My Full Art Gallery

All of the pictures you’ve seen on this blog up to this point (except for memes) are either photos I’ve taken myself, family photos from my photo albums, or artwork I’ve created myself. Today I’ve decided to post a full compilation of the paintings and drawings I’ve created during the course of my recovery. After both D-days, I struggled to find the words and the language to communicate how the betrayal from my husband’s pornography use has affected me and made me feel. So I painted and drew my feelings instead. After all, a picture’s worth a thousand words, right?

Eventually, when I get my own apartment or my own home (which I hope will happen in the next year or two), I plan to frame these and hang them on the walls over my husband’s computer. But in the meantime, they’ll all be here for you to see and relate to.

This is the first painting I’ve ever done related to betrayal, painted sometime between 2017-2018. The “mistress”, a personification of porn addiction, is holding me up to show the viewer what she’s done to me. But the heart that’s dripping blood still holds the light of God in it, and still shines through the blood and injuries and tears. This heart is where the logo of this blog comes from.

The back of “The Mistress” painting, with an early draft of “The Mistress” poem.

I painted this to show my intense urge to smash any screen my husband owns, and my even more intense desire to see my husband do that himself. I haven’t actually seen him do this yet, but he reluctantly let me smash his iPad on D-Day #2, on June 21, 2022.

A bed is in the middle, and it’s filled with images of women, representing the women my husband may have seen in porn. It has made me wonder if there’s any room in his head (or his bed) for me.

How I feel when my husband chooses porn over intimacy with me. Rejection. Intense rejection and grief.

Portrays all the hopes and dreams I once had of marriage with my husband. Passion, trust, hope, vulnerability, and agape (the Greek word that means unconditional love). They are now tainted and defaced , and dirtied with ugly, black words like betrayal, fear, humiliation, and sadness.

Yes, the same picture on the home page of this blog! A comic I sketched when I felt (and still feel) that the body of Christ around me isn’t doing enough to help betrayed spouses in crisis. One person in the crowd, which is me, has been through the same pain as the wife under the dark cloud, and sees her as she experiences the shock and grief of her husband’s confession. This shows how I hope to live out 2 Corinthians 1:3-4:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (emphasis mine)

The Lord has showed up for me and comforted me in my worst affliction: betrayal. And though I have never asked for such an experience, nor will I ever ask for it, I feel He has uniquely equipped me through that to comfort others in the same afflictions.

Me breaking down over all the thoughts and feelings I’ve had while intensely grieving the last discovery.

Symbolizes hope and optimism, for an end to the struggle, the darkness, the grief, and the trauma.