Sin of Withholdingنموونە

Withholding in Marriage

In Ephesians 5:25-28 Paul gives Christians the antidote to any withholding pattern that can creep up in a Christian marriage. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 

After he tells men to love their wives like Christ loves the church, he says something very interesting in verse 29, “After all, no one ever hated his own body, but they feed and care for their body…” I find this a very interesting scripture. Paul suggests that taking care of a spouse is like feeding and caring for your body.

Factually, let’s go through feeding and caring for your physical body. You work for food, then shop for it, then cook it, and then eat it. On average, it would be safe to say we spend around two hours a day just feeding our body and about a half hour to an hour a day just to wash our body. Another step in caring for your body is sleep. For most of us, sleep is an eight-hour investment. You can see that caring for yourself on a daily basis is time-consuming and is factually committing many hours of your day to self-care. At a very core level, you fully accept with gratitude the DAILY maintenance of your body. 

In the same way, we should have a great and thankful attitude for the work it takes to maintain an “all in” marriage on a daily basis. We should pray together, share our feelings, and praise each other daily. We should create and maintain a system where dating and connecting romantically are a high priority and make every effort to make wise parenting and financial decisions. This shouldn’t be a chore, but rather one of our greatest blessings in life.

Those who are withholders have real challenges in their marriages, as do the spouses they inflict withholding upon. Marriage is the one constant relationship where you publicly declare to love, honor, and cherish the other person. If you are married, practicing the sin of withholding creates all kinds of pain and trauma.

The term intimacy anorexia is what I call withholding in marriage. Intimacy anorexia is the active withholding of spiritual, emotional, and physical intimacy. Intimacy anorexics will have some of common characteristics. They will often blame and be too busy for their spouse. They will regularly withhold love and praise and will avoid sharing their emotions. 

Withholding spiritually is withholding spiritual connectedness from your spouse. Regardless of the rationalization, there is an absence of spiritual connecting between the intimacy anorexic and their spouse. It is also common for anorexics to avoid giving all of themselves to their spouse physically. Often, the anorexic can use anger or silence toward their spouse and the spouse will feel more like a roommate than a spouse. 

Marriage is the only relationship that, by definition, demands emotional, spiritual, and sexual intimacy on an exclusive, committed basis over a prolonged period of time, or as the vow goes, “till death do us part.”

If we are withholding or being withheld from there is hope to heal. God doesn’t expose withholding except for one reason: to heal it. You will need support and more information on intimacy anorexia to help heal from the sin of withholding in your marriage.

This silent sin of withholding has many casualties, much like pornography, workaholism, or other major issues in marriage. Being able to see withholding as sin that our Lord Jesus Christ has already died for gives us hope. Christ desires us to have an “all in” marriage.