Hi Peter,
Thanks for taking the time to give your answers to my questions... I'm mostly asking because I'm interested in learning about your beliefs and stances, etc.
So here's the second round.
Part 2:
* In your original post, you said that you had chosen to pull the plug on a dead marriage, and you have my sympathies for what you went through. When do you personally define a marriage as being "dead," and when do you believe it's Biblically allowed to divorce? (Some on the forum do not believe the divorce is ever allowed, even in cases of abuse -- just to give you and idea of the gamut of beliefs you will run into here.)
Good question again, and as much as it pains me to answer it, as I made serious blunders there, I will do so. The story is more involved than me "simply" bringing a marriage to an end. It needs context. So, strap in!
I met my first wife at church. I wasn't specifically "looking", but we got along quite well, and after a short period of time (a length of time that me of today would consider WAY too short and ill-advised, ha ha), we became an "item". We were an "OK" match, but in my early 20's I lacked much of the wisdom and understanding about relationships I now have. Sigh - oh for hindsight to be foresight! Looking back, I think I was still above average in relationship matters even at that age compared to my peers, but, yeah, almost from the start there were warning signs. For my part of the "problem", I had serious rejection issues (which I'm still trying to get a handle on almost 30 years later
...) and other feelings of being unloved and unwanted, plus I had a desperation thing going on in terms of thinking no one would ever want me as a husband. As a result, I allowed myself to be blinded to my first wife's major issues that were clearly going to be a problem in the medium to long term.
Anyway, we ploughed on through things for 18 months, got engaged, went through some very good premarital counseling - which is when the alarm bells really started ringing. I could see clearly I was in for a rough ride, and that, ideally, I should back out of things right there. Even the counselor intimated as much. But, I'd started paying for her wedding ring by the time the counseling was done (even though the wedding was a few months out by then), we'd paid for most of the wedding itself in advance, the deposit was down on a house - I felt carried along on a river I felt powerless to escape. Of course, I could've escaped any time I wanted, but the young version of me lacked the courage and perspective to know that. We had "fooled around" sexually while we were engaged - stupid, I know, and very regrettable - but weren't living together.
Anyway, come the wedding night, we sat on the end of the bed in the motel (a good metre apart, no less), preparing mentally to fly out to the honeymoon the next day, and looked at each other without a word: we knew we'd made a big mistake. There was a palpable "
We just did something really foolish" in the air. No sex that night: two strangers sharing the same bed. Which set the tone for the entire honeymoon. She was grumpy, cold and distant the whole time, and even flirted with some bronzed boat-hand on the ship we took out to the Great Barrier Reef with 30 or 40 other people. It was a horrid honeymoon. There were no 'nasty' things said, but it was cold and perfunctory, and she was often very 'short' with me.
That pretty much was the way things stayed for the next 2 years - I can count on one hand the number of times we were sexually intimate - she'd became frigid. I'd never experienced anything like it. My Christian walk took a major nose-dive, I fell into severe depression - it was a living nightmare. On top of it all I changed jobs to one that was massively more stressful, she barely lifted a finger around the house, our house, that needed lots of work done on it, preferring instead to watch TV most of the time. What little commonality we'd originally had was largely gone within a year.
I began going to counseling, as I knew I was at least partly to blame, and I was desperate to make things work. I don't do well when I feel unloved, doubly so when I feel rejected. She refused to go to the counseling for quite a while, only grudgingly coming along towards the middle of the 3rd year of our marriage. She was super defensive the whole time and would accept no responsibility for her behaviour or attitudes. We were both a right mess, and had no business being in any kind of relationship, either with each other or anyone else. I paint a grim picture - and it was grim - but there were still moments of fun and levity. So much so that no one outside our relationship knew just how bad things were.
The area we lived in was infested with people who insisted on blasting their music at all hours of the day and night, and I don't cope well with that kind of selfish, boorish behaviour, and my brain locks onto bass-beats that I can't not-hear. So, I put the house up for sale at the start of the 3rd year. Come July of that 3rd year, I was ready to call life quits. No hope was visible, work was hectic, I felt I had no one to talk to, and my relationship with the Lord was non-existent. Out of the blue, my first serious GF turned up in my life after not having spoken to me for almost 4 years, wanting to put things to rest in her mind between us so she could move on. Like a drowning man going under for the last time, I foolishly grasped at that opportunity. I'd already been planning to end things with my "wife", but lacked the courage and strength to do what I ought.
Now that an old flame had resurfaced, even though she wasn't trying in any way, shape or form to get me back (quite the opposite), I used that as the motivation I needed to pull the plug on things. It was an awful thing to do, sitting my wife down no the couch and telling her we were through. She knew I had bad news for her, she later told me, as all the colour had drained from my face and I looked as white as a ghost. All true. Probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Despite not having any connection with the Lord at the time, I still had some basic Christian thought and principles in place - at that time, I believed there was no grounds for divorce except for unfaithfulness or persistent abuse, so it was a huge step for me to take. Miraculously, once I had told my "wife" of my intention to end us, life started to turn around. Within days, the house sold after no one showing any interest for 6 months. I suddenly became aware of my sinfulness for the first time in my life and had what I consider to be my actual conversion experience.
I'd promised to marry my ex-GF when we were together, and in fact we had considered ourselves to be married while we were together even though we had no legal piece of paper (that's a whole other story), so I saw the whole situation as providential "evidence" I'd been with the wrong woman all along, that the Lord hadn't honored my "marriage" because I was "technically" married to my ex-GF in His eyes. It was only after I told my "wife" that I was ending things that she really start to pull herself together and WANT to have counseling, being prepared to sort her own stuff. But, it was too little, too late.
I went on to marry my ex-GF a few years later, and believed for many years that I'd never actually been married to my first wife - until my 2nd wife, the ex-GF who had actually began nagging me to legally marry her despite reservations I ended up having about her, cheated on me and left me. Leaving me realizing I'd just squandered 25 years of my life on two women who didn't deserve my herculean efforts, and that it had all been a massive series of lies and deceptions Satan had used to rob me blind: of money, time, health, spiritual blessings, honour, reputation - all of it.
I realize that's a VERY long answer to your question, but without that context, my answer would be meaningless. So when did I fully realize the marriage to my first wife was 100% dead? I'm not sure there was a definitive moment - it started from the wedding night and just went downhill from there. I suppose my decision to sell the house grew out of a 'knowledge' that things were never going to work - the nasty neighbourhood was also a big motivator, though.
When you have you counseled other couples, at what point do you (if ever) advise them to follow suit and pull the plugs on their own "dead" marriages? Do you ever consult with a pastor/spiritual leader when counseling others, to confirm your guidance? (I just ask because this was something I was taught in a past church.)
I've never counseled a couple to end a marriage. Mostly because I've had few married couple ask for advice. Most of the people I've helped have either been Christians thinking about marriage, or people in non-marriage "carnal" relationships, or backslidden Christians shacked up with someone but not married to them. A good percentage of those I've counseled have already left a relationship and are grappling with the fall out - probably 50-60% of people fall into that category. Having not been faced with a couple who's marriage - Christian or otherwise - is on the rocks, I haven't been in a position of even considering what advice I would give. Were I to come across a counseling situation where I knew I was out of my depth (and despite the confidence I have in my advice-giving ability / knowledge, I'm not so arrogant to assume I know everything - I don't. But I do know a lot more than the average person I've met throughout life, that's been clearly obvious to me), I would most definitely refer a person on to someone more "qualified".
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