Does God Want a Say in Your Boundaries with an Addicted Spouse?
There's no secret that living with an addicted loved one is HARD! There are a thousand complications and nuances that make these relationships different from those we experience with the healthy and free people we love. As we try to figure out how to navigate the tumultuous waters of these convoluted (yet precious to us) bonds, we often seek out the advice of "experts."
We hope they'll shed light on situations that feel desperate and offer us hope. Unfortunately, too often, their answers only further complicate our situations. This is never truer than with so much of the expert advice available to us in the area of boundaries.
Perhaps part of the problem is that we have failed to ask God if He wants a say in our boundaries with an addicted loved one. Because doesn't addiction really just boil down to sin? Perhaps part of the problem is that we're turning to people for the wisdom we need to deal with sin, while God stands by waiting for us to simply ask Him.
James 1:5-8(NLT) - If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask Him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.
Why Do Boundaries with an Addicted Spouse Matter?
But maybe we're jumping the gun a bit here. Maybe you're not even fully convinced that boundaries are important in these relationships. Perhaps the fear of losing the person you love outweighs your ability (read willingness) to separate yourself from their actions.
You wouldn't be the first person who loves an addict to feel that way, and you certainly won't be the last!
But somewhere along the way, many of us come to a place where we realize something's gotta give. We can't go on living the way things are. The harder we try to hang on to our loved ones, the deeper they go into their sin. And as we bury our head deeper and deeper in the sand of denial, we find we have lost the ability to breathe.
We become some barely recognizable shell of who we really are, or worse, we don't even know who we are anymore. Our identity gets all wrapped up in the sins of the people we love. They become our idols, and just like that, we find that it has become our own sin too.
Boundary Lines Separate Us from Sin.
That is exactly why we need boundaries.
When we set up boundary lines around ourselves, we demonstrate that our loyalty is to God and His standards. We define the limits of where we'll go, and where we won't. We separate ourselves from the sins of others, and allow the consequences of their actions to fall, in full force, on them.
Galatians 6:7-8 - Don't be misled - you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.
It's hard to do! We don't like to see the people we love being hurt, even when it is their own fault. It is our instinct to get in between them and the consequences for their sins. But when we do, not only do we put ourselves in danger, we get in the way of God. We mock His justice, and interrupt the system He has put in place to bring people to Himself.
Ouch... am I right?
I have certainly been guilty of this you guys. And it didn't do anyone any good. Not me, not my husband, not our children, nobody.
But I came to a place where I realized I had gone wrong. I had listened to so many different people tell me what boundaries in marriage should (and shouldn't) look like, and I was SO confused. Like the verse above from James promises, I felt exactly like a wave that was blown and tossed about by the wind. Completely unstable. So I decided it was time to shut down all that noise.
Learning What God Has to Say About Boundaries
I decided it was time to dig deep into Scripture to discover what GOD had to say about boundaries. I spent the next two years reading through the Bible (the whole thing... twice) specifically looking for what it had to say about boundaries. Personal boundaries, relational boundaries, spiritual boundaries, boundaries in marriage, boundaries within the Church, all of it. I was absolutely blown away by how much was there! Turns out, God has a whole lot to say on the issue.
I took that information, and put it together into a workbook designed to help others discover for themselves what God showed me. I’ll talk more about that in a bit, but first, let me very briefly highlight a few of the things God showed me.
1.BOUNDARIES ARE MORE ABOUT YOUR ACTIONS THAN THE ACTIONS OF OTHERS
I start with this principle because I think it’s the one I personally had gotten the most messed up. (And one I believe many of the experts get wrong too.) I believed boundaries were all about getting other people to do what you wanted them to do. So they seemed manipulative and wrong to me.
What God showed me through His Word is that in reality, setting boundaries that are in line with His ways will actually be about changing MY behavior.
In my relationship with my husband, this meant I had to stop making excuses for his abusive behavior. I had to stop looking the other way while he continued to live in sin. And I had to physically separate myself from him for a time in order to allow the full weight of his choices to hit him instead of me.
For other women I know, it meant not bailing their husbands out of jail ever again, or not finding ways to sacrifice their things in order to pay off debt that had been accrued as a result of their husbands’ sin. For others it meant letting family or church leadership in on what was going on to seek out help. For still others, it meant learning how to walk away from conversations in which they were being mistreated or manipulated.
No matter the specifics, though, boundaries that please God are all about the actions we will take in order to separate ourselves from sin.
2. BOUNDARIES ARE LOVING. NOT MEAN, VINDICTIVE, OR PUNISHING.
This is another principle that was really hard for me to wrap my brain around. Boundaries had always seemed so punishing to me. It felt like I was saying, “If you do x, then I am going to have to punish you by doing y.”
But that is not the reality of healthy, God-honoring boundaries.
As stated before, healthy boundaries aren’t made in order to pull out certain desired behaviors from the people we love, but rather, they’re made to clearly define where we are and are not willing to go ourselves.
Healthy boundaries lovingly offer choice to the people we love, rather than attempting to control them, and then simply define the choices we will make for ourselves.
We’re essentially relinquishing the delusion that we have any control over the actions of another, and simply taking responsibility for our own actions, understanding that we will have to answer to God only for ourselves.
As a result, we’re placing our loved ones into the loving and powerful care of God, understanding He is far more equipped to deal with them and their terrible choices than we are. And this, my friends, is true love! To offer the people we love to God instead of trying to hang onto them ourselves is to love them with a selfless, sacrificial love that cannot be matched in our own strength!
3. HEALTHY BOUNDARIES WILL ALWAYS BE CLEARLY COMMUNICATED
It’s never fair to expect people to read our minds, and it is never fair for others to expect us to read theirs. The boundaries we choose within our relationships must be clearly communicated ahead of time.
People need to know where our borders fall. God does not expect us to hold to standards He has not communicated to us, so we can’t expect people to know our un-communicated expectations either.
The Biblical Boundaries Workbook
Of course, we don’t have the space here to cover all that God showed me in His Word about boundaries in relationships. These principles I’ve shared with you only begin to scratch the surface of what is there.
More importantly, I haven’t even begun to discuss here HOW we can figure out what boundaries God might be asking us to make with our addicted loved ones. But these things are covered in the workbook in quite a bit of detail, along with lots of interactive questions to help you apply it in your own situation.
If you’d like to dig deep into Scripture on the subject of boundaries and allow God to have a say in the ifs and hows of their implementation, you really should check out the Biblical Boundaries Workbook. If you sign up for Leah Grey’s eCourse, UnBound Me, you’ll also receive an extra 20% off the workbook and free shipping.
Read more about my story about my husband’s sexual addiction and how to connect with me below.
-Cherith
I'm Cherith. I write over at His Dearly Loved Daughter about affair recovery and personal healing found through identity in Christ.
Back in 2016, my world came undone when I caught my husband in an affair (not the first time that had happened) and suddenly the full reality of his sexual addiction came into the open. He confessed to a staggering number of betrayals over the course of our 16 year marriage and I suddenly had to figure out how in the world I was going to move forward. He was my best friend, the love of my life, my favorite person in the world, and the father of my children, but I was not willing to go on living the way things had become. I would not be part of a marriage that did not honor God and His standards.
At the same time, I was still reeling from the shock of it all. I could barely think straight enough to figure out how to get out of bed in the morning and get through my day. How was I going to make decisions about my marriage? The only option that made any sense to me was to fall on my face before God and plead with Him for help. I asked Him to show me what I should do, and He faithfully answered me. Loud and clear.
In the years that followed, God tenderly laid the path before me and rebuilt my identity in Christ. And bonus, He turned my husband's life around too! Here we are four years later, still healing, but far more healthy and whole than we've ever been before. We share what He has taught us along the way with the hope that others will find the redemption we've found. As the song goes, we've seen Him move the mountains and we believe we'll see Him do it again.
WANT TO READ MORE ABOUT BIBLICAL BOUNDARIES? TRY THESE!