Comments on: Marriage Problem #1: Misunderstanding of “Covenant”

By: Word Warrior

Word Warrior — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 01:45:06 +0000

Kim,

My heart breaks for you. I don’t have answers. I only know the One who does. I am praying for you, dear one.

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:09:44 +0000

My husband has committed adultery more than once. He depends on me being submissive and forgiving and can’t figure out why I am so upset when he has “cut it off” and wants to make a new start. He doesn’t listen to pastoral counseling when I’ve forced it; he has refused to go to any other kind of counselor. We have a large homeschooling family and everything thinks we are a wonderful, happy family. I’ve been waiting on God to act for years now, and instead of healing our marriage, He has allowed my husband to engage in multiple emotional affairs and a couple of sexual affairs. He knows how to say what a pastor wants to hear and does just enough “repentance” to the pastors to convince them that he is repentant and they won’t have to institute church discipline. Things are better for a while, then he gets busy with things outside the home and finds women who are more than willing to help him with WHATEVER needs he has. I find it sickening, but I have children to support and do not want to raise them in a broken home. I’ve read a zillion books on marriage and adultery and forgiveness and being a good wife. I am not blameless (I get easily discouraged these days and can fall into depression) but I have “done” all these things suggested. His ego just needs more than what one wife can provide. Sigh.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:56:33 +0000

Anon, THANK you for your honesty! I just recently heard from yet another woman who claimed that her marriage’s problems were about HER changing, not her addict husband, that just leaving him alone was best, etc. VERY tiring and irritating; the wife is not Superwoman and can’t be her hubby’s missing link to health.

By: authenticallyME

authenticallyME — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:23:04 +0000

ANONYMOUS….amen! That has been my experience, exactly!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:36:24 +0000

I agree with momofmany. If you are struggling with serious problems in your relationship, things bigger than “he won’t fix stuff around the house”. Helpmeet can be a very dangerous book.
In my own relationship DH struggled with an addiction to pornography since childhood. Yes, he is a believer, and yes, he has been free of if for almost two years now, but his freedom had everything to do with God and not even one small teeny tiny thing to do with what I did or didn’t do as a wife.
In fact, reading the Helpmeet book during our years of marital difficulty caused a lot more heartache and damage than help.
Here I was trying and trying and TRYING to be the perfect wife so that he would stop struggling, and never fully grasping the concept that it had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t caused by me and couldn’t be cured by me.
Now my husband is healing, and I am having to work on my own issues from following the advice in that book (sleep with your husband as much as possible so he’ll be too tired to look elsewhere). The fact is, in our unique relationship I felt wrong to offer myself to him in the condition we were in, but I did it anyway because I thought I was being the “good wife”. Now I struggle with a fear and disdain for sex as a result of having it so much with a complete lack of relationship.
So, her advice completely backfired in our relationship.
Not to say it couldn’t help someone else, but I don’t recommend the book anymore as you never know when someone is being abused behind closed doors, or whether legalistic and somewhat formulaic advice will do more harm than good.

By: Valentina

Valentina — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:50:13 +0000

For the record…I love my husband and am a very blessed helpmeet!!!!!!!!!! We need to focus on our husband’s attributes and love and respect them because God has called us to.

By: Valentina

Valentina — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:53:47 +0000

Momofmany,
I’m so sorry you have gone through what you have gone through. I am not married to an abusive man. He can be tough and he is definately a command man and I believe if I were to test him he could become really mean but he has never been abusive towards me. Pearl’s book really helped me and many other women I know as well. We are not married to abusive men. But I have seen nice normal men with not so nice wives turn pretty ugly and borderline abusive. Your situation sounds different.As I said before my father was very emotionally and almost physically abusive. It must of been very hard for my mom. She tried for years and eventually couldn’t take it any longer. My mom and dad should never have been married but without them there would be no me (and my brothers). Their marriage was a result of my mom becoming pregnant with my brother.

I think what Pearl was trying to say when she said “When you obey your husband you obey God” is that we are called by God as wives to reverence and submit to our husbands. There are many scriptures on this. I just know in my own life that when I obey God’s commands I am blessed.

By: Comment on Marriage Problem #1: Misunderstanding of “Covenant” by Lori | marriageproblems

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:46:09 +0000

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By: momofmany

momofmany — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:01:23 +0000

Consider being an abused wife, hyper-controlled by a man who uses his role to find ways to humiliate and denegrate you (but slyly, not overtly or ever in front of people), and you go to a Christian marriage book for help and read things like,

“When you obey your husband, you obey God. The degree to which you reverence your husband is the degree to which you reverence your Creator.”

Where is that in Scripture?

It’s not there. This is false teaching.

“God has provided for your husband’s complete sanctification and deliverance from temptation through you, his wife.”

This is not Scriptural teaching. Debi puts the wife in the place of the Holy Spirit. Can you imagine being married to an abusive man (who you are never good enough for, as it is) and now you are being told that your submissive spirit and your NOT demanding your rights is what his sanctification is dependant on?

“God stands with you when you stand by your man, but you will stand alone if you insist on standing by your rights. Always remember that the day you stop smiling is the day you stop trying to make your marriage heavenly, and it is the first day leading to your divorce proceedings.”

Again, imagine listening to this, if you can, as a wife who is regularly and consistantly abused. Debi is talking, in that quote, to wives who have been sinned against by their husbands, and telling them how to respond. The wives are basically told NOT to feel what they are feeling. But God wired us to feel for a reason. Feelings have purpose. The feelings of deep pain are often there as a warning sign that something is terribly wrong. I put on a smiling face for YEARS in the face of hte abuse, my goal being to win my husband’s heart. In the long run, it simply taught him that the abuse was okay, that he could continue hurting me because I wouldn’t make his life miserable for it. It is like giving sweet smiles to a toddler’s daily tantrum. It feeds more of the same.

“A woman’s calling is not easy. To allow someone else to control your life is much harder than taking control of it yourself.”

How was I to know that my husband’s need to control everything was abuse, when books like the above define it as his “role,” and obedience to his control as my “role.”

I could go on with quote upon quote, but I won’t, and even then, we would probably still disagree. I simply want to say that this book and similar books can be terribly destructive when read by women who long for God but are in abusive marriages. Unless you have experienced such a marriage, I’m not really sure I can explain.

By: Lori

Lori — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:29:43 +0000

Thank you Heather for clarifying. Lots of good points.