Dear Sponsee,
My heart often still aches for my ex-wife. If I could go back and do one thing differently in my marriage, it would be to fully accept my wife when she was rejecting me. I know that sounds impossible, but I have discovered it is not. She was hurting and if I had learned then how to stay in the Spirit, I could have heard what she was saying and doing to me as evidence of her pain, not something so personal, and could have been consistently kind to her…and in this state I may have been better able to help her FOR HER sake – not in order to get her off my back or help her accept me again.
I never found resentment to be useful regardless of what my wife does or doesn’t do. The Spirit will help you both feel like a man and be kind and long-suffering at the same time!!! You will know when and how to set limits, but it will truly come from a perspective of what is good for her – not you. It also wasn’t helpful for me to do this martyr thing: like I am this amazing (or beaten down) man who has to put up with this never-forgiving woman – that also was absent of the Spirit.
Pray for your current wife as a priority. Serve her. Keep surrendering and praying and all will soften. Pray to know the truth from God: that you are a good man, a man who desires good, and a desirable man, then you will not get so concerned and make things worse if/when your wife says cruel things out of spite…You can be confident in your manliness and stay in your OWN recovery, even if your wife decided to leave you…but you can make that possibility less in the meantime. I will send you the Step Two work tomorrow. Begin to put your trust in God and not in your wife. It will seem like a much longer journey than you can bear sometimes…..So read and work sufficiently each day to feel the spirit that day!
