Hello RA
My wife and I spent a number of years in a situation that could be described along the general lines of what you are experimenting, although we both remained faithful to one another. We tried very hard to get things fixed but never seemed to suceed somehow. So after a certain time we just let go of the issues that bothered us, and both agreed to disagree, so to speak, no longer really trying to fix anything.
In 2008 I was asked by my supervisor to hire someone to replace me on my job because I wanted to take another responsibility at work. As it turned out, I trained this person and worked alongside her for six months and we stayed friends afterwards, and had her in my home a couple of times. She was a Christian from a different branch of the Church than mine.
She was one of the means God used in my life to think through what the basis of my faith had been, and eventually, to identify an area of my life I had let myself slip into. The Spirit of God made it clear to me that He wanted me to repent from it now. The impression left on me by this realization was so clear. I became convinced I needed to make a choice right there and then. So I did, immediately.
What followed was a series of circumstances I cannot explain really well, where I went from the position of one who feels a victim of circumstances as if they were a prison of a spiritual nature, to one who knew he was God's Son, Christ's co-heir, a prince under the authority of Christ. It became clear to me that I could call upon my Father and receive answers to my petition in resisting whatever temptation were before me. I am not saying here that I became sinless. What I am saying is that I became a warrier against the forces of darkness. I remembered who I was in Christ, and I began to be much more efficient in turning immediately to my source of strenght for fighting sin.
What I just said became the basis for a new outlook in my relationship to my wife. My wife saw me changing too. Our adult children who were no longer living at home at the time and both had carreers of their own began to tease my wife and I. They said things like, «Mom, dad is dragging you, and you don't even see it». As far as I was concerned I began to pray to God for my wife everytime she did or said something that I did not like. I began bathing her in prayer, and what she eventually told me is that she felt loved and accepted.
Eventually – within the same year of 2008 – our children began to tease us in the following terms : «You are really strange. It seems as if you both believe the other one has no faults at all. You are like youg lovers who just met. You are suffering from blink love». As I write this in 2014 my wife and have enjoy a very good relationship, which was not always the case through the years. So when I say to anyone I feel the joy of Christ and His peace within me now, these two event related just above are always in the background.
And people in our Church who have known us for many a years have said that the changes they saw in us as couple has encouraged them greatly in not loosing hope that God can work in their lives too in ways that they had began to despair would be possible. I have been reading through and stuydying the epistles of Peter these past few months. And this week as I was paying closer attention to First Peter chapter 5 verses 6 to 11, it struck me that the prowling evil-one had tried to destroy me, yet had failed. I am thankful to my Father.
As I conclude this post, I am raising my heart in prayer on your behalf, RA, as well as on the behalf of all who struggle along the lines described in your post number 13 of the present thread, and who happen to read the present post.
I am praying that God will use the present post for providing some measure of hope. I am praying that the Holy Spirit will perhaps lead you to the right people, or that He will bring home to you some passages of Scripture in such a way that it will help you understand your own situation in a better light. I am praying that He will enable you to trust Him for the enablement required to set things right in your own heart, so that you will know how and want to restore whatever needs to be, both in relationship to your wife and to your God.