What to Do When Your Marriage is Under Spiritual Attack
Jun 23, 2026Summary
Have you ever wondered what to do when your marriage is under spiritual attack? Discovering a hidden addiction or navigating a devastating relationship crisis can leave you feeling completely paralyzed by fear, anger, or betrayal. If you are exhausted from constant marital conflict and reactive triggers, you are in the exact right place.
In this raw and powerful episode of the Arise Women of God podcast, host Tamara K. Anderson and trauma recovery advocate Bonnie Randall share profound strategies to stop the cycle of retaliation. Bonnie shares her deeply personal testimony of navigating her husband's hidden pornography addiction, revealing how she learned to stop viewing her spouse as the enemy. We uncover the truth that addiction is often a coping mechanism for much deeper trauma, and explore the "Ping Pong Effect" of reactive triggers tearing couples apart.
Learn why opting out of the war to focus on your own emotional healing is the most powerful weapon you have. Discover what it truly means to put on the "Help Meet Mantle," transforming yourself into a safe refuge—a Garden of Eden—rather than a battlefield. Tune in to learn how to shift your prayers away from micromanaging your husband and invite the Holy Spirit to work miracles in your marriage today!
Questions to Ask God & Quick Tips for Spiritual Attacks in Marriage
When you are in the heat of a marital battle, your first instinct is often to pray for God to "fix" your husband. Bonnie recommends shifting your prayer to ask God these specific questions to understand how He sees your spouse and to get your custom battle plan:
- "Please help me to see him through the eyes of compassion and to see him as You see him."
- "Who is he to You? Show me that person. Who do You say he is?"
- "Please help me change. Please soften my heart."
- "Here is my problem... What do I do about it? Give me my battle plan. Give me my steps."
Quick Tips to Mitigate the Attack:
- Opt out of the war: You cannot control your spouse's choices or timeline, but you can choose not to retaliate. Choose to be an ally instead of an enemy.
- Heal your own wounds first: Weed out the thorns and thistles in your own life. Tending to your own emotional healing turns you into a safe "Garden of Eden" and a refuge from the storm.
- Praise their positive choices: Give your spouse their agency back, and actively praise the decisions they make to heal themselves and the marriage.
Episode Takeaways
- The Root of Addiction: Addiction (whether pornography, drugs, or spending) is a coping mechanism for a deeper problem. Unresolved past traumas and wounds are the underlying triggers the adversary exploits.
- The Ping Pong Effect: Satan loves to trigger one spouse, knowing they will react and trigger the other. This creates a destructive "ping pong" cycle of chaos. You break this cycle by recognizing your own triggers and refusing to hit the ball back.
- The Help Meet Mantle: You are not responsible for your spouse's choices, but you are called to be a "help meet." By prioritizing your own healing with the Master Gardener, you become a safe refuge that paves the way for your spouse to heal.
- Pure Intent Prayer: Stop praying for God to micromanage or fix your husband. Instead, pray with the pure intent to act on whatever God asks you to do, trusting Him to handle your spouse.
Free Resource
Ready to untangle yourself from codependency and systematically build watchtowers over your home? Get our free A Mother's Spiritual Defense Guide: 6 Empowering Steps to Fortify Home & Family downloadable PDF here: https://www.womenwarriorsoflight.com/A-Mothers-Spiritual-Defense-Guide
Reflection Questions
- Are you and your spouse currently caught in the "ping pong effect" of triggering one another? How can you choose to "opt out" of the war today?
- What "thorns and thistles" do you need to work on in your own heart so that you can become a safe refuge (a Garden of Eden) for your family?
- How does your perspective change when you ask God to show you who your husband really is through His eyes of compassion?
Host & Guest
Tamara K. Anderson @tamarakanderson
Bonnie Randall @bonnie.randall
Transcript
Tamara K Anderson
00:00:00.480 - 00:01:44.860
Hey, my friend, have you ever wondered what to do when your marriage is under spiritual attack because you've uncovered a devastating crisis or a hidden addiction and felt completely paralyzed by fear, anger or betrayal?
Oh, my friend, my heart grieves for you because I know you love your spouse, but perhaps you're not sure what steps to use when you're in the heat of battle. Well, stay tuned. You are in the right place.
And by the end of today's episode, you'll know how to stop the ping pong effect, heal yourself and unlock the power of prayer to stop the attack. Stay tuned. Ordinary women, extraordinary faith. When God calls, we say yes. Hello and welcome to the Arise Women of God podcast.
I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson, and I'm so excited to be back with my good friend and trauma recovery advocate Bonnie Randall to talk all about what do you do when your marriage is under spiritual attack? We are laying out three profound strategies for you today. First is the ping pong effect. How hidden trauma creates reactive triggers between spouses.
Number two, the help meet mantle. What it truly means to be a safe refuge from the storm by prioritizing your own emotional healing. First and third, the pure intent prayer.
How shifting your prayers away from micromanaging your husband allows the Holy Spirit to work the miracle in his heart.
So we're going to have Bonnie share a deeply personal and raw testimony of how she had to put this exact principle into effect during a severe marriage crisis.
Bonnie Randall
00:01:45.420 - 00:05:21.660
So I want to share with you a personal story that is really hard to share. So for a number of years, my husband battled a pornography addiction. And I didn't know.
All I saw was the symptoms and the aftermath of that addiction. I saw the toxic behavior, the destructiveness of that addiction in the way that he treated me and the kids.
And so for a long time, I looked at him as the enemy because he was being mean and cruel and the things that he was doing was not his true self. Self. Fast forward a few years. I realized things were not good. We were in a. In a bad situation and we needed help.
And so I started going back to therapy and I found a Christian therapist who helped me understand. He again reminded me, your husband is not the enemy. The enemy is the enemy.
What you need to understand about addiction is that addiction at its root is a coping mechanism for a much deeper, bigger problem. There are past traumas and past wounds in his life that he is trying to fix through this addiction. And it's the same with any addiction.
I have since learned drugs, eating disorders, fashion, spending Any addiction really is stemming from a bigger problem.
And what he helped me see was that when he was being triggered to use pornography as a coping mechanism, it was because something inside of him was triggered. Something broken inside of him needed fixing. And for some strange reason, pornography, for a moment, was a band aid. It was a relief.
It gave him that high, that sense of control, which is exactly what drugs do.
So if you're listening to this and thinking, oh, my goodness, that sounds like my friend with this drug addiction, it's because it's, again, the way addiction works in the brain. It's very similar.
And what he had me do is so important for the world to understand and for all of us, as wives and as spouses and as parents, to understand that we have power in that moment. We cannot take away that person's agency and their choices to choose addiction. But we can help, okay?
We are not responsible and we are not accountable for their addiction. There's a very big difference there. You are not to blame for their addiction.
However, you can help by learning what their trigger is and praying over that trigger and finding out how you can help heal and mitigate those triggers. So for my husband, his biggest triggers were feeling unloved, unappreciated, rejected.
And I would reject him when I was feeling unloved, unheard, unrespected. So you can see how these triggers are ping pongs.
Satan always got to get one of us triggered, because then we'll trigger the other person, and then it bounces back and forth, and it becomes this ping pong mess, right?
So once I recognized that I was contributing to the chaos because of my own triggers and my own trauma, what I had to recognize was it was not my fault. I am not responsible for how he chooses to react.
Tamara K Anderson
00:05:22.460 - 00:05:45.200
Breaking that ping pong cycle requires complete surrender of control, which is not easy to do. Right, ladies?
Watch how Bonnie stops trying to fix her husband and instead transforms her into a literal garden of refuge by putting on the Help Meet mantle and using the power of prayer.
Bonnie Randall
00:05:45.840 - 00:10:29.020
However, in that moment, I realized I had power over my reactions, power over my ability to choose something different. And working with this therapist, I realized I could opt out of the war.
I could opt out of being an enemy and someone who dug at him and who made it worse. I could choose to be an ally. I could choose to be a help, which is what we're called to do, ladies. We're called to be Help Meets.
We are the Eve in the Adam and Eve story. I'm here to help my husband not to hinder him. And so what did I do? I started healing my own wounds, my own triggers.
I started working on me, which seems weird, right?
You would think that I would go to work on our marriage, but what I learned through counseling with heavenly Father and my therapist is that God said to me, if you heal you, you will become an ally. You will become a safe place. You will become a refuge from the storm. You will become that Garden of Eden that I invite everyone to do.
And he promised me that if I would weed out all the thorns and all the thistles and all of the muck that was in my little Garden of Eden, if I would tend to that garden with him as the master gardener, that I would become a Garden of Eden so that I would no longer trigger my husband, and that would open the door and pave the way for him to heal his wounds and his inner struggles that he was dealing with. And that's exactly what happened. As I healed, he started healing. And you know what magically happened? Our marriage started healing.
We became on the same team. We genuinely prayed over each other. Not with the. The kind of prayer.
And I know you guys know what I'm talking about when you say this kind of prayer, but you pray, oh, please, heavenly Father, please change my husband. Please fix him. Please make these changes in his life. That is casting the moat and the beam right?
That is forgetting that I have a part in this partnership. So instead, my prayers change to please help me change. Please soften my heart.
Please help me to see him through the eyes of compassion and to see him as you see him. See him. What do you say he is? Who is he to you? Show me that person.
And as I let go of expecting a timeline, expecting that he would change immediately, it made room for God to work his miracles, for God to do his wonder. It gave my husband back his agency. He went and found a different therapist. We didn't work with the same person.
And at first, I was really bugged by that. But I realized, no, he needs to feel in control of his own healing. I can't control that. It needs to be his choice.
So instead, I started to praise him for those changes and praise him for those decisions that he was making to heal and to heal our marriage. We are now, I would say, mostly healed. I promise you that. When you go to the Lord and you say, here's my problem, I can see Satan's attacking this.
I can see this is the chaos that it's creating. What do I do about it? Give me my battle plan. Give me my steps. He will tell you step by step what you need to do.
You can't control the answer he gives you. You've got to let go of that, even if it sounds absolutely crazy. If you have that relationship with God, you will know that it's his idea, right?
And then when you start putting it into action and you start doing it and having faith. Because remember, faith is an action word. It has to do with doing whatever it is that God says.
When he says we pray with pure intent, that means we pray for with the intention to act on whatever he tells us to do. So when we do that, we will get an answer. And I guarantee you he will lay out your specific battle plan.
He will tell you how to fortify yourself, how to fortify your marriage, how to fortify your family, and what you guys can do to stay in the light.
Tamara K Anderson
00:10:29.900 - 00:11:46.750
When you choose to step out of self defense mode and step into your true authority as a help meet Savior's help, you give God the space to move the mountains in your own marriage.
To help you map out your own custom battle plan while standing strong in the light, I invite you to get our free Download A Mother's Spiritual Defense Guide six Empowering Steps to Fortify Home and Family and you can download this booklet free at the link below. Once you get it, open to Step number one, the Divine Partnership and study the Principle of Agency on page number three.
It will spiritually untangle you from the trap of codependency, giving you scriptural tools to hand your spouse over to the Lord. You are a woman warrior of light and your faith and your marriage are worth the fight.
You can overcome as you lean on God because He will help you and aid you every step of the way. And until next time, may you arise. Do it God's Way. Hot Strong if today's episode helped you feel a little closer to God, please like and subscribe.
It helps us grow and ensures heaven's whispers stay at the top of your feed whenever you need them most.
