Can He Love Me Without Being Attracted to Me?

Can a marriage survive when the husband no longer finds his wife physically attractive and yet still loves her?

Yes, your marriage can survive if your husband will drink water from his own cistern and fresh water from his own well (Proverbs 5:15). I empathize with the loss and emptiness you feel as well as the rejection you must be feeling on a daily basis. But, I know from experience that there are answers that work.

My husband’s sexual life was very much being lived in - what we call at Pure Life Ministries - the fast lane. After living in the fast lane of sexual addiction, a man finds going into the slow lane of normal sex with his wife almost impossible. It reminds me very much of the Israelites when they came out of Egypt. God was using the wilderness to purge their hearts of the worldliness and idolatry that was filling them. They complained and grumbled because they were used to the fish they ate for free in Egypt –the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks, and the onions and the garlic—in abundance of variety (Numbers 11:5). Manna was just too boring!

Thirty years ago, God began dealing with Steve about using my body while fantasizing about other women, rather than loving me and putting my needs ahead of his own. Proverbs 5:18-23 became a kind of game plan for Steve to follow. It was something a willing heart could do; it was something he could put into practice.

The steps went something like this: 1) “Rejoice in the wife of your youth,” 2) “Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;” 3) “Be exhilarated always with her love.” 4) “For why should you, my son, be exhilarated with an adulteress, and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?” Or, to paraphrase: if the Lord can help you become thrilled with her love, why would you want to go to bed with some prostitute?

When Steve started following the “game plan”, God did a miracle in his heart. God made that verse a reality in his life. He became exhilarated with my love. He became completely satisfied with my body; and he does not desire the body of some foreigner! It’s a miracle, but it only happened because Steve was willing to let God do that in him.

I pray that your husband will choose to forsake the leeks and garlic and become a contented man, a man who is willing to forsake a life of the endless, perpetual cycle of trying to satisfy sin’s insatiable appetite.

My husband is a contented, satisfied, and happy man. I am a woman who is secure, fulfilled, and joyful. That is God’s desire and plan.