The Vital Signs of a Healthy Marriage

Note: This article was first published in Life in the Delta in November 2005.

Have you wondered if you have a healthy marriage? If you would like to get a check-up on your marriage, I would offer that there are several vital signs that determine its health. In fact, as a therapist, I usually identify the stages of marital conflict much like the stages of cancer. Couples in Stage I have a low level of conflict whereas couples in Stage IV have extremely high levels. Also, a definitive marker for Stage IV is the engagement of an attorney by one or both spouses. This move usually closes the door on reconciliation and places the marriage in an adversarial context. Unfortunately, most couples who come to therapy come in Stage III – and most often in its late stage – which makes it almost impossible to save the marriage. It would be better if couples could recognize the warning signs of a troubled marriage and get help earlier when recovery is more likely. Or better yet, why not take preventative measures to ensure the health of your marriage?

One of the first signs to check is your level of functioning when you entered the marriage. The more problematic your family’s history, the more stress you bring into the marriage. This is especially so if you have had a previous marriage. You simply cannot leave behind all the bad things with hopes of starting afresh with only the good things – you bring everything. So the degree to which you have dealt with your past determines how much baggage you bring into the marriage.

Often marital discord is organized around a particular issue which must be addressed and resolved. Though there can be an array of issues, the most prominent are the big four: money, sex, parenting, and in-laws. Discussions about expectations in these areas are important, rather than assuming your spouse has the same views. Since these issues often involve the distribution of power and control and influence, it is important that each partner is satisfied with his or her role. For example, one person may take charge of managing and dispersing the money, as long it is agreeable to the other.

As for your relationship with your spouse, two areas are critical for nurturing and maintaining the relationship: 1) communication and 2) relationship time and activity. Communication involves both the exchange of factual information as well as the ability to share your personal thoughts and feelings. Relationship time and activity are measures of your investment in the relationship. And the two most important currencies in the marital economy are time and sexual compatibility. Time can be spent in some shared activity, such as going to a movie, but it also needs to be spent in working on the relationship by “being there” for each other and interacting on a personal level. Also, maintaining a healthy sex life is vital to a marriage and its presence is often a reflection of the couple’s level of intimacy. Many couples routinely ignore the need to nurture their marriage and just automatically expect their spouses to make them happy.

Another sign of a healthy marriage is the emotional climate that surrounds the relationship. In a safe atmosphere, people are relaxed and open rather than tense and guarded. It is safe to be oneself, to be vulnerable, and to approach your partner for connection or support. The temperature can vary from frigid to superheated. At a normal temperature, people do not withdraw in cold silence or routinely retreat to their own spaces, and when they do engage, they do not easily react in anger to one another. In a turbulent atmosphere, there is a large amount of active conflict, marked by reactivity, high levels of criticism and defensiveness. In a stable environment, marriage is not conflict free but is marked by the ability to resolve conflict in a calm and respectful manner.

So take your pulse. See if the temperature of your marriage is normal. Make sure conflict is not escalating, causing your blood pressure to rise. And if you detect your relationship time and activity level declining, start exercising your way back to health.

It's Not Mere Child's Play

Note: This article was first published in Life in the Delta in September 2005.

As summer is ending and school is beginning again, I’m recalling how much I’ve enjoyed seeing the children in my neighborhood out playing this summer. It really warms my heart when I see children playing with reckless abandon. The reason for this is I’ve come to understand and appreciate the value of a child’s play.

I’ve discovered this by treating children in therapy. When I see children, I do what is called Play Therapy. Researchers have discovered that play therapy is to children what talk therapy is to adults. In fact, children are not really capable of expressing their deep thoughts and feelings in words, but they can work them out in play, using toys as words and play as their language. So for kids ages 4-12, I use this technique, which has been found to be quite successful in helping children resolve their problems.

The practice of Play Therapy requires specialized training and experience. But in many ways, it parallels the everyday play of a child. When a child begins Play Therapy, I offer them a variety of toys and tell them they can do most of what they want with them. I’ve never had a child ask what to do with the toys – children instinctively know what to do. Play comes so naturally to them.

In personally seeing the healing benefits of play to children, I’m often struck these days with the thought of how structured our children’s lives have become and how little time they have for play. Well meaning parents want their children to have every advantage to get ahead in life, so they enroll them in school as early as possible or in organized sports and classes. Some of these regimens are helpful in introducing a child early to the educational process, athletic training, or social skills. But I want parents to know that free play is not wasting time. Not only is play fun but it also promotes creativity and is critical to the healthy cognitive and emotional development of the child. In fact, many of our children are so used to having planned activities that they do not know how to think for themselves, hence the often heard “I’m bored.”

I also believe that play is important to adults as well. It ranks up there with love and work as being key to human happiness and well-being. Play can be any fun activity that can elevate our spirit and brighten our outlook on life. In play, we can relieve feelings of stress and boredom, connect to other people in a positive way, think creatively, regulate our emotions and get renewed energy to return to our daily tasks. A healthy balance, of course, is needed between work and play.

In conclusion, if we know that as adults, we need some fun, unstructured time, let’s remember that our children need that also. Perhaps knowing that “it’s not mere child’s play” will help parents not feel so pressured to enroll their child in every available activity. Then perhaps they themselves can have some extra time for play.

(Note: By play, I mean non-directed play using toys with pretending as well as drawing or painting or playing with play dough. This does not include watching TV, playing video games, or reading. However, research has shown that reading and playing or listening to music are better for children’s brains than the visual stimulation of TV or video games or computers. So I encourage music and reading but in addition to free play.)

Managing Your Anger

Note: This article was first published in Life in the Delta in July 2005.

For most people, anger is not a pleasant topic. When frustration starts to build, many of us revert to pre-adolescent behavior. It is amazing sometimes how quickly we can be overtaken by anger – sometimes in a matter of seconds. Anger is a huge problem for a lot of people. Many couples come to counseling with anger as a major issue. Also, it is the number one reason kids are brought to counseling.

Anger is often a misunderstood emotion, yet it is one of the most powerful and controlling of all the emotions. Some people think that anger is always wrong. However, it is a God given emotion, and if used in a healthy way, it can be beneficial. Often too we fall into stereotypes with anger: it is not a permissible emotion for women whereas it is the only permissible emotion for men. But emotions are neither male nor female.

Anger is energy. It puts our bodies into a state of readiness by pumping out adrenaline and nor-adrenaline, raising our heart rate and blood pressure, and tightening our muscles. Also, anger is the emotion most likely to induce the same emotion in another person.

One important thing to know about anger is that it is usually a secondary emotion. We often experience anger in response to another primary emotion, which is usually out of our awareness. Almost always anger is a protector for one of the following: 1) hurt in the past, 2) frustration about a blocked goal in the present, or 3) fear in the future. Anger protects by energizing: if you hurt me, then I get angry, then I can protect myself and you have to be careful around me. The key to managing anger then becomes learning to identify the primary emotions in order deal with them, rather than to react in anger.

Although we can’t always control the experience of anger, we can learn to control the expression of it. However, sometimes this takes a lot of work over time and may require the help of a trained professional. Never is it good for anyone to explode on another person with shouting, throwing things, or using angry words, such as put downs, name calling, blaming, sarcasm, swearing, and the like. Also, be aware that the expression of anger can take passive forms, such as pouting and withdrawing. A person can implode as well as explode, which is also harmful to self and not the loving thing to do.

Some people spend their anger energy and get some potential short term benefits. By getting it off their chest, they feel better, they get their way, and they’re in control temporarily. Yet they may lose in the long run, because some of the long term risks include health factors, especially coronary heart disease in men, as well as broken relationships and a lack of intimacy in relationships.

Some steps for managing your anger include, first of all, awareness of it. Next you must admit your anger and accept responsibility for it. Sure, someone else can cause your anger, but you are always responsible for how you choose to express it. Next, determine who or what is going to have control – the anger or yourself. A next step is to identify and get to its source, which sometimes involves taking time out and processing it. You can invest the energy of anger by exercising, praying, or taking time to listen inside. Merely venting it by throwing things only tends to escalate it. Then lastly, you can choose your response and can speak calmly to the other person in a controlled manner – speaking for the anger rather than from it.

Think of your anger as a control light on the dash of your car, letting it be a signal that something else is going on under the hood. And remember: unhealthy anger reacts whereas healthy anger responds. How well are you managing your anger?

Facing the Reality of Fantasy

Note: This article was first published in Life in the Delta in May 2005.

We are living in an age where the ability to escape from reality is only the click of a button away. We can have instant access to all sorts of fantasy – television, movies, computer games, internet chat rooms or pornography – just to name a few. Instead of facing the present circumstances of the life we are in, we can essentially live another life. I would like to pose the idea that I think a large part of being mentally and emotionally healthy is to live in reality. I also think that God calls us to this – to live in truth, or reality.

I would like to clarify that I’m all for recreation and relaxation. This too is something God calls us to do – to rest from work. Also, I believe God placed in us a need for stories. It is part of who we are. A large part of the Bible consists of stories. So not all escape into movies, TV, books, or games is bad. But the questions to ask ourselves are these: Are we doing what we’re doing to relax, or are we trying to calm anxiety or replace loneliness? And what do our real life relationships look like?

While not all forms of fantasy are wrong, depending on our motivation, I do think that any escape to internet pornography is wrong. In case parents do not know, the largest consumers of internet pornography are children ages 11-17. Usually behind pornographers is organized crime, and they are being extremely aggressive in going after our children because they want customers for life. In addition, so many men are addicted to internet pornography that it has become one of the leading causes of divorce today. Women too view pornography and evidence has begun to show that women’s brains are actually being rewired so they are becoming more sexually aggressive and more responsive to visual stimulation by sexual images than in times past. Even so, both men and women become involved in chat rooms and many a marriage has been destroyed by an online relationship.

One danger of the addiction of pornography is that it produces a release of endorphins in the brain. This is like a drug released in our body vs. a foreign substance, like marijuana or heroin, which has to be introduced. The effect feels so good that the person cannot stop. Later a person usually experiences enormous guilt and shame and possibly depression. Yet the person trapped in pornography has a continual desire for more and gets trapped in a cycle. Unlike other abusive substances, pornography has the three A’s: it is Accessible, Anonymous, and Affordable. For anyone trapped in internet pornography, intervention is absolutely necessary. The prognosis for change is 100%, but the key factor is whether the person wants to become pure or not. But the way to getting well is by bringing it to light. The person must have accountability to another person or a group. And internet filters must be in place.

The antidotes to fantasy are fellowship and facing our pain. Anyone who is escaping to a fantasy life or fantasy relationship is probably lacking intimacy in their real relationships. All of us have an inborn desire to be loved, understood, and affirmed. Fantasy relationships can only satisfy these deep desires momentarily. And in the deepest recesses of our heart is a void that only God can fill. I love what G. K. Chesterton says, “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.” I would say that is true for anyone clicking onto internet porn sites as well.

I would challenge you to face the reality of fantasy and its destructiveness to marriages and families. I would ask that you become involved with real people and real life circumstances and responsibilities, rather than seeking time alone with a machine. But be warned, real love is messy and relationships take work. But they are much more satisfying. Indeed, we were made for relationship.

Advice to Couples Planning to Wed

Note: This article was first published in Life in the Delta's Wedding Issue in 2005.

As a marriage counselor I have noticed how much time and attention have been devoted to the preparations for the wedding but how little have been devoted to the preparation for the marriage itself. In fact, the wedding plans can seem to take on a life of their own and the couple can easily lose perspective of their future relationship.

Recent statistics show that marital satisfaction begins to drop in the first 4 years of marriage and by the end of 5 years of marriage, 19% of couples will be divorced. One survey found that 40% of newlyweds found marriage harder than they had expected and also felt that their partner had become more critical after marriage. It is becoming more and more evident that couples not only need pre-marital preparation but an on-going support system to make marriage work. (Prepare-Enrich, 2003)

One reason for some post-marital distress is the marriage myth that you can take all positive things from your family of origin and leave behind all the negative things and in effect have a fresh start. Wrong! In actuality, you bring it all into the marriage. In fact, the sources of much of the conflict or unhappiness are what I call pre-morbid factors, such as crises, poor relationships, and unresolved conflicts from the past. Another reason for distress is that the rose colored glasses come off that have filtered in the positive things about the other person and filtered out the negative things. When these glasses come off, the true person emerges, warts and all. Sometimes this is immediately, even on the honeymoon, or in the few months that follow. This is even true of live-in couples, who think they have gotten to know each other well, but they have just postponed this process of letting their guard down completely because the uncertainty of the commitment. An additional reason for distress following marriage is the myth that another person can make you whole. Unless a person is happy being single, it is unlikely he or she will be happy being married. The best thing a person can do to prepare for marriage is to become an emotionally healthy individual.

I like to recommend pre-marital counseling at least six months prior to the wedding. This way the relationship of the couple can be explored without the competing pressure of the wedding plans. Also, if a couple discover that they need to break or postpone the engagement, they usually have not made such extensive plans that they find it almost impossible to back out of them. A good pre-marital counselor will usually explore the couple’s goals and expectations of the marriage, their families of origin and how they plan to blend them, their personality and gender differences, their communication skills and ability to resolve conflict, and their financial plans and how they view money. Even with good pre-marital counseling, the most important benefit is that they have someone to whom they can return if they encounter difficulty a few months or years into the marriage. The expectations of marriage rarely match the reality of what is actually experienced. So if you do not have pre-marital counseling, do get counseling after the marriage if you encounter problems – the earlier the better. If problems are allowed to fester, they can become worse as time goes on with the couple becoming polarized in seemingly entrenched stances.

So much of what we see and hear about marriage these days is negative. It seems the “for better or for worse” takes on the “for worse” part. But the “for better” part can be a wonderful relationship that can provide our most basic need of a loving attachment to another human being. The commitment aspect of marriage underlies this secure attachment. The sexual aspect of marriage sets it apart from other relationships and can be a continual source of pleasure and a way of connecting for years to come. And the intimacy aspect of marriage can be that of soul mates who know and are known by each other. This is where communication skills are so important. Some couples are so afraid of conflict, especially if it was not modeled properly in their families, that they avoid it at all costs. But conflict handled in the right way can actually increase intimacy.

It was once thought that the ability to resolve conflict was the best predictor of marital satisfaction. But the most recent research indicates the best predecitors to be the wife’s ability to be soothing and have a “softened start-up” when approaching her husband and the husband’s being able to tolerate and respond to his wife’s negative emotion. (Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, July 2003) It is vital that couples stay emotionally engaged and actively responding to one another. It seems the age old biblical principles still work – “wives, respect your husbands” (translated, do not nag or attempt to control them) and “husbands, understand your wives” (translated, listen to them, do not withdraw from them or just try to fix their problem).

In conclusion, couples who are planning to marry, please work on the relationship. A good relationship will not just magically happen. Think of being married as becoming a team together, with each fitting their plans to one another. If each selfishly lives their own life without regard to how it effects the other, they miss out on the marvelous support and comfort that marriage can provide.

(Note: If you cannot obtain adequate pre-marital counseling, I recommend you do some reading on the subject. Some books I would recommend are Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts, by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, and Fighting for Your Marriage, by Markman, Stanley, and Blumberg.)

What Is Your Parenting Style?

Note: This article was first published in Life in the Delta in March 2005.

There are basically three types of parenting styles – permissive, authoritarian, and authoritative. Depending on which one a parent may practice may have a significant outcome on their child’s character development. As I will explain, the permissive parent and the authoritarian parent both get out of balance – the permissive parent in love and the authoritarian parent in rules, whereas the authoritative parent strikes the right balance between the two.

Permissiveness is a style of parenting which does not impose age appropriate limits on a child’s behavior. It is usually rooted in the parent’s inability to tolerate their child’s anger or unhappiness. One root of the problem is the parent’s need for a child’s closeness or affection to meet their own unmet needs. The child is unwittingly used to bring warmth and love to the parent. This is the reverse of what parenting should be: the parent should give love and affection to the child with no return expectations. Making the child responsible for the parent’s happiness is a huge responsibility. The child will do it because children come into this world hungry for relationship.

Another underlying reason for permissiveness is the parent’s over-identification with the child’s pain, fear or loneliness because they confuse their own painful feelings with their child’s. For example, a mother who was abandoned emotionally as a child might interpret her child’s protest at leaving on a date night with her husband as abandoning her child. The difference is – her child has not been abandoned but is doing what children are supposed to do – protest if they don’t like something. Regardless of the source of the problem, the permissive parent has trouble saying no to their child’s protests or steps in to rescue them from suffering. These parents think love means rotating their lives around their children. Like helicopters, they hover over their children and rescue them whenever trouble arises. While these parents think they are easing their children’s paths to adulthood, these children are usually unequipped for life.

The other unbalanced style of parenting is authoritarianism. These parents are like drill sergeants. They also love their children and are determined to show it by disciplining them. Their words are filled with anger, put downs, commands, and I-told-you-so’s. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times!” or “Shut up and go to your room!” they may bark. The underlying message they send their kids is that they’re dumb and cannot think for themselves. When small children rebel, drill sergeant parents can quash a rebellion with a stern order or punishment. But when adolescents rebel, parental orders become unenforceable. Anytime a parent explodes in anger when a child does something wrong (e.g, loses book, makes a bad grade), the child learns their behavior makes an adult mad. The child gets angry in return, rather than learning from the experience. These children do not learn to think and are as dependent on their parents as the helicopter kids.

The preferred style of parenting – the authoritative style – strikes the right balance by giving the child the understanding he or she needs while at the same time enforcing the limit. This type of parent can tolerate their child’s protests without reacting emotionally themselves. They stay calm and contain their child’s protests by offering empathy. Empathy is the ability to “feel with” or identify their child’s emotions, validating that it is all right their child expresses anger or fear or pain. Yet the parent stays calm, sets the limit and offers a choice to the child. This is the right kind of love because it fills up a child inside and meets their relational needs. Yet it also teaches their child about reality. For example, a parent may say to a toddler who tries to hit them with a ball, “People are not for hitting. You may hit the tree, or I will play catch with you.” The emotions are removed while the child is forced to think. Or a parent might say to a teen who fails a test, “I’m so sorry. I hate it when I do badly myself. What are you going to do about it?” This again forces the child to think and solve his own problem.

The authoritative parent stays calm but firm. The child learns to grieve their loss and move on. They learn the valuable lesson they cannot make reality change, but at the same time they are satisfied with their parent’s loving understanding. This style of parenting teaches toleration of frustration and is a valuable way to instill character in a child.

The State of Marriage

Note: This article was first published in Life in the Delta in January 2005.

Since this is the month in which the President delivers his “State of the Union” address, I thought I would speak to what I view as the “state of marriage.” I was concerned a few months ago when the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, of which I am a member, sent out a survey to ask the members’ opinion about whether we should take a stance to maintain the definition of marriage as an exclusive union between a man and a woman or rather expand it to include same sex couples. I replied that I preferred to keep marriage as an exclusive union between a man and a woman and listed several reasons, including that marriage has provided the basic structure for society in all cultures since the beginning of civilization and that it also promotes the best growth and development of children in my opinion.

I was encouraged following the general elections in November that so many people overwhelmingly agreed that marriage should remain as a union between a man and a woman only. Yet while I am hopeful that marriage will remain as an institution in our nation, I am discouraged as a marriage counselor about the current condition of marriage in general. Couples therapy is the most difficult type of therapy I do because many couples tend to be so conflictual and in such emotional pain by the time they come to therapy that they tend to be irreconcilable. I even know colleagues who now refuse to see married couples due to the difficulty of this type of therapy. Yet because of the importance of retaining marriage as a vital structure of society, I will plod on – for now at least.

I will agree that in past centuries many couples stayed together out of necessity and socio-economic pressures, albeit many of these unions were not happy ones. The 20^th century opened the way for many unhappy couples, especially women, to have the freedom not to live in physically or emotionally abusive homes nor tolerate adulterous situations. Yet we may have taken this freedom too far with 50% of our marriages ending in divorce. Sadly this statistic is the same for Christians as well as non-Christians. I believe that most people take their vows seriously when they say “for better or worse,” yet when “the worse” comes they seem unable to stay in the marriage. Or if they do stay married, they find other ways “to stick it out,” including having affairs or a series of married relationships that start out with high hopes which later are dashed. Or two people stay in a long-term relationship by living separate but parallel lives under the same roof. Or some opt out of marriage altogether and just decide to live alone for the rest of their lives. These to me are all poor options and do not fulfill what I see as God’s original plan for marriage, which is the coming together of a male and female in an exclusive one flesh union in which they are intimately connected physically, emotionally and spiritually.

I would urge couples to assess their marriages, whatever stage of life they are in. No age group is invulnerable to divorce anymore. A huge mistake many couples make is to neglect their relationship due to busyness in their lives. They seem to be on track for living separate lives and do not learn to communicate with each other on a meaningful level nor resolve conflict in a satisfactory way. One of the partners then suddenly wakes up one day and gets mad that he or she is not experiencing the type of relationship desired yet has not made a committed effort to do their part to invest in the marriage along the way. Newlywed couples especially now seem to find marriage harder than they expected. It is becoming more and more evident that couples not only need pre-marital preparation but an on-going support system and good models to make marriage work.

While we may have preserved marriage as an institution for now, we as a nation need to individually address our own marriages in order to preserve marriage for future generations. If your marriage is not a mutually satisfying and supportive relationship, I encourage you to get help – read some books, attend a marriage conference, find a more mature couple to mentor you, or seek a marriage counselor. I challenge you: what is the “state of your marriage”?