If I had a dollar every time a husband told me he wasn’t a very emotional guy, I’d be retired by now. But hey, I’m not judging. I used to think the same thing.

Turns out: it’s pure bunkum. And it’s messing up your marriage too.

It’s definitely a very commonly held view that women are more emotional than men. The stereotypical view is that women’s emotions are all over the place and they’re only too happy to let you know about it, while men are more muted; less extreme in their emotions and less willing to talk about how they’re feeling.

But the research on emotion and gender paints a rather different picture.

There are some differences around our ways of expressing ourselves, but nothing so drastic as being able to say that men “just aren’t as emotional” as women. Sorry, guys.

Does Evidence Support the Idea that Women are More Emotional?

We have to start by looking at our culture, and the subset of a culture known as emotion culture. Emotion culture is defined as a way of viewing emotions and their expression within society. It’s the unspoken rules and implicit assumptions that guide how we see and express different emotions. Unsurprisingly, these rules differ for women and men.

Part of western emotion culture then is the belief that women are “both more emotional and more emotionally expressive” than men[i]. Also it is widely thought that we differ in the emotions we feel and express: for example anger is a masculine reaction to things and sadness is more a feminine reaction[ii].

But does this commonly held view hold up to scrutiny?

A study by Simon and Nath[iii] used a questionnaire about daily emotional experiences for which they analyzed 1460 responses. They looked at:

The frequency of feeling emotions in general

The frequency of reporting feeling different emotions (changing emotional state)

Emotional expressiveness (how much expressivity happened)

They found:

No difference in the frequency of feeling emotions between genders. Men feel as frequently as women do.

Some differences around which emotions are felt by men and women, but not a strong link. Often these differences were accounted for by differences in roles or situations. For example, women reported feeling negative emotions more often but this difference was accounted for by their lower household income. Men often reported feeling calm more often than women did, but when the effect of having children under 18 was removed, this effect disappeared. Men aren't naturally calmer than women--women are just less calm because they are dealing with the kids!

Women DO express their emotions more readily than men. But the underlying level of feeling is not different.

Now you have visibility into emotion culture: humans all experiencing the same amount of feeling, but culture is dictating the extent to which you express it. We’ll unpack that more in a minute. I only cited one study. Let me drop a couple more in just so we know that we’re being fair in our consideration of the research.

Kring & Gordon[iv]: measured people’s emotions while watching film clips that were either scary, happy or sad. They observed participant’s facial expressions, self-reported emotional reaction and skin-conductance, which is part of the physiological or biological aspect of emotion.

They found no difference in self-reported emotions or skin conductance between men and women, but women were again more expressive with their facial expressions. Men were reporting feeling the same emotions as women, they just weren’t showing them externally. So again: male and female feelings were the same. Only women were more expressive of those feelings.

Another study: Lively & Powell[v]: looked at differences in expression of anger between men and women. Found that "social domain and status differences are such powerful predictors of emotion expression that they eclipse the influence of other individual characteristics,

So for a long time, I thought praying together was just a nice thing to do. It was one of those optional, lets-do-this-if-we-remember kind of things. But with time, my perspective on this has shifted. A lot.

Regular readers of the blog will know that we offer sound, research-based advice, as well as speaking from a Christian worldview. Even today when we’re looking at the effect of prayer on your marriage we’re referring to what we can learn from Scripture and from secular research because we believe that God also reveals truth in creation.

When I was coming to the research that had been prepared for this post I had in my head that we would only be looking at praying together, but there’s also some great info about praying for your marriage that I want to share as well. The research shows that both praying for your marriage and praying with your partner have some incredibly beneficial effects on your marriage.

Prayer Increases Long-Term Marriage Satisfaction

I wasn’t expecting this but it does make sense. It turns out that praying for blessings for your spouse predicts marriage satisfaction later in life[i]. So this study showed that who praying for the wellbeing of your spouse predicted relationship satisfaction at a later point in time.

The opposite was not true! Relationship satisfaction did not lead to an increase in prayer. So it was apparent that prayer is a catalyst to increase relationship satisfaction.

As the researchers considered this, they speculated that prayer encouraged spouses to think about the long-term aspects of the relationship. Here’s a quote: "Praying to an eternal and unchanging being and asking for positive things for my partner, may prime me to use a longer time frame in thinking about my relationship to my partner as well.[ii]"

That might be the case. I have a different idea. In 1 Peter 3:7, Peter is instructing husbands and he says, “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” (NKJV).

Notice here that there is a prescriptive and behavior that Peter requires of husbands so that their prayers are not hindered. In other words, you have to behave a certain way, giving honor to your wife and understanding her, in order for your prayer to be effective.

I think this is also one of the ways that prayer impacts marriage. It puts back-pressure on your behavior. I know if I get to the end of the day and if I’ve been crusty with Verlynda or disrespectful towards her or have just been a jerk: I can’t pray. It just feels so fraudulent.

So one of the things I’ve noticed is that having a daily time of prayer together forces me to confront myself with my care for my wife and how I’ve related to her that day. I think that has a regulatory effect that challenges us to live— in both behaviour and attitude— in a way that allows us to arrive at the end of the day in a way that we can pray with authenticity. So of course that is going to have a positive effect on marriage.

There’s another part that this researcher noted: praying for your spouse also involves God in the marriage. Because of this, there’s a sense of accountability towards God which means both that I’m watching my behavior again, but also that I’m checking in on my commitment levels. And, as we discussed in episode 45, a top 5 predictor of marital success is commitment. So if praying for your spouse and your marriage increases commitment, that’s definitely something we want to be doing as well.

I’d like to issue a challenge on that note: do you pray for your spouse? And I mean, more than just “Father I pray for Verlynda and I pray for our dog etc etc”. Like you’re actually praying about stuff that matters to her and to you.

Further, these same researchers noted that praying FOR your spouse and praying WITH your spouse were highly correlated.

This week we’re hitting a very specific moment that is occurring in many marriages; that moment when you discover your husband’s porn habit.

The revelation that your husband is addicted to some form of pornography is obviously a huge problem and a real shock to your marriage. But we're going to look at what the research says is the best way to deal with it in the immediate aftermath and how to look towards getting through it. We’re going to help you see what’s going on in his world, and then go through first steps towards recovery. We’ll be coming at that through two approaches: one if he is on board to get help and the other if he is in denial.

One quick preparatory comment: we’re going to be using the word ‘addiction’ quite a bit in this episode. Researchers can debate the definition of this word and Christians even more so. I want to skip that discussion for now simply because this episode is for wives whose world has just come crashing down around them and a ten-minute theological diatribe is not going to be helpful.

Discovering a porn addiction is an incredibly difficult thing to experience, often just as devastating as discovering an affair. Even if the problem is “just” online rather than in the real world, that same sense of betrayal, of being lied to, of a breakdown in trust, of repulsion, anger, and even fear are felt in response to this horrifying discovery. Wives may well wonder if their marriage can have a future after discovering that their trust has been violated on such a deep level for such a long period of time and angry thoughts of revenge are common.

Defining Porn Addiction

Let me give you a definition that can be used to help understand what’s going on for your husband and will give us a basis for what we need to go over today. I also want to say that while my main specialty is marriage therapy, my second most experienced area of work is with pornography recovery. Also, this problem, unfortunately, has been a part of the history of our marriage and so Verlynda and I will be drawing out on our own respective experiences too.

Addiction is "when a person compulsively uses sex to alter his or her mood to produce pleasure and/or to provide an escape from internal discomfort and is employed [or, entrenched] in a pattern characterized by recurrent failure to control the behavior and continuation of the behavior despite significant negative consequences[i]".

I like that definition for a few reasons:

It identifies why your spouse is engaging in this behavior. Not for the purpose of justifying it but helping us to understand: he’s using porn to alter his mood and/or escape. This is important because there is a valid need and an invalid coping mechanism at play. Your husband has a desire to feel better or escape from the pressures of his life, which is normal but has turned to a very unhelpful way of meeting that need. If we want the invalid coping mechanism (the porn) to go away, we have to also take care of the valid need in a healthy way.

It also points out the recurrent pattern: this could be daily, weekly, monthly, even quarterly. There’s a recurring pattern here.

And it also highlights the fact that at some level, even on the verge of his awareness, he knows there are significant negative consequences to his behavior. Why doesn’t that stop him? That’s a separate discussion where we would have to look at addictive cycles and come back to that valid need.

Keeping a Healthy Perspective

If you’ve just discovered his porn addiction, it will probably be a real shock and there will be all kinds of feelings going through you. To help you get a handle on the situation there are a few things you need to know.

The first is that you’re not alone. This is a profoundly common problem but also one that carries a lot of shame for both husbands and wives. Because of that, it doesn’t get talked about. Usually, couples that go through this go through it feeling very alone and without shar...

Did you know that 89% of veterans experiencing PTSD report one or more kinds of sexual dysfunction? And that survivors of childhood sexual abuse have a very common set of negative feelings and beliefs about sex? That’s the bad news.

The good news: your marriage can become a place to help heal trauma — even through what happens in your most intimate moments.

In our previous  post we asked whether trauma might be having an unseen impact on your marriage, and how you can identify and begin to heal this issue. Previous trauma can have a major impact on a marriage by  damaging your ability to trust and open up to your spouse. It can also have a major impact on marital sexuality.

Like last week, we’re not trying to encourage anyone to make up something that isn’t actually there. But I believe that trauma is impacting more of our marriages than many of us realize. And one area the symptoms are particularly evident in is the area of sexuality.

We’re going to start by looking at how trauma impacts female and male sexuality individually. And then we’re going to show you how to improve your sexual relationship directly.

If trauma is affecting your situation or even if you don’t have any trauma that you’re aware of, the last half of today’s post is going to have some very useful teaching on becoming more conversant about your sexual relationship.

How Trauma Impacts a Wife’s Sexuality

Unfortunately, a common cause of trauma in women is childhood sexual abuse. And although this also happens to men, we do have a very useful study from 2012[i] that specifically looks at the impact of childhood sexual abuse on women’s sexuality.

Based on their review of the research, this study found that trauma impacts women’s sexuality in the following ways:

"Women with a history of CSA report more negative feelings about sex and experience less sexual satisfaction than do non-abused women[ii]”. I want to be clear: this is normal. I know when statements like this are made it’s easy to put yourself in the “damaged goods” category. But that’s not what this is about. It’s really helpful when we’ve been through something profoundly difficult like trauma to know that we’re not alone in our struggles. Finding out that this is a normal experience should normalize it. So you’re not crazy, you’re not the only person like this. The good news is that there is hope and recovery. So just stay with me here. The first take-home point is that it’s not uncommon to report more of these negative feelings.

Next, “Forming intimate adult relationships is often difficult” for survivors, and “when relationships are formed, sexual and emotional fulfillment is often lacking[iii]”. So if you’re listening today you may be listening because you want more from marriage — more from your relationship with your husband. That’s great!

Research has found that the most common sexual difficulties in survivors are “disorders of desire, arousal, orgasm, and less often dyspareunia (painful sex) and vaginismus[iv]”. Vaginismus is the term given to recurring, involuntary tightening of the muscles around the vagina whenever penetration is attempted, making sex difficult or impossible. So these are common issues that female trauma survivors face in the context of married sexuality.

What causes these sexual difficulties?

That’s a good question to ask. One common underlying factor is often that survivors of sexual abuse have been found to have "more negative self-schemas [ways of thinking about self] than non-abused women[v]". When psychologists talk about schemas they are referring to our core beliefs- the things about ourselves and the world which we hold as irrefutably true. You can imagine that in intimacy when these deeply held negative ways of thinking about yourself are the dominant stories, it’s going to have an effect. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your husband thinks you are — you just can’t see yourself any other way.

Do you ever get the sense that an unseen force is at work in your marriage? I’m not going all woo-woo on you here, but what if you could identify that force, understand it, and then use your marriage as a place of healing?

If you've been through some kind of deeply traumatic experience then it's perfectly reasonable to expect that it will have had some effect on you as a person. But trauma can also have a big impact on your marriage, often without you even knowing.

How big of a deal is trauma?

I wanted to examine this because I see it at play in a lot of marriages and I am hoping that by reading this you will be able to self-evaluate your circumstances to see if this is relevant or helpful.

Trauma has different definitions and can be caused by many different things. Experiences such as childhood illness or hospitalization, near death encounters or experiences where death is witnessed, accidents, extremes like genocide and war, rape or torture are all examples of situations where trauma may result. Basically any deeply distressing or disturbing experience can result in trauma. Often you’ll see this where a person’s ability to cope is simply overwhelmed and you end up feeling powerless.

What’s interesting about trauma is the rule of nine. If you have events on a scale where zero is not a big deal and nine is witnessing something really terrible, the rule of nine is about how there are different figures you can multiply together to get to nine. If you experience one incident at a nine level of intensity you can have trauma as a result. Or you could also get it from having three incidents at a three-level; none of the incidents on their own would be big enough, but they add up together to a traumatic experience. Or even nine events that are a one level of intensity, where you have repeated exposure to something “small” that’s not big enough by itself, but by repeated exposure, it works up a trauma response.

So trauma ends up being the emotional response you carry to a very negative event or series of events. Trauma is a normal reaction to painful or difficult experiences but it can impact your ability to cope with normal life. And it can also have a major effect on your marriage.

How Trauma Impacts Marriage

A study from 2000[i] looked at 96 couples where at least one spouse reported a history of childhood abuse. Of course, that would be a likely source of trauma. These couples exhibit some particular attributes. So we’ll look at what these are and then why they appear, and then examine how we can help heal this.

This study made a few observations. First, if one or both spouse reported a history of physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood the couple was more likely to experience lower relationship satisfaction and higher individual stress symptoms than couples where neither spouse reported an abuse history. This is why we are dealing with the subject of trauma: it can impact marriages for sure!

They also noted that couples with a history of childhood abuse scored lower on cohesion than non-abuse couples. Cohesion is about the closeness of the couple- the emotional bonds they share. So there is more distance experienced in marriages where childhood abuse has been part of one or both spouse’s history.

It is common for individuals who have experienced abuse to report that they experience emotional distance and isolation. So yes, this definitely has the potential to touch marriages. If you’re reading this and it feels familiar, just stay with me though: we have good news for you later on.

Why Does Trauma Affect Marriage?

We’ve talked about attachment before — the science of love or the love bond that exists between two spouses. Trauma impacts attachment and, related to that, one’s ability to be emotionally engaged.

Let’s talk about some examples of what this looks like based on the work of Johnson and Williams-Keller[ii]. By the way, this is Sue Johnson who has really pioneered EFCT— the approach t...

Is this just a Christian myth? Is the idea that the best sex occurs within marriage something that is only believed by church-going people? What does the research say?

If you’re struggling with your sex life we offer sound, research-based advice, and today, hope for a constantly improving sex life too. Today we’re going to be looking at why the best sex happens inside marriage. Actually, it’s hard to believe that going through a bunch of research might be arousing but today we’re going to take a crack at it.

Why Sexual Boundaries Are A Good Thing

We’re going to do something very deliberate today: we’re not going to refer to the Bible at all. Now if you’ve just started reading our posts you need to know that Verlynda and I are born again Christians who are very involved in our local church and we always think and write out of our Christian worldview. We often refer to Scripture as well as to research. And today could definitely be a Bible-thumping episode. In the New Testament, there are only a handful of epistles that refrain from addressing sexual sin, from lust to fornication to adultery. So that message is clear.

And I think that a lot of people, perhaps from more agnostic or atheistic backgrounds, look at Christianity and see it as being very prudish because of these restrictions. Like we’re missing out.

But I think it’s actually very much the opposite: the sexual revolution of the 1960s to 1980s has actually done more to erode the quality of sex that people are experiencing than to enhance it. It’s telling that just now, in 2017, we’re starting to see articles in the New York Times and Washington Post raising the alarm over pornography use and its detrimental impact on male sexuality. This is nearly 50 years after the first adult erotic film had a wide theatrical release in the USA.

Where culture has got this backwards and impressions are still inverted is that God put boundaries around sexuality to increase the amount of pleasure and sexual satisfaction that can be experienced, not to decrease it.

And we’re going to demonstrate this from the research today. At the end I’m going to tell you why this is important to your marriage, and to ours, of course.

What Statistics Say About Sex Within Marriage

Overall, research tends to support the idea that the best sex happens within marriage. Let’s start with a study from 2000 by Christopher and Sprecher[i] which compared sex within marriage to sex within dating and cohabiting relationships. They found that married couples generally reported being satisfied with their sexual relationship. They cited a study where 88% of married couples reported being “either extremely or very pleased in their [sexual] relationship”

[content_container max_width='200' align='center'][thrive_fill_counter color="blue" value="88" before="" after="%" percentage="88" label="Rockin' It"][/content_container]

What I think is really cool is the words that these same extremely pleased or very pleased married couples used to describe how they felt about having sex: loved, thrilled and excited.

So not only are married couples typically satisfied with their sexual relationship but Scott and Sprecher also showed that studies have found that married individuals are more satisfied with their sexual relationship than single and cohabiting individuals. This was particularly the case for monogamous married respondents. So it’s not just being married that’s the key, but being monogamous in marriage too— can’t make any assumptions here since the Sexual Revolution.

So this is great: sex is better within marriage. But why?

Again, we could go to the Bible and argue that it just makes sense because God is good, and He designs us to flourish when we are obeying him. And of course, that’s very true. But instead, let’s go to the research again and see what these researchers are observing. What makes monogamous married sex the best kind of sex?

Sex Within Marriage is Exclusive

I was originally thinking of coming up with an inflammatory title for this post like “Chapman’s Love Languages Debunked” because that makes for good clickbait on the internet!

But this is The Marriage Podcast for Smart People and I figured, well, smart people are going to see that I’m just trying to create hype. And my mission is to help marriages, not create hype. So we’re actually going to look at research that examines the validity of the 5 Love Languages Concept and challenge you on how you might be using or abusing this concept in your marriage.

We have an exciting post for you this week. Today we’re going to be talking about Gary Chapman’s famous book, the 5 Love Languages. Now, the premise of the 5 Love Languages is that everyone has one single primary way in which they prefer to receive love and one secondary way. The five options are:

Gift giving

Quality time

Words of affirmation

Acts of service (devotion),

Physical touch

The idea is that once you discover what yours and your spouse’s love languages are you’ll be better able to give and receive love in a way that resonates with them. This concept has been widely accepted in mainstream thought and seems particularly popular in the Christian world. But the purpose of what we do is to offer sound, research-based advice, which sometimes includes questioning popular ideas. Most of all, we offer hope and because we tell you what actually works in marriage.

So I’m working from the assumption that Gary Chapman is a brother in Christ and I have no desire to cut him up or attack his reputation. Where we’re coming from today is we’ve noticed a number of occasions in marriages now where the 5 Love Languages has actually been counterproductive to the health of the marriage. While it’s nice to put yourself in a box, we’ve seen it become an issue in a number of ways. So we want to look at what works, what doesn’t, and give you some research and some points to consider before you swallow the whole 5 Love Languages idea hook, line and sinker.

Is There Empirical Support for the 5 Love Languages?

If you look on the Wikipedia article it’ll say right away that there’s some question as to whether Gary’s concept can be empirically validated. Well, we’re happy to tell you some researchers have taken up the challenge. In 2006, Polk and Egbert[i] set out to determine if the claims made in Chapman’s book could be supported through an empirical study.

They took 86 couples and asked them to pick one of the five languages that best described the way they prefer to receive love. So these folks each had to pick their primary love language. Then they had to complete two surveys: how they preferred to receive love and how they preferred to give love. They also used a standardized assessment called the Quality of Relationships Inventory to measure the quality of these relationships (this is the non-Chapman part of the study).

Following this they bunched the people into three categories:

Match: both spouses gave and received in their preferred Love Language. The way they gave and received love in their marriage was perfectly complementary.

Partial match: only one spouse received his/her preferred Love language.

Mismatch: neither spouse received their preferred Love Language.

Here’s what the researchers found, for and against Chapman’s ideas.

There was no correlation between the survey regarding how you preferred to receive love and your actual perceived preferred love language. In other words, if I said “choose one of the 5 Love Languages as your preferred one” and then gave you a detailed survey that asked 20 questions to help determine the same there would be no statistically dependable matchup between the two.

What you think your Love Language is when you pick one vs. trying to measure this by looking at what you actually do to express love and maintain your relationship doesn’t match up.

There are a few possible conclusions.

How would you react if you found out that your spouse was cheating on you? No doubt it would be a severe shock and you would find yourself filled with anger, surprise, sorrow and all kinds of other emotions. In fact, research shows that the effect of discovering infidelity is so severe it can be likened to recovering from a life-threatening traumatic event.

Today we’re going to be looking at something many wives experience following the disclosure of infidelity which is basically PTSD with a twist. If you’re struggling with your marriage after infidelity then today’s sound, research-based advice, should bring you hope.

A guy called Dennis Ortman literally wrote the book on this in 2005. It’s not a well-researched subject area since it is relatively new. However, this is definitely something I have observed and it is very real[i].

So Ortman noticed that many of his clients who had experienced infidelity within their marriage showed similar patterns of stress in response to the betrayal. I don’t have a reference for this but I remember when I was studying for my masters in the late 2000’s I came across one article that pointed out that 60% of wives who were sexually betrayed shows all but one of the symptoms of PTSD. And Ortman noticed that these spouses he was working with also mirrored the criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

But: it’s worth noting that one of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD is that you have to have witnessed severe bodily harm or death. And of course that doesn’t apply here but he was seeing that all of the other criteria were being met.

So while traditionally understood PTSD would occur in response to witnessing something deeply traumatic and violent, in PISD there is no life-threatening event but the deep impact of the betrayal leads to similar symptoms, including:

Experience of intense fear, helplessness, or horror: Individuals who have experienced infidelity become overwhelmed by feelings of fear, helplessness, and horror when they remember the affair. They live with a constant feeling of helplessness and fear that it will happen again[ii].

Re-experiencing of the event: Victims of infidelity “relive the horror of the event and all the overwhelming feelings, sometimes years later.” Just as a war veteran may duck at the sound of gunfire or have flashbacks of traumatic moments that happened long ago during war, “victims of adultery relive the painful discovery of infidelity[iii]”.

Avoidance of reminders of the event: Victims of infidelity “cope by trying to forget the terrible things that have happened to them by avoiding thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma[iv]”.

Emotional numbing: Victims of infidelity “become so overwhelmed by their feelings of anxiety, rage, and helplessness that they attempt to cope by withdrawing into an emotional cocoon...They detach from life and from themselves to survive the emotional storm[v]”.

Heightened anxiety: Victims of infidelity, “live on high alert for recurrence of the [infidelity].” They struggle to sleep and often have nightmares[vi].

Irritability and rage: “Individuals who have been traumatized become preoccupied with how they have been victimized, which causes them to become angry with the perpetrator, with life, and with themselves. At some level, they blame themselves for allowing the trauma to occur. Consequently, they are often irritable and experience temper outbursts[vii]”.

Why Can Discovery of an Affair Cause Such a Strong Reaction?

The main reason I see for this is that an affair or a betrayal of this magnitude is an incredible blow to the marriage bond. Discovering an affair or discovering porn or sex addiction is a betrayal of trust that shakes your belief in your most important relationship and leaves you feeling vulnerable.

Trust is a fundamental component required for a marriage in order to flourish. Think about it: if you had everything going great in your marriage except...

Today’s episode is twice the challenge: we’re dealing with the difficult subject of abuse in marriage but we’re also talking about when to leave a marriage too, which, under normal circumstances, is contrary to our personal values and our mission to help save marriages. So read carefully and thoughtfully as we navigate this very difficult topic.

Today we’re going to be guiding you through this subject of when to leave or stay in an abusive marriage.

If you missed last weeks’ post we discussed trajectories of healing and recovery for abusive marriages. You’ll definitely want to check that out for some background to today’s episode if this is the first time you’re listening in Also, make sure you hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss any upcoming shows from us.

Let’s get into this topic by starting with our values and then going to some really interesting research.

I think the most important thing we need to keep in front of us and for our readers to bear in mind is the context in which we are writing. We are sitting here in Florida writing this from our travel trailer. But when we publish this episode it will be available in over 100 countries and will be downloaded thousands and thousands of times. We have people of all faith backgrounds that read our posts. And even when most of our readers are evangelical Christians we have a spectrum of opinions on the subjects of separation, divorce and remarriage.

Rather than going into a huge sidebar on that I’m just going to say this. Our mission is to save marriages — we want to reach and influence as many marriages as possible. We hope your marriages never comes under this kind of strain and believe that no marriage is beyond recovery. We have written previously about certain exceptions to this and whether genuine ultimatums are ever justifiable in marriage, and while we still believe that separation is not the ideal from a Christian standpoint, when we talk about abusive marriages we are dealing with a whole different ball game.

You may well have your own opinions on whether divorce is ever acceptable. I would just ask that if you are not in an abusive marriage and if you have never been close to someone who is on the victim side of that relationship, that you suspend judgment until you hear some of their stories and experiences.

On the other end of the spectrum, we will have women listening to this who are facing another beating today. In this very moment, they are afraid — possibly even for their lives. So we have this wide audience reading but we really want to speak to those of you who are in an abusive marriage and are trying to figure out what your next step is and are maybe even afraid for your life, certainly for your wellbeing and possibly that of your children also.

Should I Leave My Abusive Marriage?

Let’s start with a very interesting study from 2007[i] where the researchers collected data from over 400 women who were seeking help due to being in a violent relationship. They interviewed these women every 3 months for the next year.

These women had four patterns of relationship that the researchers identified

Completely apart: the women remained uninvolved with their partner from the second interview to the end of the study

Together then apart: women who were “in” the relationship with this partner for at least one-time point [during the first 6 months of the study] but were “out” of the relationship [during] the last 6 months of the study

Fluid: women who were involved with their partner for at least a one-time point [during]…the last 6 months of the study, but were “out” of the relationship for at least a one-time point between the second interview and the end of the study.

Completely together: women who remained involved with their partner for the entire study

Where this study is helpful is it showed how women fare in an abusive relationship based on their decisions to stay,

Will the abuse get better?

Or is it going to stay the same?

Abuse is deeply rooted in belief systems and so we want to talk about recovery rates and how to figure out if you might consider sticking things out or if there is no hope for your husband.

Today we’re going to be looking at what the research says about trajectories of abuse. Meaning: if you learned from the last episode that you are in an abusive relationship, what hope is there for change?

So last week we looked into how to know if you’re in an abusive marriage or just a distressed marriage, and at ways of defining the different forms of abuse. Be sure to give last week’s post a read.

What Research Says About Trajectories of Abuse

A study from 2008[i] looked at physical and emotional aggression and measured them using the Domestic Conflict Inventory— a tool for measuring conflict in marriage that includes elements of physical and emotional aggression which we describe in our previous episode.

They looked at 118 couples and found that:

Physical aggression significantly decreased over time (43% per year)

Emotional aggression did not significantly change over time. They actually found that husbands showed a 3% increase per year. Just note that this means that 3 or 4 or of the men out of the 118 couples changed.

Longer duration marriages had lower physical aggression.

What we are seeing is that research tends to support these results. Physical aggression changes over time — often decreasing — but emotional aggression tends to remain stable over the years.

Another study from 1996[ii] found that even when the husband’s physical abuse decreased over a 2 year period the same was not true of emotional abuse. The frequency of emotional abuse remained stable even as the physical abuse decreased.

Now, for men that get involved in batterer programs and seek help, more recent research shows that these programs can be effective in helping them reduce aggressive comments and helping them communicate more positively during arguments. Not all batterer programs offer this kind of skills-based training but this does help reduce verbal abuse, but the researchers also noted that good communication skills need to be taught to both the man and the woman to be most effective[iii].

Another thing that is worth noting here is that the abuse interventions need to be seen as an ongoing process, not just a one-time cure[iv]. So men who successfully stopped being violent towards their spouses often stated that they were violent due to patterns of behavior learned from their parents. Or they were violent because it helped them feel more “masculine” and in control. So violence and abuse are deeply engrained into this type of thinking as you might image.

Consequently, you can’t shift this in one intervention.

The change in thinking and beliefs is most successful in men who continually engaged with counseling and intervention such as batterer programs. The men reported that they would sometimes “forget” the right ways of coping with situations when in the moment but that long term interventions helped them become more aware of their own motivations in being abusive, which helped them towards change.

What I hear when I look into this kind of research is that your husband will do best when he considers himself to be on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth.

This, obviously, is going to look very different than him just apologizing, even being tearful, promising he’ll never do it again, and then not actually engaging in any process to help him recover. A tearfully apologizing husband may mean every word he says and genuinely want to change, but that in-the-moment remorse is rarely enough to change long-standing patterns of thought and behavior. So just keep that in mind as you gather evidence about what kind of a trajectory he is on.

How Many Abusive Men Recover?

The answer to this question depends a lot on the type of abuse...