Enemies of Marital Intimacy

We want initmacy–that is why we get married. But it is dangerous. Get too close and there is a danger of either being hurt by rejection or by being smothered and controlled. So we protect ourselves either by clinging or by withdrawing.

These defensive reactions feed each other. The person who is afraid of rejection and clings too tightly will activate the fears of the partner regarding being controlled, who will then withdraw, which then makes the other person more afraid of rejection.

If you see evidence of this destructive dynamic in your own relationship, call Dr. Ross at (859) 278-3290 for an appointment.

If you are thinking divorce…

When anger builds to an explosion, a spouse will sometimes compulsively announce that she/he wants a divorce. No divorce may be filed immediately. Perhaps the threat is an expression of overheated emotion. The danger is that sooner of later, if one or the other spouse continues to use the D word, they may talk themselves into a divorce.

There are many reasons why a decision of this magnitude should not be made in the heat of battle. If one spouse feels he/she simply cannot continue to live with the other, instead of drawing a line in the sand and filing for a divorce, a couple should consider a structured separation.

Order My Marriage Manual to learn more about how you can slow down and avoid a divorce that should never have happend.

Talking Divorce?

When anger builds to an explosion, a spouse will sometimes compulsively announce that she/he wants a divorce. No divorce may be filed immediately. Perhaps the threat is an expression of overheated emotion. The danger is that sooner of later, if one or the other spouse continues to use the D word, they may talk themselves into a divorce.

There are many reasons why a decision of this magnitude should not be made in the heat of battle. If one spouse feels he/she simply cannot continue to live with the other, instead of drawing a line in the sand and filing for a divorce, a couple should consider a structured separation.

Order My Marriage Manual to learn more about how you can slow down and avoid a divorce that should never have happend.

Good News, Bad News, and Really Good News

Socrates paid marriage a rather back handed compliment when he said that every man should get married because, “If he gets a good wife, he will be happy. If he gets a bad wife, he will become a philosopher.”

There has always been, it appears, those who take a rather jaundiced view of marriage. So it is today we find many how hold a very cynical view of marriage. According to its detractors, marriage is a temporary, unworkable trap whereby two romantic fools suck the life out of each other and make each other miserable. Furthermore:

• Marriage does not work.
• Marriage is temporary.
• Marriage makes people miserable
• Marriage is a trap to confine women and oppress them.
• Marriage ruins sex.
• Marriage keeps people from realizing their full potential.
• Marriage institutionalizes men’s abuse of women.
• Marriage makes people less satisfied and more unhappy.

In spite of the cynics there is truly some good news about marriage. When you marry you are getting in on one of the greatest, most awesome, blessings God has ever bestowed upon the human race. After God created humankind to care for the fabulous garden in which he lived, he understood right away that being human, which means being made in the image of God, would not work if there were only one sex.

Relationship is at the core of who God is. God is a Trinity of persons in perfect unity and fellowship: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because we are made in God’s image, we too must be in relationship in order to be fully human. So God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him" (Gen 2:18).

This is the good news about marriage. God noticed Adam’s aloneness and his need for relationship. Thus God gives man the woman. They complement one another perfectly. In their beautiful, blessed unity they stand buck naked before each other without shame.

This good news in the Bible about marriage is now being “discovered” by contemporary social science. Some of the extraordinary benefits of marriage include companionship and friendship, longer life, better health, more wealth, a higher standard of living, and greater emotional happiness and well being. So, my lovers, take cheer, for the good news is that in entering into this sacred union you are setting yourself up to enjoy these and other blessings too numerous to count.

Now for the bad news. After just pumping marriage it’s very hard to tell you the rest of the story. How can I say it? Let’s put it this way, quoting Ben Franklin: “You cannot pluck roses without fear of thorns, nor enjoy a fair wife without danger of horns.” Yes, marriages are made in heaven, but so are thunder and lightning.

The bad news is that marriage generates some of the most awesome and scary emotional thunderstorms you will ever experience. Marriage is one of the hardest things you will ever undertake. Fulfilling your vows to love, honor and cherish each other for better or worse will be far and away the single most difficult task you will undertake in this life.

Marriage is hard. On your wedding day you have only begun to climb the Mt. Everest of marriage. In your vows you swear to love, honor and cherish this person beside you for the rest of your natural life. I know, at the altar she looks absolutely beautiful and he is unspeakably handsome, but sooner or later your spouse will show you his/her true colors, and some of those colors will not be pretty. You will discover that you will become more angry at him or her than anyone else in your life. There will be times when you will positively hate the sight of the person whose hand you now hold. That’s the bad news.

Now for the really good news. The really good news is that the bad news is bad news only in the short run. The very difficulty of marriage, the part about it that will cause you the most distress, will in the long run prove the greatest blessing–if you can stand the heat. The difficulties of marriage have the potential to become the means by which God will grow you up into the most beautiful, mature human beings imaginable.

There is a basic life principle, encapsulated in the trite but true saying, “No pain, no gain.” The difficulty of marriage, the emotional pain it can and surely will engender, can become the means by which you become the kind of person that deep down you always wanted to be: strong, caring, patient, sensitive, and self controlled.

The intense heat generated by your marriage will be the crucible in which you can be purified. This is the really good news about marriage. Besides the blessing of companionship, it can become the means of making you into the kind of man or woman you ought to be. Marriage is the place where you can become a real saint–if you can stand the heat.

Marriage Matters

Thirteen of the top scholars on family life have issued a joint report on the importance of marriage. The report is based on decades of research and the findings are striking. For the first time leading family scholars have issued a definitive joint report on the financial, emotional, and health consequences of marriage for men, women, children, and society.

Why Marriage Matters: 21 Conclusions from the Social Sciences

was produced by a politically diverse and interdisciplinary group of leading family scholars, including psychologist John Gottman, best selling author of books about marriage and relationships; Linda Waite, coauthor of The Case for Marriage; Norval Glenn and Steven Nock, two of the top family social scientists in the country; William Galston, a Clinton Administration domestic policy advisor; and Judith Wallerstein, author of the national bestseller The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce.

The report is sponsored by the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan think tank, Center of the American Experiment, and the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. The report was released on February 14th, Valentine's Day, on the same day as the broadcast of a national PBS documentary on the weakening of marriage, "Marriage - Is It Just a Piece of Paper?" narrated by ABC's Cokie Roberts.

This is the first time leading family scholars have issued a definitive joint report based on a steadily accumulating and by now very large body of social science evidence about the consequences of marriage and its absence.

Since 1960, the proportion of children who do not live with their own two parents has risen sharply– from 19.4% to 42.3% in the Nineties. This change has been caused, first, by large increases in divorce, and more recently, by a big jump in single mothers and cohabiting couples who have children but don't marry. For several decades the impact of this dramatic change in family structure has been the subject of vigorous debate among scholars. No longer. These 21 troubling findings are now widely agreed upon.

Even E. Mavis Hetherington's book, Divorce Reconsidered: For Better or Worse, which argues that the consequences of divorce are not so troubling as other recent books on the subject have suggested, does not dispute the basic facts. The dispute is about the interpretation of the facts. For instance, Hetherington agrees that between 20% to 25% of the children of divorce suffer from serious, long–term emotional problems. But she says that's not so bad– that means 80% to 75% don't suffer serious, long-term emotional problems.

The 20-25% figure is not in dispute; what is in dispute is whether such a figure constitutes a serious social problem.

Among the research findings summarized by the report Why Marriage Matters are the following:

About ChildrenParental divorce reduces the likelihood that children will graduate from college, and achieve high-status jobs.

 

Children who live with their own two married parents enjoy better physical health, on average, than children in other family forms. The health advantages of married homes remain even after taking into account socioeconomic status.

Parental divorce approximately doubles the odds that adult children will end up divorced.

About MenMarried men earn between 10 and 40 percent more than single men with similar education and job histories.

Married men, have longer life expectancies than otherwise similar singles.

Marriage increases the likelihood fathers will have good relationships with children. Sixty-five percent of young adults whose parents divorced had poor relationships with their fathers (compared to 29% from non-divorced families).

About WomenDivorce and unmarried childbearing significantly increases poverty rates of both mothers and children. Between one-fifth and one-third of divorcing women end up in poverty as a result of divorce.

Married mothers have lower rates of depression than single or cohabiting mothers.

Married women appear to have a lower risk of domestic violence than cohabiting or dating women. Even after controlling for race, age, and education, people who live together are still three times more likely to report violent arguments than married people.

About SocietyAdults who live together but do not marry– cohabitors–are more similar to singles than to married couples in terms of physical health and disability, emotional well-being and mental health, as well as assets and earnings. Their children more closely resemble the children of single people than the children of married people.

Marriage appears to reduce the risk that children and adults will be either perpetrators or victims of crime. Single and divorced women are four to five times more likely to be victims of violent crime in any given year than married women.

Boys raised in single-parent homes are about twice as likely (and boys raised in stepfamilies three times as likely) to have committed a crime that leads to incarceration by the time they reach their early thirties, even after controlling for factors such as race, mother's education, neighborhood quality and cognitive ability.

Marriage matters, it really does.

A Conversation about Sex and Marriage

A Conversation about Sex and Marriage
James Robert Ross
with excerpts from Lauren Winner (Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity, Brazos, 2005)

Lauren Winner, a young Jewish woman, made her mark as an author in Girl Meets God, the story of her encounter with Christ and her conversion as his disciple. In Real Sex she undertakes the task of rethinking her assumptions about sex which she absorbed and incorporated into her own life style during the sexual revolution.

This is an honest, courageous book. The author is brutally honest with herself about herself, about the state of her soul, about her own sexual choices and about the difficulties in the exercise of chastity.
This is a Biblically informed, theologically sound book. It is not a jeremiad against the joys of a little sexual hanky panky. Rather, it describes the meaning of sex in the context of what it means to be human, especially to be a human being who has been called by God into a covenant relationship of which marriage is the most profound and significant symbol. Ms. Winner demonstrates how sex is intricately tied up with our personal identity and with our relationship not only with the warm body in bed beside us but with our neighbors, the church and ultimately with the God who invented sex.
Finally, this is a helpful book. When the author describes many of the church’s moralistic truisms and observes how unhelpful they are, she strikes a chord with all who live and breathe in a sexually saturated atmosphere and have struggled with lust, pornography, and infidelity. In contrast she offers concrete, meaningful suggestions about Christian sexual discipline and formation. In so doing she presents a compelling critique of our ultra individualistic culture and how it has infected and controlled the way Christians see their responsibility for each other.
You are encouraged to purchase and together read and discuss the entire book. But here are a few excerpts, which will help you reflect upon your relationship to each other, your relationship to the church, the meaning of marriage and the significance of sex for your marriage.
Ms. Winner begins by confessing that she experiences the church's teaching about sex as difficult. She writes:
I chafe against [this teaching]. Sometimes it feels outmoded, irrelevant, burdensome. But to rely on my experience here would be to rely on something frankly broken and distorted. Sometimes it is scary or inconvenient to trust the church. But it is more often a relief to know that I don't have to rely solely on my intuition or experience to make decisions about ethical behavior. The church is here to teach me how to handle sex, money,. time, relationships, and myriad other issues.
So, if my point in bringing together ethics and experience is not to say, "Oh, in the twenty-first century, these teachings are just too hard; let's toss scripture and tradition out the window and embrace fornication"–why, then, talk about people's lived experience at all? Is doing so a concession to the voyeuristic tell-all that characterizes so much of today's popular culture? I think not. For if our ethics of sex should not be primarily grounded in experience, our pastoral response to sex must take account of it. By pastoral, I mean something broader than simply what clergy do; I mean the compassionate and wise response of all brothers and sisters in the Christian community to those siblings in Christ Struggling with questions of sex and chastity.
We Christians insist that bodies and what we do with them are important. We insist that sex was created for marriage alone, and that unmarried Christians shouldn't have sex. But if we want to do more than insist-if we want to help these unmarried Christians inhabit chastity-we ought to know something about what role sex plays in their lives…
The sixth and seventh chapter of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians show both how broad and how specific the category of porneia [usually translated “fornication” or “sexual immorality”] is. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul invokes porneia when he is forbidding Corinthians from patronizing prostitutes. In the next chapter, Paul uses porneia again, this time telling the unmarried and the widows that it is better to marry than to burn with desire. In this second passage, logic tells us that porneia must mean sex outside of marriage–if the only two options are marriage or smoldering with desire, it follows that sex outside of marriage is not an option. And, according to Paul, this sin is no minor peccadillo. As Lewis Smedes [in Sex for Christians] summarizes, "If unmarried sexual intercourse was wrong, it was a serious wrong; it ought not even be talked about (Eph. 5:3). God's will is that we abstain from fornication, not giving way to 'the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God' (1 Thess. 4:6). [Porneia] is sin; intercourse by unmarried people is [porneia], therefore intercourse by unmarried people is sin."
Scripture gives us a context for reading the rest of scripture, and what we learn about God's vision for sexuality in Genesis shapes how we understand words about sexuality in the rest of the Bible. Paul understands sex as part of the ordering of creation. Paul's words cannot be unhinged from his larger vision of the world, a vision set out at the beginning of scripture.
This is not just a lesson in reading. It is also a pastoral point.
Consider, as an example, the recent experience of my friend Kara, a campus minister in Illinois. Recently a student came to her, on fire for the Lord, and said, "I want to follow and serve Jesus, and the one thing I really want to know is, how far can I go with my boyfriend?" One could, I suppose, answer that question simply by pointing to a few verses from Paul, but a more complete, and perhaps more compelling, instruction is to begin with the picture of intended reality that is laid out in Genesis. Kara realized that answering her student's question required first answering a host of larger questions: Who created us, and for what ends? What is God's creational intent? and What are we made for?
I'll hazard a guess about Kara's student. When she's sitting on the sofa in a dark den with her boyfriend, random verses from Paul may not do much work. However, if this student's community helps form in her an understanding that she is God's creature, made for God's best purposes, she may indeed think very differently-even righteously-about sex, and bodies, and the context in which those bodies are to touch and be touched.
Our bodies and how we inhabit them point to the order of creation. God made us for sex within marriage…To see the biblical witness as an attempt to direct us to the created order…is to recognize the true goodness of God's creation; things as they were in the Garden of Eden are things at their most nourishing, they are things as they are meant to be…
Americans insist that sex is private, nobody’s business but mine and the person with whom I’m doing it. I can show you my midriff in public, and I can make out with my boyfriend on a park bench, but there is no communal grammar that allows you to talk to me about this body I am exposing in front of you…[Thus] society’s most basic message about sex: one person’s sexual behavior is not anyone else’s concern. And if your best friend doesn't have permission to voice her worry when you commit adultery with both its blatant violation of the Ten Commandments and its obvious capacity to hurt other people and wreak social havoc– certainly no one has permission to utter a word about a little thing like premarital sex.
Put simply, this is a lie. And it is a fairly new lie. For most of human history, people of many different cultures have agreed that societies must order certain forms of exchange in order to survive. Communities have ordered language, establishing grammars and vocabularies that shape how people communicate with one another; they have ordered the exchange of money, property, and labor; and they have ordered the practice sex. As essayist, poet, and novelist Wendell Berry has put "Sex, like any other necessary, precious, and volatile power that is commonly held, is everybody's business."
In the last half-century, however, that assumption has been routed, replaced by the axioms of individualism and autonomy. Indeed, today the idea that sex "is everybody's business" sounds alternately shocking and silly. Instead, we are more prone to think like my friend Roxanne, who chuckles and says, "Look, we're two consenting adults. Why is what we do under the sheets anyone else's concern?"
There are, of course, some practical answers to Roxanne's question, not least that her sex is my business because sex can lead to babies, and the society that Roxanne and I share has a vested interest in defining and maintaining the family structures that care for babies.
But Roxanne and her boyfriend use condoms, so it is easy for her to dismiss any concern I might have about kids. Today, thanks to the Pill, we can generally (if not completely) sever the connection between sex and child-making; indeed, the advent reliable birth control was a major factor in privatizing sex in the West. "I'm not going to burden society with an unexpected and unwanted child," says Roxanne, "so I'm free to do what I want, right?”
To be honest, I appreciate Roxanne's rejection of my practical and pragmatic suggestion that sex is communal because babies are communal. Procreation ought not be severed from sexual conversation (we will return to procreation in the next apter); but arguing that sex is "everybody's business" only cause everybody is interested in preserving stable families which children can be reared is on some level a practical argument, and practical arguments are, finally, unsatisfying, cause they don't get at the core of what's at stake.
It is sometimes hard for me to talk to Roxanne about sex cause she and I don't share some basic assumptions. For starters the way I talk about sex is conditioned by the beginning of Genesis…Marriage serves as the biblical analogy par excellence to the relationship between God and His people…Marriage–because of what marriage is, the analogue to God and His relationship to His people–precedes sex. This ordering of marriage and sex–the understanding that marriage contains sex, rather than that sex adorns marriage–implies a resonance between sex and community.
But perhaps a more important disagreement between Roxanne and me has to do with individualism. The actors in Roxanne’s question are “two consenting adults,” unmoored from any community or society, free to make their own decisions. So long as they don’t violate the other’s consent, they can do as they please…
In a world where the basic unit of ethical meaning is the individual, Roxanne’s stance carries real weight. But in the Christian universe, the individual is not the vital unit of ethical meaning. For Christians, the most basic images, metaphors, and signs are corporate, and the basic unit of ethical meaning is the Body, the community…
The community has a role in making ethics. Paul makes this clear when he instructs the Galatians to hold one accountable for sin: “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
That passage in Galatians, if we construe it uncharitably, can lead us to envision a community that functions primarily as a police force: Christians’ responsibilities to one another begin and end with peering into other Christians’ bedroom windows and sounding the alarm if something illicit is going on.
While one task of any community is to enforce its own codes when they are being violated, perhaps the prior task of the community is to make sense of the ethical codes that are being enforced. Here the community is not so much cop as storyteller, telling and retelling the foundational stories of the community itself, sustaining the stories that make sense of the community’s norms. This storytelling is part of the working out of God’s grace in the church. We, the church, retell our own story–we do this every time we read scripture, every time we celebrate the Lords’ Supper, and (hopefully) every time we minister to one another. And that retelling is part of what enables us to live into the story. It is the community that ensures that ethics is not about the dispensing of cut-and-dried answers to moral questions, but that ethic is a story with meaning and power…
Speaking to one another about our sexual selves is just one (admittedly risky) instance of a larger piece of Christian discipleship: being community with each other.

Building Your Child’s  Self  Esteem:   Sense and Nonsense
James Robert Ross, Ph.D., LMFT

✹The Importance of Healthy Self Esteem
Most parents understand how important healthy self esteem is to the development and success of their children in life. Good self esteem promotes success in school, the ability to make friends and a healthy, enduring marriage, success in the work- place, and the ability to deal constructively with the hard knocks of life.
Because self esteem is so important to a child's development and future success in life, it
is understandable that parents are concerned. It is also understandable how there has come to
be so much said about building self esteem in a child. Although a lot of the things parents art
hearing about building self esteem in their children makes good sense, predictably a lot of it is
pure nonsense. But first, what makes sense?
First, let us clarify some confusion about this much discussed subject. Self esteem is not
the same as self centeredness or selfishness. As a matter of fact the person with the lowest self
esteem is likely to appear most self centered and unable to give of himself to others.  Rather,
self esteem refers to a deep belief in one's worth and competency, the feeling that I am ok
and that life is good and that I have something to contribute.

✹Essential Building Blocks for Healthy Self Esteem
There are three main sources of healthy self esteem. First, a person learns to feel safe and, therefore, accepted in the world during the first twenty-four to thirty-six months of life
through the experience of physical and emotional security.  Basic needs for food, cleanliness,
shelter and mental and emotional stimulation must be uniformly provided either by the parent
or by a consistently available parent substitute.  If a child lacks a safe, secure environment at
the earliest stage of development, he or she will experience life as threatening and unstable and
will grow up to feel incapable of facing the normal challenges of life.
Studies of the attachment of infants and toddlers to their primary care givers have
demonstrated the long terms negative consequences of a disruption of the consistent presence
of an attachment figure.  With extremely incompetent or abusive parenting self esteem is not only threatened, but a child's ability to trust the world, to trust other people, to trust himself, and to trust God is severely damaged by neglect, abuse, or abandonment at an early age.
Second, just as a person learns about his or her physical appearance by looking in a mirror so a child learns about his or her worth by looking into the faces of other people, especially
parents. If, when a child looks at a parent, he sees disgust and gloom in that face, then the impression is created in the child that he or she the cause of that negative reaction. The child says to himself or herself, “When I look at my parents they look bad; therefore, I must be bad."
On the other hand, if a child sees delight and gladness in the face of a parent, she
concludes that she must be a delightful person. When a child looks into a parent's face, she
needs to see that the parent looks upon her with utter delight. The parent's expression
should convey that this child is the most beautiful, wonderful, precious creature on the planet
earth.
Let me illustrate. My oldest daughter. Joy, has four children, the youngest, a daughter,
Sarah. When Sarah was a few months old, Joy called me full of excitement. Why? Just because she had discovered Sarah's first tooth! That, she thought, was a major miracle. Indeed, everything about her children are miracles to her. There is no way that those four children do not know that their mother, and father too, worship the ground they walk on. The parents' unabashed joy and pleasure in their children is an essential building block in healthy self esteem.
Third, in order for a person to feel good about herself, he must do well. Failure damages self esteem. Success and achievement feed self esteem.  On the other hand, if a child
does not do homework or if he gets F's in school or never does chores at home or mistreats
other people, then that child will naturally feel like a failure. Indeed, that child is a failure.  Success and achievement can take many forms. It does not necessarily mean being
valedictorian of the class or winning an Olympic gold metal. But when a two year old feeds
herself, or a five year old learns to tie a shoe, or an eight year old washes the dishes, or a
twelve year old mows the yard, the accomplishment of these tasks contributes to a feeling of
competency and self worth. Learning special skills in music, art or sports also boosts a
child's self esteem.
Therefore, if a child does not do his homework and thus fails at school, or if another child
does not do her chores or does not help with chores at home, these failures to fulfill their
responsibilities will severely damage their self esteem. There is no way they can feel good
when they have not done well.
Acceptable moral behavior is another important form of success and achievement. If your
child repeatedly and consistently lies to you or hits other children and if nothing is done to
interrupt this immoral behavior, the child will certainly feel bad. She should feel bad!  On the
other hand, when children learn to be kind and generous, when they learn not to cheat at
school and to share some of their allowance with hungry children, they will respect themselves
as decent human beings. When a parent fails to teach a child proper behavior and to
discipline for wrong behavior, that parent is ultimately insuring that his child will grow up
with terrible self esteem.
Self esteem is not built by always getting one's way nor by never experiencing hardship,
pain, or unhappiness. Indeed, the person who is shielded too much from the hard knocks of
life is likely to develop an exaggerated sense of his or her self importance. In the end the
failure to meet and overcome adversity will produce mere self centeredness rather that a
genuine, healthy self esteem.

✹The Difference Between Building Good Self Esteem and Spoiling a Child
We have all seen the child who wants everything, and he wants it now. If he does not get
it, he will make life miserable for everyone else. Although the parents at first say "no," they
finally give in. We say that they have "spoiled" the child.
How does this happen? Why do some parents raise a brat who ends up in trouble with the
police while others do a reasonably good job of taking a whinny, demanding, self centered two
year old and turning out a gentlemen or a lady at high school graduation?
Three factors contribute to spoiling a child as opposed to building healthy self esteem. First, if a child is extremely bright and strong willed, it will be easier to spoil her. If the child started talking before eighteen months of age, knew the ABC's by age three and understood all the big words which the parents spelled in front of her to try to keep some things private, then all this intelligence and energy may be devoted to getting her own way.
This is perfectly normal. Children, especially those born bold and adventuress,  naturally try to maximize and their own independence and pleasure without much reflection on how destructive it may be. One reason they have parents is so they will have appropriate limits set to
their normal attempts to do their own thing.
To the parents of these extremely bright and energetic children, who may feel that they
have not been good parents and that it must be something that they have done that makes their
children so difficult, I say, "God has given you a thoroughbred to train." In contrast to the
plow horses my father had on the farm, which were as docile as a puppy dog, a thoroughbred
horse is more talented but also more high strung. While almost anyone could have handled the
pair of horses we called Bob and Bill, it takes a real pro to train and ride a thoroughbred.
And it takes tremendous strength, talent, and dedication to train and discipline a very
bright, strong willed child. But unless that thoroughbred is trained, it will never win a race.
And unless your bright, adventuresome child has his energy channeled into constructive
activities, he will never accomplish much, and will in fact use his talent to manipulate you and
others for his own selfish ends. As a result he will hurt a lot of people and will probably get into a lot of trouble that can do nothing but damage his self esteem.
Second, sometimes parents are likely to spoil a child when the child has suffered a serious accident or disability or is disadvantaged in some way. Helen Keller is the classic example of the child spoiled by parents who felt sorry for her because she was deaf and blind. At one point Helen absolutely terrorized the whole family. But everyone felt too sorry for her to make her mind. Or they were convinced that her disabilities made it impossible for her to understand and obey as a normal child should.
Only when the parents hired a teacher who refused to treat her as if she were a pitiable invalid did Helen's terrible conduct improve. The teacher understood that sympathy was the last thing in the world that Helen needed. With an unwavering faith in Helen's potential she proceeded to demand of her the very best. As a result Helen Keller grew up to be one of the most productive, admired and respected citizens in this country.
Third, sometimes parents feel that they are not quite good enough. Usually they are
sensitive, dedicated parents, who feel that they owe their children the best of everything and
are willing to make any sacrifice to prove their love. The temptation to underestimate their
ability and a feeling that they must prove themselves can be a special temptation for
adoptive parents. Because some of these parents were unable to bear biological children, they
may feel, unjustifiably, that they are somehow or other not quite good enough. In addition, they may feel sorry because the adopted child may have been neglected, abused or abandoned by the natural parents. At any rate adoptive parents seem prone to the need to prove themselves, and,
therefore, they lean over backwards to make their children happy.
Divorced parents, who feel guilty about their divorce, are also vulnerable to not feeling
good enough and, therefore, needing to do something extra to prove that they are good
parents. Knowing how hard divorce is on a child, they over compensate by giving the child
special privileges. This seems to happen particularly to noncustodial parents.
However, guilt is the hook by which a child manipulates parents. In addition, because the
parents are already divided by the divorce, it becomes easy for the child to play one off against
the other. The result, again, is a spoiled child.
Fourth, there are some parents who are so personally insecure that they are afraid to make
any decision with which their child disagrees. These parents are so afraid of making a mistake
that they tend to set the rules or to make decisions which need to be made, and when they
do, they are easily intimidated into backing down. A power vacuum develops in the home,which is then filled by a strong willed child. I have seen homes where a tyrannical child ruled
and where parents were virtual prisoners of the spoiled child's unrestrained selfishness.
Any one or these situations is enough to lead to spoiling a child. But when two or three
factors come together in the same family, they can produce a real monster.

✹Two Myths About Self Esteem
• "Hardship damages self esteem."
This myth is easily refuted simply by pointing to some of our greatest heroes: Jesus,
Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr.  Clearly if the lives of these and countless other saints are any indication, hardship does not destroy self esteem. If anything, almost the exact opposite is true. High self esteem is developed only in the crucible of hardship and suffering. Speaking of the grief that the early Christians were suffering in their trials the Scripture  explains that, "These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which
perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory
and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed" (I Peter 1:7).
Malcolm Muggerridge expresses what most adults already know about the importance of
hardship. He writes in A Twentieth Century Testimony:
Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time
seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed,
everything I have learned, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my
existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness. If it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence, the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable.
If you take hardship away from your child, you rob the child of the most essential skills to
grow up into a strong, sensitive, capable adult. If you never let your boy climb a tree because
he might fall and hurt himself, or if you refuse to let the little league coach make him sit out
the big game because he was late to practice, or if you never make your daughter do what is
right even though it hurts, you are not building self esteem. You are simply keeping them
from life. You are guaranteeing that they will never grow up, that they will remain emotional
babies all their life.

•  "A parent should be best friends with a child."
It is true that children need friends. It is true that a child's self esteem can be severely damaged by the cruelty of other children. But it is a myth that parents should be a child's best
friend, at least while the child is growing up. (Being a friend to your adult child is another
matter entirely.)  Since a friend is someone in whom a person can confide and someone upon whose shoulder one can cry, pity the poor child who has to be a friend with mother or father.
Sometimes a parent complains to me that their children will not talk to them. When I hear this
complaint, I suspect that the child is simply resisting a parent who is trying, inappropriately, to
be friends with a child. If you really want a child to talk to you, don't try to be a friend. A
child will want to talk to you because you are older and wiser and sympathetic and
understanding, not because you are a "friend."

✹ Guidelines for Building Self Esteem
•    Look at your child, ask questions, and paraphrase statements. Remember to look with your eyes.

•    Don't distract yourself with details
•    Don't try to fix things
•    Accepting your child builds self-esteem
•    Focus only on changing behavior that is important to change, i.e. behavior that isolates or harms him/her or disrupts the family
•    Avoid backhanded praise. This mixes praise and insult.
•    Say, “Thanks for finishing your chores,” instead of, “It’s about time.”
•    Value your children by listening to them and acknowledging their feelings.
•    Communicate with your child’s teacher teachers, but don’t try to solve problems the child might have with a teacher.
•    Never compare your child to anyone else, especially a sibling.
•    Set and enforce fair and reasonable boundaries
•    Last and most certainly not least, maintain your sanity and keep yourself under control.

Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children's Defense Fund, is also the daughter,
granddaughter, aunt, and sister of Baptist ministers. Her father died when she was 14. Her
mother, who cooked for all the elderly in the church, even after she was older than most of
them, had this philosophy: "I did not promise the Lord that was going part of the way. I
promised him I was going all the way until he tells me otherwise."
Marian published a letter to her children in which she shares with them some of the most
important lessons she learned growing up in South Carolina. Some of these lessons are:
• There is no free lunch. Don't feel entitled to anything you don't sweat and struggle for.
• Never work just for money or for power.
• Don't be afraid of taking risks or being criticized.
• Be honest.
• Never give up.
• You are in charge of your own attitude.
• Always remember that you are never alone.

When your children learn to live by these very wise lessons, they will develop the healthy
self esteem and self respect that will assure them of true success in life, where success is
defined in spiritual rather than monetary or materialistic terms.

Forgiveness: The Spiritual Task of Marriage

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you (Ephesians 4:32).

Mature adults have the ability to tolerate imperfection and frustration without expecting that other people are there primarily to provide instant happiness and gratification.  On the other hand, take a look at a typical eighteen month old toddler.  When he sees something pretty, he wants to play with it–now, not later.  When he is hungry, he expects to be fed–now, not later.  When he feels like peeing, he lets go–now, not later.  And he expects everyone around him to do whatever is necessary to make him happy without a thought as to whether they might be tired or hungry.  That is immaturity, and the more that describes either or both partners in a marriage, the more certainly they will have a tremendously painful and unhappy marriage.

In spite of the fairy tales and love songs, no husband is a perfect prince charming, and no wife is a perfect angel.  Good marriages are those in which the partners learn humility, patience and forbearance, the willingness to accept each other, including everything from wrinkles and varicose veins to bad breath and forgetfulness, without bitterness and without trying to make each other over into a storybook image.  We must, in a word, grow up, not just physically or even emotionally, but spiritually.  We must, in a word, come to be more like God, and coming to be like God means learning to forgive.

To the extent that couples learn to forgive one another, then to that extent have they not only developed individual maturity but they will have also developed a truly spiritual marriage.  Many books giving advice about building a Christian home mention prayer, Bible reading and church attendance, all of which are good habits.  However, it is possible to do all these things without being one very spiritual.  Indeed, I have seen spouses use all of these religious activities in a most unChristlike manner.

Forgiveness is another matter, and that does not mean merely repeating the words, "I forgive you."  It means really doing it.  Of course, when it comes to forgiveness, God is the only one who knows how to do it very well.  Forgiveness for us mortals is always fragmented, partial, grudging.  Even when we think we have completely forgiven someone, we often discover  ourselves feeling some residual resentment, or perhaps we tend to repeat the story of the injury, a definite sign of the inadequacy of our forgiveness.  The truth is that when you truly forgive another person, a person who has unjustly hurt you, you are at that moment actualizing in this world a little bit of the power and love of God.

No question, forgiveness is hard.  Indeed, apart from the grace of God, it is impossible.  So, here are a few suggestions to set you on the right path.

(1) Clarify your hurt and validate your anger.  If you have not been hurt unjustly, forgiveness is not an issue.  Before you can forgive, you must be able honestly to say, "Yes, I have been wronged.  I deserved better, and I have a right to be
angry."  Forgiveness is not excusing.

(2) Pray for what Lewis Smedes calls "magic eyes."  Reframe your partner as weak and needy; look for the child, who is always a part of us no matter how old we are.  Try to see this person as hurting rather than someone who just hurts you.   Forgiveness is an act of grace dispensed by a superior, or at least an equal, of the person who has committed the offense.  One problem in marriage is that spouses tend to "parentify" each other.  That is, they see each other and respond to each other like a child would respond to a parent.  When a spouse is critical, they experience it as if it were punishment from an angry parent.  Forgiveness then becomes well nigh impossible.  That is why a demand for forgiveness from a parent for the abuse of a child or a demand for forgiveness from a domineering and abusive husband is totally inappropriate.  If your husband is abusive, verbally or physically, the abuse must stop and a relationship of equality and respect must be established before forgiveness can be properly implemented.

But assuming that abuse is not part of the picture, in order to forgive your partner, you must learn to see her or him as a frightened, weak and needy child.  You must understand that underneath some of your spouse's most obnoxious behavior is a scared little girl or boy.  Once you understand that, once you can see beneath the anger or the irritating behavior, forgiveness becomes a possibility.

This ability to see the person who has hurt you as week and needy requires considerable strength on your part.  It is truly a reflection of divine power (Ps 78:38-39; Luke 23:24; Acts 7:60; 2 Tim 4:16).

(3) Make a decision to forgive.  You don't have to wait until you feel perfectly loving and kind to begin forgiveness.  Perhaps you do not feel like forgiving your partner, even though you believe that ought to do so, and it is, in fact, what you want to do if only you had the strength.  Then decide to do it.  In forgiveness the mind and the will are primary.  Don' not pay too much attention to the emotions.  Indeed, when it comes to forgiveness you must ignore your feelings and simply do it.

(4) Pronounce absolution:  "In the name of Christ I forgive you."  This is not something you actually say aloud to your partner, not unless he or she asks for it.  We all know how a declaration of forgiveness can be used as a way to say pharisaically and condescendingly, "Just to prove how much nicer I am than you, I will forgive you of that awful thing you did."   The declaration of forgiveness is something you do for yourself to help you implement your decision.  Say it aloud, or better yet, write it in your journal.

(5) Pray for your partner, and ask God to bless him or her.  Nothing helps forgiveness along more than prayer for the person who has hurt you.  When you are most inclined to obsess about how you have been hurt, simply make a decision to do something nice for your partner.  A  word or a written note of appreciation for something good that you see in your  partner, or a small gift or favor is what I have in mind.  I realize that when you are thinking of your hurt, the last thing you want to do is be kind, but if you intend to forgive, the prescription to help you accomplish this supernatural act is to do the very opposite of what you feel like.  When you feel most like getting revenge, then do the opposite. "Fake it til you make it."

Finally, repeat all the steps above again–and again, and again.

From his cell in a Nazi prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer ( Letters and Papers from Prison) addressed the following encouragement to his sister on the occasion of her wedding:

"God intends you to found your marriage on Christ.  'Wherefore receive ye one another, even as Christ also receive you, to the glory of God.'"  In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage can survive.  Don't insist on your rights, don't blame each other, don't judge or condemn each other, don't find fault with each other, but take one another as you are, and forgive each other every from the bottom of your hearts."

Marital Maturity and Self Soothing

The ability to soothe oneself during times of tension and conflict with a spouse is critical to the maintenance of a healthy, intimate relationship.  This ability is directly correlated with the degree of one's personal maturity or differentiation.  The mature and well differentiated person is one who feels secure and who feels ok with himself or herself without other people's approval.  When there is tension or conflict, this person neither withdraws nor attacks but stays in the relationship while maintaining one's integrity.
An inspiring illustration of this is found in the civil rights movement when Martin Luther King, Jr., and others refused to accept the unjust discrimination of a segregated society, i.e. they were people of integrity, while at the same time they refused to attack or to withdraw from those who opposed them.  While they were viciously attacked by their racist opponents they were able to remain calm, i.e. to soothe themselves, and they continued to stay in relationship with their neighbors without either attacking or withdrawing.
When there is conflict, married couples need this kind of strength to calm or soothe themselves.  Various styles of self-soothing have been classified into distinct categories which correspond to different levels of differentiation. These patterns are listed below (beginning with the most differentiated).  Rate yourself.

• When there is tension between you and your partner, you are able to self-soothe while at the same time trying to repair any fracture or bad feelings with your partner.

• When you become upset, you break contact with your partner for brief periods of self-soothing, focusing on other interests to replenish yourself, and then within a few minutes renew your efforts to regain connection with your partner.

• At this level your attempts to reestablish connection become less frequent, and you find it difficult not to attack or to withdraw into yourself perhaps without speaking to your partner.

• When you are upset, you may not make any attempt to connect with your partner for several hours.  You go to bed angry and wake up angry.

• At this point you actively avoid your partner, sometimes for several days at a time, and if your partner attempts to repair the connection with you, you either ignore him or her or renew your attacks upon him or her.

• At the lowest level of differentiation and maturity your functioning is severely affected by the disruption in connection with your partner.  All you can do is obsess about how badly you have been treated and how you wish you were not in this relationship.

If you are at one of the lower levels of maturity and differentiation, the good news is that you don't have to remain there.  Growth is possible.  Think about the times when you have been at least moderately successful in calming yourself and maintaining the connection with your spouse.  The point is to attempt to repeat these small successes.  Pay attention to yourself, and talk with your counselor about some effective techniques to soothe yourself.

Can My Marriage Be Saved?

I had been asked the question many times:  "Do you think there is any hope for our marriage?"  The couple in my office assume that I am an expert in marital health and disease and that I can, therefore, make a realistic estimate of the chances of the survival of their marriage.

It is not, however, that simple.  Physicians have learned that the outcome of an illness sometimes depends as much on the person who has the disease as upon the disease itself.  If that is true for physical illness, it is one hundred times more true for relationship difficulties.  Can this marriage be saved?  Well, that depends very, very much upon the two people in this particular marriage.

Even though I cannot tell you for sure the chances of getting to your golden anniversary, I can tell you some things that are true about the couples who avoid the divorce court.

YOU WILL DEAL WITH YOUR ANGER WELL.  Couples whose marriages last and who experience any degree of happiness have learned to recognize, acknowledge and deal with their anger.  For example, if one of them, usually the husband, has a tendency to "stonewall" or to avoid his wife when she is upset, the chances are better than average that their marriage will not  last.

This does not mean that they simply unload on each other any time they feel like it.  But it does mean that they have found a way to disagree without destroying each other.

YOU WILL GROW UP.  Marriage is hard work.  It is not a job for a child.  And when couples are psychologically immature, the chances are good that they will split.

Psychological maturity is partially a function of age.  But it is more than that.  Some people eighteen years old are obviously more mature that others who are thirty–or fifty.  What makes a person mature is primarily the ability to tolerate imperfection and frustration without expecting that other people are there primarily to make him happy.

Take a look at a typical eighteen month old toddler.  When he sees something pretty, he wants to play with it, now, not later.  When he is hungry, he expects to be fed, now, not later.  When he feels like urinating, he lets go, now, not later.  And he expects everyone around him to do whatever is necessary to make him happy without a thought as to whether they might be tired or hungry.  That is immaturity.  And the more that describes you or your spouse, the greater the likelihood that you will be on your own before long.

In spite of what the fairy tales and the love songs say, no husband is a perfect prince charming, and no wife is a perfect angel.  Marriages that last are those in which the partners learn to accept each other, warts and all, without bitterness and without trying to make each other over into a storybook image.

YOU CAN STICK TO YOUR COMMITMENT.  When people get married, they make promises to one another, but whether they follow through is something no one can predict.  Will your marriage last?  Even when everything about it turns sour, if you are bound and determined to stick it out, then you just do it.  That does not necessarily mean you will be happy.  But it means that you have a fighting chance to make something beautiful happen between you.  You see, people who bail out when the first clouds darken the sky never get a chance to see if their boat can weather a real storm.

Can your marriage be saved?  How well do you handle your anger?  Have you grown up?  And can you stick with your commitment?

Answer for yourself.