Our very entrance into a marriage crisis is often strewn with ambiguity: they want a pastor, but they don’t.
—James D. Berkeley
Every once in a while I hear of a couple married dozens of years who “never quarreled once.” I always wonder whether they’re amnesiacs or liars.
Place two sentient people together in marriage, and conflict is bound to occur. In measured doses, conflict can be productive; it forces growth and change, compromise and resolution. It releases tensions constructively, rather than letting them build to dangerous levels.
But when does the normal jostling of any marriage relationship become a crisis? It depends on the individuals involved.
“Just as some people can handle more physical pain than others, some couples tolerate more marital discord. But a body can stand only so much pounding, and a couple can take only so much anger and quarreling,” says Ed Smelser, a counselor at Fairhaven Ministries in Roan Mountain, Tennessee. “Tension is inevitable. Arguments are common. But when the situation becomes so painful that a couple can’t see the marriage continuing—that’s a crisis.”
What is the pastor’s response when a shaken marriage totters in near collapse—and when some do eventually topple? Here are engineering plans to shore up the tottering and rebuild the devastated.
Outsider In
While our presence in some crises will be welcomed, our very entrance into a marriage crisis is often strewn with ambiguity: they want a pastor, but they don’t. Or one does, but the other resents it. It’s difficult for the pastor, an outsider, to know the expected role when summoned, sometimes ever so faintly, into a marital crisis.
A marriage crisis rarely grows in complete obscurity. Signs of disintegration begin to appear around the edges of the relationship: an increase in separate activities, coldness toward one another in social situations, marital “humor” with barbs, public bickering, rumors of family fights, children who suddenly become behavior problems or allow their grades to plummet at school, a drop-off in church involvement. Pastors notice these signs and wonder what to do.
Sometimes unwelcome messages reach the pastor: “Do you know the Schulzes are having trouble?” When the rumors prove accurate, the pastor has a decision to make: to initiate or to wait until they make the first move. Both tactics have pros and cons.
Initiating can make you an unwanted intruder. Therefore, many pastors wait, prayerfully, to be contacted by one of the spouses. “Unless someone is willing to reach out for help, willing to change,” I heard over and over as I talked to pastors, “the chances of helping that couple are nil. Somebody has to want help enough to be willing to involve you. Otherwise they may listen politely (or not so politely) to what you say, but they’ll go out and do what they’d planned to do all along.”
Thus it appears wise to wait until invited.
But waiting for the drowning to call for help is a wrenching job for lifesavers. Aren’t pastors supposed to care for their people, even when parishioners don’t know enough to request it? Should pastors helplessly sit on their hands while marriages go under?
These difficult questions have led many pastors to adopt this philosophy: Under normal circumstances, I’ll allow couples the dignity to ask for help. But I won’t knowingly allow a marriage to disintegrate solely because no one invited me in.
Charles Shepson, founder of Fairhaven Ministries, says, “Sometimes when I hear a former student or acquaintance is having marital troubles, I’ll write to tell him I care and to offer help. The vast majority of the time I get no response. Or when I do hear back, it’s usually months later, after things have really fallen apart or when things are safely back together. In the midst of a crisis, they often seem unable or unwilling to let me help. But when they reach out to me, it’s another story altogether. Then I’ve seen a lot of good things happen.”
Care’s Beginnings
Of all people, one’s spouse has the greatest opportunity to cause pain and frustration, just as that same person is most capable of giving pleasure and fulfillment. Thus, marriage difficulties cut deeply.
When initiating pastoral contact, one of the biggest jobs is to control and channel a range of emotions. The crisis often unfolds with one spouse unable to cope with the pain of a rocky marriage and thus seeking the pastor’s help. A woman whose wedding I had performed about a year earlier called to ask if she could see me in my office. While settling into our chairs, she got to the point: “Jim, Keith and I aren’t doing well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Jeanne. What seems to be the matter?”
“It’s probably not fair to put it this way, but it’s his family. I don’t think I’ll ever be a part of them.”
“What about them is hurting you?” I asked.
“Keith and his parents and brothers are in the trucking business together. Don’t get me wrong. It’s going well—maybe too well. That damn business is all any of them ever think about!”
It was the first time I’d heard her use that kind of language. “You sound put off by the Kalahars! But every new couple has to learn how to fit into each other’s family. Is there anything else?”
“It probably wouldn’t be that bad for anybody else, but do you know how clannish the Kalahars are? I mean, we all live together on property right near the shop—my mother-in-law is right out my kitchen window! They’re always having birthday parties and anniversaries and business celebrations. But if the party’s for my side of the family, forget it! They expect Keith and me to live for the business, and Keith does whatever the rest of his family wants. Well, I don’t want to be a Kalahar—at least not that much. I want at least a little piece of Keith for myself, and to do things our way.”
“I can understand. Have you and Keith been upset with each other?”
“Upset is hardly the word for it. I didn’t feel good on Tuesday, so I told Keith I didn’t want to go to a party for his cousin. We had a big blowup. He accused me of trying to turn him against his family, and I was so mad by then, I told him I hated his stupid family. Then I split for Carol’s place. I ended up going back home that night, but Keith and I have hardly been speaking. Keith’s been out of the house most of the time. But what’s new about that? He cares more for his trucks than he ever did for me!”
Jeanne had a crisis: she still loved Keith, but they had a lot of things to work out. Jeanne came looking for help, and I wanted to see that the marriage God had joined together no one would put asunder. How should I best proceed?
Ed Smelser offers sound advice: “When people first come to you, they tend to describe situations to best fit their needs. Out of frustration, anger, bitterness, and hurt, they tell you everything that’s wrong with the other person. I like to meet with a couple together to have them both tell their side.”
Jeanne was probably telling me the truth as she knew it, but it was edited truth, a piece of the story. I was sure Keith had plenty to fill in from his viewpoint. I had to be careful not to jump to conclusions. I needed Keith’s insights and attention to do all I could for them.
“It’s important to get them together,” Smelser continues, “because even sitting in front of you, they have to practice good marriage communication: letting the other person speak, letting him or her finish, not controlling the conversation. I like to observe how they relate to each other, so I ‘let them go at it’ to a degree. I learn a lot about them and their relationship in that initial interchange.”
After an initial meeting with both parties, many counselors find it wise to meet with each person separately. Charles Shepson usually follows this routine. “The second time I meet with a couple, I try to talk with each of them alone for thirty to sixty minutes. That’s a time when each can talk openly without any regard for how the other is taking what’s being said. For instance, the husband may say, ‘I feel almost nothing for my wife anymore.’ He couldn’t say that in front of his wife without hurting her, so probably it wouldn’t be said.
“The wife may say, ‘I’ve told Bill about one lover, but actually I’ve had three. He’d never be able to take it if he knew how many, and especially who they were.’ That’s valuable information that eventually Bill needs to hear and handle, but it never would have come out had I not talked with Bill’s wife in private. I can ask questions and get answers unimpeded by the effect those answers would have on a spouse.”
“I tell them they may say anything they want about our individual session,” Smelser says, “but I make a case for not talking about it outside our sessions together.” Why? Because when they tell each other about their time with the counselor, they often “forget” parts embarrassing to them, misquote the counselor for their benefit, or give some misreading of what was said or done.
After he meets with them separately, Shepson gathers them briefly to plot their next steps. This helps discourage excessive curiosity about “What did you say about me in there?”
If a counselee doesn’t talk, says Smelser, “I try to draw out that person by saying something like, ‘You must have your reasons for being quiet.’ Suppression of anger, or passive aggression, can be just as injurious to a marriage as active hostility.”
The idea to keep in mind here is that emotions are. They may be acted out or stuffed deep inside, they may frighten or bewilder or dominate, but they need to be acknowledged. Then they may be faced and worked on.
Shepson says, “One of my jobs is to get feelings out into a setting where they are neither judged nor discounted. I want the person to know his or her emotions have a right to exist. Later we may talk about the right and wrong actions springing from these emotions, but at the moment, I need to give permission for these emotions to be expressed.”
Care Objectives
Once the couple has expressed their emotions and described the basic issues, the counselor can work on some basic objectives. Ed Smelser has five objectives for the next few sessions. These provide a marriage counseling routine in outline.
Controlled release of tension. Smelser’s initial goal is to gather data in a “safe” setting. He lets the couple get things off their chests, but disallows verbal abuse and hateful statements that will later be regretted. A couple has built pressure in their relationship for a number of months or years. When they finally reach a crisis, that pressure is ready to burst out in destructive ways. Merely allowing them the dignity of being heard releases pressure.
Increased understanding of issues. Emotions cloud reasoning, and both parties likely come with a limited or distorted view of their marriage. Whether overly pessimistic, unnecessarily blameful, or excessively naïve, their understanding often needs massive doses of unbiased observation.
“Have you considered …?” questions help couples view their problems from a new perspective. With Jeanne, I mused, “Keith has had thirty-some years in close association with his family. I’d probably have a hard time including new ways into old habits, too. I’ll bet he isn’t even aware of how much his family continues to influence him.” Jeanne, in her hurt, may not have had the charity or clarity to even consider that.
Communication with, rather than at, each other. The prior need, of course, is to get them talking to each other. It’s not uncommon for a counselor to hear a spouse talking as if the other weren’t there: “I wish she’d just once—only once!—be on time for church!”
The natural response to that is, “Jill’s here. Maybe you could say it to her.”
“Oh, yeah. Uh, Jill, do you think you could try to be on time more often? I hate being late for meetings.”
Since communication problems are at the heart of so many marital crises, simply getting the two parties talking together can be a major step toward health. But the quality of that talk is important. According to Smelser, “Many of the things one person says make the other erect defenses.”
The wife says, “You never think about all the things I do for you.” The natural response from the husband is, “I do too! Just yesterday I thanked you for packing my lunch.”
To the wife, Smelser might say, “The way you talk seems to be triggering defensiveness in your husband. If he feels you’re attacking, he’s going to want to defend himself. How about saying something like, ‘I sure like it when you notice the things I do to keep this family going’?”
Smelser continues: “Most wives, when they say, ‘Don’t read the newspaper,’ don’t really have anything against newspaper reading. What they intend to say is, ‘Talk to me!’ If the husband would only talk a few minutes with his wife, he could read the paper unmolested for hours. So we have to get people to say what they want, not what they don’t like.”
Refocusing on one’s own responsibilities. By the time marital problems get out of hand, both parties have likely done a lot of brooding on what the other’s failures are. The wife is full of “He doesn’ts,” and the husband is loaded with “She won’ts.”
“The focus must be taken from ‘faults I think my partner ought to work on,'” Smelser says. “I may say, ‘I’m really not interested in who has the majority of problems. The issue is for each of you to say, “What am I doing to contribute to our problems? What can I work on to make things better?” I try to help them refocus on their own choices, on their individual responsibilities, on what they themselves need to know or do or say. It’s in the present doing that the marriage is going to be saved.”
Genuine appreciation for the other’s feelings. “People don’t have to agree,” Smelser assures us, “if only they understand the other person’s position. I want to work with a couple until each develops a genuine appreciation for the other person’s position—regardless of whether he or she agrees with it. One woman said to me about her husband, ‘We still don’t agree, but I feel so much better simply knowing he fully understands my opinion and is taking it into consideration.'”
This understanding applies not only to husband and wife but to couple and counselor. Smelser believes that “people seem to know, at some level, where their problems are and what needs to be done. But they’re in crisis and feel incapable of doing anything. I’ve found that simply agreeing with their intuitive analysis actually helps them do what their intuition has told them is right. Also, when they get my confirmation—’He agrees with me!’—they’re accountable because I’ve said, ‘I see what you see.’ It’s a lot harder for them to rationalize after that.”
Separation and Divorce
Questions of separation and divorce arise with more regularity than any pastor would want. However we may feel about divorce, people come to us bleeding from its beating and in need of crisis care.
“Before students leave this seminary,” says David Seamands of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, “I tell them they must have their theology of marriage, divorce, and remarriage worked out. If they don’t, they’ll find out within the first few months in the parish why it’s so important.”
One of the early concerns is when to advise separation. In cases of abuse, nearly everybody urges separation. No one should be required to live with fear of injury. Other situations also point toward separation. Some spouses participate in illegal activities, and remaining in the same household could subject a mate to legal implications or criminal dangers. Sometimes a dominant spouse insists the other participate in immoral actions. When it comes to obeying man or God, that person has to obey God—away from the control of a tyrannizing spouse.
Other situations are less clear-cut. What does one advise when two people seem to be tearing each other apart, when all that’s resulting from their crumbling union is destruction and pain and anger? Many suggest a trial separation to allow tempers to cool, emotions to change, and clearer heads to prevail.
Separation is not intended to be a prelude to divorce, but rather a means toward eventual reconciliation. Crisis counselors need to make clear with the couple their intentions. “I come right out and ask them ‘Why are you separating? What do you expect to gain from this move?'” says one pastor. “If they hem and haw and come up with vague answers about ‘needing space’ and ‘wanting more freedom,’ then I try to get them to be more specific. I may point out the costs of living apart, and they’re substantial. I draw a mournful picture of the effect on the kids, if there are any. I don’t want separation to look like a simple answer. It can so easily be a regression to immature coping mechanisms, like running away from the problem.
“But if the couple has thought through the implications, and if they’re able to set up a way to continue working on their relationship while separated, separation can break a hurtful pattern. I’ve seen couples return to marriage gladly; they don’t find being apart much fun.”
The separated need help coping with their new arrangements, and direction and impetus to keep working on their tottering relationship. The counseling concerns expressed earlier still apply, but with greater urgency.
Divorce sparks many wildfires in a person’s life. Questions of finances, identity, sexuality, “success” as a man or woman, child raising, and living accommodations smolder beside the smoky issues of sin and guilt. Because divorce involves brokenness and sin, confession and forgiveness are in order. Divorce is not the unforgivable sin. By clarifying a person’s responsibility for the sin of divorce and by “absolving” the truly repentant through prayer and pronouncements of forgiveness, many pastors have helped the divorced work through their sense of guilt.
Fortunately, the pastoral counselor is not alone. The body of Christ can help people cope with the many transitions of divorce. For some, the crisis may be as prosaic as a lawn mower that won’t start when the lawn is a foot high and growing by the hour. Single parenthood, job reentry, household maintenance, cooking, loneliness—the newly single may have a tough time handling such experiences.
That’s where a church fellowship can shine. In one church, for instance, several men who are proficient in car maintenance regularly provide safety checks, oil changes, and simple repairs on the cars of single parents in their church. In other communities, men take the sons of divorced mothers fishing, and women help the daughters of divorced fathers with shopping or hair care. In other places, self-help groups like Parents without Partners meet in churches. Pastors may provide individual counsel, but church families have the ability and availability to care deeply for the divorced in their midst.
Personal Considerations
It’s remarkably easy to get caught up in someone’s marriage crisis. What’s not easy is maintaining that delicate balance between professional distance and pastoral warmth. Many pastors say the most volatile counseling situation involves a male pastor and a woman with a troubled marriage. The “thoughtful, caring pastor” can easily be seen as the “answer” for a woman with a “thoughtless, brutish lout” of a husband. The warm affirmation can readily translate into sexual attraction. The flesh is weak.
It’s also vulnerable. It’s not unknown for pastors to be intimidated by passion-torn spouses. One pastor tells the story:
One day a woman from my church asked to talk with me. She said she felt in danger from her husband. When I asked why, she said, “He wants to get rid of me.”
I didn’t know her husband, and from the way she described him, I was glad I didn’t. Apparently he’d grown fed up with her and wanted her out of his life, so he was doing incredibly mean things to her. He probably figured if he intimidated her enough, she’d leave.
He especially wanted her to sign over the house to him, but that would mean she’d leave without a penny of assets. I told her she didn’t have to be bullied into signing anything and encouraged her to stick up for her rights. I also warned her to leave the house if he started acting dangerous.
Not long after that her husband came to see me. He wasn’t at all pleased with what I’d told his wife, and he seemed intent on changing my mind. When his six-foot-four frame came through my door, I knew I was in trouble. Pointing accusingly at my sternum, he raged, “If you hadn’t talked to my wife, she would’ve signed the papers and let me have my house!”
I don’t know what came over me, because I was scared, but I said, “You may be over six feet tall, but you’re only half a man if you’re trying to take that house away from your wife.” Somehow that worked. They did divorce, but she got the house, and she lived in it for years in retirement. Although he swore there was no other woman involved, the husband married two weeks after the divorce.
Another danger: being linked too closely to one party. Ed Smelser says, “It’s easy to feel closer to one person in the couple. Maybe you feel that person has a better handle on what needs to be done and is more willing to do it, or maybe the person seems to be more the victim. That can be a problem, because both persons ought to be able to expect your impartiality.
“Often the woman seems to garner special favor. Maybe it’s because women are generally more sensitive to relationships. Perhaps it’s a protective instinct. Whatever the cause, though, I need to remain impartial to be effective.”
One cost of marriage crisis intervention caught me by surprise. Soon after I had met with Jeanne, she seemed to turn on me. She’d taken some turns for the good in her marriage, but suddenly in church matters, whatever I was for, she was against. After several months of locking horns with me, she finally announced her decision to leave the church.
I hadn’t failed her as a counselor; she had been appreciative of my concern, and she appeared helped by my advice. Nor had my opinions and pastoral style changed. So why the clash?
Probably because I knew too much. She had revealed their difficulties, and my being privy to their problems was hard for her to live with. In her awkwardness, she left the church, ostensibly over our disagreements. That is sometimes a price to be paid for crisis intervention.
Marriage crisis intervention also can be highly frustrating. I worked with one couple for nearly two years. To the husband, his wife was a cold fish, with unreasonable expectations that she never allowed him to attempt to meet. To the wife, the husband was a troubled and selfish mother’s boy who was unable to show he really loved her.
I could see why both felt as they did. From outside the labyrinth, I watched them bumping their way through the marriage trying to find each other. But they could see only an endless array of walls. Although I could visualize what it would take for them to succeed, they were either unwilling or unable to make it happen.
In frustration and dismay, I watched them wend their way out opposite exits of the maze, unable to find and hold on to each other. Pastors who care about people and see the awful destruction of divorce, feel the sorrow of a home divided, of children uprooted, of love turned into bitterness and self-reproach. Sometimes it hurts to be called into crisis.
It Isn’t All Ache
But what keeps us going are the occasions when our intervention has impact. One missionary wife sent this testimony to Charles Shepson following a visit to Fairhaven:
I felt trapped between my feelings and my Christian convictions. I hated my husband and wanted to leave him. I honestly did not know how I could go on living with him, feeling the way I did. I knew that to leave him was wrong and would have far-reaching consequences for my family. And we were missionaries!
I knew what was right. I could quote all the verses, yet I had myself convinced at times that it was more cowardly to stay in the marriage than it would be to leave it. My whole life was misery. I was rejecting everything I believed in.
My husband and I were given an opportunity to go to your retreat center for counsel, and in agreeing to go I made my first tentative choice to work on our marriage. My first day there, I made a deliberate choice to commit myself to my husband and to our marriage. It was a decision based upon what I knew to be right, but it in no way reflected my feelings at the time. I still felt rebellious and bitter. I felt no love, and these feelings stayed with me. Each positive step I took was a response to my choice as I ignored my feelings.
We started to rebuild our marriage. Our first aim was friendship, since we felt this was a measurable, reachable goal. I had no expectations, but I stuck with it, knowing only that I was doing the right thing. My miracle happened—slowly, very slowly. As I acted on my choice and built on it, my feelings began to change. Over the months I began to feel respect, then tenderness, and finally love for my husband. I saw his weakness, and I saw his strength. I saw him through entirely different eyes, and I loved him.
Success!
Copyright © 1997
