Saving Your Marriage From Divorce (Part 1 of 2)

So you're in a situation like that with your marriage, it seems impossible. There's just no way out. Look what's happening.

It's been years like this. And Satan is pushing, you're done. God may not be done, and it's not going to be done with that marriage. There's always a chance, with God's help. So God is asking you to step forward in faith, follow a series of steps, and let's see what He can do.

And we know He can do anything. With God's help, there is hope for your marriage. And Dr. David Clark is our guest on Focus on the Family. He'll be offering some of that encouragement to you, and we trust you'll stay tuned. Your host is Focus president and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. You know, John, in every marriage that I'm aware of, and I try to take little surveys of when I'm traveling, talking to people, you're going to hit times where there's conflict, there's misunderstandings, and maybe even hurt feelings.

That's kind of normal. In a healthy marriage, both spouses come together to work on their issues as they arise through good communication, healthy conflict, which is why we talk about strengthening your marriage so often here at Focus on the Family. But when we don't deal with issues as they arise, a marriage can become stale, unhappy, and you and your spouse may get to the point where staying married doesn't feel worth it anymore.

And I'm telling you, that's not a good place to be. Today, we're going to come alongside struggling couples and give you the hope that the power of God—and yes, some work on your part—will be required for your marriage to be better. And that can make it a much happier marriage once again. Here at Focus on the Family, our heart is to strengthen and save marriages. One way we do that is through our Hope Restored program. It's specifically designed for couples that are on the brink of separation, or maybe even signed the divorce papers already.

And if you're hurting and in that spot, let us help you. Four out of five couples—that's what I said—four out of five couples who go through the program are still together two years later and doing better. So I think it's worth your investment to check that out. Maybe not for yourself, but think of the witness and testimony as a Christian that you have in Christ.

It's important that you be mindful of that as well. Yeah, you can find out more about Hope Restored when you call 800-232-6459. 800, the letter A in the word family, and we also have details in the episode notes. And Dr. Clark has written a great book that we'll hear more about today. It's called I Don't Want a Divorce, A 90-Day Guide to Saving Your Marriage. David, welcome back to Focus. Well, my pleasure to be here. We love having you here. You're just so energetic, number one. You're fun to be with. I can't believe you can contain yourself in a counseling session. You must be a very interesting counselor.

I'm very active. I'm very directive. Are you subdued when a couple is in front of you, or are you just in their face?

I'm never subdued. I can see that. I tell them what to do and how to do it. That's why they're coming to me.

I don't say, well, how do you—I have never, ever said in a counseling session, how do you feel about that? You get right to the point. Oh, come on. Yeah, we're going to get right to it.

I love it. And let me ask you, you believe there's some good news about bad marriages. How?

Well, three words, join the club. Ninety-nine point nine percent of marriages get into the danger category at one point or another. Five to seven years, huge problem area. The seven-year itch is real.

And then if you clear that, then it's going to be the 18 to 20-year mark, another huge upswing. Marriage breaks down. Annoying habits, male-female differences, communication problems, conflict issues. Plus, no one ever taught you how to be intimate. In a great Christian home, if mom and dad did that, they did it behind closed doors.

I don't know how to do it. So your marriage is going to break down. That's the bad news. In fact, in this great book, I Don't Want to Divorce a 90-Day Guide to Saving Your Marriage, you mentioned kind of three basic marriage types. Let's start there. Good. First, we're unhappy but willing to work on it. Our marriage is struggling. We admit it.

We're going to be honest here. Two adults, and we want to get better, maybe. And there's different categories in that main category. But that's not a bad place to be.

That's a good place. They're recognizing, okay, we're struggling. We're roommates. Let's do better.

Right. The couples who don't have the honest conversation, I'm unhappy, you're unhappy, we're in trouble, those are the ones that end up getting divorced. If you'll voice it and you'll seek a plan like my plan or your pastor or focus his resources and the intensives are awesome, they're excellent, I send couples to them, you can make it. But you've got to have the conversation and you have to start doing something before it's too late. Let me ask you this, the want to.

We're going to come back and get the other two real quick. But what about the want to that you're describing? How does a couple recognize, okay, we still have I want to do it better in us? Oh, good question.

I mean, that's it. It's usually going to be a conversation brought up by one of the spouses, probably going to be the woman, because they're sensitive and they know what they're missing. Your basic guy doesn't know what he's missing. If there's food on the table, if we're okay in the bedroom, if my job is okay, we're good.

Hey, aren't we good? Not realizing the wife is dying inside, so she's going to bring it up. My theory is a good man's going to get it. You have to bring it up.

You've got to be very direct. He'll realize, oh, and then we go through a series of steps and that if he loves his wife and chances are he does, okay, what do I have to do? Initially, he doesn't know what he's missing. He'll do it for her. And that's a fine way to start.

Eventually, a few weeks into the program, he'll realize, oh, I've been missing. I'm not deep. I'm not close to my wife. So that's what the want to comes initially from. I love you. You're saying we're in, we're in trouble. I'm going to respond to that. But what I'm also hearing you say is that want to can be an aha. You may not start there.

I mean, I just don't know what I want. And then when you start going through the process of why are we not as strong as we could be, you start recognizing, oh, maybe I'm part of the problem. Oh, yeah, I'm sitting with couples in my office every week had four or five this last week. The wife is there. She's dragged the husband there.

And he actually has the nerve. She explains, I'm upset. I'm unhappy. We're not intimate. And he's arguing with both of us saying, No, we're fine. I'm telling you, we're fine.

I see what are you doing in a shrinks office? What are you out of your mind? You're in trouble.

Your wife is saying you're in trouble. But there's a lot of resistance to that. What's the male thing about that? Why are we blind to that? What is it ego? Are we saying, Hey, even though we've got our issues, it's okay.

Partly that we're into control. And I don't want to feel like I'm out of control in my marriage. But underneath the real reason is, oh, if this is really a problem, much is going to be required of me, I'm going to have to learn how to be intimate, I'm gonna have to really get deeper with my wife. I don't want to do that.

I don't know how to do it. I'm not good at it. And so if I can somehow convince her that we're okay, then we don't have to do this.

Well, it's the dumbest argument in the history of the world. She's already saying I'm unhappy. We need to have a response to that, sir.

Yeah. All right, let's go to the other two. You mentioned the we're unhappy stage, but willing to work on it. What's number two? Number two is my spouse won't change. Many spouses are in this situation, probably the woman could be the man. But let's say it's the woman and you have a husband who is not going to divorce you. But he is pretty much done with you. He is not going to be intimate with you. And he won't do anything to change. He won't read my book. I don't want to divorce he will not go to a seminar he will not go to an intensive he won't talk to your pastor.

He's not going to make any changes. And this can happen over a period of years. And the wife's dying inside. What am I supposed to do? If I have a husband or a spouse like that?

What does the church offer me? Well, Dave Clark, through his book and focus is we're offering you a plan a clear plan that will get his attention hopefully motivate him get him to repent from his sin because that husband's in serious sin. If you're saying our marriage is in trouble, and I'm not gonna do anything to work on it.

I'm breaking one of God's most important laws. And so that's a sinner and we're going to confront that sin. And we'll come back around on each of these. We're going to explore them more.

But we want to get the basics right up front. And the third one then is what my spouse has sinned big time. And I don't know that he deserves being married to me any longer.

Right. This is the catastrophic crisis when the roof just caves in. I found out my husband is looking at pornography. And it's been a pattern I found out he's got an emotional affair going with someone at work or Susie that he knew back in junior high, whatever or or he's got a full blown affair. Or there's been alcohol problem, a drug problem, financial irresponsibility, he's gambling, he's wasted our money. He's done something that or she's done something just outrageous. It's extremely sinful, and it's a massive crisis.

How to heal, how to enter the system at that point, get the center to repent and get into recovery and then heal from what has happened. That's the challenge of that situation. And I want to say, you know, every time you're voicing the he did this, you're really saying he she the spouse, but it's fatiguing to always have to say he she. So you know, unless it's specific to male behavior, you're you're really trying to refer to both genders that could be in trouble, right? Exactly.

And women are I hate to say this, women are catching up in the senior category. So well, yeah, the way that's it. Well, let's spend the rest of time right now talking about marriages where both spouses are unhappy, but they're willing to work on it.

We'll go a little deeper with each of these. How do you think these couples typically get where they're at? What creates the roommate mentality? I think it's the nature of the beast. It's just what marriage is like. And it happened to the blonde Sandy and I and we didn't even expect it to, but it did. So this is pretty normal. It's very normal.

You're infatuated, you're in love, you get married, then you start living together to find out just how hard it is massive adjustments, annoying habits. I can't believe she's like that. Sandy found out that I'm a slob. She didn't know that because we weren't living together.

Unbelievable world class slob. You thought she knew that about Dave Brown. My roommate in college didn't care because he was a slob, too. I never got the memo here.

So that was a big issue. And then things are already starting to break down and we don't know how to be intimate. When you lose the rush, the adrenaline, the power of the infatuation.

Oh, you don't have anything left. Now we have to learn how to develop intimacy. No one's ever taught us don't have a clue.

You're given often in the church and well-meaning people and they're wonderful and church is wonderful. But you're you're given the the goal, but you're not given the how to say that's a good point, man. So that's why focus is here. Exactly. Think about that.

And you do a wonderful job. No one else does it like focus. And then you're already kind of on the edges. And then you do the one thing that's guaranteed to kill your passion. Stone cold dead. You have a child.

You know what? What were you thinking? Everybody out of your mind. Then it's all about the baby. I'm when Emily came our first it was just like catastrophic. We just our lives were just came to a stop. We got to keep her alive.

And then it was we got to stay alive. She's killing us. She was yelling all the time. She's very feisty. She's a wonderful person.

But oh, so that I don't know where she gets that. I just got to say that's so funny. You also give some advice in the book about this kind of marriage. You suggest we take these marriages out back and shoot them. What are you getting to?

What is that all about? Most of my couples and they're shocked out of their heads. We're sitting there at the end of the first session. I said, look, I got to tell you, this marriage is awful. It's dead.

Take it out back and shoot it. We're done. And they look at me like, why are we here? I thought you were I thought he was a Christian, Betty Bob. I say, look, your first marriage is over. We're not going back to that one. We're going to read you. We're going to heal from what's happened with God's principles. We're going to put into place the brand new marriage, which is going to take you the rest of the way. So that's a little juxtaposition I use. And it really seems to work. No, it's true.

Okay. To successfully build a stronger marriage, you believe couples must strengthen their relationship with God. I everybody that feels that way is now saying, yes, we're getting to the spiritual component. That's so true.

That's foundational. We would say, what does that look like, though, in practical terms? What does it look like to strengthen your relationship with God when you're in this kind of marriage? Well, here's the nuts and bolts.

I'm assuming and it's a good assumption because I always ask couples when I see them. Yeah. Do you know Jesus Christ personally? If not, we're going to do that like right now, because without God's help, you're not going to make it. But then the second point is how are you personally doing in your relationship with God through Jesus? Church attendance may be a little lax.

I'm not having a quiet time. You're not close to God. So if you're not close to God or ma'am, you're not we can't do the steps in my book.

We're going to have to start with that. Let's get your faith back where it belongs. One of Satan's most effective tools is using marital unhappiness to draw you away from God.

He's a master at it. I don't want to go to church. We're unhappy, you know, and we're just drifting apart. And so we don't want to pray together.

Everything falls apart. But it's you and God. That's the main thing.

So we start getting that back. And most of the couples on my office hang their head. They know exactly what I'm talking about. I don't get pushed back. They say you're right.

And the man will say, I'm the leader. I should make sure we go to church. Let me ask you, David, that's an interesting observation with the couples that come to you. How many come to you that are struggling that do have a, you know, good, healthy relationship with God? They're reading the word regularly. They're praying regularly, maybe hopefully praying together regularly. How many of those couples come in for help? Three percent.

Three percent. Seriously, that's it. That's why it's in the book.

It's major league. I am not close to God. It's only with God's power that I can love this opposite sex person.

Once I lose that connection, I literally cannot do it. You know, that fits with national survey work that it's somewhere around one to three percent that the whole the whole country of Christians would say that if we're engaged with each other, if we're healthy spiritually. Very few people have marital difficulty at the level that it's going to tear it apart. Let me ask you this. You believe the breakdown of most marriages is a breakdown in communication.

We see that here at focus. It sounds so simple. I was talking to Jean the other night and we were talking about how many generations do we have to go through? You know, when will we say, oh, it's communication because we've been talking about it for like two thousand years.

Yeah. You know that we need to communicate better. We need to love and respect each other. Why is this so hard to do if it's so obvious? You know, nobody knows how when you're dating and even early in marriage, you think you know how you think you're having deep conversations. In fact, you are not because you don't know how every parent listening should actually sit their kids down. And there should be a crash course over the course of of years actually teaching them how to communicate with the opposite sex.

Nobody does it because you don't think to do it. Well, that'll just work out. We worked it out. They'll work it out. No, we need to have as part of premarital education in this country and the church can be involved in that very clear. I'm going to teach you how to communicate.

That's what I do with my premarital couples. Wow. Think of that. It would be huge.

Yeah, huge. They think they already know. They don't know. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Our guest is Dr. David Clark and you can contact us to get a copy of his book, I Don't Want a Divorce. We also have the entire conversation with David on a CD or it's available as a download. Stop by the episode notes to learn more or call 1-800 the letter A in the word family.

And now more from Dr. David Clark on today's episode of Focus on the Family. So that air of communication, another one and this I think is if not equal to maybe greater than because it starts everything else. Selfishness.

I mean, I think Dr. Clark, the main reason God set it up this way. Why opposites attract? I mean, he's probably smiling a bit because he's moving us toward his character, selflessness in marriage. Speak to that issue of how selfishness can destroy a marriage. Oh boy.

It works every time it's tried and it's tried every time. And I think of my marriage specifically. I was spoiled.

I come into marriage. Everything had been taken care of. And I was a great kid. Don't get me wrong. I was a great kid and I really didn't give them too much. Except for the slob.

That's right. But mom didn't seem to care. She shut the door. I come into marriage with Sandy. Oh my goodness.

The expectations. Is she a first born by chance? No, she's second born, but she really is more of a first born. She's a doer. She's a mover. She's a shaker. She tells me what to do and I do it. She's a rock.

But I came in totally unprepared. I thought that if Sandy just met all of my needs, well, of course, I'd be happy. And then if I'm happy, she'd be happy. A lot of guys feel that way.

Well, it was the dumbest thing in the world. So I had to really read Vamp loving her. We had some great conversation. Talk about communication. She sat me down early in marriage and said, look, I'm doing everything here, Dave. We're a Dallas seminary. I'm doing the laundry.

I'm working full time and I'm typing your your papers late at night. I would hand them to her and say, would you type this? And I'd go to bed. Oh, my goodness. I was incredibly selfish.

Snares, daggers are flowing right at you right now. My goodness. What kind of a husband was that? Terrible.

Sandy said, you're out of your mind. And so I started doing the laundry, started doing the dishes when she cooked. I got a part time job because the burden was too much on her and I did my own dumb papers. But more than that, I had to learn how to love this beautiful blonde.

I had no idea. And so I had to learn how to how to talk with her, how to make time with her, how to how to really meet her needs and have conversations that would be deep for her. Our first year was rough, rough, rough, rough. Yes. OK, for the men that are listening, let me ask this question. What does a deep, good conversation sound like? I mean, we're down to one on one, buddy. Well, you you literally first you let your wife define that, because a guy might think this was a great conversation about me fixing the car engine or whatever it might be. The box are doing exactly. You know what? I don't think so. So you let her you if you've got the guts, you sit down with your wife today and you say, honey, what is a deep conversation? She'll laugh her head off. Are you kidding? You've never asked that.

You'll probably faint. But that she knows exactly what she wants here. And you let her know and she'll let you know what what she needs. Well, we would talk about a topic and you would say this and I would say that and you'd ask me certain questions. She knows. Is that a good question to start with?

It is. What is a deep conversation with me? What would that look like, honey? She knows the answer. And your particular woman will be able to tell you and choreograph it and you'll say, OK, I'm going to work on that.

So it's like a training exercise. Women like have a Ph.D. in communication. So we shouldn't be shocked by the speed in that reply when you ask that question.

There will be no causes. Don't be upset. It was so quick because she's been wanting to answer that question for a few years. She has.

And that's male leadership. You need to be asking her what are your needs? And that's one of her key needs. Let's start working on that. She will be beyond thrilled. And then together. Yeah, I mean, she'll teach you how to communicate.

She absolutely will. Well, and that's a beautiful picture of how it could work, too, is for the wife to maybe knock some of that edge off of her anger that he needs to be taught. I mean, it's hard for us to say that. We don't want to be taught about anything. We could fix that.

And then we totally mess it up. But even in this area, to be taught, you know, honey, can you teach me how to be deeply intimate with you? It takes guts to ask that. Women tend to think he knows and he's holding out on me.

No, no. Here's the secret. He doesn't have a clue. He needs to be taught. And if he's open to that, you'll do it together. Like every area of your relationship, parenting.

I mean, in the bedroom, the physical, the spiritual, you've got to work together and teach each other. Well, again, you mentioned it. Someone's going to be working to tear you apart. The enemy.

And he's so successful. David, you mentioned writing a letter of responsibility to your spouse. That sounds, again, a little intimidating as I read it. What does it mean?

I'm sitting with a couple. This is second session. We've established some of the foundational things as we've discussed.

And now we're going to talk about the homework assignment is going to be and they bring it in the letter of responsibility. It sounds bad. It does. But you know what? I don't care. I know that. You know that. And I explain it. Look, you because they come in for a session. It's all about the other person. She met that.

You wouldn't believe. And then she goes back. Oh, yeah. Well, how about you, Bozo? I say, this is not helpful. You're probably right in what your partner is doing wrong, but it doesn't help. You can't do anything about that. So stop the rocks in the bottles. I'm going to have you look in the mirror very solidly.

Pray over this and write actually write out the mistakes you've made in the marriage for next time. You can hear a pin drop in the counseling session. But you know what? That's how we start. That's how Dr. Clark starts. That's how the Bible starts. It starts with looking in the mirror, the log in your eye.

Take a look. Be very honest about mistakes, regrets, things you have to work on. That's A. And then B is what you're going to do, what you want to do to change those things. Couples that come in and a lot of them try this because of resistance. They'll come in and they haven't done the assignment. I'm not going to see them again. This is a progressive series of steps. I'm not mean about it.

Well, sometimes they have, depending on if they've had by chai tea or not in the morning anyway. So I will say, no, this is in fact, we're going to cut this session short because you don't have the homework. I have no other agenda here.

And you can go now and you're going to pay me. That nips it in the bud. That's good. Another one that you talk about is focusing on your spouse's positive attributes.

That could be so hard. And especially if you have a critical nature, which I think all human beings do. It's whether or not you let it out of the cage. And because it's so fleshly to be critical. And you know, that's, again, one of the things Jesus talked about is bite that tongue, you know, don't go there. And how would we think about being less critical or not critical and more positive about our spouse?

How do we do that? Well, it's a great question, Jim. When a marriage breaks down, as you know, it's all negative. When they're sitting in front of me, they're all negative. The positivity is all gone. That's how they started their relation with positivity.

So we bring that back and it has to be forced. I say, you're not going to like hearing this. You're not going to want to do it.

We're not worried about your feelings. You just have to do it. Faith in God, faith in this process, and hopefully love for your spouse.

It's going to be developing comp. We start with compliments. I'll say this next week. I want you to come up with a list of 14 very impressive and real compliments for your spouse, physical attractiveness, character, what they do for you as spiritual qualities has to be a real list. And then you're going to drop in seven days, two compliments a day, one in the morning, one in the evening that began.

And it's the most awkward thing in the world. They don't want to do it. I can't think of anything positive. Don't come back to my office until you have thought of positives because they're there.

They're just totally buried by your dysfunction. And Satan's pushing them way out of where to whack. So when they start after that week, things are starting to change simply because they've said something that is true and it starts to connect them. So we start with that. Yeah.

And it works. No, and it's so true. And it's so important. It goes back to communication. Like you're saying, um, let's end today talking about conflict, which is, you know, again, another, all of these are so critical. I keep saying, this is important.

This is important. But the lack of communication and dealing with conflict in a healthy way is what got a lot of couples to the point they're at now. Right. The point that they need help. What does healthy conflict look like?

And David, you know, this folks are going to email us or contact us and say, if you're Christian, you shouldn't have any conflict. Address that too. Yeah. Those people have big problems. There's nothing worse in my opinion.

I'll tell couples this, but then a couple that has no conflict. Why? Oh my goodness. It sounds right though.

It sounds like a good thing. And very Christ-like. That's not true. Christ had a conflict with a lot of people and they killed him. That was, that was pretty conflictual.

And he always told the truth was got him in all kinds of trouble, even though it was done with love. Yeah. If you're avoiding, you're avoiding what is actually going on. So you're burying things. Absolutely.

Potentially. Right. And that's keeping you far apart. And so those kinds of couples, if I'm avoiding all these issues that are really bothering me, I'm not talking about a lot of things I should be talking about. And so you pull way apart. You're going to have conflict. You actually want to have conflict. It's built into God's system. And if you handle it the right way, there's all kinds of passion and conflict, working it through, finding out things about your partner.

You never knew closeness results. The making up is sweet. The whole thing works.

That's good. David, man, we have flown through this, but we're not done. We've covered topic one. You know, when the couple is unhappy, but willing to work toward it, we still got to come back to the, uh, one spouse not being willing and kind of dig into that.

And then finally, when the big sins occur, whatever that might be infidelity or abuse or where there's something happening that needs more serious contemplation, maybe separation, those kinds of things. Uh, let's come back next time and cover that. Can you stick with us? I'm not going anywhere. That's how we concluded part one of our conversation with Dr. David Clark about his book. I don't want to divorce a 90 day guide to saving your marriage. John, I'm so energized whenever we have David in the studio, he has a gift of saying what needs to be said and challenging us to live out our faith in our marriages. We need to do things God's way.

If we want to experience the joy and peace and intimacy that he intended for us. And I wholeheartedly recommend David's book to our listeners, especially if you or someone you know, is struggling to save their marriage. We also have hope restored where we provide intensive counseling over several days to couples who may be on the brink of divorce.

That's not uncommon, but we've seen God move in those marriages and four out of five of those couples who go through hope restored are still together two years later and having a more satisfying relationship. We would be happy to tell you more about hope restored and other resources we have for your marriage. We have a team of caring Christian counselors and so much more here. Just call 800 the letter a and the word family 800-232-6459 or stop by the episode notes where we have all the details. And John, so often I hear from folks who say to me, the need for focus on the family could not be greater than right now.

They instinctively see the downward spiral of the family divorce rates, all the hassles and the mayhem going on in family. So if you're in a good place, join us in ministry. Let's be that difference in Christ to a hurting and painful world who's looking for solutions. Your ongoing support makes this broadcast and the podcast and websites and everything else we do, counseling all possible.

It's only with your support and God's guidance that we can do this work together. So please support focus on the family today. Send a gift of any amount and we'll say thank you by sending you a copy of Dr. Clark's book.

I don't want to divorce a 90 day guide to saving your marriage and maybe you can pass it on to a neighbor or friend who needs it. I know many families are going to benefit from this powerful book. And once again, our number is 800, the letter A and the word family or donate and get the book when you stop by the episode notes for all the links. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the conversation with Dr. Clark and once more, help you and your family thrive in Christ. I knew my marriage was falling apart.

I just didn't know how to fix it. I felt like I would always be alone, even if I stayed married. At Focus on the Family's Hope Restored Marriage Intensive, we offer hope to couples in crisis so they can have the marriage they've always dreamed of. For the first time, I felt like my husband truly heard me. I've received some great tools from the counselors that have changed my life and my marriage. To begin the journey of finding health, go to HopeRestored.com today.