Yahnke, Marriage Counsel and Care

Transcript (edited for readability).

It occurs to me that when we're talking about pastoral care, individual spiritual care is profoundly important. And when we're talking about marriages that need to survive, marriages that are in pain, marriages that need to move from withering on the vine to flourishing, much of that happens in your study, in conversation with you, by the grace of God.

Sometimes one of the most difficult things for a pastor to do is to look at a marriage that is dying. As you keep vigil at beds in hospice settings and hospital settings, there's certainly a confident expectation of the resurrection and of death moving to life eternal. When you see a marriage withering on the vine, it's a radically different thing, and it's a tragic thing. And so, as part of our conversation together, we're going to talk a little bit about how it is you can bring the finest resources of God's gifts, plus your wisdom, plus extraordinary patience, to bring to marriages that are in trouble. Sustaining marriages is crucial.

Why do I say that? I think of the number of marriages that limped into my clinical setting over almost 30 years, and each of them made my heart break in one way or another. So one of the clear realities is that you become engaged with these people, involved with these people, wrapping these people in prayer. I recall one couple that came in and said, "You know, we just don't care anymore. We just don't care. I can't stand being in this relationship for another minute. The marriage is dead, it just hasn't been buried. We don't want to hurt the kids, but we are hurting the kids. We have separate lives, separate friends, separate bank accounts, separate bedrooms. The marriage has been a farce for 10 years. But I thought I should see you anyway." They've been in your parish for 15 years, but it's nice that they came in to provide you with a death announcement. That is often when people seek help, when things are radically out of control.

So we're going to talk a little bit about the challenges to marriage, and what I would like to do is to equip you with some basic ancillary tools. You have the tool chest of spiritual care resources, and you're extremely skilled at the art of using those skills. So what I'm going to do is suggest some other things that may be helpful for your reflection, some additional skills that come to you this time from the toolkit of Christian psychology. Some of them may be familiar to you, some of them may be new to you. We're not going to take on anything like systems therapy. We're simply going to look at fundamental tools for assisting marriages that are in pain. So please regard it as a buffet: take those things that are useful to you, leave behind the things that aren't. And I assure you, we won't be able to shrink-wrap a 32-hour graduate intensive into one hour, but we'll give it a try. So we'll start with a slice of that intensive in the hope that it's useful.

You'll not be surprised to discover that divorces routinely begin with marriage — I'm very sorry to break that to you. Two individuals stand before God's holy altar, and then they pledge love, honor, and respect, or obey, given their inclinations, one another, with the help of God. And if there's a good homily bearing witness to God's gifts, the wedding may hear the rather stunning news: earthly marriage is the icon of Christ and the Church. Festival music, dances, fairy princesses, and great happiness. And then the Census Bureau comes to mind.

How well do these relationships last? How well do they continue? The U.S. Census Bureau does not have good news for us, my friend. Only 70 percent of those who are married will make it to their 10th anniversary. Those are the newest numbers. The numbers of success in marriage are going up, which is happy news. Seven percent will see their 50th anniversary. We know that kids are marrying later and later, and they're not kids anymore, and we recognize that particularly those who populate the 18-to-24 age range are those individuals who now have the highest levels of suicidal ideation, suicidal gestures, and depression. And this is the group that's now saying, "I'm not sure I want to be married," in the midst of all of that. And so marriage is getting put off in some significant ways, so that the median age at first marriage for males is now 30.6, which is higher than just a few years ago when it was at 26. So it's a very clear escalation. Women are now marrying for the first time at a median of 28.6 years of age, up three years from only a little while ago.

So we recognize marriage is seen as some kind of a destination point for the youth of today: when you're financially stable, when you've worked through all of your emotional difficulties, when you've finished your professional degree, you have the job you want, you've outlined the house that's appropriate for you — then and only then are you going to think about marriage. Which makes cohabitation such a desirable stopping-off point for many, sadly.

We also realize that for these kids, they aren't necessarily confident the marriage will last, even though they vow that it is forever and ever. They've seen their parents' marriages crash and burn, and they have a certain aversion to trying it themselves. The average length of first marriages ending in divorce is seven years.

And whenever I want to measure the impact of some particularly important phenomenon, I go to two places: one, to Amazon, to see what kind of books are being written; and secondly, I Google topics to see how popular they are and how many people are writing on the topic. Amazon currently features about 281,000 books on the topic of divorce. Happily, over 575,000 books are written on marriage — that's good. But there are billions of articles, bless you, that are now being written on divorce. Titles including "The Good Divorce," "Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life," "Till Divorce Do Us Part," "The Dinosaurs Divorce," something for children, which is nice, "Danny's Mommy's Divorce" — that's worse yet, right? — "Divorce for Dummies." And some a bit more hopeful: "A Step-by-Step Approach to Making Your Marriage Loving Again," probably.

So I'm not going to recommend, when some of your parishioners come into your study and are asking for some assistance and they're looking for something they might read, I would encourage you not to say, "Why don't you take a walk through your bookstore, something will appeal to you." Don't go there. We're swimming upstream in a culture that's normalized divorce. We know that. It's trivialized its impact — we don't write much about that. It's epidemic. And an even scarier part to all of this is that the kids are now the carriers of the toxins. Families really believe that being dissolved and starting over in independent places with independent parents, with families that have been dissected and torn apart, will work; it'll be okay; kids are resilient. Not.

And so these days, we're redefining family in remarkably toxic terms that people believe and people endorse and people share. So the terms about what a family is become remarkably elastic in all the wrong ways, and just about anyone's personal concoction of what a family means is being endorsed. We know that intact families are increasingly rare, and family now raises children, not moms and dads.

In clinical practice, when I would work with young children, particularly children who had been through a divorce or two divorces, it was important for me to understand what their conception of family meant. And one young child — she's about 10 — her family definition was: "A family is a normal mom and a dad. But they don't have to live together, though. But the kid has to know who both of them are. And the kid has to know that they both love them. And the kid has to know it's not his fault if they got a divorce. That's a family." That's changed a bit from when I grew up. And she added, "But there are really some really special times when you can have mom and dad together. But usually someone has to dial, like, grandma." That's a family, right?

So she put a pretty personal face on a learned definition of family given by the past president of the international family therapy association, whose definition of family sounds like this: people who live together with affectionate ties, some commitment, and members of their biologic family with whom they have close bonds. Merry Christmas! And happily, that's now a therapeutic system. Everybody who knows anybody. So our culture's desperately trying to tell us that this kind of family is okay, and now we recognize that men can marry men and women can marry women. Our children are going to be the most confused people on the planet. We've moved away from the Norman Rockwell marriage, to the detriment of our faith, to the detriment of children's security.

Remarriages are commonplace after divorce, usually for those who are aged under 50. And remarriages that have ended in divorce last about an average of 7.5 years. So they're not always Cinderella endings. Kids are now beginning to believe that that is normal. Kids are now beginning to believe that if they have a mom and a dad around the Thanksgiving table, that that's really pretty cool, but kind of rare. So the collateral damage of marriages that fail is huge.

So we're going to start our conversation about counsel and care for marriages by looking at the dead carcass of something our Lord intended to be holy. And so that means your care and counsel for marriage begins with preaching and teaching every week, in and out, faithfully, because an awful lot of the people whose marriages are going to struggle will never see you. They will never darken the door of your study. They'll never come to tell you that they have failed, or that their marriage has failed. But they will be in the pew, God willing, on Sunday. They might even make it to a Bible study class. So to the extent you are able to continue to teach and preach about God's gift of marriage and children, you serve them enormously well. So teach unapologetically about marriage.

And it also means that premarital counseling may need to shift in some directions it previously hasn't taken. I'm not going to say much about that, because I know Bill Cwirla is going to talk about that pastoral practice a little bit later.

Ordinarily, when a husband and wife come to your study with a marriage that's in trouble, I'm encouraged to learn that pastors feel a sense of confidence that they can be helpful. I see actually a change probably over the last 20 years. When a husband and wife would see a pastor about marriage, there was a sense of frustration; there was no sense of confidence that they could be helpful at all. And a good share of the time, a number of people that came into my clinical setting had seen their pastor and said, "Well, my pastor said, you know, there's not really much that I can do to help the two of you. You've made up your minds. So I think a psychologist is the best choice." Well, I agreed with them completely. No, I did.

But earlier on, my observation was, I'd seen a lot of pastors who would abdicate their role as someone who would provide spiritual care and counsel to the marriage — provide prayer and blessing and wisdom and guidance and listening, encouragement, and here's the big one: hope. This one goes down in capital letters in the outline. Hope. You are the purveyors of hope, and most of the people who darken your door do not actually believe that there is reason for hope. And if you cannot point to the hope in Jesus Christ, His gifts, His blessing, they've got nothing. So you are the purveyor of hope.

We're going to talk about a couple in trouble who's seeking your care, and I'd like to define your role, I'd like to define your resources, and then some fundamental tools that could be helpful as you move forward.

Understanding the need of the care seekers is huge. As I've talked to pastors, I understand that they often have a kind of curriculum for the marriage that's in trouble, or they have a sense of "here's the package that I need to present to the marriage that's in trouble," without perhaps hearing all of the outrageously nuanced challenges that every marriage bears. I would encourage you, first and foremost, to understand: why is it they chose you? Why have they shown up in your office? Why is it they're not seeing the counselor that's over at the mall? Are you there to tell them what God says about marriage? Are you there to judge? Do they want to see you because they can be absolved? They can be encouraged, they can be listened to, they can be confronted? Well — say what? Because I'm free. And ultimately, I hate to break it to you, but your price is right, you know?

And you're also there to be informed that a divorce is pending, so it's a thoughtful gesture that they make. If you have a couple that wants to be listened to, and your first response to the couple is to teach and to talk, they'll not be back. So if you can discern what it is that brought them in, you're able to prioritize what you tell them and how you tell them. Maybe they're there to get assistance with the children. They may have children with fourth-commandment deficit disorder, and they've given up trying, and they can't co-parent anymore, and they're frustrated. And some of them are there to know: what are the implications of this for my church membership, if we can't make the marriage work?

But you have enormous credibility in their eyes. You are a person they trust, a person for whom they have respect and affection, and they will hear you. And usually they've exhausted all the personal resources in their lives. They've exhausted what problem-solving should have done, could have done, ought to have done. And they're really coming to you in a place where they're feeling somewhat helpless. And that is an enormous responsibility for you. They're essentially saying, "Okay, I've got nothing. What are you going to give me?"

So you determine what role you'll fulfill for them. Who are you trying to be — the advocate, the advice giver, God's sheepdog, their friend, an enforcer, an agent of coercion? What is your expectation about the couple that walks into your office as they're walking in? What is your expectation about what you need to accomplish, so that you can spin away from the conversation whenever it's over feeling a sense of satisfaction that you've been faithful and done what it is you've been called to do? What must you do?

When I talked with some pastors about this as I prepared these comments, some pastors essentially gave me the impression, "Well, you know, we sort of have to see what it is they want and where it goes," as if there's no outline. Depending on who you are choosing to be, obviously, you shape your consultation template. I'm going to encourage you that if you begin to work with a couple, each visit they have with you has a template. It has a certain pathway to move forward. Templates allow people to feel safe. They know what to expect. They know we'll start with prayer, we'll have time for listening, sharing, we'll have an opportunity to ask questions, be a little bit of teaching, and it'll end with prayer and blessing. And they need to feel safe.

What is your template? What do they need from you? They may need to rat out their partner. They may need to complain, they may need to cry, talk sense into the other, get permission to disengage from the relationship. You're familiar with all the reasons. Some are actually those seeking God's resources in the midst of deep discouragement. Sometimes we tend to focus so heavily on the marriage, we forget that the pastor is not called to care for the marriage. The pastor is called to care for the souls of individuals, and to care for the marriage in extension. Do they want you to be the parent? Do they want you to beat up one or the other of the spouses? And ultimately, do they simply want to pop into your office, make the announcement so they can put a check mark on their list of things to do — "I even talked to the pastor, and those 15 minutes will change my life"? No. For some people, it's just, "I've done everything. I am without guilt and blame, so I don't want to hear it from you."

An awful lot of pastors, though, do feel as if they don't have that much to offer. Sorry — I only have God's word, His holy promises, the power of the Spirit, the ability to stand with you before the throne of the omnipotent Creator of the universe. That's all I've got. Sorry. Inviting repentant hearts to speak words of repentance and hear words of absolution — you've got all kinds of good stuff going on.

I'd like to talk with you a little bit about a sample consultation template. And I know that's not your language. But sometimes pastors are a little bit either weary of seeing marriages or overwhelmed by the task of seeing marriages in travail. A sample consultation template looks a little bit like this for a Christian psychologist. Naturally, you welcome them, you establish rapport with them, and if it's appropriate in a counseling office, you may even find an opening prayer. Don't see that in a lot of places. If you plan on helping these people, you might want to reassure them that what they are sharing with you is completely confidential. You might remember from Doxology One the three sentences: "I'm so glad you're here. Whatever it is you and I share together is going to remain completely confidential, and I'm not going to share anything with anybody without your direction or your consent. There is an exception, though: if I'm concerned about your safety, or if I'm concerned about the safety of others, I'll intervene in whatever ways I need to, to be sure you're okay." Some people need to hear that, because some people aren't quite sure whether or not whatever they offer you in the conversation might appear as an anecdote in a Sunday sermon. So you give them that reassurance.

And then it's very helpful for me as a psychologist to describe exactly what I can do to assist them, so they have reasonable expectations. "We're going to be able to talk a little bit about what's been going on, the needs that you're identifying. If there's a diagnosis, we'll be able to identify what that is. We'll identify a treatment goal, a goal-oriented plan that will move you from where you are now to where it is you tell me you might need to be. So our goal is to understand the issue, move toward some treatment goals, and then ensure that you're confident this can be helpful to you." So what is it you're going to do? Explain the purpose of what this first visit is about — and notice, if you call it a first visit, you're shaping their impressions — and what it is you hope to accomplish.

If you don't have an agenda, conversations can meander in very frustrating ways across the landscape of their lives, and they feel as if "he doesn't know where we're going." You need to be able to say what it is you hope to accomplish, in the language of the church. Some pastors want to know, "Well, tell me the history of your marriage." Don't go there, please, on the first visit, or you'll never get beyond, "We were married 40 years ago; let me tell you what happened at the wedding." It's going to be a very long first session. And you might even want to let them know how much time you have available for them for the first visit. Unlike a therapist, whose clock ticks for 60 minutes and then they're done like a little muffin, we expect that pastors who are dedicated to the work that they do will hear them out — 2.5 hours, 3 hours. So I would recommend, whether you say, "Let's take the next hour and do this," you're giving them, again, information that helps them shape their expectations for the visit.

"What's bringing you in?" And you ask him, and you ask her — one of them gets to go first — "What's bringing you in?" which is about as neutral a question as you can get. Followed by, "How are you doing in the midst of that?" And that's a lot of information. You'll recall my favorite phrase, which is essential in interviews of this nature: "Tell me more about that." And there goes another 10 minutes of intense detail. And you ask the basic questions, focusing on the here and now, because they're coming in out of here-and-now problems. And then you ask them to tell the story: "What's been happening lately?" So we've extended a little bit of the ground you hope to cover with them.

And then: "What do you hope will happen as a result of our conversations?" Very powerful. And it lets you know if they think this is just a quick trip, or if this is a process, or what their expectations for you are — and are their expectations of you and the process realistic, or completely unrealistic, which would need to be corrected. You might at the same time ask that they commit to a series of conversations if the problem is somewhat complex, and it usually is.

Let me do a quick survey. How many of you have a practice or a procedure of saying, "I see couples three times and refer out," "I see them seven times and refer out"? Okay, only a couple of you. I would encourage you to think about that. I would encourage you to be prepared to be their pastor: to teach, to provide prayer and blessing and spiritual encouragement.

[Jeff:] I don't have a set number, but I do have this: if nothing is being accomplished, you know, I'm just doing spiritual care, and if they're one person that doesn't want to work on it, whatever, I don't like — why are we in here?

Right. And so first and foremost, your identity and purpose is that of their pastor. And if you see needs emerge that are beyond your immediate expertise — financial management; I don't know if any of you are working on fixing your congregants' portfolios, I recommend against that — you refer. So let them know if you have that kind of a practice: "I'll be happy to continue working with you as long as we make important progress. It may be useful at some point to seek some additional counsel and care." So you're not going to surprise them after your fourth conversation and have them take with them all the wrong inferences: "He doesn't like us, he's bored with us, he hates us." So you prepare them in the very first visit.

And at the close of the first visit, you schedule the next visit. "Let's take a look at the calendar and see when we can get together next." It may not have been their expectation that they were going to have more than one conversation, so that may surprise them, but it does ensure that you get to finish the spiritual care business that is unattended to after that first conversation.

Presenting problems come in a variety of familiar packages. Unresolved conflicts galore usually present themselves. Money management, loss of intimacy, difficulties parenting, division of responsibilities in the household, extended family complications. A couple that has no problem-solving skills whatsoever may emerge. A couple that is so avoidant they haven't even talked about their own levels of pain and dissatisfaction with one another, and have identified you as the facilitator to equip them to do that. Or an awful lot of people who aren't particularly gifted at communicating, whose EQ might be remarkably low. And a lot of people will be quick to point to their partner, and probably point to any of these as sins: "He's a terrible parent, he's terrible at money management." And you may need to help them clarify what is sin and what is lack of experience and wisdom.

Communication generally is going to be fraught by their weariness. They're just weary with it all. They're often angry, resentful. "We've talked about this a million times, nothing's ever changed." That's what hopelessness looks like. Nothing has ever changed, despite their best efforts to date. And their expectation is, "We have no reason to believe that anything will change." Listen for it; it's likely to be there. In some cases, communication in the family has allowed for verbal abuse to surface. No empathy. Some people just say, "I'm all talked out, I've got nothing to say." So communication is an issue where you may find their inability to communicate effectively with one another invites a referral, because that may not be your strong suit, teaching that.

There may be betrayal — and this is spot on — there may be infidelity. There may be lust, pornography, non-sexual intimacy with another partner — common problems. And relationships can be taken hostage by mental health issues. A good share of the time, I would say at least 40 percent of the time that I would see marriages come in, one or the other of the couple had a diagnosis of depression. That is a huge number, actually — 40 percent. And as I would see a depressed person in marriage counseling with a healthy spouse, a good percentage of the time the healthy spouse was gravitating toward depression as well — just couldn't anymore, couldn't bear it, couldn't stand it, couldn't do it.

And so if there are mental health issues, you may recall the Bev scale. This is a great time to use it. "Let's get a good overall look at how you're doing in general." And you shrug your shoulders, because you're not playing junior psychologist. You just want a metric to help you understand. "On a scale of one to 10, where 10 is 'I've never felt better in my entire life' and one is 'I wish I were dead,' where are you on the scale from one to 10?" Everyone's got a number, and I'm shocked: the greater a person's level of discouragement and despair, the swifter they are at arriving at a number.

In quick review, the numbers we're interested in are seven. Seven is the number where my psychiatrist friends tell me most of us should be most of the time. I don't see many sevens. The numbers we're concerned about begin with four, and four is that stage at which people are having unbidden thoughts, intrusive thoughts, of hurting themselves. And that generally invites a referral. Suicidal ideation doesn't ordinarily happen among people who aren't experiencing depressive symptoms. The closer one gets to one, the greater the level of discouragement and despair, and the greater their level of risk. So it's useful to check that out.

We often see, particularly in marriages having real vitriol and resentment and hostility, there can be personality disorders that lie at the heart of that, where you have essentially one individual who has learned to cope with difficulties in an extremely dysfunctional way. And the borderline personality disorder would probably lead the parade as the most difficult kind of circumstance to respond to. Tim, please.

[Tim:] Would you say that it would be more helpful to address the symptoms, or to try and play — see —

They probably go hand in hand. The longer you talk with individuals, the more you're likely to detect what's going on. And if you detect that there's a low mood, before the visit closes, you might want to bring it in. You don't start there. But it's useful at some point in the conversation if you're trying to measure the depth of it, or if you're expecting that people are going to interact effectively with one another and they're not, and one person is seeming to be just completely disagreeable, or one person is irrational. It begins to go on your private checklist. So it may not be an issue you raise during the first session, but you become aware, and you look for evidence to support your hunches.

[Questioner:] We might be getting to this later, but first — in a situation like that, where one down is sort of a person that may just simply not be able to be reasonable — correct — and I have had the observation made by one member of a couple that they're starting to feel that communication is actually detrimental to the counseling at the moment. And I'm wondering, is there ever a time when you recommend that all non-essential communication is broken off for a period of time, because the one person is trying to use all communication against the other person, and it's getting really messy? Is that a —

If there is coercion, if there is verbal abuse, if there is damage done by the nature of the communication, we'll move to that in the truce. I wouldn't necessarily want to say, "All right, we're not talking for a week," because that suggests we've reached a level that's impossible to imagine we could ever come back together from. Let's get to the truce, and if I don't bring it back up, grab me for that, okay?

Generally, the relationship is deteriorating as a presenting problem, which starts with regret, which starts with hurt, which starts with a sense of longing, and moves into a place that's very calcified, where it moves beyond loss of attraction, it moves beyond loss of romance, to just emotional estrangement. Or to a gradual loss of even a desire to try. And so people essentially are just holding on. And the long-term hurt and the quiet resentments start to predominate. And what most people will tell you at this point is, "Love is lost."

So it's important to evaluate: what do they determine? What has helped them to determine if this relationship can survive? Have they already made a decision about that? You're going to be listening for misbelief, unbelief, and other great shame and vice. And although two people can still care about one another, that's not the most predictive factor of whether or not the marriage will endure and can prevail. Beyond divine resources and intervention, the best single predictor of whether a marriage is going to be able to prevail is if there are remarkably steep barriers to divorce: their personal religious beliefs, their feelings of estrangement from close family or far family, their sense of being stigmatized in their congregation, legal hassles, financial limitations that are enormous, disruption of the children's well-being. The longer they are married and the more minor children they have, the greater the likelihood they will stay together. So sometimes it's not God's goodness and grace and mercy that keeps people together. It's a fear of bankruptcy. It's a fear of hurting their children.

And in what we would call a disaffection pathway — marital disaffection, we'll come to that in a moment — you have people who have been in a stable, unhappy relationship for 10, 20, and 30 years. And so when we're thinking about trying to influence change, we need to be pretty candid about just how powerful it is to be in a stable, unloving relationship for that length of time. Neglect has emerged as a way of living with another person. Devitalized, empty-shell relationships. Older people tend to respond with neglect to a marriage that's dying. It's just too hard to do anything, to expect they could turn it around. Please, Greg.

[Greg:] Excuse me, and so this is kind of — I thought that's weird — the husband thinks, "Well, let me go do something else and come back." So, like, is it helpful to actually have kind of —

It's going to depend on the couple. Ordinarily, I think it makes sense, after we move to a truce of one sort or another, to say, "Here are the takeaways from this day. We've discovered that this is the health of the marriage right now, that you are — or aren't — committed to it, and for the coming one to two weeks, here are three things that are going to be important. We're going to come back together and see how those three things went." So something at the end where they both say, "Yeah, I've got it." So it's part of the truce.

So the older couples — they've just neglected one another, they've neglected the marriage, they've neglected just about everything, and feel as if they are trapped in a loveless relationship, and there's nothing they're going to do about it. Young people don't tend to be too passive. They tend to be, "I'm done, I'm gone, I'm out of here. I can't, I won't, I can't deal with it."

The best predictor of the marriage dissolving is if one of the partners has a ready means of support, an absence of caring for children, and a history of a previous family member who has divorced. Those couples see that divorce has worked in at least one case. But the key thing we're looking for is a sense of hopelessness, and you have an excellent response to hopelessness. Hope is: here are the alternatives, and here is how we invite God's blessing.

Responding to the presenting problems: they come in, the need is pretty intense, or they wouldn't be there. And they're going to need to leave the conversation with a sense of having accomplished something. You have to leave that first visit saying, "Yeah, that was good." And let's look at some of the things that will contribute to that. One couple told me, after their infidelity had been discovered, that they came in and saw their pastor, and their pastor's response was to say, "Let's give you each a personality test." No. So, they have to be able to leave that first session saying, "He gets it, he understands what we're doing and why." And ultimately, a lot of that is listening for you, even though you are tempted to be completely ready with biblical instruction. The first visit is just a lot of listening.

A number of items are essential if that first visit is going to be regarded by them as helpful. They have to be able both to agree that the marriage relationship is not what they want it to be, that it may be unpleasant, it may be difficult — whatever reflects the level of difficulty — and it has been that way for a time. The goal of moving through this is to have them nodding vertically together, which may be the first time they've done that in quite a while. The second thing you need to accomplish, probably, is that the marriage in its current state is painful for both of them. "You may be feeling a lot of pain and be totally insensitive to what she's feeling. So we both have to agree, yep, we get that." And regarding the way that they've been interacting with one another, we have to have, at least at that first visit, an acknowledgment that the choices they've been making are decidedly unhealthy and probably not remarkably Christian.

It's helpful if each in that first visit can come to agree: "We've been pretty intent on ourselves, our own needs, and having our own way, and usually because it's been painful, we've pretty much neglected what's happening in his life — that's his problem." A good number of first conversations will allow the counselor or the pastor to get to the point where they are able to say, "We've both done things we ought not to have done, and we've not done things we ought to have done." That may be as close to a confession as you'll get in the first visit, but at least it allows for each of them to acknowledge, in the presence of the other, that there is remorse, there is awareness, there is a sense of pain, having hurt the marriage and having hurt a partner. It may be useful, if the situation invites it, for the people to be able to agree, "You know, we really are each living in our own Venn diagram circle, and it used to overlap beautifully, but now it just isn't any longer" — as opposed to one person who may be clinging unrealistically to the expectation, "We're fine. Really, we're fine." Jim.

[Jim:] So you've been talking about when they both come together —

Yes.

[Jim:] And that's not unusual?

Right, I ran into that. It's going to depend on the person who presents. In clinical practice, I would say 75 percent of marriage counseling began with the female coming in. And the female comes in because she's looking for solace, she's looking for counsel, she's looking for comfort, she's looking for a way to have hope about a marriage that is dead or dying. And in that case, you need to hear her story and respond to her individually, not to the marriage, and it may take two or three visits with her before you give him a call and say, "Your wife and I have had an opportunity to visit together. I know she's invited you to come in, but you've declined" — which is usually the case — "and I'd like to make a personal invitation for just you and me to sit down and have a visit together." Otherwise he feels as if he comes in and you and she have already created an alliance, and both of you are going to be there to attack him. So if there have been a series of single conversations with her, it merits a single conversation with the husband. And ordinarily you'll learn some things you haven't heard before. And then you go through essentially the same things. You get them both together, because you can't counsel a marriage with one person. You can, but it's not that useful.

[Questioner:] Excuse me — both of them, like, individually?

And that can be okay too, and it's seen in counseling a good share of the time. If you have somebody who is a complete emotional wreck, hugely depressed, that person may need to reach a certain level before he or she can even interact with the other person, and he may need to understand, "No, we're not freezing you out, and I invite conversations with you, and how you're doing." And so it's really individual spiritual care until they're both ready to join in conversation with you. Phil, did I see your head?

[Phil:] Yeah — you were talking about things that they can agree on together —

Yes.

[Phil:] But there are situations where we have one-sided situations —

Yes, absolutely.

[Phil:] — where they don't both sit down and say that it's both of them —

Right. And this obviously has particular sensitivity on the part of the pastor as to what is most useful, what you can and can't do. If there is something that's irreversible, if the case is indeed lost and they've seen the divorce attorney first before seeing you, this would be less salient. You will be hearing this in their conversation with one another, and that's when you would raise it: "Yeah, we could make it work, if he wouldn't do that all the time." And in your private checklist, you say, "Okay, there's something there that he would" — yeah. So the process is about, "Yeah, your well-being hasn't been my priority, and I agree about that. This is not what God wills for us in holy matrimony." And usually they'll agree to it.

The entire process is about building consensus, about being able to move back to a plural pronoun: "We think, we want, we hope, we pray that this will be true." As you move through a counseling and care process with this individual or the couple, you need to pivot away from what has been toward what can be. "By the grace of God, we can choose to do better." Be willing to say, "I'm sorry, I could have done better." Be willing to say, "You know, I'm going to do whatever it takes and see if this is possible." You may actually be able to get that kind of level of commitment.

The first time I ever started working with Harold Senkbeil on shared clients and parishioners was an incredible learning experience for me. The couple was going to be meeting in my office, and we invited him to come over and join the conversation. And I saw him carrying a small Bible in his hand. I thought, "He's armed and ready for the event." And so I wouldn't discourage even meeting with a counselor if you need someone to facilitate a conversation. But I wouldn't start there, once again.

Ultimately, in terms of moving forward, you need to think to yourself: is a referral appropriate here, a referral to a counselor? And some of those issues, I think, we've covered in previous sessions in the classic Doxology. You don't give a diagnosis. You don't pretend to be a mental health authority. You point to the pain. You point to what you see as the difficulty, and recommend a screening. "You know, it sounds as if it might be helpful if you were able to talk with somebody who could assist with some of the communication issues" or the like — the non-spiritual dimensions of dysfunction. And sometimes the whole family may need intervention, not just the husband and the wife. Serious difficulty with a child's behavior would also invite a referral.

The process of marital disaffection is what you are clued into, and one of the things that's helpful for you to know is: where are they in this process? It's kind of like Kübler-Ross's stages of dying, but in an application of marital care. Phase one is disillusionment, and that means the marriage is in trouble. They're disappointed with one another, they're disenchanted with one another. Their expectations for one another have been disappointed in some important ways. They're aware the marriage isn't going the way they hoped. They're beginning to have doubts about the spouse, and for the first time in their life in the relationship, they're beginning to experience some regrets. That's disaffection. That's generally the most innocent level of seeking for care. We don't always see people that early. Generally, what we see happening most commonly at this first level is that the wife is trying to refashion herself, remake herself, to please her partner. Women are more likely to make changes to try to please the partner than are men. That's a generalization, which means it won't always be true, thank you. They may also try, at this stage, to be more attentive, to be more loving. They'll try to help out in the house if it's the male. They're willing to try something that might make a material difference in the spouse's level of satisfaction. That's the first stage.

By stage two, it's just plain hurt. They've tried some things, nothing appears to have been a significant assistance to them, and they're feeling hurt. They're feeling that things are unfair. They're feeling neglected, and they feel that something's horribly wrong, and they're not quite certain if they should attribute it to their spouse or to personal deficits and personal deficiencies. They know that their spouse may not understand them, and they start keeping a mental checklist of rewards and costs: "Well, he did that, and you didn't do anything about that." And that's when things become remarkably dangerous, because you've turned your marriage into a metric. The hurt: this has to go away. This is where some of the first thoughts about ending the relationship start. And generally it's a very brief thought — "I don't know how much longer I can do this" — and then they shake it off. "Well, obviously the marriage has to work." But it's crossed their mind, which means they found the doorknob.

Third stage: we've moved from hurt to anger. Just plain anger, resentment, hostility, indignation, a sense of bitterness. Just anger. "If it weren't for him. If only he would. I don't know why he can't." And you'll hear a lot of that in the language of the spouses as they chat with you, which helps you be pretty clear about where they're at. They're able to catalog their hurts over time. They're able to point out their spouse's shortcomings and negatives. They can alphabetize the list. And they have a list of grievances that's probably most characteristic of this stage. And they're avoiding the partner, which isn't particularly healthy. And generally there's been a significant decline or cessation of intimacy at this point.

Ambivalence: completely alternating between despair and hope from one minute to the next. "Maybe it can work. This is hopeless." That is remarkable emotional wreckage on the human soul, from one day to the next to say, "It'll work. No, it won't. It'll work. No, it won't." So there are genuinely important thoughts about, "Here's what I could do to help, here's what I could do to make things better," and yet, constantly, you have the thoughts of giving up. And at this point, people start writing down their pros and their cons list in the solitude of their own time: the cost of staying, the cost of leaving. And they look at it very carefully, because they don't know if they can continue in the way that they've been living.

Stage five is marital disaffection. They are indifferent about the partner. They genuinely have no affection for them any longer. They're detached, they're alienated, they're beyond hurt. Peter.

[Peter:] Yeah — are there five stages, or —

I lied. Five is my favorite. Six we'll get to in a moment.

[Peter:] No, because — I think you brought up first an anger —

Yep.

[Peter:] — and then the ambivalence —

Yep.

[Peter:] — and in our handout, we go for a hurricane —

Okay, which is just like Kübler-Ross's theory. They're interchangeable. Thank you, I appreciate that. No, no, thank you. It's a subset. Okay.

And so ultimately, notice the incredibly pressing force. There is nothing doing this — it's kind of like a gravitational tug that's lateral. And then by the time you get to the phase of unilateral disaffection: "I just don't care. It just doesn't matter. The kids will be okay." It's not necessarily rational. It is the weary soul. It is a turmoil-buffeted soul. It's a soul that says, "I can't do this anymore." And this is where you start to see a couple saying, "Maybe we should separate for six months and see if it will help." My observation about marriages that separate doesn't offer a great deal of hope for you. Marriages that separate usually tend to be a stepping stone to divorce. So if you greenlight that, that's probably just what they need — for one partner to move out.

In unilateral disaffection, one wants out and the other doesn't; that's occasionally the case. And they are making their individual plans without telling the other about them, and they're asking, "How long, O Lord?"

Determining the turning point in the marriage is useful. Determining that turning point means, all right, there may have been some bumpy things, there may have been some difficult things, we may have had some challenges, but this was it — this was the single episode, or the single action, or the single behavior that blew it up. And you see the problems there. Controlling behavior: "Don't tell me what to do, you're always on my case." Fifty percent of the time it's control. Forty-nine percent of marriages coming in point to the partner's lack of responsibility: "He won't do anything." Right, you've heard that. Forty-seven percent of couples come in and point to a lack of emotional support: "I could drop dead and he might notice. Maybe not." And about 29 percent of marriages point to the partner's abuse of substances, the partner's use of drugs, the partner's use of pornography.

And for those of you who may not be aware — and I think we're going to hear more from John Kleinig tonight — when you ask a woman whose husband uses pornography heavily, if you ask that woman what her appraisal of that situation is, she will tell you that it's infidelity. And as a result, she expects that her husband's infidelity will be treated as sufficient cause for a divorce that is reasonable.

So the turning points in the marriage let you determine what was stressful. For 20 percent of the people, it's a stressful event. One woman came in and she said, "I went out to the workshop." Her husband spends a lot of time in his workshop; it's good for him and keeps him out of the house, so it's good for her. And she said, "I went out there the other day with some new light bulbs, and I found this Tupperware — big tubs." She'd found multiple Tupperware tubs of downloaded pornographic images. One event. Up until that moment, she expected to be married for 50 years, and the marriage was over. So understand how one event can be determinative.

And then, determining the attributions of blame: who's at fault in your mind? Is there one person who's completely at fault and who needs special conversation? Are they both equally sharing blame? Useful to know as well. Please, Michael.

[Michael inaudible.]

Right. In your own mind, you have to make sense of, "I see two different pictures here. I realize the truth is somewhere in the middle." Where is the greatest stress from the relationship finding its origin — in his actions, behaviors, and language, or hers? Because one of them may well regard themselves as the sinned-against one. And if you have somebody who is feeling sinned against, that person needs a particular opportunity to deal with a sense of the injustice and the shame that goes along with that. As for the responsibility, I run into a couple of circumstances where the husband's like, "I'm doing everything I can," and the wife is saying, "He doesn't do anything around the house," and there are certain circumstances where it's like, "I can see what she means, but I feel like she's being over —"

Yeah. Her expectations are unreasonable. And sometimes the pastor may not be the best person to sort it out; being aware of it is useful. I think working with a counselor could assist the two of you to devise something you both thought was reasonable. It might be useful, if it's really tangled and it's deserving of it, to suggest that another individual sit with them, and then they can both say, "Okay, we'll try this for two weeks."

Communication strategies. You're not conducting clinical therapy, yet there are resources. You see, in A through R, some of the really crucial things that most marriages need to think about together. They need to think about what is pain, what is anger, how do we communicate? And if you have the resources and the inclination to teach communication skills, great; but generally that's not what called and ordained servants do. Ordinarily that's a referral issue. Routine fun time matters — check on it. What are they doing for fun? Do they plan together, spend time together? Do they have a date night? What are they doing together, if anything, for fun? ESP doesn't work — listen to the number of times that they are guessing what the other thought, and invite instead a very clear identification and communication of expectations that they have, one for the other. Expectations that are unmet are hugely damaging in the marriage.

Asking "why" generally sends people down bunny holes that aren't particularly constructive, as when a husband asks his wife, "Why on earth did you do that?" — as opposed to, "In the future, could we consider this? What would be helpful in the future?" So your goal is not to dissect everything historically, but instead to say, "Here's what we know, here's how it's influenced you. What do we choose to do and say and pray for, so that you move in the direction you're telling me is important?"

Wives are usually waiting for their husbands to make them happy. It's a long wait sometimes. And you might need to discuss what would be required for the smallest sense of satisfaction between the two of you on a daily basis. What is something that you would read as a gesture of affection, a gesture of respect, a gesture of reaching out and caring? We need gestures at some point, so that they can say, "He's a total loser." No, he's not a total loser; he brought you four daisies. "He's almost a total loser." Okay. You're aware of criticism and meanness, and you can certainly talk in healthy ways about that.

Keep in mind that communication, even when it's difficult, is essential, and as part of the truce, let me move to that at this point. Before they leave their first visit, you essentially say, "I think we've identified these things. I think we've accomplished this. I think we've pointed to this. We're going to go to our loving Lord in prayer, and I'm going to bless you. But before I do that, I would like to know if you would be willing simply to have a truce." "Well, what does that mean?" For a period of one week, you each agree that you're not going to push one another's buttons. And they'll look at one another, and it's very common: "Well, why would we do that?" Well, because it's a remarkably helpful tool, and that's why you're here. So we can talk about what might be useful for one week — and we love to push buttons, because we know where they are and what they do. All right, for one week we're not going to do that.

"What's the next thing we're going to do?" We're going to provide at least one statement of support and encouragement to the other, at least once a day. We're going to agree to return for our next visit with you — and they both are nodding. And every evening, we're going to try, even if it's the table prayer, we're going to try to have a prayer together. And you might have a devotional book you want to suggest to them, you might have a series of prayers you want to suggest with this, and then acknowledge how incredibly difficult you know that to be, and commend them for their willingness to take it on. And they usually will. You get to dissect it when they come back, which is a little bit messy.

You see the rest at the bottom of the outline. They imagine the world is seen by everyone as they see it — listen for that in Roman numeral 7, J. Make clear, if you're asking your spouse for listening or asking your spouse for problem-solving, help them try on empathy; teach them what it means if you need to. Read one another's non-verbal messages. Focus on the message and the messenger. Help them validate one another. Help them initiate change that's important.

And then, "Be willing to seek assistance." Be sure you have the name and the number of a counselor for whom you have respect, somebody that you know does both singles work and does couples work. Because if they agree to it at some point during your conversation, you need to know where they can go safely, with a person in whom you have confidence.

And then, naturally, this is what you are so gifted in doing: the living in grace, the giving and receiving of forgiveness. And wrap them in prayer and blessing. That's probably the speed track through caring for marriages. Quick question, please.

I recall one occasion particularly where a woman was sitting like a pretzel — and we can read that body language pretty clearly — and her spouse, who was sitting almost next to her, said, "I know how very much you love me." And she just looked as if he'd pulled that out of thin air. Obviously, this is complete shutdown language. You look for the small bits of body language that say, "This is a time I'm available to listen." "This is a time that I'm hurried." "This is a time when I might actually invite a hug." Session two or three, if there's been no intimacy, kind of restoring a hug if they're interested in it — it may not be the time.

Ultimately, the bottom line is: you need to read so much, so quickly, and so effectively. I would encourage you to continue to provide spiritual care for them even after — you may say, "We need to have you work with someone on communication, we need to have you work with somebody on your financial issues, and I will continue to be happy to meet with you, to provide spiritual encouragement, Christian counsel, prayer, and blessing."