We sat down with Randy Robison of Life Outreach International to share our testimony and talk about our new book – The Phoenix Marriage: God creates beauty out of ashes. Randy asks some tough questions about infidelity, healing from betrayal, and being transparent with our kids about transgression.
Monthly Archives: September 2014
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. – II Corinthians 5:17
God is in the business of renewal and restoration. If you put God at the center of your relationship (Part 1) and commit to investing deeply in your marriage for 40 days (Part 2), God will breathe new life and energy into you both. But how do you transition from that intense focus to a more maintainable level of energy? The level of intense focus and energy that your marriage renewal requires initially cannot and does not need to be maintained indefinitely. After 40 days, you’ll want to transition into the new phase of your renewal.Phase Two – Healing and Rebuilding
In the initial phase of your renewal, you are working to enrich your marriage, recapture your friendship, and put God at the center of your union. Making these changes permanent requires an important transition in your mindset and your activities.
As I describe in chapter 7 of The Phoenix Marriage:
Your first forty days were likely a roller-coaster of emotion, intimacy, and vulnerability. Many couples get caught up in the energy and the excitement of breathing new life into their marriage. However, the critical season following those first forty days will determine whether these changes will last or if the couple will slip back into old patterns and behaviors.
You want this new version of your marriage to last, don’t you? Rebuilding your bond and healing relationship wounds characterize much of this second phase. Additionally, you will be transitioning to more sustainable levels of focus and energy. As with the first phase, defining goals and concrete actions will be critical for success.
Goals for this Phase
Defining goals for each phase of your renewal is important. Without goals, it is easy to drift aimlessly, not actually making the progress necessary to renew your bond. Without goals, it is easy to lose sight of why the two of you began this renewal and what you need to do in order to maintain the momentum. Thus, each couple much define goals that make sense for their marriage, given the unique challenges and heartaches that they have experienced together. While no definitive list can be included, but common themes will tend to exist amid the goals which couples define for this phase. These themes include trust, forgiveness, and healing from whatever hurts lie in your collective past.
As the two of you consider the pain that you must overcome and the trust you must rebuild during this phase, be prepared for a lot of work. The following, prior blog posts may prove helpful:
- Talk is Cheap — Actions speak louder than words
- 8 Rules for Rebuilding Trust — Trust can be rebuilt through persistent love
- Wounds Heal Crooked — Healing is a messy process
Taking Action
As with the first phase of renewal, all of this just talk unless you put it into action. We explore a long list of concrete actions in The Phoenix Marriage, but here’s a few general themes you can except for your actions to align with:
- Find your new normal – In the first forty days (phase one) couples tend to prioritize their marriage, letting non-essential activities fall away (hobbies, outings with friends, family outings, etc.). This is necessary, because you need focused attention to build healthy patterns. But now the two of you must find a way to fold some of those activities back in while also identifying what changes need to happen. You’ll also be trying to find your new normal in terms of routines, frequency of contact, and how you communicate with one another. It’s normal for their to be anxiety over anything that feels like previous routines. You’ll need to work together to build confidence that this “new normal” won’t result in falling back into old patterns.
- Lovingly, patiently rebuild trust – The loss of trust, in whatever measure, the two of you have experienced can be devastating for a couple. As I write in chapter 7:
Prior to beginning this renewal process, your spiritual and emotional connection had faded and your bond had weakened. While this will look different for each couple, the simple fact is this: trust has been broken at some level. In most cases, the trust has been broken by both the husband and wife. You trusted your mate to love you fully and selflessly, and he or she fell short of that mark. In more extreme situations, you find yourself coping with betrayal of trust from addiction, abuse, or infidelity. Wherever you are on the spectrum, trust has been violated, and rebuilding it will require time and patience. It won’t be easy, but take heart, trust can be restored.
- Battle your demons – We all have something we must battle as a part of the renewal and healing process. Insecurity, guilt, doubt, fear, and resentment are common obstacles. One of the couples we are walking with recently shared a fear with us: “I’m 46 years old, I just don’t know if it’s even possible for me to change at this point. Things will inevitably slip back into their old patterns.” You have to resist this sort of negative self talk and embrace the reality that each day you can decide who you want to be and how you will behave as an individual and as a member of your marriage team.
- Grieve and process emotion in healthy ways – There is pain in the collective past of your relationship. During the intense focus of the first 40 days, you may find that you swept much of these issues under the proverbial rug. But you can’t ignore them forever. They will either come out unexpectedly and explosively or you can choose to let them out a piece at a time as part of a healthy and constructive healing process. One couple that we mentored last year experienced significant challenges when alcohol was used as a coping mechanism. Another suffered from wild emotional swings when safe, healthy outlets for emotion were not provided. Processing all of the past hurt is crucial and it is an on-going process, because “wounds heal crooked” (see article referenced above).
- Extend grace to one another – Be gracious and understanding with each other as you transition from the intensity and excitement of the first phase of renewal, into a focus upon healing an rebuilding in this second phase. You will both need to extend a lot of grace toward each other as you collectively heal and rebuild. Tammy and I have come to learn that grace, is the universal love language.
Ingredients for Success
We have found that prayer is the single most powerful ingredient of our revitalized marriage. In fact, our most popular post to date: “We tried something new in the bedroom and it saved our marriage” explores that very topic. Another important ingredient for success is to be gracious with each other as you each process past hurts and work to put into place your new normal. One of you might heal and move on faster than the other. Grace and patience should permeate the relationship. My wife and I are 22 months into our renewal, and there are still hurts and hangups from my affair that we have to deal with periodically. I had no idea how expensive my affair would be, but I realize it now.This second phase will likely be harder than the first, but it is rewarding in terms of intimacy and depth that it yields for your relationship. There’s a lot of work for you both to do, but it’s worth every painful conversation, every raw prayer, and every tear.
Throughout time, humans have elevated reason – our ability to rationalize and make judgement calls regarding good and bad decisions. In Aristotle’s Ethics he describes human beings as rational animals and identifies reason as a uniquely human characteristic. Our ability to justify and rationalize our decision-making is God-given. But dependence upon reason can also get in the way of God’s call for us to love unconditionally.
Human reason is great, but God’s wisdom shames the wise (I Corinthians 1:27). Where we see only failure, He sees a future. Where we see destruction, He sees destiny. In the middle of our mess, He begins a miracle. And so, He calls us to love like He does — unreasonably…[read more]
[This is an excerpt from a guest post over at Husband Revolution. You can read the full article there.]
Nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, is famous for his use of metaphor, irony, and parable in explaining ethical and religious concepts. One particularly famous parable describes a rather odd crime:
Two thieves broke into a jewelry store one night, but instead of stealing the jewels they simply switched the price tags. They put high-priced tags on cheap jewelry and low-priced tags on valuable gems. For several weeks no one noticed. People bought cheap jewelry for exorbitant prices and rare jewels for next to nothing.
Kierkegaard’s point is that we sometimes have difficulty assessing the actual value or cost associated with something. If we are told it is valuable, we believe it. If we are told something is cheap, we accept it as fact. Our concept of “price”, “worth”, and “value” are subject to the costs and benefits that we assign. But what happens if you assign these incorrectly? Worse yet, what happens if you accept a lie about what something is worth? We live in a fallen world where someone has switched all the price tags around. We assign unmerited value to things that are worthless, and overlook priceless items as inconsequential. We take the most valueable things for granted (integrity, honesty, commitment) while minimizing the full consequences of selfish actions.
Sin is expensive
Sin is expensive. Incredibly expensive. But the price isn’t paid in cash, it’s paid in mental, emotional, and spiritual pain. God didn’t create an arbitrary list of “DOs” and DON’Ts” to see if we could follow them. No, He laid out a set of essential guidelines for living. His anger towards lying, stealing, cheating, coveting, murder, jealousy, and pride is because all of these behaviors destroy relationships. Everything that the Bible labels as sin is something that God is trying to protect us from. His desire is love, peace, grace, and harmony with Him and with all of creation. Sin is our defiant rejection of this in an effort to satisfy our own selfish desires. Almost two years ago, I set out on a destructive path of selfishness that culminated in a two-month affair which nearly destroyed my family. I had no idea just how expensive that path would be. Sadly, we are still paying the price for my selfishness.
Every decision has a cost
My economics professor told me years ago: “there is no free lunch.” If someone offers you something for free, you need to dig deeper. Every decision has a cost. Nothing is ever truly free. Even something that appears to be inconsequential initially, may have substantial long-term effects. The decision to eat unhealthy food has both an initial cost and a long-term cost. The same holds for decisions within relationships.
At its core, all sin is selfishness. In some cases, that selfishness leads us to rationalize actions as being relatively inexpensive (“this will only really affect me, not anyone else”, “I can play near this fire and not get burned”). In all cases, the full emotional and mental cost of our selfish choices is not paid until months and years later. I truly believed that my affair in 2012 was a victimless crime. I naively thought it only impacted the two of us. I was dead wrong. In reality, it hurt every person in my family (myself included) and devastated my wife to such a degree that she is still paying the price nearly two years later.
The full cost of my affair
It is difficult to fully appreciate all the ways that my sin has impacted my life and the life of my family. There were initial costs, short-term costs, and long-term costs.
Initial Costs
- Integrity – I have always been a fiercely loyal person. Loyal to family, friends, employers, hobbies, churches, etc. But in a moment of weakness, I sold my integrity as quickly as Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. After I sold it once, I bought into the enemies lies that I had ruined everything and I might as well throw in the towel.
- Self-esteem – Worthless. I felt completely worthless. Unworthy of Tammy’s love. Unworthy of God’s calling on my life. My best bet was to cut Tammy and the kids loose and move on so they could heal.
- Stress – I lived a double life for two months. While I was trying to delicately unwind my marriage and let the kids down easy, I was under a terrible amount of stress. I’d never lived a life full of deceit and I don’t recommend it. I was constantly on edge and even developed a habit of grinding my teeth at night.
Short-term Costs
- Heartache – As our relationship unraveled and I began pushing for divorce, Tammy and the kids were crushed. All six kiddos had been through divorce before. Those old wounds opened right back up, but this time they would be losing their step-siblings that they had grown to love. Tammy was confused, hurt, and frightened about her future and the kids future.
- Distance – My relationship with Tammy and the kids was frayed and distant. I pushed friends away, mentors away, and God away. I was too busy rationalizing my behavior to listen to wise counsel.
Finally, that fateful day at Starbucks arrived. Tammy and I sat down to divide assets and get everything ironed out for the divorce. She confronted me, the Holy Spirit worked on my heart, and we turned a crucial corner. We decided to fight for our marriage and for our family. But the full cost of my selfishness had not been paid yet.
Long-term Costs
- Wounds – I wounded my children and my wife deeply. It took over two months before one of the girls began to trust me again and three more months for another (the third doesn’t really talk, so we aren’t sure). But Tammy has paid the highest price for my infidelity. Nearly two years later and she still has days that she must battle with ghosts from the past. Every day is a little easier, but sometimes we take a step back. Wounds heal, but they heal crooked.
- Trust – Rebuilding trust has proved to be extremely difficult, as you might imagine. A big part of this is that talk is cheap. So we had to move past just talking about rebuilding trust and actually doing it. We have made great strides, but it hasn’t been easy. Throughout the rebuilding process, we have identified eight rules for re-building trust.
- Peace – I robbed us of peace. I wrestle with forgiving myself. Tammy wrestles with trusting me. On occasion Tammy will have an angry outburst. In other cases, a song, movie, or date on the calendar will bring back a flood of painful memories for one or both of us to unpack.
What have you sold too cheaply?
My selfishness was incredibly expensive. But I only see that now in hindsight. What seemed at first to be a personal decision that impacted no one else, turned out to be slippery slope of pain and anguish that devastated my entire family. I sold my integrity, self-esteem, peace of mind, family unity, and marriage at rock-bottom, discount prices. These things were incredibly precious, and I sold them for pennies on the emotional dollar.
As I have shared my story with other men, I have heard from so many that they see ways in which they have allowed their own selfishness to chip away at the joy in their marriage. We have all sold something precious in exchange for meeting a selfish desire:
- Those little white lies you tell your spouse make things easier on you at the cost of your integrity.
- Pornography costs you pure, genuine intimacy with your mate.
- Discontentment with what you have or where you live robs you both of peace.
- Manipulation might pay out at first, but it poisons your relationship, sowing seeds of bitterness.
- Dismissing your spouse’s need for sexual intimacy could be more convenient, but it damages his or her self-esteem in the process.
- Harsh words may win an argument, but your emotional bond suffers.
Maybe its time to start putting the correct price tags on your own actions within your marriage. Recognize the ways in which you have played fast and loose with your mate’s heart. It’s time to stop the cycle of selfishness and honor your marriage as the precious gift that it is.
So the question is, what have you sold too cheaply?
