This is the seventh in a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few weeks for more great content, and feel free to submit your own essay to this series by emailing [email protected]. (Thanks! -Abby Maxwell Hansen)
Guest Post: by a licensed marriage and family therapist
The year three of my children came out as queer (they use “queer” over LGBTQ+) was a rough one. My husband and I processed it differently and had different emotional experiences, but we got to the same page in terms of how we supported our kids. Being able to talk about it with each other and trust the other’s love and respect for these amazing young people we were parenting was a tremendous blessing. We ended up feeling closer to each other and to our kids.
The following year our kids started leaving the LDS Church and again my husband and I processed it differently, had different emotional experiences, and this time did not end up in the same place. After 3 years of faith journeying, 24 years of temple marriage, and a lifetime as members of the Church we found ourselves in a mixed-faith marriage. Navigating this new terrain has required communication, compromise and coordination about things we’d previously taken for granted. There have been additional sources of concern and additional need for respect and reassurance.
As a marriage and family therapist, I’m trained to attune to what lies beneath the surface of couples’ conflicts–the fears that fuel painful patterns, the longing for connection and respect, the need to know we’re safe. I handle the challenges in my marriage better when I’m coming from a place of compassion (for each of us) instead of fear and hurt. That takes continual effort, and I definitely mess it up, but problems that are addressed often heal into greater strength.
Below are some suggestions for establishing safety, connection and respect, and overcoming fears and hurt in a mixed-faith marriage.
- Rebuild safety.
It is normal for us humans to feel safe with others who believe, act and feel as we People who are on the same page as us seem more understandable, predictable and dependable. And we need to feel safe in order to connect–that’s how our brains work. When one person in a relationship stops believing, acting and feeling the way they used to, it makes sense for the other to be unsettled and feel unsafe. A key basis for predictability is gone and things that were taken for granted are now called into question. If a shared faith is lost, will shared love be lost? Fidelity? Morality in general? Eternal marriage and family? There is a lot to fear and grieve.
If your marriage began with shared faith and became mixed-faith, the effort to re-discover common ground is part of re-establishing a sense of safety. Instead of focusing on specific beliefs, try exploring values. Maybe one of you doesn’t believe in God anymore, but do you both believe in being kind, honest and doing good? Maybe now only one of you believes temple covenants are essential, but are you both actively committed to your marriage and family? Maybe you differ about whether children should be attending church, but do you both want your children to grow up to be responsible, respectful, moral people?
Religion can do a lot of the heavy lifting of establishing what someone’s moral page and vision for life look like. Doing the work as an individual and couple to determine a shared moral page and life vision can assuage a lot of fears and promote safety as you navigate a host of issues. It may help a spouse who suddenly seems frighteningly unpredictable, possibly immoral and rejecting of a shared vision begin to seem understandable and dependable again. It can also help both people feel personally grounded in their own moral authority–their ability to determine, believe, and act on the morals and a vision of life that they value.
- Be aware of your fears and communicate about them.
In a mixed-faith marriage, you might recognize conflicts about how kids are raised, how to navigate family events, whether porn, alcohol or other previously taboo activities are acceptable, how you are or aren’t supporting each other, etc., along with all the normal marital conflicts. When focusing on those it’s easy for communication to become conflictual and lead to disconnection. With some introspection, a change of focus, and willingness to be vulnerable, though, you can change the conversation and cultivate connection.
When working with couples in conflict, I inevitably find fears fueling their pain. Sometimes we have to dig to discover what is actually the core of the conflict, but it almost always comes back to fundamental relationship desires that aren’t being met, and the meaning people make of that. In a healthy attachment relationship, we want to feel respected, connected, understood, valued, important, accepted, safe, trusted, appreciated, wanted, supported, partnered. . . you get the picture. When we aren’t feeling that way, fears come up. Our minds may decide: “I’m not enough;” “I’m a failure;” “I’m unlovable/unacceptable;” or really start tuning in to every hint that: “I’m not safe;” “I’m not valued;” “I’m alone in this;” “I’m powerless;” “I’m being rejected,” and seeing the other person as the problem. Both feel terrible and terrifying.
If there is a conflict that comes up often for you, take some time alone to explore what is at stake for you in the conflict. Maybe the kids’ church attendance (or not) is actually about you feeling like you are failing as a parent and that you can’t succeed without support. Maybe it’s about feeling your experiences of hurt at church aren’t seen or respected. Coming to a resolution about the surface issue almost always requires communicating about the underlying issue. None of us are at our best when our fears are driving, and to get them out of the driver’s seat they have to be understood, communicated and validated.
Validating the other person’s experience is often hard for couples–there’s a sense that by really listening and reflecting what the other person is saying, we have to agree with them or give up our point of view. That isn’t what validation is about, though. It’s about creating a safe place, where fears and hurts can be heard and understood. It requires each person to hold onto themself (helping create safety can’t happen when we are letting our own fears drive) and lean in instead of pulling back. Validating is like getting out of a finger trap–trying to pull the other person to our side only traps us further; relaxing, re-engaging, and reflecting what the other person is saying releases us.
- Focus on helping things go right.
You have likely heard the statistic that stable relationships have a ratio of at least five positive interactions to every negative interaction (no? It’s from John Gottman.) Healthy, thriving relationships have an even higher ratio of positive to negative. Every relationship has ruptures, so this means it’s important to be intentional about repairs. There’s a saying I love about relationships (because I mess up a lot): “What’s most important isn’t what you did, it’s what you do after what you did.” Reconnecting, with an acknowledgement or apology for what went wrong helps things go right.
Helping things go right also means overcoming our brain’s negativity bias and intentionally noticing and communicating the positive. For most of us (I’ve been assured it’s not just me) it’s much easier to see faults in the people and situations around us than to see what is going well. This isn’t a shortcoming necessarily–turns out we’re kind of programmed that way (look up “negativity bias” for more info). So we have to be intentional about seeing and commenting on the good.
Another way to help things go right is to do the basic stuff that we all know are good for our marriages. The things that (for me) often get relegated to the back burner in the face of all the demands of life and my lack of energy or brain power or both. And when there’s conflict that disconnects us further it can feel like the back burner just gets turned off and there’s this slow heat death of the relationship (where everything devolves into a frozen void). So, you know, make the effort to spend fun time together. Talk about things that are interesting to you both. Watch fun shows together. Have sex. (And if there isn’t enough emotional connection or safety for sex, go to therapy!) Smile at each other. Give a compliment. Say “I love you,” and why. Express appreciation and admiration. Hold hands. Forgive. Apologize. You know the things.
I’m still pretty new to navigating my mixed-faith marriage, and I anticipate challenges will continue. My hope comes from the experiences of connection we’ve had based on doing the things above. Not every marriage (mixed-faith or otherwise) survives, and it is not within any one person’s power to make it survive. But when both partners are committed to doing the work, I’ve seen marriage come back from the brink and thrive.
___________________
This post is part of a series about navigating Mixed Faith Marriages. Find more from this series here.
One Response
:Religion can do a lot of the heavy lifting of establishing what someone’s moral page and vision for life look like.” Yes! It takes work to re-establish this after a faith transition, both individually and within a marriage.