If you are reading this article, it is likely that you have been experiencing emotional distress that you acknowledge is connected to your marriage relationship. Perhaps you feel extreme tension and frustration towards your spouse that has lingered too long. Or maybe you are experiencing a lack of feeling in the relationship such as numbness, loneliness or disconnect.
What is “Normal” in a Marriage?
When you experience strong negative feelings or disconnect in your marriage, you may ask yourself if your struggles are “normal”. This question can itself be the cause of further uneasiness. However, it is an important question to ask yourself, as recognizing the problem is the first step toward the solution. Are you truly aware of what is normal? Is your definition of “normal” accurate? Let yourself analyze whether your marriage is normal. It is ok.
It is important to understand that every marriage, even “Christian” marriages, have problems. Every individual struggles against sin and temptation, so it is impossible to have a marriage that is not affected by the struggles of the married individuals. Two sinners living life together in a sin-filled world with opposing needs is a recipe for challenges. There are no exceptions to this reality.
The Emotional Intensity of Marriage Conflict
Perhaps you can readily acknowledge the reality of conflict, challenges, and/or struggles in marriage as normal. In an intellectual sense, you know marriage is hard in this way. However, the intensity of your emotional experience overwhelms you. You may experience times where frustration feels like hatred, or disconnect bleeds into feelings of painful rejection or abandonment. In moments like these, strong feelings can override your ability to be rational. You may think, say, or do things that make things worse. This can lead to further confusion, guilt, shame, and estrangement.
Unless you are an AI chatbot, you have almost certainly experienced something like this in your marriage relationship. It is very important for you to know that this is normal in an intimate human relationship. Why?
Creatureliness and Attachment
There are many reasons for this, but one reason is that we are creatures that are designed to desire and thrive in meaningful relationships with others. We are social animals – the crown of God’s creation – whose very survival depends on interdependence with others in our species. God created us this way. We are “hard-wired” with a capacity and need to give and get, to be part of a team, to love and be loved, to sacrifice and to have others make sacrifices for us. We are made for connection and we depend on it to survive and feel secure.
The Fight, Flight, Freeze or Fawn Response
When tumult and emotional drama emerge in our most significant relationships to others, this triggers our survival instincts because we feel threatened at a deep level. Deep needs, like the need to survive, naturally exist alongside deep feelings. Our marriages are supposed to be the safest, most dependable place to experience connection on earth. So, when this safety is threatened by normal conflicts and struggles, we tend to overreact. This is the “fight or flight” response (which may also include the freeze and fawn responses) coming out in the marriage relationship.
We can find ourselves vehemently pursuing the partner to gain the assurance we need (fight), or find ourselves running away (flight) from the negative emotions of the other person. The intensity of the “dance” as each partner struggles to gain equilibrium and return to safety in the relationship can feel extreme. It can feel like life or death, all cylinders running, desperate and scary.
If you are a human, you have the fight or flight response programmed into your neurobiology. The capacity for your “emergency response system” is innate; you are born with it. However, how your fight or flight responses are expressed has to do with your environment, personality, and other factors. It has to do with your upbringing, your early experiences, traumas, and attachments, especially to parental figures or caregivers. Behavioral science demonstrates that your earliest attachments cement your programming, while subsequent experiences create opportunities for you (and others) to either reinforce these programmed and learned responses or eliminate them.
This process is what gives shape and definition to each individual and to your unique marriage. In other words, the learned behaviors of each spouse come together in a unique recipe that results in a fusion with its own flavor. In a sense, the marriage itself takes on a life of its own. Understanding your marriage’s specific style, dance, and flavor is vital to improving your marriage bond.
For example:
- Do you pursue/pressure/chase after your spouse during an argument?
- Do you hide from your spouse’s anger?
- Do you avoid any acknowledgement of conflict, hoping it will just go away without the need for a difficult discussion?
- Do you notice that you freeze during conflict and withdraw?
- What is difficult, particularly for you, in your marriage?
- What is difficult for your partner?
- What has improved your ability to work through difficulties?
- What elements leave your marriage “stuck” and unable to move forward?
- Do you pretend or deny that there is a problem when conflict emerges?
Become a Student of Your Marriage “Entity”
Each partner is responsible for becoming a student of the collective marriage “entity.” Furthermore, our heavenly Father has appointed you both as a team to be responsible for the project of your marriage. It is up to you to “crack the case”, problem solve, develop strategies, and build wisdom that will allow your marriage to thrive.
I encourage you to summon up the bravery to take a look at your own marriage “entity” and become an expert on its strengths, weaknesses, history, and prognosis. Ask the Lord God to assist you in order that you may become a fine steward of his great gift of marriage. Trust in His willingness and ability to accomplish this through you as you step out in courage and truth.
Written by: Nancy Messner
nancy@restorationcounselingatl.com
678-534-3824, ext.130
Nancy (Buckhead, Roswell and online) has a passion for working with individuals and couples as they strive to face life’s challenges. She has been married for 28 years to a pastor, and they have five children (ages 12-23). Nancy offers an objective, understanding, and non-judgmental atmosphere where individuals and couples can work on healing and growing under the light of God’s truth. She received her training from Wheaton College in 1999, further graduate work at Liberty University, and has lived in Atlanta for eleven years.