Title Tuesday: Shattered Vows

Welcome to  Title Tuesday, my favorite day of the week! This day is dedicated to book suggestions, news, cartoons, and reviews. I write this portion of my blog because I am a big believer in the motivational speaker Charlie Jones' quote which says, "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I try to meet as many new people as possible and to read everything I can. This is my way of sharing that information with you. You can see a visual summary of the books I have reviewed for both adults and children over on my Facebook page. If you are interested in understanding my rating system for books you can read my Book Review Explanation here and What I Believe here. If you want to check out what I am currently reading or what I want to read next, friend me on Goodreads!

Good morning! Every once in a while I share book reviews geared towards women trying to recovery from a husband's (physical/emotional/cyber) infidelity. These books will not interest most people, so if you are one of my regular #Title Tuesday readers and you aren't interested in this topic, I promise I will be back to my regular reviews/cartoons next week.

Alright, those of you that are still reading, I want to share with you about Debra Laaser's book, Shattered Vows. For anyone that has had their marriage ravaged by infidelity, you know that it is a devastating blow. It can take months to years to heal from a single affair, longer if their are repeat offenses or continued lying.

In the case of Debra Laaser, her marriage was rocked by the discovery of her husband's multiple sexual betrayals. Her husband lost his job and they entered a very difficult season of recovery and trust rebuilding. Now, they travel together all over the globe and tell other couples their story. They are an incredible example of the redemptive nature of Jesus Christ in a marriage.

I won't lie to you, some of this book is difficult to read. The concept of dealing with your own issues and pain can be frustrating when your heart has been broken by your spouse. However, there was one particular paragraph from Laaser's book that made me keep reading and pushing forward, On page 67 Debra writes,

The feelings won't just go away over time. Not thinking about your husband's sinful decisions won't make them magically disappear. Quickly forgiving your husband and "moving on" will only bury your feelings of anger and sadness- only to have them seep out at unexpected times down the road. The better choice is to go to any lengths to get the support you deserve so you can heal and thrive, not just survive.

This, to me, summarizes the entire book. Recovery from (physical/emotional/cyber) infidelity is incredibly hard and Debra Laaser walks the reader through the first steps with incredible grace.

In Shattered Vows, Debra tackles tough topics like:
-does marital sex prevent pornography use?
--sexually transmitted diseases
-the drip disclosure method
-healthy grieving
-slips and relapses
-and a whole lot more

Debra is honest, concise, and doesn't pander to the "the wife needs to stay in her lane" junk that is often passed around in moral/sexual purity discussion. She does delve a bit into the idea of "codependency", which I don't believe is a prevalent as many psychologists and counselors seem to think. However, that withstanding, this book is excellent and I strongly recommend it to anyone deal with marital (physical/emotional/cyber) infidelity. Overall I give Debra Laaser's book Shattered Vows a solid A+, and it is the first book I recommend to women dealing with marital infidelity.