CONTENTS

• JUST VISITING
• FEATURE ARTICLE: PRESCRIPTION FOR A HEALTHY MARRIAGE # 10
  IN SEARCH OF A CURE FOR SICK MARRIAGES
  (Part Four - "The Gravel in Your Shoe")
  
• LEST WE FORGET:
  THE COST OF DIVORCE
  AN ABOMINABLE ACT OF SELFISHNESS
  by Mikal Frazier, LMFT, LPC
  

  JUST VISITING

  Because of our participation in the Pan-American Lectureship, this newsletter is being written several days in advance of its publication. This issue brings to a close the section on "In Search of a Cure for Sick Marriages." Many people write to us to tell us about numerous difficulties they experience in marriage. You would have to be a cold, unfeeling person not to be touched with the depth of human pain in some relationships. Many people ask "Is there any hope for us?"

  For many years, we have believed that any marriage problem can be overcome IF both parties

  (1) want to transform their marriage into a mutually satisfying relationship (2) are willing recognize their own self-centeredness and make whatever sacrifice it takes to overcome their selfishness (3) mutually strive to meet the needs of one another and (4) determine to submit to God's will.

  If any one of these ingredients is missing, the relationship will not likely be salvaged, but if these things are in place, fantastic things are possible.

  I'm amazed at the number of times Mikal writes something along the same lines we do. We don't collaborate on the planning of these articles. Mikal has freedom to send us whatever she chooses. I think you'll get the idea from the things we both say that we don't consider divorce to be a very positive solution to a marriage crisis.

  Norman

  * * * * *

  Prescription for a Healthy Marriage # 11

  IN SEARCH OF A CURE FOR SICK MARRIAGES

  "Part Three - 'The Gravel in Your Shoe'"

  By Norman and Ann Bales

  (Previous articles in this series are archived at http://www.allaboutfamilies.org)

  INTRODUCTION

  Several years ago a story made the rounds about an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary, the famous conqueror of Mount Everest. He was asked to identify the most troublesome problem he encountered on his ascent to the summit. To their surprise, it wasn't altitude sickness, the bitter cold, protecting against frostbite, the hazardous winds, and sheer cliffs of ice or anything of that nature. He said, "the most troublesome problem was " . . . the gravel in my shoe."

  So it is when you are trying to make your way back from marriage disappointment. Some people seem to be able to clear the major hurdles - infidelity, substance abuse, and even threats of physical violence only to lose all those gains because of some seemingly inconsequential hurdle. We thought it important to address some of those concerns as we conclude the section that deals with curing sick marriages.

  Unrealistic Expectations

  One of the most common discouragement's that people face when dealing with overcoming marriage crises of any kind is expecting too much too soon. Preachers and even professional Christian counselors sometimes fall into the trap of setting up a plan that looks more like an unbearable burden than a respectable goal.

  Disapproval of Self

  Marriages usually get in a mess because there's something messed up inside us and then when we realize what we've done, it gets worse, because we start blaming ourselves.

  Norman comments

  One day our counselor said to me. "You're never going to be able to love Ann until you learn how to love yourself." He was on solid Biblical ground. Paul wrote, ' . . . husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself' (Ephesians 5:28). I missed that message for many years. Jesus said, that the second great command is to ' . . .love your neighbor as yourself' (Matthew 22:39). If you don't love yourself, your neighbor's not going to be treated very well.

  William Glasser, who is famous for an approach to mental health known as Reality Therapy, said, in the book Reality Therapy

  Equal to the importance of the need for love is the need that we are worthwhile both to ourselves and others . . . If we do not feel worthwhile, we will suffer as acutely as when we fail to love and be loved.

  How do you overcome this loss of self-regard? Brag on yourself? Take a course in assertiveness training? Become a hypercritical person who always finds fault with others in an attempt to make yourself look good? Self-righteousness? We all know those things don't work.

  Dr. Robert Rigdon offered a much better approach to overcoming negative self-regard. He said

  Self esteem is usually fulfilled in relationship to others. We are dependent, but we are not helpless. When people verbally and/or nonverbally prize, praise, honor, respect us, we have our need for self respect replenished.

  Communication

  Many couples believe they can restore their marriage to its original state by just starting over and forgetting the past. They think having great, positive times together will take care of all the pain, bitterness, hurt, anger, frustration and mess that is strewn behind them. We're sorry, but it doesn't work that way. The good times and positive experiences are vital to the healing process, but there is also something very therapeutic about getting things out in the open, expressing your feelings and having your mate listen to you and express understanding. This usually takes place over a long period of time and working through can indeed be just as troublesome as gravel in your shoe.

  Ann's comments:

  I'm one of those people who thinks you need to lay all the cards on the table, talk about it, find the solution and then we can go on with the rest of life. Norman likes to work around problems. These two communication styles don't go together very well. We both had to change our communication skills or we were never going to get anywhere. We encountered an unexpected problem when Norman suddenly decided he would employ my communication style and I thought his way would be best for me. That is difficult to do under 'normal circumstances', but it proved disastrous when we tried to do it in the midst of 'marriage chaos." We got through it by putting up with the gravel in our shoes and making the decision to look objectively at our negative habits of getting things across to each other. Gradually, we began to heal a lot of hurts and really start on the road to healing.

  Gravel in your shoe is one thing. A tack in your foot is something else again. Many married couples are unsuccessful in rebuilding their lives after an affair because they replace the gravel with tacks. Some therapists claim that all questions must be brought out into the open and dealt with. Our counselor suggested a different approach. While he saw the need of honestly facing the events that had taken place and the issues that precipitated it, he saw no point in continuing endless dialogue about the details of the affair. It would be like driving a new tack in your foot every day. He asked us, " Would you go outside and collect all your garbage from the last few months or years and dump it in your living room floor and go through it to see what you'd thrown away?" Some things, like garbage, are better left behind and buried.

  Celebration

  When Sir Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Everest, he wasn't thinking about the gravel in his shoe. He was celebrating. When there is positive movement toward reconciliation and you both recognize it that needs to be marked and celebrated.

  Norman's Comments

  The acuteness of our problem came to light in my fortieth year. By the time, my forty-first birthday rolled around, we had been working on trying to resolve our problems for about six months. Ann threw me a big birthday party and gave me a birthday card that no one understood except me. It read, 'Happy 1st birthday.' Well in a sense it was, because our relationship was taking on new directions and I was becoming a different person and that was a very special way to celebrate.

  I knew something was wrong in our relationship, long before things came out in the open. Ann stopped saying, 'I love you.' She didn't resume affirmations of love when we first began working on rebuilding the relationship. In fact she very openly said, 'I'm not going to be dishonest about it. I respect you. I love you as my brother in Christ, but I do not love you the way a wife should.' The counselor and I devised a plan. We actually worked behind her back. Here's what we decided. I would purchase a gift for her, which would be given her when she said, 'I love you" for the first time. The gift would be some rather intimate nighttime apparel. It took all the courage I could muster to subdue my conservative reserve, and go shopping in the women's lingerie section of a department store, but I bought it, had it gift wrapped and hid it.

  Several weeks later, I had to take her to the emergency room of the hospital, where she was admitted for several days. I had left the children alone at home with my teenage son and I felt like I needed to get back, so I left her alone at the hospital. Just before I left, she said, "I love you." I thought, "I can't believe the timing.' She did get her gift but it was a few days late. But it was a way of celebrating the gain in our relationship and that's important.

  CONCLUSION When we look over the principles and courses of action we have suggested that are necessary to heal broken relationships we are painfully aware of the number of people who have tried many, or perhaps even all of these things, to no avail.

  After our successful recovery, we shared our story with a friend who does extensive marriage counseling. He said, "You are very fortunate, because many people don't experience the success that you have known."

  We've wondered how did we succeed when others fail and we believe there is one key. When we first began talking about trying to heal the rift in our relationship, we sat down and talked about what we had going for us. There wasn't much. Our relationship was in bad shape, but we agreed that there was one thing that was strong and had always been strong in our relationship. That was our ability to communicate our thoughts about scripture. We both respected the Biblical knowledge of each another. We were both committed to Christ, even though we were coming to realize how badly we had digressed from that commitment. We could talk calmly and openly and without threat about God's word. We could even disagree about things we understood and there were no hard feelings. And we said, "Maybe, just maybe, we can use what we learn from God's word as the catalyst to rebuild our marriage." It worked.

  * * * * *

  LEST WE FORGET: THE COST OF DIVORCE AN ABOMINABLE ACT OF SELFISHNESS

  by Mikal Frazier, LMFT, LPC

  CHOOSING SELFISHNESS

  Divorce has to rate in the top five selfish acts human beings can perpetrate on one another. As I watched an acquaintance choose the short-lived pleasure of divorce and remarriage at the risk of his family's well-being and even possibly the souls of his loved ones, the thought of selfishness came to me over and over. I thought, "One day he is going to have grandchildren and he will have the audacity to say to that grandchild as the child naturally protects a prized possession, 'Now, don't be selfish.'" Of all the heinous, self-serving acts we commit, I cannot think of one that has more long-reaching waves of destruction and devastation for innocent people.

  Years ago, in an office I no longer use, an absolutely beautiful young man sat. Also in that room sat his mother and his father. He was a young 13 years old. He sat frozen, arms crossed over his chest. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Tears flowed down the cheeks of his father. I fought to keep mine back. How a mother could not be moved by her maternal instincts as she saw the pain of her firstborn is beyond me. But she had "happiness" to pursue.

  Right there at that moment, this child, whose heart was breaking and spirit was filling with anger, was making a decision. He was deciding that no one would ever hurt him like this again. And as a result of that decision, he will go through life inflicting pain and destroying others, as he goes about his self-protective existence. But that mamma had to find her "happiness." I would like to know what she is doing now. I'll bet the thrill of the new relationship she found has faded, and maybe she has even learned that her joy has to be an internal experience, not based on her external circumstances. But it is too late to save her children from the consequences of her selfishness.

  THE COST IN REAL TERMS

  Following is an assortment of the many aftershocks which follow divorce:

  • When a couple comes to my office, confused and struggling in their own relationship, and we can find nothing else that makes sense, more often than not, we will realize that one of the partners' parents experienced some trauma or divorce at about the same stage of the family life cycle as this offspring couple. We are creatures of pattern. The authors of _Love is a Choice_ state, "If the original family was painful (even if the child doesn't specifically remember it as being painful), that pain must be replicated..." You see, our experience is the only map for relationships we have, and it has been hard-wired into our minds, deeply within our subconscious. Choosing divorce is the surest way for parents to destine their children to the same fate.

    David Blankenhorn in Fatherless America reports these findings:

  • A child in a fatherless home faces a significantly higher risk of sexual abuse. (This refers to the absence of the biological father.)

    In the April 1993 Atlantic Monthly, an article entitled "Dan Quayle Was Right" by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead reports these findings:

  • These children are "six times as likely to be poor." They are two to three times as likely to suffer emotional and behavioral problems. "They are also more likely to drop out of high school, to get pregnant as teenagers, to abuse drugs, and to be in trouble with the law."

  • "Children from disrupted families have a harder time achieving intimacy in a relationship, forming a stable marriage, or even holding a steady job."

  • Some might assume this is an African-American problem. Not on your life. "Among white families, daughters of single parents are 53 percent more likely to marry as teenagers, 111 percent more likely to have children as teenagers, 164 percent more likely to have a premarital birth, and 92 percent more likely to dissolve their own marriages. All these intergenerational consequences of single motherhood increase the likelihood of chronic welfare dependency."

  • You might notice that many of these outcomes are reporting on single-parent homes or single mothers. This same article reports that children in a blended family or stepfamily appear to be even more disadvantaged than children from a stable single-parent home.

    Judith Wallerstein, in a highly respected longitudinal study on the effects of divorce found:

  • Children of divorce were significantly more likely to suffer depression even beyond the 10-year mark after their parents' divorce. There is also significant harm done to their emotional development. Children who had reached their thirties were struggling to have stable, intimate relationships. (If I choose divorce I am increasing the likelihood of having to stand by and watch the hearts of my grandchildren break. As a grandmother I would find that most unbearable. No pleasure I can imagine would be worth that.)

    Barbara Dafoe Whitehead in her bookThe Divorce Culture states:

  • "The research demonstrates that even advantaged children of middle-class, college-educated parents are not exempt from the risks associated with divorce." The chances that an advantaged girl will become a teen mother are five times as high, and the chances that an advantaged child "will drop out of high school are three times as high, if parents do not live together."

  • A Canadian study reports "children in stepfamilies are forty times as likely to suffer physical or sexual abuse as children in intact families."

  • "Daughters of both divorced and remarried mothers have more permissive views of sex outside of marriage than daughters whose mothers remained in intact marriages."

  AND THE ADULTS

  I could go on. There is no good news on the cost of divorce. If these findings were not tragic enough, these self-indulging divorcing adults do not find the utopia for which they are searching. Second marriages fail at a significantly higher rate than first marriages. In one national report, 80 percent of the men questioned said they would remarry the first wife they divorced if they could. It is my belief that those who report greater satisfaction in a subsequent marriage are only responding to a maturation process they themselves have gone through. Very rarely would it be because they are in a better relationship that has "made them happy."

  A counselor from many years ago said, "It takes two to make a marriage and one to make a divorce." You may be the one who wants to make the marriage work, but your partner does not. You have no control over that. Any one in a relationship can make any issue a walking issue if he or she so desires. All you can do is strive to make your response the response Jesus would make.

  IT IS A CHOICE

  As Christians we have been called to die to ourselves. To choose divorce is the antithesis to this command. God has promised you joy, contentment and peace that passes understanding. But you must choose it and you must learn it. Paul, himself, said he had LEARNED to be content in all circumstances.

  You can perpetuate a cycle of selfishness or a cycle of service for your children and their children. Jesus said, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it," Matthew 10:39. Eternity hangs in the balance.

  Judith Wallerstein summarizes the cost of divorce this way: "Divorce is deceptive. Legally it is a single event, but psychologically it is a chain---sometimes a never-ending chain---of events, relocations, and radically shifting relationships strung through time, a process that forever changes the lives of the people involved."

  How tragic! What a cost! And this does not even touch the hem of the garment where eternity is considered.

  (Mikal Frazier is a licensed family therapist with a private practice in Minden and Bossier City, Louisiana. She and her husband, Jim have three adult children and two grandchildren, whom they will gladly tell you about if you ask. Actually you don't even have to ask.)

  * * * * * *

  If you have questions about marriage and family relationships, you can "ASK THE COUNSELOR." Address your questions to Mikal Frazier. Her address is mikalfraz@aol.com

  Norman's e-mail address: nlbales@allaboutfamilies.org