Marital problems
Q: I have been married for a few years. During the first year of my marriage, I suffered from a panic/anxiety attack after which I made sincere tauba and committed myself to being on the right path and not being careless about committed sins especially zina. Within the first 2 years of my marriage, I travelled and worked in 3 different countries. Me and my spouse were living in different countries for the first two years and I finally joined my spouse after 2 years. I’d like to believe that I became very religious in these two years. Things between me and my spouse were not great from the very beginning. Emotionally and physically, attraction between me and my spouse was average. Religiously we were not on the same page because my spouse is a revert. I suffered from a really bad panic attack and for months I was constantly anxious and depressed. Later that year I invited my parents to visit me, hoping that it would help me to regain my mental health but nothing changed. I was becoming more and more depressed. There was a lot of friction between my spouse and my parents and once my parents left, Allah blessed me with a child. My parents came back to visit us to help us during the time of the birth of our child, but things got worse between me and my spouse because of the presence of my parents in the house. My spouse left the house because of the toxic environment in the house and came back to the house once my parents left. From that point on, our relationship has been going down hill. We became emotionally detached and our intimate life became very very poor.
For the next couple of years my spouse left the house out of anger and frustration and demanded for divorce many many times. According to my spouse, the anger and frustration shown on her part was to bring me back closer but it actually pushed me more and more away. We became intimate hardly 5-8 times in 2 years. On multiple occasions my spouse told me to go and look for another person and demanded divorce.
Up till this point, I was able to guard myself and protect myself from the worldly temptations. I wanted to feel loved and so I joined a matrimonial website looking for a spouse. I met this person (Muslim but not religious at all) online and after almost 1 year of communication between us, we met in person. We were supposed to get married but that person, just before we were supposed to do our Nikkah, backed out. However we ended up committing zina later that day. I felt so guilt and cried over it for many nights. Our illegitimate relationship continued for many months and then we broke up. Meanwhile things with my spouse were getting worse and worse and we decided to divorce. In between I met few other people and committed zina. I felt like my heart became very hard and even though I was making all of my salahs etc , deep down I was feeling really guilt and sad because of my actions. I felt like I was being pulled away from the right path as a punishment from Allah. I started wondering why Allah would allow this when I was trying to be on the right path. I was on the right path for many years and I feel so broken that things I used to speak against myself like zina etc, I ended up committing those sins myself.
However on the day I was supposed to divorce my spouse, we both felt that we need to spend more time and seriously work towards our marriage. I realized that all these worldly temptations are temporary and I seriously need to spend time in nurturing our married life. I want to be back on the right path. I have asked Allah for forgiveness but I keep getting tempted by, if not zina than other sins. I am not physically and emotionally attracted to my spouse. We are going to try our best to make this marriage work. Please advise;
1. That how I can attain forgiveness from Allah and his love. I am scared that I will be punished twice for my sins because that’s what Allah says in the Quran. I don’t want to be punished at all.
2. How can I make sure that I am not tempted to committing zina because of lack of attraction between me and my spouse (my spouse is overweight from the very beginning and is not consistent with activities that would help to lose weight)
3. How can I be motivated about keeping my marriage safe
4. What should I do if I don’t feel attracted at all even after all the efforts are made