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It’s Time to End Male Spiritual Leadership

Mark DeYoung on May 1, 2024

I stopped attending Christian men’s conferences over ten years ago. The increasing hype, dopamine rush energy, and teaching left me feeling empty. Unfortunately, things have not improved (Read about a recent debacle at a Missouri men’s event here). During events like this, men frequently hear messages about being male spiritual leaders in their homes. My goal in this blog is to explain why it’s time to end male spiritual leadership as a common teaching in Christian communities.

Men’s conferences grew following the Promise Keepers movement of the early 1990s. If you want to read an excellent resource and analysis of how these events became a significant part of evangelical church culture, check out Jesus and John Wayne but Kristen DuMez. Like DuMez, one of my primary concerns with these events is that they do little to promote significant change or discipleship in a man’s Christian faith. Of course, there are good and often anecdotal life-changing impacts, but the overall result is often veneer only.

Like most, I would often walk away from these events with an energy and a passion for “doing good” or “better.” But getting back home to the family, I would quickly run into the wall of real life. The event’s energy is quickly deflated, and there is little staying power to change anything. My wife and I have often lamented that, similarly, going to church marriage conferences does little to help the couple that leaves the event and is right back to fighting as they get into the car. These weekend events’ high energy and adrenaline have minimal staying power to facilitate lasting change in everyday life. In church language, they are highly “attractional” but short on meaningful discipleship. And as I suggest in this blog, some of the teaching might be counterproductive to what we know makes healthy marriages.

Many of these men hear specific teachings that they need to step up and be the male spiritual leaders in their homes. The message is often received as a call to action. If you have not been engaged or active in your marriage or family, you need to “do something.” If you have been “leading,” you need to do more or do it better. Encouraging men to take charge and be decisive suggests that men have some power and authority in their homes. It is then assumed that this God-endorsed authority and power delivered in the pulpit and supposedly endorsed by scripture should result in a “blessing” of your family’s health. That all sounds good until it does not work that well. In my experience, it often leads to men feeling inadequate and women feeling hurt and disappointed. Ultimately, it just disconnects.

High-energy events do little to help the family or marriage face a “dark night of the soul.” All marriages face moments that rattle our sense of security and faith, and we need to ask if these events and the call for men to be male spiritual leaders, truly prepare men for moments of deep uncertainty. Let me offer you a few examples of dark nights that I have heard far too often in my work with families. (See note at bottom).¹

Having attended so many church events growing up, the young man is now married but not experiencing the blissful union that he thought he should expect. He thought they “did it right.” He and his bride saved themselves for marriage sexually, but on their honeymoon, they struggled sexually. Sex caused her pain, and he became frustrated. And in his ignorance, he has angrily insisted that they continue to have sex despite the pain. Three months into their marriage, they have already grown distant and hopeless.
The 30-something-year-old husband whose wife cannot conceive. They decided to adopt. They could not have predicted the behavioral difficulties and stress of their now five-year-old. There are daily phone calls from the school. It negatively impacts their work, and the comparisons to their friends who seem to have perfectly well-adjusted kids are discouraging. This husband’s wife is now saying she wishes they never adopted this child, and she does not even like this child. This man often fights with his wife over coaching her on her parenting.
The 40-year-old’s teenage son was the “ideal child” and always made great grades in school, but he is now failing over half of his high school classes. He is at risk of losing his starting position on the football team, and he has come home to report that his girlfriend is pregnant. This husband harbors anger at his wife for not managing their household well while he was the primary income earner.
The man in his 50s has worked for his company for over 25 years and was told he is being let go. There is no severance. He is looking for jobs and running into many dead ends. He finds himself yelling at his wife because she is overspending and cannot follow a simple budget.
The retiree whose wife died ten years ago from a terrible cancer and whose children have refused to talk to him. He is lonely and angry and experiences many doubts about his faith over his lifetime. He privately stews that his wife made him out to be the bad guy to their children.

There have been and may continue to be many good things said to men in conferences. However, the examples of the men above illustrate how efforts to “lead” and assert “authority” only disconnect in times of challenge and pain when a connection is needed most. Unfortunately, telling men to stand up and be strong male spiritual leaders in their homes falls short and is often responsible for only more conflict and pain. It’s time to end male spiritual leadership.

In my book, Revolutionary Marriage, I address the topic of male spiritual leadership. I share that in my practice as a marriage therapist for many couples over the years, this idea has not helped. It has done more harm by destabilizing the marriage unit. I’ll explain the problem in detail, but first, I’ll provide some history.

In the mid to late 1980s, conservative Christian leaders began to dialogue about the changes in American culture and politics specifically related to a rise in feminism, called second-wave feminism. Many in these circles viewed this as a threat. What rose out of these conversations was the idea of complementarian marriage. It is the idea that men and women have specific, scripturally defined roles for marriage. A central tenet of this view was that men are hierarchically in charge of the family and serve as “head” of the wife. They argue scripturally that this “authority” was established before the fall of man because Adam was created first, and Eve was created from Adam. You can read a very important historical document related to this view called the Danvers Statement. You can find it here. What is most important to note is that this idea of male spiritual leadership is a modern idea and little connection to the ancient church.

In Revolutionary Marriage, I suggest that these views are flawed. They ignore the creation story of Genesis 1, in which males and females are created together. And I suggest the story of Eve coming from Adams’s rib has less to do with hierarchy and authority (leadership) and far more to do with unity. A brief Google search can help you find many scholars who have written on these ideas and highlighted the problems with positions like the Danvers Statement. I might suggest Philip B. Payne, Beth Allison Barr, Marg Mowczko, Aimee Byrd, and Kristen DuMez.

When men are encouraged and told that they need to be the male spiritual leaders of their homes, it more often than not creates a power imbalance. Someone is in charge. Someone has to have the final say or deciding vote. Any position of power over another is antithetical to the kingdom Jesus established. Readh Marg Mowczko’s analysis of this idea here. Jesus came to turn all systems of power upside down. Consider the above examples about the “dark nights” many face in their married lives. Every example shows growing anger, resentment, and bitterness over their failed attempts to control or manage the situation and even their wives. All this hurt for wives (feeling misunderstood and belittled) and husbands (feeling like they are failing) sounds a lot like the curse from Genesis 3:16b, “You will long for your husband and will rule over you. (NIRV)” Firing men up with adrenaline and dopamine at a conference and sending them back home “to lead” is ripe for fueling these fires of conflict between spouses. When pastors, teachers, and church leaders teach the idea of male spiritual leadership, they are just endorsing the curse of Genesis 3.

A husband having any power over his wife was a part of the curse and never God’s intended plan. Please understand that many in the complementarian community would say that a husband’s authority is a “benevolent authority.” This is just trying to put a bow on patriarchy, and patriarchy was NEVER part of God’s plan. Adam and Eve were co-rulers according to Genesis 1:28a, “God blessed them. He said to them, “Have children so that there will be many of you. Fill the earth and bring it under your control… (NIRV)” I honestly fear that men struggle with this idea because they have bought the lie that power is what defines them as a man. I love the line from the Barbie movie, “I’m a man with no power, does that make me a woman?” No, no it does not.

Research from the Gottman Institute has consistently shown that men assuming authority places their marriages at risk. John and Julie Gottman developed a concept in their research called, “accepting influence.” It is defined as creating an atmosphere where you intentionally honor your spouse’s request and find a way to say “yes” whenever possible. It requires empathy and vulnerability to consider the needs and desires of your spouse. This has the effect of decreasing emotional intensity and deescalating conflict. The Gottman’s found that 65% of men were likely to choose a response to their wives that was resistant, or argumentative. This would consistently ratchet up the level of conflict.

Male spiritual leadership puts men in a position to escalate conflict because they often assert some decision-making authority. The assertion of authority is often resistant and argumentative to wives. However, the research by the Gottmans confirms Paul’s direction: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ,” Ephesians 5:21 (NIV). In our examples above, yielding to their wives’ influence might have looked a bit like this:

A young husband empathically listens to understand his wife’s pain. He needed to allow her to express her needs so they could mutually find safe, comfortable, and pain-free sexual activities.
A husband who validates the difficulties of parenting and finds ways they can work together to address the challenges.
A husband who invites his wife to explore the fears, grief, and anxiety about facing a teenage pregnancy. He asks for her perspective on how they might teach their son to be responsive to his girlfriend as she copes with this pregnancy.
The jobless husband who becomes less concerned with budgets, and listens to his wife’s fears and concerns about the finances.
The retired widower, who considers all the years his wife pleaded for his reconciliation with the children, decides to invite his children’s forgiveness and work towards rebuilding their trust.

Another quote from the Barbie movie fits here: “To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest anyways.” Christian husbands need to lose interest in the dopamine-high motivational speaker experiences of men’s conferences. They need to lose interest in being male spiritual leaders and become determined to accept their wives’ influence. We must find ways to engage with our wives empathically, collaboratively, and, most importantly, sacrificially. This is the type of love and service Jesus calls us to in our vocation of marriage.

Please note that none of the examples given are of actual clients that I have worked with as a therapist. These are general descriptions of circumstances that I have heard in various forms over the years and in no way are meant to represent real persons ↩︎

Marriage Therapy Outcomes

Mark DeYoung on November 7, 2023

Dr. DeYoung did an analysis of all his work with couples for the past 10 years. It includes work with over 250 couples and just under 4000 hours of therapy with couples in that time.

Couples who commit to therapy beyond three meetings with Dr. DeYoung have an 88% success rate for therapy. On average those couples participated in 18 hours of therapy.

A common reason for marriage therapy is affairs. Dr. DeYoung has worked with numerous couples attempting to overcome the challenges of betrayal from affairs. 78% of couples that have worked with Dr. DeYoung accomplish their therapy goals. This subset of couples participated in 21 hours of therapy on average.

Couples can also be affected by problems from substance abuse. Dr. DeYoung has worked with numerous couples attempting to cope with problems caused by substance use. 74% of couples that have worked with Dr. DeYoung and also been dealing with substance abuse accomplish their therapy goals.

This subset of couples participated in 21 hours of therapy on average.

Mental Health and Gun Violence

Mark DeYoung on June 6, 2023

In May 2023, there was another horrific act of evil in Allen, TX, when a gunman opened fire in a crowded mall parking lot. This was nearly one year after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX. In Allen, eight were killed, including three young children; in Uvalde, 19 children, and two teachers were killed. Two evil men committed these acts of violence. The result has been too many destroyed lives.

Following these events, Texas Governor Abbott spoke to the communities involved and said similar things in both cases. Here are his words:
In Uvalde, Governor Abbott said the shooter had “a mental health challenge.” “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge…We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health.”
In Frisco, he echoed a similar refrain. “What Texas is doing in a big-time way, we are working to address that anger and violence but going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it…People want a quick solution. The long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue.”

The governor has it entirely backward. His words conflate evil with mental illness. This sends all the wrong messages. Mental illness is not evil. Mental illness is not the primary cause of violence. Numerous complex systemic factors contribute to violent acts, and to singularly blame mental illness and blindly ignore all the other potential contributors to violence is dismissive, neglectful, and irresponsible.

This makes the governor’s response backward because I believe the rise in gun violence contributes to a surge in mental health challenges. It is not the other way around. This is because mental illness has been with us since the dawn of time. It ebbs and flows with the impacts of life stresses and traumas. We know that mass events like famines, pandemics, wars, and other tragedies can have far-reaching implications for the mental health of nations. In other words, our mental health suffers as external stresses pile up. And these impacts can last for years. Gun violence is no exception, and it is one of those stresses.

With the advent of the Information Age in the later 1900s, we have increasingly faster access to information. We have gone from the 24-hour news cycle of newspapers to instant news at any second we want to access. This has led to living in a culture of fear. With a world of information in our hands, we have no time to process or digest all the information that floods our minds. As a result, our mental health suffers.

And with the threat of constant gun violence in our faces, our fear escalates. We avoid public spaces, including what should be one of our safest public spaces–church. So isolation increases along with our fear. And to think our children have remained unaffected is naive. Our children are intensely aware of the dangers in their world and schools. As I wrote in the May 2023 blog, “Teenage Mental Health Crisis,” regular lockdown drills in our schools are practiced trauma.
We should make mental health resources available and eliminate stigma from seeking mental health support. We need to increase mental health support to help us cope with the threats of violence in our neighborhoods. But, more importantly, we need to restore a sense of order and peace in our communities.

Here are a few suggestions for accomplishing some of those goals.

Set limits on the amount of information you consume. None of us needs a constant feed of news from our phones or televisions. We also need to limit how much we scroll on social media. We know that higher levels of information input only increase our anxiety and distract us from what is most important right in front of us — our family, friends, and neighbors, which leads me to my second suggestion.
Focus on those closest to you. Spend conversation and face-to-face contact with your immediate family and friends. Notice their needs and work to meet those needs. Provide service and support. None of us can solve the world’s big problems, but we can do something about the people right before us. Love those close to you.
Please do what you can to stop supporting our violent subculture. Examine your life and world. Do you do things or say things that explicitly or implicitly support violence? Do you use violent language when you talk about topics? When talking about political adversaries or those you disagree with, you use fighting-oriented language, like “going to battle” or “we are at war.” Do you need to advertise guns on your bumper stickers, flags, or living room wall if you own guns? Do you play violent video games? Maybe we could all curb our connections to these words, images, or activities.
We need to stop responding to gun violence as if it is a zero-sum game. If we keep responding like the goal is to beat the “bad guys,” then disagreement, conflict, and violence will only increase. Our goal should be to find ways to create safer, more peaceful communities for all of us, including the “bad guys.” If we do that, they may not be bad guys anymore. The focus is then on helping the community flourish and feel safe. Church leaders have many opportunities to implement programs, messages, and collaboration in this area, leading to my last point.
We must make more significant strides in unifying with those different from us. Sadly, we often won’t share a meal or resources with the church down the street, let alone another community of faith. All faith communities can rally together around a message of peace and cooperation. We need to passionately pursue cooperative efforts with every faith community to find solutions for reducing violence in our streets and neighborhoods.

Teen Mental Health Crisis

Mark DeYoung on May 3, 2023

May is mental health awareness month. And to contribute to our collective awareness of mental health, I want to discuss a current crisis. I honestly don’t use those words flippantly. The mental health of our preadolescent and teenage students in our country is in severe decline. I want to share with you some statistics that show this drastic decline and challenge us to rise as a community to support our most fragile groups.

In February 2023, the CDC released a shockingreport about teenage suicide in America. Suicide rates reached an all-time high in 2018, and though there was a slight decline in the next couple of years, in 2021, rates jumped again to reach an all-time high. Of particular concern is the level of hopelessness among our younger generations. Just a few statistics from that report:

60% of teenage girls reported feeling persistently hopeless in 2021
1 in 3 teen girls had seriously considered suicide
1 in 5 teen girls had experienced sexual violence in the past year.
14% reported being forced to have sex. Please stop and ponder that number. Over 1 in 10 girls reported being sexually assaulted. Remember, the vast majority of sexual assaults go unreported. Also, boys are the perpetrators of these assaults. What is going on with our young men that this seems to be more of normal behavior and expectation for them?
In a global survey of over 400,000 teens, only 22% reported being close to their family.

When we see statistics like that, many want to jump to conclusions about the cause. Please don’t be too quick to blame COVID or social media. Most experts in this area say COVID was a stressor that split open cracks already well formed in our society. However, some fair blame can be directed toward smartphones, screens, and social media.

Jonothan Haidt, a psychologist, has begun publishing data that strongly implicates social media with the rise of anxiety and depression in teenagers, specifically teen girls. His work is extensive, and I would point you to this website for a deeper review. But, the most significant conclusion from his work is a definitive turn in mental health among our teenagers with the introduction of the front-facing camera on smartphones (we can now take endless selfies) and the rise of Instagram. These both happened around 2012. The data is obvious, and though Dr. Haidt has faced pushback on his data analysis (this is part of science), the skeptics need more stable ground in their arguments.

So, we can put some blame on screens and social media. But from my perspective as a therapist, we continue to mishandle this problem. Our first mistake has been that we adults have drowned ourselves in social media as adults. We could have been better examples. Our kids witness us scrolling, posting, and commenting as frequently or even more than they are engaged with their social media apps. Children learn from watching their parents. No child development expert would disagree with that statement. And we need to be honest. We have been bad examples. We should work on setting better boundaries with our use of social media. I would love for such a cultural movement to abandon social media so dramatically that the billions these companies are raking in from selling us as a product dries up. It is a bit of a pipe dream, but I can dream, can’t I?

Secondly, as parents, we have attempted to manage the phone, screen time, and social media through a punishment/reward system. My bias is that punishments/rewards as a primary form of parenting are ineffective. They can have short-term value, but there are far more effective ways to parent. We need to stop taking phones or relying on router parental controls as the sole means to manage our child’s screen time. Instead, we need to be having conversations about screen time. It starts with a relationship. Why does your kid like TikTok? What videos do they enjoy on social media? Do you watch them together? Do you have a relationship with your child outside of TV and other screens? Do you go on walks or eat meals without screens? Do you play games (not video games) together? If you want to read a classic about this kind of relational parenting, read Dr. Haim Ginott’s Between Parent and Child.

Let me suggest a bit more controversial source of this mental health crisis. GUNS. School shootings have significantly increased.* In the 1970s, there were approximately 60s deaths nationwide from school-related shooting incidents. We are currently on track to have over 400 school-related shooting deaths this decade. These numbers have only increased since the 1970s. Lockdown drills are common practice for all ages in public schools. Young elementary children know that lockdown drills are designed to keep them safe from an active shooter on their campus. Many express significant fears and anxiety, knowing this is a constant reality.

My wife is a public school teacher. If I had the time and space to explain the procedures, rules, and expectations they must keep in mind for these lockdown drills, it would overwhelm all of us. Teachers are evaluated in their handling of lockdown drills. During drills, people go around wiggling locked doors. Children hear what it will sound like if a gunman is walking the halls. This is practiced stress and trauma. Now look, we used to have fire drills in school. The fire alarm would go off, and we would celebrate a break from our work while we walked outside. But during those drills, we were not walking through simulated smoke, seeing fire trucks, or feeling the heat of an actual fire. But in gunman lockdown drills, children are pressed to “remain silent” so they are not heard, and then in the silence, a door is wiggled, attempted to open. For all children, this is stressful, but for a sensitive child, this repeated lived-out terror.

As I write this blog, I feel inclined to write a much longer blog about guns and mental health. That will come in July 2023. But let me say for this post that our cultural obsession with firearms harms us. The late game theorist Anatol Rapoport illustrated that conflict will always escalate in games where there must be a winner and loser (we call them zero-sum games). We are witnessing this before our very eyes. Exercising your right of gun ownership to keep an arsenal of weapons in your home only contributes to the cultural escalation of violence. Weaponry reduction and inviting whole communities into conversations for creating safe and peaceful spaces in our cities is the right direction.

Our children witness this escalation. They genuinely fear that their school is next. I fear that the school down the street is next. This is not a far-off problem we can dismiss as “their problem.” Our children see it, and their mental health is suffering.

So what do we need to do?

We need to stop doubling down on solutions of the past. Stop saying this worked for me in my family or growing up. The world has fundamentally changed. It is time for new and creative solutions, even if they make us uncomfortable.
Stop pointing fingers of blame. Instead, engage in dialogue with those in your community. Talk to people who look different from you, are in another generation than you, vote differently, and go to another church of faith. We are better united than divided.
Connect with a young person. Love them. Please support them. Encourage them. Listen to them. Don’t worry about correcting or fixing it.
If you want a Christian faith view of mental health. Check out this YouTube channel from The Hills Church. Pastor Rick Atchley is doing a multi-week series on mental health. It started a few weeks back, but all the messages are titled “Let’s Talk about Mental Health.”
I did a podcast for The Hills Children and Youth Next Gen program on Mind Body connection and mental health. You can find that on this link.

Data from
*Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security, https://www.chds.us/sssc/charts-graphs/

Therapy vs. Coaching

Mark DeYoung on February 28, 2023

Professional Life Coaching is considered one of the fastest growing industries in North America. According to the International Coaching Federation (ICF) there are more than 26,000 professional coaches in North America. Revenue in the coaching industry during 2022 was approximately 1.5 billion dollars and is expected to grow to be 2.1 billion in 2030. According to Zip Recruiter the average salary for a Life Coach is $62,000 per year. The top 2% of Life coaches can make between 180K-240K per year. At current growth rates published by the ICF there are likely to be an additional 12,000 professional coaches in the next 10 years.

In comparison there are approximately 110,000 licensed Master’s level therapist’s in the United States. Revenue in the mental health market for 2022 was 76 billion in 2021 and is expected to exceed 100 billion in 2029. The average licensed mental health counselor/therapist makes $72,000 a year. The top 2% of licensed therapist can make 135K or more. In the next ten years there are expected to be 13,000 more licensed mental health counselor jobs added to the job market.

Though the share of the market is much larger for mental health providers, at the individual provider level there is little difference. A Life Coach and a Therapist can make a similar income. But is the service they are providing the community the same? As a licensed professional I have grown concerned with a number of clients who have sought service with a professional life coach and as a result of a bad experience were shocked to learn of the vast differences between the two types of provider.

I do believe that Life Coaching serves a place in our communities. As a service to individuals it can provide tools and supports that are extremely beneficial. But the consumer of Life Coaching services needs to be aware of what they are purchasing. Information is power to help the consumer make the best choices.

Let’s look at some Key differences between Life Coaches and Therapist/Counselors.

Education
There are significant education differences between Life Coaches and Therapists. To be a licensed Therapist/Counselor in any state in the United States you must have the minimum of a Master’s Degree from an accredited University. According to the ICF there are no minimum education requirements to be a Life Coach. It appears that an individual can work towards and complete a Life Coach credentialing process with a high school diploma or GED.

This means a Therapist/Counselor has completed at least 6 years of college work — their four year undergraduate degree and a two years Master’s degree program. This means that therapist/counselors have far exceeded the education of many Life Coaches before ever beginning a certification/license process. Most coaching programs are approximately 60 hours of online course work as a one time class. A typical 3 hour college class meets 48 hours not counting all the outside reading and assignments. So one college class exceeds the one course for coaching certification.

The type of education is also critical. Life coaches do not necessarily have a background in mental health. They may have a degree in finance, or interior design, but may be offering coaching for parenting or mental health issues.

Many life coaches may have advanced degrees, but it would benefit the consumer to inquire about the actual training and education a life coach has received.

Training/Certification
Most counselor training programs in graduate school have rigorous training components. They will require several hundred hours of client therapy services (mine required 500) as necessary for graduation. Graduate counseling students are also required to meet with a clinical supervisor and review their work with clients. This usually is dozens of hours during the two years of course work. My graduate program required 100 hours of meetings with supervisors. Once graduated a therapist cannot practice independently. They must also complete hundreds more hours of therapy (my license required 2000 hours) and dozens more hours of supervised evaluation of their work (mine required 200 hours) before being fully licensed.

As a comparison, the most basic coaching certification requires only 100 hours of coaching experience and 10 hours meeting with a supervisor. For the ICF to give you their highest certification you must have 200 hours of coaching education, 2500 hours of coaching experience and meet with a mentor coach for 10 hours.

There are significant differences here, specifically in the level of supervision of a providers early work. Life coaches only need to meet with a mentor for 10 hours (per ICF website). But therapist/counselors must meet with a supervisor for over 300 hours prior to being licensed. The experiences gained from a relationship with a trusted supervisor are invaluable and the licensure process for counselors is set up to honor that important relationship.

Regulation
All mental health providers are licensed in their state of residence. This includes Psychologists, LPC, LMFT, and LMSW. In Texas, these licenses are regulated by the Behavioral Health Executive Council (BHEC) and that council functions under the state laws of Texas. All mental health providers must meet rigorous licensure requirements and ongoing continuing education as mandated by law. The public is able to file complaints with the BHEC. The BHEC has the right by law to sanction and punish licensed practitioners in Texas. Texas (and any other state) has a strict codes of ethics that guide a counselors practice and if a therapist/counselor breaks that code they can be disciplined, including losing their license to practice. This level of ethics and regulation helps keep therapist/counselors accountable to the community that they serve.

Life coaches are not regulated by state law. The public has no recourse if a coach behaves inappropriately or unethically. There is no state board to file a complaint. The ICF does have a code of ethics for coaches, but the code is not enforceable. There is no ICF board to file a complaint against a member coach. This means there is no accountability for the coach to anyone other than to themselves. As a therapist this is my biggest concern for the community regarding Life Coaching – there is no accountability to protect the consumer and public trust.

For the consumer seeking support services or mental health services, it is important to understand what they are getting. Most therapists are prepared to answer questions about their education, training, and licensure. It is important to ask questions of both life coaches or therapists. Certifications can seem very significant, but don’t be shy to ask a therapist or coach to explain what went into achieving a certain designation. Therapy and Life Coaching both have important purposes and the more informed you are as a consumer, the better choices you can make regarding what services you plan to utilize.

COVID – A Comet – Commitment

Mark DeYoung on July 28, 2020

The COVID virus has shaken our world. The levels of uncertainty we have experienced during this pandemic have been stunning. Economic, Social, Physical, and clearly Political. Our daily lives are flooded with constant change and uncertainty. An invisible virus wields power to create panic and titanic shifts in nearly every aspect of our lives. We don’t go to movies. We wear masks. Churches worship digitally. Schools have become distance learning laboratories. There have been unexplainable shortages for toilet paper.

This change was completely unexpected. We never saw this coming. During December 2019 as we celebrated Christmas, there were rumors of a virus in China, but the tidal wave of change coming in the next few months was unseen. The result of such change is the virus has raised our threat radar. And for good reason. It has the potential to cause real harm to the point of death. As a result – of both uncertainty and threat – we often feel out of control. We have had to admit how little control we really have. We feel powerless.

Then right in the middle of this pandemic mess something else unexpected happened. We have had a surprise cosmic visitor. Newly discovered in March 2020, a small (3 miles wide) comet named NEOWISE. A chunk of rock and ice, on a 7000 year parabolic journey around the sun brightens in our skies during the middle of a chaotic pandemic. What timing. It didn’t show up 6 months ago when we might not have noticed or cared as much to notice. It has been a small glowing jewel of beauty in the middle of great stress and trial.

Our scientific knowledge of astronomical events makes a comet appearance like this something we can readily understand. But go back 2000 years in the middle of some catastrophe, and a celestial visitor would likely have been considered “a sign”. We do that as humans. We try to connect the dots. Signs in the sky must be trying to send us a message. Pandemics mush be trying to get our attention. What are they trying to say? We search for some meaning or explanation. We want to understand the why – especially in times of chaos and uncertainty.

I don’t know about COVID or the comet NEOWISE being signs. I am not prophet nor am I the son of a prophet. But such a monumental event can get our attention. They can remind of things that are important and refocus our attention on what is most valuable.

For me as a marriage therapist, the collision of these two unexpected cosmic realities has reminded me of some very important things about marriage.

The truth about sharing life with a partner in marriage is that the unexpected is bound to happen. Sometimes this is as simple as an unexplained mood shift in our spouse, or as traumatic as a diagnosis of a serious disease. Sometimes a surprise can come from external causes such as being fired from a job or they can be the result of our own choices such as the revelation of an ongoing affair. Regardless of magnitude, from small to overwhelming what they shared in common is being unexpected and creating uncertainty. As a result we often feel fear, and insecurity.

We are wired up as humans to respond to threats like these using our fight – flight system. We are created to respond in these ways because we need some form of protection. It is a good system that God gave us. But what can be good, can also become a problem for close relationships like marriage. The fear response can lead to increased conflict and distance. Fighting can cause injury and fleeing can cause distance.

In my book, Revolutionary Marriage, I suggest a response for these unexpected moments of chaos and change. We have to keep our focus on commitment. Commitment brings stability to the unpredictable. Much like the pandemic has cause isolation, withdrawal, and increased conflict – stress in marriage can lead disconnection. When we return to our commitments in marriage the focus becomes on what we know rather than the unknown. Affirming our commitments to our marriage partner establishes predictability and stability rather than chaos.

I am not going anywhere. That’s what our partner needs to hear.

This becomes an anchor point in the storms of life. The storms pass but the anchors provide stability and security. I think this is what God had in mind when the idea of “one flesh” is expressed in Genesis 2:24. That phrase is all about unity. It means to cling or hold tightly because life is going to batter you so you need something to hold on to.

So in what practical ways do I reaffirm my commitments? You live by the principles of “I am here” and “I am present’

I am here means that you live out your commitment by making time for your spouse. Dedicated time. Sacred space reserved just for them. This is all about physical availability.
I am present means that you live out your commitment to your spouse by communicating an open invitation to empathic connection. You choose to be responsive and aware of your partners hopes, needs, fears and concerns. This is all about emotional availability.

Some have done these things in the middle of a pandemic and they have been blessed with moments of deeper connection and intimacy. They have shared in conversations that have increased understanding and provided meaning.

And this is what a comet has to do with marriage. If we anchor with commitment and are open enough to intimacy in the storm we will find some beautiful surprising jewels. People were able to step outside their homes or sit in the yard with the neighbors and catch glimpses of this astronomical wonder. Making time and space for each other, affirming your commitments can result in you seeing something new and beautiful in your spouse.

These experiences are like likely going to surprise us. We can’t manufacture those moments, but just as glowing tail of dust and gas pops into view in the fading twilight, beautiful moments will be experienced in marriage when we make a space and wait for them to happen. We must commit to the process and wait for the treasure.