so, you're married to a narcissist and you want to leave him?
"It's like I was a frog in a slow-boiling kettle," she says to me, shuttering from the trauma of having to re-tell her story again. "I had no idea what was happening to me. I didn't like the person I was becoming - bitter, passive-aggressive, emotionally distant - but never before had I connected it to the fact that I felt unsafe, fearful, used."Through months of counseling, she had identified in her marriage patterns of emotional manipulation, sexual aggressiveness, mockery for her appearance, vacillations of reactive anger and lustful sweet talk, restricted freedom to work and travel, entitlement, over-spending, and porn addiction. In counseling, her husband's fauxnerability played out in gestures of seeming repentance, but their therapist called him on his lack of specific repentance and incapacity to name long-term patterns instead of mere occasional behaviors. In time, he doubled-down, blaming her "sexual unavailability, bitter spirit, and failure to submit to his loving leadership in the home." Resigned and eager to be free of his constant gaslighting, she filed for divorce. And that's when he released hellfire.I've told versions of this story in all of my books. Maybe you read parts of your story in it. This is because I've seen this, not once, not twice, but dozens of times in countless marriages, from Orlando, to San Francisco, to Holland, where I now reside.I hear it in stories you send me through email and social media. I also hear the pain of being cast from your church families, ostracized by biological family members, ignored at work, and thrust into uncertainty. "I had to learn to use a mower and fix a garbage disposal," one of my clients said. Even more, the scarlet letter of shame looms.
I've received one-too-many "you counseled my wife to divorce me" letters from spouses and "you're counseling couples toward unfaithfulness" from pastors. I don't cheer couples on to divorce. As a child of divorce, I felt the pain of it acutely and still deal with the implications and disruptions today. I do try to honor the Bible's pattern of caring for the abused, the weak, the neglected, the betrayed, and those most vulnerable. My own study of Scripture was helped immensely by both of Dr. David Instone-Brewer's works on Scripture and divorce. He emphasizes how conservative Jesus was in his re-affirmation of the sacredness of marriage. In that day, a man could divorce a woman for just about any cause. Don't like her cooking? Don't care for her new haircut? End the marriage. Jesus re-emphasized the sanctity of marriage, undermining shallow notions of faithfulness.And yet, Instone-Brewer shows how lovingly pastoral and affirming of a woman's dignity Jesus and his followers were. Even though the end of a marriage is a rupture in the shalom we're made for, pastoral provisions were made for those who found themselves in marriages where fidelity was broken. He highlights through a careful study of Scripture three grounds for divorce:
- Adultery (in Deuteronomy 24:1, affirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19)
- Emotional and physical neglect (in Exodus 21:10-11, affirmed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 7)
- Abandonment and abuse (included in neglect, as affirmed in 1 Corinthians 7) (via David Instone-Brewer's short article, including his response to an inevitable critique from John Piper, here)
Indeed, in a time when we're discovering the depths of narcissistic abuse in the church, when we're seeing major, trusted Christian leaders revealed to be duplicitous, when the supposed "good-guys" are discovered to be abusive and untrustworthy, we can re-discover afresh just how gracious Jesus was to provide a path to freedom and healing for wounded spouses. Making provisions for the vulnerable shows just how significant marital faithfulness is to God and just how important you are to God.That said, for every spouse I counsel, whether male or female, who experiences the bite of a narcissist in a relationship, I always encourage seeing a wise and experienced therapist who gets the dynamics of narcissistic relationships, and who both honors the sacredness of marriage and employs pastoral wisdom and agility.In the end, Scripture from Genesis to Revelation is crystal clear in its call for dignity for victims and its warnings to the powerful. In becoming the forgiving victim, Jesus demonstrates a love that provides a pathway for healing for both victims and abusers while not-at-all denying the evil of and justice for those who don't surrender their power. Jesus provides a path of transformation for each-and-every one one of us ready and willing to give up trying to fix ourselves and ready and willing to surrender to a death-to-the-old process, which can be humbling, even humiliating. That transforming journey is available to anyone addicted to the self-justifying, self-protecting, self-admiring self-salvation project of narcissism. I personally love to work with those sincerely committed to this work, and can testify to the power of transformation.But isn't it kind, loving, and so in-character that Jesus would make a way for you, you the "frog in the boiling kettle," you the one who thought her years were lost, you who endured humiliation, you who felt so guilty and ashamed, you whose God paves pathways of freedom for wholeness, healing, and transformation? God may hate divorce, but God sure does love you.