Marriage question

[Grace4Me]

I know that God hates divorce. What if you are married to a verbally abusive man? Does God expect you to stay and make it work?

[ZeldaCA]

That is a very tough question. But I would say that a man who is verbally abusive is not a) being true to his marriage vows (to love and honor you) and b) not treating you the way God would have him treat you (as his own flesh).

But unlike physical abuse, I believe something like this can be helped in marriage therapy or Christian counseling. If he refuses to go though, and is not even trying to control himself, then for your own good as well as the sake of your children, you may need to leave. Rarely is a verbally abusive person only abusive to their spouse...most of the time they do it to their kids, too, which IMO is completely unacceptable.

[faithandgrace]

Does God expect you to stay and make it work?

Probably. Since God hates divorce, I can't picture Him wanting us to give up on any marriage without trying to make it work.

[manytears]

I have a hard time with this one. I would not stay with anyone that abuses me or my children. I don't think God wants us to be doormats. I just don't know. I just know I couldn't take it. Wouldn't take it. Pray about it. I'm not a good one to answer this question I guess. :hug

[all things]

My sister is going through this exact thing. She's been married for 17 years, and has reached - actually gone past - her breaking point. She's talked to several counsellors, especially Christian ones, and to 2 pastors and their spouses. Everything is in turmoil, but her 2 teenaged boys were also being verbally abused (and I have witnessed it...very, very, very detrimental). She has tried and tried to make him see reason, but he just won't compromise or even really try. Although he's a church goer, I don't know his heart. They have been Deacons, Boy Scout leaders and Youth group leaders for years, etc. They are seeing one more counsellor on Tuesday, but she's made up her mind that the marriage is irretrievably broken. One thing though, it has brought her to her knees and she's a much more solid Christian now. She hasn't gone into this divorce easily. She has tried for years to keep it from ending this way.

[mmullig]

My opinion is that the marriage was probably not based on God's will to begin with or there would be no abuse. In that case, the marriage is not 'valid' to God because it was entered into without his blessing, therefore, a worldly divorce would not be see by God as a 'divorce'. I don't know for sure, this is just what I think. I have wanted to divorce my husband before, but we were brought together by God and each time I think I want a divorce, God intervenes. :)

[House of Light]

Something else to ponder.......a great percentage of those verbally abused in marriage...the verbal abuser will turn to physical abuse.

[Xian]

I have a hard time with this one. I would not stay with anyone that abuses me or my children. I don't think God wants us to be doormats. I just don't know. I just know I couldn't take it. Wouldn't take it. Pray about it. I'm not a good one to answer this question I guess. :hug

I agree.

[JadoreAdonai]

My opinion is that the marriage was probably not based on God's will to begin with or there would be no abuse. In that case, the marriage is not 'valid' to God because it was entered into without his blessing, therefore, a worldly divorce would not be see by God as a 'divorce'. I don't know for sure, this is just what I think. I have wanted to divorce my husband before, but we were brought together by God and each time I think I want a divorce, God intervenes. :)

I can't say I fully agree with you. I believe my husband and I got words from the Lord for us to be married, as if those words hadn't come, I was not going to marry him. But, despite our coming together being what I believe was God's will, I think we as people also have a responsibility to be obedient not just to God, but to His word, to what He says about marriage and how wives and husbands are to treat each other. Being a good spouse, is keeping in God's will. I believe it can be God's will for two people to be together, but either could choose to not follow God's will for how to treat the other.

If a husband or wife is being disobedient to God's word about marriage, to me it is a form of unfaithfulness. I know most people tend to think of only sexual adultery as unfaithfulness. To me, when you take vows, promising to love; honor; cherish; and you willfully go against that, you are not honoring your vows. You are being unfaithful, and you're making yourself out to be a liar.

I know God says He hates divorce, and thus I do as well. I certainly didn't set out to be married more than once in my life. However, my husband willfully, concioiusly, repeatedly chose to horribly abuse me, in every way. Because of his abuse, and poor choices I made under the stress of the abuse, I lost my infant son to my husbands abusive family who did their own dirty deeds to help take my child. My husband's mother and her second husband are raising my son under a different first name, and I have been completely alienated from his life, since he was a week old! I tried my best to be a good wife while being abused, but under the circumstances, I broke. I wasn't as good a wife as I could have been. I stayed with my husband and kept forgiving him. He kept betraying me. He let his family take and hold my son hostage from me, while they too abused me, and my husband allowed it, he encouraged it by his own continued abuse of me, and maligning of me to them. His family knew of his many problems that were in existence before any of them even knew I existed. Yet, they still blamed me, and treated me worse than dirt.
I begged my husband to get help, help for himself, and for the both of us, to save our marriage, he thought he was fine and that I was the one who needed help. We were given free counseling, he didn't appreciate it and didn't make good use of it because he felt he wasn't so bad that he needed help. I warned him repeatedly I would leave him, divorce him if he didn't change. All he did was progressively get worse. So I left him and filed for divorce. Even after I did that, he continued to spiral out of control. I became homeless. He abandoned me financially, and aside from his "I love yous" which were insulting considering all he'd done and was continuing to do/not do, he pretty much emotonally abandoned me. I had to move back home, to my country, 3000 miles away. He broke the law and is now paying for it and will be for the next 3 years. So even if I last minute decided to cancel the divorce, for legal reasons, it's not like either of us would be able to live in the same part of the world, to make a relationship work. I feel horrible about all of it. Especially about getting the divorce because of what God says. But honestly I see no other option. Because my husband just caused so much destruction, caused me so much loss, so much pain which I will feel the rest of my life, because not only will I not have my son in my life, all he'll be told about me is a tainted twisted version just so that my husband's family will seem justified in what they did, and in keeping me on the outside. They're even doing things that will continue to make me look bad, while making them look good, like some sort of angelic saviors.

As much as I wish I could obey God, my husband obliterated all trust, so no matter how many "I love you"; "I'm sorry"; "I'll make it up to you" etc, he says now, he said it all before while I was with him and he was abusing me, yet I put up with it. Why should I believe him anymore. I can't. I wont. He proved to me the type of person he was. Not only did he have no desire to obey the laws of marriage, he clearly had no desire to obey any laws.

Now, because of what happened, I will probably never remarry, because according to the bible, I, and a second husband, would both be guilty of adultery.

Trust is one of the cornerstones of any relationship. Without trust, you may as well have nothing. If someone is abusing another person, how can there be trust? There isn't. My husband's abuse just made me distrustful. It made me doubt any good he would do, because I always felt like it was just a see through blanket over the abuse. His abuse made me anxious, particularly whenever he would be upset, because I never knew when his anger over something would send him into a rage and on a violent, abusive, destructive rampage. The Lord wants to have peace. There is no peace being with someone who is abusive.

Depending on the severity of the abuse, trial separation should be the first route, with mandated individual counseling, and joint therapy. But if the abusive partner doesn't take it seriously, and just continues in their abusive patterns, I see no alternative but divorce.

[ByHisGrace]

When I married my husband I knew in my heart I was not to marry him. But it was my wedding day and it felt like it was too late. As soon as we were married we had isssues. He verbally abused me and mentally abused me. He lived to aggravate me as best as he could. That doesn't sound like anything major -- but it was awful. It was all abuse. I finally had to leave. We were separated for about 3 months before we sought counseling. But counseling didn't do any good. So we continued to live separated. At this time I got active in a church group, I was telling my marriage situation to another lady there. She said "Do what my mother did. Surrender your marriage to the Lord." I did that very thing that night. The thing was the very next morning, I had an appt with a lawyer. God gave me a verse from the Bible that night -- it was something to the effect: Go out in the morning as planned but you will not have to fight in this war. So I did, I went to the lawyer. I didn't have enough money for the retaining fee and went home. God took care of the rest.

The church I was attending was having a service for those who needed prayer for healing. A lady from Bible study said me and my husband should go to it. I called up my husband he said okay, we received prayer, the set up counseling appts with a elder and married couple, then after a total of 9 months being separated God brought us together.

So my answer to a marital problem like this would be to separate if you can and surrender your marriage to Jesus. See what He will do. He always has plan B,C,D,E,F, etc.