Trying to cope in a sexless marriage

[db2009]

I came to this forum after listening to the radio program for several weeks. I'd just like an idea on how to cope. Here's my situation (as briefly as I can describe it)

We've been married ten years and have a 7yr old daughter. We are both 39. My wife has suffered two devastating miscarriages (the last one was 4 years ago). We have had sex appx 5 times in the past two years. She claims that one of the reasons is because she is not attracted to me because of my weight (5'9 - 215 - size 36-38 pants). She also claims that she just doesn't feel sexual feelings at all (not just because of me). I feel horribly rejected and I harbor a great deal of resentment - but I continually try to please her. I've learned that I am someone who desires a lot of approval.

She is also very critical in nature (stemming from having a very critical father). We've tried counseling - she's been diagnosed and prescribed medicine for ADD, generalized anxiety disorder and depression. I've been diagnosed with poor esteem but nothing more clinical to be medicated. She gets critical of me lack of aggression and esteem (I believe a lot of it stems from my feelings of rejection)

I will not leave her, nor cheat - I don't believe in it. At times I have strong sexual desires and it drives me further into an awful mood.

I'm starting to feel very hopeless - I'm not sure if she's capable of loving me, or if I'd be capable of receiving her love (without some physical affection)

Any advice - sorry if that rambled - I tried to include the basics. I just want to get positive.

[kathy]

To David,
You seem to need some help yourself. You should be more diligent about advice you give. It might only be an online forum, you are still morally responsible for any misguided advice you give. Prayerfully consider this and future replies.

TO: db2009 - Please do not fall for anti- Biblical solutions. They will leave you worse off than you are now

[Bee Bee]

Kathy, I'm alittle confused about your reply to David? Are you talking to the the man in the "sexless marriage"? What advice or misguided advice did he give? I'm really new to this forum so maybe I totally missed something here? If I did, please bring me up to speed ,on what your reply is talking about? Is db2009,,,,,David......... or someone else? Was David's reply removed ( if that's not db2009) and I didn't read it? Thanks a bunch!

[Bee Bee]

Kathy, No need to reply because I just figured out who David is and actually as serious as his advice is, I had a good laugh!:) I think he is enjoying himself alot because his replies are so ridiculous and he is actually getting some responses! Out of the heart the mouth speaks............plural marriage?! That is a huge revelation of the condition of his heart! Your advice was good though and I pray he is able to understand it............and reach out for the help he needs! God Bless You!

[kathy]

Thanks BeeBee, lucky I received both of your messages at the same time. I found your reply to db very inspiring. May God bless you for using your pain to reach out to others.

[Bee Bee]

db2009,
You definitely have alot going on and I may be a woman . however , because of my husbands Diabetes( diagnosis 3 years ago) he gave up on all of the intimacy. I never dreamed in a million years this would have happened and like you I will not cheat or leave him on those grounds so what is the right solution? With that being said the answer and I believe the only answer in this situation is God's! Since we cannot change another person because God shares His glory with no one and we will never be able to do what He alone can do! As painful as it is and I have cried multitudes of tears over it and my heart is cut to the quick for you, your self-esteem and mine must be healed in the light of God's love and truth about us. There is a root of rejection in your life that I believe began way before you even met your wife that you have to deal with alone with God and some GOOD christian counseling! Your wife is broken and you are also ( in different areas) but, you are the one calling out for help right now and God sees and knows all about your hurts and hers. Get into the Word of God if you are a born again believer in Jesus Christ and find every verse you can on how God sees you! Get a bible concordance or whatever you need and then ask God to lead you to those healing scriptures. Until we see ourselves like God sees us ,which is the TRUTH about us , no matter how we feel or are being treated right now, we'll remain in our low self esteem and those feelings of rejection which are so strong in our flesh! Read as many of the verses each day ,outloud, that you can, until they become deeply implanted in your heart and mind! God desires to bring you up to a place in Him where you know ,that you know ,that you know you are of great value to Him! Right now your focus is on the difficult thing that is happening and God wants to change the view.:) I don't advise you to stop pleasing her within reason ,just decide for your own well-being and according to God's TRUTH, that we are not to be people pleasers ,but, God pleasers and if you are in Christ ,I have exceedingly great news for you..........God is already pleased with you! Your wife or my husband will never be able to give to us what only God can give! Yes, they have responsibility to us by the very nature of the marriage which is a covenant relationship ordained by God Himself. And, it is such a hopeless feeling at times and the anger takes over at times ,but, it cannot be where we live because it's not God's perfect loving will for us to keep getting rejected!! So, if you keep looking to your wife alone for acceptance ,the real enemy is going to keep using it against you! Your hope and defense and acceptance of yourself and mine is in Him alone! Don't give up or give in to allowing the enemy to fuel that rejection........pray for your wife and love her and let God heal YOU and I believe when she sees what God is doing in your life you will be amazed at what He will do in your situation! Praise God every day for the healing He is going to do in your life and marriage! God Bless the broken road that will lead you straight to HIM!!!

[Pinky]

I am glad for your sake I read this. I am a woman who had the same problem as your wife for decades. My problem came from being raped hundreds of times. However God healed me and I am normal now. If you are committed to staying then shift your focus from yourself to helping her get healed. My first husband went crazy and tried to kill me. He was hooked on drugs it wasn't just my sexual dysfunction. In any case I am with my new husband for 15 years and I am healed. But women in my rape support group all have the same problem and none of them are healed but me. So you have to be patient. There are other areas I have not had healing in yet. So be patient and get the focus off of yourself it wil bring you peace.

[K]

OK. My first thought when reading this, was that maybe your wife is not attracted to men in general, and is not feeling loving toward you because she is really not finding the connection she needs emotionally etc. Just a thought. Something to talk about with her. You know? Connect? Get into her soul? Most guys aren't into that right brain stuff, but it really helps open us girls up to the sexual side of ourselves when we feel known and loved on the inside of us. Hope this helps. God bless.

[David Norman]

Hello Db,

Just wanted to check in with you man and see how your doing, hope things are working their way out. It will all work out in the end.


Take care, David

[lisa saunders]

I also want to confirm this thought and prayer....God will, work it out if you let Him....He is bigger in me than the world. and in the end, it does seem such a waste of precious time,to have let such foolishness interupt the more important beautiful times, in your lives...when you remember to keep God closer to your side..Amen

[Linda Hoyt]

Here is what you do. Go for a walk with your wife every evening. Take yoru daughter. Walk for at least an hour. Hang on to hands. Talk about anything, and everything.

Diet. No sugar. You only gain self esteem by accomplishing a goal. Walking and dieting will make you both feel sexier.

Your wife is looking for an excuse. She is feeling angry over her lost babies. She also now associates sex with heartache. Take her excuse away, by being the most fit that you can be. Besides, you need something to do, since you aren't having sex, geepers, lift weights and play basketball man! Then you will have the confidence that you need to seduce your wife---which is what you need to be doing! Wives almost never "feel like it"....sorry, but it is your job to change her mood! Figure it out....figure HER out...that is the fun of marriage! Make her feel special and gorgeous...tell her how badly you want HER....not sex, but her. Tell her how important she is to you, and how you crave her.

Get busy! You are missing out on a lot of life!

[giveaccount]

What you are going through must be really hard. She comes from a background of having a critical father and that became a way of her connecting with those around her. She is reflecting on you how she feels about her father. I have a friend who has a critical father. He never received approval for the good things he did instead he was constantly criticized. He is now in his 40's was in prison for 7 years and is now lacking the love and affection of his father. He will probably always seek his dad’s approval and never get it. He is now confiding in his leader at church and he told me that his leader prayed for him and hugged him he did not know how to take this mans love and affection. It has scared him but God is good and he heals our brokenness only to use it for other people’s pain to reach out to them. Your wife sees you as she sees her father he was a strong male figure in her life. She needs to address the fact that her father was critical and maybe not affectionate towards her and grieve this in her life. You need to give what she can't give at this point in time you need to praise her for things that she does well you need to keep her in prayer for the critical spirit that she has. You need to know that she has some healing to do that she is broken and that it takes time to heal the hurts so you will need to not take things to heart. When she is critical it is time to pray for her. You may need to get your approval from friends for now. At times we can receive what we need in a Godly way from friends and family. Find some one you can speak to this will help you get through all of this. I think that your wife would began to be sexual with you once she begins to face and grieve the fact that she will not get what she is looking for from her father until he begins the process of healing in this area of his life. She needs to stop seeing you as her father. Lord I pray that you would step in and heal the brokenness in her life. Lord a critical spirit can do so much harm in a family help her process and grieve the relationship she had with her father. You know the struggles of this marriage he wants to remain pure and faithful help her to know what a blessing this is. Give him strength to endure the healing process that she needs to go through. Lead them and guide them to get the help they need and most of all that they would go before you at all times. I pray that you would shine some hope his way. That he would know that you are behind all of this. I pray all this in Jesus Name amen. This is an article I found on a critical spirit. Criticizing: Judging

Included in the sins of pride, which God treats especially severely, are the sins of criticizing and judging. "God opposes the proud" (I Pet. 5: 5). Even if a person believes in Jesus, if at the same time, he persists in judging others God is not for him. Then God has to be against him. But it would be terrible to have God as our opponent, to be under His wrath, which will have its full effect in the other world. That is why Jesus warns us so sharply: "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged" (Matt. 7: 1,2).

Judging others will bring the wrath of God down upon us. He will be against us, because this sin is especially satanic. Judging others and accusing them is what Satan does. He is the accuser. Judging is one of the manifestations of our pride, manipulated by Satan. In great presumptuousness we sit in judgment on everything that we see or hear about others, usually without knowing the background and the motives of their behaviour or mistakes. Judging is satanic poison in our hearts, which can bring us terrible judgment, if we persist in it. Jesus tells us this clearly by addressing those who judge with the words; "You hypocrites!" (Matt. 7: 5). Jesus threatens the hypocrites, saying they will not enter His kingdom, but the kingdom of hell; they will go to the "father of lies". So the spirit of criticism, nourished by the accuser, is our greatest enemy. We have to hate it from the bottom of our hearts and not tolerate it in the slightest, unless we want to find ourselves in the kingdom of the accuser instead of with Jesus.

How can we attack this enemy? First, recognize the fact that we are full of criticism and stop trying to explain it away. We should no longer make excuses for ourselves by saying, "I have to tell others what they are doing wrong to prevent them from making a mess of things. In reality, however, we enjoy correcting others and reproaching them. Often the real source of our criticism is rebellion or annoyance, because someone did something against our wishes.

Therefore, we criticize him and accuse him. So in the light of God we have to ascertain that it is presumptuous to accuse others, to reproach them and especially to pronounce our verdicts in front of someone else. Then we will become guilty towards our neighbour, by getting others to be against him, and this could seriously harm him. When we search our consciences in our quiet time, we should ask ourselves: Where have I brought guilt upon myself by judging others and reproaching them? What has my spirit of criticism brought about? Perhaps it has even ruined people's lives. Have I harmed the souls of people at home or at work by reproaching them again and again and continually accusing them? If we--perhaps as a parent or educator--have filled our hearts with this satanic poison and sprayed it out at others, we have to admit that we are subject to God's condemnation, that we were Satan's servants.

What a terrible harvest we will reap! Our criticism will rob us of the most precious gift that Jesus has given us: forgiveness and the blotting out of our sins. Criticism provokes the wrath of God, who has forgiven us, as the parable of the unmerciful servant tells us. Although He had forgiven this servant, He delivers him to the jailers, because this servant would not forgive his fellow-servants (Matt. 18: 32-34).

So it means that we have to make every effort to get free from this spirit of criticism and whole-heartedly repent. Here we must act according to Jesus' words, "If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out!" (Mark 9: 47). That means waging an intensive battle against the satanic sin of judging others. Jesus clearly shows us the way and we have to follow it. Otherwise there will be no release. "First take the log out of your own eye!" (Matt. 7: 5). Jesus is exhorting us: Stop giving your opinions about others and accusing them, before you become quiet in the presence of God and ask Him whether you are guilty of the same sin. Our sin of criticism usually begins when we neglect to do this. We do not follow Jesus' words; we criticize immediately without first becoming silent in the presence of God and humbling ourselves under our sin which is even greater. When we come into the light of God, we will usually find out that we have the same faults, perhaps even more dominantly and many other undesirable traits in addition. Then we will see that our guilt is like a log in contrast to our brother's splinter. We will be ashamed of our own sin and lose our presumptuous and indignant desire to criticize others.

Then we will be struck by what the Apostle Paul writes, "Therefore you have no excuse, O man, whoever you are, when you judge another; for in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things." (Rom. 2: 1). And further: "Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God"-and be judged for this sin (Rom. 14: 10).

So today we must choose a new way, a new place. Instead of sitting on the judgment throne above the others we must sit where we deserve to sit: in the defendant's box, where we can be judged and hear God's judgment on our sins. When we are willing to do this, God will no longer be against us and we will no longer be in the hand of the accuser. On the contrary, we will belong to our Lord Jesus, who had to let Himself be accused in five trials. He did this, although He was innocent. Shouldn't we, who are guilty, be able to take this place? If we earnestly begin to judge ourselves, we will ask people at home and at work to tell us the straight truth about ourselves. Humbled beneath this, we will be able to accept the reproaches of others, even when they are unjust. Then our lips and hearts will be silent and we will not be able to criticize others so quickly and judge them so harshly.

Jesus went the way of humble love. He humbled Himself in the dust and let Himself be judged. Now He has redeemed the members of His body to live this love, which covers up others' mistakes instead of criticizing, which forgives and tolerates instead of making reproaches, which bestows kindness instead of criticism.

This does not mean tolerating sin. But if we should ever have to pronounce judgment, we will do it quite clearly but with a humble and loving heart.

But whoever wages a war of life and death against his spirit of criticism will find that nothing sits so deeply in our Adam's nature as the spirit of criticism. It will not disappear overnight by making one commitment. "I want to let myself be judged and place my mouth in the dust." No, our blood is infected with it. There is only one Person who is stronger than our old Adam. It is Jesus Christ. His blood has greater power than the blood that we have inherited from our fathers. This blood of Jesus has complete power to free us, if we call upon it ever anew; in it there is really power to cleanse us from our sins, from the great sin of judging others, from hypocrisy, which makes us guilty and brings us into Satan's hands. In faith we must appropriate the redeeming power of this blood. This will only happen in an intensive fight against this sin, in a daily battle of faith and prayer. This includes speaking the "nevertheless" of faith in spite of the defeats we experience: "I am redeemed to love and to forgive!" Whoever is willing to endure in this battle in spite of his short-comings, believing in Jesus' redemption, will be freed from his great sin of judging others.

[lisa saunders]

This sounds like what the higher authority is doing. They like to sit in judgement and reproach aganist the people. This we know from Rev when it say's wickedness in high places. I have been criticisized by my step mother, but poor woman it was not her fault, it was her parents that did it to her. That is the abuse cycle. The statistic shows that 97.8 % of abused children grow up to be abusers themselves. It was a mental abuse for me, everything I did, no matter..was not correct. I learned how to be perfect, and never receive reccomendation for my achievements, I even picked out a job that mentally abused me later in life after she died. I am 45 years old now, do ya think I can be appreciated and recognised, not abused now. Lord Jesus please bring peace through restoration and healing, cover me in your holy blood pry satan's fingers off of me and my life through criticism and condemnation of others and cast these evil spirits back from whence they came. Also generational curses handed down through my family, wash them in the blood Lord Jesus Amen...Free in Jesus name...no more abuse....I have always helped others, still looking for the approval I never received, please help me to come in contact with good christian brethren that will pray for me, instead of criticize and jugde. Lord I always take up for underdogs, it hurts my spirit, to see and hear them criticized because it makes me remember how I felt when I was young. I wanted to be the defender of the white knight, who came to their rescue..Gods white knight...I hate to see people or companies lie and set up people to lose their jobs. To try and drive them crazy, knowing they will do anything to keep the stupid job. The bible tells us to witness and dispute untruth, I despise injustice as my father in heaven does... Be a doer of the word..do not sit by and watch someone being abused and not offer to help them..even if it is to quote God's word, or to abide by our laws that govern society (if someone has broken them and abused someone) For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son......its a battle everyday....the accuser was cast down from heaven..that means he is here in the world now....do not be deceived by his miracles and peaceful loving nature..he is dangerous viper in sheeps clothing.And most of all he knows scripture better than some of us..he was God's angel.....keep watch..in Jesus name Amen ...Godspeed..