You don’t have to fall victim to the same patterns of conflict and strife you’ve faced in the past. Understanding the causes and how you can better handle the stress can put the merry, jolly, and happy back into your holidays.

Unwrap the reason for the conflict and gift yourself with the tools to deal with it!

If you’ve ever wondered why relationships (whether it’s spouses, siblings, relatives or friends) tend to become particularly strained around the holidays, the answer is simple: the holidays present unique circumstances and expectations that can magnify friction, stress, and conflict. In fact, most people juggle several holiday friction points, which can make it difficult to hold it all together, let alone be jovial.

Common Holiday Conflict Points

Here are some common friction points that tend to surface during the holidays and some tips to mitigate conflict.

1. Holiday Spending

One of the biggest stressors around the holidays is spending. This is no surprise since money is one of the top sources of conflict in relationships. Holidays bring a lot of extra expenses, including gifts, holiday cards, family photos, decorations, extravagant foods for the big family feast, and new clothes for all the holiday parties. As the expenses add up, so does the likelihood of a disagreement on how much money should be spent and on what.

To avoid spending friction, sit down with your spouse, make a list of anticipated expenses, and agree on a budget before beginning your holiday spending. This will ensure you’re both on the same page. Be sure to communicate if an unexpected expense comes up and discuss whether or not you can afford it.

Remember that avoiding dealing with the issue will not make it go away and is more likely to result in greater conflict later. Being able to have an honest conversation with your significant other about the state of your finances, as well as your feelings about your financial habits, is crucial for a healthy relationship.

2. House Guests

In today’s world, spending the holidays with your extended family often requires traveling and staying with relatives or hosting relatives in your home. This creates the potential for multiple friction points. Maybe your in-laws say things that bring up uncomfortable emotions, or maybe the pressure of having a perfectly clean house and being the perfect host leaves you stressed and overwhelmed. What can you do to reduce tension and recapture the joy of the holidays when confronted with reduced privacy and unsolicited input from relatives?

First, set boundaries for the length of time that the guests will stay. This gives you the ability to say to yourself, “It will only be one more hour” or “One more day.” Many people are unsure of how to broach the topic of set departure times, but it can be as simple as stating the start and end time when you first extend the invitation, so guests know when the event is expected to end.

Second, make time for self-care. Just because your in-laws are staying at your house, doesn’t mean you have to devote every waking moment to be with them. For example, if going to the gym is part of your daily routine, stick to it. You can also excuse yourself to go to bed a bit earlier to read, journal, spend time with your significant other, or anything else that will help you decompress.

3. The Pressure of Perfection

So many people feel an immense amount of pressure to plan and orchestrate the perfect holiday celebration. This pressure can quickly turn from cheer to stress and anxiety. Be wary of falling into the comparison trap and examine your motives—how much of what you are doing is simply to impress others and not what really makes you happy?

Set realistic expectations and do not spread yourself too thin. Talk over your plans with your spouse or family member. Together, prioritize what matters most to you and what you think you can realistically manage.

Then . The hustle and bustle of holiday shopping, parties, and house guests can lead you to feel out of control. The more you plan ahead and ask for help when needed, the less stress you will find yourself under. And remember to keep things in perspective. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t find the perfect gift or everything on your list doesn’t get done. Don’t dwell on it; let it go.

Finally, forgive and forget mishaps. At the end of the day, perfection is impossible, so just do your best and remind yourself to not dwell on minor hiccups in the day. 

4. Family Conflict

At times, conflict between family members is inevitable. But knowing how to manage the conflict without losing your temper is critical.

Whether it be opposing political views or a deep-seated family conflict like perceived favoritism, holiday celebrations are not the time nor the place to seek resolution for these issues. If you find a family member is bringing up a topic that is likely to result in tension and arguments:

• Choose not to engage
• Walk into another room for a few moments to regain your composure
• Ask to defer the conversation for another time and suggest a new topic

5. Spousal Resentment

Often one spouse feels like they’re doing all the work to make the holidays a success. If you find yourself feeling like you’re doing all the work, set aside a time to talk with your spouse and ask for help. Do not let your resentment build. Express your feelings honestly without accusatory language. At the Marriage Recovery Center, we often use Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication Model to help couples communicate effectively.

• (OBSERVATION) When I see you _______ or hear you say _________,
• (FEELING) I feel________.
• (NEED) Because I have a need for ______,
• (REQUEST) in the future, it would help if you would ________.

For example, “When I hear you say that you want to help, but then I don’t see you following through on your promise, I feel confused and anxious, because I have a need for clarity and consistency.  In the future, if you say that you’re willing to help out with a particular task, it would mean a lot to me if you would follow through with your actions.”

On the other hand, if your spouse is the one that takes charge of the holidays, be sure to verbally recognize their efforts and offer assistance, even if they seem to have everything under control. Don’t forget to thank them for all they do to make everything fall into place.

Find the Happy in Happy Holidays This Year

Holidays don’t have to be marked by stress and conflict.  Let us help you identify what’s not working and give you some practical steps you can take to make your holiday a happy one. Contact our Client Care Team and ask about our Mini Intensive. You can also schedule a free consultation with a Client Care Specialist right away.

Your Foundation is Key

A man’s life is built much like house. There’s a framework to give it form and function (your sense of purpose and highest desires), it’s composed of many rooms (the areas of your life like work, family, rest, play), and those rooms are connected to one another by hallways and passages (these would be your core character and beliefs). Your life is wrapped in decorative siding on the exterior (how you present yourself in public and to the world) and it is roofed for protection against the elements (your self-protective strategies). Each of those is important and worth a discussion in their own right, but there is one element of a house and of a life that is more important than all the rest: the FOUNDATION.

If a house’s foundation isn’t built correctly, then the whole house is in danger of falling down: it can’t bear the weight of what will be set on it. The same is true of the foundation of a man’s life. So the question is, what is your life built upon? In what (or whom) do you trust? As Bob Dylan would say, “Everybody’s gotta serve somebody.” So, what do you serve? What do you worship? What do you invest your time, heart, money in?

For many men, life is built upon and driven by a fear of failure, rather than by a sense of their own value, worth, and purpose. Due to the wounds life has dealt you, you may wonder if you have the fortitude needed for you to come through in a crisis. All of those things produce cracks in your foundation, and they lead to behaviors in every aspect of life that will serve to sabotage you. This is true in your marriage too.

If you’re identifying with any of this, the good news is faulty foundations can be fixed. We may have to break up the old one and rebuild from better materials, but that’s doable too. It’s at least worth a conversation, and we at the Marriage Recovery Center promise to listen well. Please contact our Client Care Team to begin the process. We look forward to working with you!

Sandra and Tom

Sandra and Tom came to The Marriage Recovery Center after years of trying short stints of marriage counseling. They had done what many couples do: reach a crisis point in their marriage, seek short term help, and drop out of counseling, only to repeat the pattern a few years later.

“I always thought that coping with my marriage problems was a sign of strength,” the weary, 43 year old mother of three told me. “I could always find the strength to keep plowing forward, even though my marriage problems remained unchanged.”

“You went to counseling at times, right?” I asked.

“Yes, but each time we only went for a few sessions. Our schedules got in the way and I think Tom became uncomfortable when he was confronted. So, I adapted to our situation, telling myself it wasn’t all that bad.”

“Was that really the truth?” I said, looking firmly at Sandra.

She paused, letting the magnitude of the problem sink in.   “Yes and no,” she said. Again, she paused and looked at her husband, who was sitting and listening to her patiently. “I think I found ways to explain our problems away. I told myself that all couples go through tough times. I told myself that things were not as bad as they were. I told myself that if I pushed Tom he would leave me, and I really didn’t want that.”

“Yes,” I said. “Many couples endure really bad times and tell themselves it is not so bad. That’s called denial: Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying to myself. We all endure lots of pain to keep things going just the way they are. We cope, adapt and accommodate, all the while killing ourselves and our marriages, and tell ourselves we are doing something good. This all prevents real change.”

Scripture tells us that the truth will set us free. (John 8:32) It is actually facing the truth and applying it to our lives that will set us free.

I then asked Sandra and Tom to do something that is often quite painful. I asked them to write out all the ways they adapted to their difficult marriage. I asked them to write all the ways they told themselves things were not as bad as they were. What forms of denial did they use to keep things stable in their marriage? Asking these questions can help to determine if you are being truthful with yourself and, subsequently, what can be done to honestly face your challenges and overcome them.

Additional Steps to Take

First, be completely honest with yourself about your situation. As you consider your situation, are you fiercely candid with yourself? You cannot change what you do not own. You cannot change something if you don’t see the situation realistically. Write down the way things are. Talk to a friend about the facts of your situation.

Second, determine if you have been coping, adapting or accommodating. Write down the ways you have been coping and note the impact this coping has had on you. Explore why you have been coping instead of facing issues candidly. Again, honesty is critical.

Third, face your fears of telling yourself the truth. If you have been accommodating out of fear, acknowledge this to yourself, and perhaps a trusted friend or counselor. Take inventory on the impact this is having on you and your relationships. Acknowledge that accommodating out of fear keeps you trapped and reinforces a weakness in another.

Fourth, choose to act with integrity and honesty. Set out to interact in a healthier, clearer, and more honest manner. From your clear, calm, compassionate self, let your feelings inform you, not control you. As you listen to your feelings and discern a better course of action, you can address the problems with honesty. Every time you do this you will strengthen your inner self and will stop enabling a destructive process. Denial falls away and truth emerges.

Finally, stay the course. Perfect practice makes perfect. As you set out on this journey you will rediscover lost parts of yourself. As you stop adapting and accommodating others, you will come to know yourself better and have healthier, more honest relationships. You will find your relationships becoming more vibrant, alive, and filled with respect and integrity. From this new position, you will have more self-respect and will be better able to respect others.

Do you really want to be healed? Are you ready to give up harmful actions? If you would like our professional support, please go to our website, www.marriagerecoverycenter.com or call us at (206) 219-0145 to find out more about our services.

No, seriously. Marriage is the absolutely best place to grow. I know some of you may think I’ve lost my mind. “Marriage,” you say, “is the last place I grow. It’s the place I cope, struggle, work to recover from.”

I understand that. But let’s begin with a quiz. Just give the first answer that comes to your mind.

1. Who knows you better than anyone else?
2. Who has seen you at your absolute worst?
3. Who knows your darkest secrets?
4. Who knows your worst character traits?
5. Who has the greatest power to help you heal from emotional, relational, and even spiritual struggles?

WHO MARRIAGE WAS CREATED FOR

While some may waffle a bit with their answers, most will answer with one person: their mate. Even in the worst of relational times, we long to be understood and accepted by our mate. When the chips are down, we want encouragement from our mate. When we feel the most insecure, we often want healing counsel from our mate.

But wait a minute. Isn’t your mate the one person on Earth you’re most likely to argue with? Aren’t they the one you may feel most vulnerable with during times of intense conflict? Isn’t your mate the person with whom you often don’t want to share your darkest secrets?

In spite of these questions, I have great news. Our mate is THE person God has given us to be a helpmate. A ‘helpmate,’ according to God, is a person able to speak into, and even bring healing to, our most vulnerable and wounded areas. More than any other person on the planet, your mate has the potential to bring healing through your relationship with him or her.

Shortly after God created the heavens and the earth, he placed man in the garden he created. While the garden was beautiful and abundant in every way, something was missing. God declared, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18) Although enjoying the garden, I can imagine Adam being pretty excited about this new addition to creation.

WHAT MARRIAGE CAN BE

The historical record is clear—humankind would not always live in harmony. They would struggle and battle with each other. They would hurt one another. Still, God’s goal for man and wife was that they would help each other, defer to each other in love, and build each other up. Marriage was the place designed for great things to happen. So, in spite of the challenges you face, marriage is still an excellent place to grow. Consider the following:

 the place we cultivate transparency. Marriage may be a place we put down the heavy weight of our façade. No false persona and trying to be more than we are. This transparency has been proven to be an antidote to life’s stresses. Your mate may offer the opportunity to be fully known, understood, and accepted, and this is powerfully healing.  Marriage can be:

• the place where you cultivate vulnerability. Here, with the person who knows you better than anyone else, you can share your worst fears, deepest insecurities, and your most challenging struggles. Marriage, when functioning as God intended, is the safest place for you to share your most vulnerable self—and this is powerfully healing.
• the place where our character weaknesses are revealed and where we can work on them. Stress and challenge are the places where our weaknesses are exposed. If we pay attention, even in dark times we can learn and grow. While friendships offer a unique and critical component for healthy living, marriage is where our foibles and personality issues are exposed. Scripture encourages us to bear with one another’s weaknesses, (Romans 15:1) and there is no better place to do this than in marriage. No one knows what we need to work on like our mate, and they are in a unique position to be a powerful instrument of healing for those weaknesses.
• the place where we can offer encouragement where it is needed. While we may be angry with them, our mate needs something from us too. Again, Scripture challenges us to encourage and comfort others with the encouragement and comfort we have received (2 Corinthians 1:4). For many, the closest mission field is their home. We often enter marriage with a childhood filled with heartache, adolescence rife with struggle, and early married life filled with challenges.
• the place designed by God to share our burdens. It has been said that a burden shared is a burden split in two. Scripture says that we are to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2). We all long to cast our burdens, anxieties and concerns on a listening ear. Thankfully, we can do this within the sanctity of marriage. Marriage is indeed a place where we can lay our burdens down and feel restored.

No matter your circumstances (and I want to be clear that I never encourage tolerating abuse), might it be possible to view your challenges in a different way? Might your marriage be just the place, at least for now, to gain awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, and to grow? Seeing the mirror in your marriage puts an entirely new spin on marriage and the inherent advantages of married life, seeing your marriage as a place of opportunity, which it certainly can be.

If you want help getting your marriage to a place of encouragement and growth, we’re here for you! Learn more about what we offer at the Marriage Recovery Center by contacting our Client Care team or call us at (206) 219-0145 to find out more about our services.

When you take the personality of the marriage and combine it with the personality of each person in it, you get a set of relationship rhythms. These are unique to every relationship, a fingerprint of sorts. Included in those rhythms are “rules” (I use this word very loosely as these aren’t necessarily conscious or spoken aloud, nor do they have to be rigidly followed) about how much time together and time apart the relationship needs in order to function best.

COVID-19 and the related quarantines and shelter-in-place orders that it has produced have the potential to put quite a strain on those “togetherness rhythms”. Especially for introverts—people who enjoy periods of solitude and contemplation and who find fulfillment in the world of internal thoughts and ideas—long periods of forced togetherness can pose a real challenge to their sense of balance and peace. Relationships that are already strained, tense, or on edge are also vulnerable.

Add to that the dynamics of having kids who now have to be home-schooled, children who are feeling pent up and deprived of time with friends, family pets who are highly excited by all the people suddenly at home with them, job layoffs, financial strain, and a lack of toilet paper and other necessities, and you have a perfect storm. So, in the interest of sanity and world peace, here are some survival tips:

1. Breathe deeply. In. Out. Rinse and repeat. Pausing for a minute or so several times a day just to breathe has an oddly calming and re-centering effect.
2. Remember that this is temporary. You can do temporary. Say it 3 times with me: “I can do temporary.”
3. This is a time to live with extra grace for one another. Meet impatience with patience, meet anxiety with peace and comforting, meet agitation with calm. You have great power to affect the atmosphere of your house, for better or worse. Own the effect you have on others and use it for good.
4. Be purposeful about your together time. Plan fun activities to share (board games, cards), new adventures to try (plant a garden, cook a new dish, google ways to say “you have pretty eyes” in 30 languages and then practice saying them together), or projects to do.
5. Manage your stress by knowing your limits. When you find yourself going stir-crazy or needing alone time, raise a flag and enlist your partner’s help. Trade off teaching the kids or dealing with the house so that each person can get away for a bit. Go outside, take a walk, ride through the countryside. Remember #1.
6. This is probably not the time to have heavy relationship talks or try to work out areas of high conflict. If you’ve got kids at home or others who are sheltering with you right now, there are too many people around to bring that kind of intensity to your home. There’s not enough space (physical or emotional) and the general stress level is likely too high for such conversations to be very productive.
7. Don’t forget your support system. You may not be able to get together with friends as you normally would, but you can still phone, video chat, or connect through the myriad of social networking options that exist. Remember that MRC is still up and running, so if you find yourself needing extra support, feel free to reach out to us.
8. Find exercise outlets to burn off some energy.
9. Be aware of what your heart is feeling: Afraid? Anxious? Sad? Lonely? Overwhelmed? Bored? Acknowledging your feelings can make them more manageable.
10. Don’t forget to breathe. This is temporary.

And if all else fails, my answer to many things: pet something furry. Life always seems better in the company of an animal.

As I mentioned above, Marriage Recovery Center is still up and running, so if you feel like you need extra support in this time, please reach out to us at (206) 219-0145 or contact our Client Care Team.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he continued. “My wife reminded me of something she wanted me to do for her and I forgot all about it. Big mistake.”

“But, was it a ‘mistake?’” I asked. “Or was this the kind of ‘mistake’ you make on a regular basis?”

“Well,” he continued sheepishly, “it is something she has called me on a number of times before. It’s a pattern, I suppose. I just can’t seem to help it.”

“So, it’s not really fair to call it a ‘mistake,’ but rather a pattern of behavior,” I said. “And, I don’t agree that you can’t seem to help it. I think this is an issue of focus and responsibility.”

Every day I hear about a new incident that has set a person back in their efforts toward healing their marriage. These incidents are often described in ways that minimize the severity of the actions. I’ve heard them called ‘mistakes,’ ‘hiccoughs,’ ‘missteps’ and ‘forgetfulness.’

As you might imagine, if one calls these patterns of behavior ‘missteps, accidents, or mistakes,’ they distance themselves from responsibility and the problem is very likely to recur. Furthermore, if responsibility is placed outside of themselves, they are not likely to change. If a person firmly believes their troubled behavior is ‘an accident,’ (which is denial) and they are appropriately confronted, they are likely to become defensive and angry, blaming their mate for the problem.

Can you see how troubled behavior becomes even more entrenched? Can you see the ‘craziness’ that erupts from these defensive, distancing maneuvers? What could be handled quickly and efficiently with responsibility and change, becomes an even larger nightmare.

That said, we know that growth is not a straight line. It’s filled with hits and misses. However, if we pay attention, and are fully responsible, we use the misses for growth. But, we must be deliberate about it. We must do ‘inner work’ on each and every miss and take full responsibility for growth and change. This requires intense focus and daily work. It demands that we are critical about our patterns of behavior and completely open to hearing about the impact of our behavior on others. We must ‘root out’ the problem behavior, which is usually fueled by troubled thinking, and clean up our lives.

We have developed a worksheet to guide you through a process of turning a ‘failure’ into a success—an AFGO—Another Fortunate Growth Opportunity. This requires sitting back and reflecting on your situation, delving deeply into your patterned behavior, taking full ownership of your problems and seeking new thinking and new behavior.

Using this formula again and again, bringing your work to individual and group counseling, gives you an incredible opportunity for growth. When you ‘grow up’ and face your problem-thinking and troubled, immature behavior, you strengthen your self-esteem and are likely to be further esteemed by others.

We at The Marriage Recovery Center are anxious to discuss your AFGO’s with you. We will help you delve deeply into these self-defeating patterns of behavior and help you advance your work toward healing your marriage. Learn more about what we offer at the Marriage Recovery Center by contacting our Client Care team or call us at (206) 219-0145 to find out more about our services.

So is a mid-life crisis just bound to happen to everyone at some point in their lives?  Many of us get to a season in life where we begin to struggle and question everything—who we are, why we’re here, and how to create a life worth living.

While some people think that mood and perspective are all a choice, perhaps sometimes we are at the mercy of life’s natural phases and chapters that are, believe it or not, seemingly hard-wired into our biology.

During certain times, we are almost forced to go deeper to find our truth in order to move on into the later chapters of life more elegantly.  But to those around us who bear witness to this process, it can certainly appear that we’re not ourselves. It may look like we’re acting out in ways that are confusing and sometimes completely opposed to our prior belief systems and expected behavior.  Just like a mid-life crisis would look.

During these times of philosophical crisis, we often disconnect from those we love. Out of nowhere we buy sport-cars and motorcycles, we dress like teenagers, and some of us even seek out the attention of those half our age. Culturally we refer to this phase as a mid-life crisis, and for those who might think this is simply an excuse for unusual or even bad behavior, it actually appears to be somewhat biological.

Believe it or not, we even share this phase with other relatives in the animal kingdom! There is a similar U-shaped curve for happiness found in chimps and orangutans, implying that there may be a universal, biological correlation between age and happiness.

Happiness During A Mid-Life Crisis Is A Curve

As you can see by the Gallop World Poll taken in 2012, happiness and age are highly correlated, and our lowest level of happiness coincides with our middle years. What we think of as middle age has been moving out as we live longer, so the U-shaped curve has also been shifting to the right over time.

How Might We Experience This Phase?

In the words of Gail Sheehy in her book Passages, “People can expect to feel sometimes momentous changes of perspective, often mysterious dissatisfactions with the course they had been pursuing with enthusiasm only a few years before.” Plus being middle-aged nearly doubles a person’s likelihood of using antidepressants, so this is clearly a crisis on many levels (biological, emotional, intellectual).

Below is a list of some of the symptoms of a mid-life crisis. Give yourself 1 point for each symptom that applies to you and add up the total.

• You’re apathetic/feeling bored/your life is on autopilot.
• You’ve lost your sense of purpose.
• You’re jealous of others.
• You’re asking deep, probing questions.
• You’re making rash and unusual decisions, or unusual purchases that just aren’t “you.”
• You have no ability to see to the future.
• You have a deep sense of loss, like you already know the ending.
• You’re not satisfied in your success.
• You’ve become overly focused on your appearance, or not at all (think pajamas and slippers all of the time.)
• You’ve lost your desire to physically and emotionally connect with others.
• You’re seeking out the company of much younger people.

Are you having a mid-life crisis?

0-4 Unlikely

5-7 Could Be

8-11 Full Blown

How to Navigate Your Mid-Life Crisis More Elegantly

• Slow down and think through everything much more comprehensively before making any rash changes. This is a stop and pause time in life, a time to be contemplative. It’s much better to be slow to act than act too rashly and hurt others (and yourself) in the process.
• Know that a mid-life crisis isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s part of our human experience to learn and grow through adversity. Go towards the big scary monster and ask, “What are you here to teach me?”
• Open up with loved ones to describe your process. Think of this like giving out your GPS coordinates when you’re lost in the woods. To paraphrase Brene Brown: we think our vulnerability makes people like us less, but in truth, they end up liking us a whole lot more.
• Create new goals that will help you better understand yourself and navigate the process effectively (taking good care of yourself, meditating, reading self-help books, counseling, joining a group of like-minded individuals, volunteering).
• Remember that by being still with your curiosity, you’ll ultimately boost your coping mechanisms.

How to Support a Partner Going Through a Mid-Life Crisis

• Remember, this isn’t about you. It’s difficult to see your partner slipping away emotionally and not think it’s about you, but be assured that it’s not. Try your best to not take this personally. Take care of yourself first, so that you’re healthy and thriving and available to help them if/when they need it.
• Allow them their process. Critical to fully supporting your partner as they navigate their middle years is to allow them enough space to go through their process completely unjudged, while always letting them know that you’re there for them if they need help. Funny enough, this should look a lot like healthy, successful parenting!
• Be a good listener. One of the highest forms of supporting another human is simply holding space for them, just being there for them, with no agenda, only love.
• Express your concern without an attachment to their response. Part of our loving others is wanting the best for them, and when we’re worried that they might be lost or suffering unnecessarily, of course we want to help. So, do that, share your concern so that your partner has this important feedback from someone they know loves them. But then leave them to do with it what they may.

When to Seek Help

Counseling allows for conversations that enable you to see the forest for the trees, to get beyond your own sometimes limited smaller perspective. So, when you’re not seeing things clearly and you can tell that your behavior is having a negative impact on those around you, this is a perfect time to seek out professional help.

At the Marriage Recovery Center, we’re very experienced in helping people to navigate the mid-life phase of life. So, if you find yourself flailing and unsure of your purpose, we can help! Call our client care team at (206) 219-0145  or click here to book a free consultation and rediscover your meaning and significance.

And what if, just maybe, this big time out actually contains an invitation for us? What if it’s an opportunity to look at how we live, what we value, and where our priorities lie? Maybe it affords us time to learn stillness and contemplation. Those tend to be lost arts in this day and age. And perhaps, in our newfound stillness, we will find ourselves face to face with God.

Being Still Before God

It’s interesting that Scripture never says, “Be busy and know that I am God.” Rather, it is a call to stillness. “My soul, be quiet before God, for from Him comes my hope.“ (Psalm 62:5) In the quiet, we can actually hear God speak. In the stillness, we can feel the breeze of His presence and the warmth of His embrace.

I’ll be very honest and say that stillness did not come naturally to me. When God first asked me to try it, I thought He was trying to kill me. I fidgeted, squirmed, protested, and walked away. I couldn’t hear a thing, feel a thing, or sense a thing. So, I fidgeted some more and got straight on to the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” phase. But God insisted, and so I tried again, and again, and again…until stillness actually came. And then so did God, and He brought peace with Him, and companionship, revelation, and life. All of a sudden, my soul understood the value of stillness and the wisdom of a God who knew that I needed it even when I couldn’t see it.

An Invitation to Stillness

Here is your invitation, from a God who knows you, loves you, and wants your company:

‘Arise, my love, my fair one,
And come away.

‘For behold, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
 
‘The flowers appear on the earth once again;
The time for singing has come,
And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

‘The fig tree has budded and ripens her figs,
And the vines are in blossom and give forth their fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
And come away.’”

“O my dove, [here] in the clefts in the rock,
In the sheltered and secret place of the steep pathway,
Let me see your face,
Let me hear your voice;
For your voice is sweet,
And your face is lovely.”

Song of Song 2:10-14

Stillness in Marriage

The invitation to stillness also applies to our marriages. Maybe it’s time to get quiet with your soul and ask whether the way you’re living together as a couple is really what you wanted and had in mind when you said, “I do.” Are you the husband or wife you want to be? Are you having the effect you want to have on your family? What are you contributing to the atmosphere of your relationship? Is it grace and peace, understanding and patience, support and safety? Or is it impatience, criticism, and harm?

In the current season of “time out” that we are in, perhaps there’s a starting over that’s possible for you and your spouse. God wants for your marriage the same intimacy that He wants between you and Himself.  And it IS possible.

We at the Marriage Recovery Center would be honored to help you and your spouse work on your relationship and build something worth having. For more information on how we can help, please reach out to us at (206) 219-0145 or contact our Client Care Team.

There’s an old saying, “If you love someone, set them free, and if they come back to you, it was meant to be.” I don’t think life is really as fatalistic as that, but there is definitely something to be said for the deeper element of free will. When free will is taken out of the picture, love ceases to be love. If love is coerced, demanded, expected, or required, it ceases to be meaningful and simply serves to benefit one person who is exercising power over the other in some way.

Hear that again. Love ceases to be love when it is not freely chosen.

It is a common belief that separation signals the start of the end. In reality, the end was already well underway, and separation is what is needed is for something to shake up the status quo and interrupt where things are headed. There is much good that comes when both parties get a chance to step back, reevaluate the trajectory of their life both individually and together, and take the time to be intentional about what happens next.  This encapsulates our Healing Together philosophy which is the idea that when both individuals in the relationship take the time to work on themselves first, it is immensely beneficial to the relationship and accelerates the healing process.

A therapeutic separation, when done under proper guidance of a well-devised plan, creates space for each spouse to deeply reflect upon how they are choosing to show up in their world—to shift from living a reactive life to an intentional life.

The kinds of questions you ask yourself will determine the quality and direction of your separation. This isn’t a waiting game; your spouse is done waiting for change. It isn’t a power struggle; it’s already been proven which of you is more powerful. It’s not a free pass to do whatever you want. If you choose any of those options, divorce isn’t that far off.

Instead, ask questions that lead to life:

• Where are my choices leading me? What path am I on? Your destination is determined by your steps, not your intentions or hopes.
• What kind of person am I? Is it congruent with who I know I want to be? Does my true character match my reputation?
• In what ways might I be silencing my spouse? Where am I taking away his or her right to decide who to be and how to show up?
• What do I want my marriage to mean to my spouse and kids? To the people around me? Do I have a mission statement for my marriage?
• What do I need to acknowledge about what I’ve done to damage the relationship and how can I make true amends? Do I need professional help, rehabilitation, or ongoing coaching?
• What is my spouse saying he or she needs for healing? How can I help make room for what they say they need?

If you are at a crossroads, facing a separation, we would love to help you use this opportunity as a powerful time of reflection, growth, and healing. Path of Renewal is designed to help you create a roadmap to bring healing and connection to your marriage, no matter how far beyond hope you think it may be. Contact our Client Care team at (206) 219-0145 or check our website to find out more!

At its core, emotional abuse is an assault against one’s personhood. The assault is multi-faceted: targeting identity, worth and value; twisting perception of reality; disregarding emotions and lacking empathy; and using anger  as weaponry. This blog is part of a series that covers each of those aspects. I will be focusing on emotional abuse as an assault on identity, value, and worth.

The Assault on Identity, Worth, and Value

With regard to human development, identity refers to the stable, defining characteristics of a person that make them an individual. Having a solid sense of identity requires a thorough understanding of oneself, include one’s own traits, preferences, thought patterns, strengths, and weaknesses. Essentially, it is a construct of who you are and where you are going. Our sense of personal value and the basic values we live by are reflected in our sense of identity.

The assault on identity, value, and worth looks like taking away someone’s right and responsibility to decide who they will be and how they will show up the in the world. In other words, the abuser assumes the authority to define it, and his words trump all others.

The victim’s identity becomes not as a fellow human being, worthy of their own individuality, but essentially as an extension of the abuser. In the case of the husband being the abuser and the wife being the victim, he does all the thinking for her as if she has neither the ability nor the authority to think for herself. He causes her to question her own decisions as well as her ability to decide. He tells her who she is, what she must believe, how to think. The implication is that she can’t figure this out for herself. He knows better than her what “truth” is. He is the measuring stick.

Her value is measured by this same stick. The abuser often sets standards as a fluid target with rare acknowledgment that she’s met them successfully. She is constantly threatened with discard or replacement, both through words and with his wandering eye. Her hurt doesn’t affect him, her concerns are irrelevant to him, and her desire for anything that is different from his desires offends him. The message here is that she has nothing of value to add.

The assault on her worth puts her in a solid category of lesser-than. She’s treated like a child, a servant, and an object. At the end of the day, the message she hears loud and clear is that she is invisible, unknown, and has no influence.

“Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.” – Epictetus

Regaining Your Identity

Part of the healing process entails reestablishing a solid sense of identity. Love requires being known—known in the authentic, transparent, free, unique way God created each individual to be known. When you know who you are, you will reach for the things that lend themselves to a life that reflects your character. And instead of looking for things or people to give you value, value becomes part of your internal sense of self. You bring your value to the table, so to speak.

In the context of a marriage, both spouses must have an honest, healthy sense of self in order to heal together in the relationship. In fact, in most cases, marriage issues aren’t really marriage issues! They are individual issues being played out in the relationship as symptoms. The root causes are within the individuals.

Here at the Marriage Recovery Center, we provide a comprehensive series of programs designed to create space for healing for the abuser, the victim, and the marriage. In our Healing Together program, both spouses begin with individual work. When growth is seen and the time is right, we begin couples counseling. If you want to break free from the stronghold of emotional abuse, contact us at (206) 219-0145 and get started on your path to freedom.