Revealing the Truth in Love

Back to Case Study 14 and the situation this case represents. Let's look at the man's scores first. Some of his highest scores or the least amount of trouble he dealt with are: C envy (22), D boast (19), G self-seeking (22). He started to have some troubles in: B kind (16), E pride (14), F rude (18), I keep record of wrong (18), and JK delight in evil (18) which shows he is negative most of the time. He had some difficulty with: N hope (16), and O persevere (15), tending to think everything was his responsibility. He had to do everything on his own power and strength. How he persevered was using emotional abuse and manipulation. He had the most trouble with: A patience (11), H easily angered (11), and L protects (12) which is a very key issue, and another key issue was M trust (11), as well as the last element of love, P fails (13). His personality type was both active, right and wrong, do it now, and sincere. So, his motives were ultimately good, but the low score you look for is on pride. Sincerity is a potential or an actual reality, but they have never been confronted by why they appear to be prideful (passive). This unknown element will show in responses to how they deal with the issues. And as I explain more of this, you'll see that he really wrestled with submission, and did submit finally.  But he had a deeply entrenched pattern of manipulation or emotional abuse which was very destructive, placing his fun, humor and making fun of other people (his wife) in place of seeking security in God, that he had never faced. And the man was in his late 40s, though learned to act out his insecurities from watching his father (attention seeking behaviors), laughing at his wit and arrogance of pulling jokes as a coping mechanism and now found it very hard to address this pattern. 

Now let's look at the woman's scores. The places where she had the least amount of trouble were: C envy (22), D boast (20), G self-seeking (17), I keep a record (19), and L protects (16) which contrasts with his score of 12. That meant that in the relationship, she didn't have a tendency to be sarcastic or caustic verbally. And yet, when I describe the details, she was initially labeled as the problem in the marriage, not him at all. She had some trouble with: A patience (13), B kind (14), E pride (16), F rude (15), H easily angered (12), N hopes (13). Her lowest scores were: J-K delight in evil (11) which is being negative, M trust (9), not trusting God and doing things on her own strength. Because of all those tendencies, she feels like a failure, P fail (10) while lacking in a sincere relationship with God. 

These two individuals had been married about 17 years, and there were lots of things that had happened over that time that were never addressed. I indirectly knew these clients over a period of years through some other acquaintances. I would see them two or three times a month, for an hour or so each time. Just observing them, I knew there was something wrong for about five years before they actually came to me for counseling. You may find acquaintances you know come to you for counseling, since they know a little about you and their friends trust you.  Don’t decline their request immediately and don’t say “yes” too quickly; take time to seek the counsel of the Lord for discernment, that may also include setting some clear boundaries.

The man was typically a joker or a clown, the life of the party, likable person, always making jokes that were a bit to the extreme. For example, he would go into a store with his wife and fake having a heart attack or becoming sick, by lying down on the floor, moaning and acting it all out dramatically. Often, he pretended that he was going to do something illegal in the store around the clerks. And in a few cases, the clerks went to the manager, who called the police, who arrested him. In one instance, they were actually handcuffed, both of them, and led out of the store into a patrol car. After questioning them, they were being released and walked past friends, acquaintances and people from their church. He felt like this was relatively okay. He had witnessed his father and brother doing the same types of things. The family had a reputation of being jokesters. They all did this out of an insecurity covered by arrogance that is evidenced in the low score on pride. 

He was blind to how destructive and disrespectful this was and how he hurt his wife. Rather than protecting his wife, his behavior caused her anger. He subjected his wife to shame and ridicule, and disregarded her need to be protected as a representative of the Lord. She could not feel respect, admiration, or feel safe with him. His spiritual issues especially dealt with trust. He didn't have a sense of trust in God, that he didn't have to be the clown, or the brunt of the jokes. Also, he had a sense of needing to perform, in order to be valued. He persevered by being the clown, literally sacrificing his own sense of worth, while turning a deaf ear to the Holy Spirit. Also, he had some issues with love never fails, which basically means he felt like a failure. That was the motivation for his tendency to always be the clown, and make everybody happy so that he would feel secure. This pervasive trait was generational from his father. 

When you look at her scores, she has an Active personality, so she deals with right and wrong, no grey areas. When he would do these clowning things, her first reaction would be to say things that were cutting, cruel, pushy, naggy, sarcastic, and disrespectful. I observed this many times before I met them in counseling. Some would say she kept him “in line”. She had been trying to get his attention, and talk to him about his behavior for a long time, and it just didn't work. She had gone far past any sort of gentleness. Instead, she was frustrated, bitter, angry and insecure. Part of her issues came from growing up in a home where the father was an active elder in the church, and he was supposed to represent what God is like. Her father was very strong willed, and her mother was passive. She watched her father be disrespectful to her mother, and decided at an early age that she would not take that sort of treatment from anybody. She got very rebellious against her father, and rejected his Christianity. She saw a lot of things in her parents that were hypocritical. Her parents impacted the way she treated her husband and possibly some of the reasons for her low scores on J-K Delights in Evil, M Trusts - P Never Fails.  She had her reasons for not respecting him, since in his life there were some things he shouldn’t have been involved with, because they were very sinful, destructive things that should have never happened outside of his marriage. 

She became very cynical and critical and wasn't saved, and then saw within her husband a man that professed a lot of the same things that dad did, but had destructive behaviors, that he didn't seek to change. He emulated her father a lot, but never got involved in adultery. But as I spoke to him about abuse, I said to him, “You have been adulterous to your wife spiritually.” They came to me for counseling because of her involvement in adultery. As I talked to them, I learned that there had been more than one time. He knew about them all and was very incensed. His statement was, “I put up with this a few times, and I don't have to take this anymore. She doesn't want to be a Christian, and I've just had it!  I will get a divorce, because I have grounds. I have a right.” There were three kids involved. He came first and she wasn't going to. I talked about divorce and his feelings of betrayal. When she learned that he was considering divorce, she came to be part of the decisions that would affect her. 

As you notice in their story, the presenting issue (her adultery) was not the rock in the rock and ripple metaphor.  Neither was his “manipulative, emotional abuse behaviors” the rock or identified as the problems.  Only after a handful of sessions, when I explained their personality types, their tendencies and explained their scores on the concepts of Agape love, where his emotional abuse tendencies come to the surface. I had to explain how he embarrassed her by his actions in public to get people to see him as funny (attention seeking). She commented that people always come up and laugh, and they'll say, how do you stand it? He's such a clown. She had the deepest wound and the deepest bitterness, she said to me, “You know, that's the absolute truth. How do you stand somebody that never fulfills your needs for security, for your ability to respect him, to have a desire to want to be in the relationship, because he is constantly a clown. He is never serious about anything. Even when I try to get serious, he gets cruel and nasty, defensive and argumentative.” She said, “How do you stand that? I don't want to stand that anymore. I don't want to be in this.”

One of the times that I had been around him, he was with his mother. They were reminiscing about an incident she experienced with her husband and her three sons. They all knew his mother was going to have a friend come into town, so they decided to do something to play a joke on her that was in very, very poor taste. When the wife brought the friend home, who was visiting from out of town, they chose to play this prank, and it embarrassed the woman tremendously. And later, the wife went to the husband and said, “Why did you do that?” And he said to her, “Don't be stupid. There was nothing wrong with that. It's just fine. You're being silly.” He totally ignored her and the son had the same pattern. 

I talked to him about this situation to illustrate that you can be abusive, unfaithful to your vows to respect and to treat your wife with honor and dignity. It is wrong to deny your spouse’s words of explanation and tell them that they're being stupid for thinking something's wrong with it. Now this absolutely incensed him, because what I said was, this can happen. And he said, “No, that's stupid. That's not so! This thing I did with my brothers and dad was not wrong. It was just a joke. You're making a bunch of junk out of nothing.” I said, “Well, let me give you one other way to look at this.” I said, “Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go back and ask your mother about this incident, ask her if she remembers it. Ask her what she felt. I'll tell you what I heard her say about how she felt. I was at her house the other day, and somehow, we got talking about your dad and all of the silly stuff he did and how much fun he was. 

Now, remember, this was over 20 years ago that you guys did this. Your mother started talking to me about this, and she broke down and wept like a baby. She didn't just sort of cry. She was hurt and she cried hard for about 10 or 15 minutes. Here's a bottom line to what she said to me, ‘I tried to talk to him, he told me I was being stupid and making a mountain out of a molehill. He hurt me deeply to this day, because he wouldn't listen. As good as our marriage was, there were places where I hated it, because there were places where he embarrassed me, at church, in front of friends, and he wouldn't listen. He never listened for years and years and years and years. I regret that we couldn't resolve that, because it was a place where I couldn't be close to him. I couldn't trust him, and I felt that he was unfaithful to me because of the emotional torment and anguish I'd go through and the inability to resolve the problem.” 

The male client got furious. He said, “That's a stinking lie. She never said that. That never bothered her. Dad had never hurt her.” I said, “Go ask her, and then come back. And if you ask her, and she says, it is so, then you think and pray about how your impatience, your pride, you're being easily angered, you're not being protective in how you act and how you speak. You're not trusting God to help you face the real reason you're like this with your problems and your insecurities. How you dump on your wife and mistreat her with playing the clown and acting stupid. You need to think and pray about your sense of failure, and your sense of being not good enough. Ask God if that is what is wrong, and if it is, you repent. You get down on your belly if you need to, and you ask God to forgive you. And then you go to your wife and you tell her you've been wrong and ask her to forgive you. Because if you don't do that, then nothing is going to change.” And he had said to me before that part of the discussion that he was hurt so badly. And I said, “Okay, you tell me this, which sin is worse? Worse the sin of adultery, or the sin of pride, impatience, emotional abuse, being easily angered and not trusting God. He said, “Well, of course, hers is worse. She has committed adultery.” 

He went and talked to his mother, and she repeated exactly what I had said, and he was absolutely destroyed, and he did think and pray. He was genuinely sincere, but he had never faced that part of the problem, and no one had ever explained it to him. Nothing had ever really revealed it, and his wife didn't have a good way to deal with him. He came back a radically different man, and he said to me, “You're right and I'm wrong, and I've been wrong for a long time.” He was shocked when he realized that the same sort of patterns for how he treated his wife were also evident in his children. He realized that what his wife had been telling him was true, and not only had he been that way to her, but he had been teaching the kids how to be the same way.