What is a Secret Sexual Basement?

Before you read this post, I want to be clear where I stand on pornography. It is socially accepted but statistics show it is damaging. Most women do not want to have sex like a porn star. They want to be themselves. Most women in the porn industry are not there because they like or wanted that job. People fail to see that there is a direct correlation between objectification, porn and inability to maintain intimacy with a partner. Porn is not intimacy, it is lust fleshed out. It took me until recently to feel like I finally had validation for my abusive marital situation. I am extremely grateful for Dr. Minwalla's work, which was the key to giving myself permission to finally own my grief and move beyond what I lived for 17 years.

A Study on Refuge

2-16-22

Two of the most basic human needs are safety and security. We cannot level up if we are struggling with the basics. Getting married and having a spouse, building a life and finding a place to call home is an ideal picture of these needs perpetuated around the world. These elements contribute to that sheltered feeling I so desire. But, when this is threatened by hurtful behavior, choices, and attitudes of someone in the family system, home doesn’t feel like much of a refuge. One psychiatrist is making seminal and unorthodox strides in categorizing a familiar poison to healthy intimate paradigms.

Dr. Omar Minwalla has been doing ground-breaking research on the topic of abuse as related to sexual deviances, including secret pornography use, hiring prostitutes and infidelity. Whereas the current psychological model of cause has been attributed to compulsion and self-control issues, even calling overuse of pornography an addiction or tied to childhood trauma, Dr. Minwalla proposes a very different way of looking at not only the origination of these behaviors, but the subsequent harmful actions to cover up what is going on.

Dr. Minwalla says that at the root of these behaviors is sexual entitlement and this leads to abuse of the spouse in order to cover up whatever is in what he has coined “the secret sexual basement.” He states that where there is this entitlement attitude, there has developed an “integrity abuse disorder.”

There are programs to help rehabilitate men who struggle using this foundational theory, at the Institute of Sexual Health. The jury is still out whether or not men who are sexually entitled really do change. Lundy Bancroft also works with men who are abusive and has a very realistic picture of favorable outcomes.

But, what is such a ground-rattling breakthrough is how powerful the advocacy is for the spouse, exactly what behaviors in the abuser damage the relationship, how this affects the spouse and how she should also be treated.

There is a distinct analogy that he weaves together well of all of the husband’s surreptitious behaviors. It is the picture of a familial home with a secret room in the basement. Maybe there was not a basement when they moved in. But, as the secrecy grows, so does the amount of toxic fumes being generated from this secret place. Eventually, the wife starts asking questions, suspects something is wrong. In abuser fashion, though, the husband denies anything is going on and this is how the gaslighting may start. His unwillingness to address his behavior contributes to the entitlement he carries with him. This tears down what may have once seemed to be a solid marriage. Reality begins to shift even more if he discloses any details of his secret, compartmentalized life and this shakes a woman’s safety and connection to her husband to the core.

Here is where the church, in my case, and the secret sexual basement intersected. My husband made a promise to me before we got married to cease the use of pornography, as we had a small incident come up while dating. I literally never thought about it again. Then, about 14 years into our relationship, 11 of which we had been married, he confessed out of the clear blue that he had a pornography problem and he wanted to take it to the church to deal with it.

My initial response was absolute shock as I had no idea. I had gained weight and we had some difficulties including our sexual life, but there were no signs at all of this behavior. Not only that, but why take it to the church rather than try to just handle it in-house, so to speak? Shortly after disclosure, however, my son started getting a massive amount of porn spam in his email because my ex-husband had been using my son’s tablet as his access point. I had tried to be understanding about it at first, but the fact that his behavior could ensnare my son by his choices unleashed absolute rage in me. That was also compounded by the fact that I had started reading “The Emotionally Destructive Marriage” by Leslie Vernick and realized that I was being abused by my husband’s behavior. I had no idea how intertwined the sexual sin was with the abuse, until about six months ago. We have been divorced since 2017, but I didn’t find Dr. Minwalla’s work until recently.

When we went to church leadership for counseling, there were red lights from the start, but I was so trusting, so blindly in my marriage, trying desperately to be a good, godly wife, I missed a lot of them. Unfortunately, my anger was seeping out everywhere, and as Dr. Minwalla has so aptly observed in an interview on the Betrayal Trauma Recovery podcast with Anne (see www.btr.org), my anger became the church’s focus rather than the gravity of my husband’s behavior.

When I explained what was happening in my marriage, in detail, to the two pastors, the head leader told me that if I couldn’t call the police, it wasn’t abuse. I found this absolutely obtuse, and it could not have been more painful if he had punched me as hard as he could anywhere on my person.

Other red flags that perpetuated the abuse were things like forbidding us to seek any other counseling than the nouthetic form. (This is the stance that the Bible holds all the solutions to every problem. There was even a Sunday School class that I attended at the church based on the book, “Why Christians Can’t Trust Psychology,” by Ed Bulkly.) But, I was starting to believe otherwise, because these answers rang so untrue down to my bones. The leaders told me to have more sex with my husband so that he wouldn’t want to use porn. They questioned my salvation and told me I had humility issues, even though I was in a bible study class at that very time on humility and my husband was doing _nothing_ to change his behavior. They instructed individual women at the church on what to say to me and to forbid them to further a relationship if I reached out to them personally. They also promised to hold my husband accountable in addressing his behavior and reducing his porn use, which they did not do claiming they forgot or didn’t have time. They also appointed a younger couple who wanted to be in leadership to counsel us as they considered the wife, who had a master’s degree in social work/counseling, “equipped” to help me. (How hypocritical was that?) They were really just passing me off because I was too much to handle.

Honestly, I still see red when I discuss this topic because, as Dr. Minwalla so perfectly described, when a woman discovers her entire marriage is a lie and her husband is abusing her so he can continue to engage in sinful, hurtful behaviors, I experienced a psychological death. I have called my husband a soul murderer and that is what it felt like. I cannot just pick up my life where I dropped it off at the courthouse. I can’t just stroll into a church and trust anyone because they are being Christian-ly “nice.” I look at church leadership as heart-breakingly ill-equipped across the board, across denominations when it comes to the hard topics of sexual sin, abuse and divorce.

As a survivor who endured enough to bring me to suicidal ideations and to walk away from God, the church and my own healing for a good year before I could even begin to face any of it, I would like to offer these suggestions to church leadership, if they will kindly lend an ear:

• Learn about Dr. Minwalla’s model. Read his white paper. This is also about disordered personalities, which often resist any help. Study the effects on a woman’s sexuality, her ability to connect and trust in all relationships from disclosure forward, the way she thinks of herself and how to restore her tether to reality.

• Believe her when she tells you something is amiss. The scales of deceit placed there purposefully by her husband to hide his infidelity and sin are starting to peel and fall off. This is not a pleasant or fun experience, rather, it is terrifying to the foundation of her life as she thought she knew it. If there are children in the home, security and well-being for the future is even more at risk.

• Learn about how deep the damage to self is for the wife and how, through the love of Christ, it will aid her healing. Do not accuse, do not maximize her anger rather than assessing the situation objectively. She has every right to be angry and a church cannot force forgiveness in their timeframe. That is between her and God. Men shouldn't be given a separate, more palatable timetable for their issues- there is no room for double-standards in healing. It takes as long as it takes.

• Her husband may resist accountability or find that “confession” eases his guilt enough to actually continue in secret sin. Do not use church speak to soften the blows of his long-term, devastating behavior and abuse. Call it what it is. This is not something the church alone can handle. Realize this and ally yourselves with psychology professionals who will respect what you are trying to do and affably extend the same to them.

• Do not counsel her that she would be seeking an unbiblical divorce if she could no longer live on top of the secret sexual basement, especially when her husband chooses his entitled behavior over loving his family. Please, do not accuse her that the Lord is not her savior because she isn’t doing what makes the leadership comfortable. You don’t have to live in it, your say-so really is opinion. Encourage equipped women from the church to surround her with support and love and kindness and be as gentle with her as possible. Help her get outside help from a counselor as well. She is fragile and deeply wounded and you can be doing irreversible damage to her soul and relationship to God if mishandled during this friable time.

Sometimes, sin is more than sin, bigger than the vows spoken at the altar. It is a besetting choice and ingrained in a person’s being/self to cultivate a secret, sinful life. I don’t know what the theological term for that is, but I call it an unsafe person to have in your life, both practically and spiritually. As friends, family, church leadership, coaches, counselors, you have the choice to be her refuge. Be imitators of Christ, cover her with your feathers of compassion, love, advocacy, understanding and let her find safety there to heal and sometimes hide as you watch her life transform by letting the truth be the truth.