What Happens When You Don’t Speak Up in Marriage

 

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It appears that sharing stories is what is being laid in my heart lately. So, I will be sharing another true-life story in today’s blog post, and I pray that it blesses you and makes a meaningful impact on your life, as you navigate your marriage journey or prepare to start one soon.

A young lady married the love of her life when she was in her mid-thirties. She was never married prior to that time, and she had never been with a man before she took her marriage vows. She got married as a virgin, which was what was expected of a devoted Christian that she was.

Her husband was a good man who had never been married before, but had been with other women prior to meeting her. So, he was not a virgin as his wife was when they met. She was all he wanted in a woman, and he concluded that he had finally found the perfect woman. He was going to marry her and finally settle down.

They dated for a couple of months and thought they knew all they needed to know about each other. All looked good, and they took the relationship to the next level. Soon, the wedding bells began to ring. They got married and looked forward to a beautiful life together.

Within the first few weeks of the marriage, trouble started. What started as a promising union between two Bible believing Christians soon snowballed into a nightmare. The husband became grumpy for no reason.

Nothing his wife did or said made sense to him. The more she tried to find the missing link, the worse the situation became. She prayed and prayed, but this man was just growing into a monster every passing day.

She concluded this must be a demonic attack and that there was probably a spiritual undertone to what was going on in her marriage. Her husband did not sit her down to tell her anything. It was always one heap load of unreasonable complaints and fault-finding after another.

Over time, he became aggressive and would beat her up. This was a big U-turn from the man she thought she knew. The loving man who doted on her when they were dating. She began to think.

“Did I miss something?”

“Was I in too much of a hurry to marry, given my age, that I didn’t see this trait about him?”

“How come he has become a monster all of a sudden?”

These were her constant thoughts. She noticed that some of her wedding attire was missing from the house. That was a reason for suspicion. When her husband discovered she was pregnant, he was not even happy. She lost the pregnancy within the first trimester without her husband showing any form of concern.

Her mother died when she was just 21 years of age. Her father was a faithful and loving husband to her Mummy while she was alive, so this happening to her in her own marriage, barely months into the marriage, is really strange. She grew up in a loving home where she never saw her parents quarrel.

Her sisters have very loving husbands, too. None of them presented with this aggressive trait. What did she miss, and how did she miss it? These were questions she needed God to help her figure out. She remembered her mum had warned them all not to trust anyone on her dying bed. This must be what she was talking about. There are evil forces at play here.

When deep aggression started to show up in the relationship with her husband, she ran away for her dear life. But this wasn’t what she bargained for. This was not how she wanted her story to go. She had waited patiently for a good marriage, for it to just end months after it began. 

Her father, who devoted his life to raising her and her sisters without remarrying, after the passing of their mother, had no choice but to intervene when she ran back home and told him what was going on in her marriage.

He contacted her parents-in-law, and they agreed to a meeting to find out what was going on and how they could resolve the issue. The meeting was held, but it did not produce any results, as the husband walked out on his parents and her father without providing any reasonable explanation for his actions, other than to accuse his wife of accusing his family of being diabolical.

She returned to her matrimonial home after a while, hoping that things would change. She tried to comply with all of her husband’s rules and regulations, but there was no improvement. When he became violent again, she made up her mind to leave for good. This is reality, and she would face it rather than die trying.

A year later, her husband filed for divorce, and they both went their separate ways for good. The marriage barely lasted for 18 months, and that turned out to be the worst time of her life.

Many years after the divorce, the husband came across an old friend, and they spent time catching up on missed moments. He opened up to his friend about his failed marriage and attributed it to a lack of trust from his ex-wife, claiming she became unreasonable and accused his family of diabolical activities. He wasn’t going to build a marriage where trust was lacking.

He also complained bitterly about the poor sexual relationship they had. The complaint about sex came up in almost every sentence he said. And his friend was silently taking note of that. Interestingly, he made no mention of his violence towards his wife. To his friend, the total sum of his story did not add up. With a zeal to see if there was a possibility of reviving what would have been a beautiful marriage, he pleaded to speak to the ex-wife, and he reluctantly gave him her telephone number.

The next day, the friend called up the wife, introduced himself as her ex-husband’s old friend, and got her comfortable enough to speak to him. She opened up and told him the horrible things she endured with his friend and why she had to walk away for her own sanity. It was an emotionally loaded conversation, but the wife seemed to be at peace with herself and was doing well.

It was at the point of talking to the ex-wife that the friend was told that the man was cheating on her and was set to marry the other woman. That was the reason he rushed for a divorce. Unfortunately, the lady he wanted to marry abandoned him for another man, and the hopeful marriage that necessitated the divorce never happened.

There was some clarity after the friend spoke to the wife, but it wasn’t enough to explain why the man became a monster just after getting married. The friend who was a Christian decided to pray for these two. He wanted God to intervene and reunite them. God hates divorce, so He should intervene to fix this. The friend prayed to understand the root cause of the issue, which was still unclear even after hearing from both parties.

Then he realized what the problem was. Sex. That was the puzzle that destroyed that marriage. The lady was a virgin; she had never been physically intimate with a man before. That first experience must have been excruciating, given her age. So, she complained and avoided it as much as she could.

The friend called for a meeting with the husband and decided to ask to know more about the sex problem he has been whining about when talking about his ex-wife. The husband told his friend that his wife was always complaining and unwilling. They never talked about it, but he bought her books and assumed she should read them to get a clue on how to make love, being that she was a first-time lover.

The man got frustrated by his wife’s naïve disposition towards sex and began to cheat. Because of his guilt of cheating, he tried to frustrate his wife out of the marriage to give him room to marry his cheating partner, as he was not okay with having sex outside of wedlock. He had promised himself he would not commit adultery in marriage, and that was what his wife was making him do.

His friend gave the wife a second call to ask her also about their sex life while being married. She acknowledged that it wasn’t great because of her situation, but her husband never discussed that with her. She was completely oblivious to the fact that the reason he was mean to her was because of sex.

This news broke her, but she was too broken by the way he treated her for her to offer herself to him without any effort from him. He needed to show that he wanted her back; otherwise, she was good without him. The husband, on the other hand, was still consumed with pride and shame to go on his knees and beg.

They are still divorced and remain unmarried, to the best of my knowledge.

I share this true-life story to bring to light the little things that have significant potential for disrupting a home and marriage. The simple lack of communication resulted in conspiracy theories and unhealthy assumptions. The assumptions gave birth to distrust, and distrust gave birth to anger and violence.

If only he had been forthcoming with feelings and helped her through the pain of first-time sex with a mature virgin wife. Communication in marriage is non-negotiable, but note that how you communicate is also as important as what you communicate.

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