Part 3: Why Self-Protection Hurts Your Marriage
The last two posts have looked at the lies we believe about God, ourselves, and life and how we develop our own strategies to try to protect ourselves by controlling the situation, hiding, or indulging in something we hope will make the pain go away. Unfortunately, anything other than obeying God and allowing Him to heal you will ultimately hurt your marriage. Here’s how . . .
Once there was a little girl. Every summer her parents sent her away to an exclusive camp for a month. They meant well, but she felt abandoned and on her own. Not everyone responds the same way to a wound. If this little girl grows up and marries, she may maintain a self-sufficient, “who-needs-you” attitude. If she does, she will likely push her husband away because “moving together as one” involves inter-dependence, not self-sufficiency.
Or, her feelings of abandonment might result in exactly the opposite reaction. Every time her husband tries to give himself a little space, she might grasp at him and become very needy. Either way, she is hurting her marriage, not helping it.
Let’s take another example of a child who grew up with a critical parent. No matter what the child did, it wasn’t quite good enough. Perhaps the child took to hiding in order to avoid the sting of criticism. Hiding can take different forms. One child might spend an inordinate amount of time in their room or with their nose in a book. Another child might “hide” behind a wall of sarcasm to fend off the pain.
When the child grows up and marries, the strategies for protecting himself or herself are still in place. If the spouse even makes a small, gentle criticism it will likely prick the still-open wound and the self-protection mechanisms will spring into effect.
Some people protect themselves by “medicating” their pain. “My family doesn’t value me, but a cookie will make me feel better.” “I feel like an outsider at school. I’ll just sit and play a video game.” The movie Fireproof portrayed a husband who medicated the pain of his marriage by watching pornography and squirreling away money his family needed so he could buy a boat. You can probably see that dealing with pain by indulging doesn’t solve the problem, it makes it worse.
Our strategies for dealing with pain never work. If sin is at the root of the problem, as it is with an addiction, you must make some changes starting at the heart level. If the root is a still-oozing wound, God wants to heal the wound. The baggage we bring with us into our marriage always hurts our marriage. You have to get rid of it if you want to really dance.
“The Baggage Dance”
