I’m Starting to Get Angry

Alright, you know when you ask to be delivered from something and something else pops up? Well I was asking God to deliver me from the fear of this situation and the fear of disappointing my husband and I feel like he has really helped me with that. It’s still there a little bit but I’m able to move past that easily and reorganize my thoughts instead of obsessing on the fear. Another emotion has popped up though in it’s place and I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. The Bible talks about righteous anger but to make sure to deal with it before you go to bed. I feel like I’m trying to deal with it before I fall asleep but I don’t know if I’m successful or not because the next day it just comes back.

On Saturday after therapy, I was wanting to go hiking with my little sister and mom. I haven’t been able to do anything like that for a long time with them and I also haven’t had a chance to take a whole day and go hiking. Well after therapy my husband was in such a crap mood because I decided not to spend the day with him. So I asked him if he wanted to go to breakfast before I left and he said yes. We ended spending almost three hours talking about our relationship. He told me that he can’t do the things that the therapist is suggesting, that he can’t change in that way. We are asking him to completely change his whole personality and that’s impossible for him. This was another one of those monologues where I wasn’t allowed to interject at any point.

He said that my emotions are like an ocean and I have a lot of room to change and such. His emotions are like a puddle and he has very little room to maneuver and therefore can’t change. He decided that he can’t give me what I want and that he failed our marriage. He kept saying that he’s failed at everything so it makes sense he would fail this relationship also. He kept telling me that I need someone who can give me what I want and it wasn’t logical to put effort into a marriage that can’t be changed. The only logical decision was to end it and put our efforts into something else. I had left him alone for too long and now he’s started liking being alone. He said that I would be fine and I would have no trouble finding another guy and that I don’t need him. Well at this point, I had listened to him play out this victim card for far to long. Although this is a very shortened version of it, this conversation was almost identical to the one we had six years ago when he tried to leave and kill himself. All the talking points, expressions, and attitudes were the same as that conversation without the suicide part. It just felt like this was one of those manipulation tactics again, it just didn’t feel genuine but I had trouble in the moment discerning what was actually happening. For some odd reason I decided to fight for this though. I finally just said “yeah no sh*t I would be fine without you and I know that, I also know that I could find someone else that would be way easier to deal with and just skip all of this difficulty. The problem is that I’m not choosing to do that, I’m choosing to stay and work it out with you because I care about you and I care about our marriage”.

Well we argued this for a while and he finally just decided that it doesn’t matter and we are going to get a divorce. At this point, it’s lunch time so we grab something to eat. He starts talking about telling people and us remaining friends. I actually start feeling a sense of relief, it’s finally over and I didn’t have to make the decision. I can finally live my life without constant ridicule, rage and isolation. I’ve known for a while he will never actually make this decision and that if we do get a divorce it won’t be that easy. We get in the car and he asks if I really think we can work this out. I tell him that it’s going to take both of us to really work out our problems but I think we can do it if we are both committed. So now we’re back to “working it out”.

I spent the weekend with him and he basically just wanted sex the entire time. When he wasn’t begging for it, he wanted to play a video game with me. It’s a strategy game so I figured we could talk during it and spend time together. Wrong! He spent the time watching youtube videos with his headphones on for the entire time! However, we ended on a good ish note and decided we would start facetiming instead of a regular phone call. He thought it would be helpful to see my face every day so he wouldn’t forget why he was fighting for this relationship.

We did this for Monday and Tuesday and it did seem to help. However Tuesday night, he didn’t use the video call and acted like he was in a bad mood again. We didn’t really have very much to talk about and he was just doing the whole dry humor making fun of me thing again. I had previously downloaded this app for couples that had a bunch of card decks to spur conversations. I started with a few of those and they went ok, he wasn’t taking it seriously at all and would use extremely vague answers with no explanation even if I asked for more. Eventually we got into some difficult cards that were directly relating to our feelings toward our situation. I would explain mine and he would either explain a little bit or say he couldn’t answer that right now. One of the cards I answered by saying I feel like you aren’t fighting for this relationship and by the end of the week you don’t even care about it which hurts me because I don’t feel like you even want to bother trying at all. He didn’t say anything and when I asked him if that was true he just said yes it is.

So we go through a bunch of these cards and I’m being truthful at this point because the fear is gone and I want to just get my feelings out in the open about our relationship. I asked him at the end if he learned anything and he just told me that he’s learned that he’s an evil bastard and I’m too emotional. I’m not even mad at this point really, I’m tired and I had put that conversations in God’s hands.

During the day though I am feeling extremely angry about this. I feel like I have this fire inside my heart that just wants to blow up and throw something. I just want to go up to him and actually get mad, instead of trying to deal with this calmly and peacefully, I want to scream at him. Why am I fighting for this when the other person doesn’t even care? Why am putting myself through this emotional turmoil for someone who doesn’t even think he is worth it? and most importantly, why did God make marriage so important? Why make it so that it seems like this horrible sin to divorce? I’m angry because I’m so torn between what to do. I’m angry because I feel like a failure for not learning how to deal with my husband in the first place. What if I’m condemning my husband because I don’t want to stay and I could have saved him. I’m angry because I have poured my heart and soul into this and it feels like my husband threw them in the trash. I’m angry because the person I thought loved me isn’t fighting for me. I’m angry because I feel like God isn’t listening to me and I’m angry that I still keep playing this victim role!

I can’t figure out how to get out of this cycle of self pity like this and that makes me even more mad! I know that I need to use God as my source of strength and I know that I shouldn’t be obsessing like this, but I’m running out of time to make a decision and I still don’t know the right one. These peaceful days with my brother are coming to an end soon and I’m freaking scared. I’m scared that I’ll go back and nothing will change and I won’t be able to get my head strait. I’m also scared that if I leave him for good, I’ll have thrown away God’s plan for me and I won’t get another chance. I don’t believe that God will forsake me for it but what if this was God’s plan for my life and I throw it away?

I hear all of these stories on youtube and podcasts where God showed them the correct path and they had peace in their decisions. I don’t hear anything still though and I don’t have any kind of peace like that. I had one dream where I moved into a new house with my husband that was an old Gothic looking mansion and our room was covered in crows and they all flew up around the room when we walked in. I have no idea if this meant anything but it was the night after I asked God to give me a sign so maybe it does mean something.

I know that God isn’t doing this to hurt me and that I got into this relationship out of rebellion when I became an atheist. God has no reason to guide me through this when I left him a long time ago. I am still praying for grace, mercy and understanding though because I know that God has a habit of giving us gifts that we would never deserve. I’ve also heard that God has a habit of waiting to show himself until it’s the right time and maybe it’s just not His timing yet. I will continue to wait on Him and keep praying for myself and my husband.

As a side note, I don’t think that God controls everything, I don’t believe that I can just wait around and His plan will play out. I do believe that we have to make our own decisions and be active in our lives instead of waiting around. The reason I believe this is because we have free will and if He gave us free will then He wouldn’t come down and control everything that happens. I do, however, believe that as Christians, we can look to God for direction in our lives in order to live our lives for Him.

I want to live my life for Him but you never hear to much about how much your emotions and feelings get in the way and cloud your judgement when you are a christian. It always felt like it was a sin to get mad at God or to even think the things that I have written in this post, and maybe it is. This however, is what I have been struggling with and what I am working on. When you become a christian I am learning that the bad thoughts in your head often get worse and life often gets worse because the evil in this world doesn’t want you to trust in God. I will continue working on trusting God though and making Him my source of strength and hopefully, in His timing, He will give me guidance.