Pastor, Our Marriage Is in Trouble

A Guide to Short-Term Counseling

CharlesL. Rassieur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317756941
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Salute mentale in psicologia

Acting with genuine care and concern, pastors can be effective in helping married couples resolve difficulties and discover reconciliation, joy, and love. The question often is, "How do I do it?" In Pastor, Our Marriage Is in Trouble, Charles L. Rassieur, an experienced counselor, outlines a step-by-step approach that takes the pastor from beginning to end in a process of short-term intervention and counseling. A helpful tool in the process is the Pastoral Marriage Counseling Questionnaire, which can be used in gathering essential information about both spouses and their relationships. In addition, you'll find important information about:

• a rationale for the need and opportunity for pastoral intervention in troubled marriages
• how the marriage counseling process begins with the initial pastoral contact with one or both spouses
• help for the pastor in preparing for individual counseling sessions with each spouse
• important topics for marriage counseling regardless of which approach or model is used
• the last two sessions of counseling: deciding whether to end counseling, to refer the couple to other professional resources, or to contract with the couple for further counseling sessions

1

INTRODUCTION TO PASTORAL MARRIAGE COUNSELING

He answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one …’? So they are no longer two but one.… What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”

–Matthew 19:4–6

Mary Fordham often came into the church office during the week as she made preparations for the youth choir she directed. One day Pastor Elizabeth Boyd came out of her private office at the time that Mary was entering the church office, and they had a chance to exchange a few words. Immediately, Elizabeth sensed that something was troubling Mary very much. Because they were standing where others could hear their conversation, Elizabeth invited Mary into her own office.

As soon as the door was closed, Elizabeth said, “Mary, is something on your mind? Are you upset? You don’t seem like yourself this morning.” There was a long pause as Mary looked into her pastor’s eyes for understanding. Then she started to cry.

“Yes, I’m very upset. Tom and I had another fight last night, and neither one of us got much sleep afterward. I didn’t want to admit it to myself before, but now I must face it. Our marriage is really in trouble! We’ve tried everything we could think of over the last six months, but things have only gone from bad to worse!”

Most pastors can easily recall circumstances and conversations with parishioners similar to this one. The continuing mystery is that in God’s wisdom a woman and a man, as different as they are, fulfill one of the fundamental laws of creation by choosing to be lifelong partners. And the continuing reality, despite illusions to the contrary created by the rituals and dances of courtship, is that marriage has more potential for conflict than any other relationship a person can enter. The irony is that the person we choose for our life’s partner because he or she seems so ideal can become the source of the greatest hurt and pain we may ever experience. Perhaps Paul had reached a similar conclusion when, in the first century, he cautioned others with the observation that “those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that” (1 Cor. 7:28b).

Unfortunately, the alarming rate of divorce today confirms Paul’s recognition of the worldly troubles experienced by married persons. Although divorce statistics are not precise indicators of the health of contemporary marriage, researchers have found disturbing trends in the divorce rates of this century. In the nineteenth century, nearly every marriage ended by the death of one of the partners; divorce was quite rare. In this century, divorce rates began to rise in the mid-1940s, with a peak in 1979 and 1981. Sociologist Randall Collins has reached the discouraging conclusion that, based on the trends of the past decade, almost half of all new marriages in the coming years will end in divorce. And half of those divorced couples will have been married fewer than eight years.¹ However, the latest data reflect a recent decline in the national divorce rate of 4 percent between 1985 and 1986, bringing the rate to where it was in 1975.²

If divorce statistics have changed dramatically, so also have the currents and forces in society that affect the stability of marriages. Certainly, any accounting of the major influences on marriage today must include at least half a dozen new trends.

1. The phenomenon of living together. As recently as three decades ago a couple’s cohabiting was referred to, rather disdainfully, as a common-law marriage. It was not respectable, and “nice people” did not do it! Now the young adult children of “nice people” quite commonly cohabit, or live together, as it is popularly called. One result of this recent change in accepted courting behaviors is that many young adults are postponing marriage. They have found a widely accepted means for intimacy and companionship without the obligations of a permanent commitment. Pastors will no doubt have increasing opportunities to do relationship counseling with such couples. For some pastors a special effort will be needed in order to set aside previous prejudices and offer sensitive pastoral care to couples who have chosen to delay making the traditional matrimonial commitments to each other.

2. Young adults choosing career over marriage. Not all young adults are living with a partner without the benefit of a wedding ceremony. But many young adults are delaying marriage because they want to continue their education or devote their energy to a promising career. Contraception and abortion have made sexual relations more common among young adults, and certainly marriage is not required for one to find partners for sexual expression. Many young adults prefer to become well established professionally and financially before making permanent commitments for marriage and family. Most pastors are seeing fewer couples marry before they are twenty, and an increasing number of couples are twenty-five or older before they are ready to commit themselves to marriage.

3. Women returning to school and careers. During World War II it was a necessity for women to leave home and go into the nation’s factories. Fortunately we are not now at war, but for economic and personal reasons, fewer women are remaining at home. In fact, many couples feel it is a financial necessity for the wife to be a breadwinner also. An increasing number of women are either returning to college or moving directly into the work force, sometimes even before their children begin school. Thus, it is not remarkable to face the problem, as a middle-aged couple did in my office, of his depression about declining in his career at the same time she was enjoying the excitement of finishing her education and entering a new profession. It was quite difficult, because of their contrasting personal and professional situations, for them to be very sensitive and supportive of each other.

4. Public and professional concern for physical and sexual abuse in marriage. The well-kept secret about domestic abuse is a secret no longer. Physical and sexual abuse within marriage has become a matter of intense professional concern. Fortunately, a woman is much more likely now to receive the attention of a sympathetic professional if she goes to a police officer or a counselor to seek help because she is being beaten by her husband. Basic attitudes are changing among professional helpers, including clergy. Not long ago, if a woman went to a clergyman to say that her husband was assaulting her and she was afraid for her safety, the pastor would send her home with the admonition to “pray for your husband and be more submissive so you can make his life easier, because obviously he is under a lot of pressure to provide a living and a home for his family.” Now the responsible professional helping person, clergy included, will consider referring the woman to a shelter, if necessary, and sending both partners to a center or agency that specializes in the treatment of domestic abuse. The emergence of greater public awareness in this critical area cannot but have a major impact on future marriages and help ensure safer marriages for more people.

5. The rise in “blended families.” The consistently high incidence of divorce since World War II means that a greater number of single parents with children will remarry. Although the famous television family, the Brady Bunch, was portrayed as having a happy living arrangement, that is not typically the case for many blended families. Marriage with built-in children, often children in their teens, carries many hidden pitfalls. For example, the joining of two families can easily confuse parenting roles. The creation of a blended family is more than the union of two adults; it is frequently the merging of two quite different family histories and cultures. Nonetheless, if the blended family can be made to work, it offers a rich opportunity for some children, who might not otherwise have a family, to enjoy the advantages and the challenges of being reared in the security of a two-adult home.

6. Increasing mobility and depersonalization within suburban culture. Three decades ago Gibson Winter asserted, “We are the uprooted. We are the producers of things and the servants of machines. We live with things, ideas, and prices. We rarely have time to live with people.”³ The sprawling suburban culture of middle-class middle-management America shockingly reflects Winter’s analysis. Living at a hectic pace just to stay even with their upwardly mobile neighbors, middle-class Americans are too busy to understand, much less to practice and experience, very much of the meaning of intimacy. Too often couples and their children only nod to each other as they pass outside the bathroom or in front of the refrigerator. Many families sit down together to a meal only three times a year: Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. And for two of those meals, a televised football game may be turned on at the same time.

Within such a rootless and impersonal society, marriage loses some of its basic and essential anchors. The paradox is often true that married persons who cannot be intimate with others also cannot find intimacy between themselves. The loss of intimacy, and the inability to know how to find intimacy or create it, is the single greatest crisis facing modern marriage today.

The Pastor’s Opportunity

Confronted by so many contemporary threats to the stability of modern marriages, what can a pastor do that will make any difference? It is commonplace for clergy to feel virtually powerless. Especially do they often despair at making a serious attempt at premarital counseling. Too many times a pastor may feel that a potential marriage is questionable but will go ahead with the ceremony because the couple would just go somewhere else to be married if this pastor did not do it. Likewise, when couples show signs of significant marital stress and strain, many clergy discount the significance of their role as intervenors in comparison with such other professionals as psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers.

However, unlike other helping professionals, the pastor moves into people’s lives with the authority of one who teaches the fundamental values that undergird marriage. Whether or not parishioners agree, they respect their pastor as someone who has knowledge, expertise, and authority in matters of values and faith. This authority is inherent in the pastoral office, even though we live in an age that is suspicious and questioning of most authority. Thus, it must be emphasized that intrinsic spiritual authority, coupled with the right of professional initiative, offers the pastor greater accessibility to troubled marriages than any other helping professional can claim. Speaking as a psychologist with many years’ experience as a consultant to clergy, Paul Pruyser identified what he calls “the pastoral right of initiative and access” and asserted, “I have begged ministers always to be aware of this right as one of their most unique and valuable functional assets.”⁴

Thomas Oden is equally convinced that the pastor’s freedom and responsibility to be faithful in pastoral care and calling offers the pastor opportunities for early interventions that other professionals will never have.

No office-bound psychiatrist is free to do this. This is why, at the level of accessibility, good pastoral counsel is potentially far more effective than secular, time-cramped, fee-based, medically modeled psychotherapies. Its accessibility offers it the opportunity to serve prior to the crisis. A timely intervention may prevent unnecessary hurt while promoting needed growth.⁵

Pastoral availability for marriage counseling occurs through more than just an active schedule of pastoral calling. Pastoral calling will undergird a ministry that addresses marital and relationship issues from a wide variety of pastoral opportunities. The pastors to whom parishioners will turn for marital help often engage in pastoral activities similar to the following:

Demonstrating in sermons and prayers both concern and sensitive understanding for the stresses encountered in marriage.

Offering brief study courses during the Sunday morning adult forum to aid the growth of marriages.

Leading a contract marriage growth group, which meets once a week to discuss a chapter from such books as The Intimate Marriage by Charlotte and Howard Clinebell.

If married, reflecting a marriage that is growing, vibrant, and joyful.

Being sufficiently open and self-revealing as to be seen by others as human and likely to be caring and nonjudgmental toward troubled marriages.

Finally, it must be said that the key ingredient for pastoral care in any context is pastoral initiative that is well informed by pastoral intuition. Such intuition is a matter of knowing when to go to a couple and say you are concerned for them and want to have a pastoral conversation with them. No other professional person has that right.

Sensitive pastoral initiative is not intrusive and does not violate any parishioner’s privacy. When the need and the opportunity are obvious, pastoral initiative requires one to say, “I am your pastor and I care very much about you. Your marriage has too much pain and conflict. I would like to meet with both of you just as soon as it can be arranged.” Because of their position, authority, and accessibility, clergy have a greater opportunity than any other group of professionals to bring a more promising outlook to the future of marriage in the coming decade.⁶

The Qualities of the Pastoral Marriage Counselor

The seasoned marital therapist has had much advanced training and supervision and in many cases has had personal psychotherapy to deepen self-understanding. By contrast, most parish pastors do not have anywhere near the level of specialized training of the clinical marriage therapist. But most parish clergy have the appropriate motivation, pastoral authority, and essential personality characteristics to offer care and help to the couples seeking their assistance. Although counseling specialists can easily point to the limitations of the average parish pastor as a counselor, the fact remains that, once ordained, a pastor is by definition a pastoral counselor, representing the church with all the rights and responsibilities that accompany ordination. Despite the very limited degree of training for all clergy in formal clinical skills and the obvious differences in counseling skills from pastor to pastor, it can hardly be questioned that the centuries-old Judeo-Christian tradition of the pastoral care of souls has offered as much benefit to humankind as any of the other helping disciplines, if not more.

Wayne Oates has identified three qualities that are basic to a helping relationship: an accurate empathy, a nonpossessive warmth, and an inherent genuineness.⁷ Regardless of the level of the pastor’s training, the aim will always be to exhibit those qualities identified by Oates.

The sign of accurate empathy is not for the counselor to say, “I understand what you are saying.” No, the only authentic sign is when the counselee says, “Yes, you have understood me.” The capacity to hear, comprehend, envision, and describe to the counselee the counselee’s private world of perceptions and feelings is hard work. And most pastors should have the capacity to offer at least the basic, essential understanding necessary for their parishioners to be helped.

A nonpossessive warmth is genuine caring without strings attached. It has some of the qualities of that grace which always conveys caring and acceptance. Within the presence of such caring, a person who is conflicted will feel safe enough to reveal feelings that are hurtful. Non-possessive warmth invites us to be vulnerable so healing can take place. The message conveyed by such caring is that people are free to make their own choices without coercion or manipulation. Such grace is essential if pastoral counseling is to facilitate the resolution of marital conflict.

Genuineness in a pastoral counselor means that the pastor is honest with others and, just as important, honest with his or her own self and feelings. Such a counselor has integrity that is obvious and unquestionable. In the presence of such a counselor, one knows that one will hear the truth. And when it is appropriate, the counselor will also be self-revealing without pretense or awkwardness. Genuineness is the capacity to face the truth within oneself as well as within others. Wayne Oates is correct; without genuineness, pastoral counselors will sound hollow and be ineffective despite how technically correct their interview techniques may be.

The effective pastoral counselor will also have many of the following personal qualities:

A genuine liking for people. Such a counselor is more interested in helping people than in slavishly following a certain counseling theory or technique.

An essentially positive feeling of self-worth. Such a counselor will be less likely to measure personal self-worth by personal “success” as a marriage counselor....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction to Pastoral Marriage Counseling
• 2 Initiating Short-term Marriage Counseling
• 3 Individual Sessions with Each Spouse
• 4 Concluding Joint Sessions
• 5 Special Concerns in Marriage Counseling
• Pastoral Marriage Counseling Questionnaire
• Notes
• Recommended Reading