The First Time My Wife Said "I Don't Love You."
"Barna finds that the divorce rate among born-again Christians (27 percent) and fundamentalist Christians (30 percent) actually is higher than the rate for non-Christians (23 percent)." -Jim Killam
“You were talking too much,” laughed Ashley. James looked up and down between her and the empty plate that sat between them. She had eaten the entire dessert they had planned on splitting whilst he talked with friends at the dinner table.
“I found it adorable,” he remembers.
Ashley and James had met the month prior at a baseball game but Ashley was in a relationship at the time. Now, on a cold January night, they sat across from one another at a mutual friend’s birthday dinner. Both single. James hadn’t been with anyone in years–not since his son’s mother, but not for lack of interest either. It just never worked out with any other woman, nothing made sense. But here Ashley sat in front of him. He was captivated by her looks, her aura and her intellect.
A couple of weeks later, Ashley reached out to buy him a cake as a thank you–more like a sorry–for eating the whole dessert at their friend’s dinner. Their first date was on Valentine’s day. “Within a couple of months I knew I wanted to be with her. People didn’t really know Ashley, but I wanted to date her right away,” James remembers.
Their courtship was intense and intentional. James, a successful financial advisor carrying the wounds of a previous divorce, a violent past, and trauma as an inner city kid, insisted they attend couples therapy even before they started officially dating. He knew that due to his upbringing, he couldn’t function with a romantic partner without help. “If you really want something meaningful,” he told her, “you’re going to have to attend these sessions with me.” Ashley said yes without hesitation. It drew him more to her.
Sitting in a Panera Bread, discussing a book about preparing for marriage, Ashley began to tell James about her goal of becoming a traveling consultant. Uh oh. At the age of 41, he knew he wanted a wife who would be present, not constantly away for travel. “But who in the world am I to go ahead and interfere in a lifelong dream of hers?,” he thought to himself.
He looked up at Ashley. “I think we should break up,” he said definitively.
Ashley lost it. Once they got back to the car, she kicked the window, punched and slammed doors in a fit of rage that left James shaken and concerned. Memories of his violent past began to resurface and he wondered if this was something he could handle long-term. But when they phoned their therapist and she explained it as Ashley’s way of expressing pain and love, James chose logic over instinct. Deep down, he knew it was a red flag. But he figured love wasn’t easy. They were going to fight, right? Love meant working through difficulties, didn’t it? Despite his better judgement, James pushed forward.
James and Ashley married in August 2016 with the confidence that they were both committed Christians who shared the same values and vision for life. James treasured his and Ashley’s Bible studies together, their shared desire to honor God with their lives, and Ashley’s brilliant mind. He loved doing new things with her. He valued their movie nights, their intellectual conversations about psychology and faith, and their mutual agreement to have high integrity. She was getting her doctorate; he was building his business. They seemed like great partners destined to be a power couple.
Marriage began to reveal some deeper cracks within the relationship. Ashley’s independence, which James had admired at first, was now beginning to feel more like resistance to partnership. His controlling tendencies coupled with his unrelenting attitude, which he admits can sometimes air on the side of extreme, clashed with her fierce autonomy. “I’m high control. I am...But I never tried to stop her from doing anything,” he shares. Therapy helped them navigate some issues, but others festered.
The Beginning of the End
Six years later, after an argument about Ashley’s interactions with other men at a friend’s wedding, she looked James in the eye across a restaurant table and said, “I don’t love you,” in front of a mutual friend.
Time stopped. He didn’t understand. The words came out of nowhere, calm and matter-of-fact, like she was commenting on the weather. They’d just returned from celebrating their anniversary for three weeks in Spain. Nevertheless, James had been reading about disciplined Christian living, feeling like God was preparing him for something he couldn’t yet name. He now understood.
He felt something shift inside him—not just the seething presence of deep hurt, but a recognition that this was a moment that would define everything that came after. He’d seen this before, with other couples in their friend circle. The casual declaration of unlove, delivered like a verdict. “I was angry, disturbed, and felt betrayed,” he remembers.
“Ashley,” he said, “if our marriage was ever in danger, I told you I would let you know.” He paused. “We’re there.” With all the anger, hurt and shame rising from his chest and into his throat, he looked at her, “I’m about to destroy this marriage.”
Their friend, who James forgot was even still at the table, calmly asked “Well, why do you have to be the one to destroy it?” It disarmed him. He took a breath, trying to regain control and paused again.
He recognized he loved God too much to act in anger and loved Ashley too much to give up without a fight. After a moment, he admitted at the table that he was hurt and asked if they could all pray together. “This is game over,” he thought to himself as they walked out.
The marriage limped forward through intervention sessions with their church elders, through James’s mother’s illness that consumed much of his time and energy, through house-hunting and dream-building that felt increasingly hollow. For months, things seemingly got better. They traveled to Puerto Rico for Valentine’s Day, rekindled their connection, and found their way back to each other–or so it seemed.
The moment when everything changed was a business decision—a major one. James’ partnership was dissolving, and he chose to walk away from a significant financial opportunity rather than what he saw as compromising his principles. But he didn’t consult Ashley first. He acted on his emotions and walked away from his partners and significant income without looping her into the decision. In his mind, he was protecting their future, building something better. She, of course, saw it differently.
“Do you see your paycheck?” she asked one day, and James heard something in her voice he’d never heard before—what he perceived as contempt mixed with fear.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You’re only making a thousand dollars a month.”
James tried to explain the mechanics of his business, how he was paying back advances, how the situation was temporary. But Ashley had already made her calculations. Her income had tripled that year, and suddenly the financial dynamic had shifted in ways that exposed deeper fault lines including unhealed places and fundamental differences about what it meant to be partners.
“When I removed myself from a stable team making good money, I realize now that probably triggered her with her childhood... and I didn’t pray for her through that. I was like, ‘I got this,’” he admits.
He began to notice a shift in Ashley’s heart.
“I want to go where I want, buy what I want, whenever I want,” she announced one evening over dinner after returning from a girls trip to Paris.
James stared at her across the dinner table, recognizing the voice of someone who had tasted a different kind of freedom and found marriage suddenly constraining. “That’s not really a marriage,” he replied.
“I know,” Ashley said.
The Departure
The end came swiftly. Within twenty-two days of Ashley praying that God would make His will clear about their house purchase—”If we don’t get this house, I should leave”—the sellers accepted their bid. When James asked what God was telling her now, Ashley didn’t answer. She had already moved out. Friends had advised her to leave.
James spent that previous Saturday packing Ashley’s belongings into a U-Haul, Christian worship music blasting through his headphones. “That was probably the hardest time in my whole span, the hardest time ever with me and God in the sense like, ‘I need strength, God,’” he remembers. Every box he carried felt like carrying the broken pieces of his heart to the curb. When she criticized him for stopping to pick up his mother’s birthday cake, calling it evidence that he “always put everyone else first,” James felt the last threads of hope snap.
“Would you text me when you get there safely?” he asked as she prepared to drive away.
“Yes,” she said, and she did. It was the last kind gesture between them.
The moment her taillights disappeared around the corner, James stopped sharing his location with her on his phone. “She’s never coming back,” he told his friends.
He was right.
The Wilderness of Forgiveness
In the months that followed, James discovered something unexpected: his faith didn’t crumble under the weight of abandonment—it crystallized. While people let him know that Ashley was drifting away from church, from their shared circle of friends, from the spiritual disciplines that had once anchored her, James found himself drawing closer to God than ever before. In the wake of losing his wife, their mutual friends he considered family, and his actual in-laws who were family, James held onto God like He was all he had.
He established a daily routine that became his lifeline: three hours each morning in prayer, Bible study, and worship. He ran ten-mile distances while singing praise songs, each step a prayer, each breath a surrender. The physical exhaustion became a spiritual discipline, teaching him that he could endure more than he ever imagined.
“Jesus learned obedience through suffering,” he often said to himself. If Christ himself was perfected through pain, who was James to expect exemption? “I am not special, there will be suffering for me and that is not an excuse to be unfaithful towards God.”
The hardest part wasn’t the loneliness or the practical complications of divorce—it was watching someone he loved choose what he believed was spiritual destruction. James continued praying for Ashley daily, not out of hope for reconciliation, but out of love for her soul. He mourned not just the loss of his wife, but the loss of the woman he believed she truly was beneath the layers of hurt and worldly ambition.
“I mourn the fictitious daughter that we created. I mourn the woman that I always thought Ashley was. That’s what I mourn. Like what we could have done together collectively,” he shares.
The breakthrough came when he realized that throughout their marriage, he’d never really prayed for Ashley the way a husband should pray for his wife. He’d prayed about their problems, about his frustrations, about wanting her to change. But he’d never prayed for God to defend her against Satan’s schemes, never interceded for her heart the way he would for any other beloved daughter of God. “That awareness to say, you know, you could have fought for your marriage in that capacity, there was a great deal of shame on my end from a Christian man’s perspective, as a Christian husband,” he shares.
The guilt was crushing at first. Then it became fuel for a different kind of love—one that could persist even without reciprocation.
Ashley filed for divorce, and all James could feel was numbness. He hired an attorney with specific instructions: “Treat her like your daughter and protect me like your son.”
Through it all, James held onto a simple truth: Satan was the enemy, not Ashley.
His attorney, with thirty years of experience, couldn’t believe how the case unfolded. Every decision went in James’s direction and every legal challenge resolved in his favor. James thought about a new name he had learned for God: El Gibbor—God who fights for you.
“I don’t think He was fighting against her,” James told friends. “I think He was fighting for what was right.”
Forgiveness came in stages. First came the decision to forgive—a choice James made early, before he even felt it. Then came the emotional forgiveness, the release of anger and resentment that had taken root during their worst fights.
But the deepest forgiveness was harder: forgiving himself for the ways he’d failed as a husband—for not seeing and hearing his wife in the way she needed, for his impatience and controlling tendencies, and for not praying the way biblical love demanded. He looked back and recognized all the ways he struggled with being kind and gentle throughout both of his marriages.
He called his first wife, his son’s mother, and apologized for things he’d done twenty years earlier. “I said ‘I am really sorry for what I’ve done to you and how I [treated you]... I looked down on you.” The conversation lasted two hours and ended with both of them in tears.
“I’ve been waiting twenty years to hear you say that,” she told him.
It was a model for a larger kind of forgiveness—the kind that doesn’t require reciprocation or even acknowledgment. James forgave Ashley not because she asked for it, but because he believed his soul couldn’t carry the weight of unforgiveness and still follow Jesus.
The Unexpected Strength
What surprised James most was his own resilience. The man who had once been emotionally guarded found himself vulnerable in ways he had never been before. His son observed, “Dad, you’re less robotic now. More human.” The irony wasn’t lost on James—losing his wife had somehow made him a more authentic version of himself.
“I struggle with image... I never wanted to be viewed as the poor guy or, you know, in any way. [I wanted to be seen as] always on top. That’s why I would suppress those feelings in the past,” he shares.
He learned to feel his emotions fully instead of suppressing them, to breathe through pain instead of running from it, and to journal his thoughts instead of letting them fester. Therapy taught him that his behavior could change his circumstances, but only a changed heart could change his life.
Eighteen months after Ashley left, James was becoming a different man. Not broken and rebuilt, but refined—emerging stronger and more pure. His relationship with his son has deepened. His business has recovered and is thriving. He’s started hosting dinners at his home on Friday nights.
And he’s learned something profound about love: it doesn’t end when the other person leaves. Real love—the kind that reflects God’s heart—persists even in the face of betrayal, even without hope of restoration.
James still prays for Ashley. Not because he wants her back, but he believes you don’t stop loving someone just because they choose a different path. He believes they haven’t stopped being family just because they’re divorced. He believes that God will continue to protect his family—including Ashley He prays that she will find her way back to God, back to the woman he’d fallen in love with—not for his sake, but for hers.
He has learned to love without attachment, to hope without expectation, to forgive without reconciliation. When people ask if he misses Ashley, he can honestly say he misses the good memories while being grateful to be free from the painful ones.
“I miss not being able to hear how she feels about a matter or experiencing new things with her…I miss the little things like how she did her hair every week, watching crime shows, and her crazy diets…There’s components that I really, really loved about Ashley that I clearly miss. I still get angry that she’s made this decision,” he shares.
However, the most unexpected gift of the divorce was freedom—not from marriage, which James still believes in deeply, but from destruction.
“I had been praying for peace and vengeance, like, deliverance. Vindication was the actual term. I was like, ‘God, please vindicate me. I don’t understand why this is happening. Why does she see so much fault in me? I was like, ‘Please vindicate me. Please vindicate me,’” he shares. “And I promise you fast forwarding, I would have never thought that vindication looks like divorce, but I do believe that now. And the peace that I have now, I would have never ever thought that peace came from a hardened heart and separation and divorce.”
James feels like he can be generous again without fear, serve others without guilt and make decisions based on God’s calling rather than human approval–all things he found challenging to do while married to Ashley. But he recognizes that the end of their marriage took them both. There is plenty he wishes he could have done differently. At the same time, he is learning not to take all the blame and to recognize shared responsibility while still owning his specific role and mistakes that lead to the divorce.
“I naturally go there. I’m like, it is me, me, me, me. But then if it’s only one person saying it’s you, it’s you, it’s you, it’s you, then, you know, it’s not real because it’s both of y’all.”
The Continuing Story
James has survived not one but two divorces, and his faith has not only endured but deepened. “I did feel shame from being divorced twice…I felt shame and questioned whether I should have ever married–like I was bound for failure,” he shares. However, he now understands that God’s love isn’t proven by preventing suffering but by providing strength to endure it with grace. Every morning brings fresh mercies, every challenge brings new opportunities to trust, and every heartache brings choices to go and grow through.
The man who had once struggled with patience and gentleness is now learning both through loss. The businessman who had measured success in dollars and assets is discovering treasure that couldn’t be stolen or divided in court proceedings.
James is only 48, with potentially decades of life ahead and still desires partnership. But he has learned something that many never discover: that a man’s worth isn’t measured by his marital status or his bank account, but by his faithfulness to love God and serve others regardless of his circumstances. He leaves us with these final thoughts:
“This is not the end of my story. My faithfulness in my marriage was not wasted, and God will use even this pain for a greater purpose. Stay rooted in Him and He will guide me into healing, renewal, and even joy again. While it’s hard to see now, there are several ways He can use this season for something greater—both in my life and in the lives of others:
1. Deepening Your Relationship with God:
Pain has a way of drawing us closer to God in ways that comfort never could. Right now, I am in a position to experience God’s presence, love, and faithfulness like never before. (”My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” —2 Corinthians 12:9) I may have sought God before, but this season can teach me to lean on Him in a deeper way—to truly trust Him with my future.
2. Strengthening Your Character & Faith
Hard times refine us. This pain, though devastating, can shape me into someone stronger, wiser, and more compassionate. God often uses trials to:
• Teach patience and endurance (James 1:2-4)
• Grow spiritual maturity (Romans 5:3-4)
• Build empathy for others who are hurting
I’ll come out of this more resilient and spiritually grounded, ready for what’s next.
3. Preparing You for Your True Calling:
Sometimes, God removes things to make room for something better. What if this painful season is actually positioning me for the calling God has on my life? (”For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” —Jeremiah 29:11) I may not see it now, but this could be the very thing that shapes my purpose, ministry, or next step in life.
4. Using Your Story to Help Others:
One day, my story will be someone else’s survival guide, hence this piece. There are others who are (or will be) going through heartbreak, wondering where God is in it all. Because of what I’ve endured, I’ll be able to encourage them from a place of true understanding. (”He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.” —2 Corinthians 1:4) My testimony of God’s faithfulness through this pain will strengthen others, maybe even in ways I can’t imagine.
5. Redirecting You to Something Greater:
Sometimes, we don’t realize that we’re settling for less than what God intended. If my marriage was no longer aligned with God’s plan for my life, then this could be His way of leading me to something far better. Think of Joseph in Genesis—betrayed, sold into slavery, thrown into prison. Yet, every painful step led him to a position of great influence and purpose. What the enemy meant for harm, God used for good (Genesis 50:20).
6. Restoring You for Future Blessings:
Right now, this pain feels overwhelming. But God is a God of restoration. He may:
Heal my heart in ways I never expected
Bring new opportunities for joy and purpose
Even introduce me to someone who values and honors the covenant of marriage in a way my ex-wife didn’t
‘I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.’ — Joel 2:25
Final Thought
This chapter is painful, but it’s not the end of my story. God is still writing it, and what’s ahead is better than what’s behind. Hold on to Him, trust the process, and know that this season is shaping you for something far greater than you can see right now.”
“There is someone I love, even though I don’t approve of what he does. There is someone I accept, though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me. There is someone I forgive, though he hurts the people I love the most. That person is me … If I can love myself without approving of all I do, I can also love others without approving of all they do.” —C.S. Lewis
Note: This story represents one person’s journey through divorce—specifically, James’s perspective, experiences, and interpretation of events. Like all relationship stories, there are multiple truths, multiple perspectives, and complexities that cannot be fully captured from a single vantage point.
Ashley’s story—her experiences, her pain, her reasons, and her journey—is not told here. This is not because her perspective lacks validity, but because this narrative focuses solely on James’s spiritual and emotional journey through an unwanted divorce.
Every marriage that ends contains two stories, two sets of wounds, two paths of growth. This is only one of them.
This is a honest account of faith tested, accountability accepted, and resilience discovered—all through one man’s eyes.
Wow! So heart-felt & well told. It really shows the MANY layers of grief through divorce.