hurt

A Heartbreaking Anniversary

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What follows is a different type of post than I usually write. It’s less professional and more personal, so please forgive me if I take off my counseling hat for a moment and bare my soul.

The Anniversary

Last week my wife and I celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary. Let me clarify upfront…that’s not the heartbreaking part! We’ve been together a total of 45 years and she’s still my best friend. I wouldn’t want to do life with anyone else, and hopefully, we’ll be chasing each other around the nursing home someday.

The Heartbreak

So what made it so heartbreaking? Was it the health issues we currently face? Was it the personal family things we’re currently walking through?

None of these led to my heartbreak. Though they’re not fun, they’re just a part of life, and the further down the road you travel, the more apt you are to hit some rough roads.

What broke my heart was that at the same time as our upcoming anniversary, I received word of four different marriages that were headed for divorce.

These were not rookie couples. They were couples with kids who had been married for over 10 years. They were couples who appeared to have promise and hope. They were couples with whom I had some sort of connection. And they were couples who were capable of rising above their issues and going on to have a great marriage together. But, for some reason, one or both spouses decided the marriage needed to end.

The Reality

I don’t want to minimize or trivialize the struggles they were facing. When you’re in the midst of such struggles, it’s easy to feel that things are insurmountable. Nor do I want to minimize or trivialize the efforts of those spouses who did everything they could do to keep their marriage together. Some of these spouses worked incredibly hard to save their marriage. But, as I’ve said before, marriage is a dance between two people. And sometimes you just can’t make your dance partner want to dance.

You might be thinking, “You’ve done marriage counseling for close to 30 years. You should be used to this by now.” But I’ve never been able to get used to divorce. (And I hope I never do.) No one dreams of being divorced. So to watch a couple who once vowed “till death do we part” wind up dividing property and kids because they believe they can’t make it work still breaks my heart.

Divorces will happen. We live in a complicated and messy world with complicated and messy people. Sometimes…

  • The hurt is too deep.
  • The personalities are too fixed and rigid.
  • The issues have been left unattended for too long.
  • The trust is too damaged.

I still want to believe that every hurting marriage can be restored. But sometimes divorce is just going to happen, no matter how hard you try.

The Plea

So, out of my heartbreak, I want to plead with you. Whether you‘ve been married for 2 or 42 years…

  • Don’t sweep things under the rug. Talk about them sooner rather than later.
  • Don’t ignore your spouse’s needs. If you can, meet those needs more often than not.
  • Don’t let yourselves drift apart, even in the hard seasons of marriage. Fight against that.
  • Don’t let legitimate responsibilities take priority over your most important responsibility…your spouse.
  • Don’t compare your marriage with others. Instead, focus on being the best couple you can be.
  • Don’t take things too personally. Not everything is about you. Sometimes it’s about them.
  • Don’t die on every hill. Some hills are just too small to die on.
  • Don’t let pride or embarrassment keep you from getting help when you need it. A happy marriage is worth anything.

Will these things insure that you’ll never go through a divorce? No. These things are investments, and occasionally the investment may not pay off. But doing these things will greatly improve the probability of avoiding divorce and of making the most out of your life together.

And to my wife: Thank you for sticking it out with me for the last 42 years…and not smothering me in my sleep! I owe you!

Speak Now or Struggle Later

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Speak Now or Struggle

Often, people in my office tell me about how their spouse said or did something that hurt or offended them. But, when I ask if they said anything to their spouse about it, they typically say, “No.”

And as a result of not saying anything, their hurt and resentment gradually build. The rift between them and their spouse gets bigger. And their hurt begins to leak out into other areas of their marriage.

Why don’t we speak up when we’ve been hurt? What is it that leads us to keep things to ourselves when we’ve been offended?

REASONS WE DON’T SPEAK UP

There can be many reasons we don’t speak up when we’ve been hurt, offended, or angered by our spouse.

We lack self-confidence.

When you lack self-confidence or have low self-esteem, it’s hard to find the ego strength to stand up for yourself. You may doubt your thoughts, feelings, or intentions. Or maybe you don’t speak up for yourself, because you assume you’re wrong or your concerns don’t really matter.

We judge by prior history.

If you’ve tried to speak up for yourself in past relationships but were consistently ignored, told you were wrong, or put on the receiving end of that person’s anger, then you will be hesitant to speak up for yourself now. You just assume history will repeat itself.

We fear our response.

If you have a history of blowing up or saying things you shouldn’t, then you may be afraid of speaking up, because you don’t want to hurt your spouse.

We fear their response.

If you have a history of being on the receiving end of your spouse’s anger when you’ve tried to speak up, then you may find yourself thinking, “I can’t speak up, because it will just make them mad and I don’t want to deal with that.”

REASONS TO SPEAK UP

But despite the reasons we don’t speak up, there are some really good reasons to go ahead and speak up…especially if your spouse has hurt or offended you.

It promotes honesty.

When you speak up, you’re being honest. No marriage can survive, let alone thrive, without honesty. Even difficult honesty helps to breed trust and respect. Honesty is also an important part of setting boundaries in a relationship. It may feel like it’s making things worse at times, but you can’t get to a better place without honesty.

It keeps things from festering.

Speaking up keeps things from building up emotionally. The less you speak up, the more things stack up inside. And this colors your thoughts, emotions, and perceptions in the marriage. Not speaking up is like continuing to walk with a rock in your shoe. If you don’t learn to speak up, the limp will just get worse.

It creates an environment for solutions.

You can’t fix something in a marriage if you can’t talk about it. There has to be mutual honesty and understanding before you can find a solution that will work for both spouses. Not speaking up ensures that the problem will continue…and possibly get worse.

HOW TO SPEAK UP

So we’ve talked about some reasons why we don’t speak up, and we’ve talked about some reasons why we need to speak up. But how can you best speak up; especially if you know it could be difficult?

Here are some steps you can take to best speak up when you’ve been hurt or offended:

  • Speak when you can control your words. If you’re the type of person who has trouble controlling your words and emotions when you speak up, then don’t speak until you know you can control yourself. And if while you’re speaking you find yourself getting out of control, then table the conversation and come back to it when you’re more in control.
  • Speak kindly but truthfully. There’s a passage of Scripture (Ephesians 4:15) that tells us to speak the truth in love. You need to do both. Speak lovingly so they can hear you, but speak truthfully so you can address things.
  • Speak earlier rather than later. The longer you sit on something that’s bothering you, the more you stew on it and the worse it gets. Then when you do bring it up, your emotions are already high. Address things at the moment they occur and the emotional volatility will be low and manageable.
  • Speak when you can best be heard. Try not to speak up to your spouse when they’re already tired, frustrated, upset, or angry. Chances are neither of you will get anywhere. Instead, pick a time when they’re more calm and open. But, don’t put it off too long, or the issue will go cold in your spouse’s mind.
  • Speak to your contributions as well as theirs. If you’ve contributed to the issue you want to address, lead the conversation with your contributions to the problem. You may even want to ask your spouse to forgive you for those things. This will set a much better tone and help them be more open to what you have to say.
  • Speak consistently. What I mean by this is consistently take this approach; even when it seems to be getting you nowhere. Don’t try it for a while and then give up. That just teaches your spouse that if they wait long enough, you’ll eventually drop it and they won’t have to deal with it. Continue to speak up until the two of you can come to some sort of consensus and agreement.

A FINAL WORD…

Or more like a final disclaimer…

Doing these things doesn’t mean the conversations won’t be difficult or that things will go according to your desire. It takes a lot of practice to break old habits. But keep at it. Following these suggestions will give you the best long-term probability of improving things and being heard. So, learn to SPEAK UP!

The List – Wait for Your Spouse to Go First

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Note: We are currently in a series called “The List.” The list refers to a list of ways you can lose your marriage, and is based on information gleaned from over 20 years of counseling records and watching marriage fail.

“You go first.” “No, you go first!” “Why should I be the one to go first? You go first!”

Parents hear this from their kids when those kids are facing something challenging, scary, or something they just don’t want to do.

But this also occurs between spouses. It just sounds different. It sounds more like, “Well, it would be a lot easier for me to do what you want if you would just ___________.” Or, “How can I do that when you’re still doing this.” This is the married version of “You go first.” “No, you go first.”

SO WHO GOES FIRST?

So many marital disputes boil down to who’s going to go first. We usually know what we need to do. We just don’t want to go first. We want our spouse to make the first move toward making things right.

But waiting on your spouse to make the first move makes things worse. And doing that long enough can cost you your marriage.

You should be the one who goes first in trying to make things better.

Now some of you are thinking, “Why should I be the one who goes first! You don’t even know the situation! You don’t know what my spouse has done! How can you say I should be the one who goes first to make it right?!”

Well first, let’s talk about why it’s so difficult to be the one who goes first.

WHY IS GOING FIRST SO HARD?

If you push back against going first, that’s perfectly natural and understandable. Going first is difficult. Here are some reasons why going first is so hard…

Hurt.

Maybe the reason it’s hard for you to go first is that your spouse has hurt you. Maybe they’ve hurt your feelings, or your pride, or your sense of fairness. And just like any wound, burn, or broken limb, that hurt has made you very sensitive and guarded.

Fear.

Perhaps it’s hard for you to go first because you’re afraid of being taken advantage of. Maybe you’re afraid of getting hurt again. When you’re hurt by your spouse, it can make it harder to trust them going forward, for fear that they’ll do it again.

Pride.

This is a subject none of us what to admit, but pride can often get in our way of going first. Our pride causes us to think things like: “Why should I go first? They’re the ones who messed up!” “If I go first, they’ll think I’m weak.” “I can’t go first. Then they’ll think they can get away with anything!”

Stubbornness.

And finally, we often let our stubbornness get in the way of going first. We’re convinced that we’re right, and we’re going to stick to our guns no matter what. We’re not going to compromise our principles…no matter what.

WHY GOING FIRST IS SO IMPORTANT.

I know going first is hard when you feel you’ve been wronged. I struggle with it all the time. But despite how difficult it is, going first is important for the following reasons:

It breaks a stalemate and gets things moving.

When there is hurt or disagreement in a marriage, it creates an emotional and behavioral log jam. Just like a log jam in a stream, love can’t begin to flow between spouses until someone makes a move to remove a log and get the love and behaviors flowing again. It’s within your power to get things flowing again, by going first.

Going first also makes it easier for your spouse to respond positively. You may be thinking, “It’s not my job to make it easier for them. They should do what’s right, even if it’s hard!”  But that’s a two-way street. If you want them to do what they should do so it will be easier for you to respond to them, then you have to be willing to do the same.

It starts to change attitudes.

We feel like our attitude needs to change before we can take the right action. But it’s actually the other way around. When you do the right thing, it starts to change your attitude…making it easier to do the next right thing. When you do the right thing, it not only positively affects your attitude, it positively affects your spouse’s attitude also.

And when you lovingly go first and do the right thing, it makes it harder for your spouse to blame you for their actions. In effect, going first takes away their ammunition.

It’s a tangible expression of love.

Love is expressed more in what you do than in what you say. If you say you love your spouse, but then wait for them to go first, your words of love mean little. You’re basically saying, “I’ll love you, only if you do what I think you need to do.” That’s not love, that’s bartering. Love sacrifices what you want for what your spouse needs.

It makes logical sense.

You can’t force your spouse to change. Trying to force them to do something (like going first) is disrespectful, offensive, and insights resistance. Don’t you feel the same way when they’re trying to force you to do something? So it’s illogical to try to force them to do something they don’t want to do and expect it to make things better.

Any change made in a marriage…no matter who makes it…will have an effect on the marriage as a whole. So, even if you believe your spouse should go first you ging first, will change things.

It’s a spiritual principle.

And finally, if you’re a person of faith, the idea that you should go first is backed up in the Scripture.

Matthew 5:23-26 says that if your “brother” has something against you, you should go and make things right between you. But later in Matthew 18:15, we’re told that if you have something against your “brother,” go and try to make it right with them. If you sum up these two passages, I always should be the one who goes first.

A FINAL WORD…

In marriage, both spouses should strive to go first. But I  know it’s hard to be the one to go first in trying to do the right thing; especially if you’re feeling hurt or fear being taken advantage of. But going first can make a real difference in your marriage. It can get things moving again, change your attitude, and make it easier for your spouse to respond in kind.

But here’s a caveat… I’m not saying if you always go first, everything will always be great in your marriage. It takes two people, working together, to make the marriage work well. You going first and doing the right things does not ensure that your spouse will do the same.

 

But, Romans 12:18 tells us…“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” That verse infers that it may not always be possible to live peaceably with someone. But it is possible for you to do what “depends on you.” And that involves going first to try to make things right in marriage.

Because if you consistently wait for your spouse to go first, it will be detrimental to your marriage. That’s why…IT’S ON THE LIST.

It’s Marriage Not Magic!

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I love a good magic show. As a kid, I would practice for hours learning sleight of hand magic. And now that I’m an adult and know it’s just a series of tricks and illusions, there’s still something about the wonder and the mystery of a magic show that captivates me.

Marriage and Magic

Whether you like magic or not, there is a part of all of us that wants our marriage to be magical. And we tend to treat our marriage as if it were a magic show, in the following ways:

Making something disappear.

Magicians are known for making things disappear. From small coins to jet planes, magicians seem to be able to make things disappear right in front of our eyes.

Likewise, spouses tend to want problems in the marriage to disappear. We ignore issues, down-play conflicts, or distract from problems in hopes they will magically disappear. But marriage is not a magic show and problems don’t magically disappear. They must be faced, addressed, and worked through.

Making something appear.

This is the flip side of making something disappear. Here, the magician magically produces something…seemingly out of thin air.

Many couples hope a great marriage will just appear, without a lot of effort. It’s as if they hope for great communication, easy conflict resolution, good sex, and large bank accounts to be magically produced out of thin air. But those things don’t magically appear. They come from an abundance of long, hard work.

Sawing a person in half.

This is a classic piece of magic. An assistant climbs into a box, and the magician uses a saw or sharp blades to separate the assistant into pieces; only to reassemble the assistant moments later, without a scratch!

In marriage, spouses will cut one another, with words or actions, and expect them to bounce back as if no harm was done. But you cannot hurt your spouse without leaving some sort of scar that they will carry for a long time. And sometimes a spouse can be cut so badly they can’t be put back together. So be very careful with your words and actions.

Reading a person’s mind.

It’s amazing when a magician can tell a person what card they drew or what number they’re thinking of. A magician can call upon someone they claim to have never met, and yet tell them things about their life in amazing detail. It’s like the magician can read minds.

I want to remind you that you cannot read your spouse’s mind. So don’t make assumptions about what they’re thinking, what they’re going to say, or what they desire. To do so is disrespectful and a sure way to get yourself in trouble.  Yes, you should get to know your spouse so well, you have a pretty good guess of what they’re thinking. But you should never assume you can read their mind. Ask questions and clarify responses. You’ll be better off for it.

Escaping the impossible.

One of my favorite magicians was Harry Houdini. He became famous as an escape artist, who bragged that he could escape from any shackle, restraint, or container. And whether through trickery or physical prowess, it seemed he could escape from anything.

Too often, we tend to believe we should be able to escape problems and hardships in marriage. We will try to ignore them, avoid them, and run from them. And when those escape tactics don’t work, we will blame things on our spouse or assume we’ve married the wrong person. But unlike a magician, you cannot escape from problems and hardships in marriage. You must go through them and learn from them.

A Final Thought…

Magicians make what they do look amazing and magical. But what you don’t see is all the years of hard work and practice that went into making it look like magic.

Marriage is not a magic show. If you put in the years of hard work and practice, your marriage will look like magic to others, but you’ll know how the trick is done. You’ll know it’s not magic, but rather years of trial and error, loving and learning, serving and sacrifice.

But if you stick with it long enough, you will eventually come to the end of your life and think…TADA!

Are You Dissatisfied With Your Marriage?

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If you’ve been married for a while, maybe you’ve had this thought. It’s an unsettling thought that you’ve probably not said out loud, but it’s one you can’t seem to escape. The thought is…

“I’m not satisfied with my marriage.”

In the last Normal Marriage post, we looked at the tendency for spouses to drift apart. This post addresses the next level. Here, we move from looking at marital drifting to marital dissatisfaction.

DISSATISFACTION IN MARRIAGE

The thought that you’re not satisfied in marriage can rock you to your core. We all go into marriage believing things should be happy and easy. And when it’s not, we…

  • Wonder if we married the right person.
  • Feel like there’s something wrong with us.
  • Blame our spouse.
  • Become depressed or resentful.

Now, let’s make something clear from the start. You’re going to be dissatisfied with your marriage from time to time. Despite what you see on social media, no one has the perfect, easy marriage. As a pastoral counselor, I see a lot of marriages that look great on the outside, but behind closed doors, the marriage is not as perfect as it looks. So know that there are times when marriage won’t be satisfying.

WHAT CAUSES DISSATISFACTION IN MARRIAGE?

If I asked you, “What’s causing you to be dissatisfied with your marriage?” you may think, “That’s easy. I’m dissatisfied with my marriage because of my spouse!”

Nice try, but it’s not that easy. There can be a lot of reasons for your dissatisfaction, and not all of them are about your spouse. Obviously, issues of abuse, or adultery, or abandonment will cause major dissatisfaction in a marriage. But we’re not talking about anything that drastic. Here are a few of the more “normal” reasons why you might be dissatisfied with your marriage:

The two of you are human.

You married a flawed person. Oh, and by the way…they did too! We make mistakes at times. We’re self-absorbed at times. We get tunnel vision. We are a work in progress. (But don’t go and tell your spouse they’re “a piece of work.” That’s not what I meant!) You’re not perfect and neither is your spouse. This, in itself, can create dissatisfaction in marriage.

The two of you are different.

When people come to me for premarital counseling, I ask them what attracted them to each other. They always say it’s was because they were so much alike. But the truth is, we’re attracted more by our differences than our similarities. It’s our differences that make the relationship exciting and attractive. But here’s the problem…opposites attract before the “I do’s” and they aggravate after the “I do’s.” (Can I get an Amen?!)

But you need those differences because they compliment and shore up your weakness. Those differences that aggravate you are actually a gift to you…if you’re willing to humble yourself and accept it.

Life throws you curves.

We all want to get married and live happily ever after. But life tends to plant land mines all along our road to happily ever after. Job losses, health issues, wayward children, expenses we didn’t expect, and a host of other things can explode without warning. And the stress and strain they put on a marriage can create a lot of dissatisfaction.

Your expectations are unrealistic.

Our expectations for marriage are often unrealistic…especially in the beginning. We expect our spouse to continue to be just as enraptured with us as they were when we were dating. We expect them to always listen to us, always want to have sex with us, continue to bring us cards and flowers, be interested in everything we’re interested in, and in general see life the way we see it. These unrealistic expectations get us in trouble and keep us from being satisfied in marriage.

I’m not saying you should expect the worst. I’m just saying your expectations need to be realistic.

Hallmark movies lie to you.

Ok, maybe this is just my aversion to Hallmark movies, but it goes along with unrealistic expectations. If you compare yourself to what you see in Hallmark movies (or other media,) you will start to base your expectations on that…and you will be dissatisfied.

The point is, no marriage is perfect, and there’s a lot of perfectly normal and natural reasons spouses experience dissatisfaction in their marriage.

Does this mean that you’re just doomed to be dissatisfied in your marriage? Not at all! But it does mean that you (not just your spouse) will have to make some changes.

What changes? We’ll cover that in the next Normal Marriage post…so stay tuned!

If You Can’t Get Over How They’ve Hurt You… (Part 2)

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What do you do if you’re having trouble getting over the way your spouse has hurt you?

I posed this question in the last post, but I didn’t answer it. Instead, I looked at the various ways spouses hurt one another.

I encourage you to go back and read that post, but here’s a very short summary…

  • Sometimes spouses will hurt one another.
  • Sometimes that hurt is unintentional.
  • Sometimes that hurt is intentional.
  • Sometimes the hurt sticks with you and is hard to get past.

So now I need to address the original question. What can you do when your spouse has hurt you and you can’t seem to get over it?

I suppose you could do a mic drop and leave your spouse, but because there is hurt in every relationship, you will constantly be moving from relationship to relationship. Not a good idea.

There’s another alternative…

If you can’t get over how they’ve hurt you…it’s time to forgive. 

If you’ve been hurt badly or repeatedly, you may recoil and push back at the mention of forgiveness.  Or, if you’re a person of faith, you may feel you’ve already forgiven them, but their offense continues to bother you…like a rock in your shoe.

Both of these responses are usually due to a misunderstanding of forgiveness. In order to explain what I mean by forgiveness, let’s start with some of the myths about forgiveness.

FORGIVENESS MYTHS…

There are a lot of misconceptions about forgiveness that can actually make the idea of forgiveness unpalatable and unattainable. Here are a few:

Forgiveness should be quick.

Sometimes we want to forgive quickly because we don’t like feeling resentful. Other times we want to forgive quickly because we believe that’s what our religious tradition teaches. But think of it this way…You can quickly forgive someone who accidentally bumps into you and spills your drink. But you’re not as quick to forgive your spouse who has been unfaithful and slept with someone else. The greater the offense, the longer and harder the process of forgiveness will be.

Forgiveness will come naturally with time.

Despite the old adage, time doesn’t heal all wounds. Healing takes both time and work. It may take some time for you to forgive your spouse, but it will also take work to get through the hurt.

Forgiveness is a one-time decision.

Yes, forgiveness starts with a decision to forgive, but then it is a process of continuing to forgive. Forgiveness involves re-forgiving your spouse every time you feel the hurt resurface.

Forgiveness means you forget the offense.

Our brains are not created to forget when we’ve been hurt. We need to remember the hurt…not to keep blaming our spouse, but to take the steps we need to take to protect ourselves from further hurt.

Forgiveness takes away your pain.

Forgiveness doesn’t take away your feelings. At least not quickly. Forgiveness merely asserts control over those feelings, denying them the right to drive you.

Forgiveness implies the offense doesn’t matter.

If the offense didn’t matter, there would be no need for forgiveness. The offense does matter! You’ve been wronged and hurt, and that needs to be recognized and dealt with.

Forgiveness means there’s no need for justice.

If your child is killed by a drunk driver, you can eventually forgive that drunk driver. But that doesn’t mean the driver should not suffer the consequences of their actions. Your forgiveness simply means that you relinquish the right to “make them pay.”

Forgiveness is the same as excusing the offender.

Forgiveness does not excuse your spouse for the offense. Nor does forgiveness release them of the personal responsibility for what they’ve done.

Forgiveness requires the offender to repent.

Forgiveness is something you do, independently of your spouse’s attitude and actions. Even if they see no reason for forgiveness, you can still forgive them. Forgiveness sets you free, despite their response.

Forgiveness means you have to trust your offender.

Forgiveness does not promote an environment for repeating the offense. If you borrow my car and it gets a door ding, I will probably trust you with my car again. But if you borrow my car and carelessly total it because you were driving too fast and drinking, I probably won’t trust you with my car again…even though I forgive you.

So, after looking at the myths associated with forgiveness,  now let’s look at what forgiveness really is…

FORGIVENESS IS…

Forgiveness is simply the decision and corresponding act of giving up your claim to retaliation or payment for an offense. You’re not denying the offense or the hurt it’s caused you. You’re simply releasing your right for repayment or justice.

This is what you need to do if you can’t get over how your spouse has hurt you. As we mentioned above, you may have to do this slowly and repeatedly depending on the gravity of the offense. And your forgiveness may not change the consequences of their offense. But it’s still a critical factor in your healing.

Forgiveness offers powerful benefits to a person’s physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual health. But one of the biggest benefits of forgiveness is that it keeps you from being stuck in the past. The offense is a part of history, and since you can’t change history, the only way you can keep from getting stuck in the past is to forgive.

I know…it’s easier said than done! But if you can’t get over how they’ve hurt you…it’s probably time for you to forgive.

If You Can’t Get Over How They’ve Hurt You… (Part 1)

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We all dream of a marriage where there’s lots of fun, good connection, deep understanding, frequent sex, abundant money, perfect kids, beautiful rainbows, and dancing unicorns.

But marriage can be as much a battleground as a playground at times because spouses will hurt each other from time to time. You can’t live with someone, day in and day out, and not…

  • Get your feelings hurt.
  • Feel devalued.
  • Be misunderstood.
  • Feel put down.
  • Be taken for granted.

Before we look at how to get past the hurt, we need to understand it.

UNINTENTIONAL HURT.

Most of the time, spouses hurt one another unintentionally. They don’t mean to inflict harm on one another. It just happens…like stubbing your toe or stepping on a Lego.

Most unintentional hurt comes from three basic differences between spouses:

Family of Origin.

We tend to underestimate how much our upbringing contributes to our marital hurt. For instance:

  • If you were raised in a family where raised voices were a sign of unacceptable anger, but your spouse was raised in a family where raised voices were a sign of lively discussion…you’re going to get your feelings hurt.
  • If you were raised in a family where both spouses jumped in to keep the house clean, but your spouse was raised in a family where one spouse was responsible for the house and the other for the outside…you’re going to get your feelings hurt.

Personality.

It’s funny how the personality we fell in love with often winds up being the personality we’re frustrated with. For instance:

  • If your personality is to be very structured and planned, but your spouse’s personality is to be very free-wheeling and spontaneous…you’re going to see your spouse as inconsiderate and hurtful at times.
  • If your personality is to be very private with most things, but your spouse’s personality is to be very open with most things…you’re going to butt heads and feel some hurt.

Stressors.

Both you and your spouse deal with different pressures and stressors in life. These pressures and stressors can easily leak out in your interactions with one another, causing unintentional hurts.

  • If your boss has been on your case with one demand after another, a request for help from your spouse might cause you to react with an icy, do-it-yourself tone of voice…leaving your spouse wounded.
  • If you’ve spent the day with kids clamoring for your attention and climbing all over you, your spouse’s sexual advance may be met with a cold, back-off-before-you-lose-that-hand kind of response…leaving your spouse rejected and hurt.

All of these are unintentional hurts, but they need to be talked through and worked out.

But what if the hurt is intentional?

INTENTIONAL HURT.

There may be times when spouses will hurt each other intentionally. Where unintentional hurt is like stubbing your toe, intentional hurt is like sticking out your foot to trip each other.

Intentional hurt typically occurs when we’re…

Trying to Defend Ourselves.

If we are feeling attacked, our automatic response is often to defend ourselves. For instance, if your spouse comes at you and wants to know why you haven’t unloaded the dishwasher, your first reaction might be to say “I’m sorry.” If they continue to press, your defensiveness goes up and you begin to make excuses for why you didn’t unload the dishwasher. But if your spouse continues to press, you might lash out in anger and say something like, “I’m not your servant! If you weren’t so busy staring at your phone you could do it yourself!” Though it was said in the heat of the moment, this was an intentional hurt inflicted on your spouse.

Trying to Get Even.

If our spouse has hurt us in some way (intentionally or unintentionally) we might react in such a way as to hurt them back. This is often done in a very passive-aggressive way.  For instance, suppose you’ve asked your spouse repeatedly to let you know when they’re on their way home from work, but they never seem to remember. You might try to get even by: not preparing dinner, going out with your friends and not letting them know when you’ll be back, or not picking up the phone when they’re trying to get in touch with you. These are all passive-aggressive attempts to get even with your spouse.

Trying to Get Our Needs Met…Apart From Our Spouse.

This category can involve getting involved in habits or hobbies our spouse does not enjoy. But mostly this refers to emotional and/or sexual infidelity. It’s when a spouse seeks to meet an emotional or sexual need with someone other than their spouse. Spouses who have done this will tell you they never intended it to happen. This can make it sound like the hurt they inflicted with their infidelity was unintentional. But somewhere they made an intentional choice to step outside of the marriage, making it an intentional hurt. (Note: we will have more to say on infidelity in a later post.)

As I said at the beginning of this post, spouses will hurt each other from time to time. Hopefully, it’s more unintentional than intentional, but it will happen. The quicker we can recognize when and why this happens, the easier it will be to fix and avoid it in the future.

But sometimes the hurt (big or small) will stick with us. We take it personally…to a fault. The hurt cuts so deep we can’t seem to forget it or get over it.

When this happens, what can we do? I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but this post is already too long. So, you’ll need to check out the next Normal Marriage post to find out!

Things You Need to Know Before You Get Married…or Divorced

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“I wish I had known this before I got married.” I hear this a lot as a counselor. Sometimes it’s said in jest, and sometimes it’s said in frustration.

Before we get married, we think we know what it takes to have a good marriage. It’s only after we’re married that we begin to find out how much we really don’t know. The things we don’t know can bring an end to the honeymoon phase of marriage, and if left unaddressed, can bring an end to the marriage itself.

What is it we need to know before we get married…and before we get divorced?

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Getting Over the Wall of Resentment

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Resentment can be like a wall that separates spouses, and the longer the wall stays up, the harder it is to get over it. Walls of resentment can become so high and thick that spouses lose hope of ever getting over it.

But there are some things you can do if you have a wall of resentment in your marriage.

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