When You Desire to be One with Your Husband, But You're Just Alone
"When I try to tell him I'm lonely, he just says I'm too emotional and shuts down."
"He does his thing, I do mine."
"I told my husband I don't feel right doing that, but he says he's the head of the home and I'm disrespecting him and God by not doing it."
"I wonder if he'd connect with me more, if he wasn't watching porn."
Sister, if you've ever said any of these things, you're not the only wife to feel this way. Maybe you have close, deep friendships and you desire that connection with your husband, but you've been told that men just don't relate that way. Maybe you think you are the one who is holding the relationship back from going deeper, and wonder how it would feel to connect the way you see other couples connecting. Maybe you're not sure what a relationship would look or feel like without anger, manipulation and control. Maybe you've resigned yourself to living two separate, amicable lives and you find happiness in kids, friends and work, but you kind of wonder if there's still a reason to be married.
All of these scenarios have one thing in common- they lack intimacy, unity and oneness.
I was pretty clueless about what this meant during my first marriage. I was happy to be married to a man who was not an alcoholic like my father. He cried in front of me several times and told me a few painful things about his childhood. That made him more emotionally available than me at the time, so I rejoiced in us breaking gender stereotypes. He claimed to be an egalitarian, and he learned to outwardly check the boxes I needed him to check so I could feel like we were treating each other like equals (childcare, cooking, cleaning, working). We made decisions well together, so that must mean we were in unity right? I had avoided marrying a fundamentalist patriarchal abuser, so life was good.
But I still desired something I didn't even understand. I was not alone, but I was lonely on a level I couldn't even articulate yet. I thought if he just stopped lying, losing jobs and watching porn, and if I could just stop getting so irritated, even enraged about little things, we'd be perfect. But we were both human, after all. Everyone has work to do, right? It was better than it was 10 years ago. So I focused on the good.
But those were all symptoms of something much bigger.
No consequences ever stopped my husband's lying.
No self help books wiped away my anger.
No amount of white-knuckling stopped him from watching porn.
After watching many, many women go through this, I can confidently say,
Ignoring the problem will not make it go away.
No amount of submission will make him stop abusing you.
If you tell him in just the right way, with just the right words, and just the right timing, he still won't listen.
You can't find the perfect Bible verse to convince him to treat you with respect.
He will not just grow up one day.
Praying and meditating on Psalm 46:10 will not make you stop being angry about things you damn well have a right to be angry about.
I know you want to believe that there's a perfect formula that will transform your marriage into a sacred place where you can dance naked with your lover with no fear.
You want to find that book that will tell you the secret to cracking open that steel cage around his heart.
You believe God is a God of miracles and you pray and pray that the next time your husband is staring at some other woman's pussy, he suddenly repulsed and horrified at his actions, and comes running back to you.
But sister, none of that will happen unless he does the work. The hard, painful, liberating, dirty, cleansing, life altering, transformational, touching the face of God WORK.
Not if he's "willing" to do the work. Not if he kind of started to do the work. Not if he'll do the work after this busy season at his job. He has to actually DO and continue DOING the work.
Whether or not he's doing it, you do it. Do it for you and do it for your children. Do the work until you have peace about your decision to stay or to go.
The point of marriage is the two becoming one in the spiritual realm. This is being vulnerable, sharing the things that hurt and together pulling away the tentacles of the past that tangle around your heart. It's being a safe place to fall and safe place to grow. It's pushing a little, being iron sharpening iron. Even when you're both angry and triggered and just for a split second wanting your spouse to step on a 100 legos, it's the unity of knowing that you're both doing the work and will keep doing the work, together. Even when it's messy and painful.
The point of that unity is service for the Kingdom. It's being a better team together, as the hands and feet of Yah on earth, than the two could be individually.
Procreation, the way marriage and families create and support the community, and all the laws that hold that together, are just a support system for continuing the species and upholding this greater purpose of marriage.
If the greater purpose is not being fulfilled, if the two are not one, if they are not furthering the Kingdom (which can mean as many different things as the coupes involved, not necessarily formal ministry), then the marriage is not the sacred thing God intended.
That doesn't automatically mean divorce. There are many lesser, though important reasons to stay together when people didn't know then what they know now, but now they're married. Children, finances, and stability are nothing to take lightly and can be good reasons to stay married.
But certainly if you can be healed, grow, and be a better servant of God outside of your marriage than within it, especially if there's abuse, then sister, go do that. I say that without caveats, because women almost always try damn hard in their marriages before ever getting to a place where this post would even resonate... Go in peace.
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