When the Things That Made Me Feel Loved Became Tests of Love

The other night, I realized something about myself that I hadn't fully understood before.

In the beginning of our relationship, my husband did all these little things that made me feel loved.

He would open doors for me. He would wash my back in the shower and dry it for me afterward. He would do little things without being asked, things that made me feel cared for, thought about, and cherished.

They were the little things that made me fall in love with him. They made me feel like I had found someone who wanted to take care of me, someone who noticed me, someone who wanted to make me feel special.

And over time, some of those things became habits.

Opening the door, for example, has become something he does almost automatically now. In the beginning, I would stand there and wait until he figured out that I wanted him to open it. Now, I think it has become second nature to him. It is something he learned about me, something that became part of the way he loves me.

And there is something beautiful about that.

But somewhere along the way, I began to turn those beautiful little gestures into expectations.

And those expectations became something much bigger than the gestures themselves.

They became proof.

If he opened the door, he loved me.

If he washed my back, he loved me.

If he dried my back, he loved me.

If he remembered the little things he had always done, I could breathe a little easier because I felt secure in the knowledge that he still wanted me.

But if he forgot? If he was exhausted? If he was upset with me? If he didn't do something he had always done before?

My mind would immediately begin asking questions.

Does he not love me anymore?

Has something changed?

Is he pulling away from me?

Am I losing him again?

I didn't realize how much power I had given those little moments. I didn't realize that I had allowed the absence of a gesture to become evidence of the absence of love.

I had taken the very things that once made me feel loved and turned them into tests he had to pass to prove that he still loved me.

And the hardest part is that I wasn't doing it because I wanted to make his life difficult. I was doing it because I was afraid.

I wanted to feel secure. I wanted to know that the love I had experienced in the beginning was still there. I wanted to know that the man who had once made me feel so cherished hadn't stopped seeing me that way.

I wanted reassurance that I hadn't lost him.

But somewhere along the way, my desire to feel loved became a need to see love demonstrated in specific ways, at specific moments, in order for me to believe it was still real.

And I started asking myself a question that I think I need to spend some time sitting with.

Why was I allowing these things to determine how loved I believed I was?

Why did one missed gesture have the power to undo all the moments before it?

Why did I struggle to believe my husband loved me if he didn't show it in the exact way I had learned to expect?

And why had I placed so much of my peace in his hands that one small moment could send me spiraling into the fear that I had lost my husband all over again?

I am beginning to understand that sometimes the things we want most can become the very things we use to measure our worth when we are afraid of losing them.

And I don't want to live that way anymore.

When Love Becomes an Expectation

I think there is a difference between wanting your husband to love you in ways that make you feel cherished and needing him to perform those gestures so that you can believe he loves you at all.

I still want those things.

I still want my husband to open the door for me, to wash my back, to dry my back, to reach for me, to hold me, and to notice when I need a little extra love.

I don't want to stop wanting affection. I don't want to pretend that those things don't matter to me.

They do matter.

They are some of the ways I feel loved, and I want my husband to know my heart well enough to understand that.

But I don't want those gestures to become obligations that he feels forced to perform just to keep me from falling apart.

I don't want him to feel like every decision he makes is a test, and I don't want to turn every moment he misses into a verdict on our marriage.

I want to give him room to be human.

I want him to be able to have a hard day, feel exhausted, be upset, or simply forget something without my mind immediately deciding that he no longer loves me.

And at the same time, I want to be able to tell him when I am hurting. I want to be able to ask for affection when I need it. I want to know that my feelings matter to him, even when we aren't getting along.

Because I think there is a difference between demanding that someone prove their love every moment and allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to say, "I'm struggling right now. I need you."

I want to learn that difference.

I want to learn how to ask for love without trying to control how it is given.

And I want to give my husband the opportunity to love me because he wants to, not because he feels that he has no other choice.

I want him to see me standing at the door and open it because he remembers that it matters to me.

I want him to see that I need a little extra affection and choose to reach for me because he wants me to feel loved.

I want him to learn my heart, just as I want to learn his.

I want him to understand where I struggle, what makes me feel safe, and the moments when a little extra tenderness could mean more to me than he realizes.

Not because I have forced him to memorize a list of expectations, but because we are learning each other.

Because love grows when two people become more intentional about understanding one another.

And I want to become more intentional about understanding him, too.

When Affection Becomes Something We Withhold

But I also have to be honest about the part that has hurt.

At some point, it started to feel like the things that once came naturally between us were no longer always there.

Sometimes, when he was upset with me, the things I had come to associate with love seemed to disappear.

And I didn't know what to do with that.

I would wonder if he was withholding affection because he was angry. I would wonder if he knew how much those little gestures meant to me and whether their absence was intentional.

If he didn't dry my back, was he simply tired? Was he upset? Was he pulling away? Was he trying to make a point?

I didn't know.

And I still don't know the intention behind every moment.

I cannot honestly say that every missed gesture was punishment. I cannot see inside his mind or know what he was feeling when he chose not to do something.

But I can tell you what happened inside mine.

I began to interpret those moments as rejection.

I would start thinking that my husband hated me, that he didn't want me anymore, that he was tired of me, or that I had finally pushed him beyond the point of being able to love me.

One small moment could become an entire story in my head.

And before I knew it, I wasn't simply hurt that he hadn't done something.

I was grieving the possibility that I had lost the man I married.

I was afraid that the love I had once known was gone for good.

And that fear became so overwhelming that I reached a point where I was begging for affection.

Begging for a hug.

Begging for a little tenderness.

Begging for one glimpse of the love I remembered.

I didn't want to have to beg my husband to want me. I didn't want to have to convince him to put his arms around me. I didn't want to feel like I had to earn the affection of the person who had promised to love me.

I just wanted to feel like his wife again.

I wanted to feel like I still had my person.

The man who chose me.

The man who married me.

The man I believed would show up for me through sickness and health, through the good days and the bad ones, through the moments when life was easy and the moments when we could barely understand each other.

I wanted to know that even when I had been difficult, even when I had said things that hurt him, even when I had made him angry, there was still room for tenderness between us.

I wanted to know that conflict didn't mean abandonment.

That anger didn't mean the end of love.

That we could be upset with each other and still remember that we were on the same team.

And I think that is what I have been longing for beneath so many of my expectations.

Not a perfectly executed routine.

Not a husband who never forgets a single thing.

Not someone who never gets angry or needs space.

I have been longing to know that our love is still there, even when we are struggling.

I have been longing to feel that we can hurt, disagree, and grow without losing sight of the commitment we made to each other.

And I am learning that I cannot force that reassurance to come from him.

I can explain my heart. I can tell him what I need. I can invite him into the places where I feel vulnerable.

But I cannot make affection genuine by begging for it.

What kind of love would it be if I had to force someone to act like they loved me?

What would it mean to feel a hug that someone gave only because they were afraid of what would happen if they didn't?

What would it mean to receive a kiss while wondering whether the person giving it actually wanted to?

I don't want affection that is performed out of fear.

I want affection that is freely given.

I want to feel loved because my husband wants to love me, not because he feels trapped by my expectations.

And I want him to be honest with me about what he feels, even when those feelings are difficult, because I don't want us to build a marriage around pretending.

I want something real.

Even if getting there requires us to face things that are uncomfortable.

The Fear That Maybe I Broke Something We Can't Fix

There is another part of this that I don't always know how to say out loud.

Sometimes I wonder if I have taken things too far.

Have I hurt him so deeply that he doesn't know how to look at me the way he once did?

Have I pushed him away so many times that he no longer knows how to come close?

Have I hurt my husband to the point that he doesn't believe things can be different?

Have I broken something in him that I don't know how to help heal?

I don't know.

And I think that uncertainty is one of the hardest parts of loving someone when your marriage is hurting.

Because I remember how he looked at me in the beginning.

I remember the feeling of being chosen.

I remember the little things that made me feel like I was the woman he wanted beside him.

And sometimes I wonder whether he can still see that woman when he looks at me now.

Can he look past the arguments, the fear, the insecurity, and the moments when we have hurt each other?

Can he still see the person he fell in love with after that first moment we met?

Can we find our way back to a love that feels safe, not because we never struggle, but because we have learned how to struggle together?

Or have we both been so hurt that we no longer know how to reach for each other?

I wish I had the answers.

I wish I could look into the future and know that everything we are working through will lead us somewhere beautiful.

But I can't.

And maybe that is why I have been trying so hard to control the little things.

Maybe I have been trying to hold on to every gesture, every routine, and every familiar sign of affection because I am afraid that if I let go, there will be nothing left to hold on to.

Maybe I have been treating those gestures like the last little pieces of the marriage I remember, afraid that if they disappear, the love will disappear with them.

But I am beginning to understand that I cannot rebuild a marriage by trying to recreate every moment from the beginning.

We are not the same two people we were then.

We have lived through things. We have hurt each other. We have changed.

If we are going to build something beautiful again, it may not look exactly like it did before.

Maybe it needs to become something new.

Something wiser.

Something more honest.

Something that allows both of us to be human without making the other person responsible for every fear we carry.

I don't want to spend the rest of my marriage trying to force my husband to become the man he was in the beginning.

I want to give us the opportunity to discover who we can become together.

And I hope that, as we heal, we can find our way back to those little things that made our love feel so special.

Not because we are trying to prove something.

But because we have learned how to love each other more intentionally.

I Can't Make Him Choose Me

I think this is where I have finally reached a point of surrender.

I am tired of holding on so tightly.

I am tired of trying to figure out what every little thing means.

I am tired of pushing for reassurance because I am afraid of what silence might mean.

I am tired of trying to make the outcome match the one I have imagined in my heart.

I don't want to force my husband to love me.

I don't want to force him to show me affection.

I don't want to force him to reach for me, hold me, or reassure me.

Because I am beginning to understand that I can ask for those things, communicate how much they mean to me, and invite him to grow with me, but I cannot make him want them.

I cannot make him choose me.

I cannot make him see our marriage the way I see it.

I cannot make him believe in our future if he is struggling to believe in it himself.

And that hurts more than I know how to explain.

Because I love him.

Because I remember what we had.

Because I still believe there is something worth fighting for.

Because a part of me still hopes that one day I will look at my husband and see that familiar love shining through his eyes again, and he will look at me and see the woman he once fell so deeply in love with.

I want that so badly.

But I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to force it to happen.

I don't want to turn love into a negotiation where I have to convince someone to give me what I am begging to receive.

I want to know that if we rebuild this marriage, we are both choosing it.

That we are both showing up.

That we are both willing to look at the ways we have contributed to the hurt and learn how to do things differently.

That we are not simply waiting for the other person to change while refusing to look at ourselves.

I know I have things to work on. I know my fears have affected us. I know there are times I have reacted from hurt instead of responding with wisdom.

And I want to keep growing.

But I also know that I cannot do the work for both of us.

I can become a healthier wife. I can learn to communicate differently. I can stop treating every missed gesture as proof that I am no longer loved.

I can make room for my husband to be human.

And I can pray that he will continue learning how to love me in the ways that matter to my heart, just as I continue learning how to love him in the ways that matter to his.

But I cannot make him take that journey.

I can only choose whether I am willing to take mine.

And if there comes a point when my husband truly believes he cannot or does not want to rebuild this marriage, I cannot force him to feel differently.

That is the painful reality of love.

We can choose someone with our whole heart, and still cannot make that person choose us in return.

But for now, I am choosing to stop trying to control the ending.

I am choosing to do my part and leave room for him to do his.

I am choosing to pray instead of panic, to communicate instead of assume, and to give God the space to work in places I cannot reach.

I am choosing to hope without demanding a guarantee.

And I am choosing to believe that if God is going to do something beautiful in our marriage, I don't have to force it into existence.

I can participate in the healing without trying to control every step of it.

I can love my husband without making him responsible for proving that I am worthy of love every single day.

And I can trust that the truth of our marriage will be revealed through the choices we both make, not through my ability to make sure nothing ever goes wrong.

Maybe God Is Asking Me to Open My Hands

I have been thinking about the way our story began.

I know that if some people heard the whole story of how we met, they might question whether our relationship ever had a chance.

Some might say we were too broken.

Some might say the circumstances were all wrong.

Some might say that two people with so much hurt between them could never make it work.

And maybe, if I were looking at our story only through the eyes of the people we were back then, I might understand why they would think that.

But God sees more than the beginning.

He sees the people we were, the people we are, and the people we still have the opportunity to become.

I recently read something about two people who fall deeply in love but aren't ready for the relationship they want to have. Sometimes they have to separate, grow, and learn things that they couldn't learn while trying to hold on to each other.

And sometimes life brings them back together when they are in a different place.

That idea stayed with me because I know what it feels like to have a relationship that didn't work the way I hoped it would, only to find myself standing in front of that same person again, with another opportunity to see what might be possible.

There was a time in my life when I was praying and asking God to bring me the man He had for me. I wanted a Godly husband, a man who would put Christ at the center of our relationship, who would love me the way Scripture describes love — patiently, kindly, sacrificially — and who would lead our family spiritually as we pursued God together. But if I am being honest, I was impatient. I was struggling with waiting, struggling with surrender, and struggling with my need to control the outcome. I wanted so badly to be loved, wanted, and chosen that I sometimes put myself in situations that left me hurt. I had all these expectations of what a Godly man should look like, and the longer I waited, the more discouraged I became.

But there was also a part of my heart that had never completely let go of the man I met before he became my husband. We met in a place where you would never expect to meet your soul mate, both of us standing in the lowest and most broken seasons of our lives. We saw the parts of each other that most people try to hide — the hurt, the wounds, the brokenness — and somehow, we fell in love with each other right there in the middle of it all. But love wasn't enough to make us ready. We had things to learn, wounds to heal, and lives to surrender to Christ. We had to walk away from each other and allow God to work on us separately, even when it meant grieving a love I thought I would never experience again.

I had to grieve the possibility that the man I fell in love with that day might never be the man I would marry. I had to release the dream I had carried of being his wife, and I eventually reached a point where I placed that dream in God's hands. I remember praying for the husband God had for me while trying to accept that maybe it wasn't going to be the man I had once loved so deeply. I was finally trying to let go of the past, let go of the future I had imagined with him, and trust that God knew the desires of my heart better than I did. I thought I was surrendering a broken relationship so God could bring me the person He had for me, never imagining that the man I was releasing might be the very man God would bring back into my life.

And while we were apart, God was working in both of us. I was learning to seek Him, to understand what I truly needed, and to recognize the ways my desperation to be loved was affecting my choices. My husband was finding his own way back to God, pursuing Him and asking Him to show up in his life. We were growing separately, learning things we couldn't learn for each other, and beginning to understand that we needed something greater than ourselves at the center of our lives.

When we found each other again, I wish I could say we were both healed, that we knew exactly what a Godly marriage looked like, and that we were suddenly ready to love each other perfectly. But that wasn't our story. We were still in the middle of it — in the middle of healing, forgiveness, surrender, and learning how to put God first. We were still human. We were still carrying things from our past. But this time, we had an opportunity to choose each other while learning to choose God, too.

And I am so grateful that God brought my husband back when He did, because by that point, I was beginning to lose hope. I had prayed for a Godly husband, but somewhere in my waiting, I had started doubting what God could do in my life. After all the progress I thought I had made, I felt as though I had taken ten steps backward. I was tired of waiting, tired of being hurt, and tired of trying to figure everything out on my own. I was close to throwing in the towel, and right there in that moment, my husband came back into my life. Not a perfect man who had everything figured out, but a man who was pursuing God and trying to figure it all out, just as I was.

And now, here we are, trying to learn how to love each other in a way that honors God and protects the marriage we chose. We are still figuring things out. We are still learning how to surrender our fears, heal our wounds, and stop allowing our past to dictate our future. Sometimes it is confusing. Sometimes it is painful. Sometimes the hurt and anger make it difficult to see that we are supposed to be on the same team. But after everything God has done in both of our lives, I find myself asking: why would I decide that our story is beyond hope before giving Him room to continue working in it?

I choose my husband. I choose him in the confusion and the chaos, in the hurt and the anger, and even in the moments when I struggle with feeling abandoned. I choose to keep doing my part, to keep growing, and to keep praying for our marriage. Not because I can make him choose me, and not because I can guarantee how our story will end, but because I believe our marriage is worth bringing before God and asking Him to help us rebuild.

And today, I am giving God something more than my own heart. I am giving Him my husband's heart, too. I know I am human. I know I have made mistakes, and I know that my fear has sometimes affected the way I love. But I am asking God to help me protect my husband's heart instead of allowing my insecurities to hurt it. I am asking Him to teach me how to love my husband with patience, grace, and understanding. I am asking Him to heal the places in both of us that still hurt, to show us how to stop fighting each other and start standing together against the things that threaten our marriage, and to restore what has been broken if that is His will. I am asking Him to help us become the husband and wife we are still learning how to be.

God, I am giving You our marriage. I am giving You our past, our pain, our mistakes, and our future. I am asking You to protect my husband's heart, to heal mine, and to teach us how to love each other the way You intended. I cannot force reconciliation, and I cannot control what my husband chooses, but I can choose to surrender my own heart to You. I pray that You will continue working in both of us, that You will guide our steps, and that You will reconcile our marriage in the name of Jesus. I don't know exactly what You are doing, but I don't want my fear to make me doubt what You are capable of. I want to trust You with the story I thought I had lost, the man I thought I had to let go of forever, and the future I am still learning to place in Your hands.

I wasn't ready before.

And I know I am still learning now.

I cannot say with certainty that every part of our story happened because God intended it to happen exactly that way.

But I do believe He can take brokenness and bring good from it.

I believe He can meet us in our mistakes, teach us through our pain, and lead us toward healing when we are willing to surrender our own ways of doing things.

So who am I to decide that our story is beyond redemption?

Who am I to assume that because we have been hurt, we cannot heal?

Who am I to decide that the love we once had can never grow into something deeper and healthier?

I don't know what God will do with our marriage.

But I know I don't want my fear to make that decision for me.

I don't want to spend so much time trying to preserve the love I remember that I never give the love we could build a chance to grow.

And I don't want to confuse surrender with giving up.

Sometimes surrender means releasing the need to control the person you love and trusting God enough to let that person make their own choices.

Sometimes it means accepting that you cannot force a reconciliation, even when you desperately want one.

Sometimes it means doing the work in your own heart while waiting to see whether the other person is willing to do the work in theirs.

And sometimes it means loving someone enough to stop trying to control how they love you.

I am not giving up on my marriage today.

I am giving up on the idea that I can save it by controlling every little thing.

I am giving up on the belief that if I can just get him to open the door, dry my back, hold me, or say the right thing, I will finally be able to rest.

I am giving up on trying to force a glimpse of the old love to appear every time I am afraid it has disappeared.

Instead, I am going to work on becoming the woman I believe God is calling me to be.

I am going to give my husband the freedom to choose the husband he wants to become.

I am going to pray for us both.

And I am going to leave the outcome in God's hands.

Because I cannot make my husband choose me.

But I can choose how I love him.

I can choose how I respond.

I can choose whether I allow fear to keep running my life.

And I can choose to trust God even when I don't know what He is going to do.

I still hope my husband and I find our way back to each other in the ways that matter most.

I still hope we learn to reach for each other instead of pulling away.

I still hope that the little things that once made us feel so loved become part of our marriage again, not because either of us is afraid of the consequences if we don't do them, but because we have learned how to care for each other's hearts.

I still hope that one day we will look back on this season and understand how much we had to learn.

But I cannot live today trying to force tomorrow to look the way I want it to.

So I am opening my hands.

I am giving God my husband, my marriage, my fears, my expectations, and my hope for what we might become.

And I am asking Him to teach me how to love without fear, how to trust without controlling, and how to remain faithful to the work He has placed in front of me without trying to do the work that belongs to someone else.

I don't know how our story ends.

But I know I don't want fear to write the rest of it.

I want to leave room for God.

I want to leave room for growth.

I want to leave room for my husband to choose me freely, just as I have chosen him.

And I want to remember that no matter what happens, I am still responsible for the woman I become along the way.

I can fight for my marriage without fighting to control my husband. I can hope for reconciliation without demanding it. And I can love him with an open hand, trusting God with the parts of our story that I cannot write myself.

Maybe this is what surrender looks like.

Not the absence of love.

Not the absence of hope.

But the decision to stop trying to force love to look a certain way and begin trusting God with what comes next.

Still becoming.

Still learning.

Still choosing love.

And finally, learning to let go.

-Megan