The Emotionally Destructive Marriage With author Leslie Vernick

hello wonderful this is sarah and i'm here with leslie bernick who is a fabulous author that i read years ago she wrote the emotionally destructive marriage and tell us a bit leslie about what an emotionally destructive marriage is and why it's so different than just falling out of love or someone you kind of don't really like that much anymore that's such a great question sarah because i think a lot of women who come to me kind of when they start coming out of the fog they're shocked that there is such a thing as an emotionally destructive marriage and i was very careful about choosing those words because i know you were you did very well you did very well yeah because a lot of women if they're not physically battered they would never self-identify as being in an abusive relationship but an emotionally destructive relationship is an abusive relationship it's just not as easily seen it's it's a lot of smoke and mirrors at times but let me just you know there's a difficult marriage you know when there's a lot of external stressors you have you know blended family you have you know covet 19 you've got job loss you've got military travel you've got you know special needs kids it causes a lot of stress on a marriage it's a difficult marriage you have personality differences cultural differences racial differences um and i think it requires a a growing together and maturity to navigate a difficult marriage but a difficult marriage doesn't necessarily have to be a destructive one it's just difficult and you can grow and and actually thrive together and build a stronger relationship even when things are difficult there's also a disappointing marriage where you know you thought you were marrying prince charming and he's got some frog qualities and you're you know he's not as ambitious as you wanted him to be here he's not as romantic as you wanted him to be here he's not a great conversationalist he's not destructive in any ways he's not harmful to you but he is just a little boring or he doesn't clean up his messes like you'd like him to and i think part of living with someone long term whether you're married to them or you're just a roommate in college you have to learn to accept that people aren't perfect and everybody doesn't do things the way you think they should and that's part of loving people and getting along and so that's part of your own maturity and marriage of loving the person you're married to not the person you thought you were married to but a destructive marriage is even it's different it's deeper and first let me say that every one of us is capable of the patterns or the not the patterns but the behaviors that i'm going to talk about every one of us is capable of cursing a spouse out or lying or cheating or doing some horrible things we're all capable of that so don't hear me say that if your spouse does that once you're in an emotionally destructive marriage i don't know that yet the way i describe it i know what you're saying so there's a difference between a dog who bites you once and a dog who buys you daily that's right good good because when a dog bites you once if that dog loves you and you say ouch that dog knows that that was bad and they don't want to ever do it again and so when you're in a relationship with someone and they hurt you and you say ouch you know why did you call me those names i can't believe you lied to me or you cheated on me or why didn't you tell me that about your past whatever it is a healthy person will take ownership for that and they will do what they need to do to repair that relationship right yeah and learn from their behavior and learn from their behavior and learn from their behavior right right so when we're looking at emotionally destructive relationships we're lucky looking at patterns that aren't stopped even when you speak up or say you don't like something patterns of being obviously abusive with your words you know cursing you out and all those kind of things but also patterns of like when you're completely controlled like you're dominated and you don't have a voice or a choice to say no and this is especially true in faith families where religion especially uh conservative christianity or maybe even muslim families and other families where the head of the home is the one who gets to make all the choices and the wife is relegated to the status of a child or a slave right there because what you just said was like okay so one partner has all the choices and all the control and all the control and i think that's really important to note if someone's looking on the outside especially the church community is a marriage community they are in fan of people staying together right there's a lot of biblical basis for that and sometimes it's really difficult because they're going well he's saying this she's saying this who's really the toxic one who's really at fault but it's pretty easy to see well which partner had all the choices and who has the power and who has the power right that can be really important for maybe people who don't understand right so yeah really the people help are discerning you know if it's the pastor if it's the counselor if it's just the marriage mentor or even the in-law to be able to yes who makes decisions about where money is spent who gets to decide what school the kids go to and if and if the wife has no voice or no choice i mean yeah she may be rebelling against all that fighting resisting oppression is what she's doing and you know sometimes she can do that in a good way and sometimes she might do it in a bad way which makes her look like a co-abuser or even like abusive one yeah well and it's i think going back to the dog example if you have a dog in a cage that's been like kicked every day and finally that dog decides to throw open the cage the dog's probably snarling a bit right and it didn't start out that way it didn't start out that way and you know this is a big um so when i work with women who come to me for help you know one of the things we talk about is you know if you want to have any two strategies if you want to have credibility with your children or credibility with the people helpers you've got to take care of you because when you get so depressed or you get so angry that you're just lashing out or so sick because of the toxicity in your household which is real um then you're the one who looks like the problem exactly and i also want to go back to the point that you said about it's like a having a child like a parent child relationship in a marriage rather than a partnership that's right and i think the christian um i don't know a whole lot about the tenets of muslim faith but i think the judeo-christian faith has a lot to do with submission and headship and you know i'm the authority over you and and it's sort of like so i challenge women and men i say so when an adult woman gets married she no longer has a brain she no longer has a choice she has to be relegated to the status of a child or a slave that that that's what you're saying headship means and i don't think that's what the bible teaches but people who misuse the bible or go to very conservative churches where that's really drummed in a woman who's in that place she starts to feel confused like oh my gosh even god hates me even god is against me because i'm you know supposed to just be this flattened out object that someone can use for their services and i don't really matter and and then she tries to get help and they say be less selfish die to self right yeah our pastor just spoke on relationships this week and i'm actually going to have to write him a little email because um you know he used that like die to self and let's be less selfish and i agree with him our culture's full of selfish people and you can't have relationships if each of you are vying for your own way so there's a place to say hey i need to learn to give instead of always being entitled but when you're asking an abused woman to keep trying harder what that does is it only enables his selfishness it enables his entitled mindset to think i deserve to treat you this way because of you not doing what i want which in some ways we don't realize what's happening but in some ways you get to terms and think is my role here on this earth to help a selfish partner be more a better sinner right in the in the in the context of faith when we asked one partner to die to self what we're saying is we it's your job to let them become more selfish more domineering more controlling more better at avoiding the inner work they need to do to be a person of good faith right opposite of love love is acting in another person's best interest you wouldn't give your if you loved your young adult child who was on crack cocaine you would exactly you know your paycheck to go buy crack cocaine would you yes love that's enabling someone to be destructive and so that's why it's so important that we understand that true love is sacrificial but that might be calling the police it's not enabling someone to be more sinful and i think i love the crack cocaine example because we don't tell people of the church to help feed addictions right that's like a you know if someone has addicted to drugs you don't give them drugs if someone is addicted to alcohol you don't give them alcohol and if someone's addicted to control i you know people like you and i are working to push the conversation to say and we also don't want to feed the addiction of control because it is as every bit as destructive that's right and the bible is very clear about the role of oppressors and the status of oppressed so if you think about it that way in a marriage when you're living with someone who is your oppressor like when the bible talks about slaves living with their oppressive masters he's not talking about having a good relationship he's trying to teach a slave how do you or it but when you're in marriage and you've got to kiss someone who's your oppressor and you've got you know what it's like tough stuff and so you know we can kind of giggle about it because we're at this other end but but i hope this is a message of hope right if you're in that and it is like i am married to an oppressor yeah and let me just say this i i think god if you look at the bible you know i'm just reading through it again this year and i think about all the verses that talk about safety how god keeps us safe and values our safety he valued jesus safety when herod the oppressor was going to kill baby jesus he didn't say just submit to the laws of the lamb which was one of god's idiocs but he said flee joseph take the baby and flee and the bible tells women and they're listening now that he values your safety the prudence see danger and take refuge and god does not care more about the sanctity of marriage than he does about the safety and the sanity of the people in it that is i remember that point very clearly from your book when i was reading it and that's i mean in some ways do you feel as if the church has somewhat made marriage an idol in a way that's a little off base at this point i think so i think you know sort of like the pharisees made the sabbath kind of this yes perfect people yes wait a minute you've got this backwards you know i can't even heal someone on the sabbath you wanted to stone me you know i can't do good on the sabbath and so we've made this marriage relationship and it is important and it's a part of our family structure part of our society structure so i'm not demeaning that i have a high value of marriage i've been married 45 years but i think that we have said staying married at all costs honors god more than telling the truth about what's really going on in your house and by holding someone accountable which are all biblical principles and so we've asked christian women to lie and pretend in order to keep their marriage together at what cost at the next generation learning this is okay well and i think there is this view that i have to keep it together i mean there was somebody recently who is a a woman very much later in her life married to like a missionary you know and it's like i have to stay together because somehow it like dishonors god if people outside the church see marriages fall apart within the church you know and i think there's you know there's always a smidgen of truth to this you know that it does dishonor god when people take marriage casually and break up marriages for no reason but god did make provision for divorce for big deal reasons and there are reasons that relationships get broken and can't be repaired because there is no repentance there is no change and you can't live with your enemy you might have to love your enemy but jesus isn't asking you to kiss him or live with them that's another great point yeah you don't have to love you we are called to love our enemy not live with him and i i tell women um forgiveness is not the same thing as access like you can forgive someone but if a christian counselor or biblical counsel or marriage counselor are saying they have had no change in their behavior and you're supposed to give them access to you that is not what the bible says correct you know i i i did a talk for pastors recently i said so let's say that someone in our congregation crashed into your car they were texting and they didn't do it on purpose they just crashed in your car and there was a lot of damage in your car and you were you came out your neck was hurt your head was cut and i said oh my gosh pastor i'm so glad it's you because love covers a multitude of sins and you need to forgive me so i'll see you later bye that's a great example and there and no pastor would ever say that's okay not okay to me not okay to anybody but in marriage somehow a husband can crash the family into the cliffs and say he's sorry and everything's supposed to be fine with no amends no care for the impact of the harm that they've caused and repentance says i care about the harm i've caused and i will make amends and i will do what i need to do to show that i'm sorry not i deserve you to forgive me and take me back no matter what and i will do what i need to do those are action words those are not promises made well and you need to see the action not just the words because you know the bible talks about people who have smooth words who make promises that they have no intention of keeping and even john the baptist said prove by the way that you live that you repented of your sin and turned to god not just tell me what you're going to do do it and show me and then i'll start to think about that well absolutely and you know even there was some article that i came across and it was saying put someone's name in with love you know leslie is patient leslie is kind leslie keeps no records of wrong leslie you know rejoices in the truth and rejoices in the truth love rejoices in the truth love does not been bend over a million thousand different ways to hide the truth right yeah and you know you're absolutely right and one of the things that i think is so tricky in the christian world and maybe we can do a whole other podcast about this is the teaching for christian women to be loyal and faithful and submissive and kind and humble and long-suffering and forgiving all the wonderful qualities of course we don't say don't be that but when we teach a woman to do that with no discernment or boundaries then they are targets they're magnets for takers and users and then they're supposed to be forgiving and loyal and long-suffering and so then it just perpetuates all their good virtues are now creating uh situations where they're in perilous toxic relationships and they don't have an escape plan because there's no virtues in the christian library for christian women to be strong assertive have good boundaries somehow those are oh you're being you know you you're too big for your britches or you're not being godly men can be that but women can't and i think we really need to help women understand that god calls us to some strong virtues as well strength and dignity are her clothing and she smiles at the future unafraid describing the proverbs 31 woman absolutely well and women like deborah i mean when you really start to look at the women who are named in the bible many of them are rule breakers right mary magdalene um hebrew midwives who didn't listen to pharaoh and said you better drown all baby boys that are born they said we're not doing that we're just not going to show up for the birds you know they were defiant isn't that fascinating when i really went back through and looked at the women of scripture it was they were on the rehab they were almost always breaking uh ruth i mean does anybody think it's just like oh you're just laying at the feet of this guy it's like i bet that was not a normal practice you know crawling into bed with men you aren't married to was not he was somewhat of a rule breaker and you know and reagan lied so rehab prostitute and when the spies from israel came and she hid them because she knew that god was on their side she hid them and when her own people came to her and said where are the spies she said they went that way she lied in order and here's the the beauty of god in order to keep the spies safe i have broke one of the ten commandments she lied and yet she's in the hebrews hall of fame as a virtuous woman and so sometimes we think oh i can't do that because i'm a christian but sometimes god calls us to do things in order for higher valued things like jesus says i'm going to break the sabbath in order to heal somebody who wouldn't if your own son or ox even fell into the pit wouldn't you break the sabbath to save their life and so sometimes we get so legalistic uh god hates divorce and so therefore i should just like one woman said to me i should be a sacrificial lamb and let myself get killed if that's what it costs me to serve god and i'm like god's not asking you to be the sacrificial lamb he already provided one that was jesus but there there are so many women who think exactly what you just said and that's where it is so heartbreaking because i see so many women trying to do the right thing trying to do the right thing by their kids trying to do the right thing by their church families and trying to do the right thing by their marriages that's what's so heartbreaking about this and i think that's why it's so important that you do this podcast and we equip women not just to say oh i'm done with you jerk yeah that creates her own you know negative spiral in her life as well but to really understand what is god calling me to suffer with what is god calling me to sacrifice with and and maybe sacrificial love means i stop lying for you i stop covering for you and you're really mad at me and you go find someone else and i am going to suffer for telling the truth right and and that's biblical suffering it's not that i suffer and just allow you to cheat on me and it's okay with no consequences because that's not good for me for sure but it's not good for you you're becoming more and more deformed you're becoming more and more degraded as a human being and that's not going to happen if i love you well and you talked about cheating and within many church cultures that's kind of like okay you can leave if they cheat but you you've talked about some other things in your work right like you can also get out of you know like god says it's okay to leave if what uh what are some other things other than cheating well you know again i'm not going to be legalistic about it because i think each person has to do their own work in order to leave with a clear conscience because you always have to live with yourself whether you abuse a person or not sometimes the most abusive person is in your own head right because they're beating you up for what you've done or what you haven't done so i think you have to do your own due diligence there but i think that god designed marriage to be a safe and trusting relationship not an abusive one and so when that covenant of safety and trust has been broken that has been symbolized by the adulterous relationship so when god divorced israel for example in jeremiah he calls her an adulteress but she didn't actually have technical intercourse with false nations and so so when people make a covenant in marriage it's a mutual covenant to love and to cherish and to honor and to be faithful and when those covenant promises are broken repeatedly and it may not be through sexual intercourse it may be through financial deceit it may be through online emotional affairs it may be through chronic pornography unrepentant it may be through lots of different things but when you go to your brother and jesus says and you tell them you sinned against me in matthew 18 and they refused to listen and you've brought evidence look this is covenant-breaking stuff and they continue to refuse to listen jesus says treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector in other words you're not in close fellowship with them anymore you're not in close relationship and how a wife decides to work that out whether it's separating whether it's divorce whether it's you know if there's a legal separation she can do however she needs to understand her relationship with that man is broken she didn't break it he broke it she's just making it public when she says i'm not going to pretend anymore it's okay and and i love the language just because god loves marriage does not mean god loves abuse he hasn't love abuse he hates abuse exactly he hates abuse and loves the people in the marriage more than the marriage right is that right any and he also loves the abuser and so when we look at the oppressor when we look at scripture we think about the oppressed and the oppressor you know just read psalms 1-10 talks a lot about the oppressed and the oppressor god is always always always on the side of the oppressed and he's always against the oppressor but when the oppressor changes when they're willing to like zacchaeus zacchaeus is a great example he was the oppressor he was a tax collector he oppressed the jews took their money and when he came to jesus no one had to tell zack he is jacquis now you have to do this this this these are these are the show the fruits of repentance zacchaeus said oh my gosh i've hurt people i'm going to pay back four times all the money i swindled from them and i'm going to give half my money to the poor zach he has his heart changed from the oppressor from his actions changed his actions changed yes he followed through you could see it and say he didn't just make promises he fed that family he gave away the poor he made changes in his tax collecting practices right and there was a pattern of it it wasn't a one-time event and so and god loved that he is just as he was and just like he loves your husband he loves you he doesn't love your husband more than he loves you and you're for a woman it's no one's going to steward you but you and that's your responsibility it's not your responsibility just to keep your marriage together it's your responsibility to keep you together and if you're taking xanax and drinking vodka every night just so that you can be with your husband because otherwise you can't yeah but it's not staying well use that term staying well um and you know we don't that that's a whole other podcast we have to get into that another time definitely check out your work on that because uh that is not staying well you know that's surviving honoring god it's not honoring god to stay in a marriage where you continue to be abused and you're losing your health your mental health your physical health your children are saying that how does that honor god nor does it honor the church community and i do want to say that i've talked to several people outside of the church walls because it within the church walls it's almost the sense like oh if you do that people will want to come to church and want to follow jesus and it's like i have never heard anyone say i really want to go to church because they let them they let peop they let their men abuse their women i had like a lot of kids leaving the church because my church pastor the church never did anything and my dad was abusing my mom and they just said it was okay yes yes yes so if there's any that clarity in your head of like oh i've got to appear to be this way that the people who have come to the church as adults and like fall it's like it's based in truth not based in cover-ups no one wants to go be more involved in churches because they're covering things up right and obviously churches have covered up all kinds of abuse sexual abuse of children you know marital abuse other things you know inappropriate relationships between parishioners and their pastors abuse of power there oppressors and oppressed but there's a verse in ephesians that i think might be helpful and it says um do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness but instead expose them and that's so scary for a christian woman to actually expose and i'm not saying put it on facebook but what i'm saying is don't cover up his abuse of your children his abuse of power his abuse of money his abuse of pornography um and degrading you to the status of a an object um i use this example of your husband loves you as a he loves a cell phone as long as you work and you do what he wants you're good but if you have a need of your own how dare you have a need and if you don't work anymore you refuse to work anymore you're replaceable and when you're in that kind of relationship that dishonors god and it dishonors you absolutely leslie thank you so much where can people find more about you tell them about your book and um yeah they can find my book on amazon they i have a website lesliebernick.com i've got a lot of youtube videos we're on instagram we have a lot of facebook lives head over to our uh professional facebook page and um come to a live and we're doing a lot of trainings and just information because people need to hear the truth god loves the truth and rejoices in the truth and he calls us to love but he doesn't call us to be blind to the truth i love it i love it leslie thank you so much for helping us on our journey today to become toxic person proof

Channel: Sarah K Ramsey

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Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021