I Ditched Christian Marriage Advice
It saved my marriage — and my sanity.
It was a Sunday morning, and we were scheduled to have some couples over for a potluck meal. As a group, we had met over six weeks, getting trained to be coaches/mentors to young couples. This was to be our last hurrah before meeting our new mentorees and imparting our wisdom. My husband and I, at least from a certain perspective, qualified beautifully. We had been married for 27 years, and things had been going pretty well between us for some time.
At least, that’s what it looked like from the outside.
Going through the curriculum to be mentors triggered some things in both of us and the situation started to unravel pretty quickly. By that Sunday morning, I told my husband I wanted to pull out. The truth was, we were not a happily married couple, and who were we kidding being coaches.
But of course, divorce was not an option for us.
We were good evangelical Christians and, so help us, we were determined to suffer through a bad marriage rather than to separate and break God’s supposedly holy commands.
This was what we were taught in church, along with a whole bunch of other damaging marriage advice that was presented as life-giving truth, but, in reality, was strangling our marriage to death.
