How can I be sure that my wife loves only me?

Question:

I'm married. My wife was the only girl in my life. However, she did love someone before she met me but it did not materialize as her parents were against the marriage. She broke away from the boy and almost gave up on life, deciding never to marry. I then walked into her life and she told me about him. One day she told me that the boy had tried to touch her by putting his hand into her blouse, but she did not allow it. I was naive enough to understand that maybe they were not involved physically. I was happy. However, one day she mentioned her diary, and I asked her for it. She refused. She said that I would not understand the things in it. I said okay, and we both agreed to burn it. Years later I managed to get in touch with her previous lover, and he told me how he loved to kiss her all the time, at all places even on the beaches, hotel, and her home. That he hugged her a lot and touched her breasts only from outside. I asked her about this and the diary came back to my mind. We had a fight and I told her that if she loves me and wants the marriage to work, I need to know the truth.

She told me that she had recorded the first kiss in the diary as it made her feel loved for the first time in her life. She did not want me to read it as she felt that I would feel that she is not capable of loving me as she already had those experiences. She said she was sorry that I was not her first kiss. but I was the only one to have made love to her. These things haunt me and at times I find it difficult to forgive her for telling me these things now only after I found out and that so many years after we are married.

What would you advise me? I must say she has been a good wife. But how am I to be sure that she loves me only? That she is not faithful to her old memories? After all, she did not break up on her own, she was forced to by her parents. Please advise.

Answer:

You won't like this, but you are being unreasonable and foolish. You are out looking for reasons to doubt your wife's love, even though she has given you no reason to doubt it. She clearly has let the past go, but you continue to drag it back up. "Love does not envy" (I Corinthians 13:4), but you are full of jealousy for a man whom your wife did not marry. Love "thinks no evil" (I Corinthians 13:5), but you have decided that your wife is unfaithful to you in thoughts -- without evidence of such. The reality is that your love isn't what it ought to be. You are driving a wedge between you and your wife, destroying the relationship you should be having.

Your wife was right about the diary. There is no reason for you to know about the details of her prior relationships. Such knowledge does nothing to strengthen your love for her. You sought out her old boyfriend, and take his word over your wife's though he has the motivation to undermine your marriage because he is jealous of you.

Your expectations are unreasonable. You seem to expect that a woman picks the man she loves the first time, without making a mistake. You also think that a person is only capable of loving just one person. Love doesn't come in a limited quantity. She loves her parents, her children, her friends, and her God. To you, whom she loves, she has given herself. She has been faithful to you alone.

Instead of being content with what the Lord has blessed you, you demand a past that cannot exist before you will allow yourself to be happy. You are destroying yourself because the past cannot be changed. Look at what you have, and get on your knees and thank the Lord that He has allowed her in your life. "He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the LORD" (Proverbs 18:22).

Response:

Thank you for the most appropriate, genuine, and straight forward insight into my problem. Thank you for telling me what I needed to hear. May God bless you and your ministry. I will pray for you. Indeed, my wife is God's best blessing to me. I love her, will love her always; and instead of just regretting the wrong I did, I will try my best to make up for all the lost moments of love. Thank you again.

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