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.
Easter is the most important, significant, and meaningful remembrance of Jesus. And yet it receives much less publicity and celebration than Christmas. This might be because generally it is much easier for us to become excited and celebrate a baby's birth than a man's murder. The birth of a baby is also common to human experience; crucifixion thankfully is not. People can get excited about buying gifts for each other and our economy has grown dependent on the spending that goes on during the Christmas season. There are lots of reasons that Christmas gets more press than Easter, not the least of these is getting our arms around Jesus' resurrection from the dead. And yet Easter is the religious ceremony of the Christian faith. As Paul suggests, without Easter, we have no Christian faith.
Easter helps us remember and celebrate the greatest expression of God's love. I cannot do justice to such a subject in such a short space, but we cannot separate Jesus' resurrection from his crucifixion. His death and rising are the heart of the Christian experience. One deals with sin and the other with a new order of creation. Dr. Robert Mulholland, a New Testament scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary, calls it "God's cruciform love". Simply, God's being cannot do anything else but crucify himself on our behalf so that we might participate in His nature. In other words, God created us to be with Him so He removes what separates us from Him.
In my last blog, I quoted Thomas Merton that at its root sin is a failure to love. God never sins and always loves; it is who He is. In another blog, I quoted Henri Nouwen that love means "intimacy, closeness, mutual vulnerability and a deep sense of safety". While there is a tremendous amount that can be said about what love is, this definition captures the relational aspect of love. Easter reminds us that God has made an open door to participate in His love. He has made it possible for us to be intimate, close, vulnerable and safe with Him and therefore with each other. Easter affirms that God is love and that His love is the greatest force imaginable that it raises the dead. His love gives new life where there is no life.
Please consider where in your life there is deadness or failure to demonstrate love. Who are you struggling to love? Does your marriage feel dead? Does fear dominate your relationships and your life? Do others feel unsafe with you? Do you believe that you don't need others? Do you think that you have to live life manipulating and maneuvering to get what you need? All of these are failures to love; please consider that God gives new life where there is none. Easter reminds us that nothing is hopeless, nothing is dead forever. Celebrate Easter in your life!
This is the week of Easter, what is sometimes referred to as Passion or Holy Week. It is when Christians remember in a variety of ways Jesus' death on the Cross, our Lord's answer to the problem sin. It is fitting that last week the Vatican released an expansion of the seven deadly sins (http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/03/13/new.sins/?iref=mpstoryview) that reflect our technological and scientific advancements like genetic manipulation or ruining the environment. It is a good time to reflect on and consider what sin is.
In one of the readings my wife Carolyn is doing for her daily devotional, something she is admirably faithful about, she commented on a sentence that struck her: "…all sin is, at its root, a refusal to love." (Lent and Easter Wisdom from Thomas Merton). In today's relativistic, postmodern world where like trash, one person's sin may be another person's virtue, I wonder if "sin" is even a word that has any meaning. Significantly and thankfully, I am apparently wrong. According to Ellison Research (http://ellisonresearch.com/releases/20080311.htm) 87% of Americans, whether religiously involved or not, believe in the concept of sin defined as "something that is almost always considered wrong, particularly from a religious or moral perspective." In a list of thirty behaviors and activities ranked as sinful, adultery tops the list with 81% agreement. I wonder what kind of list would be formulated when sin is defined as a refusal to love instead of something that is considered morally wrong. I am afraid for me it would be a very long list of daily offenses.
I believe most of us think that we would never refuse to love. How could we imagine doing such a thing? It is not too difficult for me to think of myself as someone who can and has sinned but I do not like considering myself as someone who refuses to love. This makes me question what love is. It raises questions like what does refusing to love look like. When and where am I refusing to love? How do I know if I truly loving someone? What does refusing to love have to do with genetic manipulation or even adultery? If I am willing to love does that make me free from sinning?
The Bible tells us that Jesus' death on the Cross is God's love in action (John 3:16). It tells us that God is love and that Jesus is the perfect picture of love (1 John 3:16). And this same verse tell us what our love needs to look like, being willing to give up our lives for one another. This should sound familiar; this is what Jesus did for us on the Cross. Apparently, we are to do the same thing for each other. The root of sin, then is being unwilling to put others first. How simple and how difficult this is.
I am experiencing the privilege of having conversations with Dr. Sharon Hart May, the author of books on safe haven marriages. Her latest book, How to Argue So Your Spouse Will Listen is one I give to every couple I counsel. My conversations by teleconference are focusing on EFT or Emotionally Focused Therapy, an approach to marriage counseling developed by Drs Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg. A substantial body of research outlining the effectiveness of EFT now exists. Research studies find that 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery and approximately 90% show significant improvements. The only situation in which EFT is not indicated is on-going violence in the relationship. EFT is being used with many different kinds of couples in private practice, university training centers and hospital clinics and many different cultural groups. These distressed couples include partners suffering from disorders such as depression, post traumatic stress disorders and chronic illness. I have found this approach to be remarkably effective with couples I see and can affirm that my experience with EFT is consistent with the research results. This method really helps couples.
I have over twenty-five years of experience with couples and marriage. I am a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy and have taken numerous courses and workshops on how to help couples stay married and most of them have a documented success rate of around 35%. (One notable exception is Dr. John Gottman's work). I cannot express how frustrating and sad it is to watch couples make a decision to separate and divorce. I almost quit seeing couples who were in distress because I knew how unhelpful traditional marriage counseling was with true and meaningful results. I no longer feel that way and am now confident that with God and this method I can help any couple who desires to stay together or reconnect.
I do not make this statement lightly. I know it is bold. The couples that find their way to my office are in significant distress. There typically has been an affair or some other major betrayal or traumatic experience that severely stresses the relationship bond. There is great emotional pain present but the tools and means are available to help them restore, redeem, and transform their relationship and grow into loving union. I am humbled and grateful to participate in such a thing as this. Please tell any couple who is experiencing marital difficulties that real hope is available.
May Blessings Be in Your Day
I love (no pun intended) this quote from Henri Nouwen (a well known and respected Catholic theologian and spiritual director) about what love means: "Love means intimacy, closeness, mutual vulnerability, and a deep sense of safety." Obviously, I do not feel close to or intimate with his quote so my use of "love" is more about how much I like his quote. We use "love" to describe how we feel about so many different things, like "I love Coke," etc. that the word loses its power when we use it to describe how we feel about the person we love. Mr. Nouwen is using this to describe how we should be with God when we say He loves us and we love him. It is also how we should be with our spouse and best friend.
He goes on to say: "But all of those are impossible as long as there is fear. Fear creates suspicion, distance, defensiveness, and insecurity." Again, Mr. Nouwen is speaking in reference to fearing God but the same holds true for our intimate relationships. We cannot love God or one another if "fear" is at work in our relationships. You probably do not think of the word "fear" in reference to your spouse unless you are in an abusive relationship. But when you apply the words "suspicion, distance, defensiveness, and insecurity" how well do they fit? Or the converse; is your marriage or love relationship a place of "intimacy, mutual vulnerability, and a deep sense of safety"?
The amazing thing is this, both in our relationship with God and with each other, that if we know someone loves us, if our answer is yes to love and no to fear, then we are able to tolerate seemingly unbearable stress. We may experience significant conflict with our spouse, parent or friend or go through excruciating challenges, but if we know that at the end of the day, they love us, desire us, want to be close to us, honest and open with us, and genuinely care about our welfare, then the relationship is secure and we are secure.
Are you saying yes to love and no to fear? If not, your relationship is in trouble and it will not stand up to the challenges and stress of life. The good news is it does not have to remain that way. Begin working to eliminate the causes of fear in your relationships and allow the power of love to work its magic.
I visited my website recently and was struck by the word transform. I was impressed by this because I know I do not have the power to transform anything. I hope I have not given the wrong impression and promise something that I cannot deliver. There is change in many of the people I work with in counseling. There sometimes is transformation, which means to "change something dramatically, especially improving…" Often there is not dramatic change but improvement. But I am confident that seeds are planted that may lead to transformation, that is to dramatic improvement.
Transform can also mean "to change completely for the better". Complete change, dramatic change, this is describing change that is obvious. These are powerful statements of what many people hunger for; it is something you and someone else can notice like when the stock market increases by three or four hundred points in one day or you lose 30 or 50 lbs and the change is obvious, and better. You don't look like the same person. You are dramatically and completely different, in a better way.
Have you had an experience of transformation in your life? Have there been occasions or experiences of your life becoming completely different and better? As I look back over my life I see profound and dramatic change that warrants use of the word transformed. I am completely and dramatically different and better from the person I used to be. An important variable is "as I look back". Becoming a transformed person is not like the stock market where dramatic change happens in a day or even a few hours. Becoming a transformed person is a process or journey with dramatic or meaningful occurrences along the way that have a cumulative, life changing effect over time.
Transformation is possible. What experiences have you had that have contributed to your transformation? Who were the significant people involved? How have you dramatically or completely improved?
I sit with many couples that have gone through adultery, or in the modern vernacular, "having an affair". The terms don't exactly mean the same thing. One of the definitions of affair in the dictionary is "a sexual relationship between two people not married to each other." Adultery on the other hand is defined as "voluntary sexual relations between a married person and somebody other than his or her spouse." Technically, having an affair does not necessarily carry the weight of betrayal associated with adultery. And betrayal is a heavy weight to carry.
Another term for such behavior is infidelity. I think this definition captures the event in more descriptive and accurate language: "unfaithfulness or disloyalty, especially to a sexual partner." Interestingly, infidelity is also defined as disbelief or "the absence of religious belief"; thus the term "infidel" or nonbeliever. The authors of the Old Testament would often describe the Israelites who turned away from God toward pagan gods as adulterers. They were disloyal and unfaithful to the covenant they had made with Him. He was to be there God and they were to have no other god before Him. A marriage is a similar covenant between two people. We are to be faithful to one another, and not just sexually.
Problems with faithfulness begin way before sexual unfaithfulness occurs. Infidelity may happen often and in many ways other than committing adultery and we need to guard our faithfulness and loyalty to our mate. When we are unfaithful or disloyal to our mate we betray them, just like we betray our Lord when we are unfaithful to him. Heavy stuff if you're not an infidel!
What does it mean to be faithful to your mate? One place to begin is to pay attention to how you think about, view, and treat your mate. How faithful are you to one another in the little things? Do you respect what they desire even if it seems silly to you? Do you defend one another and stand up for each other in the face of criticism or attack? Does your mate know that you are there for them no matter what, or do they wonder if they have to stand on their own? Can your mate trust your word; your promise to do what you say you will do? If you ask your mate: "Do you believe, know that I am on your side; that I stand with you through thick and thin (or sickness and health) and will never leave you", how do you think they will answer?
Do you wonder how all of sudden you are in an argument that you did not see coming? You are upset and agitated before you know it and embroiled in a disagreeable disagreement with someone you love. Literally, you can be having a casual conversation and within milliseconds you're in emotional turmoil. To borrow a phrase from Dr. Sharon May, you have been hijacked by your emotional brain. This happens when you perceive a particular situation to be threatening or stressful and your emotional brain kicks in gear taking out your prefrontal cortex or thinking brain. We are created to react rapidly when confronted with threatening situations and thinking slows our reaction time down.
This works great when you are confronted with a real physical threat and you either run (flee), attack (fight), or stand like a doe in headlights (freeze). You are dealing with danger in an adaptive, life preserving manner. The challenge for our relationships is we also react this way when we are confronted by what we perceive as emotional threats, and that is a different flavor for each one of us. Dr. Joseph Le Doux from the Center for Neural Science at New York University has mapped out what parts of the brain are affected by information coming in from our senses and obviously how we perceive what we are taking in is critical to which "brain" reacts, our "thinking/reflecting" brain or our "emotional/reacting " brain.
We are in an argument before we know it, and depending on how each of us responds determines how long or intense the argument is. We are all different, with different histories and temperaments that affect how we react. For those of us who are "quick responders" we need to learn how to slow our system down and engage our thinking brain. We can escalate a disagreement to proportions not expected and the argument quickly becomes something no one wants.
Interestingly, even the "slow responders" who remain calm on the outside are reacting exactly the same way on the inside by either freezing or fleeing. These folks are the ones that shut down and withdraw during conflict. The important point is that while they may seem reasonable and in control, their thinking/reflecting brains are not engaged so problem solving and compromise cannot occur.
For either type of "responder" the situation and person are not safe so self preservation not communication and reconciliation is the rule of the day. It is only when our thinking/reflecting brains are processing information that we can work through our differences. We must work to make one another feel safe; then we can connect and communicate.
Pay attention to what trips your trigger and how you react. Learn to distinguish between your emotional responses and your more calm thoughtful ones. Allow each other to come back to level before reengaging and trust that your loved one is not the enemy.
Men and women are different. Anyone who has been in a heterogeneous relationship knows this. In fact, the word heterogeneous means exactly this; "consisting of parts or aspects that are unrelated or unlike each other." No wonder marriage can be so difficult! The way a man and woman argue is one specific way that we are different. Dr. John Gottman, a marital researcher has documented the different physiological reactions of men and women during an argument. Because our marriage, and any other significant relationships where there is an emotional bond or attachment, is critically important to our well being our stress response is triggered when the relationship is threatened. And men and women respond to this threat in radically different ways.
Dr. Gottman found that most men, in the midst of an argument where they are feeling pursued and attacked, or cornered, react as though their wife is a real physical threat. We men tend to gear up to physically defend ourselves like we would if we had to battle a lion or a warrior. Due to higher levels of testosterone, men's physiological arousal is one of heightened vigilance, increased heart rate and blood pressure. We are physically ready for war. Not exactly conducive for resolving an emotional conflict; we are not looking for a hug and an "I'm sorry honey, I really didn't mean that"! At the moment, and for a significant period of time thereafter, men are not physically able to respond in an emotionally connective way.
Amazingly, our heterogeneous other is able to do that. Women have higher levels of the hormone oxytocin, the bonding hormone. When experiencing similar relational stress, women are more inclined to socialize and nurture, not fight. Their natural tendency is to want to connect and give care so they pursue and persist. In the midst of an emotional conflict woman are wired with a greater ability to calm themselves. Men, on the other hand, take longer to settle down and usually need separation and space to do that.
If your spouse, most likely your husband, responds to emotional stress like a lion is about to devour him, then give him time and space to settle down. There is a critical condition to allowing this disengagement; there must be agreement to return and engage at a later time. Many couples will simply remove themselves and ignore what went on because experience tells them the same cycle will repeat. This is disastrous for the long term health of your relationship and you must develop the skills and resources to comfort and connect in the midst of conflict. Appreciating the different ways men and women are created can make a huge difference in accomplishing that.