4 Thoughts for Confession and Listening
1. Pray about it.
If you’re confessing to a porn addiction, pray and ask God for His grace. Next, pray for empathy for the person you’re confessing to and for wisdom about how much to share. Finally, ask God for the courage to follow through. If someone else confesses to you, say a quick, silent prayer asking God for grace, empathy, patience, and wisdom, knowing you can’t fix this addiction.
2. Do your part with help.
If you’re admitting an addiction, your part is to tell the truth kindly—more on that in the next section. If someone admits to you their pornography addiction, here are a few things to remember.
First, they have decided to trust you with something very painful. However, you’re not their counselor, you (ideally) aren’t their only confidant, and you are not responsible for fixing the problem. They just overcame a huge hurdle, so thank them for sharing.
They’re telling you because they believe it’s wrong, so they don’t need to be reminded right now. Don’t freak out. They are taking an important step, but there will be many more down the road.
You don’t have to know all the next steps. You can listen, ask them what they plan to do next, and check in to see if they’ve taken their next step. If you’re hearing from your spouse, child, or significant other, it’s a good idea for you to seek help from a counselor, pastor, and trusted friends.
3. Tell the truth kindly.
If you’re confessing, remember that you’ve probably been practicing this conversation in your mind for a while. The person you confess to hasn’t. You’ve possibly had a chance to start the healing process and see a path forward. While they might be blindsided by the information. While you can’t control their reaction, you can take steps to help share with kindness and compassion.
If you’re confessing to your spouse or significant other, consider timing, location, and exactly what you share. Think of how you would want to be treated in this situation and put your spouse first. Don’t let this stop you from being honest, but practice empathy as you confess. Bringing in a counselor or a pastor for wisdom is a good idea.
Again, in the case of a marriage, it is often a wise choice to bring in a mutually trusted third party to help facilitate some of the healing that will take place.
4. Follow up.
When someone shares something heavy with you, it’s easy to have one of two tendencies—you bring it up too often afterward, or you never bring it up again. Neither is helpful. So, think about your follow-up strategy. After you ask them about their next step, decide how frequently you’ll check in to pray for them, ask how they are doing, and see how their next step went. Also, be sure to honor them in the way you follow up. If they told you in private, bring it up again privately.
We are grateful for the ministries that we have gleaned from to help shape these next steps from including open.life.church, Pure Desire Ministries, Ever Accountable, and Accountable2You.