What Makes Relationships
Difficult and Destructive?
All sin is based on original sin,
the effects of which will be with us till death.
WILLIAM JOHNSTON
Whoever stubbornly refuses to accept
criticism will suddenly be broken beyond repair.
PROVERBS 29:1
When I was in college, I read a bestselling book by Thomas Harris called I’m Okay, You’re Okay. It’s a nice thought, but it just isn’t true. Deep down I know I’m not okay, and I know you’re not okay either. If I wrote a book and titled it I’m Broken, and You’re Broken Too, it wouldn’t sell very well—but it would be much closer to the truth.
Beautiful but Broken
God designed humankind magnificently. He wove his divine likeness into us and placed us just a little lower than angels (Psalm 8:5). When he finished, he said his creation was very good (Genesis 1:31). We have within us the capacity for incredible beauty and goodness, but something went dreadfully wrong. We create breathtaking gardens, then trash our environment. We feed the homeless, then gossip about our neighbor’s marital problems. We express kindness toward a stranger who asks us for directions, then yell at our kids or spouse because they bother us.
Why do our relationships fail? What damages them? What drives a person to injure another person’s body, spirit, or soul and not even recognize those actions or attitudes as harmful?
As a licensed counselor, I could go into psychological explanations for some of the reasons people become destructive, but as a Christian counselor, I’d rather keep it simple: It’s sin. But our sin isn’t all that simple. Sin isn’t only something people do wrong, sin is something we are, meaning we are fallen and broken beautiful people. Since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, humans don’t function as well as God designed us to. Instead of asking God to teach us what is best, we lean toward going our own way, and we naturally prefer sin over righteousness.1 That’s why we always need to be suspicious of what feels “normal.” Normal is still broken.
We only have to look at a small child to know this is true. No one has to teach a toddler how to do wrong. That comes naturally (Psalm 51:5). When she doesn’t get her way, she throws a temper tantrum. When she wants something her brother has, she hits him and grabs it away. As she gets older, when she’s caught doing something she shouldn’t do, she lies about what happened. The parents’ job is to teach their children how to behave and how to recognize and admit their brokenness, which teaches humility, an important virtue that helps us maintain good relationships.2
Language is a funny thing. As a culture, we don’t like to talk about sin and evil anymore. Good counselors definitely aren’t supposed to use those words to describe the hurtful and horrible things people do to each other. Most of us don’t even like to use the word broken; we prefer the words wounded and sick.
During a recent counseling session, I gently confronted my client Rachel about her temper and the harsh way she spoke to people. She told me, “It’s because my mother never loved me. I’m hurt and I’m angry. I can’t help it.” My client was telling herself, Because my mother hurt me, I’m wounded and I’m sick. Whenever I feel upset, the only thing I can do is to get so angry everyone knows they’d better not mess with me again. That’s my mom’s fault.
Please don’t misunderstand me. Rachel is wounded and sick and did suffer a great deal in her childhood due to her mother’s neglectful and hurtful parenting.3 She did not learn constructive ways to manage her feelings or her problems in life. As tragic as that is, her mother’s behavior is not Rachel’s main problem right now, nor is it the reason she acts the way she does. You see, if we are only wounded or sick, then we are not responsible. We can’t help it; we’re simply victims of what’s been done to us.
We slide further into self-deception when we do what Adam and Eve did when God confronted them in the garden after they disobeyed him. Like the child who hits her brother because he wouldn’t give her the toy she wanted, we blame the other person when we do wrong. We say, “They made us do it.”
If they made us do it, then we’re not sinful or broken—our condition is the other person’s fault, we insist.
The Deadly Exchange
In the first chapter of Romans, the apostle Paul describes what went wrong in the garden as well as what’s wrong with us today. He writes, “They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself” (verse 25). Eve’s decision to believe the serpent’s lie put her desire for power and knowledge above God. Eve’s desire wasn’t the problem. She fell when she craved power and knowledge more than she loved God and his Word.
Eve’s decision to believe the serpent’s lie over what God told her forever changed her peaceful, loving way of life in the garden paradise that God provided. Satan promised Eve that if she believed him, she’d gain the ability to be like God. Instead, she lost her innocence and discovered shame, hardship, and sorrow in her relationship with Adam.
When God confronted Adam and Eve for their disobedience, Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent, and the first destructive relationship pattern was set into motion. It took only one generation for the result of those seemingly harmless choices to grow deadly. Cain, Adam and Eve’s first child, envied and murdered his younger brother Abel and felt no remorse (Genesis 4:9).
Paul continues to explain the consequences of this deadly exchange:
Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy (Romans 1:29-31).
Relational destructiveness is the indirect consequence of our inborn tendency to reject God as God and truth as truth, Paul says. His teaching is critical if we are to understand some of what happens in destructive relationship patterns. He says that our problems are caused by things we do, not only by things that are done to us.
This concept is difficult to grab hold of, because it’s hard to see our part of the problem when it’s obvious that another person’s behavior is destroying us. Without a doubt, my mother’s words and actions caused harm to me as a young child. Even as an adult, she had the power to devastate me with her tongue—until I stopped letting her. As long as I believed her words were more true than God’s Word, she had the power to destroy me—because I gave it to her.
During one incident in my late twenties, I remember her telling me that she hated me and wished I was dead. After I angrily responded with a few choice words of my own, I stumbled out of her house feeling like I wanted to die. I distinctly remember hearing God say to my heart, Leslie, she is broken. She will never love you like you want her to, but I love you and you are special to me. I chose to believe him. From that day on, my mother’s words lost their power over me. It wasn’t that they never hurt, but they never destroyed me again. My internal healing didn’t mean I instantly gained the ability to respond to her cruelty with wisdom and grace. That maturity took much longer to develop.
When the Pharisees rejected Jesus and told people he was either crazy or from Satan (Matthew 12:24), Jesus felt the deep pain of rejection, but he was not destroyed by it. Why not? Because Jesus knew what was true, and he knew who he was. We’re not Jesus and are therefore vulnerable to believing lies over truth, just like Paul warns us.
Jesus also cautions us that Satan is a deceiver (John 8:44). His mission is to kill, steal, and destroy (John 10:10). Throughout the Gospels, Jesus proclaims again and again that he is giving us God’s truth. Not only that, Jesus claims he is God’s truth (John 14:6). When we know him and believe him, we gain wisdom and strength to navigate the difficult waters of messy relationships. He equips us to recognize lies and learn how to reject them. We will learn how to do this more in parts 2 and 3.
Even as Christians, we struggle with unbelief. We embrace the truth of the gospel and the Bible, yet when we’re honest, many of us have a hard time actually trusting God with our daily lives. The effect of our brokenness is that we have become separated from God, from others, and from ourselves. We have a divided mind, conflicting emotions, a natural orientation toward self, and a will that is more willing to please ourselves or please others than to please God. Lies we believe can destroy us, and what we love the most will control us. That’s why God tells us to believe him and to not love anything more than we love him.
What We Worship (Love) Controls Us
Roy said, “I’m not into worship, Leslie,” as we were talking about his faith. What he really meant was that he didn’t like going to church or singing hymns or praise choruses. But he was most definitely into worship—worship of success, achievement, and financial security. Everything Roy did served those three gods. One of the reasons he was in counseling was because his marriage was in shambles due to his long work hours and neglect of his family. Roy rationalized that he was just trying to be a good provider, but truth be told, he loved the praise, admiration, and recognition he received from his achievements and success far more than he loved his wife and children. Jesus warns us that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also (Matthew 6:21).
God made all people to be worshippers. Our need to worship is part of our DNA like an internal compass that always points toward true north. However, when people choose not to worship God, it doesn’t mean they don’t worship at all. We all worship something (or someone) that we value, love, or are deeply impressed with.
As Americans, we kneel down to the gods of productivity, achievement, and efficiency, power and control, beauty and youth, approval and acceptance, success and status, sex and food. Many women I know are controlled by the words of the mirror and scale every morning and have a good or bad day depending on what they say. God knows our tendencies toward idolatry (loving false gods). That’s why the first four of the Ten Commandments specifically have to do with our relationship with him. He knows how essential it is to our emotional, physical, relational, and spiritual health that we honor, love, and value him above all else.
Satan always appeals to our human desires and felt needs and continually offers us god substitutes to distract us from our true longing and deep need for God. God warns us not to put any other gods before him (see Deuteronomy 5 and 6) because he knows that if we do, we will be captured or destroyed by them.
The book of Ezekiel illustrates this in Israel’s history. The biggest sin Israel committed was spiritual adultery (Ezekiel 16:32). Her heart grew cold as she turned from loving and depending on God for her well-being and happiness to created things. Israel embraced the lie that God wasn’t enough and that following God kept her from the good life. She believed the same core lie that Satan fed Eve in the garden. Like Eve and Israel, we too would rather decide for ourselves what we think is good, true, and right instead of believing, trusting, and obeying God.
We all wrestle with disorders of worship and believing lies even if we’re not in a destructive relationship. That is why we’re still broken. For many of us, lies feel truer than the truth does. It’s easier to believe that God hates us or is angry with us than it is to believe that we are his beloved children and are precious to him. We meditate again and again on some hurtful words someone has said, yet when another person pays us a compliment, we dismiss it or don’t trust it, even if that person is genuine.
WHERE IS LIFE FOUND?
Jesus urges us to stay away from false gods and reminds us that life is found in God and not in the things (even good things) God gives us. Jesus commands us to love God with all of our hearts, minds, souls, and strength, because he knows that this love relationship is the only love relationship that will completely satisfy us. In his wonderful book The Evidential Power of Beauty, spiritual director Thomas Dubay writes,
You and I, each and every one of us without exception, can be defined as an aching need for the infinite. Some people realize this; some do not. But even the latter illustrate this inner ache when, not having God deeply, they incessantly spill themselves out into excitements and experiences, licit or illicit. They are trying to fill their inner emptiness, but they never succeed, which is why the search is incessant. Though worldly pleasure seeking never fulfills and satisfies in a continuing way, it may tend momentarily to distract and to dull the profound pain of the inner voice. If these people allow themselves a moment of reflective silence (which they seldom do), they notice a still, small voice whispering, Is this all there is? They begin to sense a thirst to love with abandon, without limit, without end, without lingering aftertastes of bitterness…
How they and we respond to this inner outreach rooted in our deep spiritual soul is the most basic set of decisions we can make; they have eternal consequences.4
If you’re in a destructive relationship, you can’t change the other person or control what he or she does or says. But if you want to break free, you must recognize that you have given this person God’s authority over your life and allowed his or her words to become truth and the words of life and death to you. Parts 2 and 3 will help you learn how to reverse this tendency as well as give you specific tools to address destructiveness in your relationships.
It’s true that our brokenness (dysfunction is the secular term), causes much pain and heartache and can make our relationships difficult. The even deeper problem is what we do with our brokenness. That decision determines whether we grow healthier and more like Christ in spite of our brokenness, or become destructive toward others as well as toward ourselves.
Our Response to Our Brokenness
Jesus saves people from the penalty of sin. He also redeems us from the power of sin (Romans 8:2; 2 Peter 1:3). This reality is the good news of the gospel. One of the definitions of the biblical Greek word for salvation (sozo) is the idea of restoration, wholeness, or healthiness.5 God’s salvation is not merely forgiveness of sin so that we get to heaven someday, but a blueprint that includes our maturity and restoration. Becoming emotionally whole and spiritually holy is the journey God desires for each of us as we work out our salvation within the context of our relationships.
Let’s take a look at how God teaches us to respond to our brokenness. As we mature emotionally and spiritually, this pattern becomes a part of our character so that our brokenness doesn’t lead to destructiveness. As you read this, ask yourself if you practice any of these steps in your own interactions with others. If not (which may be the case), you can begin to grow by adopting new behaviors. Perhaps you’ve never been in a relationship where you saw these modeled. God’s plan for you is to become whole and holy. You may not be able to get others to do these things, but don’t let that stop you from growing and becoming healthier.
Healthy (Mature) Responses to Brokenness
1. Learn how to see. James tells us that “we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2 NIV), but if we don’t see where we stumble, we can’t avoid falling. That might sound obvious, but many people cannot or will not see their brokenness or sin. For example, Jesus called the Pharisees “blind” because they denied their pride and self-righteousness (John 9:35-41). You can’t work on a problem or ask for help if you won’t see or can’t acknowledge the problem exists. The psalmist prayed that God would show him his hidden faults (Psalm 139:24).
Most of the time, our awareness comes when we see we have hurt someone, or they tell us that we’ve done something that pains them. When I yanked Ryan to his feet that day and dislocated his elbow, I immediately recognized my behavior as abusive. I knew abuse because I had been abused. I did not want to be the kind of mother who abused her children, yet I knew that I had that tendency. I saw it. It was part of my sinful brokenness. On the other hand, my mother was never able to see or admit her brokenness until the later stages of her life. For many years she could not acknowledge her drinking problem or that she ever treated her children wrongly.
2. Face your brokenness and ask for forgiveness. Helen came to see me after her husband, Richard, moved out of the house. He said that he couldn’t live with her temper and disrespect any longer. She yelled and criticized him constantly, and when he told her it upset him, she called him a baby and mocked him. He finally concluded he wasn’t important to her—her words and actions said it loud and clear.
Helen knew Richard was upset—he said these things lots of times before—but she had never taken his words to heart. She rationalized that he was oversensitive and didn’t understand how much stress she was under or how busy she was with the kids. Helen didn’t want to look at herself to find the reasons for her behavior. Instead, she made excuses and started pointing out all her husband’s faults.
But Helen began to realize that if she wanted any hope of winning her husband back, she needed to become more aware of the way she treated him and also had to admit she had a problem. She began to acknowledge that her disrespectful yelling and screaming were wrong and not a healthy way to communicate, even when her husband aggravated her. Eventually she wrote him a letter saying she understood why he left her and told him he was right—he shouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior from her. She asked him to forgive her. The next step for Helen was to think about what she could do to change her destructive behavior.
To become more aware of the true nature of our actions, it is important to consider the feedback significant others give us regarding our behaviors or attitudes. For example, if Tom’s pastor (chapter 1) had listened to Tom’s concerns, confessed his dishonesty, and asked Tom’s forgiveness, they could have ended their ministry relationship on better terms. Ideally Tom’s pastor should have asked himself why he wasn’t honest in the first place and tried to discern what was underneath his dishonesty. Was it jealousy of Tom’s ministry success? Was it fear of disapproval or conflict? Answering these questions would have increased the pastor’s growth and had a healing effect upon their relationship.
Pride often keeps us from seeing or admitting our brokenness to others. Don’t let your pride blind you.
3. Take responsibility for your part of the problem. Helen wasn’t responsible for every problem in her marriage, but she needed to take responsibility for her part. That’s why Jesus tells us to take the plank out of our own eye before we attempt to remove the speck from someone else’s eye (Matthew 7:3).
At first, Helen was tempted to tell herself that she couldn’t change. Her mother treated her father far worse than she treated Richard, and at least she was doing better than her mother did. But Helen knew that God didn’t want her to be disrespectful and harsh toward her husband, even when she was angry or disappointed with him. She began to feel sorry for hurting him, and she wanted to learn how to be different. She was willing to do the work to get there.
When I recognized my abusive tendencies toward my son, I needed to take responsibility for my anger and actions regardless of my upbringing or Ryan’s misbehavior. Certainly those factors influenced me, but I could not control or change them. The only thing I could change was my response.
Admitting our own wrongdoing apart from all other factors, and working on responding differently even when someone else is clearly in the wrong, is part of becoming emotionally and spiritually mature.
4. Make the effort to change. Repentance means much more than feeling guilt or shame or even being sorry over wrong behaviors and hurtful attitudes. With God’s help, we must turn from them and do the work to be different. Paul tells us that we’re to put off our old selves and put on our new selves, which he tells us is created to resemble God’s likeness (Ephesians 4:20–5:1).
Helen stayed in counseling in order to learn how to handle her negative moods in a godly way and how to be more sensitive to her spouse’s needs and feelings. When she slipped and blurted out nasty words, or when Richard told Helen she was being disrespectful to him, now she paid attention. She stopped making excuses for herself and walked herself through the first three steps of this process again…and again…and again…until they became a part of who she was (and wanted to be).
Whenever Helen became discouraged, she reminded herself that God was not finished with his work in her heart. He promised to change her, and Helen committed herself to cooperate with him to that end, however long it took.
Remember, because we are all sinful, some pain in relationships is unavoidable. However, when two people are mature enough to respond to each other using the steps outlined above, their relationship does not become destructive. I’m saddened by the truth that people often make the opposite choice.
Immature (Unhealthy) Responses to Brokenness
Most of us do not readily recognize our own sinfulness. It’s hard to look in the mirror and detect what’s really in our hearts. Our nature is to lie to ourselves about ourselves (Jeremiah 17:9). God already knows that is humankind’s tendency. That’s one of the reasons he mandates community and connection. Within our relationships, we are to stimulate one another toward greater maturity (see Ephesians 4), to admonish each other when necessary (1 Thes-salonians 5:14), and encourage one another to live in truth, because any one of us can become self-deceived (Hebrews 3:13).
However, when we are told what we are doing is wrong, or if we see we are hurting a person, many of us close our ears, refuse to hear the truth, become defensive, rationalize, blame others, make excuses, or lie about our actions.
Refusal to listen, defensiveness. During a counseling session with me, Bob’s wife tried to talk with him about his inappropriate behavior toward her. He actually put his fingers in his ears and sang, “La la la la la la…” He did not want to hear about or acknowledge his destructiveness, and he resorted to childish ways to remain unaware.
Sue came to me because she could not understand why conversations with her husband, Mark, always ended with her feeling like she did something wrong. Sue shared that she recently told Mark she wanted to talk with him about some things that were troubling her. He bristled and didn’t seem receptive. So later on she said to him, “Hon, lately it seems like we’re walking on eggshells around here. Is something wrong?” Mark didn’t respond. So Sue added, “I’m concerned about something I observed with the kids. Saturday you promised to take them to the park, but you never did. That’s not the first time. I’m worried that the kids are getting hurt and will lose confidence in you.”
She didn’t tell Mark that earlier in the day she had overheard her older son whisper to the younger one, “Don’t count on it,” when their dad promised to take them to the pool. Even so, when Sue shared her concerns, Mark erupted and yelled at her. “I know I’m a lousy dad. I don’t know why I even bother trying. I will never be good enough for you, will I?”
Sue felt devastated and tried to clarify her intent. She said, “I’m not trying to hurt you. I just want to have a normal conversation with you. I don’t think you’re a horrible father, but I do want to share some things that might help you be a better dad to our boys.” Mark would have no part of it. He stormed out of the house, leaving Sue believing she had done something terribly wrong. This type of conversation wasn’t unusual; it was their typical pattern of interaction.
Mark’s guard was always up. Sue found it challenging to share her feelings about what he did or how he impacted their boys without Mark falling into self-pity or self-hatred. Sue longed for a relationship with her husband where honest feedback could be shared. She couldn’t control Mark or his responses, but Mark definitely controlled her. By regularly twisting what Sue said and accusing her of attacking him, he effectively stopped all healthy conversation and constructive feedback Sue could give him. By the time Mark was done with Sue, she felt like Mark was right: she was a horrible wife.
People like Mark are not willing to listen to others, and talking with them goes nowhere. The normal give-and-take of effective communication and healthy interaction feels impossible. An extremely unhealthy response to seeing our brokenness and sin is to become self-destructive. Judas became so distraught after recognizing what he had done to Jesus that he went out and hanged himself (Matthew 27:1-10).
The maturing person allows others to act as mirrors that reflect the truth of his or her life. That doesn’t mean that everything everyone says about us is always true, it just means that when someone shares a concern about the way we are behaving toward others, we ought to at least check it out. The Bible tells us that “as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend” (Proverbs 27:17).
Blindness and denial. Jesus says that the person who consistently rejects constructive feedback from others is blind as well as foolish. Denial, the psychological term, is a defense against seeing one’s brokenness. People on the defense cannot see themselves truthfully, nor can they own the pain and suffering they cause others. They cannot acknowledge that they are doing anything wrong, hurtful, sinful, or inappropriate. They have an answer for everything that makes perfect sense according to their own version of reality, even if it leaves you scratching your head or thinking you’re going crazy.
Even when Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and called them a brood of vipers (Matthew 23:32), they still refused to see their own proud hearts. Here is Christ’s description of destructive blindness:
Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is! (Matthew 6:22–23).
Remember, the self-deceived person who believes that he or she sees clearly can be most dangerous. Jim Jones, a self-proclaimed religious prophet and leader for the Peoples Temple, confidently led over 600 adults to commit mass suicide in 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana, by drinking cyanide-laced grape juice and giving it to their children. Over 900 people died.
In his day, Jesus warned people about the destructiveness of the Pharisees when he told them to guard against their teaching (Matthew 16:6,12). God never intended for us to be able to discern all truth all by ourselves. That’s why he has provided us with his Word and one another as a protection against our tendency toward deception.
Unwillingness to change. In addition to blindness or denial, another common deadly pattern of responding to our brokenness is the flippant I know, I’m sorry response. In other words, a person is aware of the sin and acknowledges that he or she has a problem, feels sorry, but then does nothing to change. We will learn more about how to evaluate this pattern biblically when we get to chapters 8 and 9, where you will learn whether to keep persevering in a difficult relationship or to step back from a destructive person who will not change.
Be careful. Because we are all broken, most of us will question our own thinking or perceptions at times. This is usually a good thing. But we should also feel free to question other people’s thinking. Don’t believe everything everyone tells you. Check out the claims for yourself against God’s Word. Seek wisdom from people who know you and respect you. When I began to believe other people really saw me differently than my own mother did, I experienced a new level of healing. They liked me and even enjoyed me. I wasn’t perfect but I was loved, and that felt pretty good.
Our Response to One Another’s Brokenness
Just as it can be painful to see our own brokenness, it can also be difficult to recognize the brokenness of the people who share our destructive relationships, especially when we love them and can see their good qualities. Like we do in our own lives, we make excuses for them, cover for them, lie for them, or protect them from the painful consequences of their own actions.
We continue to try to please them, appease them, or change them, but no matter how hard we try, the damage continues. Or we may sit as judge and jury over them, forgetting that we too are broken.
In parts 2 and 3, I will provide some specific steps you can take to build greater spiritual and emotional health into your life so that you can respond rightly to the sins of others. Closing our eyes and pretending nothing is happening isn’t the answer. Neither is harshness, judgment, and criticism, or trying to change them into the people we think they should be.
Healthy, mature people allow reality and truth to teach them. Unhealthy individuals blame life or others instead of learning the laws of God’s world; for example, you can’t put your hand on a hot stove and not get burned. Healthy, mature people look to God’s truth to shape their ideas. (See Psalm 119, especially verse 29, for the psalmist’s commitment to this process.) Destructive people twist or distort God’s Word to prove they are right or get their own way.
When you are in relationship with those who refuse to see their own brokenness or admit their blindness, you are in great danger. Be careful not to allow another’s blindness to become your blindness. Remember, we are highly influenced by other people. The more dependent we are on others for our physical and emotional safety and well-being, the more susceptible and suggestible we become. In extreme cases, some individuals develop a disorder called Stockholm syndrome, whereby the victim no longer views the abuser as the enemy. Instead, the victim becomes emotionally bonded with the abuser. This syndrome has been documented in kidnap victims and concentration camp survivors; it has also been observed in battered spouses and abused children.
To understand more clearly the roots of destructive behaviors, we must now look more closely at what is going on within the hearts of those who are blind and destructive.