Dear Agatha,
I am in my mid 30s and got married seven years ago to a wonderful friend of mine. We actually dated for two and a half years before getting married. We have a son. At the time we got married, none of us was ‘born again’, as we had very active pre-marital sex life, which we both claimed we cannot get elsewhere since we both had relationships before providence brought us together.
About two years into our marital life, my husband became born again. Months later, I had no choice but to follow suit. We both became active in the church, serving on different committees. We became a reference point in the church, as we became the epitome of what the ideal couple should be.
Unfortunately, the same thing cannot be said of us in our private life. Since becoming a born again Christian, my husband refuses to perform his duties to me as before. Initially, we made love everyday and only went on break when I am having my period. We also experimented with different positions. It was good and nice. After his new-found faith, my husband does not care about me any longer; he believes there are better things to do than sleep with me.
I am lucky if he agrees to make love to me once a month. Even at that, I would have to cajole and cry before this, and during the act, he would say I should not hold him and he prefers a particular position where I can never achieve orgasm.
Agatha, I believe in the sanctity of marriage and the faithfulness of the parties concerned. But I am dying in silence. I am not a nymphomaniac, but I believe I should derive maximum satisfaction from my husband. St. Paul’s letter in 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 concerns intimacy between couples and how it should not be denied; but this has not changed my husband’s attitude.
Right now, he has not made love to me in six months! He believes he has a calling and that sex will be a huge distraction to him. He is becoming so selfish and doesn’t care about my feelings. I am scared of reporting this to the pastor because I believe this is personal and then how will people look at us in church again? I had to re-establish communication with an ex-boyfriend, but I am scared of doing this because of the repercussions. Please Agatha, help me before I do something bad to myself.
Lizzy.
Dear Lizzy,
This is a very serious matter that requires utmost wisdom and caution to save your marriage from collapse. There is no way you can, on your own, resolve this problem without getting help from the people who are experienced in marriage and the ministry.
You need the help of your pastor to get through to him, to remind him of the importance of his marriage to his ministry. Don’t be ashamed to seek help from those in the best position to educate him, because it is your right to enjoy your husband and marriage.
If you continue to depend on your wisdom, with the extent he has gone, you may not be able to get him to listen to your reason or get him to appreciate the loneliness crowding you. For this reason, you must act quickly before you are tempted to do something you cannot tell the pastor or his wife. Begin with the wife because, as a woman, she may be in the best position to appreciate what you are going through. One-on-one, express your fears and the challenges you are going through, including the fact that you are on the verge of having extra-marital affair with your ex. At this juncture, don’t be shy to own up to the challenges you are facing in your home. We all need help from time to time to make things work in our homes and lives.
Once the pastor and his wife are involved, it would be their duty to use the appropriate words of God to remind your husband of his duties to you and point him to the danger both to his image and ministry of having a broken home. Sincerely, it is not your voice or those of his family members he now considers spiritually inferior to his newfound faith that he needs. He needs the voice of those he has now formed confraternity with to educate him on the danger of leaving a full-blooded woman who was used to constant sex fallow.
You also need the help of the marriage counsellor in the church to tutor on the place of sex in marriage, as well as the naked fact that God gave it as a special gift to married couples not just to procreate but to help them relax, bond, communicate and appreciate the values of being together.
He has to stop seeing sex as a dirty act, but something God gave to mankind to enjoy within the bounds of marriage; that having sex in a marriage isn’t a sin, hence he should not feel guilty at expressing himself in intimacy with his wife.
However, if the orientation of the church is such that sees sex as functional only for the purpose of procreation and not for recreation between a couple, in addition to prayers, you can also get books written by renowned religious leaders on the place of sex in the marriage.
Spiritually, you need to resist this moment because, a lot of times, the devil uses the things we are weak at to prevent the designs of God in our lives. There is no contesting the fact that your problem started even before your husband joined the church.
From your letter, it is also obvious both of you didn’t cultivate the culture of discussing your desires before taking the decision to execute. He changed church without seeking your opinion, while you followed to please him.
By right, it is an issue both of you should have agreed on because the tenets of marriage demand that a couple must be in agreement on everything. You should have demanded at that point for his reason as well as his focus. Marriage isn’t just about having good sex; it is a combination of everything. You made the costly mistake of premising everything about your marriage on sex, so much that you didn’t even give yourself a chance to study the behaviour and mindset of the man you were married to.
As long as he was ready to satisfy your sexual urges, you were happy to allow him the freedom to fly. In a way, you unwittingly nurtured him not to consult you on anything, take decisions on your behalf and implement without recourse to your person. His attitude really has nothing to do with him changing church, but simply a demonstration of who he really is, the person you previously ignored. You two didn’t grow friendship because you were too involved in the sexual aspect of your union. The consequence is that you both don’t have anything to fall back on, to pull you out of this abyss your relationship is going into.
Because his habit is formed and beyond what you can do on your own, there is also the need to commit this side of him to God in prayers. By not blaming the church and instead focusing on your own contributions to the problem you have on hand, your prayer point would be easier to define.
Don’t, for the sake of your children and essentially for your own peace of mind, do anything to compromise your marriage. There is hardly any marriage that is free of challenges; if nothing, be grateful that you are not losing him to another woman. It could have been worse if he is rejecting you for another woman in his life.
No matter how frustrating for you, you shouldn’t have re-established contact with your ex. You didn’t act right. Besides, it makes you appear too desperate to have sex without caring about the consequences.
While your husband is wrong to have abandoned his responsibilities to you, it is also wrong for you to be overtly desperate for sex. If your husband were away for a year on a course abroad, won’t you cope? If you’re caught, the focus would shift from what pushed you into it to you betraying your husband. Hard as it is for you, good judgement demands that you put a strong restrain on yourself.
Frankly, this is when you need God the most, as well as learn to train yourself for the challenges of marriage. It isn’t every time we get what we want from our spouses. Marriage is learning about sacrifices, as well as adjusting to the demands of the moment. You have to be ready to key into his vision for him to understand what you are going through as a woman. Don’t worry, God will help make it right for you, provided you are ready to rely on Him completely.
Good luck.
