I didn’t want to talk about this, but I feel like I have to because there are so many girls out there that look at these couples that put on “the show”. You know the one I mean. He brags about her, she brags about him. There’s constantly posted photos of gifts and surprises they got each other.
And those photos of them all over each other all that dang time… can be nauseating to those of us that have struggles in our marriage or relationships.
I got to this realization that I needed to talk about this because I was about to post a photo of something my husband did for me the other night that just made my heart melt. And upon hovering my finger above the post button it hit me… how many of you wives/single moms/divorcees/women would actually not be inspired by this photo. But you may perhaps feel hurt.
Hurt because you had something like this but the relationship was broken. Hurt because you never had a relationship like this and doubt you will ever find one. Or hurt because you believe you are not worth being shown such love from a man.
In light of this I feel I need to give a back story of just what our relationship has been through these past six years that has brought us to this point.
I’ll just boldly put this out there; at this time last year my husband and I sat down to talk about divorce. Honestly for where we are in our relationship now, this fact is shocking to me.
You see, I was coming down to the end of my pregnancy with my last daughter and it had been such an emotional roller coaster for me. I actually had gotten into a deep depression during my pregnancy and this brought up a lot of old wounds.
Before this I was so proud of how I could take the hurt people did to me, stuff it down and move past it. I could act like it never happened and gain the strength to continue to take punches if they kept throwing them. But it turned out I was hiding deep brokenness that came out during this pregnancy. And it rocked my husband and my relationship to its core.
We said things like, “I don’t find you attractive anymore”. And “I don’t even like being around you anymore”. We argued every day. I remember crying almost every night and feeling so broken that I wanted to take my own life. I felt like I must have done something absolutely horrible to God that he put me in this hurtful relationship.
I prayed every day for God to change my husband and instead he showed me how I needed to change. God showed me how I was hurting my husband by responding out of my hurt the wrong way. And it turned out that as I focused more on how I treated my husband and less on how he treated me; this took away the tension in our home so that my husband too could hear from God.
My husband and I would take turns hurting each other. And when it was his turn I would show him just how hurt I was by being mean. I would stop making eye contact and tell him to just stay away from me because I didn’t even want to be in the same room with him.
God showed me that though I was hurt and praying to forgive him, I wasn’t showing forgiveness. So in those moments my husband would hurt me, I would have to let my actions show forgiveness especially when I didn’t feel this inside.
I would make him his favourite meals and he would question if it was poisoned because he knew he had hurt me. I would let him sleep in on his days off instead of helping me with our daughters. I had to start saying things constantly to him that I didn’t feel in the moment. Words like, “I love you”, “you’re handsome”, “I’ll miss you”, “you’re a great husband and amazing provider for our family”.
Our sex life was non-existent for a period of time and I truly did not want to be close to him in that way. Yet I knew God wanted this. So I gave in.
I knew some couples when they were experiencing their own scary seasons in their marriage. And after seeing them some time later it came across like they must have been pretending to be in-love with one another. I didn’t understand how they could build an even stronger relationship from their trials.
It turns out these couples weren’t pretending at all. I’ve found this out because as years past by these couples remained married and continued to show great love and respect for one another. I’ve especially found this to be true because this has been my husband and my experience in our relationship.
We did a lot of hard work in our marriage and allowed the outside pressure on our marriage to turn our relationship into something beautiful like a pearl.
