non judgmental environment. We don't get drawn into a variety of different social issues. We're here to help the person who's been betrayed from someone who's acting out sexually or relationally or that person that struggler themselves. It's kind of like going to the er. It's like going to treatment, just truncated. And then of course the follow up work happens after that. But it's a marvelous program. We've been around since 1997 and so I'm, I'm so honored and blessed to have they've gotten to work so long and to still be associated with them, to still get to tell my story at, at some length. At every workshop we have a very extensive website, Bethesda workshops.org It's a great place to start. It's a wonderful place for someone even if you're not coming to a workshop and not even at all interested in a workshop. Lots and lots of information for free on the website about addiction, about trauma, about being a partner, about what healing looks like. Very extensive resources section of recommended books by category of treatment centers, of organizations like Pure Desire and just, just lots of, lots of information there. Fabulous staff, great clinical staff, many of whom are also personally in recovery as an addict or a partner. And I think that's marvelous, you know, fabulous new executive director as I've stepped aside this year. Great administrative staff. So we're, we're here, here to help.

Yeah, yeah. And we'll be sure to put that link in the show notes. And we think again, we think very highly of the work you do. And for our listeners, we've seen people attend those intensives on the front end of their journey to kind of get some of that initial crisis and hard work done in a very powerful environment. And we've also seen people do that at midpoints of their journey where they get somewhere where they realize I'm stuck in something or as they start to unpack trauma, more comes up than they realize because they've been avoiding it for so long. Bethesda Workshops really is a trusted partner and friend and would really encourage you to go check out what they have to offer. And whether for yourself or others in your church or group or family that may be going through some of those same things, they'd be a tremendous resource. So Tyler, any final thoughts or words from you?

Marnie, your story is amazing.

God is amazing indeed.

And you've been obedient which is a large part of our story, to be obedient to his prompting and his will in our lives. Thank you. We so appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing parts of your story and we just wish you the very best and we look forward to future connections with you. Marnie, we appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And all of the good wishes and accolades go right back to Pure Desire. Wonderful, wonderful organization.

Yeah yeah. Thank you so much. Well if you're a fan of the content, please subscribe to the podcast, share it with somebody and write us a review that helps other people find us. And if you want more information on Pure Desire groups, resources or counseling, go to PureDesire.org so journey on my friends, you are not alone.