S03E28 He Wants To Live Here But I Don't Feel Secure in His Love For Me
[00:00:00] Welcome back to The Wise Wife Podcast. Please like and subscribe so that more women who are navigating hard seasons in their marriage can be encouraged and equipped. Today we're gonna talk about a very common question that I get from women who are fighting for their marriage. It sounds a little different depending on their situation, but we're gonna talk about how they're all kind of rooted in the same thing.
So it's typically some version of this: "My husband wants to come back, but not really as a husband, what do I do?" Or, "I found my husband cheating and while he shows remorse, I don't really think that he stopped cheating, or maybe I've caught him still cheating. Should we separate?" While the details can vary, the core question here is pretty much the same, it's "how do I know whether letting my husband come home or stay home is wisdom or, enabling dysfunction?"
So the good news is there is a framework for this. It's not necessarily my framework, it's God's framework, so let's get into [00:01:00] it. I'll read you a message that I recently received because this situation is more common than a lot of women realize, and that's the other thing too, is the enemy just wants you to think that you're the only one who could possibly going through this horrible thing. And yet I'll tell you from someone who gets these messages is all the same ice cream, just different flavors. But here we go.
"My husband left me and our children, it's been a few months, he's been out with other women basically living whatever life he wants, and now he wants to come back, but not as a husband. He wants to set up together so that we can co-parent and create some firm rules about how that would look, but not really with me as a wife, more so as a roommate. Should I let him return?"
Alright. This is a situation of an example of a man who wants to come back to the marriage for convenience and not because he wants to be with you.
Then we have another wife who said to me [00:02:00] recently, "my husband admitted to having an affair, and I was totally blindsided by it. When I asked him if it was over, he said yes, and because our marriage has been pretty good up until this point, I really believed him, unfortunately, a few months later, caught him cheating again and lying about it. He says that he wants to get his heart right, but my question whether I should trust him when I don't see him doing anything to truly overcome his lust. "
Alright, let's say this very clearly: in both these cases we have men who have shown regret, not repentance. So before we go any further, we need to understand what that means. In both these cases these men are what I call "in-home prodigals", someone who wants the benefits of home without the responsibility of covenant. They want the shelter, the access, the convenience. They want their kids around. They sometimes want intimacy. They want some element of "wife", but [00:03:00] without the full responsibility of being a husband.
So in the Prodigal Son story, let us not forget the prodigal returns broken. He returns humbled. He returns saying "I'm no longer worthy". He does not come home negotiating terms. He doesn't come home demanding comfort. He certainly doesn't come home pointing his finger at why his father drove him away. He comes home understanding that he really deserves nothing and he is willing to do anything to right his wrongs.
Even work as a slave, right? That's repentance. But many husbands do not return in repentance, such as my husband didn't return with repentance, we're gonna get to that in a second. They return in regret.
Regret says "My life actually got harder and I changed my mind."
Repentance says "I've sinned and I hate what I have done."
Regret says "I miss the life I once had and what I've lost."
Repentance says, "I recognize now [00:04:00] what I've destroyed and I never wanna do that to anyone ever again."
And that difference matters because if you cannot tell the difference, you will open your door to something God never asked you to tolerate. And if you don't know that difference, you won't be able to do what God is asking you to do because honestly, me included, a lot of women are called to take back husbands who are not fully repentant, but they have to know with eyes wide open what fight they are up against. So I wanna add the nuance here of my own story because it does matter. When Tim came home, he did not come home emotionally healthy. He didn't come home full of repentance.
In fact. I didn't get an apology for seven years, and it's important to note on that, that I wasn't sitting there waiting for an apology. In fact, it surprised me when it came out of his mouth 'cause I was like, oh, oh yeah, I guess. I guess you've never really said you're [00:05:00] sorry for leaving me. But I didn't need that because I had forgiven him and because we were actively working on improving our marriage and I, I didn't trust my husband in those early years, I'll tell you that much. I trusted God 'cause I went in with eyes wide open knowing the difference between regret and repentance. Okay, so he came home? Yes. Broken, confused, wounded, still carrying all kinds of bondage, but he came home wanting marriage and that was the difference.
He was not saying, I want your company, your house, your meals, your support, and other women too. He was saying, I do not know how to love you right now, but I want to try and that matters because someone can come home imperfect and still be moving toward the fulfillment of your real marital breakthrough and covenant.
But if he's coming home while openly protecting his sin or worse turning it [00:06:00] around and blaming you for why he sins, that is very different. And this is where I need to be very clear. Some women think they're being godly because they're being accommodating, and in reality, you are actually being complicit with sin.
If a man says "i wanna live here, eat your food benefit from your stability, lets you carry all the responsibility while I continue behaving like an unmarried man." That is not restoration. It's certainly not humility and it is actual usury. Okay? That's taking from someone while refusing covenant responsibility and, and fear often causes many women to tolerate this because they think "maybe this is my chance. Maybe this is how I show grace, and this is my chance to prove that I have changed and I'm, I'm worthy of his love Now." It's fear. It's fear, [00:07:00] especially when they think, "well, if I say no and actually operate in dignity and self-respect, I'll lose him forever." Fear-based decisions are almost always destructive decisions.
The framework that God has given us for all of marriage and all of womanhood is found in Proverbs 31, and we see it in Proverbs 31: 25, which says "strength and honor are her clothing" or as I have on the back of my office wall right now, "she's clothed in strength and dignity". It means that every decision we make must be clothed in strength and dignity.
Covered in strength and dignity. Not anger, not fear, not panic, not desperation. Strength and dignity says, "I love you. I want our marriage. I believe in us, but I will not participate in dysfunction." That is not punishment. That is simply living in [00:08:00] boundaried dignity, and it is the most loving thing you could do for your husband.
So hear me, hear me on this. Boundaries are not demands. This is where a lot of people get confused. A demand says, "you must stop doing this". A boundary says "you're free to do this, but I will not live inside the consequences of that choice". Right? You can do this, but I don't have to. And, and so the response that I would recommend to these women is more something like, "I love you. I want our marriage to work. I recognize my own failures and I'm growing, but I am not willing to create a home where adultery, emotional detachment, and cohabitation are normalized for our children. If you want marriage, I'm here and I'm willing to walk alongside you as we both heal in our own ways. But if you don't want marriage, I understand, I don't agree, but I [00:09:00] cannot agree to this arrangement".
And that is a boundary. It's not control. It's not manipulation, it's not threats, it's just truth. A demand is not something that you can enforce, right? There are empty threats and expectations. A boundary is not about them. It's about what you are okay with it. What you will do if a situation continues. Right? I can't stop you from doing X, but I will do y. Now if you have children, this is even more important because with children, we're creating their concept of what is normal. In fact, most of y'all are in the problems you're in because your husband's family of origin built him this way, and you as well, you were built by your family of origin for better or worse.
So while you are now establishing a, a family and you have your own children, if you do, you are creating what is normal for them. So ask [00:10:00] yourself this, if your daughter watched this marriage, would you want her to believe that this is how her future husband should treat her? If your son watched this marriage, would you want him to believe that this is how a husband should act?
Because children do not learn marriage from simply what we preach. They learn marriage from what we normalize. And while you may think that you're hiding the hard stuff from the kids, I assure you it's leaking out everywhere. They are always learning. And they will learn yes, from what you do, but they also learn maybe even more from what they don't see you do.
So you might be keeping them from the truth of your husband's emotional detachment. So you think, but they see that dad doesn't prioritize you or cherish you. Now all of us are a work in progress to, to one extent or another, so I'm not saying that you should up and [00:11:00] leave your husband if he doesn't cherish you.
To be fair, being cherished, like truly cherished usually comes after suffering, comes after your marriage is tested. And time. Okay. Being cherished is literally the reward for a long standing marriage, so it can take some time for that. But I'll tell you one very quick way to guarantee that your husband will never cherish you: accept his scraps.
Many women accept scraps because taking the crumbs from under the table feels safer than total emptiness and hunger. But scraps are still scraps, and fear can whisper to you, "well, at least he's near", but near is not the same as restored and present is not the same as repentant, and those are really important differentiations, shared space is not the same. As a covenant being fulfilled.
Okay, and one more thing: [00:12:00] when a husband is in open rebellion, please do not quote Bible verses at him. Okay? This does not produce transformation. 1 Peter 3:1-2 says, "wives in in the same way, submit yourselves to your own husbands so that if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives when they see the purity and reverence of your lives."
Well, I would be here to say that that scripture has been weaponized by many women to put up with abusive behavior, when really what was needed is the purity and reverence of standing in strength and dignity.
That means your strength, your dignity, your peace, your loving boundaries. will teach more than any lecture. So we're not here to just stay silent outta fear, and we're not here to talk, talk, talk with self-righteous Bible verses. But we can say, "that does not work for me", [00:13:00] right? We don't have to say, "you are wrong and this is why you're wrong, and here's all the reasons you're wrong".
We just simply say, "that does not work for me". And that can often carry more authority than an argument because let's be honest to you, men who are in active, or any of us who are in active unrepentant sin, would love nothing more than to argue with you and turn it around to be your issue, your sensitivity, or even just your problem to solve.
They want to make you be responsible so they can continue living without consequences for their actions. Always making you over-function so that they can sit in their enjoyable sin. Because remember, they're not repentant, they don't hate what they've done. They hate being caught, and they hate having the loss of what their sin has created, but they like the sin or they wouldn't do it anymore.
Right? You have to let the consequences do the work. Stop [00:14:00] trying to reason with a sinner, and instead let the sinner feel the weight of their choices, not from a vindictive, punitive place, from one of love and soft heartedness.
Okay, I see a lot of women initially make the mistake of, of being the barrier between a man and his consequences. They absorb the impact that God never asked them to absorb. That is not being a help meet absorbing consequences that are supposed to be your husband's is not what you are called to do as a help Meet as a helper, perfectly suitable to him. But consequences are often what God uses to wake someone up.
And when your husband faces a consequence and knows that you're there, to still stand by his side? That's how you become a cherished wife, where he now is called to become his best self without losing you in the process. We are not called to [00:15:00] sabotage, to force consequences. We're not called to expose the darkness unless you feel the Lord is really telling you to do that, which I would go seek wise counsel on that 'cause I don't usually see that turn out so great. And we're not called to rescue them from the choices that they've made, but we are called to stand in strength and dignity while remaining faithful. So it's not dignified to let someone openly use and abuse you.
Okay, hear me again: i'm not talking about people who make a mistake. Okay? I'm talking about repeat offenders and usury. This is a situation where your husband is act actively in sin, right? And he is continuing to do the same thing over again, and you're not seeing any change or growth if your husband is actively working to overcome his sin.
Right. We've all made mistakes, right? If he, he committed adultery, he's willing to do whatever it takes to make it right. That's [00:16:00] incredible. And I love seeing those marriages heal because that's a man who is truly repentant. In other words, he hates his sin. He hates what he did to you. That man will cherish the woman who stood by his side through it all.
But if we're talking about the repeat offenders or the example of the first woman's situation who's just a man wants to blatantly operate in his sinful choices, and she should just be okay with it. Then it may be time for some boundary dignity on your part. You deserve a better living arrangement than that, and I really believe that sometimes what God actually has for us, which is healing, restoration, and a better marriage that he actually wants for you, it's on the other side of consequences for your husband.
So if your husband wants marriage, that's one conversation. Great. Let's have that conversation. What does that look like? How can we love each other in this moment, the best we possibly can, and put God at the center. And if it's only you doing that, that is [00:17:00] my case as well, that works too. But if he wants benefits without covenant, that's another entirely different conversation.
And openly cheating or cheating and repeatedly, repeatedly cheating? That's not fulfilling his side of the covenant, that's breaking the covenant over and over and over again. So if he wants all the benefits of having a wife, but without honoring a covenant, that's another entirely different situation that needs to be addressed. And wisdom knows the difference. You don't have to fight for your rights. You don't have to defend yourself. Remember, that's all demands. You don't have to lower your standards because you feel guilty about how you've played a part in this breakdown. If you're facing a situation like what I've described where your husband is showing more regret than repentance, it is entirely right to prayerfully and lovingly say to them, [00:18:00] I want our marriage to work, but not like this.
And then when you draw the boundary and enforce the boundary and remain faithful, then you know now you are to fight for your marriage, for your husband, and for your legacy from a place of dignity and strength.
