2 Ways to Stop the Cycle of Feeling Ignored by Your Husband
Wives are feeling lonely
We receive letters from women each week. We feel privileged they take time to share their hearts and lives with us. The hardest part is hearing the difficulties many of them go through. Lately, women are telling us they feel ignored by their spouses. It’s sad to hear how worthless it makes them feel. It makes me want to line up all of the husbands on the earth and pace in front of them with my megaphone, hollering one sentence at them.
“TURN OFF THE TELEVISION AND PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR WIFE!”
Logistically, that could never happen. But I do have this blog, so, I can virtually pace and holler a little bit right here.
Women just want their husbands to spend time with them. They ask us what in the world they should do, because they are feeling depressed and unimportant. They feel like they don’t matter. I have spent a lot of time trying to find an answer for them, because I know there has to be one. How do we break the pattern?
1. Stop the cycle.
It is often a vicious cycle: the husband ignores, the wife feels frustrated and starts to nag, the husband puts up a wall, the wife gets more depressed, and she begins to shut down emotionally. The marriage suffers, the spouses grow apart, and then other bigger problems begin to arise.
The cycle needs to stop before the bitterness and distance sets in. In a perfect world, husbands would just snap out of it, and start treating their wives with kindness and consideration. These guys would be so surprised to see how rewarding true intimacy feels and would keep connecting because it yields such wonderful fruit. Realistically, many men are not going to do that, so I think the cycle has to stop with the next step. The wife has to resist nagging and becoming bitter and fix her attention on her Savior.
2. Find your worth—your true worth.
How does a wife feel peace while feeling rejected by the man she loves? She daily brings her burdens to Christ, because He cares for her and has good intentions towards her and her marriage. When women focus all of their energy on their husbands, and look to them alone for fulfillment, they will be disappointed. Of course marriage is supposed to be satisfying, but it can’t function as a form of salvation. There is nothing we experience on this earth that can truly fulfill us and make us feel whole. Most things simply give us glimpses of what is to come. C.S. Lewis wrote,
“The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”
Rejoice in the blessings of marriage, but when it leaves you feeling lonely, look beyond it—to the place you find total satisfaction.
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