Why Marriages Fail: He said, She said ...

I’d like to recommend to you an article by Kerby Anderson from the Probe Ministries website entitled “Why Marriages Fail.” In this article, Anderson cites four negative patterns that can destroy your relationship or marriage. These patterns are escalation, invalidation, negative interpretations, and withdrawal and avoidance.

Anderson’s article is based on the book “A Lasting Promise: A Christian Guide to Fighting for Your Marriage.” Written by Scott Stanley, the book is in turn based on the University of Denver’s PREP (Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program). Anderson clarifies that most Christian books on relationships and marriage are long on insights and short on empirical research. Stanley’s book combines both Biblical insights and empirical findings from the PREP.

Anderson, citing Stanley and PREP, describes these negative patterns as follows:

1. “Escalation occurs when partners respond back and forth negatively to each other, continually upping the ante so the conversation gets more and more hostile…. Each negative comment increases the level of anger and frustration, and soon a small disagreement blows up into a major fight.”

2. “Invalidation is a pattern in which one partner subtly or directly puts down the thoughts, feelings, or character of the other.

“Invalidation can take many forms. Sometimes it can be caustic, in which one partner (or both) attacks the other person verbally.

“Invalidation can also be much more subtle. It may involve an argument where contempt for the other partner is not so obvious. One partner may merely be putting the other partner down for his or her feelings.”

3. "Negative interpretations occur when one partner consistently believes that the motives of the other are more negative than is really the case.

“When a relationship becomes more distressed, the negative interpretations mount and help create an environment of hopelessness. The attacked partner gives up trying to make himself or herself clear and becomes demoralized.

“Another kind of negative interpretation is mind reading. Mind reading occurs when you assume you know what your partner is thinking or why he or she did something." Nearly everyone is guilty of mind reading at some time or other. And when you mind read positively, it does not tend to do much harm. But when you mind read on the negative side, it can spell trouble for a marriage.”

4. "Withdrawal can be as obvious as getting up and leaving the room or as subtle as 'turning off' or 'shutting down' during an argument. The withdrawer often tends to get quiet during an argument, look away, or agree quickly to a partner's suggestion just to end the conversation, with no real intention of following through.

“Avoidance reflects the same reluctance to get into certain discussions, with more emphasis on the attempt to not let the conversation happen in the first place. A person prone to avoidance would prefer that the topic not come up and, if it does, may manifest the signs of withdrawal just described.

“In a typical marriage, one partner is the pursuer and the other is the withdrawer. Studies show that it is usually the man who wants to avoid these discussions and is more likely in the withdrawing role.”

In my previous post, I mentioned an incident between me and a friend. The incident went like this:

I have a good friend (my former high school yearbook editor way back in 1992), and several years ago, we got into a big fight over this issue of a man opening a door for a woman. I had taken pictures for her office of several farms in Tagaytay. On our way home, at C-5 and Buting in Pasig, I helped a woman reporter with her young son get down from the vehicle we were on. After I helped this woman reporter, I got back into the vehicle, completely forgetting about my friend who was sitting at the front. It was too late when I realized I didn’t help her out and that my friend had gotten off the vehicle by herself.

That Sunday, I texted her and apologized for not helping her get out of the vehicle like the way I did for that woman reporter and her son. My friend sent back a flaming text reply, saying that she could take care of herself and that even with her boyfriend, she was very independent.

Well, I texted her back immediately. Ha! I’m a guy and I wouldn’t take that kind of flaming text message sitting down! Just kidding! Proverbs 15:1 says, “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.” I texted her saying, as far as I can remember, with these words, “I didn’t think of you as being helpless but rather as a woman who should always be honored and respected.”

Notice how these patterns came into play with this incident between my friend and me. When I texted her and apologized for not helping her get off the vehicle, she texted back with a negative interpretation of what I meant. If I sent back to her my own flaming text message, we would have moved to an escalation of the misunderstanding between us.

Instead I replied with a message that validated her. That message calmed down things between us (after a month, she texted me saying that she had used my name as reference for her application for a new job). Although she didn’t say “sorry” or apologized outright for her negative interpretation and flaming text message, I positively interpreted her action as her way of saying sorry.

I remember reading a book (“Soul Mates,” I think) by marriage counselors Les and Leslie Parrot which mentioned a couple who fought over a bar of soap! Things escalated to a point where the husband eventually sawed off his half of the house and moved it as far as he could. Neither spouse has spoken to each other, according to the Parrots, for nearly thirty years. (If I remember correctly, the Parrots were referring to a story from the novel “Love In The Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.”)

The Book of Proverbs perhaps says it best about life and death being in the power of our words in chapter 15:

1. A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.

2. The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness.

3. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.

4. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit.

Or as Ephesians 4 puts it about anger:

24. And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

25. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

26. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

Galatians 5 says it best how to avoid negative patterns:

22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

23. Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Hey, lest I sound so righteous, mature and blameless by the discussion above, I’ve got to confess that I have done my own share of negative interpretations and escalation. I remember that I initiated the breakup with my two girlfriends (one in the 70’s and the other one in the 80’s) because I thought that I could read their minds. But hey, these are stories that I will share with you only after you have read Anderson’s article mentioned above, okay? Just surf to the Probe Ministries website and go to the section on Faith and Sexuality.