I have so fully embraced the relational side of my marriage to the extreme that my wife felt smothered and viewed me as "clingy" and "needy" -- especially when the trials and circumstances of life crashed down around me in the form of bouts with unemployment and trying to find my self worth as a man. That is when she disconnected and found joy connecting emotionally with another man in our church over a two-year span until I exposed it to our head pastor. Now, as we try to reconcile and as she has her walls up emotionally, spiritually and physically to me, it is hard to even see a brighter future together. Even 16 months after disclosure, she would rather keep her nose in her smartphone looking at social media and texting back and forth with her friends and family than open her heart to me. It is very discouraging as we go to Christian marital counseling a couple times a month and even individual counseling. So, all-in-all, it is very tough to try and connect. She says she is doing her best to open up and be more vulnerable and lays it before God every day, but her actions still speak louder than her words.

What I need from my wife to restore trust is something she can't give. She refuses to be be close to me, to try and reconnect spiritually (doesn't want to pray with me because it is too intimate in her eyes), emotionally (rarely wants to talk deeply to me because it makes her emotionally vulnerable) or physically (doesn't want to hold hands, hug, sit next to me, kiss me -- to intimate -- and we are having a hiatus indefinitely on sex because she said she has resentment and bitterness in this area, too). SHE HOLDS ALL THE CARDS AND SHE IS THE ONE WHO CHEATED!!!!!! You would almost think that I cheated on her and not the other way around, as is the case with her two-year emotional affair. Yet she is the one who made the choice in her heart years ago to disconnect from me and to pursue this other relationship. Maybe I am the idiot? Why I am still trying to pursue her and longing for this relationship to be healed and restored? Why am I the one who wants God to create a miracle and have this wild -- possibly stupid and insane notion -- that He would actually want to reconcile this relationship? I want so badly for my wife to just connect with me on ANY level to help heal the hurt and pain she has caused. But that is not her style. Her personality is that of an avoider who wants nothing to do with connection (I have been the one who has pursued her and tried to please her this entire 20-plus year relationship while she has just criticized me and tore me down in words and in her heart for disappointing her). But maybe I am just grasping at straws? Maybe it is God's plan that we divorce -- even though I know it would devastate me and my children (even though my oldest two are in college, but my youngest is still in middle school with us and very hypersensitive to this ugliness). This chaos of 15 months now since disclosure daily rips the heart out of my chest. I hurt so bad and just want there to be some glimmer of hope in the midst of this storm!!!!

From what I read in the Bible, God is supposed to be a loving, kind Father. From what I have experienced in real life, He is cold, distant, does not answer prayer, actually gives scorpions and snakes to His children, does not open the door when knocked on or revels Himself when sought. These comments by me are not made lightly. I have spend my entire life truly seeking after God through His son, Jesus, and praying for the power of the Holy Spirit to enter into my heart and my life. Instead, I have experienced the trials and torments that are this sinful world via the enemy and, I am honest to admit, even by bad choices I have made. It is truly frustrating as I have sought God's power, love and wisdom through the Bible, through prayer, through other Christian men, through Christian radio programs and other materials and books, but I still find myself falling flat on my face. As I have given over my life to Christ and pursued Him throughout my life, and then giving over my marriage to Him when my wife and I vowed to break off all demonic ties with previous generations and offering Christ our marriage and future generations, it has been totally frustrating to see how my marriage and my career unravel before my eyes over the past 20-plus years. I admit I lived in a victim/self-pity mentality that I have been working through with Christian counseling over the last 3 years to overcome (that has destroyed my marriage and my career with doubt, fear, anxiety, worthlessness), but it is tough knowing that I have honestly been pursuing Christ all these years with an open and honest heart and receiving scorpions and snakes in return. It has broken my heart and destroyed everything I have ever truly cared about.

Probably because my wife chooses to stay disconnected -- even though she is the betrayer -- is why I still guard my heart. I try my best to by as nice and kind as I can and lovingly be sacrificial around her and honor her boundaries and walls she still has in place (once again -- she is the BETRAYER and yet she is the one with all the rules, so go figure). So it is very, very hard to really open up my heart. I keep waiting almost every day for the shoe to drop and her to just pack up and leave. I also feel God has burned me so many times, too, in both my relationship with Him, how much I have given of myself in my marriage only to be burned there, how much I have given of myself in my career only to be continually burned there. Life is nothing but a series of arson torches for me in everything I have ever cared about. I just sit there putting time and effort to the things I have opened my heart up to care about and watch them burn to the ground.

I had a group of about 8 to 10 guys I really leaned on (I was part of a men's small group of 6 other guys) when the disclosure of my wife's emotional affair came out. All were very supportive, very prayerful and, for the most part, very wise as I let out my range of emotions from crying to anger to grief. But it has been 14 months now since the disclosure and, since then, my men's group has ended and, one-by-one, the other men have drifted away back into their regular lives and routines. Most of these men attended the church my wife and I had to leave (because the emotional affair partner was the youth pastor and his wife is still the worship leader), so we had to leave our church of nine years and are still floating around trying to really find a church for our family since. So now I am pretty much totally isolated other than our marriage counselor we see twice a month. My wife is still very disconnected from me, so we can't share grief or healing as a couple. It is very lonely, very frustrating. My wife feels I should just press everything into Christ with or without friends (and her). It is ironic because she still has friends and her own individual counselor she talks to regularly. I just have to walk this journey by myself and pray that I can find some context in which to grieve and heal, all the while praying that God will free me from my bitterness, anger, resentment and unforgiveness I am still trying to let go against my wife especially while she remains in a state of disconnect. Not sure what the future holds and if God even intends on us staying together and reconciling. My wife seems committed, but man am I going through a range of torment by myself with no comfort from even my Lord.

So how exactly does sharing grief look like when -- 14 months after disclosure of my wife's emotional affair -- she is still disconnected and keeping her walls up against me? I grieve alone and I grieve nearly 24/7 and I have to do it without her. She doesn't allow me to invade her emotional, spiritual or physical space so it makes it very hard to unconditionally and totally forgive and to reconcile. She barely even acknowledges the pain she has caused, minimizes it (at least what I see on my end), and feels that both of us need to individually get healed and find our identity in Christ before we can even address reconciling and healing the marriage. This road to hopeful marital reconciliation is all based on her rules and boundaries. Nevermind she crossed the boundary of emotional infidelity and has done very little to nothing to help me grieve or heal in this area. Yes, you can sense the resentment, hurt, anger and bitterness that still resides under the surface no matter how much I lift it up to God every minute of every day as I still love this woman and want to spend the rest of my life with her. So how can we ever grieve and heal TOGETHER? I am so tired and exhausted of trying to grieve and heal on my own.

My biggest wound inflicted on my wife before her emotional affair was that I loved her too much. How can you love someone too much, you ask? You place them in a position above God and your world revolves around them. I thought entering marriage that by doing everything for your wife was love. I cleaned, I took care of the kids, I did my best at my jobs (even though they were never close to be family-providing jobs and my wife had to bear the brunt of being the main wage-earner over the past 15 years and I found myself unemployed 3 separate times due to various circumstances). So she lost respect for me. Desire for me. She was an independent avoider personality coming into our marriage and I was a hyper-sensitive pleaser personality that took offense to her criticism of me (she rarely built me up, encouraged me, affirmed me as a man/husband/father and that ate away at my soul not having a wife to be there when times were tough -- which is something I still struggle with wondering if I should even stay in the marriage going forward because I struggle wondering if she is a woman who will ever have my back). She found me to "needy, clingy and smothering." It has taken me time and counseling over the past few years to put my focus on Christ first and not her. But, like I said, that is my greatest way I wounded my wife was not being the man she wanted me to be. Not being that dynamic, take-charge male leader of the house and deferring to her to much. My greatest crime is that this was the way I thought I was supposed to love my wife in a marriage was by being her servant. But it was all wrong and I am not sure if I will ever truly be the man she can respect, love and desire.

I think this is what has hindered me more than anything about my wife's emotional affair. Her tears have all been more over the choices she made and getting caught more than the hurt, pain and grief she has caused me. She points out more my shortcomings as to why she did what she did and continues to stay disconnected even a year-plus later because of my shortcomings. Not sure what to do but my heart still hurts, I am still angry that she fails to even realize the pain and devastation to my life that she has caused. Why do I think she should be the one to try and make things right? Is that even legitimate to ask? I am so conflicted in my heart that she still takes my break away when she enters a room. I still love this woman. At the same time, with her walls so high against me, her disconnect physically, emotionally and spiritually against me when all I want to do is start over, heal and be close again, I find myself so bitter, so resentful, so angry as I try to work through the pain, the grief and lift it all over to God every second of every day for my heart to forgive. I cry out to God that I want this marriage to survive, but we are so stuck and just spinning out wheels. Why do I still love so much yet she left me in her heart years and years ago. While she asks God to soften her heart to love me again, I have to wait around in bitter anguish not knowing if I can ever trust her enough to ever let my heart be vulnerable enough to let her crush me again!

I fear that my grieving -- which has been going on for over a year now -- will never resolve anything. I fear that I will just remain in pain forever as my wife -- who is still with me but is still very disconnected -- will never truly love or desire me again and will not want to repair the relationship that she has destroyed on her part with her 5 to 6 years of pulling away from me and ending with her 2-year emotional affair. I fear that all is for naught as I see no breakthrough in sight and I mourn the loss of the relationship we once had and the possibility of ending this marriage in divorce, thus destroying the vow we made to God when we got married 20-plus years ago that our family legacy would finally change and we would end the sinful curses of generations before us and our marriage and children would serve Christ. That is what I fear!

It felt like someone had pulled the rug out from underneath my entire life when I exposed my wife's emotional affair with our church youth pastor to our head pastor and everything came out. I had been dealing with years of extremely difficult things in my life -- going through long bouts of unemployment and questioning and getting angry at God that I couldn't provide for my family and having my wife bear this burden. But I always felt that she was in my corner, that she had my back no matter how tough life got. I had felt blessed that as my world was so upside down and in turmoil, that I could count on her. So when the affair was exposed and she told me that she had lost her love for me years before, my heart and mind exploded. For the first half a year I cried at the drop of the hat and, to this day, I still have trouble seeing the first 20-plus years of our marriage as nothing but a sham even though the emotional affair lasted only a couple years. The only thing that kept the marriage together to this point (a year-plus after it was exposed), is that I still have a deep love for her even though I am still working through unconditional forgiveness. It is so very hard to allow your heart to be vulnerable again to the greatest pain you have ever experienced in your life, especially when your wife is still very much disconnected emotionally (we can only truly talk during counseling sessions and not outside of that time period), spiritually (we do not pray together because she thinks it is too intimate, still) and physically (she doesn't kiss, hug, cuddle or hold hands because that is still too intimate). Her walls are still very high with me, so all I can continue to do with my pain is just press into God one minute at a time, one day at a time, and pray for reconciliation.

Ben, please, please, please tell me how you keep going when -- in my case -- my wife's heart disconnected and hardened to me 5 to 6 years ago. She had her emotional affair for 2 years and, even when I confronted her throughout those 2 years, she vehemently denied it until I took it before our head pastor (she was working in the youth group and was having the emotional affair with our youth pastor right in front of our two teenage kids in the youth group). This was in July 2015 when everything was exposed by me and came out, leading to the firing of the youth pastor (whose wife led worship and their family still goes to that church, but our family had to leave after being there for 9 years). We have been in counseling now for a year on a near-weekly basis, my wife goes individually to another counselor (both Christian) bi-weekly. But after a year, we are nowhere any closer to connecting and reconciling. I don't know why, but I still want to be married to this woman who I have loved and cherished for 20-plus years. She has to ask God daily to soften her heart to me (which she has claimed to be doing for years now and even more so since the affair was discovered). But her walls are so high and she keeps me at arm's reach. Yes, I admit during the first 20 years of our marriage, I put her on a pedestal and made her No. 1 in my life, even over God. I know in my heart I truly wanted to make this woman happy, but neither one can bring happiness to each other. I have found over the last couple of years -- after I had to break down due to my anger with God over circumstances in life (being unemployed 3 times over 12 years and not being able to be the provider in our family -- my wife is -- that I have prayed and longed to be -- thus leading to my anger at God). My wife has found me "clingy, needy and smothering" and hated the "victim mentality" I had for the first 20 years of our marriage. So now I am working on me and she is working on her, but there is still very little evidence that all this pressure and time is going to pay off. I feel like it is only a matter of time before the explosion occurs, the tension is finally going to make us crack and this marriage will end in divorce and shatter our 3 children and the vow we made to God on our wedding day that we wanted a Christian legacy for our family and to break the chains of sin that plagued our family before us. Please tell me how to break through. Please tell me how we can get to the next step when my wife still wants nothing to do with me emotionally, physically or spiritually. I cry out to God daily to reconcile this marital covenant to give Him the glory. I long for a future where this trial will become a testimony to others, but my hope is fading and each day I lose more and more resolve and become more bitter, resentful and my heart hardens more to a wife who already closed herself off to me years and years ago. I want to be inspired by your's and Ann's story that there is hope. Please pray for us and give any advice you can.

Thank you for the prayers. What are your suggestions for a husband who has always been a pleaser and pursuer in the relationship from Day One and a wife who has become more and more of a distant avoider who has hardened her heart for the past 5 to 6 years? Our counselor -- who has been with us since Day One of the affair disclosure and was counseling us prior to the disclosure -- said that my wife has basically divorced me in her heart years ago. Right now we are still together, but her walls are still so high and she doesn't want to emotionally connect or physically connect and she feels that we can't pray together because that is too intimate. So there are so many boundaries I am not allowed to cross. So how are we supposed to connect? She says she prays to God every day for Him to re-ignite a fire in her heart for me again. As the days, weeks, months drag on, I become more hopeless that this will ever happen. We are two roommates going through the motions with no deep or meaningful connection -- barely any connection at all. We have two children in college and one in middle school and my poor middle-school son is very, very sensitive -- like me -- and he can see the heartbreak all around and makes comments to me all the time like "why doesn't Mom kiss or hug you anymore?" or "Do you think Mom will ever be close to you again?" I want and pray with all my heart that there will be a breakthrough. That one day she will look into my eyes and smile at me, melt my heart with her breathtaking eyes and amazing beauty. But my heart just keeps breaking, filling with resentment and bitterness as we just keep drifting our separate ways. Any advice would be very helpful!

I can so identify with this story. My wife and I spent the first 20 years of our lives living lies with each other and not really being honest and sharing or being vulnerable. Playing church and going to church and being involved in all church activities at every level from leading groups together, to serving in youth group to me serving on the church board and taking out 3 kids to service every week. But as the years rolled on, I became more angry at God over the trials and circumstances at life and my wife became more frustrated and disconnected with me to the point of falling out of love with me, hardening her heart and then having a 2-year emotional affair with the youth pastor that led to him getting released from his position and our family leaving the church. Now, a year later, we are still trying to recover from the fallout as we have both been going through marital counseling and my wife is in individual counseling. She is still disconnected and asking God to find a way to bring her love for me back into her heart while I just pray that God works on me and my garbage that helped lead to the disconnection in the first place and trying my best to not let her walls/boundaries lead to bitterness and resentment. It is such a tough journey and I pray that God can reconcile our marriage covenant and that our story can end up like yours!