Women, Get the Facts

We understand how you feel.

The women at Avenue know the shock, anger, grief and fear that can overwhelm and threaten to take you under. We know what it's like to feel betrayal trauma.

Our Healing Choice series was written for you, and it's the basis for our guided Restoration Groups. Reading the pages may feel like someone got inside your head. The pages contain reasons to hope for your own healing.

It would take you ten years of 1-hour a week counseling appointments to be spoon fed the wealth of information in these books; and to understand your circumstances and plan your future.

Additionally, our groups provide you a place like no other. No counselor's office will provide you the support and understanding you will discover in a group of a few other women dealing with the same pain.

The ability to talk and share with women just like you, who are also reeling and trying to find their footing in this unintended journey is invaluable.

Don’t hesitate to take these steps now, and escape from the isolation you find yourself in.

It depends on him.

Even in the midst of immense hurt, many women express a hope that their marriage can be restored. We support you here and pray your desires come to fruition, with full healing for both of you.

Restoration requires much patience and waiting from you to see evidence of real change. If you jump back in prematurely, fearful or tired of waiting, you may find yourself in the same situation you were hoping to have change. You will feel doubly pained and stuck. This will take work for you to understand and to uphold boundaries with consequences.

Real repentance and life-change is a certain outcome when a man applies himself to the heart surgery he requires, and the principles and practices found in the AVENUE Operation Destiny process. He isn’t given a 30 day ‘get fixed’ promise. Instead, he is offered tools, information, and a vibrant men’s community that will serve him for life.

We respect all choices.

Any woman that has been betrayed, (yes, even porn is infidelity) has a legitimate 'out' of their marriage vows. There is no judgement if you choose divorce, and this is the right place for you to journey to healing for yourself.

Each group typically has a mix of women's circumstances, hoping to restore, or separated, divorcing, by his decision or the woman's. What each woman has in common with each other is the process to overcome the wounds, to grieve the losses, to heal and to look to the future.

Our Healing Choice series was written for you, and it's the basis for our guided Restoration Groups. The pages contain numerous reasons to hope for your own healing. They are a wealth of information to understanding your circumstances and to plan your future.

Our groups provide you a place like no other. No counselors office will provide you the support and understanding you will discover in a group of a few other women dealing with the same pain. The ability to talk and share with women just like you is priceless.

Don’t hesitate to take these steps now, to escape the isolation you find yourself in.

Yes, and no.

Unfortunately, it’s typical, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for a man or his marriage.

He is called to guard against temptation.

Men, by nature, are God designed to be sexually stimulated by visual cues. However, pornography taints a man’s own values and adversely affects his attitude toward his most important relationships.

Pornography is not a benign activity. The porn user becomes less satisfied with their mate, learns fiction – rather than fact – about female sexuality, and ends up placing decreased value in fidelity. This kind of behavior is progressive. One thing leads to another.

In a word, no.

Victoria’s real ‘Secret’ is they have put in-your-face pornography in mall windows, unsolicited catalogues, and commercials.

Provocative clothing, seductive gestures, alluring dialogue and suggestive behavior all have the power to illicit sexual desire. Our electronic and print media is now saturated with these soft porn images.

The average woman has been made to feel silly and insecure when voicing discomfort if her husband gawks at this erotica. The sad fact is, our culture is continually chiseling away at godly standards, and labels coarse things normal.

The definition of pornography is simply “the depiction of an image intended to arouse sexual desire.” A man does not need to see hard porn in order to be aroused sexually.

It's common for women to begin obsessing over other women's looks when betrayed. While it's a natural reaction, it's not healthy for you. In the Healing Choice, you'll learn how to overcome this new focus.

This is pretty typical.

Your pastor may be well intentioned, but not well prepared to deal with this issue.

Placing your trust in God is a good thing. Placing your trust in your husband right now is not.

The pastor’s response only creates more hurt, implying that you were the cause of his betrayal. You need the input of people who have been there, understand your devastation, your needs, and betrayal trauma.

There is absolutely hope for restoration of your marriage, but it will take your husband putting in serious effort and measurable change.

By taking action.

Time itself doesn’t heal wounds. Time is one component, but other things need to occur for ‘getting beyond it’ to happen.

When to trust, how to forgive, and how to grieve your losses, are just a few issues. Really understanding those in light of this circumstance is imperative to your health.

Most women fail the short quiz on 'Trust’ in our Healing Choice Guidebook. What a woman thinks is required to get over an affair is usually far from the mark.

Forgiveness, ditto. So we can think we’re doing the right things, godly things, but missing vital understanding. All that is made crystal clear in our Guidebooks, which are soundly scripturally based.

Your husband’s actions are his own responsibility.

Often, the husband walks into the relationship with a masturbation habit, and thinks it will dissipate once married. But it’s a decade or more old habit. Ingrained. It doesn’t disappear magically.

So, he squanders his sexual energy this way, the easy way, instead of romancing his wife, and the honeymoon fades.

Each spouse should meet the other's physical needs for intimacy, and to help diminish temptation. But he doesn’t put in the effort you desire and just wants to get to the point like he does with masturbation.

For some men, porn has been a companion all along, but with the internet, it has changed the game, and it becomes an obsession for the man. That’s when men radically change, either withdrawing sexually, or wanting you to act out their online fantasies.

Sometimes, a husband lays blame on his wife for how she looks or dresses. While taking care of one’s appearance is one outward expression of respect to our partner, one’s looks can never be an excuse for a betrayal of intimacy.

We’ve seen this blame shifting used on every type of woman, from supermodel to grandmother. While your attention to grooming and sex matter, it doesn’t excuse him of responsibility. This holds true whether his betrayal is in relation to pornography or physical infidelity.

Good!

Don’t live like this anymore!

Whether you’ve caught him using porn again, or he didn’t break off the affair as he promised he would, God doesn’t want you to live this way. He doesn’t want you to tolerate ungodly behavior.

While it’s possible to restore a marriage, it involves two willing people. The Healing Choice Guidebook will help you make wise decisions that will optimize the possibility of healing after an affair, your husband changing, and to restore your marriage.

You can’t change him, but there are important decisions and actions you can learn about and take that can be the catalyst for change to happen in your husband and your marriage. If both are participating, God will bring you to a better place than you ever experienced before.

What our groups are NOT:

• A co-dependency group
• A lecture to just 'stand by your man’
• Boring

We have as much laughter as we do tears in our groups.

This is absolutely a Christian based ministry, but we don’t distort scripture to persuade you to a certain outcome.

It’s always a surprise for women to encounter other women just like themselves. Once they have this unique place to be themselves where they can vent, and figure the rest out, they can’t imagine trying to deal with all of it on their own.

One incredible discovery women make in these groups is the similarity of the lies they have come to believe from their husbands and of their own making.

While some discussion is about partners, the only person she has the power to control is herself. We encourage each woman to look at what her best life could be, and The Healing Choice Guidebook will provide a compass to direct her path to choices and changes.

We're sorry you had that experience.

HOPE is just one positive word that group participants use to describe their experience studying through our program.

Our understanding is that you’ve experienced trauma because of your husband’s betrayal. We’ve understood that reality since we founded these studies in 1995, because we have been there. We know you have a different set of needs, and we understand what those are.

Isolation is the enemy of healing.

It is our shame that keeps us silent.

Our embarrassment over our situation keeps us locked up in secrets.

We wear a mask to hide, often even with our best friends and family members.

AVENUE groups are designed to protect your dignity and dispel your fears. Through reading this website, each woman identifies issues in her marriage that are on target with the problems we’ve described, so every woman in an AVENUE peer group is on the same, unintended journey.

In this setting, you can end isolation while helping each other remove the cloak of shame you’re wearing. Being with other women has it’s benefits.

Isolation disappears.

Fear takes a back seat.

Solutions get a foothold.

Healing accelerates.

In a word, no.

A 90-year-old man who never betrayed his wife in 70 years of marriage would have had a lifelong habit to guard his eyes and his heart from the temptations he encountered; to flee from the temptation mentally and physically.

I make this statement because many a wife insists that a healed man should have an on/off switch on his sexuality.

That would solve a lot of problems!

But God didn’t build men that way; He hardwired them for sexuality that ensured female attraction, falling in love, procreation and protection of his own. It didn’t turn off at the altar, and it doesn’t turn off when he gets his priorities right.

In AVENUE for Men, they're given many tools customized to their needs and circumstances, to overcome when temptation comes so that it does not overtake them.

Part of his healing is in learning how his sexual energy powers much more than the sex act itself. Creativity, innovation, leadership, earning capability, romance, and fatherhood to name a few.