Savage Marriage

Phil & Priscilla Fretwell are co-authors of Savage Marriage where they share their true, raw, gut-wrenching journey of betrayal and healing from sexual addiction to true intimacy.

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Transcript

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Hey all! This is Camille Battaglia with Heavenly Hookups. I'm so excited to be here with my guest, Phil and Priscilla Fretwell of Savage Marriage Ministries. They're going to share intimate details about their life's journey and their healing from betrayal after Priscilla discovered Phil's sexual addiction and what looked like a picture perfect marriage. I think you all are really going to appreciate their honesty about the facts and dangers of pornography. This is such an epidemic, even in the church today. I'm so grateful for their raw and real truth that we're gonna hear. They are also authors of Savage Marriage triumph, over betrayal and sexual addiction. They also have a small group study guide. And what I love about this book Savage Marriage is that it is written from both of their own perspectives. They're based in Orlando, Florida. Phil is a successful businessman. He retired from a$2 billion global consulting firm where he had been a founding managing director. He was recognized as one of the top 25 global leaders in consulting. Priscilla has invested her life in the lives of others, starting in Brazil, serving with her missionary parents, a homeschool mother to five and a coach to women in troubled marriages. And without further ado, let me introduce you to Phil and Priscilla. Welcome. I'm so happy you're here. Well, we are glad to be here. We are. We are so thankful for this opportunity. This is a very interesting, topic that we don't really get to hear much about. I just thank you so much for being here for opening up your hearts to all of us so that we can learn from you. Well, we have found that's the best way to do it because, you know, we spend time with a lot of couples. And what we have found is that we shouldn't expect anybody to be more transparent with us than we are with them. And a lot of what we do is sharing our story and encouraging people to open up and share their story. It kind of gives them permission. Yeah, absolutely. That's wonderful. But real quick, before we get into all of that, let's find out how you all met? Oh, well we met many years ago at a church Christmas dinner and we were probably I would say that we both looked kind of perfect and religious and that should have been a red flag at the beginning. Don't you think Priscilla? It should have been, but we were picture perfect back then, too. Yes. Yes. And we thought it was too good to be true. And in fact it was. Cause none of us perfect. Yes, that's true. We weren't very real back then but now we are, we've been married coming up on 34 years. We almost didn't make it, but here we are. Yeah. Well, you guys, five, you guys deserve a gold star. I mean, 34 years. And after what you've been through, that's amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. It is amazing, but it's transformed not only our lives, but the lives of our family as well. And our kids, we have five kids, three, their adults, and married two still at home. Wow. So that's great. Do you, I guess you have grandchildren maybe. Yes, we do too. Two little girls. Yeah. Aw, that's wonderful. Yep. Why don't we jump right into it? So, Phil, how did all this start? When were you exposed? Well, you know, I think it started really back when I was probably 10 or 11 years old, my dad had, left my mom for another woman and they gotten a divorce and kind of all about the same time, I found a box of pornography out in my neighbor's trash pile and brought it inside and started looking at it. And so that ended up creating a comfort kind of inside of me that helped me deal with a lot of pain that was happening from my dad's departure. I didn't know all that Camille, at that point, I wasn't able to put that together, but that really was the beginning of the hooks of pornography into my life. That's really interesting. I also had a I guess, what would you call it? Opportunity with pornography, or the images that I saw when I was young, when I was babysitting, were with magazines and those images were imprinted in my mind, for a long time. Also when I was somewhat older an living on my own with my sister. We had HBO when it was really new back then and there were, shows on there that I watched that were in my head also for a long time. Yeah. So we both had exposure to porn because, and neither one of us realized it. No, this is something we would never talk about. Yeah. Cause remember we, we had to look perfect to get married. Yeah, cause we were looking for perfection, yeah. Priscilla grew up in Brazil, the daughter of missionaries. So why in the world would I risk exposing, all of my shortcomings here during our dating period. Because I'm sure she would've dumped me at that point. At least that's what I thought. Yeah. It's like so many couples, right? You put on a false exterior during the dating, to protect yourself and then you wind up getting married and the secrets of your past eventually come out. Yeah. Yeah. You like to keep him and hiding. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's right. And you probably didn't even realize it was an addiction or maybe you did? I don't know? Well, back then, I'd say people didn't talk about it like that. Yeah. It was kind of one of those things guys get together and they talk about this and everybody, many, many guys struggle with porn, but some guys will even talk about, you know, I, I struggled with porn, I struggle with this, but very few guys will take a step and say, it's an addiction. But when you start looking at the hold that it has on men and women, right? So we, we we're finding now, women deal with this too. Not in probably the numbers that men do. But, it does hit a lot of the ringers of addiction. Although many times we'll say, Hey, this is a lot about our choices that we've made. We do have power to make right choices that God's given us and we don't have to give into these things. Yeah. So fast forward Priscilla, how did you discover his infidelity? How did you discover the porn addiction or the porn interest? Well, the first time was 10 years into our marriage. Yeah. 10 years into our marriage. It was through a video rental. I found out they called the house and asked, if we had rented a movie and I said, we don't rent those kind of movies. And I called Phil and he came home right away. And that's when he kind of confessed that he had watched this movie in our home and I got really angry and bent outta shape that he had brought this home. And then the second time was 17 years later, 18 years later, where he could not live with this anymore. And again, he came home and he confessed everything that he was doing and where he was spending his time on his trips. That's how both of them came up, the first time I will tell you we did what a lot of couples do and that is hide. He did come clean about watching the porn in our home and he also, came clean and we did what most people do and that is, put it under the rug and, and not deal with it. Live in denial, basically that this is not happening. And we didn't reach out to anybody. We didn't reach out to our family. We didn't reach out to friends or our pastors. No one knew about our secret. The second time around, Phil brought in, how would you call it? The idea of being honest with everyone. So what happened between 10 years and 27 years into this is, I had really kind of still was struggling with this. I went through five years of professional counseling. I thought he was a good counselor, but I just, wasn't honest with him and I continued to struggle. But what happens with pornography is it's a progressive thing in your life. And so it continues to move on and on and on and it's never satisfied. And so what was pornography eventually turned in going to massage parlors and this was happening all over the world. Different places that I would go and I couldn't stop. This went on for probably 10 years or so into our marriage. And I got to the place that I just did not want to live like this anymore. And I called out to God for a rescue in my life. I was very involved in our church. I was in leadership positions and I just thought this was going to absolutely destroy our whole marriage, destroy our family and destroy my life. Really. I went to Priscilla. And confessed. We had a connection with a ministry based out of Atlanta called Whatever It Takes Ministries and a guy named Paul Speed, who leads that came in and just really helped a lot. And he showed me that I'd just not been honest. I had not been humble. I needed to take a position of humility with Priscilla. And bring her into everything I've been doing. And so that's what I did and it started with Priscilla, but then it went on and I shared with our children and our extended family. And it really started Camille breaking the back of my own pride and arrogance that I had in my life that I did not want to be seen and known by anybody. Amazing that you did that. That's a bold, bold move. But that's really how you have to do it, right? Just come clean. Yeah. It was and what it did is it took, everything out of the hiding, because we knew that we had to bring this to the light. And when we did all the grip of that stuff that had been in my life for so long, just started losing its power over me. And then I brought Priscilla into the struggle I was having. And so realized that, you know, she mentioned that she had some porn too. Well, I didn't know anything about that. But as I started sharing and we both started sharing, it was kind of a mutual coming clean in this, and she started sharing about her own, that her own, impact in her life from the pornography and everything. So Priscilla, how were you able to forgive him once he came clean? Well, to me, I think that is one of the key things. When we find ourselves in this predicament, is the forgiveness aspect. As Phil mentioned that he went to whatever it takes ministries Four Days To Freedom. I went to Four Days To Hope and it's a woman's side of that and I went actually five days after he came clean. They had a retreat and I attended and I went up there thinking that this was the answer to our problems for him. Like, we're gonna get this straightened out, Phil. Yeah. So you can't fix it. I'm gonna fix it for you. You know how that goes? Yeah. Yes. There's nothing wrong with me. Right, right. I'm perfect. There's nothing wrong with me. But, in that weekend, up there in the Georgia mountains, God, came and spoke to my heart and I will tell you, it was probably the first time I think it, I will say it is the first time I had heard God speak to me so clearly that I wasn't there for Phil. I was there for me. And he wanted to fix what was broken in me. And that weekend that's the whole experience was me looking at my life and seeing where am I with God? And I realized through that weekend that I had been in rebellious towards God for most of my life, I would say all of my life really I was a very unforgiving person. I was critical. I had a judgemental spirit a lot of bitterness and I walked in fear my whole life. And when I saw that and the most, I guess you would say the biggest problem that I really had was I was apathetic towards God, and I really didn't care about God's word. I would do all the right things. Right? Going to church singing in the choir, kids programs, missions trips, I was doing everything right. Yeah. But when that weekend, when it was done, I realized how apathetic I was towards my God and I had no desire to even know him my whole life. Bible reading was almost nothing to me and the Bible studies that I went to, I went there to talk to other women, you know? But the place that forgiveness took in my life was when I realized how much Christ had forgiven me. Because there I stood before him and all of this crap that I had been carrying for years and I realized that he had forgiven me. Yeah. And, um, and if he could forgive me, he did, not if, he did forgive me. Yeah. He could also forgive Phil and he has forgiven Phil. So I needed to forgive Phil and it was a supernatural experience for me because it was a daily choice that I made to forgive my husband. Yeah. And, I will say that happened in April. Okay. Mm-hmm. In November, Thanksgiving dinner. We had Thanksgiving dinner here at our home and I stood before my family and in-laws and everybody that was here, everybody that was here, 18 people. Wow. And I said, I want you all to know that God has forgiven me and I have forgiven Phil. Wow. And that's all I said. Because from April to November, God had worked this in my life and it was a daily decision that I made, that if God forgave me, I could forgive him. And let go. I do not need this, I can let go, so that's what happened. Wow. That's amazing. And so how was your relationship after that? Did you still have some triggers, like for the next six months to a year or a couple years after that? I would say five and a half years. Uh, no, we still have triggers. It's not as intense as it used to be. I think we get through them quicker than we used to but if there's a trigger, yes, there are triggers, I think. But we talk through'em, we pray through it. We really do talk to each other and wanting to know the root of the problem. And, so yes, we always tell our people in Savage Marriage that we have not arrived. We are not the perfect couple and everything is like, we have not arrived, but we're not where we were five and a half years ago. And I praise the Lord for that, I mean, it's a wonderful thing to be able to experience this life with my husband and with Phil. And he knows me so intimately now, we did not know each other this way before. Yeah, it was very much of a hiding of who we really were inside. Mm-hmm. And I think even in these triggers that sometimes pop up, God is using that to reveal the inward, most pain and hurt that we have. It's a beautiful experience for us to walk through it together. Yeah. That's true intimacy when you're able to be that vulnerable. Right. And real with each. Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible. What do you tell your groups that come to see you or when you're speaking about the dangers of porn, like most people it's become so acceptable now, right? And people, kids are seeing at a younger age. I heard the other day that the average age that kids are exposed to pornography is eight years old. Now. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. What do we tell the parents, like this is, this is what can happen once you're exposed to it. And these are the dangers of it. Well, it's, you know, a lot of people do talk about the pornography today. It's become more of a mainline conversation, but, I think we've come to the conclusion that we've been describing this really not in the right terms. Because what people are really having is a, not a pornography experience, but a masturbation experience that's enhanced by pornography. And the masturbation is really the seat of the shame because, and nobody really thinks about it like this Camille. There's a part of you that says there's nobody here to love me. So I need to love myself. I need to do this and inside that feels extremely shameful. So it's interesting. People will say, we call it the"P" word. Very few people will talk about the"M" word because inside it feels shameful in doing that. Even saying the word, sometimes people have a hard time saying masturbation. Yeah. Right. It's a real thing. Most people have done it at some point and what that does is it affects the wiring, the sexual wiring inside your brain. And there's more guys probably connected and hooked on this than women, but it's not exclusively a guy's issue. Because we've talked to men and women who are both dealing with this, but what happens is connecting the sexual experience, the orgasm to visual images. So what happens is men and women get married and then the man can actually, not perform sometimes not climax without having the porn. Have you noticed how many erectile dysfunction ads are out there today? Gosh, yeah. I don't really watch TV anymore, but yes, I mean. They're almost like every commercial. Every commercial. Have you ever wonder where all this stuff comes from? I get it that there are medical reasons for this too. Right. But when we've talked to men about this, many men have acknowledged that their porn use has wired their brain to be turned on by what they have allowed themselves to be turned on by. And that becomes a gigantic issue, even in very young men that are getting married and it's a place of shame. Nobody wants to talk about it. So then they buy drugs to help them with it. And their wife doesn't want to talk about it because that kind of implies that maybe he's not so interested in her so it creates shame on both sides of this equation, it really does because you will be turned on by what you allow yourself to be turned on by. And if you're connected with the, the porn. So it's not just the porn, but it's the sexual climax that attaches to what you're looking at and makes you want to desire whatever it is you've been looking at. Yep. And also the problem with this and marriage, you have a spouse that is looking at porn masturbating, and now he's wants to have intimacy with his wife. It could be called, sexual intimacy with his wife. But it's hard because the images that he has in his head are not of his wife and then what he has been practicing with porn and masturbation has been a selfish act. So now he comes before his wife and it's not one of a person coming to give, but it's the person coming to take. Wow. Because that has been his go-to I come to take. I come to take from the videos or whatever I'm watching. To now I want to take from you and the woman, of course, a lot of women feel used. There is no, there is no intimacy there, there's just a coming to take. And, it is, it's very hard. A woman is never given the time to have a sexual experience with her husband. That it is a giving experience. It's more of a taking. That's a really good point. That's a really good point. So how does pornography lead into human trafficking? Well, I think it's a gateway to it. It really is because what happens is the more that you are looking at porn and focusing and meditating on that sooner or later, you want a real person on that. Now that might be 20 years. It might be 30 years. But, I would say every guy we've talked to that have been dealing with massage parlors or anything like that, there is a root somewhere back there of images and thoughts. And sometimes it's been a trauma that's happened to'em and we've talked to a number of guys that their dads encouraged them to go to a prostitute when they're really young. Mm. Right. So just a, that's an abusive thing, but all those things create the impetus for the guy to desire the variety and other women and things like that. And so they will create the demand for this. Then the human traffickers is a business, right? They are fulfilling a demand. But while the demand is there, there will continue to be a business of human trafficking in people like that. Mm-hmm it's a billion dollar business. Isn't it? Yeah. Gigantic. Mm-hmm. And what part of the world would you say is the worst? Uh, the U.S. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Within the U.S. I've read that the three big cities in the U.S. are Las Vegas, Atlanta and Orlando. Orlando? Where everyone comes to vacation. Right. But you think about that as tourist, right. People get away from home, there's a level of secrecy, and they want to do what they want to do. Yeah. Wow. So how do we protect our kids and our family? Well, I think with our children it's interesting. We've thought a lot, we've talked to our older children about what we did growing up with them. What worked well, what didn't work well, and we've come to a couple of conclusions that there has to be an openness from parents to talk about all this stuff. And not just from one parent or the other. So, Camille, I think the typical thing is guys would talk to the sons and moms would talk to the daughters. Right. That's the typical thing that starts happening. But implicit in that setup is that this is kind of a secret thing to talk about. So son, this is dad, this is boy stuff. We're gonna talk about this, and mom didn't need to know and the same way with the girls. So we've turned that around. We talk very openly to our kids about this both of us on both sides. Don't you think Priscilla, right, right. And usually at the same time, I mean, it's a very normal conversation for us to have about porn, about masturbation, about trafficking. I mean, all this stuff that starts happening. Social media. Social media. Yeah. But many times a parent does not want to talk about this because they have their own level of shame and, baggage in their life, sexual baggage that they don't want to come out in the open and they're afraid to talk to their kids about it, but we encourage parents to talk about. Because when they are open, it will encourage their kids to be open. Because like you said, this stuff is happening really, really, really young. Yeah. And so there has to be that level of openness and transparency in the home for everybody to be honest and talk about it. Yeah. We really need to do that. The things that come across your phone, I have two phones, one for work and personal, and it's amazing to me, the texts that I get. I think being proactive and talking about these things will help everybody, not even open it up and look at it, you know, out of curiosity. Yeah. So what would you say to single people who are dating? How would they go about having this conversation? Because they might not have it in marriage counseling if they're, pre-marriage counseling, if they even go to that before they get married. Well, I think one thing we've always told our kids as they've gone up is you need to ask your future spouse about what their relationship has been with porn. Yeah. You know, the other day we were talking to our girls about some of the questions that need to be asked today. Right. The questions that we asked in the past are different than the questions that need to be asked today. Correct. Especially with all this gender stuff going on. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like, Hey, so did you ever dress as a girl? If you're talking to your boyfriend, I mean, these are things that, Hey, did you ever, you know, encounter this in your life? Things that we would not ever think about asking. Right. And they need to be willing to share their own. Right. Right. Just right out there. Right. Mm-hmm. So, I think asking questions, of future people that we're interested in, but also being honest about where you have come. Mm-hmm. Do you guys do marriage counseling or do you just help people that are already married? Well, it's interesting. We've had requests from people that are engaged and we are gonna put together something eventually that covers that piece, but it's a lot of the same topics. Really. We work our way through. In Savage Marriage, we talk about the wounds of your past. And how the, how your trauma and your wounds of your past are making decisions for you today and without your permission. And then we talk about the lies that you've believed what's happened in your, the soil that you've been planting in. And what are the lies that you've believed and how does that affect you today? So we talk about those topics with the married couples, but those topics also need to be dealt with the engaged couple. I'd say today, we're working primarily with married couples. But it's interesting Priscilla, so I'd say especially the couples that have been married 30 years, 40 years, they say, boy, I wish we would've known this before we got married. Right. That's right. So yeah. And we say that too, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. So we wish he knew all this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Now how many couples do you see, on their second marriage, maybe even their third marriage coming to you, dealing with this? A lot it is interesting. We went back the other day and we were looking at several years worth of history on couples. And we have couples sometimes leave a group. Like we get into it one, two or three sessions, and it's really tough stuff. Right. We're asking you hard questions about your past. And so if you've been married two or three times, there is some level of trauma in your past. And when we say, and they're trying to forget it as much as they can, right? Yeah. And we're saying, no, we're gonna go back and look at this because we want to understand how it's gonna affect, how it's affecting your marriage today. And at some point, the couples that have left, I'd say many of them were on a second and third marriage, right Priscilla? Correct. But they did not want to go back and look at the past they've tried their entire life to forget it. And here we are, Phil and Priscilla wanting to talk my abuse as a kid and I just don't want to talk about that. That's not a door I want to open. Right. Yeah. And so, I think that's what happens, there's just more stuff there and people are afraid to open it. So is there anything else that's on your heart that you want to make sure that we talk about today that I haven't asked you? Well, I'd say one thing is we always tell couples, there's no silver bullet in this, right. But if there was a silver bullet, this is what it would be. And this was, I would say Camille was the big thing that changed our relationship is we had, I would say level of spiritual and maybe religious involvement and activity with God individually, but we really had no spiritual intimacy together. What God showed us is that if we wanted to be emotionally and sexually intimate, we had to start with spiritual intimacy. And so we had to turn the whole relationship completely back around and start over again. And that became the key because that gave us the fuel to develop the emotional intimacy which led to the expression and the sexual intimacy. That's right. It's interesting how often, and our relationship started like this too, which it started with the emotional right. 34 years ago. And I think most dating relationships are like this, that you start with the emotional. And then you go to the physical and then you get married. Let's just say, you're a believer and you go shoot. Now we have to bring God into this. Yeah. You know, we've done these two things and we kind of let him on the sideline and I will say that's what happened with us too. Philip would do the devotions every now and there and, it was kind of like. Yeah. Okay, great. You know, but our life, our dating life was not exactly, what's that book that, that guy, Kiss Dating Goodbye or whatever? Something like that, a lot of Christians read that, don't do anything before you're married anyway, ours wasn't like that anyway. I never heard of that book. Oh, you haven't? No. So we never brought in the spiritual side of having intimacy with God in with each other in the spiritual realm. Now we had religious activity. We had activities. We were big at church activity. Yeah. But we're not talking about the activity that you do together. That's all good. But it's the conversations that you're talking about? What is it that God is showing me about me? What is he telling me? What is he revealing to me in my life and sharing that with Phil and it's not, big, drawn out conversations. It's just little things here and there, but it's something that we do on a daily basis as share. What is it that God is showing me today? Yeah. And I was just thinking what if there's a single person listening to this? And they want to clean up their act male or female and realize this is now an issue after hearing this podcast. What would you recommend for them to do? So if somebody is single and they're wrestling with sexual immorality or trauma or whatever it is from their past, we would recommend that they go to the, Whatever Tt Takes Ministries conferences, and it's WITministries.com. And there's a Four Days To Freedom for guys. There's a Four Days to Hope for ladies and they have a couples intensive as well, and Priscilla and I coach at some of these conferences and it's had a big impact on our life. And I think that'd be a great place for people to start. Thank you. That's wonderful advice. That's all the time we have today and we could talk about the subject forever. Yes, we could. I'm so grateful for everything we've learned today, and I'm so thankful to know you and I'm honored that you would share your story with all of us, because knowledge is power, right? Well, we're happy to do that and we appreciate you bringing us on. Yes, thank you. Oh, you're welcome. So if anyone's looking for healing or simply wants to gain more spiritual, emotional, and sexual vibrancy in their marriage, how can people reach out to you? Or where can they buy your book? Yeah, so we're on the internet at SavageMarriageMinistries.com. And they can find our books on Amazon, just search under Savage Marriage, Fretwell. It will pop up both the workbook and the regular book. And we also have a podcast on our website, on iTunes or Spotify. Just again, searching under Savage Marriage, Phil and Priscilla, and it'll pop up. Okay, wonderful. Our time is up, but thanks for being here, go buy their book and follow them for more information on a SavageMarriageMinistries.com. In John 16:13, it says the Lord will lead you into all truth. If you would like to find more Heavenly Hookups podcasts, please follow us on Instagram at HeavenlyHookup_S or HeavenlyHookups.com or CamilleBattaglia.com. Thank you so much.