Topic: My Husband is Smoking - The Gift of Acceptance

Good morning friends,

We have just survived our first October snowstorm. Much of the area has been without power, many beautiful trees are ruined. Their branches couldn’t carry the load of snow and ice because their leaves hadn’t dropped. It is so sad to see the wreckage. I’ve included two pictures, one from the snow storm on Saturday, one from my front yard today– the snow has mostly melted, but the damage is still here.

This week’s blog is going to answer the question, how do we handle things about our spouse that we don’t like? They may be small things or fairly large things (at least in our own mind) but not necessarily deal breakers (if we don’t let them).

Today’s Question: I just found out my husband is smoking again. I can’t believe it. I hate smoking, and I made that very clear when we met. I knew he was a smoker but he told me he would try and quit. Obviously he hasn’t. He doesn’t smoke in the house or around me but I don’t want him to smoke at all. What can I do to get him to stop?

Answer: Every married person discovers qualities and habits in his/her spouse that he/she would love to change. It might be smoking, chronic messiness, forgetting to put the ATM receipts in the checkbook, or leaving the toilet seat up when you’ve asked him a million times to put it down.

Since you’ve felt frustrated trying to improve your spouse only to fail again and again, let me suggest another approach. Instead of trying to change him, change you. Let me explain. It’s easy to love someone when he does everything we want him to do. That’s idealized love, not mature love. Having a successful long-term relationship requires that we learn how to love our spouse when he doesn’t do everything we want him to do. This kind of love is much harder. It’s not the "feel in love" kind of love. It’s the "hard work" kind of love. One of the most powerful gifts of this kind of love is the gift of acceptance.

Learning to accept our spouse’s imperfections, weakness, and yes, sometimes even sins, doesn’t mean we like a fault we see nor does it mean that we simply resign ourselves to a hopeless situation. However, true acceptance understands reality–that we are all creatures in process and that God isn’t finished with any of us yet. Acceptance doesn’t simply mean that we acknowledge our spouse’s faults, but that we stop resenting them. We stop trying to change them. We learn to be emotionally content the way he is right now, all the while asking God to mature him (and us).

Here are three (3) things that you can work to change that will empower you to give the gift of acceptance to your spouse:

1. Stop playing Holy Spirit. We can learn how to be a better wife or husband but understand this: We will always make a lousy god. God himself teaches us acceptance and why it’s so important. He says, “Accept one another, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7). The Lord is patient with our faults, and he wants us to learn to be like him. Instead of playing god, pray that your spouse would listen to and obey God in the areas God (not you) wants changed.

2. Remember you have faults too. It’s often our pride and perfectionist tendencies that make us so impatient with the flaws of other human beings. We say things like, “I can’t believe you did that.” Or “How could you be so stupid”. We seem surprised when our spouse acts imperfectly, stupidly, or differently, as if somehow he isn’t ever suppose to do such a thing. Humility helps us accept our spouses’ shortcomings because we’re well aware of our own. We know that sometimes we too can be difficult to love and live with graciously. The apostle Paul encourages us to “be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2).

3. Focus on your mates good qualities. I often tell my clients who feel disgruntled in their marriage; no one gets all 52 cards in the deck. Every spouse has shortcomings, faults, and weaknesses. When we dwell on them continuously, we will feel angry, disappointed and gypped. If you don’t want to feel those negative emotions, then you will need to intentionally change your focus. Look for your spouse’s good qualities instead of always dwelling on his/her bad ones. Obviously he or she has them or you wouldn’t have fallen in love and married him/her in the first place. Let your mind dwell on these things, as the apostle Paul encourages in Philippians 4:8.

We’ve heard the saying God loves us just as we are, but it’s probably more accurate to say that God loves us in spite of who we are. God’s love is not a reward for good behavior, and it is not deserved or earned. Rather, his love is an extravagant gift. We too can learn to love this way even when it’s hard, because God has so loved us. It is God’s love that empowers us to love our spouse even in his or her imperfections, weaknesses and sins.

In the next few blogs, I’m going to cover other gifts of love that we can give our spouse even when we don’t feel very loving. As we’ve seen in this blog, there are times when our spouse’s behavior is so destructive to the stability of our marriage or our own safety that the gift of acceptance is not appropriate and a different gift of love is called for. In these serious situations, we may need to love our spouse enough to give him/her the gift of truth and/or the gift of consequences. I’ll cover these more in the following weeks.

Note: The gifts of love are explained in greater detail in Chapter 9 of my book, How to Act Right When Your Spouse Acts Wrong. WaterBrook (2001)

Men Are Victims of Domestic Violence, Too!

Good Morning,

I’m in North Carolina today doing a video shoot for the new Divorce Care series. Pray for those who will benefit from the tremendous teaching that Divorce Care Ministries has to hurting men and women trying to recover from divorce. Prayers are also appreciated for me today as I try to communicate God’s hope.

For those of you who would still like to sign up for my free subscription offer for WHOA women’s magazine, there is still time. WHOA stands for Women WHO Hear-Obey-and Act on God's Word. (You can Google it to take a look). It’s a first class, glossy, mailed women’s magazine featuring real life stories of women who trust God in the midst of life’s difficulties. It is similar to Oprah or More, yet with a distinctly Christian message. You will soon see them all over newsstands.

In this week’s blog, I’m doing something different. It’s not exactly a question, but rather some comments from a man who responded to my last newsletter titled, Is Your Marriage Healthy? and wants people to know that men are victims of domestic violence too.

I applaud his bravery in speaking out and giving us this reminder that the Church as well as society needs to be much more aware and sensitive to the problem of domestic violence in general, but not to forget about men who suffer abuse at the hands of their wives.

I’ve condensed his rather lengthy comments and have a few of my own thoughts at the end. My second newsletter this month is on the topic of Five Things You Can do to Help Someone that Has been Abused. Sign up on my home page at http://www.leslievernick.com/ if you’d like to receive it. It will be out on Tuesday.

A Reader’s Response: In your last newsletter on healthy marriages, one sentence grabbed my attention. You wrote,

“When a woman bullies her husband, the sinfulness and inappropriateness of the interactions are much more obvious to church leaders”

What??

My experience is anything but that. My experience is that women bullying and abusing men is considered funny. Men have no place to turn. They can be hit, abused, bullied and terrorized by their wives, and the only way they can hope to have contact with their children is if they continue to allow themselves to be victimized.

My experience has been that doors of help close for men. Social services make excuse after excuse for a woman's abusive behavior and scorn the man for taking photos or videos during her perpetration. The man must be ultra perfect, and if he ever does wrong, he goes to jail. If she does wrong, she needs more compassion, more money, more help.

My experience has been that very few church leaders have the courage to look a woman in the eye and confront her about her abusive behavior. Church leaders, therapists, and other professionals often migrate to the "most reasonable" partner and the partner willing to make changes. So that one is the one who changes and changes and changes, only to be hit, raged at, and made out to be a monster, because well "all men are monsters."

My wife posted as her Facebook profile photo, a picture my mom took of my wife, our daughter and me in front of the Christmas tree (2010) in which, under my shirt, I was physically injured by my wife. The picture literally makes me want to vomit, and I cannot look at it for more than a few seconds. It is still in my wife's photo album on FB. I avoid looking there.

And as long as therapists, authors and professionals look at this issue with even a hint of "gender" in view, then, frankly, right now, I feel we've lost. Abuse is to be confronted and our children are to be protected. Families are to be protected. And women's help lines and shelters simply MUST be opened up to men. Either that or parallel organizations can fill the need.

Out of about 20 calls to women's help lines (yes, I've been that desperate), there was ONE time where someone actually fielded my call. Someone actually gave me the counsel, information, and advice that they would have given a woman. That was a VERY helpful and healing call in my life, and I am grateful that the woman on the other end of the line neither yelled at me nor hung up on me as others had.

In the meantime, I am raising our daughter. I separated from my wife in mid August and even though we have a 1week on 1 week off caretaking arrangement -- oops, she's sick, oh, she brings our daughter to kindergarten late or not at all, oops, she dresses our daughter in clothes that don't fit right -- oh combing her hair is just too much of a hassle, so forget about it, she can just look like a nappy mop in KG, that's cool.

And no one would suspect it, considering her doe-faced kind-smile and soft-eyed presentation. Which is of course, the woman I married, but not the woman my wife is and was towards me behind closed doors.

And as the man, I am urged to "be more understanding." Of what? Of outright abuse? I have never hit my wife. She has hit, bitten, restrained, yelled, raged, etc.

The counselors want to discuss how both of us are perpetrators. Maybe make the discussion "fair" by seeing it as 50/50.

Well some things are not 50/50.

A sniper can kill you from 2 miles away with a single bullet. Was the exchange 50/50? A robber can steal your car. Was that 50/50? Are you just as much to blame as the person who stole your car? Do you need to do "personal work," because someone stole your car?

I have spent about a decade now absorbing abuse, compensating for constant chaos, and I am now repairing my life.

Thank God, now that I have separated from my wife, the kindergarten teachers and administration see more of what is going on. My daughter is well dressed, well taken care of, and OK when she is with me. When she is with my wife, she is either very very late, ragged, or distressed. My wife hasn't kept her appointments with the kindergarten staff and, oh, now my wife wants to pull her out of her kindergarten, where she is loved, has friends, and plays on a mountainside.

In one sense, I am fortunate, because my wife's neglect of her own child is pretty obvious to those who are in contact with her regularly. I have deep sympathy for men who are abused by women who do a "good job" with their children. That's got to be an even more impossible situation.

And how does it feel as a man to have "escaped" from an abusive relationship with a child? I feel like a complete idiot. Sure, people smile at me and my daughter a lot in public. She sings and is well dressed and both my wife and I are good looking people, so our daughter is simply a beautiful child. But the "background" behind this father with the adorable daughter is simply: horrific.

Please don’t forget, men are victims of domestic violence too.

My Response:

Thank you for your poignant and passionate response. For those of you who did not get my last newsletter, the larger context of my comment he’s referring to is:

When a husband bullies his wife, his behavior does not describe biblical headship, nor is her forced "submission" characteristic of biblical submission. The correct terms are coercion, manipulation, intimidation, or rape and she is the victim. Let's make sure we use the right words.

When a woman bullies her husband, the sinfulness and inappropriateness of the interactions are much more obvious to church leaders, but the very sinfulness of bullying behavior is exactly the same whether the abusive behaviors is initiated by the wife or the husband.

Your points are well taken. Men are victims of abuse and here is more sad news:

1. The Family Violence survey as well as numerous other studies have found that men are just as likely to be the victims of domestic violence as women are.

2. Men indeed have fewer resources to help them. The only national toll-free helpline for men is the Domestic Abuse Helpline (888 743 5754). Go to their website at http://dahmw.org/ to find other helpful websites and resources for men who are abused. There are very few shelters (out of 1,200-1,800 DV shelters) that offers services to men.

3. Men are less likely to be supported or validated. Men who report abuse are often seen as wimpy, frail, passive, or stupid, thus making it much more likely that they won’t report. Suzanne Steinmentz, director of the Family Research Institute at Indiana University/Purdue said, “They [men] wouldn’t dream of reporting the kind of minor abuse - - such as slapping or kicking - - that women routinely report.” Why not? Because men are supposed to “take it like a man.”

4. Society doesn’t deem men as “victims” and we tend to perceive women more vulnerable than men, therefore abuse by a woman toward a man may seem more justified or excusable than abuse by a man toward a woman. A recent study revealed that more than 51% of men and 52% of women felt that sometimes it was appropriate for a wife to slap her husband. On the other hand, only 26% of men and 21% of women felt it was ever appropriate for a husband to slap his wife.

5. A man calling the police to report domestic abuse is three times more likely to be arrested than the woman who is abusing him. This makes him afraid to report, thus making the statistics for abuse of men higher than we know.

6. When a woman is abusive, she is more likely to be seen as “sick” and labeled with a mental health diagnosis. People tend to be more compassionate toward someone labeled sick. When a man is abusive, he is more likely to be labeled with entitlement issues, power and control problems, character defects or sin problems. Compassion is directed toward the female victim, not the male offender.

To the man who wrote his comments and other men who are victims of domestic violence, we hear you. Domestic violence isn’t a woman’s problem or a man’s problem, it is a human problem and a tragedy.

Please know, God gives wisdom for both the victim and abuser to heal and to change so that generational patterns are broken, but it’s only as we speak up and speak out about this can we receive the help we and our loved ones need.

Topic: My husband won't change, my pastor can't help, and I am a mess!

Morning friends,

Today I’m flying home from sunny (and I mean SUNNY) California where I just spent nine wonderful but exhausting days cooking and taking care of my grandbabies. The weather has been unusually hot and I can’t believe I’m saying this, as a girl who LOVES the sunshine, but I think I’m looking forward to getting back to my Pennsylvania fall weather.

I have a wonderful gift for you. A brand new woman’s magazine is out call WHOA - Women WHO Hear-Obey-and Act on God's Word. (You can google it to take a look). It is a high glossy Christian magazine dealing with real women who encounter real life problems and find God’s answers in the midst. As my blog friends, they are offering you a free 1 year subscription. Just e-mail me privately at leslie@leslievernick.com with your name and address and I will forward this to my WHOA contact who has made this generous offer. Perhaps you’d like to gift someone for Christmas. That’s fine too. WHOA wants to get the word out and the best way to do that is to get their magazine into women’s hands. I promise you I will not give out your address to any other person and will shred it once I have forwarded it on.

Back to my time in California. I have been watching in horror the unfolding tragedy at Seal Bay where an enraged spouse, angry at a custody decision, decided to execute his ex-wife and eight other people. Let’s not forget, October is Domestic Violence awareness month and therefore, I’ve dedicated my blog topics and newsletter this month to be focused on this topic.

If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter yet, please do. The next issue is going to be about abusive women and victimized men. You won’t want to miss it. Women can be abusive too and some of my male readers have recently reminded me of that important reality.

This week’s Question: I need help. I read all your books and took the steps to separate from my husband (emotional & physical abuse) but my emotions are a mess. He is not doing anything to try to save the marriage or show that he has changed. He hasn't even set up marriage counseling. I don't have any money to go to a Christian counselor. My pastor has told me he can't help me any further, I am stuck.

Answer: You are in a very difficult spot, and I’m not surprised your emotions are a mess. Without knowing any more details than you’ve given, I imagine you separated not only for safety reasons, but also in the hopes that your husband would “wake up” to his abusive behavior and get the help he needs in order to reconcile and restore your marriage.

The hard truth however is that he has not taken any steps to address his problem. You feel hurt, angry, discouraged, and frightened. Now what?

Helpless, hopeless and scared are probably the predominant emotions that mess with your mind. It’s important that you realize that your emotions may be powerful but they don’t always reflect reality. Things are not hopeless and you are not helpless, it just feels that way right now.

You can’t fix his problem (his abusive behavior) but you must begin to address and work on your own problems if you are going to get a grip on your emotions as well as learn to live in a healthy way. Your problems may be your fear of living alone, the lack of financial resources, the loneliness you feel, or even the anger and hurt you’ve experienced by his abuse and indifference to your pain. You say you don’t have the money to go to a Christian counselor, but there is help out there for you if you want it and look for it. If you don’t work on your problems, you will be tempted to return to your abusive spouse without him making any of the changes needed to stop this abusive pattern. Is that what you want? Would that be in the best interest for you, your children, or even your spouse?

I’m not sure what your pastor meant when he said he can’t help you further. I don’t think your pastor can or should be the primary person to counsel you or your spouse with this problem, but that does not mean that he cannot be instrumental in getting the church to be a supportive resource for you. Sadly, often times when an abused spouse separates, the church withdraws support for both individuals in a troubled marriage.

But since your pastor has offered support to you in the past, ask him if he can recommend a wise woman in the congregation to be a supportive mentor to you during this time. In addition, you can get involved in a woman’s bible study in order to get around wise and hopefully healthier women as well as grow in your faith. If your church does not offer one, look for other locations that do. You must now take some proactive steps to help yourself if you are going to learn that you are not helpless.

Second, most communities have resources for abused women. I do not know your location but you can usually find these resources in the blue pages of your local telephone directory or google them on the Internet. They provide free counseling and support, sometimes even pro bono legal aid to help you through this process of getting financial support, a PFA (Protection from Abuse) if needed, and other things that will help you get on your feet right now. They won’t be able to fill in all of the gaps, and with recent funding cuts, many organizations can only provide the bare minimum of services, but you must seek out and get the help you so desperately need.

There are also other churches that offer free or low cost Christian counseling and, if that isn’t an option, there is online counseling (go to http://www.aacc.net to find a Christian counselor who is experienced in these issues willing to work with you on-line). There are also low cost mental health services in most communities as well as universities and colleges that may have interns. They may not be experts in abusive relationship issues, but they may be able to help you deal with some of your fears and runaway emotions.

There are books you can read (I recommend my book, The Emotionally Destructive Relationship as well as many others in the back of my book as additional resources). Many of these books are available at a community library or you can simply hang out in Barnes and Noble and read them there if you cannot afford to purchase them.

Here are some additional resources that you can explore so that you can begin to dig yourself out of the situation you are in and experience healing.

For additional education and resources on domestic violence, as well as e-learning, go to:

http://www.theraveproject.org/
or http://www.peaceandsafety.com/
or http://www.faithtrustinstitute.org/

For help developing a safety plan go to http://www.theraveproject.org/.

The hotline for domestic violence is 800-799-7233.

To find professional Christian counselors experienced in domestic violence, call Focus on the Family Counselors at 800 232 6459 or go to http://www.theraveproject.org/.

Yesterday I read about a gentile woman in scripture who asked Jesus to heal her daughter from demon possession. Jesus didn’t answer her at first, and the disciples eventually asked him to shoo her away because she was bothering them with all her begging. When Jesus finally did answer her he told her he was only there to help the lost sheep of Israel. But that response did not deter this woman. She was desperate AND persistent. She knew she needed help for her daughter and she was not giving up until she got it (Matthew 15:23-28). Jesus commended her faith and tenacity.

In another story, Jesus tells of the persistent widow who keeps pestering the judge until he gives her the justice she needs (Luke 18:1-8). For me, these passages encourage people not to be deterred with a “no” at first. We as women tend to be more passive, less assertive and are willing to receive a no and feel that is the final answer. But often a no turns into a yes when we continue to plead our case.

Please seek the help you need. The answer isn’t to just learn to live with an abusive spouse. The answer is to get God-centered, strong, and healthy enough to stand firm so that you can invite your husband to do the work he needs to do in order to truly reconcile your marriage.

How to Respond When Someone Hurts You

Good Monday friends,

I am in sunny California this week being Nana to Amaya and Leilani and cooking up a storm for my daughter and her husband to have meals to eat for the next few weeks. I've decided for this week to share a video on a question and answer session I did at a women's retreat last year. The question that's asked is: How do you respond when someone hurts you? What is a Christian to do?

Thanks for all your prayers over the last month. I did make it through and I give Him all the glory for the strength He gave me.

Click here to watch video

Mother longs for better relationship with adult daughter

Good Monday Friends,

I have a new grandbaby. Horray! Her name is Leilani Capri and she was born October 1. I’m heading out to see her on Saturday. I am so blessed. I can’t wait to meet her.

For those of you who are not on my mailing list, I also want to invite you to a special event this Saturday morning October 8th, at Faith Church in Trexlertown, PA from 9-12 where I will be talking on Emotionally Destructive Relationships. To register or for more information, visit www.faithefc.com. If you are a church leader, pastor, or counselor, I am also doing a special event on Friday evening on A Biblical Response to Domestic Violence. You are welcome to attend both. Register for each event separately, and they are both free.

Thanks for all your prayers for my speaking at the AACC Conference in Nashville. It was a sold out crowd with amazing speakers, and God truly was present. God gave me some very special moments with people, but today I feel a little exhausted from it all.

Today’s Question: I am married to a pastor/mediator/marriage and family therapist, yet continue to struggle with discontent with my relationship with my adult daughter who is a physician married to another physician. She has two children, 3 and almost 1. I never married her father who left her at six and never returned to her life until she was 19. He remained in contact with her over the years but loosely, inconsistently, but did pay for college.

She began her rebellious behavior when I married and she was 13. She has disapproved since the wedding and battled with him for most of the time she was at home. She left for college at 18 and returned on holidays but stayed with her grandparents. She and I have always stayed in touch, but of course it was different when she no longer would return home. She is now 36 and lives in another state. I divorced her stepfather and remarried four years later to someone she approved of.

Not living in the same state, she usually calls a few times a day for many reasons, often when she is troubled with dealing with the kids while her husband works long hours. I always take her calls, regardless of the hour or inconvenience. For whatever reason, when we are both visiting what was our hometown, when she is around family, we have disagreements and then we don’t talk for a few months over something ridiculous.

Sometimes she visits our hometown without me, and this past summer did so and rented a camper and did not invite me or tell me about it until I found out about it from someone else. Knowing I would be hurt, she invited her brother and his wife and my other son for a week of vacation without me.

I’ve spent lots of time babysitting for her oldest child while she was an infant. I do not understand why my daughter and I cannot be closer. We are different. I am more about talking about emotions and feelings and she works hard to avoid the same. She is not affectionate with her husband or me and it’s so hard to see what is and accept it.

She flies me in to babysit when she needs me, but when she didn’t include me on this vacation I told her so and now we’re not talking again. I have not figured out how to deal with conflict without creating distance between us. I have apologized for overreacting to her choice not to include me and assured her that I love and miss her. She has finally let me speak again to my granddaughter but I feel my heart hardening.

I can’t be sad all the time because I miss her and the kids. We can never talk about what’s the problem. We just eventually go on like nothing happened. There is more but it’s so complicated, it seems like we are close yet incredibly far away from each other.

It seems like she is angry, sad and doesn’t want to deal with it, and I don’t know what to do with it. She is such an accomplished woman who is so successful in her career and is well liked and respected, but with those closest to her, it is a battle. If you could give me some insight it would be so appreciated.

Answer: Having an adult daughter who lives out of state with a new grandbaby myself, my heart grieves for you and your situation with your daughter. I wish I could give you three steps to take that would magically turn this relationship around. You already know if you’re married to a therapist, that the only person you can work on changing is you. That said, what things might you need to do differently in order to accept where things are right now and not feel so hurt and sad all the time?

First, it seems like you have no boundaries (you take her calls night and day, fly in to babysit whenever she needs you) but you do have some expectations that she does not (or cannot) meet. I think this is a set up for conflict and hurt – for both of you.

Are your expectations reasonable? I think so. You expect she would treat you as a person and not just as a babysitter or a stress reliever. You expect she would care about your feelings and not be exclusive or competitive. You expect that because you are giving so much to her, she would give back to you. And you expect that because she is an accomplished professional, she would be more competent in handling interpersonal conflict and stress. But that’s not the case.

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So although your expectations are reasonable, they are unrealistic considering her past behaviors. If you want to get healthier yourself, you will need to let go of these expectations, otherwise you set yourself up to continually feel hurt. Again it’s not unreasonable that you wish her to be different. And you can hope that someday she grows and changes. But if you want to stop hurting so much, you must let go and emotionally accept who she is and where she is right now.

That takes us back to the issue of your own boundaries. You obviously love your daughter and grandchildren. You want to be a part of their lives. You will need to decide what you want to give and how often, regardless of whether or not you get much in return. This does not create a healthy relationship, but it does help you clarify your role right now. You can choose to give to your daughter and grandchildren out of your love for them, but without strings attached. The best word is “ministry”. You are doing this because you want to, because you love them, and because God calls you to. If you are doing it for any other reasons, you set yourself up to be continuously hurt, angry, and disappointed.

Lastly, I do think we as mothers can learn to be more strategic about how we say things to our daughters. I think every single child longs for approval from their parents even if they don’t want close connection. Your daughter is no exception even though she is accomplished and successful. I wonder if she has hurts from childhood when you choose to marry someone that she so strongly disliked, or that she feels she will never be able to be the kind of daughter you really want and has given up trying.

I remember once a client of mine feeling distant from her mother because her mother couldn’t accept her for who she was. Her mother wanted this strong mother/daughter bond with lots of emotional talk and the daughter was just not wired that way. Although the mother meant well, the daughter constantly felt the mother’s disappointment and disapproval. The only way the daughter could handle the tension was to further distance herself from her mother, accompanied by some passive/aggressive jabs to her mother.

I don’t know if this would help but I might encourage you to look for all the things you can encourage your daughter about who she is. Even when she calls you in her stressful moments, say something like, “Honey, I’m sure you can handle it, you’re a great mother.” Or “I know you have what it takes to figure this one out.” Giving our daughter’s the “blessing” as the Old Testament calls it, can be a priceless gift we give our children.

Friends, you who are daughters and you who are mothers, what else would you advise this dear hurting mom?