george whitefield was a lousy husband

I read a biography of Whitefield a while back. It spent much time celebrating him and his role in the Great Awakening, but I don’t recall it spending much time dwelling over Whitefield’s shortcomings as a husband.

Things got off to a swell start when he preached twice daily during his week-long honeymoon with his wife Elizabeth James. Two years later he missed the birth of their only child. When she sailed with him to America he later described her accompanying him as a load and a burden. Out of the remaining twenty years of their marriage until she died in 1768, he probably spent at least half of it away from her on itinerant preaching. The emotional distance was probably even greater.

I guess that’s one way of interpreting ” let those who have wives live as though they have had none.”