How do we resolve my unbelieving husband's sinful acts
which are hurting our marriage?

    I suggest that the place to start is to rephrase your question in the light of an often ignored or unrecognized truth.  Marriages are not "hurt," people are.  Marriage has no life or existence of its own, only the persons involved.  Focusing on the problems of "the marriage" depersonalizes the issue and abates our ability to seek a solution from Scripture.  One other rephrase is needed in that a "we" cannot do anything unless the "we" agree on it.  You say that your husband is an unbeliever, so I assume that you consider yourself to be a believer.  Finding something that your "we" can agree to might be quite difficult at this time.  So, let us see how your new question reads.  "How can I resolve my unbelieving husband's sinful acts which are hurting me?"  Now we have something to work with because God deals with just such issues throughout His word.

    Let us first determine what you consider to constitute "resolve."  If you are thinking that there is some clever psychological method or technique to get your husband to change, then you have just embarked on a dead end road.  As a counselor, I wish someone would show me how anybody can make anybody else change.  I would pay dearly for that information and subsequently become rich and famous.  Fortunately it is not out there to be had.  I say "fortunately" because such power in the hands of sinners would surely be used destructively.  So I leave that business to God who knows what He is doing, and I suggest that you do the same.  However, that runs opposite to my "grain," and I suspect yours also.  So, it will take a concentrated effort on both our parts to deny ourselves from even pretending for a moment that either of us has, or ever will have, the cleverness or power to change any one other than our self.

    Okay, so neither of us can change your husband.  What then does that leave us to expect to "resolve?"  How about this?  Resolve means to use the circumstances in which you find yourself to bring yourself to the same "resolve" that Christ came to in John chapter 17 where He says, "nevertheless, not my will but Your will be done."  Now, if you are still reading at this point, there is a basis for real hope.  If you quit reading at this point, I can only assume that you demand your environment change according to your will as a pre-condition of your cooperation.  If you are still with me, there is one more clarification needed before I give you some concrete direction.

    What do you put in to the category of "sinful acts?"  Are you talking strictly about behaviors which are labeled as such in Scripture?  Are we talking adultery, theft, lying, forgery, beatings, drunkenness, and the like, or are we talking about things such as stubbornness, unappreciative, controlling, demanding, insensitivity, and uncomplimentary, etc.?  If we are talking about the first group, then we still have good news awaiting us.  If some of the second group is being labeled as "sin," then we have a problem of rewriting God's law to include our wants and desires.  That would be elevating our desires and wants to the level of God's law.

    It is review time.  Do you agree that there is no clever trick or power available to you to affect any change in your husband?  If yes, then do you also agree to limit your list of grievances to only those clearly defined "sins" in Scripture -- not your desires, or your "he shoulds," or "he ought to's?"  If yes on both of these, then here is the plan as outlined in the New Testament.  You are to live before your husband in such a way that you are blameless.  Whew!  It ain't easy, but it sure is rewarding.

    Living blamelessly before your husband involves at least two major tasks.  One is to stop any and all behaviors which rightfully belong in God's domain.  Acts of disciplining, parenting, or training him fall in that category.  You need to get uninvolved in those actions if you want God to get involved in them.  The second task is to love your husband in the manner in which God loves him.  There is so much confusion and misinformation on that point that I will suggest some help on that issue later.

    This process will not be easy because the situation you are in might reveal in ugly detail some area of your own life that is out of whack.  You might discover that you have been working with an unscriptural, worldly, or otherwise distorted concept of love.  You might discover that you have been living out the "marriage curse" described in Genesis chapter 3 where God tells Eve that, as a result of her sin, she will seek the position/role of husband -- try directly or indirectly to be the "head" of the husband.  You might discover that you have been playing the role of "victim" and blame your husband for your unhappiness.  You might find that you have been playing the role of "accuser," acting as judge or policeman to set him straight.  You might find that you have been playing the role of "rescuer," trying to save him from himself, his situation, or even hell itself.  These are the most common areas, broadly stated, which I see in therapy that are present in cases such as you describe.

    If you suspect that you might have been playing one or more of those three roles, victim, accuser, or rescuer, I suggest that you seek a counselor who is trained/skilled in the area of "personality disorders."  I am not, in any way, suggesting that you have a personality disorder.  I am suggesting that you seek out someone with that background because those three roles are linked together in a triad in the life of clients who do have a personality disorder, so that counselor will be able to use his or her skill and understanding to help you break free from which ever role you have been stuck.  Counselors untrained in this area will miss it and go off on rabbit trails looking for something that they can recognize.

    Now I will not give you directions for all of this via the internet, but I can direct you to where you can get some help for carrying this out.  If you want to know how to love your husband Biblically, I suggest the book titled, Bold Love by Dan Allender.  He has a section devoted to just your situation and presents the clearest understanding of how to Biblically love such a person that I have come across to date.  At the risk of oversimplifying, Biblically loving someone is an action, not a feeling, that promotes Godly responses from the loved person.  I think that you might appreciate some Godly responses from your husband.  However, being that he is an unbeliever, there is always the possibility that, upon being loved in such a way, he might bolt.  About 5% of my clients in your situation who put this Bold Love concept into practice lose their mate in the process.  The apostle Paul foresaw this happening and has provided God sanctioned permission for you to allow your mate to leave.  I do not like bringing that subject up, but it sometimes happens that when a husband observes his wife becoming more emotionally healthy, secure, and dependent on God for her joy and fulfillment (rather than dependent on him) he bolts.  But in 95% of my clients, the husband finds his changed wife more attractive and respectable and he does what is necessary to be nearer to her just to see what makes her tick.

    Ultimately, here is the good news.  You win!  You win because, if you carry out this New Testament plan, you will experience more freedom form our "self" side which enslaves us.  You will win, because you will have more intimacy with Christ as you step briefly into His shoes and experience some of the hurt you have brought on Him by behaving toward Him in a similar manner to the way your husband is behaving toward you.  You will win because you get to witness God doing what He does best, changing or disciplining others, provided that you stay out of His way.  (If you are actively trying to change your husband, be sure that God will likely delay any action for which you might take credit for the results, in whole or in part.)  You win because the power others seem to have had over your happiness is weakened, maybe even broken, leaving you free to experience joy whenever you choose.