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Divine Intimacy Radio - Ordinary Marital Conflict vs. Spiritual Warfare · The Quest Atlanta Catholic Radio

• 0:01
  Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, a co-production of EWTN Radio and SpiritualDirection.com, where we provide you with a spiritual haven of rest and explore the riches of the wisdom of the saints and the path to union with God.
• 0:20
  This is Dan Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest.
• 0:25
  Stephanie would hear it.
• 0:26
  She'd say, your hermitage of the heart.
• 0:28
  And I would then say, your monastery of the mind, where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw upon the wisdom of the saints to help us navigate the tumult of this difficult life.
• 0:38
  And today, in place of Stephanie, we have my good friend, Tim Glover.
• 0:46
  Tim served for 25 years with Ascension Catholic Health Care.
• 0:51
  He's a retired licensed clinical pastoral therapist, works with individuals and couples all seasons of life, spiritual director, retreat leader, and he lives with his wife, Sue, in Gallatin, Tennessee.
• 1:03
  They've been married for 327 years, I mean 36 years, and are the proud grandparents of three daughters.
• 1:12
  Tim, thanks for being on the show with me today.
• 1:14
  Yeah.
• 1:14
  Thank you so much, Dan.
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  Good to be with you.
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  And I'm sure my wife Sue would kind of laugh at that first number you gave.
• 1:21
  It probably feels that long for her in terms of a journey with me.
• 1:27
  Well, today, the reason Tim is on, we're going to continue answering questions from our Spiritual Warfare in the Family series.
• 1:34
  And we're going to address spiritual warfare, wounds, marital conflict, that sort of thing.
• 1:41
  And so, Tim, let's just jump into the question, the first question.
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  Similar to a last show, but because of your background, I'd be interested in some interesting questions.
• 1:51
  in the way you would approach it.
• 1:52
  But how can a faithful spouse discern the difference between ordinary marital conflict, wounds and attachment issues, and genuine spiritual warfare?
• 2:03
  What signs help us to know which battle we're actually fighting?
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  One of my first thoughts about that, Dan, is that there's a way in which those three are always present.
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  Right.
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  Right.
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  Now, which seems to be the key driver?
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  which seems to be maybe more of the origin or which seems to be the element that keeps that dynamic in a gridlock kind of way or a chronic way.
• 2:36
  That is the notion of discernment, right?
• 2:39
  Because we know marital conflict can often reflect from wounds that we enter into marriage with.
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  It's kind of a pulls upon some of those wounds.
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  Conflict can wound us, but we also know conflict and wounds can be an opening of division for the evil one.
• 2:58
  And the evil one can often like to play off of our temperaments and personalities to stir that up.
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  I think one kind of indicator, again, I think there are all three there.
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  I think one of the key things to think about is the kind of chronicity of that conflict.
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  How long has that conflict been around?
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  What's its sense of its age?
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  And also in terms of the conflict is that...
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  Is it agnostic to the topic?
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  Put any topic in there, in-laws, parenting, finances, faith, whatever.
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  But we seem to always fight the same way is often, I think, an important thing to pay attention to.
• 3:48
  in the midst in the midst of that.
• 3:50
  So I do think it's ongoing discernment and you need strategies really to address all three in an order.
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  It's kind of like which which thread to kind of pull on for the not to release itself.
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  So I think a couple needs strategies to to deal with all three of those.
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  Yeah, at once.
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  What's your know?
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  Yeah, it's just from a completely different angle.
• 4:16
  looking at this situation and, and let's, if I put myself in the place of the person who wrote this note, they also asked the question, what does Christian long suffering look like when your spouse repeatedly violates boundaries and refuses to take responsibility at what point does patience become enabling?
• 4:38
  So this is a pretty difficult situation, but I think one of the most helpful, you know,
• 4:45
  Perspective is everything right in these situations.
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  And if you don't have it, all it does is hurt.
• 4:52
  You know, if there's if there's no sense of the ultimate why or the ultimate end of all of it in my, I don't know, the way I look at it, Tim, is is it just feels like.
• 5:07
  like meaningless, endless pain.
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  And hope is very hard to come by, the virtue of hope.
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  And I feel a little bit of hope waning in this question.
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  I sense it.
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  But one of the things I found sort of universally helpful is to meditate on
• 5:30
  the reality that God is always at work in whatever circumstances we experience.
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  That doesn't mean he's causing your spouse to do these things, but no doubt he's allowing it.
• 5:44
  And then also, so that's one, if you back up out of the scene, if you back up out of the painting to gain perspective, you know, like let's say you're floating up beyond the scene of you two fighting or the constant conflict, you know,
• 5:59
  Where is Jesus in the midst of all of that?
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  Why?
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  And then, and even further, why, why is, why is it happening?
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  And why did you even marry this person?
• 6:10
  If you approach it from a purely human standpoint,
• 6:14
  it can be pretty despairing because you're, you're just judging all of it, you know, at the level of our broken humanity.
• 6:23
  And there seems to be no ultimate redemptive purpose.
• 6:27
  And I think if we can gain that ultimate redemptive purpose, it can begin to anesthetize in a certain sense, the pain to give you room to deal with it.
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  Does that make any sense?
• 6:40
  No, it really does.
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  Dan, David Wiles has this.
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  Dr. David Wiles has a statement that when you marry someone, you choose to live with a certain set of problems for the rest of your life.
• 6:50
  My wife would agree with that.
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  And what I mean by that, and to highlight your beautiful insight to this, Dan, is that kind of what gets our perspective gets us.
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  And, yeah, it'd been helpful to have that second part of that question because it really fleshes out what's going on there.
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  And so what happens is in the midst of all that pain and suffering and discontent, it draws our whole focus there, draws our whole focus into my pain, into who my spouse isn't.
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  versus helping us to put our eyes upon the Lord and his presence and his work and how he desires to use this to grow us, to redeem us, to heal us, to liberate us.
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  And as you said, because when I'm focused on me and my pain and my hurting, what you're doing to me, what you're not, what I need more of you from,
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  That begins to create a whole story I keep telling myself.
• 7:53
  Yes.
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  And it's a story that robs you of joy and peace.
• 7:56
  Yeah, and it does.
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  And it's a story that often puts me in the place of victim and my spouse in the place of villain.
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  And that story just keeps bringing more and more division.
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  It's the opposite of the beautiful verse in Philippians.
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  It says, you know, so whatever is...
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  you know, beautiful, beautiful, whatever, which basically when you look at that list, if it doesn't fit one of those things, I shouldn't let it through the gate of my mind.
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  You shouldn't ruminate on it.
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  Yeah, you shouldn't.
• 8:29
  You so that so you talked about strategies, right?
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  So let's let's reiterate or punctuate what you just said as one of the strategies is identify the story you're telling yourself.
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  Right.
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  And then related to the perspective I added, add God to it.
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  Right.
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  Right.
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  And and write this down, my friend.
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  Write this down.
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  Those of you who are suffering in these kinds of situations, wherever you're suffering is, it doesn't even have to be marital.
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  But in this case, it's marital.
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  But write this down related to marriage.
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  I have the spouse I have because I need the spouse I have for my salvation.
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  Now, as I always say, we're not talking about abuse.
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  That's a wholly different category of discussion.
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  But if there's no abuse, just I have the spouse I have because I need the spouse I have for my salvation.
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  So what that does is it begins to disrupt the story that Tim is talking about and create a new story that helps you to realize that.
• 9:36
  what's coming up in you wouldn't come up or be healed if you didn't have the spouse you have so your spouse is actually giving you an opportunity to know god in a way you could never know him otherwise your spouse however dysfunctional is giving you the opportunity to know the depths of the suffering of jesus even than you could ever know otherwise
• 10:01
  because he was misunderstood, he was maligned, he was judged.
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  People did all kinds of dysfunctional things to him.
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  And when we recognize that our suffering is not just this lone, isolated thing, but it's connected to, deeply connected to, not just in an ancillary way, deeply connected to our relationship with God.
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  And if we can begin, so here's another strategy.
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  Begin to offer up the suffering you experience.
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  Identify the suffering you experience with some kind of the suffering Jesus experienced.
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  So connect those two.
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  Console the heart of Jesus by recognizing in your heart at a level that you may not have ever explored before.
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  Console the heart of Jesus because you can say to him, I'm sorry for the suffering you went through because you now feel it.
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  So now you're deepening the bond with Jesus.
• 11:00
  You're bringing him into the story and disrupting the lie.
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  What other strategies, Tim?
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  Now, obviously, one of the problems with, you know, a question in abstract is you can't say, you know, like I would normally ask a question if somebody came to me in spiritual direction.
• 11:17
  I'd say, when was the first time you ever felt like that?
• 11:21
  which kind of gets to this, you were asking this macro question about what are the patterns, right, that are always repeating themselves, whether or not the issues are the same.
• 11:33
  But getting to the root of the issue, if you ask that question, sometimes can begin to point you that direction.
• 11:40
  Yeah.
• 11:41
  And just to piggyback real quick off your comment to Dan about really giving our consent to the Lord to enter into that pain that we're going through and what he wants to do, but also bringing our spouses to him as well.
• 11:57
  Right.
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  The very purpose of the sacrament of marriage in the midst of that, you know, and these kind of really gridlock kind of conflicts where.
• 12:11
  there is this core need that isn't being met.
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  As you said, kind of getting a little bit more into the weeds of the strategy of this, you definitely have to first kind of interrupt the kind of chronic negative filter that one has towards one's spouse in this situation.
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  And we talk a lot about what it means to capture thoughts and bring those unto obedience of the Christ, renunciation and affirmation.
• 12:41
  But that's really important because if we get in our, so first we have to really be on the lookout for a disposition of heart and mind that is filled with criticism, contempt, withholding, and withdrawal.
• 12:58
  our defensiveness with that.
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  It's interesting in studies when husband and wives come to engage each other in conflict, studies show that wives' first maneuver in addressing conflict is through criticism.
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  Can you pause there, Tim?
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  Yeah.
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  We've got to go to a break.
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  When you come back, let's continue right there.
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  We'll be right back.
• 13:23
  Hey friends, have you ever wondered what Jesus prayed?
• 13:26
  Like when he went off alone, when he was maybe younger, before we see him emerge in his ministry, maybe the time between he was discovered in the temple to when he revealed his glory at Mary's request.
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  What was he praying?
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  And then what did he pray after that?
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  So if you didn't know, assuming Jesus lived in concert with tradition, he prayed the Psalms just like the Jews of ancient time prayed.
• 14:00
  The prayer book of Jesus is what we might call the Psalms, and we have a course, the Psalms, the prayer book of Jesus, that's starting, and it'll be taught by Timothy Flanders, who's an extraordinary teacher and
• 14:14
  and he's going to dive into what these ancient Hebrew songs teach us about the prayer of Jesus, what do they teach us about ourselves, and how the Psalms can draw us into the divine conversation with the Blessed Trinity.
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  That sounds interesting.
• 14:30
  Head out to abola-institute.org and sign up today.
• 14:35
  This is Dan Burke.
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  Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio.
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  I'm with Tim Blubber.
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  We're talking through
• 14:45
  spiritual warfare in marriage, handling questions that came out of our conference on that topic.
• 14:53
  And we're addressing this question of wounds and how they relate to spiritual warfare and spousal conflict.
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  So Tim, you said wives tend to, their first response out of conflict is to criticize?
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  Mm hmm.
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  And for husbands, their first maneuver, their first step is to withdraw.
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  Right.
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  And that does, by the way, does that matter?
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  Is that true if you're an introvert or an extrovert or does it matter?
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  It doesn't matter that that sense of kind of pursuer, chasey kind of chaser can often be a pattern when it gets in and to marriage.
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  It has a high predictor for the demise of that marriage.
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  So the first key thing in conflict is you got to learn to do a soft startup.
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  You got to learn to be gentle in the approach of that.
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  And with these type of conflicts, you really need a structure that helps you speak and listen to each other.
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  And in a conflict of this nature...
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  It's really important for each spouse, in this case, the spouse who needs a sense of, you know, right now, this person's focused on what's not happening.
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  He doesn't have boundaries.
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  I have to first articulate what is my need, my positive need in the midst of that.
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  What do I mean by positive need?
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  If I were to say I need you to quit breaking boundaries, that's a negative need.
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  And it's focused on you.
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  I have to focus on what that means.
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  I may need to say I need to feel more secure in this relationship.
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  OK, so now I've begun to name the need.
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  The second thing for the listener, in this case, the spouse, is to really understand the essence of that need.
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  And we don't take time to do that to get deeper.
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  So to ask, help me understand why that need for security is so important to you.
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  Is there a story behind that need for you in your life?
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  Maybe something that relates to the family you grew up in or some other key experience in your life.
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  What are the feelings that you have around that need?
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  What's the meaning you have for that need?
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  If you had an answered prayer to that need or an ideal dream that were to come true around this need to feel secure, what would that look like?
• 17:22
  Hmm.
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  How can I help you and meet that need?
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  See, those kind of questions began to really get deeper than the focus of the conflict and begins to build into vulnerability and listening to each other and meeting each other in a we versus you versus me kind of fashion.
• 17:46
  But it really kind of takes in these kind of conflicts, the capacity,
• 17:51
  to get to that level.
• 17:53
  Yeah, very well said.
• 17:57
  I want to get really prescriptive here because the person's not in front of us, we sort of have to use a shotgun approach, but I think one thing I feel like is you've got to,
• 18:11
  relieve some immediate tension.
• 18:12
  This is one of the things we talk about in the divine intimacy and marriage retreat is you've got to use some certain kinds of tools to relieve the immediate tension, to begin to break the cycle of conflict so that you can deal with these deeper questions.
• 18:25
  And I think you and I would both recommend that,
• 18:28
  Howard Markman's book, Fighting for Your Marriage.
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  Right.
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  It is an extraordinary scientifically based approach to understanding how to have a conversation that doesn't result in the conflict.
• 18:42
  Right.
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  but that where each side is heard.
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  And there's a brand new edition out of that.
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  You can pick that up out on Amazon.
• 18:52
  So that's one bit of reading that you can do that deals with the practical human level, right?
• 18:58
  So there's a couple more areas that I think you could pursue to start to feed your brain on the right level.
• 19:06
  mind on the right, right perspectives.
• 19:09
  Another one is a book that I wrote called finding peace in the storm, which helps you to understand the macro why, which can help you flip the switch on those stories that Tim, Tim was talking about and add God to the story.
• 19:27
  And, and like in, it's fascinating about what you said about men's first reaction, women's first reaction, but,
• 19:35
  If you can get to where as a woman, you're not criticizing, but you're asking, why does this push my buttons?
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  Which is really that a lot of the brief exercise you were referring to before about, you know, what is it that you need?
• 19:51
  Why is it flipping your switch and recognizing you need to heal the switch?
• 19:57
  That doesn't mean your spouse is right at all.
• 20:01
  Right.
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  But you've got to heal that switch and you've got to put a flat plate on it.
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  And so the switch goes away.
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  But the fact is you probably are married to that person because the Lord knew that that person would flip that switch easily and they could do it in their sleep.
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  So you're given the gift of a spouse that, that, that flips the switch that the Lord actually wants to heal.
• 20:28
  So when, but until you stop, you,
• 20:30
  letting it be flipped.
• 20:32
  Right.
• 20:33
  You can't get to this analysis, this beautiful analysis that you're talking about, Tim.
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  So strongly recommend fighting for your marriage by Howard Markman and then finding peace in the storm.
• 20:47
  And now let's, let's switch it into the spiritual, Tim, and then we'll get some final thoughts from you on the spiritual side.
• 20:55
  Of course, finding peace in the storm will give you some of that, but on the spiritual warfare side, um,
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  One of the problems with being entrenched in habitual conflict, and let's call it habitual sin, because that's what it almost always results in, is that we don't understand how the demonic works in the context of marriage.
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  And so Spiritual Warfare and Discernment of Spirits is another book I wrote that can help you begin to understand the effect of desolation.
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  on you because usually when the switch is ready to go, there's already been ground prepared for that, both in your wounds and in the demonic activity because the demons know your switches.
• 21:40
  The demons do not want you to deescalate, do not want God in this story.
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  And so that's their role.
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  And so if you can begin to live discernment of spirits, you can also take a course that I teach at the Abel Institute.
• 21:53
  We also have a Spanish discernment espiritual.
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  My book was translated into Spanish, and there's a Spanish course on this if you need that.
• 22:04
  But beginning to become awake...
• 22:07
  to the broader reality of both God's action, the demonic action, and then the other aspect that Tim was mentioning, then that can give you, I would call, a space to work in that is, there's more room, there's not as much space,
• 22:28
  it's safer, or I don't know how to describe it, Tim, but I, I, I feel like, you know, like the political realm in the United States as an analogy, our laws can't really actually change behavior in the most, in the best way.
• 22:41
  What they can do is give you room for faith to operate.
• 22:46
  So I feel like I'm trying to explain how these perspectives give you room.
• 22:51
  You probably have a better analogy than me.
• 22:54
  Well, it's, it's this notion of we get unhooked, right?
• 22:58
  Right.
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  From what's driving me into that.
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  It gets me, it moves me from a place of reactivity to a place of recollected response.
• 23:09
  And that's why this sense of the ability to deescalate, to be in a different place of recollection is critical to then to be able to engage into these kind of conversations with one another's husband and wives.
• 23:23
  That's why daily mental prayer, daily examine,
• 23:27
  adoration, the Eucharist, all of these things we speak about are so vital because they help us to first cultivate with the Lord this interiority of recollection and peace that then allows us then to help contribute that to one another.
• 23:44
  It's interesting, John Gottman, when they studied couples, they had them all wired up in their love lab.
• 23:49
  What they noticed is as soon as any of the
• 23:55
  They could predict with 100% accuracy the conflict was going to go off the rails.
• 24:00
  Oh, wow.
• 24:00
  Fascinating.
• 24:02
  You know, when the heart rate rose to 95, they could predict with 100% that the conflict was going to go off the rails.
• 24:10
  And that's not that high.
• 24:12
  No, that's not.
• 24:14
  And they refer to that as flooding.
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  So what happens is from a neurophysiological and emotional level, we begin to kind of flood.
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  And so we can't take in new information.
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  We fail to listen.
• 24:25
  We enter into a kind of sense of threat and therefore defensiveness.
• 24:31
  And things of that nature.
• 24:32
  The other physiological thing that happens here, Tim, you know better than me, is the narrowing of your focus, which then it's sort of it's called myopia for a reason.
• 24:46
  Right.
• 24:46
  So you exactly.
• 24:47
  And if you think about it spiritually, myopia eliminates God.
• 24:52
  And just focuses on the crummy human in front of you that you want to fight against or whatever, right?
• 25:00
  Yeah.
• 25:00
  So myopia sets in and then adrenaline goes up.
• 25:05
  And these two factors dramatically mitigate your ability to think clearly.
• 25:11
  Is that an accurate way of saying?
• 25:12
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 25:13
  When the amygdala and those chemical soups get up enough, your neocortex begins to really shut down that place for critical thinking, for analysis, for reasoning, for the will.
• 25:25
  And our appetites and lower powers begin to kind of take over.
• 25:30
  And that's why learning some how to deescalate, learning to be in the midst of a conversation, it begins to get too heated to say, OK, time out, stop.
• 25:40
  We got to kind of pull apart from this for a while so we can kind of take a twist on an old saying.
• 25:47
  We have to learn to strike while the iron's cold when it comes to walking through conflict.
• 25:53
  And so that becomes, as you said, just a key practical skill to learn, because the only way we come into this world knowing how to de-escalate is sucking our thumbs.
• 26:04
  And that's why oral addictions like eating and drinking and smoking are so powerful.
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  So we have to learn to do that.
• 26:12
  And we have to learn how to draw upon the Lord, who is our comfort, who is our peace, and turn to him to help us with that.
• 26:23
  Amen.
• 26:24
  One of the things I love about you, Tim, is you have a deep background in these sorts of things in psychology, but your faith is interwoven with all of that and is actually preeminent in that.
• 26:35
  And that gives a prescription that's going to be much more powerful.
• 26:40
  So Finding Peace of the Storm, Spiritual Warfare, Discernment of Spirits, Howard Markman's Fighting for Your Marriage, Last Recommendation, John Paul II Healing Center.
• 26:49
  These are all resources.
• 26:51
  Stay with us in Divine Intimacy Radio.
• 26:53
  You'll continue to learn more.
• 26:55
  Grateful to have you with me here today, Tim.
• 26:58
  Until next time, may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness.
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  May he preserve you whole and entire, spirit, soul, and body, irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 27:11
  Learn more about the interior life.
• 27:13
  Visit spiritualdirection.com.
• 27:16
  Divine Intimacy Radio is a co-production of EWTN Radio and spiritualdirection.com and heard worldwide on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network.