"Should my wife be one of the people on my Covenant Eyes list?” I’ve heard this question in a variety of settings from men dealing with their struggle against pornography, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk about this issue. Covenant Eyes is a monitoring program that tracks all internet activity and compiles a list of websites visited and sends that list to whomever the user designates. So, when a husband is asking the above question, he is essentially asking “should my wife be one of the people I designate to receive the list of websites I have visited.” While the intent behind asking a wife to join the battle in this way is often noble, there are a number of unintended consequences that spring from this decision. What follows is a discussion of these unintended consequences, and their impact on the couple fighting against pornography.
Shame and Covenant Eyes
The first reason many men give to making their wife their sexual accountability partner is the hope that if the man knows beyond a doubt that his wife will know if he looks at porn, that this will be incentive enough to NOT do it. “I would feel ashamed if my wife found out when I looked at porn, so, not wanting to feel ashamed will keep me from visiting a pornographic site.” I have heard men take this approach one step further, and have actually considered using their mothers as covenant eyes accountability partners, thinking that the shame of a mother’s discovery would be so intense that they couldn’t possibly fall to temptation knowing that their mother would find out.
At the heart of this approach, however, is a fatal underestimating of the power of shame and a misunderstanding of shame’s place in our lives. The thought goes: “Feeling shame/embarrassment is horrible. I don’t want to feel horrible. So, I will threaten myself with the potential for feeling horrible shame, and this will keep me from looking at porn.” This approach assumes that the experience of shame can be domesticated and used as an incentive (or tool) to battle sin. The truth is, that Shame is a destroyer and cannot be tamed. In fact, it may be the most powerful weapon that The Enemy has against the follower of Christ. And, if this course of behavior is followed, the tool becomes the master.
Shame is a consequence of the Fall. It is not “natural” to a man, but an unnatural consequence of man’s fall from Grace. When Adam hid from God, because he was ashamed, God did not use this shame to teach a lesson. He did not shine a heavenly spotlight on his nakedness and say “See, this is what it feels like when you sin and get found out.” He did not exploit his shame, he covered it; He fought against it. For a man to feed shame, and bank on it as something useful, is to give the Fall lasting dominion in one’s life. It says “I am beyond the power of grace and the Holy Spirit, the only hope I have is in the power of shame to restrain me.” And once one begins to appeal to this power, shame eventually ceases to act as an incentive, and begins to take hold as an identity.
Once this shame-based, "beyond the strength of grace," identity takes hold, it actually becomes harder for a man to fight against this sin. When a man does succumb to the temptation to look at porn, after enlisting his wife as his Covenant Eyes accountability partner, he can begin to think “I’m so ‘sick’ that I don’t even care if my wife knows what I’ve seen.” The next time the temptation arises to look at pornography, this thought then begins to fight against him saying “Well, you’ve already proven how sick you are, you might as well go the whole way and look at porn again,” increasing the likelihood of subsequent falls.
Passive Honesty and Covenant Eyes
The backhanded slap of reality brings about the second reason that many men give for making their wives their covenant eyes accountability partners. Most men have been in the fight long enough to know that on those occasions that he has looked at pornography, he has often not been able to muster the courage to go to his wife to confess his sin. So, he thinks, “Covenant Eyes will force me to be honest about my sin with my wife. I know I’m going to want to hide or lie, and this will allow her to cut off my escape routes.”
The intent behind this is often noble: “I know I am a sinner, prone to lie and hide. I don’t want to be able to do that. I don’t want to be that man. I want to be an honest man” But the way it ends up playing out in reality actually stunts a man’s relational/emotional/spiritual development. In his heart, he wants to be an honest man, but what using Covenant Eyes in this way promotes is a passive honesty, rather than the active honesty of the adult child of God.
Here’s what I mean: “Passive Honesty” is the honesty that comes when one’s sin is exposed by another. When a wife discovers her husband’s sin through this 3rd party, she must now go to him to tell him that she knows and ask/demand that he deal with his sin. While there may be defense and protest, ultimately there is no way to escape the reality of the situation. The sites that were visited are there in black and white. He cannot lie about it and get away with it, so he confesses. It is honesty. But it is passive because the man, who knew he had sinned, did not go to his wife first and tell her that he had done so. He merely waited to be confronted with it, and then confessed.
Active Honesty, on the other hand, is recognizing the hurt one has caused, the unkindness done, the sin committed, and confessing it to the offended party whether that person knew of the sin or not. Whether this is in the realm of sexual addiction or in the every day, relational sins we commit against each other, active honesty and seeking forgiveness is what we are called to. Active Honesty is risky. It confronts us with the possibility of unforgiveness and broken relationship. “How will the other person respond when he finds out what I did/said/thought about him? Can they forgive me for telling another friend about their marital problems? Will he still be my friend if I tell him that I’m jealous of his latest promotion? Will she leave if I tell her that I screwed up again?” However, Active Honesty is also a man’s greatest hope in rebuilding a relationship that is suffering from the brokenness of known and unknown sin.
Spousal Dread and Covenant Eyes
What emotions would fly across a wife’s heart when she opens her e-mail at the end of long night wondering if she will find out that her husband has fallen again to the temptation to look at pornography? The hope of hearing from a dear friend about the joys and trials of work, motherhood, or friendship dashed against the rocks of the discovery of betrayal. How long can a wife continue to encounter this before she begins to dread opening her e-mail? And how many experiences of this kind of dread will it take before she begins to resent the husband who is asking her to deal with this dread on a nightly basis?
For a wife, hearing of a husband’s interaction with pornography is a traumatic experience. For a wife to discover such a thing not from the mouth of the one she loves and who loves her, but from a faceless, presenceless computer program can do nothing but intensify this trauma. What does someone long for when she experience trauma (when she discovers betrayal)? Comfort. Presence. Assurance. Repentance. To discover a betrayal in the absence of the one who has committed his life to her is to leave the wife with no comfort and no reminder of the love she has for her spouse or the love he has for her. She is not hearing the news from a saddened and remorseful husband, she is discovering it alone…with no physical comfort, no spoken repentance, and no reminder of the man who committed his heart and body to her. She is left utterly alone in her dread, and is defenseless against the powerlessness and shame that would seek to consumer her at that moment.
The wife is now put in the position of wondering “What should I do with this information?” She hopes that her husband will come forward on his own, and confess his sin to her. But what happens if his own shame, fear, and anger overwhelm him and he does not? Does she go to him to confront him with his sin? This can quickly turn the spousal relationship into one of mother and son, deepening the divide between the lovers. Does she wait for him to confess? Resentment and distrust then build with every minute, hour, day that passes without his confession. The wife is put in a double-bind, and is ultimately left without comfort for her pain, and oftentimes loses the opportunity to feel all she may want/need to feel, as she must now figure out the best way to deal with the situation.
So What…
Considering these unintended consequences, my answer to the question above is “No, I do not think a husband should enlist his wife in the battle against pornography by making her a Covenant Eyes accountability partner.” So, is there a place for Covenant Eyes in the battle against pornography? I still have mixed feelings about it. I think that there could be a place for it as an intermediate step, but I don’t think it has much place as a long-term tool. If active honesty with a friend or with a spouse is impossible for a man at a certain point during the struggle, Covenant Eyes may be a helpful tool in the hands of a trusted friend, but if the struggler isn’t moving from passive honesty to active honesty, he must ask himself “why?”. The deeper question I would have for the man is this: What is making active honesty with your friends and spouse impossible? Overall, though Covenant Eyes could be a helpful tool for parents monitoring a child’s internet usage, I think the same unintended consequences for men are possible even when the accountability partner is a friend and not a spouse. In general, it’s just hard for a man to feel and, thus, act like a man when he is caught or his sin is exposed by another.
If you are a man that struggles to be actively honest with your spouse and friends, or if you experience the paralyzing effects of shame, working through these issues with a counselor may be a vital step in your recovery and rebuilding of the relationships in your life. As I’ve worked with men in individual counseling as well as in group settings, I’ve seen shame diminish in men’s lives, I’ve seen their ability to be honest increase. I've seen their relationships with their wives restored and deepened. I’ve seen men who could see only brokenness and depravity in their hearts begin to see themselves as delighted in sons of God. And I’ve seen men experience hope as they see God strengthen them in their fight against pornography.
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