Feeling overwhelmed in my partnership as a new believer
I am seeking encouragement for my relationship and apologize in advance if this sounds long winded. I (26M) share a partnership with my girlfriend (28F) where we live together and share two beautiful children under the age of two!! My partner and I had only been dating for a few months when she found out she was pregnant even with contraception.
Back then, I had no knowledge of the Christian faith, but my partner grew up going to church every weekend where her grandpa was the pastor. To honor God, she chose to have the child! And thank goodness, that was truly the best decision ever. I thank her every day for that. Now here is where things got confusing for me.
The first person I called to share the news with was my best friend and roommate at the time. To make a long story short, what he shared with me on the phone was that shortly before we started dating, they had hooked up and neither of them had ever told me.
Upon hearing this I was absolutely shocked. It was already such a chaotic time with the news of the pregnancy and hearing this was truly traumatizing in a way. The thing that made it even more confusing is that my partner claimed she never remembered it and that my friend had assaulted her. She had told me stories (before I heard this) where she found out she had hooked up with someone, but didn’t remember it because she was blacked out drunk.
To make things even more confusing, my same friend and I had beaten some guy up that she had told me assaulted her shortly into our relationship. And yes this had happened after they had hooked up, but before he had shared with me that they had hooked up. I know it’s not easy to explain.
I think the part where I truly made a mistake on my end was going into a hyper investigation mode. What ensued was finding out just how many different things she had lied to me about in her past. I developed something called retroactive jealousy OCD where I was consumed with these thoughts of trying to discern what the truth was.
Needless to say, it was a personal hell for me. We were not living together at that time. Shortly after my child was born, I began talking with my partners grandpa about God and how I could best find him. Fortunately, he pointed me to the gospels, and reading the first hand accounts of Jesus is what turned me into a born again Christian!!
At that time, I had talked to my partner about wanting to start going to church and we started going! We were trying to abstain from having sex at that time, however the one time we did she conceived our next child. We continued to try and abstain from sex throughout the pregnancy although we weren’t perfect to say the least.
I was so proud of everything my partner was doing in early motherhood and I did my absolute best to try and support her. We moved into a place together and got settled in.
Fast forward to now and the reason why I am making this post is because I find myself in a weird spot. While I love my partner for all the changes she has made in her life, part of me has always felt a lot less desire to be in a marriage with her ever since that took place.
She loves Jesus and I love Jesus, but just because we both do does not magically fill in the brokenness I sometimes feel in my heart. My trust isn’t there yet. And the intrusive thoughts still haunt me.
But the thing that is making me feel a tremendous amount of guilt and condemnation is the fact that I am totally fine with being in a partnership where we don’t have sex (which we haven’t for months) and share the responsibility of parenthood. The guilt I feel is in the love that I don’t fully have for this woman. She also just recently found out that she is Bipolar and there is a host of other things that come along with that.
I have always prayed that God could mend our relationship, but the one thing that marriage would enable us to do, is to be intimate, which is not something I honestly have any desire to do. Am I wrong for feeling this way? I want my kids to be able to say their parents are married so maybe this is where all of this guilt and shame is coming from. Please give me words of encouragement only I don’t want anyone bashing my partner!!