I've been thinking a lot about the theological aspect of divorce. I can't be the only one who thinks this is a big issue to consider when contemplating divorce, but if any church talk turns you off then I'll apologize right now. If, on the other hand, you're concerned about divorce and how it pertains to your faith, then maybe my thought process will help you a little.

I attend a Christian church. Even though the church I go to is pretty liberal there are very few people there who are divorced. The demographic is mainly families like mine, with young children, a husband who works outside the home, and a wife who stays home and cares for the kids during the day.

Divorce isn't really an issue that comes up in sermons at all in our church, but it's supposed to be something we try to avoid. We're supposed to keep the family unit intact. The husband is supposed to love the wife like Christ loved the church, and a wife is supposed to honor her husband.

That's a tall order when all you want to do is pack your bags and leave.

Here is the thing I realized: Okay, divorce is a sin. Sure, I can buy that. We're not supposed to get divorced. Here is the other thing I only recently started to think about with regard to this topic: We all sin. One sin isn't greater than the other, and we'll never be perfect because we're human.

Divorce isn't supposed to happen, but then again neither are a lot of things that go on. If I do divorce my husband, even though it's considered a sin, it's not unforgivable. According to Biblical principal, I'll be forgiven.

I'm not trying to spark a theological debate, but this was a huge revelation for me. Some readers have expressed concern about how a divorce might affect their standing at church. Perhaps they can begin to rationalize a marital shift, too.

My neighbor and I were talking about our perplexing positions in life. We are both in the same boat, contemplating divorce for a couple of years now with young children involved. She revealed to me that her husband had been physically abusive to her a few times throughout the marriage and that he continues to verbally assault her in front of her kids on an almost daily basis. 

When I told her that I think my husband may be either cheating on me or planning on cheating on me, she said, "Oh, that's where I draw the line. If he cheats on me, I'm out of here."

This got me thinking about the different thresholds we all have as women. Before I was married I always assumed that my threshold would be "If I'm unhappy in my marriage, I'm out of here."  After we were married and we had kids my threshold evolved into something like, "If he ever lays a hand on me in violence, or becomes verbally abusive, or cheats on me, then I'm out of here." 

I would assume that most women in my position have similar thresholds, but talking to my neighbor (who has been married longer than I have), butapparently it's completely possible to have the threshold pushed further to "If he cheats on me I'm out of here, but everything else is just annoying."

Why do we allow the threshold to change?

It's almost as if we are numbed by situations as they come. My neighbor is pretty numb to her husband's verbal abuse. I'm pretty numb to the way my husband twists everything into being my fault, and I'm afraid I'm completely capable of becoming numb to worse things.

I'm probably a really big idiot. You know how some women are completely blindsided when they find out their husbands are cheating? They never saw the signs and then one day something abruptly happens and husband's escapades are revealed while the wife stands there befuddled and betrayed.

I'm in a different situation: The signs are there that my husband may be straying — or thinking of straying — but I can't believe that it's actually happening. I just think I'm paranoid or hyper-vigilant. You tell me if this sounds off to you.

I planned a trip a couple of hours away for the kids and me to go visit some friends for two days while my husband stayed home. (He had to work.) Our babysitter (an adult woman) asked me what night I was leaving, and I told her Wednesday. She then turns to my husband and asks if she can swing by Wednesday night so he can help her with her college homework. He says sure, and I start to think about how the situation could be potentially inappropriate but then I bury the feeling because, after all, we're trying to save our marriage.

Halfway through the week I get a text from our sitter. Have I left yet? I reply that we hadn't left yet, and the unease comes back. I bury it again because, after all, why would my husband cheat on me when he's begged me to stay?

The kids and I wind up changing our plans to leave a day later because of the weather, which means I would be home for the homework session. An hour or two before our sitter is supposed to come over, my husband nonchalantly mentions that she cancelled because she figured her homework out all by herself. I raise my eyebrow, he explodes at me and says I don't trust him, and it all turns into a fight where I wind up apologizing.

Isn't social networking great? Not only can I hop on the FWW Network and chat with women who are in a similar situation, but I have also reconnected with a bunch of people through other networking web sites whom I thought I would never speak to again. 

It's a little weird how ex-boyfriends and lukewarm friends from the past suddenly request to become "friends" on sites like Facebook. I had one friend look me up recently; things did not end well with her 10 years ago. She ended our friendship with a diatribe about how selfish I was and lo and behold now she's sending me messages saying she's so happy to find me, we really need to catch up, yadda, yadda, yadda.

My best friend from my early twenties found me online the other day. We were inseparable back when we were young and single, but job assignments took us to opposite ends of the globe and we eventually lost touch. Last night we chatted a bit and it's funny how similar our paths have been: We both got married, quit working, had kids, and became disenchanted with our marriages.

Here is where the differences become incredibly clear. She makes a swift decision to divorce her husband, gets offered a fantastic high six-figure job in an exotic country, travels the world with her child in tow and now spends her days writing a novel. By the way, she looks fantastic, like she hasn't aged a day.

Then there's me. I languish over whether to divorce my husband or not. I know that a divorce would mean a huge dip in income, and I would probably wind up in a tiny apartment with huge financial difficulties. I've gained a bunch of weight from the stress of the relationship problems, and no, I don't look as though I haven't aged a day. I look like I've aged about a billion days.

Tomorrow night we start marital counseling again. We finally settled on a schedule where our pastor comes over to our house in the evening after our kids are in bed. Now that's an accommodating pastor.

My husband isn't happy about the counseling. I guess I can't blame him. I do such a good of putting my emotions into a little box and ignoring them that as far as he knows it's business as usual until someone actually asks me what I'm feeling and won't take "I'm fine, thanks" as a realistic answer. 

In other words, even though I'm not as affectionate with my husband as I once was, it's pretty easy to live with me. I take care of stuff around the house and bring in an income, so if he wants to ignore the fact that we're having problems then it's probably pretty darn easy.

It's in counseling sessions that I start crying and carrying on about how desperate I feel in the marriage. With someone there to mediate our conversation, I feel more comfortable saying how I feel because I know it's not going to turn into the usual frustration fest that serious conversations become when my husband and I try to do this on our own...or, at least, when I approach him about something that has been bothering me and it morphs into me apologizing for being bothered by something.

Yes, tomorrow night should be interesting. We haven't been in marital counseling for months, and after my last debacle with the therapist who apparently had the hots for me, I'm a little reluctant to trust the process. As usual, though, I'm still willing to try again to see if the relationship can be salvaged.

I'm bracing myself. It should be interesting.   

It takes a lot to come to grips with the idea that a relationship has ended. It took a lot for me to realize that my marriage was over, but I remember coming to peace with the decision. It was painful, but I had resolution in my heart that I was making the right decision.

So what happens when the relationship doesn't actually end after this decision has been made?

I let my husband go in my heart. I came to grips with the fact that it was over. The marriage had ended. The relationship was a failure. Everything was going to get really messy.   

Then I didn't leave. We decided to keep trying for the sake of our kids and for the love we once had. I quickly found that the decision to try to stay in the relationship didn't instantaneously become a magical decision that made everything better. At first I was really frustrated that I couldn't suddenly be a full-fledged partner within the marriage. I felt disconnected, and on top of that, I felt really guilty that I didn't feel connected.

After much thought it occurred to me that it had taken me a long, long time to decide that the marriage was over. I guess in light of this, it makes sense that it would take me a long time to adopt another stance. That doesn't make it any less frustrating, though, and to tell you the truth I don't know if I'll ever feel like I'm 100% in this marriage. I'm on a plateau. I can't decide what is worse: making the decision to end a relationship or just kind of hanging out to wait and see what happens. 

At least back then I felt a little empowered for having made a decision. Even though I'm glad that I'm sticking around for the sake of our kids, I'm disappointed that I didn't trust myself enough to stick with the decision I made after a too much laborious anguish.  

My husband and kids are coming upstairs. I'm in the kitchen preparing lunch and it sounds like my husband is having a rough time compelling my daughter up the stairs. He's losing his patience and my daughter is starting to freak out. Suddenly I hear my daughter cry and she runs up the stairs.   

"Daddy hurt me!" she yells, crying and hugging my legs.

Let me make sure you understand something: We don't hit our kids. My husband has never laid a hand on our kids in anger or discipline, so my guess is that he was carrying our son up the stairs and stumbled over our daughter. So the issue here isn't that my husband beats our kids, because he most certainly does not.

No, the issue here is how my husband reacts to this situation. Suddenly he's in front of me, saying, "I didn't hurt her! I didn't hurt her!" He sounds like our three-year-old son. For a brief moment, I have three kids instead of two. This is a common scenario when my husband gets frustrated with our daughter. His reasoning and reaction is temporarily comparable to a preschooler. It's maddening.

I wish he would remain the adult when dealing with our kids. I understand sometimes losing patience and getting frustrated, but my first instinct when my daughter is hurt is to help her to feel better and then deal with the details afterwards.

I'm not going to stand over her and argue whether she's really hurt or not. I'm going to make sure she's okay and then talk about what happened. If I had stumbled over her on the stairs I would apologize profusely instead of expending so much energy making sure everyone around me knew that it wasn't my fault.

In an instance like this where my daughter is hurt and my husband is also seeking my attention, my first priority will always be my daughter.  I don't know if that makes me a bad wife, but my husband is an adult and my daughter is four. Who would you turn your attention to?

One of the things that pulled my husband and me apart was his fascination and obsession with online video games. These were the games where he could socialize with other people and spend seven or eight hours a night running around in his alternate reality, dueling monsters and hooking up with female avatars. 

When I tried to leave the marriage he decided — on his own — to stop playing video games altogether. He sold his gaming systems and uninstalled all the games off his computer. That was months ago, and although I'm pretty sure he's played some video games at friends' houses, as far as I know, he didn't play any games at home.

The other night we were having a conversation and got on the subject of video games. He said he missed the games and if given a chance he wouldn't play them as vigorously as before. I said that he's an adult, and he needs to make the decision of whether he would ever play again. I told him that he had made the decision to stop altogether, so ultimately it's up to him.

Lo and behold, a couple of days later he's loading video games onto the computer.

I'm terrified. One of the huge steps my husband took in an attempt to earn my trust back was to stop playing video games. Has he turned back to video games since I'm still not all lovey-dovey with him, or does he think that me telling him that he's an adult and can make his own decisions is actually a veiled endorsement of video games?

I'm bracing myself because if he falls back into the old habits of caring more about a stinking video game than he does about his real life then I don't think I can stick around for a second round.

I watched him play for a few minutes today and had to leave the room because I felt like I was going to scream. Or cry. Or both. 

Some time ago I wrote about my disappointment over not being able to join my church's board of directors. I had been nominated by some people in the congregation but the pastor quietly removed my name from nominations because he knew about the marital problems. It hit me hard because I really wanted to join the board, and it ticked me off that my life was apparently such a mess that I couldn't be considered for the position. 

Fast forward to present day. I got a call from my pastor who told me that my name had come up again. He wanted to let the nomination go through, but he needed to know if I was ready. It was really a bizarre conversation.

Usually my pastor and I have a really easy rapport with each other but I could tell that he was uncomfortable. He started mumbling about how he wanted me on the board but people on the board have certain expectations, and while the church is not necessarily opposed to divorce I would be in the public eye.  I stopped him and said, "If you're asking if I'm going to divorce my husband anytime soon, the answer is no.  I can't guarantee you that I won't leave him in the near future, though." 

He accepted my answer and this Sunday I expect to be confirmed onto the board. 

I'm really pleased that I finally made it onto the board, but here is the thing: My pastor knows that my husband and I are on shaky ground. Heck, we've been trying to coordinate schedules for the past few months so that the three of us can get together for some marital counseling.

I don't really get why he would ask me a question that he kind of already knows the answer to. Maybe it was a formality, or maybe it was a veiled warning, something along the lines of "If you leave your husband, you're off the board." Trust me, though...if I leave my husband I think the church board will be the least of my problems.

My husband wishes I were more sexual. Truth be told, his sexual appetite has always outpaced mine. He would have sex three times a day if he could, but I'm completely happy with a couple of times a week. Even before our marital issues starting affecting my performance in bed, I still didn't want to get intimate as often as he did.

Nowadays it takes quite a bit to get me in the mood. Strike one: I have back problems, and as my chiropractor so delicately put it I shouldn't do anything that involves "jerking up-and-down motions." Strike two: I'm usually pretty exhausted from the rigors of motherhood, working, and all the other fun stuff that comes with my role in life. Strike three: Yeah, this is gross, but my two pregnancies not only blessed me with two beautiful children, but also bestowed upon me some pretty serious hemorrhoids. When those bad boys flare up, getting me in the mood for sex is downright impossible. 

Okay, so now you probably know more about me than you care to. Sorry about that.

When my husband hasn't had sex in a couple of days he starts dropping hints and making sexual innuendoes in conversation. The other day I was heading out to the gym and I made the comment that I was in need of a good workout. He arches his eyebrow and says, "I can give you a good workout." I really don't like when he makes these types of comments in front of the kids, so I say, "What Daddy doesn't seem to realize is that sometimes Mommy can't hang from the chandelier and whoop it up." To this he sighs and responds, "Don't worry...I expect very little from you."

Ouch.

I already feel like a failure as a wife because I can't just find a way to be happy in this relationship. I thought I was at least being a good wife by hooking him up with some sex on a regular basis, but apparently I can't even get that right.