Growing Holier in an Unhappy Marriage

I spent three years of my marriage thinking that I hated my husband and wanted out of our marriage. I tried every human remedy there was to fix things between us and nothing worked. I am grateful to my Catholic faith and its wisdom that does not offer the easy out of divorce. I knew enough Scripture to know that God hates divorce and enough of my Catechism to understand that marriage is meant to be a living sacrament, a visible reminder of God's unconditional love for His people. So divorce was off the table. Infidelity to my husband was equally unthinkable. Experience taught me that an affair - even a virtual one - was a quick recipe for hurting a whole bunch of innocent people. Not to mention that it was a fast ticket to Hell. 

Bringing My Pain to My Mother

My vocation felt empty and meaningless. There was, as you might imagine, no joy in it. And so, after exhausting all human remedies, I turned my situation over to my Blessed Mother for her help and guidance. I didn't know what she could do to help me, but I knew I could not fix this problem on my own. 

Like the servants at the wedding feast at Cana, I was facing empty jars and no wine - the Jewish symbol of joy - to give anyone. And, as she always does, our Blessed Mother took me by the hand to her son. Gradually, through a series of revelations about what to do and how to handle things, those empty jars began to be filled. First with the waters of the Holy Spirit which restored the love, which Jesus could then turn to Joy and renew the Hope as well.

Revelation: I Didn't Hate My Husband.

It came one night as I was lying in bed beside him that I didn't hate him at all. What I thought was hate was a love that was embittered and seething with anger because of how hurt I was that he didn't seem to return that love. Instead, I felt him indifferent and cold. He seemed more invested in his online family than he was in our own. I wanted him to love me the way he had when we first came together, and that love was absent in our marriage and I didn't understand why. I felt like I was a good and loving wife. Why didn't he love me the way I loved him?

Pain and anger, left untended, can turn to hatred over time. But hate is nothing more than the flipside of the coin of love. It's what happens to love that is wounded and left untreated. My first step then was to forgive my husband for not loving me the way I wanted to be loved and to seek God's guidance on what to do to restore the broken relationship.

Reminder: My Relationship with My Husband Mirrors My Relationship with God

Years before this, God taught me to see my relationship with my husband as a mirror to my relationship with Him. The way my husband treated me directly corresponded to the way God felt I was treating Him. Did I feel my relationship with my husband was cold and indifferent? That he showed more interest in others than in me? That's how God felt I was treating Him.

This, then, was a reminder to me: fix my relationship with God and I would fix the relationship with my husband. Whatever it was that was obstructing my faith was directly related to what was obstructing my relationship with my husband. Love couldn't flow freely as long as that obstruction remained in place. 

Recognition: My Ingratitude Was Salting the Soil of Love's Garden

Salt is toxic to a garden, and ingratitude is toxic to the heart. Love cannot grow in that toxicity. It took years more before I understood the source and level of my ingratitude to God and to my husband for their contributions to my life. However, that ingratitude was the source of the problems in my marriage.

My husband suffered from mental health illnesses. These often led him to struggle with holding down jobs. That meant we often struggled financially, and the bulk of money that was brought into the household was through my efforts. I often viewed my husband as a kind of boat anchor to my ambitions, preventing me from being able to achieve the things I desired to achieve.

What I couldn't see so clearly was that I, too, suffered from mental health illnesses. It was just that my type of mental health illness - the relentless drive to achieve and the inability to ever be satisfied with what I'd done - was no less damaging than his. It was simply more socially acceptable. Applauded, even. Encouraged. 

His mental health illness forced me to slow down long enough to live life rather than constantly live in pursuit of a better life. He pointed out to me the way that I was rushing through, always seeking to get to the next thing, without ever appreciating where I was. Instead of appreciating that, I resented it because it represented an obstacle to my endless list of goals and milestones. However, it was necessary and essential to my own health and sanity. 

God paired the two of us together because we needed one another. Without my drive, my husband would not move to do much of anything. He was content to linger in the present without ever thinking about the future. Without my husband's appreciation for the present, I'd zip through life constantly pursuing a future I'd never catch and never learn to appreciate any of what I had or had done. I'd always be focused on a "better" tomorrow rather than appreciating the good of that day.

Repentance: Recognizing My Role in Creating the Problems in Our Relationship

I am grateful to God for opening my eyes to the role that I played in destroying the love in our marriage. And I recognized that I didn't just owe God an apology. I owed one to my husband, too. When I shared with him what God revealed to me, I could see him opening up to me.

I could finally answer the question that he'd asked a thousand times over, "What do you need me for?" I needed him to be the one who slowed me down and helped me to live life to its fullest. He served an important role in my growth and in my faith. One that was of irreplaceable value to me.

In recognizing my own role in creating the problems in our relationship, I stopped feeling trapped and helpless. There was something I could do to fix things that didn't involve the spiritual suicide of divorce. I could ask God to help me grow in gratitude and appreciation for the spouse He'd given me and work harder to be more grateful to God for all the things He put into my life, especially the crosses I found difficult to carry.

Renewal: Seeking God's Help in Rekindling the Flames of Passion

My experience helped me to understand the nature of God’s wrath against His chosen people and how He felt toward me.

He was allowing me to experience what it was like for Him. He loves me so very much but was so hurt by my indifference to that love that it turned to a bitter anger. This is why He says to those who grow lukewarm that He will spit us out of His mouth.

He can work with anger and hate, though He prefers we not be angry toward Him or hate Him. When you hate someone, it’s just the flipside of the coin of love. You’re still obsessed with them and you can’t get them out of your mind, but your pain at what they’ve done is so great that it blocks your ability to feel love for them anymore.

He can work with you hating Him because He knows that if He can just get you to see how much He actually does love you and that what He did was not intended to harm you but to help you, that same hatred will turn into an all-consuming passion for Him. Your marriage to Him will be restored and even reawakened by that.

But indifference is different. The coldness, the lack of desire for Him, the pursuit of everything except Him? That is impossible to work with because there’s no spark there. It’s why He keeps complaining that Israel’s heart is made of stone. How can you set fire to stone?

Time and again I’ve discovered this about my marriage: The state of my relationship with my husband reflects the state of my relationship with God. If there’s this lack of passion coming to me from my husband, it’s because I’ve lost my passion for God. He’s allowing me to experience, through my husband, what it’s like for Him to be in a relationship with me.

The goal is not to trigger me to divorce my husband, any more than I want God to divorce me, but to trigger me to turn to Him. If I choose to turn the pain and the anguish of not feeling loved the way I need to be loved, He’ll provide me the instructions on what to do to fix things with Him. In fixing things with Him, I become the kind of person that can fix the problems and reignite the flames in my own marriage.

Once I understood how God uses my marriage to mirror my relationship with Him, even the worst moments in my marriage have become opportunities for growth in my faith. It becomes a wake-up call to things that I’m doing or not doing that are damaging my relationship with God and causing it to be less than it should be.

I can then bring the emptiness in my marriage vocation to Mary, who will walk with me to the Lord and, as she did at the wedding feast at Cana, intercede for us. Out of love for her, even if not for me, the Lord will work to help me restore the joy in it as long as I do whatever He tells me to do.

Living our vocation isn’t always easy. The selflessness demanded of us twenty-four hours, seven days a week, can drain us dry if we’re not constantly allowing ourselves to be renewed by the Lord. But what we can do is use the feelings we hold about that vocation as a kind of spiritual barometer.

It’s those feelings that can lead us into spiritual troubleshooting, figuring out where we've gone wrong and how to get back to the love we once shared for Him. And, the experience can not only deepen our relationship - it can allow us to share the experience born of wisdom that can guide others on their journey, too.