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Inside the Secret Life of a Pastor
Sheryl and Paul Giesbrect are preparing to celebrate their 26th wedding anniversary. The sweethearts cherish their life together, which began when they met while attending a Christian university. It's where they found religion and each other. Today, Paul is a minister in California and Sheryl broadcasts spiritual messages. Both counsel troubled couples, but now they find themselves in need of counseling. Their marriage holds a secret, one the 50-year-old parents of two say rattled their union. For 10 years, Paul kept the fact that he was addicted to Internet pornography a secret from Sheryl.
"The temptation will be with me until the day I die,” Paul said.
Sheryl was shocked by the revelation. “I said something like, ‘Well, that’s just disgusting.’”
To help themselves and their marriage, the Giesbrects met with psychoanalyst Bethany Marshall. They allowed ABC’s “Good Morning America” to watch them for their first time on the opposite side of the couch.
The sessions yielded surprises from the start, like how often Sheryl dwells on her husband’s obsession.
She said she spent two hours a day thinking about it.
“I thought you were going to say five minutes a week,” her husband said.
When Marshall questioned Sheryl on what she thought about specifically, she admitted wondering about how often her husband was tempted.
“She questions whether their lovemaking will be enough,” said Marshall.
“I feel angry about it. I can’t say, ‘Well, this is your problem. Do something about it,’” Sheryl said.
Marshall said Sheryl couldn’t hold other people responsible to fix her marriage problems, “because you’re not healing him. You’re feeding into the addiction.”
Sheryl said her husband was great at sneaking around and wondered whether the rush of it had something to do with the situation.
“I thought her comment was interesting, kind of — her part of the game is, ‘I’m going to catch him, and he’s going to sneak around,’” Paul said. “I think, definitely, on the Internet, is how close you get to someone walking in.”
Paul said part of the thrill came from wondering how quickly he could change the screen before almost getting caught.
“Well, that was within, you know, a millisecond, and you know, you get kind of a rush off of that.”
Read the rest of this story here at ABCNews.com...
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This post has been viewed 572 times and was added on June 12, 2007 by Todd Rhoades. Filed under: Leadership Issues Leadership Development Share this post with a friend right now! View reactions to this post at other blogs... You can really help us out by subscribing to our free RSS feed with your favorite feed reader, or here at Bloglines. Also, you can add us to your favorites at Technorati.
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My name is Todd Rhoades, the 'behind the scenes' guy here at MMI. I'm also on the team at Leadership Network (although that doesn't mean that they endorse everything I write here). In my past life, I was the developer of a of a website called ChurchStaffing.com. I hope you'll enjoy your time here and tell all your colleagues about MMI! 
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Post Your Comments:Interesting article, addiction is a difficult thing to deal with, I know when I first got saved I was a drug addict, and I enjoyed sharing my testimony, talking over and over again about “how bad I was” or how high I would get. It was almost a substitute for the addiction.
Then, several years later, I found myself in another addiction, an addiction that was started in my preteen years - pornography. after 15 years of marriage, my wife discovered the addiction. It was devastating. In my eyes, it wasn’t affecting our marriage, in her eyes it shattered her self image and her trust in me. We went to counseling, survived, or should I say surviving it, but I know it is still on her heart. Its been 8 years, and its still just right there under the surface, but we are stronger, we love each other more; but we are also more realistic about the sin.
The internet is a great tool, but I know there are more of us “browsing” than you could admit.
Interesting article, addiction is a difficult thing to deal with, I know when I first got saved I was a drug addict, and I enjoyed sharing my testimony, talking over and over again about “how bad I was” or “how high I would get.” It was almost a substitute for the addiction.
Then, several years later, I found myself in another addiction, an addiction that was started in my preteen years - pornography. after 15 years of marriage, my wife discovered the addiction. It was devastating. In my eyes, it wasn’t affecting our marriage, in her eyes it shattered her self image and her trust in me. We went to counseling, survived, or should I say surviving it, but I know it is still on her heart. Its been 8 years, and its still just right there under the surface, but we are stronger, we love each other more; but we are also more realistic about the sin.
The internet is a great tool, but I know there are more of us “browsing” than you could admit.
Saying this as the worst of sinners: this is why marriages MUST be predicated on absolute honesty. It sucks having to confess sin to your wife, but it sucks more keeping it secret--it’ll gnaw at you from the inside. The upside of confessing your sin is that you see its effects immediately, rather than being able to lie to yourself about how it’s not hurting your marriage…
The Christian Church is called to become the community of truth-sayers. We are to let our yes be yes and our no be no. One of the many good places to practice this is in our marriages.
Secrecy is the mother of all sins because she blinds us to its effects.
Lord have mercy on us all.
We all struggle and we all hide things behind walls and masks. Pastors and their families are no different. The walls are bigger the more people you serve---and the news is bigger when you fall. I think it’s great they are sharing their story and struggles--hiding it all away never reached anyone…
Sharing burdens is the basis of a new type of blog that I just launched yesterday! It is a place to get the difficult issues out and discussed--posts are written by anyone and can be anonymous if desired. We need to start taking off the masks and tearing down the walls! In building ourselves and others in faith, we can turn and reach out to help save others.
I hope you check it out and feel free to contribute…
what constitutes struggle versus addiction. do you have to confess to your wife every time you’re tempted? i think not.
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