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| Prayers for an Ice-cold Marriage |
What do you when you feel your marriage dying and it seems there is nothing you can do to breathe life back into it? You try to love more, hoping it will be reciprocated, but it is never acknowledged. What do you do when it feels like you are the only one fighting for your marriage? When you’ve prayed for God to soften her heart and love you back as much as you love her?
The first sign of her withdrawal from me was the intimacy growing cold as ice. She says that it has never been white-hot, but those first couple of years were as steamy as they could be. We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. I remember her asking me one time, on Groundhog day, to do it before I went to work. I actually woke up to a blowjob, and was a good 30 minutes late for work because we couldn’t stop what she had started. Those were the good days.
Now, at 33 years old, I am lucky if it happens once every 2-3 months. And sadly, even when it happens, I can feel that she is almost lifeless and void of any pleasure in being with me physically. It hurts to think of it. I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my days alongside her, but I feel like we won’t make it unless her love for me can break out of its shell and grow back to life again.
A little backstory. A few years ago her brother took his own life. Amidst the chaos of that season, she asked for a seperation from me so she could figure out what she wanted to do. At this point, we had two kids and had been married for four years. 2020 may be bad, but the worst year in my life was 2016. I found out once we started working things out, months later, that she had an affair, and that was why I was asked to leave my home. Though leaving was an option on the table at this point, God led me to forgive and hold onto my marriage.
Now, four years later, it seems like our marriage is back on a downhill trend. Every conversation is looked at with a mirror of negativity, regardless of the topic. When she gets like this, I feel like any argument she brings up is putting her on the brink of leaving so I shut down. I don’t know what to say, and I definitely don’t want to say anything that would further separate her from me.
One of the worst struggles for me, though, is the lack of physical intimacy. That is my primary love language, followed by words of encouragement, which are almost non-existent anymore.
I struggle with porn and sexual addiction; since I have been with her, I have kept my bond to her as far as other women go, but porn is a constant thorn in my side. I try to stay away, but I’m constantly drawn back in because that is the only intimacy I get to feel anymore. The worst part is that there is no afterglow in porn. There is no fulfillment afterward, only guilt and the feeling of diminishing the Holy Spirit inside of me. I am a man of God, but in moments like these, I just feel like a disappointment. I’m a worship pastor, but after falling to this temptation again and again, I feel like I shouldn’t even be up there. I want to be more for my wife, my kids, and my church as well as the lost people around me. It all starts and ends with love.
I’ve prayed for a white-hot marriage a million times over the past six years, and it seems like every time I pray, it doesn’t seem to be a priority for God. I feel like those prayers are falling on deaf ears. Even deeper, this longing for love and passion with my wife leaves me depressed, and my thoughts drag me through the darkest of places. It leaves me with a lot of feelings running through my head: would I really be missed if I wasn’t here anymore? How quickly would the world just move on like I never existed at all?
Fortunately, I would never do that to my family and friends because I know that God has a plan for me as well as my marriage. I just want a healthy marriage, and to see the love I give to my wife reciprocated back to me. But, I need God to step in and finally close these gaps. Only God can breathe life back into my marriage. Only God can breathe life back into me. Only God.
