We all know that those closest to us are the ones that can hurt us. The members of our family or our spouse are those with whom we are most vulnerable and therefore most exposed to being disappointed. When we are vulnerable we open ourselves by letting down our guard and allowing those who love us to be close. What our family or loved ones say and do to or about us has an impact on us; they have the power to affect us. Being hurt by a loved one is like a dog lying on its back, wagging its tail anticipating its belly being rubbed or scratched and instead it gets picked up by its paws and thrown across the room. The dog was calmly and restfully expecting love and affection and instead is assaulted. Sometimes we treat the ones we love just like that. We cause one another to suffer.
One of the definitions of betrayal is to cause suffering. Betraying someone is to turn someone over to suffering. Contrast that with the definition of compassion. It means to suffer with someone. If we cause someone we love to suffer by how we treat them then we are betraying them. If we enter into someone's suffering then we are being compassionate with them. In families, marriages and other intimate relationships we often find ourselves betraying in one context and offering compassion in another. Our betrayer can also become our source of compassion and vice-versa. This is a characteristic that make relationships so difficult and confusing. It will take some effort of reassurance before the dog you threw across the room will let you scratch his belly again. The only way to do this is to offer compassion, to enter into and own the suffering you caused.
I have often thought about Judas and why he hung himself. He betrayed Jesus turning him over to suffering. The great paradox is that Judas' betrayal brings salvation to those who believe in Jesus. Jesus' death on the cross is God's awesome demonstration of compassion. According to the Bible, he suffered with and for us in order that we might be set free from sin. Our betrayal of Jesus is not too different from Judas' betrayal. We too have turned Him over to suffering because of our sin. But when we receive salvation from the Cross we participate in the compassion of Jesus. We believe that He loves us no matter what we have done. Judas' suicide is a commentary on what happens when we believe compassion is not available for us. If we believe like Judas that we must bear our suffering alone there is no place for suffering to go and it destroys us.
In our intimate relationships we need to understand this relationship between betrayal and compassion. We need to be able to enter into one another's suffering even if we are the cause of that suffering. Being compassionate with one another, being willing to suffer with each other opens up the door to freedom from suffering. Otherwise it will destroy the relationship; just ask the dog.
There were a couple of new events recently that caught anyone's attention who saw them. One was the brutal beating of a young girl shown on You Tube by her so called friends and the other was a report on out of control behavior by students on spring break. According to the Florida story on www.momlogic.com spring break is not what it used to be. The extent and degree of drinking, drug use, and sexual promiscuity is significantly increased from twenty, fifteen and even ten years ago. If any of you went on spring break during those years then you can imagine how severely dysfunctional and self destructive the behavior must be for it to be considered distressingly worse. No wonder parents worry about their kids.
The O'Reilly Factor reported on this story and had a "Family Therapist" on to discuss and analyze the issue. Like the "animalistic beating" of the teenage girl by a gang of "girlfriends" these students were displaying and strutting their stuff for a camera and the video finds its way to the internet. After a shallow and silly comment by the family therapist that the problem is due to extended adolescence without adult responsibility O'Reilly redirects that a significant factor to this display of extreme behavior is a lack of shame. That is, they do not care who sees them. That is the point of shame; not wanting to be seen. If you have a sense of shame, you want to keep your shameful behavior in the dark so no one knows what you did. If you lack shame you put it on display and shove it into peoples' faces.
Lack of shame is a calloused and hardened place to be. Most likely, many of the kids on spring break will wake up horrified by what they did and said for all to see once they are not under the influence of substances. The beating of the young girl is another story. There is no report that they were "under the influence" of anything other than brutal rage. All of this raises significant questions for our culture.
The two commentators rightly conclude that a lack of parenting plays a significant role in lack of shame. That begs the question how parenting affects the development of shame. A lack of shame reflects an absence of value, meaning and purpose. Kids without shame are those kids that have figured out whether consciously or not that they are on their own. Their lives feel purposeless, meaningless and valueless because they believe deeply in their being that what they do doesn't matter to anyone. So what does it matter how they act or who sees it?
The most effective parents are those who have a meaningful relationship with their child. Their child knows, despite all the struggles, battles, arguments, and drama that their parents love them more than they love themselves. These are not "helicopter parents" hovering endlessly over their kids directing and protecting them. These are parents who genuinely love being with their kids and invest their lives in giving them life. Their kids know their life has value, meaning, and purpose because what is more important than anything else, more important than what they do or how successful they are or what kind of trouble they cause, is having a relationship with their child. "You are my son or my daughter and I love having you as a part of my life."
Place of Pain, Place of Hope
Every week couples come into my office facing a crisis in their marriage. They are typically at the end of their rope with each other and are often ready to separate. They are asking the question would I be better off if I were not with this person. They are wondering if their life would be more full to have their partner out of their life, to no longer be joined and responsible for being with their mate. The marital relationship has become something to avoid and get away from; it has become a place of pain. Marriage counseling is often a last gasp effort that hardly seems worth the trouble. It is hard work and requires the facing of our failures, another place of pain. For any couple to go through this there has to be the hope of a good marriage.
Most of us have an idea of what marriage is supposed to be like and many have a marriage that is full of love, commitment, safety and companionship. The good marriage is that picture of two people facing the challenges of life together and enjoying each other physically and emotionally. We see that picture in romantic movies, novels, and love songs. For those distressed couples sitting in my office this picture does not match their experience. I regularly hear them say that they are ready to give up on the idea of marriage believing that they have somehow been duped into entering into it in the first place: "If I had known how bad this would be I never would have gotten married and I will not make the same mistake again." I believe many people have had a similar thought even if never acted upon.
According to recent research conducted by the George Barna Group (www.barna.org) four out of five adults have been married; that is 78% of adults have been married and only 22% have never been married. Also, of those who have been married, one third or 33% have experienced at least one divorce. In spite of this rate of divorced individuals, marriage is a choice most make, even a second or third time. Marriage is obviously something people regularly do. So is divorce. As George Barna says: "There no longer seems to be much of a stigma attached to divorce; it is now seen as an unavoidable rite of passage… Interviews with young adults suggest that they want their initial marriage to last, but are not particularly optimistic about that possibility. There is also evidence that many young people are moving toward embracing the idea of serial marriage, in which a person gets married two or three times, seeking a different partner for each phase of their adult life."
The "idea of serial marriage" is a scary thought. Serial marriage means serial divorce and that brings to mind "serial murder". If you have ever been divorced or witnessed divorce as a child of a divorced couple, images of murder are not far off the mark. The emotional and material consequences of divorce have been well documented. Few divorces end amicably and they all involve, at the very least loss, a painful experience. No divorced person I know has ever denied that ending their marriage was painful.
It is ironic that couples who divorce are attempting to get out of a place of pain only to most likely enter into a more painful experience of divorce. Of course, pain can be all consuming and the present experience of pain is not dulled by a future promise of greater pain. We want the pain to stop now and getting away from a marriage that has become a place of pain dominates our motivation. If George Barna is right that there is a trend toward serial marriage (and divorce) it raises several questions, not the least of which is how well you are able to tolerate emotional pain. Maybe this trend of serial marriage is a dysfunctional way of coping with pain? Maybe many of us have don't know how to tolerate emotional pain so we run from one painful situation to the next.
What kind of pain are you willing to tolerate; the pain of a distressed marriage or the pain of separation and loss? Do you really think running from one marriage and divorce to the next marriage and divorce will solve your pain? Why not consider tolerating the pain, the frustration and the challenge of repairing a distressed marriage? Marriages can be repaired and restored. It is hard work and it does involve pain. A good marriage is not a false hope; you have not been duped into believing in and hoping for a good marriage. Your marriage can be good.