The following article is written to women who are dealing with their husbands who have left them, but the same principles can also apply to men who are dealing with their wives who have left. We encourage you to pray, glean, and see what God could be saying to your heart:
“They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31 KJV).
Because your emotions are so turbulent, you may think no happy answer to your situation is possible. Your thoughts may run the gamut from a fairy-tale ending to the worst possible outcome. When you find yourself in this state for very long,you may be tempted to do whatever will give a clean resolution. You may want closure, even if that means doing what you really don’t want to do. But making rash decisions may be something you will woefully regret later. Time may be your friend, if you let it.
When this disaster first swooped down upon me, my friend Toni Jo said something that shocked me at first. I didn’t want to hear it.
“Don’t be in a hurry,” she said. “Give him as much time as he needs. He’s confused and needs to figure himself out. Tell him to take a year if he needs to figure out what he wants.”
“A year!” I exclaimed. “A year?”
“What’s a year in a whole lifetime?” she asked. “If it takes a year for him to figure things out, and then you have thirty more happy years together after that, wouldn’t it be worth it?”
As it turned out, it took three years for my husband and me, not one. But yes, it was worth it.
Trusting God includes waiting on him to do whatever he is trying to do during this process. Because God does not force his loving work into our lives, making rash decisions can preclude God from accomplishing new dimensions of spiritual and emotional growth in you and your mate as well as others around you. We need to give God time.
Waiting is extremely hard when each day weighs us down with an eternity of suffering. But time has a way not only of healing but also of giving perspective. What may seem true to your mate today may look different to him tomorrow. Each new encounter between the two of you can set him or you off in a different relational direction, either positive or negative.
Many years of clutter may need to go through the filter before the gemstones of your life together can become clear. If your husband has separated from you, he may be trying not to even think about you now. He may be focusing only on what he can make sense of. And that probably is not you and your relationship. Most likely he is filling his mind with work and other interests that keep him aloof emotionally.
During moments of deep depression, when you really want to give up, pick up your Bible and let God speak to you. Listen to what he says to you at that particular time. He wants to strengthen you, and you need strong wings if you’re going to mount up on the wings like eagles. Wait on the Lord. Remember, he is able to do more than we could ever imagine. But sometimes it requires time.
“Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the LORD, my cause is disregarded by my God?’
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:26-31).
The above article is written by Linda W. Rooks and comes from the excellent book, “Broken Heart on Hold… Surviving Separation” published by Life Journey. As Linda writes about this book, “Broken Heart on Hold is meant to be a friend to walk beside you through the labyrinths of your confusion and pain. It is not a quick fix or a prescription for how to solve your problems. It is intended to be a daily companion in your crisis. It is not a book to be picked up and read through once and then set on the shelf. Rather, I suggest you read one selection each day and let the devotional thoughts sink into your heart and mind. Mull it over. Chew it up. Then the following day go on to the next.”
You can also visit Linda’s Web site at www.brokenheartonhold.com where she has “individually formatted a number of Bible verses for your strength and encouragement.” As she says, “From my Web site you can download full-color pages of whatever Scripture you choose and post it on your wall, mirror, or refrigerator so you can see it regularly and be encouraged. When our minds are spinning in different directions, being reminded of a Scripture can lead us to a more peaceful and healthy path.” Preview or Buy This Book Now.
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(ZIMBABWE) Thanks to my sister in law for sharing this site with me. It’s been 3 months since my husband left. He said he needed more of an independent mind on his own. He is staying in town and is still continuing in the affair that broke us apart.
I am trying to give him time to rethink about us but am realizing my heart is growing distant with time. I love him so much but I feel he is taking advantage of that. I am more tempted to start other relationships as I feel he is using our time apart to start a new life whilst I cry over him. He says he never stopped loving me but I don’t see his efforts. I have stopped trying to engage him in seeing our 5 year old boy as he gives excuses each time. I think he feels I am trying to win him back.
Please pray for me. I am only 26 and don’t see myself divorced. How much more time should I give him to reconcile our 5 year old marriage?
(USA) Hi Folly, I can sure appreciate why your heart is “growing distant” with all that your husband is doing that hurts you. It’s one way of emotionally guarding your heart from further pain. Also, when a loved one hurts us, we are so deeply grieved that we back away emotionally and physically because we’re devastated that someone we could trust so much would devalue us in such a manner. My heart cries for you.
I encourage you not to follow in your husband’s footsteps. He is married and he should know better and live better on so many levels. And even though he is living sinfully, please don’t allow yourself to break your vows as well. You are still married (even though you are separated at this time). Not only is it important not to date while you are married for integrity and spiritual issues, you have a young son who is watching his parents. He needs to see at least one of his parents doing that which is right. And he also needs you to be his hero in making the effort to keep things as simple as possible as he works through all that has happened. Even though he is 5, all of this is a bit much for him as well (even though he may not know how to voice this).
Also, even though I can understand why you may be drawn to starting “a new life” with someone who will treat you better than your husband, all that is going on in your life right now is still too new and too complicated. I encourage you to give God some “elbow room” concerning how He can work in your husband’s life and in yours and possibly even in your marriage (if your husband will listen).
Work with God on this to heal your emotions and stand tall in being a woman of strength who doesn’t run from one relationship into the next prematurely. Your husband isn’t showing integrity and moral strength to do what is right and prudent, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do the same.
Don’t bring another man into your life, even casually, at this point. I have no doubt that you are lonely and you desire to have fun with another man. But dating brings complications with it. ESPECIALLY for the sake of your son, please don’t cause him to have to work through making more grown up adjustments than he is already dealing with.
Pray about and seek other ways to heal and to put enjoyment into your life — both for your sake and your son. And as far as trying to get your husband to see your 5 year old son, I would keep making the attempts. It is never wrong to sacrifice your own comfort to help a son and father to grow closer to each other (unless your husband is acting sinful in front of your son). Don’t let your son know you are making the attempts. He doesn’t need to know that your husband is not doing the right thing by him. He just needs his father’s love.
Many times a man isn’t as relationally minded when it comes to building a growing relationship with his children. The wife is the one who is more in tune with the necessity of making this happen. Be a silent hero here. Even though your husband isn’t doing right by you or him, find respectful ways to nudge him forward to keep spending time with his son.
It would be good to nicely set down boundaries for this to happen, like asking your husband NOT to bring another woman around while he is spending time with him (he doesn’t need this complication in his life right now). Don’t make this a time to fight with your husband or use your son as a pawn in some way. Do this for the sake of your son.
As far as asking “how much more time” you should “give him to reconcile” your marriage, that isn’t a question I can answer. While 3 months must feel like an eternity to you to be severed in your marriage relationship, it’s still young in the span of time. I encourage you to work on your own issues and take your eyes off of your husband’s behavior right now. Pray and give God time and space to work. Don’t be so quick to set a time limit. The temptation is strong to do that, but right now it would be good to put your focus on building a good home for you and your son without putting your eyes upon the decision of dating or divorce right now. God will eventually show you if and when that would be appropriate.
Please know Folly, that many of us care and will be praying for you.
(KENYA) Awesome! Thank God for this new discovery (the website). Separation as bad as it is, is still with us. I’ve been separated for two years now and I’ve still not found a reason for divorcing. I’m lost. I don’t know how long God will take to remold us. We need your prayers. But all in all, be ecouraged Emmanuel! He has wounderfull plans for us.
(USA) Thank you very much for your comments…Once again I find that there may be hope. You are right that we all expect God to work magic & restore our marriages ASAP. But when you really sit down & think about it…there is alot of things that need to be worked out in both parties heads.
I think it does take a little longer for the man who has walked out of a relationship to really sit down & think about it. I know that is the case in my situation. My husband & I have been married for 15 years, when one day he said he didn’t love me any more & he was leaving. That now has been 5 weeks ago & I find myself asking how much time should I give him before I begin to move on with my life????
I know that he has not sat down & thought about the situation, because he doesn’t stay home long enough to do so. He told me that he is trying to stay away as much as possible, which tells me that he’s not ready to try to deal with anything yet. My head keeps telling me to give up & move on, but my heart tells to to wait. I pray several times a day that God will move so me & my husband in the way & that he will join us back together with a healthier & happier marriage.
I know that the devil has his grips on my husband & he has to be released before anything will change. Please pray that god will come into his life & help him focus on the imporant things! (Laura & Charles)
(GHANA) Please I am a single lady who has a problem. I used to have a relationship and we had issues. We broke up and after some time the guy came to ask for forgiveness I didn’t attend to him, not knowing he had moved on. I also thought I had moved on until I started praying and I started having dreams about him. God was showing me dreams about him. I confronted him and told him God wants us together but he told me he was seeing someone else who also broke up from an 11 year relationship and his boyfriend wants him back. I am confused because I feel fresh love for him, but he says he had moved on, but not yet married. What do I do?
(USA) Hi Tessy. What makes you think that these dreams are from God? I’ve had dreams in the past about old boyfriends, but I don’t think that means I’m supposed to leave my husband and go back to them (even if I was single, I still don’t think that necessarily means that at all). I believe dreams can sometimes come from God but they can also sometimes be other things that yank on our imagination while we sleep. Why do you think these dreams are particularly from God — ESPECIALLY since God didn’t tell this guy what He wanted as well?
I wouldn’t judge this because of “fresh love” for someone because “love” is a very fickle type of emotion. It goes beyond feeling. Feelings can fool you. Sometimes what we “feel” is love is actually a bio-chemical attraction for someone (and sometimes a fantasy we build up in our mind). If you were married, I would encourage you to work through the emotion (if you didn’t feel you had love for your spouse) until you did. Love is more than a verb… it’s also a noun — something you do (like in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7). But since you AREN’T married — that’s a different matter.
I recommend that you read an article titled “Is My Love For My Partner the Real Thing?” which is posted in the “Is He or She the One” section. And then read through the other articles we link to in that section. The article I want you to particularly pay attention to is the one titled “We’ve Got Chemistry” because it will explain more of what I’m trying to say here. Beware of emotions — they can trick you.
To be quite truthful, if God hasn’t clued this guy in on what you think He’s revealed to you, and he’s “moved on” emotionally, and you’re going through a time of confusion (knowing that the devil is the “author of confusion”), I wonder if God is truly the One who is giving you these dreams and your “fresh love”. I would question this.
Also, the part where you said “we had issues” also makes me wonder because those “issues” could also be instrumental in whether you and this guy should get back together or not. Sometimes a couple are fun dating partners for the short term, but they would make lousy partners for the long haul of marriage. You might be a better mate for someone else and he might be a better mate for someone else, or maybe one or the other of you wouldn’t be a good spouse for anyone. That’s just the way it is for one reason or another.
And if nothing else, if this guy has “moved on” and isn’t interested in getting back together — whether you have “fresh love” for him or not, it isn’t a good idea to try to persuade him to come back to you. If this is from God, HE will work. Don’t pull a “Sarah” (of Sarah and Abraham in the Bible) where you try to finagle the situation to turn out the way you think God ultimately plans for it to happen. God is perfectly capable of making things happen in the right way and the right timing, if He truly means for it to happen. Be careful — the enemy of our faith may be trying to get you to do something you shouldn’t. I’d pray more about this.
(CANADA) I don’t feel like this separation will help for us to get back together. I wish I could feel it but I’ve been working on accepting that he doesn’t love me (spouse’s love) anymore. He cares for me but there are so many things that bother him so much up to the point that he can’t deal with this anymore. He said: “When the flame of the candle was off, I tried talking to you but your efforts didn’t work. Nowadays, the candle is even gone.”
After so much trying on both sides and him feeling this way… How could I still feel hopeful? Many times he’s been clear about not feeling any sparkle for me. I’ve tried so many things, but I can’t try anymore without his participation. Where is the balance between accepting the separation as a last opportunity for him to see things in perspective, and me keeping my self-esteem at a normal level? Where is the balance between me wanting to be in a relationship where there is no love? Should I keep pushing it or just accept that he’s not here anymore?
I’ve worked on moving on. God knows why he’s put us here. He knows why and I totally accept it. The process is hard but I know He has a plan. I just don’t know when to stop begging for his attention or just accepting the fact that he’s not here with me anymore.
I know that my last resource is to pray. (It should have been always the first…) I can pray now, but how do I determine if I should still let him keep lowering my self-esteem by telling me things that don’t fit with his concept of wife-role? I can’t find peace on this one. I guess I just need to pray and wait. Thanks for the article
(PHILIPPINES) First of all I would like to thank our Father God for showing me this wonderful site, it is such a great help for me. I thank also the people behind this very uplifting site. You’re truly a blessing to us. I truly feel for all the lovely people who have continuously given hope and inspiration to walk with God in times of troubles and who are suffering in many painful situations that I am suffering right now.
My husband and I married 8 months ago and I feel that it will come to an end soon. We got to know each other over the internet and fell in love and got married. We’ve only stayed together 2 months as husband and wife within 8 months of marriage. We had a wonderful relationship but it went sour last Aug. I thought before he was attracted to just me, so everytime we had a little misunderstanding I used to say that he could do whatever he wanted to do with our relationship because I felt that he never loved me that much. But with my actions it showed that I didn’t want to lose him. He would email and text message me just to make-up.
Last July, he told me that he had signed-up on an internet networking site (I was a member of that site also but I switched it off before we got married as a sign of respect to my husband) and he enjoyed it a lot. He started to add a lot of friends (all of them ladies), but he told me that he never communicated with any of his ladies friends, just browsing their profile. I signed back on again with that site just to have an idea what he was doing in the site and he added me as a friend. I was hurt when I saw on his profile that it was written in his status as “complicated”, which before he was so proud to tell the world he’s married to me. I asked him “why?” his reason. He said, you are there and I am in here that makes it complicated. No words came out from my mouth even though he lied to me…
I held my tongue and controlled my feelings. I’ve dealt with his lack of attention with me. We’re communicating over the internet everyday but it seems like he’s not with me everytime… he’ll just say a word when he’s asked something about his friends on that site. He even deleted my comment how I love him so much and I am proud to have a husband like him. He posted comments on my page mostly naughty and porn comments (I deleted them and he got mad at me) while he gave his friends some sweet and dear comments. He said a lot of not-so-good to hear words to me about the first guy I friended there and about me looking for someone new (which it never crossed my mind).
I got tired of all of this and know that he gives much more importance to his friends than his wife. He even slept late and spent too much time on that site. He played poker in that site and is even not giving me a single mail, just to know if I am still alive or not. I know I have made a lot of mistakes and I know I should understand him and give him a little respect with his privacy but I don’t know if it is normal to feel hurt over what he’s been doing. I never said anything because I love him so much and never told him that I was jealous because he told me before jealousy means I do not trust him. I kept everything inside and it pains me a lot.
One day in Aug he stopped everything, I received a letter from the immigration that my petition was approved and we are about to be reunited but he’s not interested anymore with that. Before he was eager to finalize all the papers. His mom told me that he lacked finances and he has a lot of debts. I offered to him to shoulder all the bills but he never said anything, so I didn’t ask about it anymore though I miss him alot…
I tried to understand him but he’s continuously drifting away. He never communicates with me anymore, he never replies to my messages. I am the one who initiates communication and have even begged him to restart our relationship but he remains silent about it. I even asked him if he still loves me and he replied…as far as he knows. I’ve bent over backwards just to reach out to him but he’s still deaf and blinded with something… I don’t know what is happening with him. I am totally clueless.
3 days ago he emailed me, and told me that he has to leave for a week or so but he never said where he’s heading. I know I have the right to be informed because I am his wife but instead I told him “though it is my right to know but because I trust you I’ll just wish you a safe trip.” Now I feel it’s over. Maybe I am just waiting for his word that he has found someone new. I don’t know what will I do if ever I would hear that.
With this trial, as I seek answers to whatever is happening with me right now I draw near to God and I know He’s calling me to serve, listen and obey Him again for I have forgotten Him for a while. I do have faith in God but this trial with me is like I cannot carry the load anymore; it weakens me every time I think of what has happened. I’ve lost weight –half of my size before, I’ve had sleepless nights and even wake up crying. I never thought this would ever happen to my marriage. It’s young and it can easily be traded in for a new affair. I feel really devastated and hurt. I love my husband so much. I know God has a purpose in all of this. He never let us crossed paths just to feel the hurt and pain of separation but I feel hopeless sometimes.
As I’ve read through every page and passage of this site it gives me a lot of hope to wait and fight for my marriage, which helped me to TRUST in HIM with all my heart. It leads me onto the one direction to fight and to wait patiently in obedience. But sometimes, I feel really tired and want to get over this and move on. Some of my advisers and friends have told me I deserve to be happy and respected. I know now how it feels to be separated and it is really painful.
Please pray for me also…for strength to endure everything and let my unconditional love for my husband never fail… You are all in my prayers, I hope we will all receive the miracles we long and hope to receive. I found a family who understands me on this site, because I feel no one cares to listen to me anymore. Thank you so much and God bless!