Ask a Pastor Ep. 71 - Marriage and Family Life

Episode Description

This episode Kurt and Faith Bjorklund sit down to have a conversation about marriage and family life.

Episode Transcript

Kurt Bjorklund: Hi, welcome. Today on Ask a Pastor, I'm joined by my wife, Faith. Welcome.

Faith Bjorklund: Thank you.

Kurt Bjorklund: And we are going to chat through some questions. Not all of these were submitted by listeners, but this is an opportunity for us just to talk about some things that a few people here on our staff thought were significant and would be helpful just as part of this.

Kurt Bjorklund: So the first questions, a series of questions, have to do with marriage. And the first one is this. What would you tell your younger self, in other words, yourself when you were just getting married, about marriage that would make a huge difference in your marriage? So if you could go back to whatever year it was we got married, way back when, and tell your younger self something that would be really helpful, what would you tell them yourself?

Faith Bjorklund: My younger self. Can I ask you that first?

Kurt Bjorklund: You have to go way back to think this through.

Faith Bjorklund: Oh, that's funny.

Kurt Bjorklund: Well it indicts me too since we were married at the same time.

Faith Bjorklund: You go first, what would you tell your younger self?

Kurt Bjorklund: No, that's a cop-out approach to try to turn that and say, "You go first." I haven't actually thought about an answer to that question because I thought I was going to ask you. Off the top of my head, what I would say is resolve conflict as quickly as you can and don't let stuff build up. Talk about what you think is a problem rather than assuming that you know and letting it build at all.

Faith Bjorklund: That's good.

Kurt Bjorklund: That's probably what I would say.

Faith Bjorklund: Keep short accounts, yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: It's probably, I think early in our marriage, that sometimes I would try to guess that I knew what you were thinking or feeling by how something went down. And if I told you about it, I found out that you didn't see what I saw at all in the incident and that your heart was not negative in any way, where sometimes I may have assumed that early on.

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah. That's good.

Kurt Bjorklund: Alright, so now you have to answer because-

Faith Bjorklund: I would say to my younger self, "You are not going to change him." Like I think we kind of know that, but I think in those early years, I think I spent a lot of time thinking about, "Well I would like this to be different and I wish he would do this differently," instead of saying, you know, "This is the person that you married, they're basically going to be the same person 30 years later." I think, no, I mean we,-

Kurt Bjorklund: Interesting.

Faith Bjorklund: Well-

Kurt Bjorklund: So what needed to change about me so much [crosstalk 00:02:52].

Faith Bjorklund: Oh, I'm speaking in the hypothetical. Know that the person that you are marrying is basically going to be the same person, so choose wisely and don't expect that there's going to be some transformation. But also I think focus on the fact that this is the person that God has in your life. And my job as your wife is to lay a foundation of acceptance. Like you are who you are, you do things differently than I would do them, you have different preferences sometimes, different passions, and that's okay. And I shouldn't expect you to always think the same way, want the same things. You're a different person, and my job is to accept you and celebrate the differences between us.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. I think that's helpful because sometimes people end up in trouble in their relationships because they think, "Well, if you would just do this, if you would just change," instead of living with a mindset that says, "I'm going to embrace and celebrate who you are."

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: And yeah, there are some things I'm not going to like, but that's part and parcel of any good relationship.

Faith Bjorklund: There are going to be things that drive you nuts. Usually, they're the flip side of strengths that you desperately need.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. Okay. This is similar, slightly different because it's not as introspective. What would you say to your younger self or say to a younger just getting married husband or, you know, somebody who wasn't you? So in other words, if that was for you, what would you have said to me-

Faith Bjorklund: To you?

Kurt Bjorklund: For example, when we were just getting married that would have been most helpful?

Faith Bjorklund: I would say... Actually, I think this is something that you did really well. I think when you're first married, you're joining two lives, you're two independent people and it's easy to focus on, what are my goals and what do I want to see in my life? What do I want to accomplish? Something that I think you did really well was always talked and communicated in such a way that we focused on what were our goals. Like you wanted to know, "Where do you want to be, Faith, how can I help you get there?" And you were also working on your own goals at the same time.

Faith Bjorklund: But I would just say to young husbands who are, sometimes, they're really career-focused and they want to make sure that they get where they want to get by a certain age and they're climbing the ladder or they have set goals for themselves that they want to achieve, and I think it's easy to focus on that to the exclusion of, "Okay, am I helping my wife to pursue her goals as well at the same time?" And I know that that's something I've always appreciated. I can look back, you know... How long have we been married? 28?

Kurt Bjorklund: It's been a while.

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah, it's been a while.

Kurt Bjorklund: It's been a minute.

Faith Bjorklund: I can look back and just appreciate how devoted you were to seeing me grow as well, so yeah, that'd be it.

Kurt Bjorklund: Okay. This is a question and this actually did come from somebody, if someone doesn't feel love any longer for their spouse, what would you recommend that they do?

Faith Bjorklund: I would just say get a divorce immediately, you know? No, I shouldn't make light of that. Feelings, I say this to clients a lot, feelings will come and go over the course of the years. There are going to be days that you wake up and look at your spouse and think, "I am the most blessed person in the world. I am so in love with this person. I'm so grateful for this person." And there are going to be many mornings that you wake up and feel exactly the opposite, like, "Here we go again."

Faith Bjorklund: The commitment that you make, the vows that you make are meant to carry you, I think, through every season, the highs and the lows. I encourage clients to ride the feelings out because they're often shifting. Sometimes they reveal to us, like if you have a long period of just feeling unloved, disconnected, not pursued, then that's pointing to areas in your marriage that you need to address. So those feelings can sometimes help you get to a place of, "Okay, this isn't working. We're not thriving. What's up? What's broken and how can we work on fixing it?"

Faith Bjorklund: But I wouldn't make any decisions based on, "I don't feel in love with you." The in love feelings I think are meant to, at the beginning of a relationship, maybe you disagree with me, but I feel like the in love feelings are there for a reason. They bond you together. You have this fantasy about, you know, this person is perfect for me and they're meeting all of my needs and I have nothing but high hopes for the future. And then you commit, you get in a married relationship, and then you get more to a place of reality.

Kurt Bjorklund: Right? Yeah. I don't know that I remember where I saw this, but I think I saw some research that talked about the physiological reality of being in love and how there's a season in which there's an actual physiological reaction that your body has, but then it obviously drops off after time. And so sometimes, you can even confuse that with ongoing more mature love. So there is a naturalness to not feeling as "in love" as maybe you did at first.

Faith Bjorklund: That giddy feeling. Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah, without a doubt. What about, now, as a counselor, you work with marriages and people in marriage, what about a situation where somebody is really in a place? Where it isn't just they have good feelings and bad feelings, it's all bad and they really don't feel like there's some good, some bad, and it's just navigating the low moments. It's, "I really feel like I don't love this person anymore and don't want to be in this relationship." What is the next step if somebody is at that desperate of a place?

Faith Bjorklund: I wouldn't wait to get to that point to go into marriage counseling, but obviously I believe in that. Something's very broken if somebody feels that way, if there's just no love, no feelings of affection. I imagine that if somebody feels that way, they're not getting a lot in return or there's been something that's happened in the relationship that has been just a severe disappointment or a betrayal or a disconnection that's so ongoing that those good feelings have dissipated.

Faith Bjorklund: I mean, I don't know if I can make a big general statement other than that I don't think that feeling unloved for a long time necessarily gives you the open door to just leave the relationship. I think it's good to say, again, like something's very broken, and if it's taken, you know, five, ten years to get to this point, it might take some time to rebuild it.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. And probably part of that is also when you first start to recognize that you're having those kinds of feelings, before it gets to that point is when you actually want to reach out for help-

Faith Bjorklund: Absolutely.

Kurt Bjorklund: So that you don't get all the way to-

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: To, "I don't have any good days." And again, I think you're right to recognize there are good and bad days, highs and lows in any relationship. So we're not talking about just kind of your routine, "I don't don't feel a lot today," we're talking about more, once you start to notice that that's becoming a sustained pattern, that it's time to address it rather than let that sit there.

Faith Bjorklund: And I want to make a differentiation too between, "Boy, I'm not feeling a lot of love. We're not investing in our relationship. It feels kind of dead. We're kind of distant," to a situation where somebody is enduring emotional or physical abuse over time too.

Kurt Bjorklund: No, those are very difficult scenarios.

Faith Bjorklund: Those are very different things.

Kurt Bjorklund: Okay. Here's a question. What would you say to someone who's married and still mostly happy with his or her marriage, but find themselves attracted to someone else? What should they do with that?

Faith Bjorklund: Mostly happy?

Kurt Bjorklund: Mostly happy. In other words, they feel like like, "Hey, I'm in a good marriage overall."

Faith Bjorklund: [crosstalk 00:00:11:45]. Yeah, mostly happy.

Kurt Bjorklund: "This is good," but then they just all of a sudden find themselves tweaked or attracted to somebody who's not their spouse.

Faith Bjorklund: Okay. What it doesn't mean is that you don't love your spouse anymore and that the marriage is over. What it does mean is that you're a human being and sometimes you run across people who you just connect with, who you get along with, who you see life sometimes the same way. I think it's normal to have fleeting connections with people where you think, "Oh yeah, they're nice," or, "I like them," or, "I'm attracted to them."

Faith Bjorklund: But it's also an interesting moment too where you think, when you have a moment like that, you think, "Okay, you know what? I probably need to have good boundaries with that person," or, "I don't need to isolate with that person if I want to protect my marriage." And I'm always aware of protecting our marriage, and I think you are too.

Faith Bjorklund: If you really connect with somebody, it's good to think, "Okay, we can be friends," and that friendship has to have really healthy, good limits, boundaries around it. If you don't have good boundaries, then you end up in a situation where it's just too easy to start getting emotional needs met or go into a place of fantasy, you know? Like my spouse is not meeting my needs in this way, but you know, this person who really gets me, it's just really easy to cross that line.

Faith Bjorklund: So I would say it happens. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong or broken with your marriage necessarily, but it probably requires some awareness and good boundaries.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. I like how you frame that simply because I think there's a couple dangers when that happens. One is to minimize it and act like it doesn't exist, which actually gives it more power in a sense because then it's this illusion of, "Ooh."

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: The other is to turn it into a big story. Like this means somehow that this is real and what I have over here isn't-

Faith Bjorklund: "I married the wrong person."

Kurt Bjorklund: Any of those kinds of things.

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah, "That I could feel this way." Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: So I agree that the idea of simply saying, "This exists and this needs some healthy boundaries around it," is probably the healthiest way to address that. When do you see people get into trouble with that? Again, in counseling, like where does that become problematic as people walk through navigating that in their marriages?

Faith Bjorklund: As soon as anything becomes a secret from your spouse. As soon as there are private conversations or you find yourself wanting to isolate with somebody at work and you find yourself rationalizing, you know, "Oh, we're just friends, we're just connecting on this work thing," and you start making excuses to yourself and you find that you're hiding anything at all. When you start being protective with your phone because you know that there's a conversation or a text on there that might raise a flag-

Kurt Bjorklund: Or you're deleting things from your phone so that [crosstalk 00:15:03].

Faith Bjorklund: You delete anything from your phone. Yeah, then-

Kurt Bjorklund: That's a warning sign.

Faith Bjorklund: That means you are hiding something, and even if you aren't consciously to the point of saying, "This is a problem." And we're really good at deceiving ourselves. Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah, and that's why I asked that question is I think a lot of times what happens is somebody may even acknowledge it, but I like the secrecy phrase because I think that's definitely a place where you can see that start to... Anytime that you can't be fully disclosing-

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: Then that means that there's something that you know intuitively is not healthy, even if it hasn't crossed any true lines of impropriety. But there's something there that you're saying, "Ooh, I don't want this to be seen." I think that's wise.

Faith Bjorklund: I think any conversation with the opposite sex, it should be considered open. Like whatever conversation I might have, you know, email, text, Facebook, whatever, social media, whatever, like I should feel really good about you reading that.

Kurt Bjorklund: So this wasn't on the pre-question list, but we have a couple minutes. So if a couple has been married a long time, and again, mostly happy, overall good marriage, not unhappy, not looking to get out, but they find times that the connection isn't as deep as they would like it to be. Well, what words of wisdom would you give to somebody to say how do you rekindle some of the depth of connection?

Faith Bjorklund: Well, what have we done over the years?

Kurt Bjorklund: We try to invest in our marriage, spend time together, get away together, not be dominated by the kids.

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah. All that. We were used to be really good about date nights. And now that our kids are almost gone-

Kurt Bjorklund: we have lots of date nights now.

Faith Bjorklund: Well, yeah, on Wednesdays. And yeah, but we do, it's getting easier to spend time together in the evenings, but something that we've always done is prioritizing nights away. Those took a lot of work, especially when the kids were younger, but they always managed to reconnect us and remind us that we actually do like each other. That was a regular practice.

Faith Bjorklund: It takes work. I think every couple realizes at some point that the easiest thing to do is nothing. The easiest thing is to go into your own world, take care of your own stuff, zone out on Netflix, pay bills, talk about the kids, go to bed early. That's where we naturally go because it takes the least amount of energy. To change a natural course takes effort, sustained effort. It takes some risk to say, "I want to plan something, think of something, do something for the other person," and risk rejection or risk an, "Eh," response. It takes time.

Kurt Bjorklund: Right. Yeah.

Faith Bjorklund: So-

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. Yeah, and I would say one of the best things is just intention. If you find that the cycle that we get in is, and I don't mean you and me necessarily, although we certainly live this too, is, "Well, she can do something," or, "He can do something and I'll just live and do what I need to do." And the best thing to do is to start initiating again, is to say, "Okay, how do I move forward and initiate something that will bring joy to my spouse and to us together?"

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: And it can be as simple as saying, "We're going to grab a few minutes sitting outside, looking at the stars without kids," to, "Here's a date," to, "Here's a getaway," but something that says... Or, "Let's watch something together. Let's read something together. Let's go for a walk." I mean, those things, every one of those things matters. But it's easy to get in a cycle where it's, "Well, if they don't, I won't," rather than, "Let me continue to initiate," and again, try to find common ground where things are enjoyable.

Faith Bjorklund: And it's like anything else in life that ends up being a good thing, like exercise, like doing a project. Sometimes we look at and think it's going to take work and you know, I don't know if I have the energy right now, like sex, whatever it is. It's one of those things that once you decide though, "This is important, I'm going to do this," and you're in it, you love it, you enjoy it usually. It just takes getting out of the normal routine to say, "This is worth the effort. This is worth stepping into." And then you find like, "Oh, this is exactly what I needed. This is what we needed."

Kurt Bjorklund: Yeah. Well good. Well thank you.

Faith Bjorklund: Yeah.

Kurt Bjorklund: If you have questions, you can send them to askapastor@orchardhillchurch.com and we will be happy to address them in a coming episode. Have a great day.