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A Conversation with Mitch Temple
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By Jim & Sheri Mueller
How does a couple know how long to wait for that rebound? How long should they be unhappy?
Well, I think it's very important, through a prolonged level of unhappiness, that you get somebody from the outside to help you. A licensed Christian therapist can come in and help walk you through that process. There might be something occurring on a regular basis that's causing that unhappiness to continue almost day in and day out. It may be a husband's use of pornography or it may be an emotionally abusive wife or something that's going on, on a regular basis.
What's interesting is you can get to a point where something like unhappiness, an emotion, can be there for so long it becomes a normal way of life. You often need help from an objective third party.
I hear couples frequently talking about falling out of love. Or, Maybe I married the wrong person. What would your response be to that?
What people feel is certainly very real. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the feeling is true; many times our emotions can lead us in the wrong direction.
If you have fallen out of love, you can fall back in love. There is a process of falling in love. It involves spending time together. It involves being open, being vulnerable, taking some risk, talking about things that are deep issues, and again spending time with each other and making emotional investments. That's how we fall in love. And then of course the attraction comes and the other components of what we refer to as "love" follows.
Everybody has a different definition of what love is. But we know biblically that love is more than just a feeling. It's more than just the passion. It's more than just the emotion of feeling in love. There is a strong component of commitment to love.
You talk about myths in the book. Expand on that.
A good definition of a myth is something that's passed down. It's typically something that has some element of truth, but it's really a legend.
Expectations.
Absolutely, it certainly can be a factor because as I said earlier, you sometimes reach a point where you lose sight of what's true and what's not. You lose sight of what's realistic and what's not realistic. And bringing in an outside person can sometimes provide the clarity that you need.
Conflict, good or bad?
[Laughs] I think it's good. When conflict is handled properly in a healthy way, it can actually move us to a better place in our marriage. It's easy to get into a mindset, where you say, You know what? We're just not going to have any conflict. We're just going to work everything out. That's just not going to happen in our relationship.
For many, many years in my marriage, I avoided conflict. My wife came from a very similar situation and we had to learn that conflict is actually very good. I mean it can move us to a new place, a better place in our relationship. It can move you from Point A to Point B.
Another myth in our culture is that if you have a crisis or ongoing conflict or something like infidelity — the only choice is to divorce. But actually with the couples I've worked with, I've seen them move their marriage to a place that's better than they've ever experienced before. Marriage still works. Marriage is still good. It was God's idea in the beginning and it's still His idea today. And no matter how difficult a marriage may feel, there is still hope. And even if the other person is unwilling to get help, I encourage you to work on yourself. Even if they're completely unwilling to get help, when they see changes in us, it can positively affect the marriage.
That positive effect can have a very productive effect on that relationship. Often if we take focus off of changing the other person and start changing in our own life, it can be such an incredibly positive thing.
Copyright © 2009 by Jim Mueller, President and co-founder of Growthtrac Ministries.
Mitch Temple is the Director of Marriage at Focus on the Family.
Have you tried traditional counseling; is your marriage in crisis and you want out? Don't give up. Checkout
Intensives at mitchtempleonline.com
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