My husband and I reluctantly walked into the room with our new marriage counselor. We both feel anxious about upcoming conversations and wanting to bring outsiders into our relationships. The session started with a comprehensive family history, which revealed that our parents remained married, which thankfully increased our chances of overcoming the issues we were facing in our marriage. Yes!
Next, our counselor asked us if we had experienced any major breakdowns in trust. He asked about sexual promiscuity, pornography, financial trust, extramarital affairs, and other lies that could undermine the foundation of trust between us. We answered these questions honestly, demonstrating that none of these obvious violations occurred between us. He was happy to report that our chances of success looked good! We left feeling inspired.
We stayed true to the counseling sessions and made some progress in rehabilitation. We quickly felt like we were doing well enough to stop taking these classes. As the years passed, we had more and more problems. We feel more lost and hopeless than ever in our relationship.
We have since returned to therapy for a second session with a new therapist and found healing that had eluded us during the first session. Looking back, I realize that the reason we didn’t “get it” the first time was that the question about trust ignored a major area where trust is crucial in a marriage. Emotional trust between us has been lost.
I would venture to say that one of the major killers of marriages is the breakdown of emotional trust. This can be harder to spot, understand, and manage because it’s much more subtle than the traditional major breakup that we know of as leading to the end of a marriage.
It all starts when we go to our partner with needs, wants, failures, desires and we are rejected multiple times. Eventually, we start building walls to isolate ourselves from our spouse. We no longer trust each other on important matters.
our story
In our house, things have gotten so bad that I get nervous asking my husband to do small things like hand me a fork. I worried that any request would be used against me, but I didn’t know that until I asked for something more strenuous, like emotional support for the stress I was feeling as a mother. Then, the way I reached for my fork the day before would become my rationale for why I was chronically wrong, why I failed as a wife, and ultimately why I didn’t show love and support when I needed it. I would become more hurt and upset, confirming my husband’s feelings that I was “crazy,” too emotional, irrational, insecure, and not worth it.
Over time, this cycle of distrust, resentment, disunity, and unhealthy communication becomes unbearable. Although we were committed to our marriage, the lack of emotional trust corroded any goodwill we held onto in our marriage. At the end of our 15th year of marriage, I told my husband, very honestly, that I no longer believed he loved me. He liked my ideas; he admired my ability to manage the household, take care of the children, and generally support him. However, IAs the person he claimed and held until his death, the person he nervously proposed to on one knee, the person with whom he shared so many firsts, I He had lost his sight and could only try to take precautions at the moment.
Long story short, we are in a crisis moment. Our commitment to marriage is about convenience, children, and expediency. Emotional intimacy is a pipe dream that none of us know how to achieve.
You, like me, may be starting to feel hopeless. I have no hope. I asked my husband to leave because I truly believed I was only causing him pain. His refusal to leave felt more like a punishment than a commitment to my love. I felt so burdened by the role of “failed wife” that I wanted separation more than I wanted change. But God.
God is the decisive difference that can overcome the dark cycle of true suffering. If we do not make a joint, separate but unified decision to abandon all our own efforts and instead call on God to heal the things we ourselves cannot change, our marriages will still be on the fast track to destruction. Over the past 15 years, we have tried everything we could to control our broken tendencies, but the one thing we have been unable to achieve on our own is true repentance and forgiveness.
Image source: ©GettyImages/monkeybusinessimages
Steps to repent
This is the part of the story where wonder and mystery intertwine with real work and effort. God does this crazy thing where He completely changes us in ways we can’t quantify, while also telling us to use wisdom to cooperate with His life-changing Holy Spirit. We did what we knew we were going to do, which was go back to counseling. My husband took it a step further and found his own personal counselor and did some extra work on his own to get to the root of the tension and closure in his life.
Not all men are the same, but I know in our case things got so tense between us that he really couldn’t hear me anymore. The more I explained, the more disdainful he became towards me, I felt. He needs to talk to someone he can trust so he feels safe and can truly explore everything he’s struggling with. I believe that personal counseling by a Spirit-filled man helped him repent.
In the meantime, all I can do is let go. I had to let go of a bunch of bad words we had. I have to ask God to allow me to forgive myself. As a wife, I am weaker, more incompetent, meaner, and more vulnerable than I thought. That day I was overwhelmed by the guilt I felt for being anxious, depressed, needy, nagging, or any of the words that flooded my mind.
I need God to help me forgive my husband. He didn’t love me well when I needed support. He didn’t know how to let me into his life; he never learned. From an early age, he learned how to build strong emotional walls that protected him from sadness and all other unpleasant feelings. Then came an empathetic woman, asking for support. As soon as my emotions came out, his walls went up. This was a source of hurt that played out many times over a fifteen-year marriage. Only Jesus has the power to rewrite these broken stories.
I asked God to change the way I viewed my husband. I want God’s eyes on this man that I have committed to love. I still pray that He helps me see the things that sometimes bother me as a blessing. We are different, which can sometimes make being together tricky, but our differences don’t make us wrong; they just require us to be a little more patient sometimes. I’m so impatient with my husband. I started to open up more to our village. To climb out of this pit, we need more than ourselves. I showed up again for counseling. I asked God to help Him hear me and see me because that was something that was lost between us over time.
We also started praying together every night.
Miracle
Sometime last year, which also happened to be a very stressful year for us, God began to change us and the reason I knew repentance and forgiveness was covering us was that I could feel the Holy Spirit bearing fruit between the works. of fruit. It’s us again. My husband and I regained calm in the room. I can trust that he will make every effort to maintain self-control when it comes to his responses to my needs. When we are alone together, we can share happiness. These are the hallmarks of trustworthy change. Our marriage is breaking out of the dark cycle of painful interactions! God is merciful.
takeout
I share this first to let you know that if you and your spouse are in the dark corners of marital despair and you are free from abuse and long to find a path to repentance, God can.
You must be willing to give up everything you have correct Let God give you His Eye Love for your spouse. There is no easy, painless path to repentance when years of discord have led to where you are now. You have to face the ugliness and then patiently give it to Jesus. Believe that He will give you a new way of life.
Here’s a reminder that we are not your partner’s savior on your journey toward marital freedom.An important step in my journey to God was also giving result give him. No part of me can change my husband and make him the person I need him to be. I knew that if we couldn’t get off the ugly roller coaster, one of us would have to get off alone at some point. If this is the outcome, I have to trust God too.
Marriage is not a prison that traps us, but a hearth that keeps our passion, love, and family safe. Getting out of an unhealthy relationship may look like repentance, and sometimes it may look like separation. God is with us on both journeys, and both journeys are difficult. Wherever you are, I pray that God will do more for you than you could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). He has the ability!
Image source: ©Getty Images/Sam Edwards
1 Comment
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