Do You Feel Used?-Marriage Restoration

“Am I being used? Am I enabling? Will they ever change if I keep letting them get away with it?”

There were many times when I felt I was being used and my husband was getting away with being selfish. He seemed to have zero consequences except being tired from living the double life. The family told me I was a doormat, one even suggested it was abuse. (No, it was not.)

Those times of feeling used made me very hurt and angry, and I recoiled and wanted to put a stop to it. I set up boundaries in anger. Made ultimatums in anger and flat out told him exactly what he was expected to do. Anger drove me, and the whole time anger kept me strong and determined to make change happen.

But deep inside, I knew it was not what God had asked of me.

When God asked me to do NOTHING, it bothered me a great deal as this went against EVERYTHING I had been taught and what I believed.

“Let him do whatever? I’m not allowed to confront? I’m not allowed to tell him how it should be? I’m just to leave him alone, give him space and let him keep using me??”

“What about me? Am I not important? Doesn’t what I am going through count?” 

It didn’t sound like God. It didn’t sound like anything close to what God would ask, so I kept on doing my own thing in anger, actually letting my anger BE a consequence to his choices. “If you are going to keep doing this, then you are going to have to suffer my anger!” was how I walked around. Yelling at things, the kids, the pets, the house. I took my anger very seriously and was sure to make it known that I was a big, huge, angry mess!

This line of thinking and my anger, made it very hard to hear God clearly, and those nagging convictions were easily ignored because my need to be justified and my anger was too great. I was able to harden to the voice of God.

Let me tell you a little thing about anger. It comes with this false sense of “privilege.” That is NOT really there, but because we FEEL anger, we FEEL we have every right to act out in that anger. When I am angry, I sin. The very opposite of what God says we are allowed to do WHILE angry.

Be angry but do NOT sin.” Eph 4:26

God knows we are going to haven anger from being hurt. And He also knows that anger can make us do whatever we feel like doing simply because we feel justified in doing so because we FEEL anger.

Over time though, I became exhausted. Anger is tiring to keep up with. I became miserable. He rebelled even more against my demands for respect, broke every boundary proudly and then started to do things out of spite, something he had never done before. He seemed to be going against me ON PURPOSE!

He was sending me a message. “You will NOT control me anymore.”

I finally had had enough and told God He won. “Fine, I won’t confront his sin and try to make him have consequences. I won’t let my anger BE a consequence!”  I let go of the anger and postured myself to God in surrender.

And this posture positioned me to receive His voice and direction.

That’s when God told me that He didn’t want ME being in charge of changing my husband, and that didn’t mean that it was not what God wanted and was planning. He just knew how to do it in a way that my husband could understand.

“As long as you keep being angry and prideful, you are making it easy for him to sin. He gets ammunition because he is upset over you trying to make him change. As soon as you stop, as you leave him be and humble yourself, he won’t have the ammunition and then he has to face truth.” God told me.

So I gave God the “ok, I will try it your way.”

I had to write it all down. The plan. Because every day I battled the feelings of being used. I had to keep reading WHY I was being still, silent, not confronting.

Then he started to change. Yep, he changed alright, he started to confront me about things I had done 20 years ago, and he was twisting things around and making things up. So I had to go back to God and ask Him what the heck was going on. Did we need a plan B??

God spoke again. “It’s working. Since you are not giving him the ammunition he needs to continue this lifestyle, he is desperately trying to find ways to justify his mistreatment of you.”

“You were wrong and controlled me for 20 years. So I have 20 years to be wrong too.” That became my husband’s new ammunition. I had no words for that, so I took it to God and trusted God to take care of it.

I started to understand the wisdom behind God’s plan. I started to see how this was indeed working.

And I was better too.

I had more peace, more joy, and no longer was driven and ruled by anger. I was able to deal quicker with my feelings of “being used” because now I had God’s wisdom and His plan to help me work through it. I also was able to see that God cared for me and didn’t like how I was hurting or being treated. But even though He didn’t like it, He was allowing it for the greater good. For the repentance and salvation of my lost beloved.

The more loving and humble I became, the angrier my husband got. But then something else happened. He started to have days of guilt and brokenness. Gone was the pride and doing things from spite.

But I didn’t react to it well. I got so much hope from it and when it ended, I fell hard on my bum again. I had reacted to his guilt and brokenness, his kindness as a sign that I could believe things were not going to go downhill. Wrong!!

Up and down, back and forth, push and pull.

My anger returned, and so did my stipulations and consequences. Gone was my reading and reminding myself about God’s plan. My anger was much worse now, and I was ready to quit.

Again, God used this experience to teach me a lesson. I learned about putting up boundaries for myself. To keep me from the up and down emotional roller coaster.

To not fall for the lie that if he was guilty or kind, or more like himself, that he would not go backward. I didn’t let myself have false hope. I guess you could say I was hopeful that one day God’s promises would come to pass but I had come to see that without repentance and truly seeking God, this back and forth was going to continue. I learned how to try and relax and be in those moments and not what he was doing mislead me in hope. I took it for what it was. A day when my husband wasn’t pulling away.

It seemed to work. I became more peaceful, he became more miserable as he no longer could blame me. He even stopped saying he had 20 years to be sinful.

Denial started to fade, and confession started to come out of his mouth. And I fell hard again.

Yes, his confessions were new, and boy did I run straight away with a new hope that this was IT, we were about to be restored.

8 more months?? Really? The confessions went on and on but nothing ever changed. I had really come to believe that once he saw truth, confessed to me he was a mess, that this would be it.

“He has not turned to ME”  Was Gods’ whisper. I knew in my heart, that sin had snared him. Opened a pit wide, and the only way out was a full surrender to God and working out repentance.

Yes, it was not quick, yes I kept getting misled by the hope that it was changing because I was trying to rush the timing.

But regardless, in the end it all worked out for good. I came away stronger in faith, wiser, and more patient. And I learned a real valuable lesson about HOPE. When it’s pinned on the wrong thing, be aware, you will get drug around and around and around. God is the ONLY SOLID ROCK THAT DOESN’T MOVE!

Standing with you,

Sheila Hollinger