Ginger’s father died when she was five and throughout the rest of her childhood, her mother was distant, caustic and punitive. She would often be told that she was stupid, lazy, ugly, needy, a chatterbox, and a religious fanatic. When she wanted to seek comfort or just spend time with her, her mom would dismiss her and tell her that she had bought enough toys and books and that Ginger should entertain herself with them. Ginger was an only child. So when you talk about rejection, she was a walking reject. She had wounds, some pretty deep ones. The beliefs that she developed from these experiences were that she was a failure, she was unlovable, she was unwanted and she was alone, just to name a few. So picture Ginger going into marriage with all these craters. She was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off and she did, at the drop of a hat. And it wasn’t pretty.
Marriage therapy research has shown that a large percentage of our triggers in marriage are from childhood wounds. Some therapists even put a number to this percentage – 90. So 90% of the issues that sent Ginger off the deep end with her spouse are the result of her painful childhood experiences. So let’s illustrate that a bit more. Imagine with me that I am Ginger and I have a deep bloody cut here on my shoulder and my sweet but sometimes challenging husband, Greg and I are standing listening to Jazz at SXSW in downtown Austin. Greg leans over and puts his hand on my exposed gaping gash. What do I do? I scream like a crazy woman, that’s what I do! And screamed like a crazy woman is what Ginger did for many years at her sweet, sometimes annoying Greg because of the emotional pain that he was triggering. The saying that hurting people hurt people is a fact. Childhood wounds will keep being activated in marriage until they get healed, and we will keep using the same ineffective coping skills that will retrigger our spouse and keep us spinning in the crazy cycle.
It has also been found in marriage therapy research that we often marry someone who has the positive and negative characteristics of one or both of our parents. Think about it for a minute. Where do you think the sayings “I married my father” or “I married my mother” come from? Why do you think we are drawn to these traits, to these people? It might be a trait that you absolutely hate. It comes from a place of comfort. It’s like we’ve come home, no matter how dysfunctional they are. But God, who causes ALL things to work together for the good of those who love Him will use our spouse and their annoying, hurtful, insensitive, arrogant whatever to heal us, if we go to Him in sincerity. You see, He uses difficult circumstances as raw material for growth and healing, if we let Him. And something else that’s really interesting is that through our healing, God can sometimes bring healing to our spouses. Like it says in 2 Corinthians 1:4 “He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others when they are troubled with the same comfort He’s given us.”
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