The husband DID NOT seek advice, she did.
I know someone who was married, quite young, to a guy who turned out to be abusive, both verbally demeaning and physically aggressive. A few times he pushed her out of bed and told her to sleep on the floor at his feet -- while she was pregnant. Being very true to her church, she sought advice from her pastor. He told her that marriage was sacred and she needed to do what she could to "understand" and "change" her husband. In other words -- "what could her husband actually want".
Is this the type of good Christian advice you're talking about?
“The husband DID NOT seek advice, she did.”
Well, of course. It’s difficult in dealing with addictions. The first step has to be that the person is willing to change. That’s hard for a person who’s stuck in the relationship to decide what to do about someone who does have an addiction and how to work past that.
It’s been my experience that change only happens when something happens in the person’s life to make staying where you are less comfortable than the change. Sometimes it’s losing a job. Sometimes it’s having someone who loves and cares for you try to reach out and stage an intervention.
It’s not easy. I’ve deal with this before.
“I know someone who was married, quite young, to a guy who turned out to be abusive, both verbally demeaning and physically aggressive.”
I would say get out because Scripture is very clear on this, in Ephesians, “husbands are to love their own wives like their own bodies, because no one ever harmed his own body.”
It’s part of the marriage covenant and physical abuse breaks this covenant between husband and wife.
“Is this the type of good Christian advice you’re talking about?”
Actually, I’m talking about this one:
“The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
This is the problem. Marriages without sex were never meant to work this way and the wife here is explicitly told that refusing sex without having a good reason for it in marriage is a sin.
I’ve not seen very many pastors cite this, but I think it’s an important principle to understand that in marriage, you are no longer your own, your wife has a claim to your body just as you have a claim to your wife’s body. If a husband truly understood this they wouldn’t cheat on each other and they wouldn’t deprive each other.
Wives get many things. This article does nothing to convince me that they understand this principle right here.