Don’t Throw Your Love Away

Don’t Throw Your Love Away

Written by Ken

Far too many throw their love away.  I am not talking about having sex before marriage which has nothing to do at all with love but selfishness. No, true love is when you make a commitment to share true life for a lifetime with another. True love is the commitment to seek the best interest in another in good times and in bad. True love is a deep and abiding intimacy where you know and are known completely by the one you love. Then all of the sudden disaster strikes and creates a crossroads in your marriage. Do you stay or bolt for the door?

In the past few years writing for and watching this blog and actively participating in Christian men’s groups online, it is heartbreaking to see how many couples are in trouble. We have had the opportunity to coach many of them and to see some wonderful couples turn around and have success, but we have just as many or more stay in the limbo of suffering and bitterness, while others have thrown away their love.

It’s not always that the grass is greener on the other side. Many times a wife walks away from the man she vowed she would “love until death do us part” out of a sense of survival. She has bought into the lies of society that tell her that she can be “independent” and her husband is weighing her down. He actually expects things from her like staying within budget, keeping a decently clean home, and God forbid if she has to cook and do laundry. I wish I could say that all of the wives were at least terrific at loving the children and caring for them, but unfortunately, even this is a problem in some cases.

For the men, it is almost always porn. Looking at artificial, make-believe pictures and videos that show some of the vilest acts of mankind and this poor guy is hooked. His brain is addicted to a screen… imagine that, it’s not even real, just a computer screen that he makes love to every night while his poor wife cries herself to sleep longing for his embrace. He has the world of every type of beautiful body and sex act at his fingers times, yet he keeps digging for those few little nuggets that really turn him on. Deeper and deeper he goes into his sin and bondage as depression and despair set in.

Recently, I heard from a man a miracle story where he had been stirred awake in bed to see his wife on her phone. He flopped his arm over towards her and to his surprised, she took it and embraced it. He reached over and they were in a full embrace. The details were vague, but the bottom line was that the embrace led to intimacy for the first time in six years. The next day, clean up began with openness, vulnerability, and compete accountability including blocking “friends” and putting filters on the computers. Porn had wreaked havoc on this marriage, but one flopped arm, and another arm reaching back, and the train of marriage that was off the track for so long was heading forward once again.

My appeal to you who are struggling in your marriages is to never give up on love. If love, particularly the love of God, is a commitment to seek the best for our spouses in good times and in bad, how can we ever give up… no matter what! Oh, there may be a few marriages that cannot make it because one spouse or the other is truly evil, but if both spouses are claiming the name of Jesus and going to church each Sunday, you are being deceived and unfaithful if you walk away from your vows, your commitments, and your love. Especially, if you have a bunch of little blessings running around your home. Love your children enough to reach out your arm in hope that even now, six years later your spouse will grab a hold and embrace it, leading to a miraculous turn around in your marriage.

I know, some of you will say, “But what about an affair?” What about it? Just because your spouse was unfaithful to you and his or her vows does not mean that you must be unfaithful to yours in return. Remember, “til death do us part.”

I am not saying that a spouse should get a “get out of jail free card” if they have violated your trust and the marriage bed. But decide to deal with your hurt another way to keep the bitterness at bay. I know of five to six men and women who each have had secret affairs on their spouses, then years later their spouse had an affair. I am astonished when I have said to one of them, “Well, you have to look at this fairly as you too had an affair years ago that she does not know about.” You would have thought that I was the enemy in those moments as their anger flared. Fortunately, most of them got through it and their marriages are even better today then they were before the affair as full and complete honesty, vulnerability, and accountability have become the norm.

There are ways to try to affair-proof and porn proof your marriage. It begins by having regular sexual intimacy. Setting up regular times, two or three times a week, for connecting. If you can, every morning before you get out of bed or evening, read a chapter of the Bible together and pray for your family, friends, and circumstances together shoulder on shoulder. Then pull your wife on top of you, men, and give her a back and body rub that she will enjoy. You don’t have to always have sex to have meaningful intimate moments skin to skin, cheek to cheek, laughing and sharing life together. It only takes seven to ten minutes in the morning or evening to begin to affair-proof your marriage.

Lori and I have been married going on 40 years, and if you read the stupid trolls and haters, I have had multiple affairs. Lori regularly is told that I am having an affair with a brunette in my office, and they don’t seem to understand that my office has been in my home for the past 33 years and the only brunette secretary I have ever had is my bride. So you, you caught us. We have had a life-long affair together and I dread the day our affairs ends. We are completely connected to each other in mind, body, and soul. It wasn’t always this way, if you know our story, but we have always been faithful to each other.

It’s not that neither of us had our opportunities to be unfaithful. I cannot imagine a decent looking, in shape couple, where the husband travels 30-40 percent of the year that, at times, could not give into temptation and sin. And had one of us sinned against God and the other, would that have lead to a divorce? No way! It is not in our DNA, the DNA of Christ to be unfaithful to our spouse, even if they are first unfaithful to us. We cannot even imagine the disaster this would have caused in the lives of our children/grandchildren, and as it turns out, our own lives. No, if we were going to get divorced, an affair is probably only third on our list of hardships and difficulties that could have split us apart if only Satan could have gotten his ugly hooks into us.

When God asks you, “Choose you this day whom you will serve,” is your answer, “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15)? Will you serve the God of your flesh in having an affair, or making your computer into your lover? Will your idol be self and selfishness, withholding love and intimacy out of a desire to repay sin with your own sins, anger, bitterness, or will you put on Christ Jesus and His love, grace, and forgiveness 70 times seven times?

Take it from us, two fellow believers who are further done the path of life then many of you are, that if you will just be true to God and true to your own vows, you too can find the marriage of your dreams coming true before yours eyes as you stay faithful to God’s commands and promises. But if you want to do things your way out of hurt, pain, or spite, expect nothing from the Lord except for His discipline to allow you to suffer the consequences of your own sins.

I know there are many who will read this today with regrets that they were part of throwing away one of the most precious gifts God has given to mankind, marriage to one love for a lifetime. For you, we can only point you to the cross where each of us, yes, even us who have grieved our spouse in many ways, said and have done some terrible things in life and marriage. We too must place our sins at the foot of the cross in 30 A.D. That is where all sins belong, past, present and future, and where Satan can no longer use them to accuse us. We have been delivered from our sins to the spotless Lamb who became sin on our behalf that we may be saved.

But we are saved for what? To squeak out a life until eternity begins, still feeding our fleshly desires and holding onto anger, bitterness, and upset, or choosing this day to walk in the newness of life that God has promised to each and every one of His children? Are you a child of God? Is the Spirit of Christ in you? If you are uncertain, then reach out to a friend, a pastor, or to us and allow us to share with you the salvation that only Christ can give.

But if you claim with certainty that you love the Lord Jesus and you are a child of God, you need to stop right now in your tracks with whatever sins you are doing against your spouse. Go to them and repent and ask them to help set up accountability for your nagging, your lack of submission, your anger, your bitterness, your slavery to porn, or any other sins that so easily beset you. Our spouse can be our greatest spiritual helper if we only let them into those dark areas of life that have been off limits to even God, and now we are to step out in the light of day. Where two souls can now journey together to the great healing that God gives His children, if they will only be honest and open with Him, and choose this day to serve Him with all their heart, mind, and soul.

Marriage is probably the one greatest thing any of us can get right in this life as it flows into family, and ultimately becomes the Church, the body of Christ. Don’t allow Satan and sins to stop you from achieving the most important goal of your life, to become one with your spouse, to know him or her, and to be fully known, to be naked and yet not ashamed. This is God’s desire for you, but will you reach out and grab an arm and begin the journey to healing? Or will your marriage be another statistic on the mountain heap of broken hearts, with many of them the children of divorce.

God’s ways are best. God’s ways are good. God’s ways work. Love them, do them, and reap the many blessings that only He can give us. We certainly have had our troubles, but we praise God He allowed us one day to reach out, and the other reached back. And the embrace is now never-ending.

Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
Proverbs 5:18

25 thoughts on “Don’t Throw Your Love Away

  1. Blessings on your ministry. I read you every day. I’m a very blessed woman with a faithful man & 5 little blessings. Nothing you say here is new to me, but I find it is like washing myself with truth in the midst of all the daily garbage & lies the world throws at us every day.

  2. Part of the problem nowadays is people try and have two leaders in one household, which never works! If the wife knows to submit to her husband’s decisions, how can there be arguments? And if she knows that the domestic chores are her responsibility, and he knows that getting an income is his, there should (in theory) be no resentment about the other not helping out.

    I know that the most difficult time for my own marriage was the very beginning. We were both working outside the home, but housework and cooking was still my job. The arguments and stress this caused led my husband quite quickly to decide for me to quit my job (and ultimately moving to a smaller home, but very worth it!).

    Since then our marriage has been much smoother and I think a testament to the importance of different roles for the man and the wife. It helped me as I was less tired and stressed, and it helped him as he had dinner ready for him when he got back, and his wife wasn’t busy cleaning and doing chores while he was home.

  3. Yes, it becomes very difficult when women willingly leave their role in the marriage to take on the husband’s role but then decides the husband must help with her role. It’s the perfect combination for strife. God created different roles for men and women so there would be peace in the home.

  4. It’s been so nice having set jobs, as in my husband goes to work and provides for the family and I take care of the house. I’m a little over my due date for my fourth baby and after supper a few days ago i decided to lay on the couch for a few minutes before I cleaned up the kitchen and went in to find my husband had done it for me. It was so sweet. And I had the thought of how much grouchier and resentful I would feel all the time if I had expectations of him helping around the house all the time (even though he’s at work for about 12 hours per day!) and he didn’t help out much! Instead, I just feel so grateful when he does little things like that (which is really very rare, since I try to keep on top of chores and things like that)

  5. This blog has been a blessing to me in many ways. Yet, it has been a curse in other ways. I wonder if others share this experience or if it reflects my own struggles?

    My husband has asked me to consider not reading this blog anymore. I am in a largely happy marriage that reflects my husbands leadership. We certainly have our share of struggles and past decisions I made, such as going all the way with education, racking up student debt, and having to work to pay it off, contribute to our conflicts but we persevere.

    However, I have been plagued with fear and insecurity since the start of our relationship. My husband’s sexual history, as well as my own are always in my mind and I worry that given his history I may not be “good enough” so to speak to keep him interested. My husband is fiercely loyal and I know this logically. For the most part I can keep these fears and bay. However, when I read or hear about affairs and pornography addictions and other conflicts that interfere with intimacy I become fearful of how this has happened to believing couples. There seem to be SO MANY stories that I become suspicious and worrisome and look for these problems in my own marriage or try to prevent them feverishly. This drives my husband MAD and he’s inquired into where I get these suspicions. My conclusion is my own insecurities that are fueled by the stories of betrayal I’ve been exposed to here. But I also get encouragement to be a better woman here. I’m torn.

    I know that probably sounds crazy. Are there others with a similar experience? Is there advice to manage this reaction to the exposures to such topics?

  6. I encourage you to live a life of faith rather than of fear, Humbled Wife. Don’t project others’ failures onto yourself or your husband but these things need to be taught for those who are walking this path. They need to fight for their marriages. We do live on a fallen and sinful planet. Bad things happen. We are promised suffering but we are also promised that ALL things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purposes.

  7. Humbled Wife, my husband is very handsome and charming and gets a LOT of attention from ladies, even when I’m standing right beside him. When we first got married, I was just like you. Thoughts of what ifs made me crazy. Until I realized that his behavior is not my problem. What my husband does is none of my business. His behavior is between him and God and one day he will have to stand before God and answer for his life, both good choices and bad. As long as I’m faithful, God will bless me for it. That is what I can control. The rest isn’t my concern. I just pray regularly for him to make wise decisions and pray for God to continue to bless our marriage. That’s all I can do. This mindset gives me peace. ❤

  8. I have found that intimacy (to use a euphemism) is only really intimate if both parties are seeing each other as sexual beings, not sexual objects. Sexual intimacy should be an act two people do together (to bond and procreate), not one that one person “Does” to another. Based on Ken’s post, it seems he understands this. However, many men do not (and maybe in part due to porn). Many young women marry, expecting to have a rich sex life with their husband, but instead find themselves “servicing” their husband with nothing in return. If that is what your husband commands, then so be it (God will reward you in heaven). However, it seems some men are just ignorant and would love to increase intimacy with their wife, and even wonder why she seems so disenchanted with the idea, but continue on since their needs are being met.

    How do you recommend a wife work to show her husband she would like intimacy to be mutually beneficial? How can she communicate that she would like to enrich the experience for *both* parties without teaching or nagging her husband? And if a husband is resistant/ does not care, how should she proceed?

  9. Both of my parents came from homes where their parents had divorced. When they got married they agreed that it would be different for them. I am so very blessed that I came from a home where my parents have been faithful to one another. It’s truly the greatest gift that they could ever give to me. It is my earnest prayer that when I marry, I will be faithful to my husband for better or for worse, and also be able to teach my children this same principle.

  10. Exactly, blessings to you and your new little one. I can agree completely about not expecting or even requesting my husband to help and then when I am off tidying up another space and he’s washing dishes. It catches me by surprise every time (I enjoy washing dishes lol like a little therapeutic with the water and I wear gloves so I can get the water quite warm small spa pleasures lol). I definitely believe identifying our roles has just helped our life. God’s ways are best!

  11. @HumbledWife I meant to respond earlier but I have two under two so I had to come back 🙂 nevertheless, always remember FEAR is not from God. The enemy will play on your emotions and do ANYTHING to destroy your marriage and how you see your husband. I also believe this blog is for women who are wholeheartedly seeking Biblical Womanhood, and please don’t take this the wrong way my sister but it sounds like you’re nagging and maybe a little insecure. I pray confidence and an immovable spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit to dwell in you and your marriage. I believe the premise of what Ken was saying is don’t be tempted on EITHER side. We must also be cautious as wives not to fall into temptation. What has blessed my marriage is understanding my husband always wants what is best for me, BUT I must not cause him stress with any of my insecurities.

    I also believe that as we seek the word with our whole heart God will do the rest. I was in a insecure place where my husband actually said, “Stop being insecure” omg it was a dagger in my heart, it was a stinging pain, but you know what…I was! Lol. When Lori touches on not being sensitive I totally understood what she was saying because it was me in that moment, I just had our first son at that time and I was struggling emotionally but I didn’t know what to call it. Fast forward to now, this blog has TRANSFORMED ME in Christ and I know I am confident, beautiful, and my husband adores me for it. He calls me his best friend which is music to my ears but I just stopped nagging him. Quick example, My husband smokes cigars, it used to really bother me and then I gave it Jesus…I’m completely unbothered by it and we are a military family so he is a very disciplined person he has just expressed he enjoys it. He’s the type of man that has always dreamed of having a family so having PEACE in this family is #1.

    Again, this blog has shown me that the power of the Holy Spirit will move in your marriage but the Holy Spirit needed me to move out the way, thank God for the TRINITY, it is everything we need! I close with this, if you no longer come here to this blog know that I am praying for you because I know your fears but I said “get behind me Satan, I will chew up the meat and spit out the bones” meaning if it doesn’t apply to me I’m simply reading and if it does I know to apply it. My mom was the adulterer in our family and she had my sister while she was married to my dad. My dad begged her to stay together but she couldn’t live down the shame.

    So Lori writing about women being the adulterers and the wickedness of feminism…it is true. This blog even helped me confront my parents about that and my mom said something we thought she’d never say she said, “sorry and it was the worst mistake and she failed us as a parent”. I believe it gave me and my dad closure, my dad is remarried but my mom is not which is best. All in all, things will go well for you and I am praying for you but always try to calm down and ask yourself if what you’re bringing up to your husband is a down payment on a problem or issue you may never have. I try to ask myself, “is it peaceful or pertinent if not just breath and let it go” xo be strong in the Lord

  12. Thanks Joy! May the Lord bless you and your family as yo seek to love and serve Him according to His Word and promises!

  13. If your husband believes it is better for you not to read the admonitions we are giving couples because it triggers fears in you, then heed his counsel. Better yet, would be to throw off the bonds of fear and trust your husband completely, recognizing his love will never fail you. That the bigger problem that you two need to deal with. Why do you still have these underlying fears? They will not disappear by not reading blogs, even as it may make things better for a time.

    Look back into your past and see those who you feel have betrayed you. They are to blame, yet blaming them will do no good. Then look forward as to who God says you are as a New Creature in Christ and accept and claim that promise. Put your fears and those who have sinned against you in your past at the for of the cross and determine to leave them there.

    What you are suffering from is a trust problem. Trust God, and trust your husband that they love you and will not fail you. You have no other choice, for to not do so means hurting your life with fears.

    I look back at the fears and stresses in my life and realize that the greatest harm was not that the fears ever came true, but that I allowed them to get a foothold in me to begin with and steal away life, and life in Christ from me.

    May the Lord bless you bot greatly and allow you to fully overcome your fears and hold tight to your good man.

  14. Excellent Stacey! If we only understood that Satan cannot really touch us, so he often mainly works by creating fear in us that paralyzes us and robs us of life and relationships IF we allow the fears to control is. God promises that “perfect love casts out fears.” His love… not just for us, but what we need to give away unconditionally and vulnerably.

  15. Yes Kate, but this does go both ways. Too often wives are willing to have sex, but are not willing to be active joyful participants. Husbands feel like the wife is just “putting out” for them but ready to get back to other things as quickly as possible.

    So I like what you are saying… and do believe that some of the most intimate moments can come without ending in sex. Call me crazy :).

  16. Amen to that! We can choose to be opposite the pain we felt and saw in childhood. What a gift to the next generation! Thanks for sharing!

  17. She sure is Meg! My doll who makes me laugh and keeps me happy :). But you know the trolls… they love nothing more than to slander and lie… all the time thinking they are doing God a favor :{.

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