Morning friend,
If you live near the Phoenix, AZ area, I’d encourage you to attend the Restore Conference, February 7,8,9. It’s going to be amazing teaching, especially around spiritual and religious abuse. If you attend, please come up and say hi. I’d love to meet you.
Question: Please help me figure this out. I am so confused, and my husband is trying to make me feel like I am wrong for feeling this way. He had an affair two years ago. He never confessed anything, I never got closure or full disclosure. He “explained away” everything I caught him in (i.e. explicit pictures, love letters/notes, never gave up his phone or GPS for transparency) and continued seeing his affair partner after discovery.
I have no idea the last time he talked to her and ended it. He was forced to resign from his job due to other misconduct allegations unrelated to his affair because I never filed a complaint. I mention this because that was another betrayal I endured during the affair because I truly had no idea what he was doing at work either. I handled the whole thing so wrong. While I didn’t trust him, and he wasn’t being trustworthy nor trying to rebuild trust I continued to have sex with him and do all the things that would make him feel loved and cared for. I over-functioned, scheduled all the counseling, tried to get us into support groups for infidelity, all the while trying to keep our household afloat with 4 kids. Not to mention I was 5 months postpartum, still nursing when I found out.
I tried for a year and a half, giving him full access to me begging him for an emotional connection and some truth to start rebuilding our trust. I did not and still don’t trust him at all. I cannot prove that he’s doing anything but I just feel so unsafe with him emotionally and psychologically.
Now, where he makes me feel unreasonable is that after a year and a half of full access to me and over-functioning, I finally told him that I would no longer participate in a one-sided marriage. That I cannot continue having sex with him until our marriage has safety and trust. And now 3 months after I told him that his anger is out of control. I am willing to work this out but I cannot be intimate with him until I feel safe and cared for. He says that now it’s one-sided and that he can’t put into this marriage unless I put in also.
There is just so much I couldn’t even fit in here but I’m hoping you can help me see what I am not seeing. Right now I want to focus on my and my kids’ emotional and psychological health.
Answer: I wish I could reach through internet space and give you a big hug. I’m sorry for all the pain you’ve gone through and the indifference and selfishness your husband has shown you.
You asked for help to figure this out, but it seems you’ve figured it out for yourself. The problem you’re now having is accepting the hard reality before you and what to do next.
The kind of marriage you want, with mutual care, safety, and trust, requires both people in the marriage to be relatively healthy. First, let’s define briefly what a healthy sinner looks like versus an unhealthy one.
Healthy Sinner – Admits when he/she does wrong.
- Demonstrates care for the impact he/she caused the other.
- Accepts responsibility to make amends and puts in the time and energy to repair the relationship
- Does what’s necessary (including counseling and outside support) to change and not repeat that behavior where possible.
Unhealthy Sinner – Deflects, blames, gaslights, or lies when he or she does wrong.
- Expects amnesty, forgiveness, and no consequences for harm done.
- Repeats destructive behaviors again and again.
- Little or no empathy for the pain they have caused the other person.
When you look at these two types of sinners, where do you see your husband?
From what you’ve described, your husband believes he’s entitled to have you care for his needs and feelings, but he doesn’t have to care about yours. And, for a time you believed that too. You were so scared about losing your marriage that you over-functioned as “the good wife” to your and your husband’s detriment. When you began to wake up and get a bit healthier and ask for more mutuality, accountability, and honesty in your marriage, he balked.
Dear one, he’s showing you something important but extremely painful to accept. He’s showing you that he doesn’t want to be honest with you. He doesn’t want to be responsible or accountable to you as a partner for any of his choices. He doesn’t want to hear nor care about your need for safety and trust. What he wants is for you to function as a robot. Shut up, don’t ask questions, be happy, take care of the kids, be nice to him, and have sex when he wants. You did that for a while, but you and I both know that is not a role God asks you to play as a wife. It’s unhealthy for you and for your marriage. You are a person, not a robot.
To be clear: You are not “wrong” for refusing to play the role he’s assigned to you. You are not “wrong” for desiring honesty, safety, trust, and mutuality in marriage. The question you must now ask yourself is this: Are you going to get those things from him? He’s shown you the answer both in his words and actions. No. Now what?
I’m going to be giving a free webinar on February 13, “I’m not OK when he’s not OK”, and I highly encourage you to sign up and attend. It will give you some direction on how to figure out what to do with “your problem”. You see, your problem is your husband does not want to change and become the man you want. Therefore, you have a problem of your own to work on. What do you do now? Can you live in peace with a man who lies to you, doesn’t care about you, and uses you to meet his own needs but dismisses your needs? You’ve tried that. You know it does not work, at least not for you.
My advice is to take your focus off of him right now and put it on your own safety and growth. Ask yourself what do you need to do (or change) to feel safe while living with him in this relationship. You’ve already set some new boundaries to do that. Good for you. Anything else? He has demonstrated that he does not care about your needs or feelings. But you are learning that you must care about you, even if he doesn’t. As you do that now, he’s trying to make you feel guilty. Implying self-stewardship is selfish and ungodly.
Here is where you must continue to grow internally stronger and more God-centered vs husband or marriage-centered. Healthy people live in truth even when it’s ugly. Your spouse is trying to get you go to back to your fawning, unhealthy people pleasing ways so he doesn’t have to feel the sting of your boundaries. Love isn’t all sugar and sunshine. Sometimes love is tough. Love speaks the truth. Love does not enable bad, sinful behavior to continue where possible.
As you get strong enough to speak the truth in love, you might say something like:
“I love you. I want our marriage to work, but the way it is not only toxic for me, it’s unhealthy for you and not God-honoring. I love you too much to pretend that the way things were, was okay. It was destructive for you and for me to behave as if what you did didn’t harm me or our marriage.
You have choices to make as to what kind of man/husband you want to be through this. But I will not continue to do life with a man who lies, cheats, won’t be responsible or accountable for the harm he has caused and wants me to act like everything is fine.”
Facing truth and reality is often much harder than living a lie. He may prefer to stay self-deceived rather than truly look at himself and the impact his actions have had on his own character and on your relationship. And, if and when you take this step, you must be prepared for the possibility that he will discard you and seek another unhealthy woman who will play that role.
There are no easy answers. Both directions are hard. But one way is unhealthy and destructive hard. The other is moving towards healthy truth hard. You get to choose which direction you move. Choose life.
Friend: When you come up against hard reality, how do you move through it with courage and faith rather than stay stuck in hopium and false promises?
