Pressure Points: De-Stressing Stressed Relationships
by Ken Wilson
NT letters to churches written to people facing intense social, cultural, financial pressure. Many of these letters include exhortations to tend to our core relationships (family, friends, co-workers).
Our core relationships are like a base camp to a mountain climber. To conquer a mountain like Everest need to set up a well-provisioned base camp. Can only climb as high as your base camp allows. When base camp is hurting, the mountain will defeat you.
Focus on core relationship of marriage, understanding that the skills-perspectives that make a good marriage are required for all our core relationships: family, friends, co-workers. Our base camp.
Bible doesn't dole out marriage advice per se. Song of Songs is a romantic love poem, but beyond that, only brief nuggets of marriage advice. Marriage doesn't depend on a highly specialized form of love--marriage depends on what all relationhips need, more love, more power, and more righteousness.
Not self-righteousness. That's a core relationship killer. But true righteousness: relationships marked by justice and mercy-love.
Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. (1 PE. 3: 8) Live in harmony with one another (Ro. 12: 16)
Harmony is about singing different notes to the same song in ways that make the song sound better because of the differences. "We're one but we're not the same" is the theme of harmony.
As adolescents, we seek social bonding through sameness with our peers. Like a choir begins by learning the melody. But sameness over time is boring. What choirs are made for is the contrapuntal stuff: polyphonic music with very active and strongly differentiated parts.
Stress is a harmony buster. Pressure & strain throw harmony off. That's why these boy bands lip-synch, because when they are running around on stage, there's no way they can harmonize.
Don't you wish you could lip-synch in your core relationships? You're stressed out and your spouse is stressed out and needs from you what you don't have to give: so you press the play button and lip-synch: "Yes honey, I understand. How can I support you today?"
Core Relationships Require Pressure Release Valves
Talking to a friend recently. Could tell he was under a lot of pressure. Pressure of circumstance, putting a squeeze on. Then I could tell that he was doing better, more like is old self. He said, "I had a conversation with Don and he said, 'Maybe we need to look at thus and so together.' And when he said that, it was like a release valve opened, and all that pressure just dissipated."
"In this world you will have pressure." The pressure will strain your core relationships. Question is, do you have release valves?
These release valves are so important, that if you're in the middle of intense pressure you need to find a way to activate the release valves, even if you're not in the habit. Where are those suckers? And if they are stuck, how do I un-stick them?
When pressure abates, you want to service those release valves, make sure they are working, so when the pressure rises, they will be there when you need 'em.
1. Intentional Cultivation of Gratitude
The discipline of gratitude--the intentional cultivation of the habit of gratitude--is what relationships need for the long run.
Relationships hold together with attraction. All of them, not just sexual relationships. In physics, attractive forces bind particles together to form matter. Things hold together through attraction.
As relationships are first forming, attraction comes easily. Or they wouldn't form.
Attraction might be need: I need a job so I'm drawn to work with these other people. Or desire: I desire intimacy, so I'm drawn to this woman, with whom I might become intimate. Or admiration: this person would make a great friend.
But as objects and people draw closer together, they encounter repellent forces. In physics, without repellent forces, everything would collapse into itself forming a black hole.
In core relationships, attractive and repellent forces at work. As the father of daughters, I hope my daughters can activate repellent forces if need be. So as not to get hooked up with the wrong boson.
But when the pressure of life is on the rise, we need to nurture the attractive forces in our base camp relationships. This is where the intentional cultivation of the habit of gratitude comes in.
Gratitude begins with focus: Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—let your mind dwell on these things.(Phil. 4: 8)
Perfect objectivity makes you a good scientist or a good accountant. But perfect objectivity doesn't sustain your core relationships. The people who are most happily married tend to look at each other through Philippians 4:8 glasses. Rose-colored glasses. What do they do? Filter out the fault part of beloved's personality spectrum. Focus on the good part.
To sustain core relationships you need a pair of Philippians 4:8, rose colored glasses. So good points are enhanced in your perception and bad points diminished. If you want be happy for the rest of your life make a pretty woman your wife. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
So make a pretty woman your wife and tend to your personal point of view…regarding the girl who married you. Jimmy your Soul and put on the rose colored glasses so you perceive her prettiness more than you perceive her unprettiness: Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—let your mind dwell on these things.
If you have signed up for 40 Days of Gratitude, you are going to pick a person and look at them for 40 Days through Philippians 4:8 glasses. Have an eye for what's good about that person. Express that once a day every day for 40 Days. And see what happens.
The intentional cultivation of the habit of gratitude: essential pressure release valve in relationships. If yours is stuck, un-stick it.
2. The Art of the Apology
Let's cut to the chase. A married person who has not mastered the art of the apology is placing his marriage at risk. It's like driving in a car without a spare tire: you can get away with it, without suffering any consequences. More space in your trunk! Until you get a flat.
Some people never master the art of the apology. They don't have to so long as they have enough money to buy a whole new car every time the old one gets a flat. Harder to sustain in recession.
But "Love means never having to say you're sorry." That works in an ideal world. But God doesn't operate in the ideal world. He's got nothing to do with the ideal world. He operates in the real one.
"The ideal of community is the enemy of community!"--Dietrich Bonhoeffer If you seek an ideal relationship, that quest will be the virus that saps every real relationship. With humans, that is. Because we humans are made from dirt: stand between the dirt and the divine.
The best relationships are not the ones that never get damaged, but the ones that have repair mechanisms.
The Art of the Apology: Take responsibility for your part in relational tension. Not excusing yourself for your part. Being tough on yourself. (If you do it, the other person doesn't have to.)
Then go to the person and admit it. Acknowledge the impact. Express your regret. Before, during and after apology, just focus on your fault not theirs. Later you can come back to theirs.
Don't even try fake apologies. A fake apology is worse than no apology. "I'm sorry if I offended you." Either you did something offensive or you didn't. If you're not sure, ask! If you did, figure out what it is (your part, not theirs) and apologize for it. If not fine. People are responsible for their own emotions.
In core relationships, need to care enough about the relationship to go to the person if they've offended us. Sure, shrug it off if you can. If your offense meter is always going off, maybe it's set too low. But when it's affecting your relationship, you owe it to the other person to tell them. "If your brother offends you, go to your brother…"
Give him a chance to change the tire. [Release valve for relationships under pressure. Use it.]
3. The Practice of Mutual Submission
As Americans we're big on equality. But equality is a political term. I want to be part of a political system that gives equal rights to all. It's the only way to insure equal rights for me!
But the emphasis on the Bible is a little different. It's on dignity. God has dignity, and he confers dignity on all that his hands have made.
We have dignity as human beings. Each one of us has value. The creation has dignity. To be respected, treasured, tended.
In Jesus movement, focus is on mutual submission in relationships. We each acknowledge and submit to the other's dignity. We revere the other, freely. Because of the dignity of God ultimately.
"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." (Eph. 5:21)
It's different than equality. Mutual submission. Give & take. Times when I defer to you. And times when you defer to me. And a desire to see eye to eye whenever possible.
There's no rule book for mutual submission. It's more like a dance. Or it's like jazz. It's improvisational. It's an art, not a technique.
This is a struggle in marriage, mutual submission. When do I defer my preferences and when do I assert my preferences? When to I defer my priorities and assert my priorities? When do I give in, and when do I insist?
Our "if we're ever stuck" agreement: the "get help" card.
[Example, playing it recently] Enormous release valve.
4. The Tending of a Relationship as a Thing in Itself
When a couple comes in for counseling the counselors say there are three patients in the room: the husband, the wife, and the marriage. "The marriage is the living history of all the things that have happened between the husband and the wife. Though it exists in the space between them it has an influence all it's own." David Brooks.
Are you catching this subtle but powerful distinction? Every relationship is a thing in itself. Every relationship is a Trinity of sorts. (Father, Son, and the love between which is a thing in itself, the Holy Spirit.) Both parties in a core relationship have to be concerned not just for the other and for themselves, but also for the relationship as a thing in itself worth tending, preserving, saving, nurturing!
This is what marriage as an institution is institutionalizing, this reality. Marriage is a thing in itself. It's more than the sum of it's parts. Every relationship is more than the sum of its parts!
Isn't that true? Two people work together. Each has a job to do, each makes a contribution to the enterprise. Great. But that's not all. The two people also tend a third thing: their relationship. The two as individuals might be great, but if their relationship is sour, man it has an impact on the whole workplace doesn't it?
Relationships are not just binary. They are imbedded in other relationships--that's community. Many marriages are weak because communities are weak. Communities suffer when marriages do. We have to love each other more for our marriages to survive and thrive. And we have to love the marriage more for our marriages to survive and thrive. And we have to love the community more…
Now I am speaking directly to married people. This applies in other relationships as well, but I want to focus on marriages right now.
Song of Songs "Catch us the foxes, the quick little foxes that raid our vineyards, now, when the vines are in blossom." (Song of Songs 2:15)
In Song of Songs, two voices: voice of the Shulamite maiden, and the voice of her lover. The voices alternate. But here it's neither voice. It's both of them in unison. "Catch us the foxes, the quick little foxes that raid our vineyards, now, when the vines are in blossom."
The vineyard represents the place of their love--(earlier in the Song they meet in the vineyard, and their love is likened to vine blossoms)
The foxes are a threat to the vineyard. A threat to their love. A threat to their relationship. TOGETHER they need to "catch us the foxes, the quick little foxes that raid our vineyard"
Is it easy catching foxes, quick little foxes? I don't think so.
You need all hands on deck to catch quick little foxes. You need strategy, cooperation.
You may need to call in community help. The fox catchers.
Something wonderful happens in a marriage, or a core relationship under stress when you stop glaring at each other as the problem, and you say, "Catch us the foxes, the quick little foxes that raid our vineyard."
OK: Crazy Idea. When we're done with Genesis Wisdom class, start a new one: Song of Songs. Invite married people who would be willing to consider making themselves and their marriages available to their community to help other married couples catch the quick little foxes that are raiding their vineyards. Come alongside to pray, to support couples who have decided they need help. Perhaps while the couple is getting professional help. Bring in some fox catchers.