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Hi father,

I am writing to you after months of praying to get out of a difficult situation.

I am 39 years old and have been married for 3, after 3 years of engagement. Shortly before getting married we found out that it is difficult for my husband to have children but despite this we got married because I always thought that if this is God’s will there must certainly be a reason even if we could not understand it.

We have considered the possibility of clinical attempts but we have decided to stop and leave it entirely up to God the possibility of having a child.

Since then, my husband has no longer shown physical attraction for me even though he says he loves me. Over time I too have turned off and started looking at him with different eyes because I feel the need for a responsible man, who desires me and who does not see me as a sister.

Furthermore, I have to add that for some time (over a year) the thought of a male coworker, that I cannot chase away, has crept into my head.

I never had the intention to step forward or to declare myself but the thought, instead of being extinguished, becomes an obsession. The more I try to silence my mind, the more violent it comes back despite my prayers.

If God asked me I would rather go crazy instead of displeasing someone but I just cannot understand why He is subjecting me to this absurd test.

I can no longer experience my old love for my husband who continues to ignore me and stay on the sofa totally absorbed by his job and cell phone.

I do not know what to do.

I pray that God will tear this man out of my thoughts and let me get my husband back but nothing happens.

I have always believed in family, I desperately wanted a child and I gave up to be with my husband … but now I find myself married, alone and rejected with an intruding thought.

How can I get out of it? Is it right for my husband to behave like this? And how right is it that I continue to be unhappy with him? I have been telling my husband for a long time that we have a problem and that if he continues like this he keeps me away but he does nothing to change things.

I never even thought of coming forward with the other man and I don’t even know if I am reciprocated, since he would never disrespect my husband and my marriage.

I feel unhappy, father. I made a promise before God and I don’t want to disappoint Him or my family, but how can I find the old love?

I’ve given up on what a woman holds most dear to my man but now I’m starting to blame him. I feel really bad. Help me.

Thanks, Alessandra

Answer from the priest

Dear Alessandra,

1. only today I reached your last message sent in April and I’m very sorry about it. I beg your pardon. How I wish things had been resolved in the meantime.

2. You are right to expect and want your husband to see you not as a sister or friend, but as a wife. Certainly he – even though in good faith – is failing in his marital duties.

And this omission of his does not help the unity of your family.

In this sense, as the Second Vatican Council was right in recalling that “where the intimacy of married life is broken off, its faithfulness can sometimes be imperiled and its quality of fruitfulness ruined, for then the upbringing of the children and the courage to accept new ones are both endangered”(Gaudium et spes 51).

3. By marriage you place yourself in a different condition from the one you lived at the time of the engagement. As engaged couples, mutual love was like a gift and there was no specific moral obligation to continue to love each other. You were free to go back as you wanted. When married, however, love has become something of a duty. And not only in the sense of excluding adultery and any kind of infidelity, but also because “the mutual love of the spouses must have its just manifestations, must develop and reach maturity” (GS 50).

4. This accrual does not occur automatically.

It requires the constant commitment of both spouses to continually renew love through mutual respect, small daily manifestations of affection, attention to the wishes of the other and dedication to his person.

At the same time it requires the commitment to overcome the perpetually lurking pitfalls of selfishness and not to neglect the spouse because of one’s personal  interests.

5. For you, this is about getting your husband back.

Not by giving him a kind of ultimatum but by making him rediscover the meaning of life and of the family according to God’s plan.

At the dawn of creation, God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him” (Gn 2:18).

God gave him Eve, a human face that understood and loved him.

It is the first help that God has given him, as the book of Sirach states: “He who acquires a wife gets his richest treasure, a helpmate, a steadying column” 

(Sir 36,26).

6. Well, you are the first of your husband’s possessions.

For this your husband must take the utmost care of you.

Your husband will also have other assets, important and valuable, such as work.

But you and only you are the first of its assets. You are the first treasure that enriches him as a man without which he is interiorly alone and poor.

7. What to do concretely?

There is a resource that the Lord has given us and it is extremely precious.

Why not ask him to build a Christian family in which God dwells, is known, loved, sought and possessed?

Why not start with prayer and even more precisely the daily prayer of the Holy Rosary together?

With this prayer, let Jesus enter your life and let Our Lady also enter, who comes to visit you with the same dedication and sweetness with which she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth.

The presence of Our Lady is indispensable because – when she intervenes – she always intervenes in her own way, which is that of sweetness.

Our Lady opens hearts without causing disasters. That’s what your family needs.

I assure you my prayers for this intention and I bless you.

Father Angelo