Tag Archives: relationships

How Do I Cope with the Pain of My Divorce?

Allison Stevens
Christian life, Relationships, , , , ,

Divorce is never easy. It is a painful, heart-breaking experience for everyone involved. Families are torn apart, leaving confused, angry, and hurting children. No one “wins” in divorce.

When you first begin to go through a divorce, your main thought is survival. You want to “just get through” the excruciating pain and keep up with life. Your heart feels like it is being ripped out, but life goes on. You must go to work, pay your bills, clean your home, and continue to parent, which some days can seem like an impossible feat.

Divorce is such a shock that many try to survive it through denial. Denial is a way of shielding your heart from harsh feelings of rejection, despair, and betrayal, which can temporarily help you absorb the initial trauma. Consciously or unconsciously, you may be telling yourself, “This really isn’t happening.” You may convince yourself that your spouse is bluffing. You might even avoid telling anyone that your mate has left you or intends to.

As the painful truth begins to sink in, support from family and friends is vital. Be encouraged to tell trusted friends what you are thinking and feeling. You should not attempt to endure the pain of divorce without the emotional and spiritual provision of your friends and family.

Once you have faced the fact that a divorce is inevitable, you will have many overwhelming feelings. Anger, sadness, rejection, and feelings of betrayal invade you without warning. It is important to allow yourself to have those feelings. Don’t try to cover or numb your feelings with something like food, work, or another relationship. We all may be tempted to suppress our feelings on occasion. But allowing yourself to experience your feelings will promote healing, not thwart it. If you are more committed to avoiding your pain, chances are high that you will experience these painful feelings inappropriately later in life and in different relationships.

These times of emotion can be opportunities for you to know God in a more intimate way. Allow God to comfort you and bind and heal your wounds ( Psalm 30:2 .) You can allow Him to show you things that maybe you have overlooked for years. God wants to show you a better way of living your life. He wants to help you see and break patterns of relating to others that may have contributed to this devastating experience of divorce.

This may be a time of repentance for the way you have related to others in your life. Do you have a pattern of avoiding conflict in relationships? Have you allowed someone to disrespect you over time? Maybe you struggle with intimacy and communication. This part of the healing is difficult and can feel scary. You may be tempted to blame your spouse for everything wrong in the marriage. Blaming may feel more comfortable than facing the part you played in the breakdown of the marriage, but it doesn’t help you grow as a person.

But what if you have been the victim of horrible abuses and violations of trust? Don’t you have the right to put more of the responsibility for the divorce on your spouse? Isn’t your anger justified? You will have natural feelings of anger and bitterness at times. Certainly, it is right and appropriate to hold your spouse accountable for the way he or she hurt you. Scripture does not say that to be a loving person we must ignore the faults of others and allow them to continue in sin. Rather, in Romans 6:1-2 Paul said that if we love Christ and recognize the extent of His grace, we should not allow a loved one to continue in sin. Loving well means that you encourage another person’s growth towards Christlikeness by holding him or her accountable with the hope that it will bring the person to his or her senses.

While a certain amount of anger and bitterness is justified, it is not in anyone’s best interest to let your feelings grow into obsession and revenge, as this will inhibit a submissive heart for God ( Proverbs 20:22; 22:4; 1 Peter 5:5 ;James 4:6-7 ).

A submissive and loving heart for God will be nurtured through prayer and thankfulness. When you think about the betrayal in your marriage, it may be easy to fall into revengeful and hateful desires. Bitterness and depression can creep into the heart and destroy love and compassion. The best way to face these negative emotions is to immerse yourself in prayer and thanksgiving. Pray for yourself, your unmet longings, and your pain. Pray for your soon-to-be ex-spouse. Pray for God’s redemptive purpose to take place in your life. Pray for hope, that in the midst of your pain and anger, you may one day have a compassionate heart for your spouse. And be thankful. Remember the good and wonderful ways in which God has been there for you in the past. Be ready to see His blessings today. A thankful heart will bring you peace and guard your heart against hate ( Philippians 4:4-9 ).

You are beginning a long and lonely journey. Fear will surround you. Overwhelming feelings of loss, betrayal, and isolation will plague you. Some moments you will feel strong. The next moment, waves of emotion will suffocate you. The path to healing means that you accept these lonely times as a place where God wants to teach you things about yourself and Him that you haven’t yet learned. Cry out to God in your desolation. He will hear you and help you ( Psalm 34:17-18 ).

Divorce has the potential to produce bitterness, depression, and a lack of trust in people. It also has the potential to deepen your relationship with God, which brings with it great blessings ( Psalm 37:4-6,9,11,18-19 ; Matthew 5:3-10 ; Philippians 2:1-2 ).Trust that God will not leave you alone in your suffering. He will comfort you ( Matthew 5:4 ), and heal you ( Psalm 34:17-18 ). It won’t be an easy road, but you can find solace in knowing that He suffers with you in your loss. This is not what God intended for your life, but He can use suffering to pour love into your heart and produce deeper character in you ( Romans 5:1-5 ).

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How Should I Respond When a Fellow Christian Wrongs Me?

Dan Vander Lugt
Relationships, , ,

Matthew 18:15-17 provides the “ground rules” for the resolution of conflicts between Christians. It applies to peer relationships, not sexual abuse or other offenses that fall in the category of criminal law. Although this is a brief passage of Scripture, it is more than a simple formula. It needs to be obeyed in the spirit of wisdom and compassion that should mark all Christian relationships. The purpose of any confrontation is spiritual healing and restoration of relationship, not revenge.

As verse 15 states, the first step in resolving a damaged relationship is for the one who feels sinned against to confidentially confront the one who has committed the offense. Unfortunately, this first private step is often overlooked. Instead of taking the initiative to personally speak with the one who has offended us, we are inclined to look for allies by sharing our side of the issue with uninvolved people. This failure to face our offender in person allows the offender to go unconfronted, and it increases the distance and distrust between him and us.

If the offending brother or sister does not accept our correction, that is not the end of the matter. It then becomes appropriate to involve two or three other people as witnesses to our problem. While continuing to protect confidentiality, these witnesses are to join us in a second attempt at confrontation and reconciliation.

If the one who has harmed us expresses no repentance or change of heart, even after this confrontation with two or three witnesses, the authority of the whole church is required. Jesus declared:

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector (Matthew 18:17).

This means that if the offending party will not accept the authority of the church, we are no longer to fellowship with this person as a brother or sister in Christ. Instead we are to love him or her in the way Jesus loved tax collectors and public sinners who desperately needed spiritual conversion.

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Can a Wife Be the Abusive One in a Marriage?

Jeff Olson
Personal Struggles, Relationships, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Much has been written in recent decades about husbands abusing their wives, as it should. In more cases than we care to admit, husbands from a variety of backgrounds are physically and emotionally battering their wives with their fists and their words. This is a serious problem no one should take lightly (SEE When Violence Comes Home.).

Abuse in marriage, whatever form it takes, is ultimately about a pattern of exerting power and control over one one’s own way. When a marriage is marked by a one-sided pattern of control, the abusive spouse is not always the husband. Sometimes the abusive spouse is the wife.

While most wives are not able to control their husbands through physical threats and violence, some dominate their husbands through their words, looks, and other threatening actions. Similar to an abusive husband, an abusive wife may boss her husband around, talk down to him, call him humiliating names, and treat him in a very emasculating way. Generally speaking, her style of communication doesn’t invite open and free conversation. It tends to be intimidating or manipulative and is intended to shut her husband down. Whether it’s through a dirty look or a lecture, the point is unmistakable: He’s not there to think or share an opinion. He’s there to do not only what she tells him to do, but also how and when she wants it done.

Just as abusive men demand sexual intimacy without regard for their wives’ needs, abusive women can withhold affection or intimacy as a way of controlling their husbands. An abusive wife may also exert control by imposing arbitrary or erratic expectations. For instance, she may badger her husband to do something, but then get upset with him for doing it because he not’s doing something else for her instead. Imposing and then randomly shifting her demands keeps him off-balance. It leaves him second-guessing himself and her feeling superior. Other abusive women constantly harass their husbands for their recreational interests and even their deeper aspirations for life. If what he enjoys and feels passionate about doesn’t fit into what she deems important, she may ridicule him or look for reasons for him not to do it. If that doesn’t work, she can always find some way to make him feel guilty.

The bottom line is this: most things in the marital relationship have to be her way. She demands that her husband revolve most, if not all, of what he does completely around what is important to her, even though her demands are often unreasonable, inconsiderate, and constantly shifting. And when it doesn’t go her way, she feels “free” to let her husband know it. Whether she relentlessly grumbles and criticizes, threatens to leave, or turns cold and withholds attention and affection, the clear message to her husband is “things had better go my way or else.” It’s a message meant to intimidate her husband and wear him down to the point where he feels it’s not worth doing anything that would risk upsetting her again.

Of course, every marriage experiences painful moments of unreasonableness and control from both partners. But when those moments become the norm rather than the exception, it becomes abusive and denies a spouse the freedom to be who he or she is both within and outside of the marital relationship. Not unlike an abused wife, an abused husband feels coerced into being who his wife thinks he should be. Perhaps this is why the Bible doesn’t pull any punches when it states that “a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day” (Proverbs 27:15) and that it is “better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife” (Proverbs 21:19).

Any marital relationship that is characterized by such patterns of control is not really a relationship. It is more like a dictatorship, where one partner rules over the other. Unfortunately, because of their own insecurities, most husbands in this situation let themselves get walked on and are afraid to stand up to the patterns of control with courage and love. Others try to ignore the way they are mistreated, only to blow up and turn mean or abusive. Neither is a godly response and is nearly always a sign of a man who has lost his heart.

To read some general ideas about a better way that doesn’t take the abuse lightly yet still offers the opportunity for forgiveness, healing, and restoration both in the marriage and in each spouse’s heart, read When Words Hurt .

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How Do You Handle Being Rebuffed When Attempting Reconciliation?

Tim Jackson
Relationships, , ,

If we’ve lived and loved long enough, we all know the pain of a broken relationship. We also know the joy of reconciliation when that relationship is mended. Unfortunately, loving someone well and trying to reconcile with them provides no guarantee they will welcome restoration. When someone refuses to reconcile a broken relationship, frustration, pain, and self-doubts can grow. The desire to find a way to restore the broken relationship that works intensifies.

Sadly, there is no guaranteed procedure that we can follow to assure restoration of a broken relationship. Sometimes, all we can do is grieve the loss of that relationship. And that is what Jesus modeled for us. He is the perfect example of one who unselfishly poured out His love to His creatures and offered them the opportunity for reconciliation with their Creator. However, they would have nothing to do with Him.

In one of the saddest verses in the Bible, John records in a single sentence the fact that Jesus “came to His own, and His own did not receive him” (John 1:11).

Jesus’ response to the rejection of His offer of reconciliation was a deep grief and sadness that moved Him to tears and prayer for His people. We see the Son of God’s broken heart when He sits outside the walls of Jerusalem and laments: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you! How often I have wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37).

One of the most frightening truths that we all must face is the fact that we cannot force someone to love us, no matter what we do. Even if we take appropriate responsibility for harm we’ve done to them, confess our sin against them, and ask for forgiveness, there is no assurance they will respond in kind. They can choose to remain distant.

While an unresolved relationship is deeply disturbing, one of the most freeing truths is that no one has the power to stop us from loving them. And that’s all that God calls us to do, to love others the way He has loved us (John 13:34;15:12).

We all wish there was a “next step” that would make reconciliation work out every time. Sadly, there is no such step. However, at those times when our best efforts at loving are rebuffed, we do have the opportunity to share in our Lord’s sufferings, to experience His pain and His relentless longing for reconciliation (Philippians 1:29).

We need to guard against a false guilt that assumes we should be able to do something to “fix” every relationship — as if it all depends on us alone. While we must take responsibility for our part in a relationship, we must not assume that we are solely responsible for the breach in the relationship. Instead of holding another person responsible for their choices, we can tend to let people off the hook and blame ourselves for “not doing enough” or “missing something” that would be the key to unlocking the relationship.

That kind of thinking is not only demoralizing but controlling and unbiblical. God never asks us to assume responsibility for others, only ourselves. That needs to be our focus.

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Is the Wife Required to Submit to an Abusive Husband?

Jeff Olson
Personal Struggles, Relationships, , , ,

More than a few Christian wives endure years of terrible mistreatment at the hands of an abusive husband because they genuinely want to follow God’s calling to “submit to their husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:24). Many assume or have been taught to believe that submitting “in everything” includes submitting to abusive behavior.

It’s important to understand the setting in which Ephesians 5 calls for submission. Specifically, Paul urges wives to submit “as the church submits to Christ” (Ephesians 5:24). This qualification gives meaning to the kind of relationship and leadership that is in view. Just as Jesus expanded the definition of leadership to center around the heart of a servant (Luke 22:25-27), Paul actually spends most of this section emphasizing that husbands are to sacrificially look after their wives as Christ gave Himself for the church (Ephesians 5:23-33). Of course, no husband perfectly lives up to Christ’s example just as no wife perfectly submits to Christlike leadership, but the submission Paul speaks of in this passage presumes that a husband desires and strives to follow Christ’s example of loving, servant-heart leadership.

While Paul is clearly calling for women to submit to husbands who are committed to looking out for their well-being, we can safely say that Paul would not counsel a wife to submit to an abusive husband. A marriage that is marked by a pattern of abuse of power and control is altogether different from the kind of relationship and servant leadership Paul had in mind when he called wives to submit to their husbands.

Marital abuse is a harmful distortion of Christ’s leadership and a violation of the marital vows to “love, honor, and cherish” that calls for a radically different response than submission (See the ATQ article What Is a Godly Response to Domestic Abuse for an Abused Wife?). Perhaps that is one reason why, even in a time when women were not highly regarded, the book of Esther features Queen’s Vashti’s refusal to submit to her drunken husband’s command to parade around like a trophy in front of his intoxicated and lewd male guests (Esther 1:2-12).

To read more about physical and nonphysical abuse in marriage and some ways to deal with it in a biblical manner, please feel free to order our booklets When Violence Comes Home, When Words Hurt, and God’s Protection Of Women.

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