How do I recover from gossip that's ruined our reputation

Our family has been the brunt of gossip by three close family friends. It really hurts. The ripples of them talking is far reaching I our social circle. It’s been devastating. This was three years ago. How do we recover?

Gossip is toxic and that’s why the Bible speaks so strongly against it. I’m assuming by your question that these people are no longer close family friends, but the pain is there nonetheless. David in Psalm 55 struggled with betrayal by a close friend and his pain was great. But your bigger question is how do we recover? I’m not sure if you’re asking how do we recover socially or emotionally but let me tackle the emotional one first, and then I’ll touch on the social one.

It’s been three years now since this happened and I want you to ask yourself a question. What’s kept you from letting go of the hurt and anger? Sometimes we don’t let toxic emotions go because they feel so justified and we tell ourselves that we’re entitled to feel them. And you are. But what does it cost you to hang on to them? At this point they are crippling you, not helping you.

So how do you let go? You start by deciding to. That may sound rather elementary but our will is an important part of letting go of negative emotions. Sometimes we don’t realize that have a choice to let go. Negative feelings can be so consuming that they feel like they are who we are instead of what we feel.

Instead of saying to yourself, “I am so angry and hurt about this.” I want you to try telling yourself, “I’m aware that I’m still feeling angry and hurt over this.” When you say it in this new way, you become aware of another part of you that is now able to decide what you want to do with these feelings. Now YOU have your feelings, instead of your feelings having you. This small change can make a big difference. Our feelings are not who we are, they are just our feelings and sometimes we hang on to our feelings much longer than we need to. We can learn to let them go.

The second question I want you to ask yourself is “What purpose do these feelings serve anymore?” Our emotions function as warning bells that something is wrong. When we feel pain, either physical or emotional, it motivates us to take action to remedy the problem. Is the pain motivating you to talk with your family friends to attempt to reconcile or to confront them about their gossip? If not, then it’s time to let them go.

How do we let go? First, enlarge your perspective. Instead of focusing on your pain, see what God has done in building your character or how he has drawn especially close to you during this time. In the Bible, when Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, and Potiphar’s wife lied about him and he was thrown in prison, Joseph felt hurt but didn’t get bitter because he stayed focused on God’s purposes in all of his affliction. God never allows evil to triumph if we are surrendered to his purposes (Genesis 37-46). That’s why Romans 8:28,29 can be such a precious promise to us. God will cause all things to work together for our good, but the good is to conform us into Christ’s image.

Second, refuse to rehearse the negative anymore. Don’t meditate on the bad stuff that happened. Instead, let you mind dwell on what is true, good, right and lovely as Paul counseled us in Philippians 4:8. Whatever we fix our mind on will affect our emotions. Practice thinking about good things in your life or your day instead of what happened to you.

Thank God and praise him in the midst of your suffering (1 Thess. 5:18). This brings honor to him and thwarts Satan’s attempt to get you stuck in self-pity and anger. Satan already used these people as his pawns to destroy your family’s reputation, but don’t let him destroy you by hanging onto your bad feelings.

Forgive these people for what they have done. You may not be able or willing to reconcile the relationship if there has been no repentance for what they have done, but forgiving them releases the poison that they have infected you with by their actions.

Lastly, overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). What they did to you was evil. Refuse to pay them back with gossip of your own. Pray for them and if the occasion warrants, do good to them. The Bible tells us that by doing so, you will not be overcome by the evil they tried to inflict on you and it will be like heaping burning coals on their head.

Recovering socially takes time. You may need to build new friendships or find a new church if that’s where it originated. Over time, people’s character speaks for itself and if you do right, I believe that people will see the truth.

My husband left. Should I hang in there and wait?

Question: My husband moved out almost 3 months ago. I don’t think he is seeing someone else. He just wants space and freedom. I used to be driven by anxiety, jealousy, and insecurity and these issues caused a lot of our problems coupled with some childhood hurts that he will not discuss.

When he left he said that he was not moving out to divorce, but he was not going to go to counseling to work on the marriage either. He does provide for us, and we do stuff as a family but refuses to work on the marriage. He regularly spends the night at my place and wants to be intimate. Before he left he slept on the couch for weeks only coming to bed for sex and then back to the couch. I have not denied him. My question is: Is he using me? Should I deny him sexual intimacy until he decides what he wants? He refuses counseling, doesn’t go to church anymore, he has no accountability or Christians in his life. We have been married for almost 10 years and have two girls, 3 and 8.

Answer: Your husband is giving you mixed messages and it’s hard for you to know how to handle it. He has moved out, but he hasn’t shirked his family responsibilities entirely. He still financially provides for you and the girls and wants to spend time as a family as well as enjoy a sexual relationship with you. But he’s not interested in improving your marriage or even discussing it. You also aren’t sure what “freedom” means. Does that mean he wants the freedom to date and have sex with other women in addition to you? You don’t think so but sometimes if feels to you like he wants the perks of family life but not a committed marital relationship.

Without talking together, it’s hard to know what he’s thinking or where he is. But at the very minimum, I think you have a right to ask if he is being sexually faithful to you. If he refuses to answer, then I think you need to protect yourself from sexually transmitted diseases for the sake of your children and their future. It sounds to me as if he doesn’t know how to verbalize his feelings or how to have emotional connection. Perhaps it scares him, or he’s bitter, or he’s been wounded by some things that have happened in the past either in his life or in your relationship and he doesn’t know how to move beyond it. Men don’t like to admit they don’t know how to do something and often it’s easier for them to avoid it than face it.

I would encourage you to be patient right now if he is being sexually faithful and not seeing other women. This is a season for you to pray for your husband and your marriage. It is an opportunity for you to work on yourself to become the woman, wife and mother God wants you to be. I don’t think it’s wise to just allow yourself to be used, but from what you describe, I’m not sure that’s what’s happening. Your husband is confused and has closed himself off to godly counsel or influence – except for you. Is that not what Peter describes when he says that “ even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct.” (1 Peter 3:1-3)

I can’t tell you how long to be patient, but 10 years is a long time to be married. You have 2 girls who would be better off if you and your husband could work it out. Perhaps by patiently enduring his confusion right now, even if later it doesn’t work out, you will know that you’ve done all you could to reconcile your relationship.

I hate myself. How to I break this cycle?

Last week I answered a reader’s question about how to better compliment our husbands. An astute reader, who had an excellent English teacher, brought to my attention that the correct spelling of the word we were defining is complement which means to “complete”. Thank you. Let’s try to do both, complement and compliment one another – to complete and to praise.

Here is a new question asked by a reader.

Q. I am educated and beautiful. I have two children I adore. Yet, I allow verbal comments to cut through to my core! My mother has put guilt on me my entire life and my husband is condemning. I know God loves me and that I shouldn’t allow this to hurt. But it does! I go inside my head and the situation gets worse. I hate myself and have gained a lot of weight. How do I break this cycle?

I’m glad you know that God loves you and that you have good things going in your life. Yet, you are caught in some destructive relationships, including one with yourself. You hate yourself and are not taking good care of yourself by gaining this extra weight. You asked how to break this cycle and I think you’ll need to start with your relationship with yourself.

How do you stop hating yourself? Let me give you a rather silly example, but I think it illustrates my point. Each morning when we wake up, we face a simple truth. When we peer into the mirror we know we need some work. No one (who cares about themselves) walks out of the house looking like they did when they first woke up. Some of us require high maintenance, others low maintenance, but all of us need some attention. We see in that moment our physical imperfections, but most people do not just stand in front of the mirror hating all their imperfections and flaws. They take action and change what they can,(shower, fix hair, put on make-up, etc) accept what they can’t change,(getting older) and get on with their day.

In the same way, when a healthy individual sees some things in his or her inner life, relationships with others, or life circumstances, that are out of order, sinful, self-indulgent or immature, they think about what action they could take to change them, stop them, grow and mature and then do the required work toward those changes.

This said, your question about how to break this cycle is a great start. What action can you take to help yourself stop your emotional eating? What positive support systems can you put in your life to counter the negative comments from your mother and husband? What can you do to build regular exercise into your day so that your body feels better and stronger?

Reckless words hurt, there’s no getting around that, but perhaps your mother is successful at putting a guilt trip on you because you let her. People only make us feel guilty when they point out some flaw or imperfection in our life or character (which we ALL have). For example, when my daughter used to say, “Mom you never bake cookies like the other mommy’s do.” She was right. I didn’t do it. But did that make me a bad mother? Only if I thought I SHOULD bake cookies in order to be a good mother.

You feel guilt because you have some internal SHOULD’S that your mother is hooking and therefore you feel like you’ve failed at something you should or ought to have done. Maybe that’s true, or maybe it’s not. I find with many of my clients, they feel guilty because they have some unrealistic should’s in their belief system. Here are a few of the most common.

I should do whatever my mother needs whenever she needs me to.
I should always try to do everything I can to make her happy
I should always want to do these things, even if it inconveniences
me because she’s my mother.
If I really loved my mother, I should want to make her happy.
A good daughter should do what her mother wants her to do.
I shouldn’t ever feel angry with my mother.
A Christian should always do whatever she can to please other people.

Listen to your own internal self talk. See if you don’t expect yourself to be better than you are and become disappointed when you fail to live up to your own, or another person’s expectations. Someone who allows themselves to be regularly put down by another person who they are in relationship with, indicates a negative self-image and poor self-esteem. You don’t feel worth sticking up for or stopping this kind of condemnation. I’m not advocating arguing with your husband or mother, that usually goes nowhere, but having a healthy and strong boundary around their negativity might be a good start.

For example, next time your husband puts you down or your mother tries to lay a guilt trip on you, respond like this.

“I want to have a better relationship with you, but I will not allow myself to be talked to this way anymore.” (Try to describe in more action words what specifically they are doing, like screaming, swearing, telling you that you are a bad person etc)

Then walk away and refuse to engage in a discussion until they can be more respectful of you as a person, even when they may have a legitimate complaint. If they won’t, don’t discuss their concerns, period. By doing that you are not reinforcing the negative cycle that has been in play for a while in your relationship. You can’t stop them from talking, but you can stop yourself from listening. When you change, the cycle changes, and that gives the relationship the best chance of moving in a different direction.

How can I function better with my husband. We don't compliment one another well.

Dear Readers:

I apologize that last week I wasn’t able to answer a new question. I have been speaking every weekend for the past several weekends in addition to my regular counseling week. Last week I was speaking in Chicago until Monday and didn’t return until late evening. Tuesday I started right into counseling and so I didn’t have time to write a response to the many questions I receive. Below is an interesting question from a reader about her marriage. I think it’s worth answering on this forum because so many of us struggle to understand God’s plan in bringing two very different people together and making them one flesh.

Q. What does it mean for a wife and husband to compliment each other in marriage? I don’t mean as in praise one another but my sister recently remarked to me that my husband and I don’t compliment each other at all and I realized she’s right. Can you give me a definition of complimenting and ways to do it?

A. The dictionary definition of the word compliment means to praise or show respect. But I think what you are referring to is more about fitting well together so that as a couple you become stronger and better together than each of you would be alone.
However this fitting together well doesn’t usually happen without intentional work by both parties in the marriage. That’s where most of us fail. We marry someone we think will be a good fit with us. After the honeymoon period of marriage wears off, however, and our husband or wife starts to rub us the wrong way, instead of allowing God to change us through these experiences so that we fit together better, we try to change the other person, or when that doesn’t work (and it never does), we build walls of self protection, growing further apart.

Without knowing any specifics about you and your husband, let me give you some ways you can learn to better compliment him. Right now don’t worry about what he’s doing. You can start this change process all by yourself and do your part to make your marriage better. It’s important that you realize that this is important for you to do not only because it’s good for your marriage and your children, it’s also good for you. By taking this challenge to heart, you will grow to become the person God has called you to. Greater spiritual maturity is often forged within the crucible of marriage and family life. Where else do we learn to live selflessly and sacrificially? How do we learn forgiveness and how to speak the truth in love if we aren’t in intimate relationships? Hopefully as your husband observes your changes, he will be encouraged to make his own changes.

Here are some ways that you can begin to compliment (or fit better in with him). Start by asking yourself what were the things you were attracted to about your husband while you were dating. Was he more social than you were? More logical? More mechanical? Had the ability to relax and have fun while you were a worker bee? Opposites often attract and when you can recognize those differences with respect, you can and will compliment each other. For example, in our parenting together, my husband was always the more logical, calm parent. I tended to think more emotionally and reactively. Sometimes his strategies were absolutely necessary with our children and other times mine were more appropriate. We complimented each other because he didn’t have all the skills to raise our children in his tool bag alone nor did I. But together we had more than either of us had alone. However, if either one of us would have disrespected the other, especially in front of our children, then we would have not be complimenting each other but tearing each other down.
In addition to looking for your husband’s strengths, see how those strengths have now become irritants to you. For example, instead of seeing him as easy going and able to relax, now he’s lazy and unproductive. Perhaps he’s always been good around people and social, now he’s a smooth talker and superficial. Every one of our strengths also can be a weakness if carried to the extreme. My husband’s logical mind has a hard time being empathic with others or expressing his feelings easily. But he is great when he has to put together something from directions or fix my computer goofs. On the other hand, I’m terrific in expressing my feelings and being empathic, but weak when it comes to complex problem solving like figuring out how to turn on the TV from the DVD mode. But we all have a choice either to focus our attention on someone’s strengths or on his or her weaknesses. Pay attention to how much you have criticized or disrespected your husband. Doing so does not compliment him or shore up his weaknesses, but rather makes you both weaker and Satan can get a foothold, poisoning your relationship with bitterness, resentment and unresolved anger.

Look for new ways that you can help him be a better man, (husband or father), without rubbing it in that he needed your help. We all need one another in some ways or other and that’s what it means to compliment one another. The apostle Paul urged us to work hard to fit together in the body of Christ and strive for unity, using all of our gifts and abilities, although different, for a common good or goal. The same principles and strategies work for marriage and family life.

Practice these things and see what differences it makes in you and in your marriage. Write back in a few weeks and let us know what changes you’ve seen so that we can all be encouraged as God is working in your life and marriage. God Bless.