Introduction
destroy: 1. to reduce (a thing;) to useless fragments
or a useless form, as by smashing or burning,
injure beyond repair; demolish. 2. to put an end to;
extinguish. 3. to kill; slay. 4. to render ineffective
or useless; neutralize; invalidate.
5. to defeat completely. 6. to engage in destruction.
destructive: 1. tending to destroy;
causing much damage… 2. tending to
overthrow, disprove, or discredit; negative.
For more than 15 years, I didn’t see or speak to my mom. Before that time, my contact with her was sporadic and always tense. She didn’t attend my wedding, nor was she present when my son was born or my daughter was adopted from Korea. She never shared Christmas with us or invited my family to visit her.
When I was eight years old, my parents went through an ugly divorce. My younger sister, brother, and I went to live with our mother. After we endured Mom’s alcoholism and abusive behavior for years, my father finally gained custody of us. My mother remarried and eventually moved to another state. She chose not to stay closely involved with her children.
As a Christian counselor, I have worked with many people stuck in destructive relationship patterns, but I also know what it feels like to be in one. My own painful relationship with my mother began in my childhood, but it did not stop when I grew up. Even as an adult, I feared her temper, we could not communicate, and she would not or could not acknowledge that she hurt me. The helplessness, confusion, frustration, and hurt of such a relationship can be overwhelming. If you’ve picked up this book, you probably know exactly what I mean. Navigating the pain in a God-honoring way is tricky and sometimes risky.
The title of this book does not begin to describe the damage that occurs in this kind of relationship. A destructive relationship injures more than our emotions. It attacks every part of our lives. It can destroy our very souls.
The Opposite of God’s Plan for Us
I wish there weren’t a need to write a book on this topic, especially for Christians. Sadly, this material is probably long overdue. When you think of destructive relationships, what comes to your mind first? Most people typically think of relationships that include some kind of physical, verbal, or sexual abuse. Without question, all abusive behavior, whether physical, sexual, or emotional, is always destructive to the personhood of the victim and lethal to the relationship. However, plenty of other sinful relational patterns not necessarily labeled or recognized as abusive are equally harmful.
Picture a lovely white-sided house with a large porch. A bomb can level that house in an instant, but termites or mold take much longer to make their damage known, and their devastating effects may go unnoticed for years. Just as there are numerous ways to destroy a house, a person and a relationship can be wounded or destroyed in lots of different ways. Someone can be undermined, crushed, stifled, and suppressed as well as shattered, demolished, or broken. A relationship is damaged when it’s weakened, fractured, or killed through the attitudes and actions of one or both people in the relationship.
You might have sensed for some time now that something inside of you is dying, even if you can’t name it or explain why. You might have difficulty talking about it. Maybe people can’t see the signs of the damage you feel and don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Maybe they tell you you’re making a mountain out of a molehill, even though you know without a doubt that something has gone wrong, and you fear nothing can be done to reverse the effects.
Relationships that lead to this kind of heartache are the opposite of God’s plan for us. Healthy relationships are at the heart of the biblical message because God created us to live connected to one another. The Word focuses on our relationship with God and is full of commands and instructions on how we are to care for and love others as well as ourselves properly. Every one of the Ten Commandments speaks about some aspect of community and what it takes to maintain good fellowship with God and with each other. No one functions well all alone. In the movie Cast Away, Tom Hanks powerfully portrayed human intolerance for isolation. Marooned on a desert island, he began having conversations with a volleyball he named Wilson. God specifically designed the human family as well as the church family to provide the close connections our hearts long to experience.
Jesus tells us that there is nothing more important than to learn how to love God and others well (Matthew 22:36-39). Because people are so important to God, he warns us about the painful consequences of destructive relationship patterns. For example, the book of Proverbs says, “With their words, the godless destroy their friends,” and, “Telling lies about others is as harmful as hitting them with an ax, wounding them with a sword, or shooting them with a sharp arrow” (Proverbs 11:9; 25:18). Jesus takes the matter of verbal abuse quite seriously when he likens it to murder (Matthew 5:21-22). Many people suffer in relationships where offensive words and threatening gestures are the weapons of choice, used to manipulate, control, punish, and wound without leaving any physical evidence.
The church is finally beginning to acknowledge the reality of physical abuse in Christian homes, but it remains rather silent on the devastating consequences of other forms of abuse and destruction, especially when the damage is not apparent. Physical injuries we see. Bruises, a broken arm, or a black eye is obvious evidence of something dreadfully wrong, and Christians have begun to speak out. Although injuries to someone’s soul and spirit are less easily detected, they are just as real and painful as physical injuries, and just as worthy of our attention.
We Christians do not always know how to recognize destructive relationships or validate the deep emotional pain they inflict, nor do we necessarily know how to fix things. My prayer is that this book will help you to see more clearly what’s wrong in relationships that hurt you, to identify the underlying heart issues at work in these relationships, and to help you learn how to respond to your specific relationship situations in a biblical, life-giving way.
Finding a Biblical Understanding
Throughout this book, I explain what’s happening and what to do about it from a biblical rather than psychological perspective. I do this purposefully. When advocating for people wounded or trapped in destructive relationships, at times I have experienced resistance by Christians and church leaders. They are suspicious (perhaps rightly so) of anything sounding too secular or psychological and therefore find it difficult to hear. If you are in a destructive relationship, I want you to have a biblical understanding and vocabulary of what’s happening, so you can figure out what’s wrong and what God’s solution is.
Making Distinctions
I have divided The Emotionally Destructive Relationship into three parts. The first part, “Seeing It,” will help you learn how to distinguish between healthy and destructive relationships. A self-administered questionnaire at the end of chapter 1 will pinpoint the unhealthy aspects of your relationships so you can see more clearly what’s wrong. In chapter 2 I examine the emotional, physical, mental, relational, and spiritual effects of destructive relationships and demonstrate how these patterns are passed down in families. In chapters 3, 4, and 5, I use a biblical model to explain how relationships become unhealthy and describe seven heart attitudes that, if left unchecked, always lead to destructive interactions with people.
Thinking About Your Own Role
In part 2, “Stopping It,” I teach you how to think more biblically about your own role in your relationships and give you specific strategies to begin to make changes. I want you to know that you don’t have to continue living in pain. In chapters 6 and 7 I help you learn how to gather up your courage and resources in order to initiate some crucial dialogue with the other person in the destructive situation. Once you’ve started that process, chapters 8 and 9 show you when to confront, how to speak the truth in love, and when to step back from the relationship. I give you biblical reasons to support your decisions. If you counsel others, these chapters will provide you with specific steps to help them wisely apply God’s truth to their particular situation.
Finding Healing
In part 3, “Surviving It,” I move beyond the relationship to your own healing. Sadly, many times a destructive relationship does not improve. Sometimes the person you’re in relationship with will be unwilling to change or look at themselves in a new way. That does not mean that there is no hope for you. God sees what you’re going through and wants to help you heal even if your relationship never does.
One of the first stories in the Bible is about a destructive relationship between two women. Sarai and her husband Abram (their names were later changed to Sarah and Abraham) were unable to conceive any children even though God had promised Abram that he would have many descendants. In those days, it was customary for barren women to give their husbands a surrogate, and so Sarai chose Hagar, her Egyptian handmaiden, to bear a child for them.
When Hagar became pregnant with Abram’s child, things deteriorated between her and Sarai. When we’re in the habit of relating with others by comparing ourselves to them, we will always see ourselves as either superior or inferior, better or worse. I wonder if Hagar felt inferior to Sarai as the servant. Perhaps Sarai acted superior toward Hagar, as the wife. Regardless, after Hagar became pregnant with Abram’s child, the tables turned. “When Hagar knew she was pregnant, she began to treat her mistress, Sarai, with contempt” (Genesis 16:4).
Sarai’s response to Hagar’s disrespect was understandable but destructive. Sarai avoided taking responsibility for her own feelings and actions by accusing Abram for all this turmoil. Abram refused to get in the middle and told Sarai to handle it herself. She did, by treating Hagar “so harshly that she finally ran away” (16:6). Sarai was envious of Hagar’s pregnancy, but she justified her cruelty because of Hagar’s contempt.
While Hagar was all alone in the wilderness, pregnant and scared, an angel of the Lord found her, reassured her, and told her what to do. God had heard her cry for help. From then on she used a new name to describe her God, El Roi, meaning the God who sees. Sarai and Hagar’s relationship problems were far from over, but Hagar found comfort and strength in the truth that God saw her and knew her plight.
In the last part of this book I want you to know, really know, that God sees you and deeply loves you. When we have been beaten down by the words or actions of another, we feel broken and helpless, unlovely and unlovable. How wonderful that our healing does not depend upon the love or affirmation or apology of another person. We may never get any of those things. But our strength and healing will come as we are able to receive and believe God’s love.
When I finally believed (first with my head and then with my heart) that God loved me, I began healing from the hurt of my mother’s rejection. This healing process didn’t happen overnight or even in one year, but over time I began to forgive her—not because she asked me to, but because I could. I no longer needed to feel angry or even hurt. I was set free. Free from the past, free from the pain, free to be me. Free to love her. That’s what God was doing in me in that 15-year interval. Even then, I never dreamed, hoped, or even prayed that my mother and I would reconcile our relationship. Then one day several years back, everything turned upside down.
My younger sister, Patt, phoned me early one morning. Our mom had just called her complaining of shortness of breath. Because of the way Mom sounded, Patt had told her to hang up and immediately call an ambulance. Now my sister was asking if I would go with her to visit our mother.
God has a way of creating circumstances that expose whether what we say we believe actually translates into authentic faith and trust. Here was my test. Did I really believe him when he told me that I was loved and that he would go into this encounter before me and with me? Did I trust that he would protect me and sustain me? These times of testing are opportunities for us to know God better so that we can grow in genuine faith. That morning I said yes to my sister. More importantly, I said yes to God, not knowing whether my mother would receive me or not.
By faith, I packed my suitcase and got on—and got off—the airplane. With each step forward, I reminded myself again and again of Psalm 27:1—“The LORD is my light and my salvation—so why should I be afraid?” Although my heart felt stronger, my body felt weak as my stomach flip-flopped and my heart pounded. As I walked into Mom’s hospital room in intensive care, my knees were knocking, but I was sure of one thing: God was with me and would give me everything that I needed to interact with my mother in a way that honored him. I didn’t know what was going to happen or if we would be able to build a new relationship, but I felt something within me that was stronger than my fear of my mother. It was God’s love coursing through me, enabling me to think about ministering to her needs without looking for, hoping for, or expecting anything in return. In a wonderful, gradual miracle, Mom and I were able to build a positive and loving relationship, and I had the privilege to care for her in her final weeks of her life and take her to the foot of the cross.
The final chapters in part 3 will show you how you can heal and rebuild your identity according to who God says you are. In the process you will learn to become more and more the person God has created you to be. Like a plant that has been crushed and wilted because of a lack of nourishment and light, as you receive God’s love and truth you will burst forth with new blooms. You will start to rewrite your story, not as a victim, but as the victor who is gaining the victory.
My prayers are with you as you begin this process. God will help you. He is your El Roi, the God who sees—sees you.