I'm about to break

I just don't know how much more I can take . I am a christian , I got saved when I was 14 and I've always been in church . I met my husband through my mom and he comes from a family of 7 . All of them were homeschooled and sheltered . We have been married 9 years in September . It has been awful the whole 9 years , he has went wild since we got married , he's hurt me more then he will know . First I'll start with the things that he has even into that have always been first in his life , first it was kayaking , then gambling and playing video games and now for the last 6 years it's been golf 24/7 while I take care of 4 kids and make sure we go to church with or without him. I love The Lord and he has been the only thing that has helped me. My husband has been controlling , verbally and physically abusive . I have left 3 times because of that but I've always come back because he promises to change . He hasn't been physically abusive in a year . This year has been awful , he went on a golf trip with buddies and they went to a strip club and he met a stripper , kissed her and became emotionally attached with her for a month until I caught him . It's been 9 moths and God has helped me forgive him
But just in the last 3 weeks he has become distant again and never wants to have sex with me and pushes me away . I try to talk to him about it but he doesn't see it and he is emotionally unattached to me . It's real bad . Satan is fighting so bad and I'm about to give up. I'm still praying and reading my Bible but I can't take much more . I feel like he doesn't love me and he sure doesn't show it . I wish he would just say I don't love you , I'm unattracted to you and I don't want to be married anymore and be fair to me and let me find somebody who makes me happy cause right now I'm miserable and I just want a friend somebody I can have fun with and who will love me and God !!!! Help me I'm about to lose it .

I've been a similar situation and it was horrible.

May the Lord show you His mercy through His wisdom and peace.

God is not helping me!!!! I'm begging Him to get a hold of my
Husband but nothing happens why?

are you hoping God will repeat what He did with Saul/Paul?
Perhaps God has a diffeent plan for you, and what you are seeing as Not Helping is His way of saying 'Listen to Me'
A

It's been 9 years of live like you want to for him. He gets by with murder and no remorse or chastisement . I don't know . I just want somebody who loves me and God

Part of the cycle of abuse is exactly as you have been through - they abuse, you leave, they make promises, you come back, and the cycle starts over again.

But this is not okay. Do you know what co-dependency is? If not, learn a little about it, and see if you can talk to a counsellor to find out if you have those tendencies.

Also, what do you know about boundaries? Imo, this will be absolutely key in resolving the issue - not necessarily changing him, but changing how you respond to him. Playing golf 24/7 while neglecting you and the children is not okay. You are his wife, and being a wife, you do not choose to share your husband to his extremes with others like golf or other women (strip club). If a husband wants a hobby, he can certainly have them, but not at the expense of YOUR marriage (which is what it's doing because he is breeding your resentment, which is a marriage killer).

In addition to boundaries, it might also help if you ask him to read together with you - Dr. John Gottman's "Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. If he is able to see that friendship with you is the key to holding the marriage together, then maybe he will work on being better friends with you than he is with golf.

Imo, he likely started out using these vices as a means of freedom from his sheltering parents, and just wanted to test out the freedoms of not being sheltered anymore. But over time, you likely grew to resent it, and it probably shows, so his response to your response is escape...he likely escapes now by playing golf so he does not have to come home and deal with the situation at home which is likely just as unpleasant for him than it is for you. You both have much pain to deal with, and my best advice is to turn towards him to help fix your marriage....oh, and that leads me to another point. Does he believe in divorce? Does he believe that men are the "head of the home"? If so, this could help in keeping your marriage together. It places the responsibility for fixing it onto his shoulders....if he is the head of the home, then he is responsible for your misery, and thus he is more responsible to fix it.

And one final note. You have young children. How does he treat them?

He's good with the kids , when he is here , he does have a short temper though with them . He does believe in the head of the home and all that stuff but he has a warped thought of it and what his title is . It will take a miracle of God for him to change .

First questions first. Do you want to make your marriage work, and are you invested in it? Or would you like out?

If you want to stay and work on it, have the two of you ever thought about going for counselling? If he is unwilling to go, what about you? Would you go? The other option, since many men do not like counselling and dealing with the hurt of the past, is to go to a marriage coach. A marriage coach does not look much at the past, but gets an idea of the current situation and helps you as a couple work on a plan for sustainable change. Personally, I would suggest a Christian marriage coach. Coaching does not have to be done in person, either. In fact, most of it is done over Skype audio or over the phone.

Truthfully, though, I think learning about boundaries and reading Gottman's book will likely shed a lot of light on what you can do even without (or before meeting with one, if you decide to go that route).

Have you ever had a conversation (not a heated conversation) where you two have discussed the state of your marriage? Have you ever asked him about how to make it a place where he would want to spend more time at home than on the golf course? Have you ever asked him if he's happy? More, have you ever let him know that although he says he loves you, you do not feel like he is committed to you? Commitment requires both consistency and caring, and it appears he does neither, so what would happen if you ask him about those things? It would help if you can be specific with examples, but be sure not to get sucked into arguing about the examples rather than the whole marriage dynamic. If one of you is starting to get heated, you might need to take a little break to allow calm to return. Nothing gets accomplished if one or both of you gets heated. Start the conversation soft...meaning, soft tone, soft heart, soft emotions, and soft voice, without blame, resentment or criticism or defensiveness.

Have you ever tried any of that?

Mamaof4 said:

I just don't know how much more I can take . I am a christian , I got saved when I was 14 and I've always been in church . I met my husband through my mom and he comes from a family of 7 . All of them were homeschooled and sheltered . We have been married 9 years in September . It has been awful the whole 9 years , he has went wild since we got married , he's hurt me more then he will know . First I'll start with the things that he has even into that have always been first in his life , first it was kayaking , then gambling and playing video games and now for the last 6 years it's been golf 24/7 while I take care of 4 kids and make sure we go to church with or without him. I love The Lord and he has been the only thing that has helped me. My husband has been controlling , verbally and physically abusive . I have left 3 times because of that but I've always come back because he promises to change . He hasn't been physically abusive in a year . This year has been awful , he went on a golf trip with buddies and they went to a strip club and he met a stripper , kissed her and became emotionally attached with her for a month until I caught him . It's been 9 moths and God has helped me forgive him
But just in the last 3 weeks he has become distant again and never wants to have sex with me and pushes me away . I try to talk to him about it but he doesn't see it and he is emotionally unattached to me . It's real bad . Satan is fighting so bad and I'm about to give up. I'm still praying and reading my Bible but I can't take much more . I feel like he doesn't love me and he sure doesn't show it . I wish he would just say I don't love you , I'm unattracted to you and I don't want to be married anymore and be fair to me and let me find somebody who makes me happy cause right now I'm miserable and I just want a friend somebody I can have fun with and who will love me and God !!!! Help me I'm about to lose it .

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as I read your post, two things hit me....1. is he a believer and is so, why is he willfully living in sin? the 2. is by do you think that you need to be happy? IOW's nothing in life is about being happy all the time, I think we often deceive ourselves into thinking that the happily ever after we are taught to seek is a 24/7 way of life. Now, that being said, I remember with frustrated horror the days when I was overwhelmed much as you talk about here, for different reasons but overwhelmed none the less. I remember the days when I longed for a shred of happiness mixed in with all the trauma, all the struggle, all the stress. What I discovered in those days, is that my happiness depended on my inward contentment and joy in Christ, rather than my outwards circumstances. It was a hard lesson that took way to long to learn, I pray you don't take as long.

God promises us peace and joy in the midst of every storm. If you do not have that peace and joy in the midst of this storm, you first need to find them in the presence of the living God. Be still a moment...listen to His voice...quiet yourself and put your eyes on Him, not the wind and the waves...trust Him, not yourself or your own wisdom or the wisdom of anyone here...find that joy no matter the situation, such peace and joy that you husband wonders what it is that he has been missing. Your husband is seeking the peace and joy he isn't finding at home, a peace and joy that you cannot give him, only God can. Show him where it is, how it can be found, and how wonderful it is to find peace and joy in the moments of our greatest battles and trials.

at least it's a place to start.

How much money did he blow on his "emotional affair" with the stripper? I put it in quotes, because usually emotional affairs are reciprocal. 99% of the stuff I hear about strippers, though, the chumps are just used for money.

Nothing he says and so does she . I talked to her cause I threaten to she her if she did not contact me . He lied about being married and having 4 kids . She said he would not even get a lap dance . She just talked to him and he kissed her when they got ready to go , they emailed several times and he wanted to meet her again . But I found the emails and he says he thanks God everyday for that cause he felt so bad and that he may have went farther if he met her . She was 4 hours away. I'm glad to have a mans outlook .

I could tell by the emails that she was blowing him off . He said don't move back to London and she said does business ever take you to London. She had quit emailing him to , he kept emailing her asking if he had said something wrong. So I could tell he was way more into her then she was to him.

Mamaof4 said:

I could tell by the emails that she was blowing him off . He said don't move back to London and she said does business ever take you to London. She had quit emailing him to , he kept emailing her asking if he had said something wrong. So I could tell he was way more into her then she was to him.

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The painful truth of those emails was not only yours to bear but his as well. He had a fantasy, a dream that was not being fulfilled. when my husband was heavy into inappropriate content, one of the hardest things for both of us to grasp was that his desires, his drive was nothing more than a fantasy, a facade that he was feeding for the soul purpose of finding something that didn't even exist. We have a friend who had/is having an affair and he is just now beginning to see that the image of what he is seeking, is nothing more than an illusion, an oasis in the desert of this world. It's an image we are told exists, which is a lie, and yet it is a lie so complete that we willingly sacrifice everything for a chance to live it out, even if for only a brief moment, and in that moment, we realize that it was hollow, empty, unsatisfying to our thirst to be loved unconditionally. Until we can grasp that we are loved unconditionally by the only one that matters, we cannot ever hope to fill the void with the failings of men/woman.

Don't worry about him. Focus on you and what you are supposed to be doing. Let God sort out your husband in his own time. Maybe God has plans. Good ones.

Do you participate in his hobbies with him? If not, why not? Can he take the children for some golf time? I know many fathers with even three-year-old sons and daughters who take them to the driving range then into the clubhouse for lunch. You do need to have some time for your own hobbies and likes. I don't see that you have talked to your pastor about this. Also, what does your husband's family think?

I know you wrote this post a while ago but I am just coming across it and felt that God directed me toward this. Have you both tried marriage councelling or maybe just you if he does not want? Do you remember any happy times in your marriage? God can perform miracles and I have seen Him do that in my marriage. He also does not want us to be abused in whatever way. Do you love your husband? Does he love you? If he is willing to speak to someone who can give you christian advise, try to work on your marriage as best as you could. But remember there are a lot of STD's out there so make sure he is not unfaithful.
The Bible teaches us to forgive and forget and also to use wisdom.
Anyone can change. It is possible for you both to have a great marriage if he is willing change and allow God to take control.

Please feel free to PM me if you need to.

EZoolander said:

How much money did he blow on his "emotional affair" with the stripper? I put it in quotes, because usually emotional affairs are reciprocal. 99% of the stuff I hear about strippers, though, the chumps are just used for money.

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Exactly! Strip clubs are designed to create fantasies, and that's exactly what a man will get. The problem is that it's not real, and strippers can't strip very long before they start hating men. In other words, they become really good actors, and learn how to make the man think that they adore him, when they really loathe him.