Abuse in Marriage - IS SIN

ABUSE IN MARRIAGE IS SIN

Sin separates

When I got married in 1998, I loved my wife. Very much. She checked off so many boxes on my list of a dream bride, I felt like she was just like my mom… and in some categories even better! Today there is a divorce that keeps us apart – what the heck happened?

I did not proactively love her the way God commanded me.

To be a loving husband, God told me what to do:

Love her like Christ loved the church. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others (your bride) better than yourself.

But out of my pride I did not pay attention and apply this principles daily.

As a result, I abused my wife and my children to the point that she left.  I didn’t think I was an abuser, but I was. Some of you men may not think you're abusing your wives - but you are. Let me show you how abuse started with me and grew out of control...

ABUSE IN MARRIAGE can be born out of, and disguise itself in these common traits:

Low self-esteem – When your identity is not rooted in Christ… your self-esteem is built on sand. Without that solid foundation of Christ as the root of your worth, when things get tough (and they will) you will look to yourself to solve problems – not God. Things will fall apart, fear festers and births more problems.

When I was dating my wife, I did not feel like I was good enough for her. Because my identity was not rooted in Christ… and because I was not chasing after God. My identity and reliance for strength was in myself.

Low self esteem in and of itself may not classify as abuse. But if you are not in a habit of looking to God for strength and guidance in your own life… then you cannot lead your wife or your family the way God intended. And your low self worth has a high propensity of becoming abuse.

Fear - not being able to see my own value and worth by fixing my attention on God made me afraid that if my girlfriend knew how incomplete I felt… she would never want to continue to date me… and she would certainly never say “yes” if I proposed to her.

Again, fear may not be abuse, but if fear becomes the basis for all the decisions you make… abuse is guaranteed to appear. SOON. It's only a matter of time.

Relying on myself to solve ths problem, I covered my fear with pride.

Arrogance - Taking the humble approach did not make me feel like I had a chance with her. If I could just show her how good I really was in my particular field of expertise, talk about myself as being just a little bit better than what I really was, put a few people down to prop myself up, then maybe she would be impressed with me.  

Arrogance is a disgusting and destructive quality to have. When being arrogant, you are actively inflating the sense of your own importance or qualities. In essence you're lying to yourself, and then trying to sell that lie to everyone else. Now you're a liar, and the more you display your arrogance, the more you are increasing the capability and likelihood of lying in the future (not only to yourself but to others).

Competitive - She has an outward beauty beyond compare, and I had only average looks. Visually she was way out of my league. Internally, she had a close personal relationship with the Holy Spirit that were both admired and envied, while I only had limited biblical knowledge. She possessed an indescribable gift of playing piano, singing, poetry & song writing whereas I, even being a music major could not play piano anywhere near as good as her. I couldn't sing as beautiful as she could, I could not write poetry or songs the way she could. She was street smart, I was mentally slow. Academically, she made much higher grades than I did while I failed many classes. I felt like I was second place to her. If only I could pretend or put on a show that I really was as good as her... maybe then she would look up to me!  

God did not call us men to compete with our wives. He called us to humble ourselves, and put our brides before us, serving them and lifting them up with great honor and cherish them above ourselves. Instead of supporting her as a loving teammate, I took on a competitive spirit to prove to her I was a valuable man in all these areas… in short I was not behaving as the loving supporter God called me to be.

A woman wants to love, and to be loved in return. When you put on the constant competitive spirit you are isolating her. Putting your woman in isolation is not only a sin… it is abusive to her heart and her soul.

When I treated her as a competitor or an enemy, I was sending the subliminal message that she's not worthy of being my teammate. This constant and repetitive message… was abusing her soul.

Pride – Pride is having an excessively high opinion of yourself. Of course this character trait is going to rise up after a constant habit of arrogance and competitive nature taking its course. But now the opinion of yourself is not just inflated… it's so far out of range it now causes you to act upon your false understanding of who you are and who you're supposed to be. You now think you're better than her and better than everybody else… and those thoughts cause you to put her down (sometimes without even knowing you're doing it).  But you're not just putting her down… you're stepping on her to prop yourself up.

This is now a high level of selfishness.

God tells us to do nothing out of selfish ambition. Seeking your own selfish ambitions is a sin. It is destructive. Pride may not destroy a relationship within one day or one week… but it is guaranteed to disrespect your spouse and weaken your own relationship for sure, and in the majority of cases pride will kill a relationship in the manner of “death by 1000 cuts”.

Simple eye rolling, verbal put downs, and constant sighing of disapproval… can qualify as abuse.

Narcissism - Narcissism is a package of many evil traits many times manifesting itself through arrogance, pride, and control all wrapped up into one, but it also has a terrible side to it. The terrible side is that the narcissist has very little feelings for the people he is hurting. I say “he” because I was the narcissist in my marriage, but it could be a he or she.

I was so wrapped up in making sure that I was always right. I needed to win all the arguments. I needed to be the one that was considered the leader. Again God tells us not to do anything out of selfish ambition, but I believe that narcissistic behavior is selfish ambition in high gear running 90 miles an hour.

But because I had been arrogant and prideful for so long, my heart was seared and I was not being understanding to the pain that my wife was going through. Anytime she feels pain, it should make me hurt! Anytime she feels pain because of me, it should make me immediately back off and rethink what I'm doing.

Narcissism is just a label that describes all of the combinations of sinful disgusting behaviors rolled up in one. Make no mistake, Narcissism is the sin of selfishness out of control.

Selfish Ambitions – men, if we are seeking to serve ourselves then we know we are not following God's instructions to love our wives as Christ loved the church. Christ was a servant. We are called to imitate him.

Seeking selfish ambitions is sinful, and it will destroy the marriage.

Wandering Eyes - wandering eyes are just another form of putting yourself above your wife again (which as we discussed before is the same thing as stepping on her to prop yourself up). Every time she sees your eyes looking at somebody else… or just looking FOR somebody else, you are sending the nonverbal communicated message that she is no longer worthy of your attention. Inside her soul, this makes a woman feel like she's been casted away, outdated, no good anymore, worthless.

Wandering eyes are a form of abusing her -because abuse is not just physical and verbal… it can cause just as much severe damage when it is abusing her emotions.

Name Calling - I have been guilty of calling my wife ugly names. If you ever do this men… you are in direct opposition and conflict with God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that her new name is “the righteousness of God”. And if you are calling her of filthy ugly name out of anger or spite, you are pitting yourself against the Lord himself.

Calling her names should be chalked up as another action of marital abuse.

Gaslighting - In the simplest description I can provide, gaslighting is utilizing an action or a collective group of actions to make your wife feel as if she's losing her mind. It is a very manipulative form of lying and controlling at the same time.

Your job and your goal is to help guide your woman to the truth. Always.

If you are telling her the truth in a loving and understanding way, I believe it is impossible to be guilty of what the world now describes as gaslighting.

If you are purposefully leading her away from the truth, and or doing it in a manner that is degrading and demeaning… it is a sin against her, a sin against God, and it is indeed a form of marital abuse.

Manipulation - in card tricks, you manipulate the cards in such a way to make the observer think the impossible just happened. Excellent magicians also use storytelling to purposefully guide your mind in the direction they wanted to go so that when you follow along with the story and the manipulations… they can easier believe the “untruth” you just performed.

But what's the difference between a magic trick and manipulation in marriage? When you start off a card trick… then the observer knows that this is a demonstration of manipulation skills for entertainment.

Manipulation in marriage… is lying with skills. I have been guilty of planning out what I wanted my wife to think or believe, and then creating a storyline and the slight of hand needed to hide the truth. Lying is a sin. It is evil in God's eyes.

If you are purposefully leading your wife away from truth, This is a slow and subtle form of abuse. Why?

Because truth gives stability. If you are purposefully removing your wife's stability and trust, then you are guilty of making her walk in an imbalanced way where she could fall.

But why don't we just keep this real simple – Ephesians 5:1 says you are to imitate God. Word God lie to, and manipulate your wife?

No.

If you're not imitating God, you are not obeying him.

Manipulation is advanced lying. Manipulation is a sin. Manipulation is abuse.   

Controlling - Simply put, being controlling is the act of refusing to give the other person a choice (whether that be your wife or your children or anyone else).

Remember when God said, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live”

Not only did God give us a choice between life and death… and the choice between the blessings that would follow choosing life, and the curses that would follow choosing death… but he also gave us answers to the test, and told us to choose the right answer ! Wouldn't it be cool if all of our teachers in school would give us the the answer key, and then encourage us to use the answer key on the exam! Crazy right? But that's what God did.

In other words, after he gave us a choice, and giving us the answer key, he gave us instructions the instructions to use the answer key - BUT what he did not do, was force the answer upon us. Even with all of that, he still gave us our choice.

Allowing the free will ability to choose - is pure love.

If you are controlling your wife, you are not giving her the ability to choose.  You are not loving her the way God loved you. And if you're not loving your wife the way Christ loved the church, you are hurting her.

Being controlling is a sin… being controlling to your wife, is marital abuse.

Fits of rage – I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have been guilty of not controlling my tongue. And it wasn't just shouting in my marriage, it was uncontrolled rage.

God told me I was supposed to be slow to speak, quick to listen, and be understanding to my wife, and the needs of her heart.

If you're not protecting her heart, you're not protecting her.

Many times protecting her, means guarding her and keeping her safe from your evil desires to shout in a rage against her, and to allow hurtful toxic words to tear her down.

If we are told to edify each other and build each other up… then tearing her down in any form or fashion is pitting yourself against God. Anytime you fight against God you will lose.

Fits of rage do not represent in any way the fruits of the spirit. The fruits of the spirit are the outwardly byproduct characteristic traits that other people see in you because you are letting the Holy Spirit lead your life, your thoughts, your decisions, and your words. You're not the one that makes the fruit… you let the Holy Spirit lead in your life, and the fruit naturally appears on its own. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and most of all… SELF CONTROL.

Self-control is really easy to define. It's controlling your own self to keep from flying off the handle when you feel like it. Controlling yourself do not speak a lie even when you feel like that's what you want to do. And controlling your tongue when it wants to shout, speak hurtful words, spew toxicity.

If you are not living by the spirit -you are living by the flesh.

Living by the flesh is sinful. Rage Against your wife is sin, and abuse.

< more to come soon… >