Normalize therapy.

Has infidelity impacted your marriage? Do you feel like you need guidance through recovery and rebuilding your marriage?

A few months ago we ran a 15 Day Marriage Challenge and were absolutely stunned by the number of people going through that process who were dealing with betrayal in the form of an affair or infidelity.

Caleb created the 30 Day Betrayal Devotional set as a response to this need. This is a very unique product in the marketplace and in this podcast episode Caleb answers some questions and tells us about it.

By the way, these were written for the more common situation of husband betraying wife. If you are a couple where the roles are reversed, and the wife has betrayed the husband, just switch books and pronouns.

Broken Couples Need to Heal From Affairs Together

The first thing we recognized is that both the betrayer and the betrayed need to be working through their own issues in this process, but they need to be doing so in a way that opens them up to each other. These devotionals comes in a set of "His" and "Hers" and are complementary to each other. They're two separate journals but come in a set.

What happens is that you are working on things that complement and correlate with what your spouse is working on. For example, a few days in Caleb speaks to the betrayer about being willing to acknowledge his spouse's feelings and is talking to be the betrayed wife about sharing her feelings rather than always pursuing facts about the betrayal.  The two parts match up day by day as you go through this journey.

And some good news: rarely is there a couple recovering from an affair where there was not some sort of intimacy deficiency in the marriage. Those couples who make a sincere effort to rebuild and recover often speak of their marriage being WAAAY better than before. What changed? All of a sudden everything becomes open and vulnerable. It's incredibly painful and risky but you have two people who are seeing way further into each other than they did before. As they heal and rebuild, they don't let go of this newfound intimacy!

Recovering From Infidelity Needs a Proven Plan

The second thing that we realized is that couples need a plan. To be honest, we initially didn't want to do a devotional because we didn't want to string together some warm fuzzies and lead people down an unrealistic pathway that was sprinkled with Christian platitudes.

So, Caleb wrote these devotionals with some very challenging Scripture readings but he also integrated them with a clinically proven pathway towards rebuilding and recovering from an affair.

This is a proven process that you're stepping through.

The first ten days help you confront the facts of the affair but move towards owning the feelings and the trauma of the affair: how it impacts the betrayed spouse, but also showing the betrayer how to demonstrate accountability and honesty.

The next 10 days deal with the 'why' of the affair. This is the part where you really start to make meaning of the affair. It's a very touching part of the devotional where you go deep with root causes in order to find the healing. By the end of this, you still won't like that the affair happened or the pain it caused, but you should be able to see that there is hope, there is purpose and that God is going to turn your grief and pain into blessing and recovery.

The last 10 days takes you through the decisions to forgive and reconcile. Do you want to do it? If yes, then it becomes about walking you through that as well. That is a very tough process to navigate through without guidance.

Recovering From An Affair Should Result in Transformation

We would never recommend having an affair in order to catalyze growth and transformation. However, since this has happened and it is a part of what you have experienced, the next thing I'm looking for is how can we take this heart-breaking, profoundly betraying, devastating discovery and turn it into something that is transformational.

Obviously, this is a self-help tool so the transformation really depends on how sincere and how deeply you go with the challenges in the devotionals.

But our goal for you would be, as the betrayed spouse, that by the end you will have:

Made sense of why the affair happened

Processed the grief and trauma of the betrayal

Understood how to begin trusting again

Learned how to forgive and reconcile

And moved towards affair-proofing your marriage.

And for the betraying spouse, my goals for you are that you will have:

Supported your spouse properly through recovery from the betrayal

Learned how to begin earning her trust again

Learned how to make amends for the infidelity

And moved towards affair-proofing your marriage.

Who is This For? and Not For?

These devotionals are for couples recovering from affairs and infidelity. It's ideal if you both can do the devotionals. There are journalling and workbook sections throughout so you are engaging with the Scripture reading, with prayer and the counsel given in the devotionals.

You could do this on your own if you like and you will receive some benefit. We only sell them as a pair because that is really how we'd like you to come to this.

These are not intended for couples recovering from discovering a sexual addiction or pornography addiction where you now know that this is something that was brought to the marriage.

If you are in an abusive marriage and your spouse is abusive in any way toward you, we do NOT recommend that you engage in any process that makes you more vulnerable, which this would do. Your first step is to find safety.

So it's not that we don't want to sell a lot of these - we'd love to reach as many distressed marriages as we can. We just want to be really honest about who this is and who it isn't for.

Remember, affairs take all shapes and forms: if your spouse had an emotional affair or a physical affair; it is was a coworker or a random person; whether you feel like you were at fault or not. The variety doesn't remove the effectiveness of this resource.

If you're recovering from infidelity, these 30 Day Betrayal Recovery Devotionals are an outstanding resource that we're proud to offer to you. They're printed in full colour on top-quality paper and they come with a wire binding so they open up and lay flat as you work through them.

30 Day Betrayal Recovery Devotionals

That way it is easy to pray over what you're learning, do the writing and journalling that's involved and just really focus on recovering from this huge blow you've experienced.

To purchase your devotionals, simple go to www.onlyyouforever.comhttps://therapevo.com/infidelity-recovery-for-couples/

Remember, if you have any questions about this or anything else, be sure to get in touch!

Do you ever wonder why you can’t trust your spouse? Especially when you think you should be able to?

Before we start, we want to make it clear who this episode is for because it may not be immediately apparent from the title.

We’re speaking to men and women who are struggling to trust their spouse and recognize that this trust issue lies primarily within themselves at this point. There may have been a past betrayal or not. If there was you might say something like, “I know in my head that I can trust him or her now, but I just can’t get past the doubts.”

You know your spouse is trustworthy, but you can’t get there yourself as far as trusting them.

So, if you’re struggling to trust and you cannot, and you are sure this is about something happening within yourself, this article is for you.

On the other hand, if you’ve gone through a betrayal and you’re struggling to trust and maybe your spouse is continuing to act in ways that are concealing or suspicious in nature and your lack of trust is legitimate, this is not for you. Trust your gut.

But if it’s more like you feel something’s wrong in you rather than in your relationship, we’d like to help you.

Finally, if you’ve betrayed your spouse and you can’t get them to trust you, don’t just stick your spouse in the bucket we are discussing today. A severe betrayal takes a long time to recover from. In fact, their discovery of your betrayal was probably a traumatic event and your spouse may be suffering from a variation of PTDS called Post Infidelity Stress Disorder.

Remember, everything said here should be seen as a self-help tool and not as a replacement for counseling!

So…trust.

Trust has been defined as the “confidence that [one] will find what is desired [from another] rather than what is feared.[i] It’s the idea that when I turn to Caleb for something I have this innate confidence that he will provide what I desire. He’s safe. He’s reliable. He’s predictable. Now, if he’s all those things but I cannot trust him, then I have a problem that I need to address.

Trust is implicit in love. 1 Corinthians 13 talks about love, and verse 7 says,

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Do you hear the trust implicit in that?

Proverbs 31:11 has this really neat little statement talking about the virtuous woman: “The heart of her husband trusts in her”. Trust is an emotional confidence in another person.

That’s why betrayal hurts so bad and why it takes time to heal – because it touches you to the core.

On the other hand, when you can’t trust but you should be able to, then this affects your marriage bond because of that fact that trust is implicit in love.

In terms of why you can’t trust your spouse, here are a few different possibilities that may apply to you.

Lack of Trust as Means of Maintaining Control

The first possibility is that you may be holding onto a lack of trust as a means of maintaining control.

In 2015, some researchers looked at the influence of trust on conflict discussions.

Typically, if you’re a trusting person you tend to make positive attributions about your spouse even in questionable circumstances. You also tend to display more positive emotions than negative when you’re in conflict. On the other hand, if you’re a low-trust individual, you tend towards pessimistic views.[ii]

For example, if you find a long black hair on your husband’s sweater and no one in your family has long black hair, a trusting spouse would remove the hair and that’s it. Instead, a low trust spouse may start the conversation with, “Who does this belong to?”

When you’re less trusting, you often move very quickly towards tactics that really destabilize the relationship or even harm it because you have this underlying belief that your spouse is concealing negative events from you.

In marriage then, low-trust spouses are more influential than high-trust spouses. They tend to pull down the high-trust spouse towards more negative outcomes. There is more power on their side.

These researchers found that when one spouse was low on trust, both spouses felt less close following the conflict discussions. Only when both spouses scored high in trust did the conflict end up drawing them closer.[iii]

You might be engaging in conflict to reduce your uncertainty, but if you are the low-trust spouse you already are on the high side of the power imbalance. It puts you on moral high ground and requires your spouse to defend themselves before the court. That’s a natural power imbalance in your favor.

Is it possible that there was a period of time in your life where things felt really out on control? It could have been a betrayal or something very different like a traumatic medical situation. Were you able to bring some sense of sanity back to that crazy situation by leveraging a lack of trust? Perhaps you find yourself today somewhat entrenched in that position and it’s really scary to think about trusting again because it takes you back to a very real sense of vulnerability.

Unfortunately, while that lack of trust can be a means of maintaining control, it is also harming your relationship to your spouse. So, while it’s an attempt to create safety, it’s also undermining your safety and if you can see that, you may find the motivation you need in order to consider making a shift if indeed this is the source of your lack of trust.

Lack of Trust as a Means of Self-Protection

Another possible source of lack of trust is related to maintaining control and that is your lack of trust could be a means of self-protection.

Research in 2013 showed that people with low trust in their spouse feel compelled to remember the past in a way that prioritizes self-protection over relationship dependence.[iv]

How this works is this: say there are transgressions on the part of your spouse in the past. If you have a lack of trust, you will continue to act in ways that protect yourself rather than protect the relationship.

This is tricky, because who wouldn’t want to protect themselves? Unfortunately, this is eroding the relationship and therefore is ultimately not self-protective. That’s why it’s hard to get unstuck from this issue. The most natural sense of self-protection is what you resort to, but it doesn’t work and there’s a way that this continues to reinforce your belief you’re not safe.

It’s a self-fulfilling, vicious cycle.

These researchers found that “the greater a person’s trust in their partner, the more positively then tend to remember the number, severity, and consequentiality of their partner’s past transgressions.”[v]

They also found that people with high trust “tend to expect that their partner will act in accordance with their interests. Consequently, …they have the luxury of remembering the past in a way that prioritizes relationship dependence over self-protection. In particular, they tend to exhibit relationship-promoting memory biases regarding transgressions the partner has enacted in the past.”[vi]

If you’re having trouble trusting your spouse, you may just be trying to protect yourself. You know this isn’t working well for you, even though at a superficial level it makes sense to protect yourself.

Lack of Trust as a Core Relationship Belief

This may be the deepest level of trust issues that we're discussing today.

In our very early experiences with our primary caregiver, usually our parents, there are ways that we come to see the world at a very fundamental level that are largely informed by how we are related to by our parents.

That, in turn, affects how we relate to our significant others as adults. This is called attachment theory.

If you learned in the early years of your life that the most important people in your world were not reliable, you will now naturally believe the same thing about your spouse even if the very opposite is true of your spouse.

Again, we’re talking about why you can’t trust your spouse in the context where you know your spouse is a trustworthy person but you are having trouble trusting him or her.

We all face this issue where we bring ways of seeing our significant other to the marriage that are more informed by the realities of our family of origin that the realities of our spouse.

This could be another source of a lack of trust that is present but not actually a result of anything your spouse has done.

How to Trust Again

So, how do you start trusting again?

That is a difficult question to answer in this context.

There are a few things we do know. One is that you have to watch for cycles and learn how to break out of them.

For example, if your lack of trust has created a level of suspicion in your marriage, your spouse may actually be concealing ordinary, legitimate things just to escape some of the burden of suspicion. If you perceive this, it increases your lack of trust. Can you see the cycle?

This cycle of self-concealment by your spouse, resulting in a lack of trust, is hard to break out of. One approach might be to actually take the initiative to acknowledge to your spouse how your behaviour is promoting this cycle and asking for his or her gentle engagement in working with you to step out of this cycle.[vii]

Another thing to note is that trusting behaviours come before feelings of trust. Another study actually showed this![viii] They asked 64 dating couples to allow their partner to dance with a stranger. If a person said yes, this was seen as a trusting behaviour. What they found was that when Partner A said yes, Partner B can dance, then feelings of trust were induced in Partner A.[ix]

What is fascinating is that the impact of this was greater than the impact of trustworthy behaviours by Partner B. You actually may infer more trust from your own actions toward your spouse than your spouse’s actions.

If you struggle with trust,...

Even if you're happily married you might find dates with your spouse kind of awkward sometimes. What do you talk about? I know we struggle at times to have an easy flow of conversation, too.

I don’t know what it is about dates that make it difficult to know what to talk about. Sometimes we’re just distracted or exhausted but sometimes if you’re up to date with each other then you’re also not sure what to go over. Certainly, if there’s an ‘elephant’ in the room, that gets in the way too.

This is a good place to start because where couples struggle sometimes is they haven’t dealt with something that’s pretty major. One spouse initiates the date as a way to try to repair or even extend a peace offering.

We could go down quite a rabbit trail with this but I think it would be good just to point out that you want to set up your dates so that you have the same goal/agenda when you go on them.

If your marriage is distressed, be sure that you’re both heading in with an open mind that you’re doing this as one little step to move towards repair and reconciliation. If this is your situation, don’t go in with super high expectations and give your spouse the benefit of the doubt and show some generosity by extending good will.

This is one time that we’d actually recommend avoiding the elephant in the room. If the ‘elephant’, or issue, is too big for you, put that out there before you go and also suggest how you’d like to resolve that: set up a time to talk, ask for help from a spiritual leader in your church, or get some counselling. On the date itself, though, is not the time or place to hash out difficult issues.

What you want to try to do is to set up your dates to allow a little sweetness to percolate into your marriage. Warmth. Kindness: both given and received.

When you’re going on a date in the context of the distressed marriage you want to point the conversation toward topics that help you to build little wee connections with each other again. On the other hand, if your marriage is reasonably healthy but you just need a way to freshen up your dates and your relationship we’re going to point you toward the same topics!

We know that life happens. We all get super busy and because we’re always in the whirlwind we tend to lose track of those little details that are happening in each other’s lives. Remember how when you were dating you used to love finding out those tiny little facts about each other? Well, date conversations should steer in that direction.

Talk About Relationships and Experiences

Generally, and looking at research on conversations that people tend towards, about 55% of conversation times for males and about 2/3 for females is devoted to talking about relationships and experiences.[i] See, most people like to talk about relationships and experiences because these are the most influential forces in our lives in terms of our emotional wellbeing.

A much smaller amount of time goes to work or school-related trips, then to sport, then arrangements for future social activities, then culture and art and politics and religion.

So let me give you a few different ideas about this.

You definitely want to spend more time asking your spouse about the relationships you see less of. For example, how’s it going with their boss, with their mother, with their closer friends that maybe you don’t hang out with as a couple too much. These things are really important to your spouse.

Watch for little hints of emotion there and try to catch those and expand on them to learn more about your spouse’s feelings. Be curious. Rather than assuming you know something, ask about it.

Watch how you add your interpretive layers to what they’re saying, though. You may find more value, instead of thinking about how you see something just to stay with more neutral non-judgmental questions to ask your spouse how they experienced their friend or the specific circumstance at work.

Part of this is not only having the topics to talk about but actually stopping and taking the time to unpack them. Males tend to just assume certain things and fill in the blanks on stuff, but if you can hold back on your own interpretation and try to lean into the curiosity, it not only helps to extend the conversation but also helps you to get to know your wife better. More understanding always leads to more compassion.

The second thing here is to learn also to be curious about areas of your spouse’s life where your interests don’t overlap. Even if you have no interest or knowledge about what they are talking about, turn that into an advantage and say “Wow, I know nothing about that” and then start being really curious about the basics. Now you’re asking questions to learn about this interest and you have the other person excited about one of their interests and that is a great way to have a conversation!

You can also just decide you want to take time to get to know how they think about certain issues more.

Talk About Important Issues

I know, I know. I said not deal with major marital issues on your dates.

However, there is still a place for important, substantive issues.

We get a lot of small talk from many of our relationships, we need to go deeper in our marriage.

There was a study in 2010 that compared small talk vs. substantive conversations and looked at wellbeing. The small talk was really banal like “Oh, how’s your popcorn chicken?” and the important issues were those things where we’re exploring relationships, like, “So, your mom baked out of your lunch date? What do you think might be going on for her?”

What these researchers found was that higher well-being was associated with less small talk and more substantive conversations.[ii] It appears that happy people don’t just stick with small talk but they also engage in more in-depth conversation.

Start Conversations by Asking Questions

Sometimes the pressure of having to bring a conversation starter leads to anxiety which prevents you from getting into the flow. Well, one thing we can do is learn to ask good questions. This is such a great skill for any part of marriage, or family life, or any human relationship.

Here are some ideas from the 7 Power of Questions by Dorothy Leeds.

The first thing you need to know is that not all questions are equally effective as conversation starters. I’m sure every person knows how well it works to ask your child, “So, how did school go today?”.

“Good.”

Period.

End of conversation.

Asking your spouse, “How was work today?” often doesn’t go much better. It’s too general a question. Think about how you can get more specific with the question. Try:

What was the best part of your day at work?

What was the most annoying part of your day at work?

What was the funniest thing that happened to you today?

These will lead to more things to talk about because they are more specific. It works even better if you have the presence of mind to track things from day to day. “So, you were hoping to get your proposal finished at work today. Was it hard to get it finished on time?”

Keep Date Conversations Going by Staying Focused

One thing that is so easy to do is to grab your phone wherever there’s a lull in the conversation. It’s like our phones have become the ultimate awkwardness disrupter – something to take me away from my discomfort and anxiety when there’s silence.

There was a study in 2014 where researchers looked at the relationship between the presence of mobile devices and the quality of real-life in-person social interactions. They looked at 100 pairs of people discussing either a casual or a meaningful topic together while a trained research assistant observed them unobtrusively from a distance noting whether either participant placed a mobile device on the table or held it in his or her hand.

The results of this study showed that conversations in the absence of cell phones were rated as significantly superior to those in the presence of the mobile device. Note: this is “in the presence” of; not even talking about use!

They also noted that people who had conversations in the absence of mobile devices reported higher levels of empathic concern. Empathic concern is that ability to relate and to connect emotionally with what the other person is sharing.[iii]

Putting your phone away shows that you are truly interested in the conversation at hand – it shows you care. When you show that, you’re sending your spouse a signal that gives them a reason to keep talking about what matters to them.

So, be mindful of how your cell phone is a part of your date together, and what it might be adding or removing.

Yes, if you have younger kids or a new babysitter, you may want to have your phone close by you. This is a time to get creative with your technology! Give your sitter a special ringtone or even turn on the do not disturb feature but set your babysitter's contact info so she has special exceptions to this. That way it will only ring if she calls and you can have uninterrupted conversation the rest of your date night.

Once you get those date conversations going, remember that you also need to be intentional about how you’re going to keep them going!

And keep in mind the Bible verse from Ephesians 4:29 that says our conversations should be “such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

It would be really cool if you could go on your next date with a real concern to give grace to your spouse by being intentional about your conversation!

[i] R. I. M. Dunbar, Anna Marriott, and N. D. C. Duncan, “Human Conversational Behavior,” Human Nature 8, no. 3 (September 1997): 231–46, doi:10.1007/BF02912493.

[ii] Matthias R. Mehl et al., “Eavesdropping on Happiness: Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations,” Psychological Science 21, no. 4 (April 1, 2010): 539–41, doi:10....

Maybe your spouse has complained to you that he or she just doesn’t feel appreciated. Well, let’s just take that at face value today and work on this whole appreciation thing. It can only help, right?

One of my favorite Bible verses is:

“You must let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only what is beneficial for the building up of the one in need, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

If every word we spoke in our marriages was tested by this verse, we would see some vast improvements!

What Does Appreciation Look Like?

There is a measurement tool used in research called the Appreciation in Relationships Scale which looks at these items:[i]

Telling your partner that he/she is the best

Telling your partner how much you appreciate him/her

Not taking your partner for granted

Acknowledging and treating your spouse like s/he is someone special

Noticing when your spouse does nice things for you and saying thank you, even for the really small things

Feeling struck with a sense of awe and wonder when you think about your spouse being in your life.

Basically, appreciation is any feeling or expression of gratitude for who a person is and what they do. When you perceive that your spouse sees you as valuable, you feel appreciated. This, of course, leads to a greater sense of security in the marriage and also the feeling that you can be confident of how your spouse sees you.

It’s difficult when you’re not sure what your spouse thinks of you. This may be why your spouse is saying that s/he doesn’t feel appreciated. For some reason, they may not actually be sure of what you think of them.

When you take these needs for appreciation that we all have and you bring them into your marriage what you’re doing is shifting your focus away from your own self-interest and really starting to include your spouse’s needs. This shift in thinking is fundamental to showing appreciation because you have to start to mentally position yourself around what you’re giving rather than what you’re getting from the marriage.

When this shift takes place, you’re now expressing behaviours that help to maintain and build up your relationship. This is the whole point of appreciation!

How Appreciation Blesses Your Marriage

Here are five ways that appreciation benefits your marriage. We’ll show you why this works and what it does for your marriage so that you can really become intentional about putting this into place.

First, Appreciate Your Spouse and Your Spouse Will Appreciate You

A study from 2012 showed that “feeling appreciate by one’s spouse promotes one’s own appreciative feelings….people who feel more appreciated by their romantic partners report being more appreciative of their partners. In turn, people who are more appreciative of their partners report being more responsive to their partner’s needs.”[ii]

Appreciation begets more appreciation. When you appreciate your spouse, your spouse is more likely to appreciate you back. Appreciation starts a healthy cycle in your marriage – as one partner considers the other before self, the other partner starts to do the same, and the relationship as a whole benefits from this.

Second, Appreciation Leads to Commitment and Protects from Divorce

Further results of the 2012 study showed that people who are more appreciative of their partners are more committed and more likely to remain in their relationships over time.[iii] In this way, displays of appreciation are protective against divorce and separation.

Anything that contributes to the happy longevity of your marriage is really worthwhile!

Third, Appreciation Positively Changes How You View Your Marriage

Different research, from 2010, discovered that one of the benefits of expressing gratitude (which is just one way of expressing appreciation) positively changes how each partner views the relationship, specifically in terms of the communal strength of the relationship.[iv]

Gratitude is what you feel when you are aware of what you appreciate. Developing the habit of looking for and then giving words to what you appreciate is how you create gratitude.

Focussing on appreciation adds this powerful altruistic aspect to the marriage which in turn affects how you view your marriage. You feel it is stronger when you show more appreciation.

Fourth, Appreciation Improves Your Spouse’s Mental Health

A study in 2013 investigated how gratitude within a marriage impacted the mental wellbeing of each spouse. They used a depression scale (which is kind of like a Beck Inventory if you’ve heard of that) which is basically a questionnaire used to measure depression or depressive symptoms.

Here’s what they found:

A husband’s gratitude negatively correlated with the wife’s depressive emotion. This means that there was an observable correlation: as the husbands showed more gratitude the wives experienced less depressive symptoms.

“A wife’s depression would be relatively palliated if her husband was assigned to express appreciation to her and not share daily hassles.” (Palliated means you have relief of symptoms but not necessarily a cure.) So, a wife’s depressive symptoms would be relatively lessened if her husband was intentional about appreciation and refrained from dumping daily hassles on her.[v]

These findings are pretty neat, but why does this work?

One thought is that the husband’s appreciation could serve as a mental resource: your positivity energizes me a little get through the day better. Also, receiving appreciation probably strengthens self-esteem and self-efficacy, meaning you feel more confident and more capable when you are shown appreciation.

Not only that but you also have a reciprocation dynamic that comes into play. The depressed spouse wants to return the gratitude which is another boost also.

Finally, Appreciation Leads to More Honest Marriages

Some researchers is 2011 observed how expressing gratitude in marriage led to more honest marriages in the fact of conflict.[vi]

Results of their study showed “a relationship between naturally occurring expressions of gratitude and comfort in voicing relationship concerns.”[vii]

The researchers believe that expressing gratitude increases positive perceptions of the romantic partner, which is the mechanism by which partners feel more comfortable expressing their concerns.

We’ve talked about this elsewhere, where having positivity in the marriage means that you also have the opportunity to raise issues without fear of a meltdown. That happens because you can more easily listen to your spouse point out a problem in yourself when you’re listening in the context of a marriage that is already affirming and safe and appreciative. Makes sense, right?

So that’s our challenge for you today: go and start making it a consistent practice to show appreciation in your marriage.

[i] Amie M. Gordon et al., “To Have and to Hold: Gratitude Promotes Relationship Maintenance in Intimate Bonds,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103, no. 2 (August 2012): 257.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Nathaniel M. Lambert et al., “Benefits of Expressing Gratitude: Expressing Gratitude to a Partner Changes One’s View of the Relationship,” Psychological Science 21, no. 4 (April 2010): 574.

[v] Yen-Ping Chang et al., “Living with Gratitude: Spouse’s Gratitude on One’s Depression,” Journal of Happiness Studies 14, no. 4 (2013): 1431–42.

[vi] Nathaniel M. Lambert and Frank D. Fincham, “Expressing Gratitude to a Partner Leads to More Relationship Maintenance Behavior,” Emotion (Washington, D.C.) 11, no. 1 (February 2011): 52–60, doi:10.1037/a0021557.

[vii] Ibid.

Making your marriage more intimate can seem like a daunting task. Until you understand that there are just four basic components. We help you identify each of them and show you what you can do to take your marriage to the next level.

What happens if your marriage really hasn’t been that great but you’ve been sticking it out for the kids, or for some other reason. Let’s say the reason you’ve been sticking it out is no longer relevant… Now what?

If the purpose for staying married is no longer relevant, is your marriage toast? Or can you do something to redeem and reconfigure your relationship so that new life is breathed into it?

Barriers and Rewards in Marriage

Why do people stay married? In 2003, two researchers set out to answer this. They cited past research that showed that people typically stay married due to either rewards (positive outcomes associated with being in a relationship) or barriers (psychological forces that restrain people from leaving relationships).[i]

Happy marriages often stay together because of rewarding aspects of marriage, while unhappy marriages often stay together because of barriers to ending the marriage.

The researchers were interested in specific rewards and barriers that kept marriages together and used data from a 17-year longitudinal study of marital instability to find some answers.

In this study, couples were asked to list (1) specific barriers that prevented them from moving forward with divorce, (2) specific rewards that kept them together, and (3) whether they stayed due to a lack of alternative relationships.

The results showed:

When couples were asked why they stayed in their marriage, 74% listed various rewards, 25% listed barriers, and 1% listed lack of alternatives.

Of those who listed barriers, the number one barrier to ending the marriage was staying for the sake of the children. The second largest barrier listed was religion.

“People who attributed the cohesiveness of their marriages primarily to barriers (such as staying for the children) tended to be relatively unhappy with their marriages and were likely to be thinking (or acting) in ways that might lead to divorce.”

“Thinking about marital cohesion exclusively in terms of barriers predicted divorce up to 14 years later, even after controlling for marital happiness and divorce proneness.[ii]

The researchers also noted that barriers were not as powerful as rewards in maintaining cohesion. Without a strong attraction between spouses (as reflected in love, friendship, or positive communication) many people eventually find ways to overcome existing barriers and leave their marriages.

For example, couples that are concerned about the effect of divorce on children may wait until their children are older or have left home before divorcing.

Here’s the point: what’s keeping you together now could lead you to your ungluing later.

You can think of this from a Scriptural perspective, too. Marriage, in terms of purpose, is cast in Ephesians 5 as a way to express the relationship of Christ towards his people on earth: there’s communication, intimacy, covenant faithfulness, loyalty and commitment, and deep, unfailing love.

If your marriage has been carried along on the winds of any other kind of purpose, it’s time to seriously consider how you can remanufacture and build something that is aligned with the divinely ordained purpose. Surely, this is a far richer, far more joyful, perspective!

But, just because you’re staying together for the wrong reasons doesn’t mean divorce is inevitable! If there’s pain in your marriage, why not find a place for the truth of redemption to be expressed in your marriage? Surely this is a better route than the devastation of divorce.

Don’t Wait to Get Help

Based on the research (above), marriages that stay together for the children are often unhappy marriages that could be headed for divorce once the children grow up. What should these marriages do? How can they find help?

A large part of the problem is that many unhappy marriages don’t seek help at all.

Other research shows that “most distressed couples do not seek marital therapy” and those who do wait an average of 6 years after serious relationship problems develop. In fact, only 37% of divorcing couples report seeking any type of counselling or therapy for their relationship.[iii]

Trying to resolve issues after they have escalated for 6 years, is much more difficult than resolving them right when they start. So, why wait? What is stopping you from getting help today?

Most people will answer that question by identifying a problem in their spouse. We understand that it’s often the case that your spouse isn’t on board for getting help, but if you’re creative and prayerful about this, you can find ways to improve things.

What Motivates Couples to Seek Help?

If you are wanting to get help, there’s this really tough question that we spoke about somewhat in our last podcast that we return to today: How do I get my spouse and I into counselling or some kind of marriage help.

There was a recent study that looked at what motivated couples to enroll in a marriage checkup, which serves the purpose of increasing marital health.[iv] It turns out this is a really complicated problem to solve! Often one spouse is unwilling to seek help and therefore can either veto this or find ways to undermine it. It may also be hard to find time in your schedule or even find childcare.

What these researchers found is that couples are motivated by relationship distress and that it’s usually more about the wife’s desire to find help. Husbands tended to be more affected by their wives’ assessment of the relationship than their own. This supports the idea that wives tend to function as a relationship barometer. So, if you’re a wife reading this, don’t underestimate your capability to influence your husband to pursue help together!

Caleb had a thought about this for you wives:

Men tend to hide. They’re afraid that if you see them as they really are, they’ll be rejected. Or, they withdraw as an attempt to save the marriage because they feel that if things are calmer, the marriage is safer than when you’re fighting.

So, if you’re husband is hiding, perhaps you could undo the whole hiding thing by bringing in his parents, or his best friend or your pastor? Not someone to take sides with you, but to take sides with your marriage.

Or, if he’s withdrawn, rather than pushing and pushing could you find a way to softly confess to him that everything you’ve been doing to try to save your marriage isn’t working and you’d like him to help you choose a counsellor so you guys can get some help.

Try SOMETHING because there is hope for your marriage. Think about how you can remove barriers to seeking help and you might find some new ways to get things moving in the right direction.

Is There Hope For My Marriage?

Many marriages do not seek the help that they need. Many other marriages go through many years of distress, letting their problems become bigger and bigger before seeking help. But for those marriages that do seek help, there is a lot of hope!

Here are a few options you can try now: (Remember, these are suggestions, and you have to bear the consequences for whatever you decide to do in your marriage. We cannot accept responsibility for choices you make!)

The first option is just sticking it out. Check out episode 111, “Is My Marriage Beyond Recovery?” In that episode we include this research:

“Only about 10% of individuals say at any particular time that they are unhappy in their marriages….As this study followed these couples over the next five years, 15% of these unhappy individuals did divorce, but 85% hung on…About two out of three unhappy married adults who avoided divorce ended up happily married to the same spouse five years later.”[v]

So, one strategy you could choose is to just stick it out and do your best at bringing the best version of yourself to the marriage. Think of an ocean freighter – it takes those long, heavy ships a long, long distance to get turned around. That is this kind of strategy: you’re looking for the long, slow turn.

The second option is to take a little more purposeful approach. This might look like having a conversation about your commitment because of the kids and stating that you want to create something between you that will endure and thrive even if the kids are largely out of the picture. Who wants to be along or trying to find another spouse in their 50’s, right? The big scary question you may consider asking your spouse is if they are willing to commit to do this work with you – then you both figure out how. Maybe you take some time off tougher, maybe you read some marriage books together, or go to a marriage retreat, that kind of thing. Just be sure that somehow you’re giving yourselves some helps along the way.

A third option is marriage therapy. The cumulative research on marital therapy comes to a general conclusion: marriage counselling does work.

A study in 2003 looked at 20 different meta-analyses of marital and family interventions (that’s a lot of data!). They found that “marriage and family therapies produce clinically significant improvements in distressed clients, with success rates of 40-50%”[vi], and emotionally focussed couples therapy, which Caleb uses, has an even higher success rate.

This is not offering a guarantee for your marriage, but I hope that you hear hope in this. Hope for your marriage.

So remember, what has defined your relationship to this point doesn’t have to be the final story. You can write a new story.

For example, some couples struggle with feeling the circumstances of life pressed them together into marriage and they wonder if they ever really chose each other. Well, even if your spouse married you because they had to, it doesn’t mean that you cannot create a marriage NOW where you choose each other!

Or, if you’ve made the mistake of having a child-centered marriage, it doesn’t mean that once the children are removed that it necessarily follows that there is no basis for your marriage....

Here's today's question:

"Background: I grew up in an abusive home (my father is an addict and a bully, but my mother never reported his abuse to authorities or tried to explain that what he was doing was wrong- we just pretended that nothing had happened afterwards) and my husband grew up in a home with not much affection or healthy communication.

I am a newly trained mediator and I know we have issues (small issues but after 11 years they have grown to cause serious problems) but when I try and utilize my training, his radar goes up and he shuts down, Even though my communication is pretty terrible when I'm not using mediation (or at least, we have these awful cycles---he says he can't talk to me when I'm upset (voice raised or if I'm panicky or angry) he brings up things unrelated to what we are discussing (which granted, yes, need attention, but if I'm trying to resolve something that's bothering me and I want peace and harmony and to be a TEAM instead of petty ineffective blamers, imo, he sabotages the conversation and I go back to reptilian brain, angry or hurt mode and everything shuts down.

So my question is, I'm trying so damned hard....I know he would like this stuff resolved too....but how on earth can things get fixed when he seems to prefer our dance of dysfunction????

And also, side note, I had a dream last night about being sad and single and so lonely and thinking of ways to meet someone to love and cherish me and be on the same side together....only to realize in my dream that I'm married (in my dream I had forgotten apparently) dark, foreboding stuff. :(

Signed,

Sad and ready to give up in Alberta"

Listen to the podcast for Caleb's answer!

A listener wrote in with the question:

"How do you set boundaries with social media? What's acceptable to keep the marriage from the pressures of the world. For example: One spouse doesn't like revealing pictures put out and the other is getting physically fit and feeling the need to parade?"

Listen to the podcast for Caleb's answer!

This week, we have a question from one of our audience members who wanted clarity on her expectations around side effects of her husband's testosterone therapy.

"What experience do you have with testosterone therapy for men? I believe part of the cause of my husband's infidelity is due to much testosterone pellets and an excessive need for sex. I do not excuse him for one minute for the devastation he caused. think If that is going to be an available treatment for a medical condition some kind of information and counseling should be required as to how you will feel.

We are 2-1/2 years past D day finding out of multiple hookups just for sex. We'd been married for 36 years!!! He is 59 and I am 57 right now. I credit my faith in keeping this altogether without telling anyone or counselling. Not a great idea after the fact. He's moved on from the infidelities and I still struggle at times.

Q2: I guess I'm trying to understand if testosterone can make you impulsive and have the need to have sex in abundance. I feel you should be in control if your self, but if you are on the high end of the testosterone scale 1200-1500 can it change you? I do know hormones are powerful and make you feel all sorts of things."

Listen to the podcast episode for Caleb's answer!

This week, Caleb answers a very touching question from Betty*, one of our email subscribers. She asked,

"I responded a few months ago, rather aggressively, may I add, to your husband's question. And of course, he graciously responded with a question that pierced through my pain and frustration and found my heart. He asked," Do you still want to be married?" I thought about it for weeks!! Please let him know that we found a local counselor, who is also our pastor, and have been progressing, to say the least. What you two do is so vital in a world that opposes marriage and commitment in general.Thank you! Thank you!

Anyways, to respond to your request, my question would be  ... " After infidelity strikes, how do you trust your husband again?" I know it takes time to learn how to trust again, but how do you truly grant yourself the space to be vulnerable in that way? Or ... are you bruised for life? Sometimes I feel like I am a shell of who I once was; a child learning to be confident in herself and womanhood, it's embarrassing. 

So glad, this is anonymous! lol . Even if this isn't broadcasted I'd love your take on this."

Listen to the podcast episode for Caleb's answer!

*name changed for confidentiality reasons