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REINVENTING YOUR MARRIAGE: Communication, Reconciliation and Flourishing For Catholic Couples

by Kathryn Rombs, Ph.D.

Introduction Even the best marriages have their momentssometimes, years. The classic irony of marriage is that the relationship we joyfully choose for ourselves and that has the potential for our greatest happiness can hurt us so deeply. Unlike relationships with parents and siblings, with whom there is no choice but to be in a relationship, marriage relationships are elective: and yet sometimes, even if only in sporadic moments that are few and far between, we feel that we have chosen our own doom. That is the mystery of marriage: how something we choose has the potential to be our self-inflicted demise. Not only is the institution of marriage elective, but it is permanent. In times of conflict, a wife finds herself thinking, What was I thinking to marry him? Why would two people put themselves in a relationship that, no matter how painful, is indissoluble? We all want a good exit strategy when a relationship becomes too hurtful. Why would we ever willingly say, Till death do us part? Isnt that compromising our own best interest? Catholics put themselves in an especially final situation, in that divorce and remarriage is not an option: just as Gods love for His people is expressed through an indissoluble covenant rather than a contract that can be terminated, so the Catholic spouse mirrors the Fathers love by engaging in the indissoluble covenant of marriage that binds the spouses together forever. Catholics have either made a more wonderful choice, or a more restricted choice. Sometimes, it feels like the latter. Contrary to secular popular opinion, the Catholic answer to whether we have compromised our own best interest, is no. It is in our best interest to place ourselves willingly in an indissoluble union. The reason is that it is the highest good for the human

3 person to love well. St. John of the Cross wrote, In the eve of life, we will be judged on love. Christian marriage is one of the best avenues a person can take to achieving the kind of love found in the Holy Trinity, revealed by Christ. As it says in Ephesians, Husbands, nurture your wives. In marriage, spouses are meant to enjoy the other spouse as Christ does, and participate in the other persons healing through the power of Christ. Marriage is the place in which, while drawn in by romantic love, we hopefully add to that a type of love, agape in Greek, that places the good of the spouse above our own good. Marriages indissolubility fosters agape in part because it encourages each person to find a solution to conflict, even at great cost to ourselves. Marriages inevitably wind up in conflict: severe crises, or patterns of small but hurtful behaviors. It is the will of God that the pain be healed and the hurts be reconciled. In this process, we learn truer love than we previously knew and greater humility than we previously demonstrated. Christian marriage is, then, like a furnace that holds each person in place while the impurities and grime of our souls are burned off. If marriage were not indissoluble, we would leave just as the heat rises beyond our comfort level, destroying our chance to be properly cleansed and healed. One husband who was married in the Methodist church finally left his wife after many, many years of conflict. He said: My wife loathes herself; she cannot get beyond her feelings of inadequacy. Her disposition led to many painful choices, and ultimately they decided to divorce. From a Catholic vantage point, it was the husbands duty and purpose in life to help his wife heal from her practice of selfloathing. Rather than take her behavior personally, her behavior was a great opportunity for him to engage in a more determined way in her healing.

4 Even beyond being a sacred, indissoluble union, the Catholic marriage is a sacramental one. All sacraments are intersections of heaven and earth: places in which earthly, tangible, ordinary things become doorways through which the gifts of God pour out from heaven directly and in abundance. For example, the sacrament of the Eucharist takes ordinary unleavened bread and wine and transforms them into the body and blood of Christ. In Mass, we are in the direct presence of God. The sacrament of marriage is similar: Christ becomes really and directly present to us through the finite, flawed person that is our spouse. A wifes touch on her husbands shoulder is the touch of Christ. A husbands word of tender affection is the word of Christ spoken to her. As Catholics, we get to be Christ for our spouse. Hence the institution must be as permanent as Christs love for us. Only in this sacred and permanent space can we be cornered into fixing what needs fixing, healing what needs healing. When a marriage becomes rocky, instead of wondering how to get away from the problem, the Catholic response is: Aha! It is time for Christs healing power to come through me to my hurting spouse! Lets get to work! The purification process that all marriages bring about at some point or another and with different levels of success is holy work. It is opus Dei, the work of God. We should not flee from it, but embrace it. Through the pain can come our healing. While many Catholic married people wish they could look at it this way, their marriage is just too painful or too stuck in its old, hurtful ways. They have asked for change. But the husband still prefers his computer, his work, his alcohol or his golf to his wife. The wife still nags, or explodes, or wallows in bad moods. They have gone to confession, they have prayed for change, they have consulted a friend or a priest. But the

5 marriage is stuck in a snow bank, and cannot seem to get dislodged from the painful pattern. Once upon a time they had been in love, but fights or chronic distance are their new normal. In this handbook, I offer three ways to reinvent your Catholic marriage. First, couples in tension need a new way to communicate. A fresh approach to talking through conflicts will provide the structure necessary to love your enemy. This communication strategy provides a practical application of the Gospel, and is a resource that helps the Catholic couple to bring the humility, power and love of Christ into the troubled marriage. Second, Catholic couples need a new way to think through decision making. Sometimes our patterns invite conflict, when what we thought we were doing was being sacrificial or Christ-like. Reconfiguring how to live out Christs teachings in marriage will bring His presence into your home. Lastly, couples need to learn how to reconcile when there is a breach. Many priests speak to this need in homilies or in the confessional, and yet the Catholic spouse is unsure how to enforce what was said. The waters of conflict are tricky; sometimes waving the white flag without problem solving is not the godly option. An articulation of authentic forgiveness and reconciliation will provide the framework needed to find genuine restoration in your marriage. It is time for a new era for Catholic marriage: an era of true healing rather than resignation, of reinventing struggling marriages rather than calling ones marriage the cross one must bear. Catholics need the resources for this new era to dawn. They need the how to to bring their dreams for authentic reconciliation to fruition. Herein lies the dawning of a new day.

6 Chapter One: A New Kind of Communication Are you proud of your words when you are in a fight with your spouse? How is your body language? The look in your eye? Would you mind if your priest, your mother-in-law, or your child saw you argue? Spouses often want to handle a conflict admirably but find themselves resorting to reactive or power-based tactics. They disappoint even themselves with raising their voice, using exaggerated language or occasionally throwing a shoe or punching a door. They are swept downstream by the patterns of which they are not proud but to which they know no alternative. It is time to learn a new way to handle frustration, hurt and anger. It is a technique called dialogue. There are various kinds of dialogue. Here I am offering a particular type, highly compatible with Catholic theology, developed by Imago Relationship Therapy.1 Dialogue is like putting a huge engine with lots of horsepower on a tiny fishing boat. The boat can finally handle the currents of the most challenging waters. The Imago dialogue process gives both parties the power to navigate nimbly and precisely against the current, avoiding the shoals of blame, passive aggression, hatred and division, and arriving at the destination that both spouses had desired but seemed so unattainable. The answer to the mystery of marriage, why we choose a spouse who then hurt us so much (did we choose poorly?) is: God allows us to marry someone who will bring our deepest hurts to light so that, in the context of this sacred environment, those hurts may become healed. A wife triggers her husbands deepest vulnerabilities; meanwhile, the
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Imago Relationship Therapy was founded by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., a Baptist minister, author of many books, including Getting the Love you Want: A Guide for Couples. While IRT is not Catholic, the dialogue technique is especially suited for Catholic marriage, and Catholics will be greatly blessed by adopting it and making it their own.

7 husband is triggering hersthey have become enemies. In light of our calling to love our enemies, we have the opportunity to love our enemy well by choosing healing over fighting. The healing process is humbling, and at times, excruciating. But if we follow the example of Christ and seek to bring light, love and dignity into the darkest, most fractured part of our lives, then we will find ourselves aligned with the commands of Scripture, especially the greatest, concerning love. Imago dialogue is a technique, and as such, is intentionally contrived. Hence it is initially awkward to use. Couples find themselves embarrassed and sometimes laughing at themselves as they employ the precise wording. But stilted is better than violent; wooden is better than painful. If yelling and pouting works for you, then by all means, keep at it. But if you are looking for a new way to manage a conflict, a way that is nonviolent and produces your desired results, the only price you pay is this structure that at first is awkward but quickly becomes more natural. The dialogue is so effective, however, that it quickly becomes a safe haven in a stormy relationship. It makes it possible to suspend old ways of talking in a conflict, and enforce the good intentions one has always had. The spouse becomes able to be loving in ones actions during a conflict. A wife is able to listen well, even when she hates or strongly disagrees with what she is hearing. She is able to see that which appears right to her husband, and validate what makes sense to him, even if she still strongly disagrees. Then she is able to actually empathize, and imagine how her spouse has been feeling in the conflict. At this point, she is able to feel loving again, to feel reconnected with the person with whom she had felt so distant, just ten minutes prior. Then, after suspending her own views for such a long time (ten minutes can feel like an eternity!), she gets the

8 chance to express how she sees things. Because she knows that he will return the favor, and listen and empathize with her, she can express herself without daggers, without claws, without venom. Few things have made her love her husband more than the times that he has suspended his differing views, and listened and empathized with her. She senses his selflessness in that moment. She experiences in action his love for her outweighing his love for himself and his need to protect and defend himself. This is the Gospel in action. He has given himself for her. He has become a true hero of the Gospel. He too has the satisfaction of having loved her as well as he would have wanted to in a trying time. He has been faithful to his promise: in good times and in bad. . . . He has loved his wife so well in a bad time, that he turned it into a good one. Then, in this reconnected place, the conflict dissolves. It loses its structure and becomes pliable, so that they can find a solution. There has never been an argument in marriage, the content of which is insurmountable once the couple has reconnected in their method of communication. Often both spouses are willing to bend, both willing to compromise, both wanting the best for the other and willing to go to great lengths and sacrifices to make that happen. That is the very heart of Catholic marriage. But the challenge in marriage is often not a particular event, decision or action, but the distance or brokenness that is felt between the two people. Once that brokenness is replaced by connection, then solutions manifest themselves. They are able to brainstorm as friends about how to solve the problem. But the battle was already won when they became friends again. Dialogue, then, helps husbands and wives become the Catholic spouses that they hope they can be but find it impossible to be in the most challenging moments. In those

9 rough times, where is God? Where is charity? Where is empathy? Are those moments you would be alright with your priest seeing and hearing? You might strongly resist using this technique. But ask yourself: if you are going to spend the next hour fighting, is that really better than doing the dialogue? It has a greater chance of obtaining your desired outcome than does the word-flinging that you know does not exactly endear your spouse nor does it strengthen your overall marriage. Even winning an old-fashioned argument amounts to overpowering your spouse and that leads to an erosion of the marriage. Not until couples commit to dialoguing through conflicts do many of them feel like charity is restored such that they would be proud for their priest to overhear how they are arguing. A conflict, yes. But cruelty, harshness, or defensiveness, no.

Dialogue Explained: The Process Here is how the Imago dialogue process works. No matter what the conflict, both spouses take a turn.

[Insert diagram from pg. 45 of CASP for Christian couples]

The process is divided into two parts, say for example, the wifes turn and the husbands turn. The person initiating the dialogue is the first speaker, in this case, the wife. When she begins with her turn, she tells how she feels, what she is upset about. The husband then responds with a three-step process. These steps will be explained in detail in the next section, but here is a quick summary. The first step is to mirror: to reflect back, as though in a mirror, what the person said. The second step is to validate:

10 to say why it makes sense that the person would feel that way. The third step is to empathize: to say why we would feel the same way, given the same mindset. Then it is time for the second part of the process, the husbands turn. He now gets to explain his experience, how he feels and what he thinks. Then the wife responds with the same three step process: she mirrors, validates, and empathizes. Each step is a few sentences, not much more. The other person nods or says Okay, at the end of each step, to indicate that it was successful. The whole process, including both parts, can take as little as 30 minutes, if the subject matter is not too complex. Many typically take one or two hours. If the process is used to sort out a whole jumble of problems, however, it is best to take each one separately, and have a series of dialogues over the course of days or weeks.

An Inside Look Here is what the process looks like. Kate is at home while her husband Louis is out of town, attending his mother who is in the hospital for critical heart surgery. His mother may die, and Louis has been upset and preoccupied for weeks. Kate has been irritating to him off and on, and it seems like he could explode any time. Kate and Louis are not in much contact, since the hospital does not allow cell phones. After he has been gone several days, Kate decides to text him with: Guess what! I fixed the sprinkler system! She thinks that he might be overwhelmed with the tension of the hospital setting, and might like to hear something uplifting and positive and get his mind off the tragedy for just a moment. They had been working together to learn how to fix their sprinkler system themselves rather than hiring someone to do it, and had spent a lot of

11 time reading up on how such systems worktheir newest home improvement project. Louis is crushed and infuriated at the text message from his wife. Is she so callous and unsympathetic to his own mothers life and death situation that she is really choosing to tell him about a sprinkler? When he returns home, he is icy and short with Kate. We all know how the conversation would go, not using the dialogue process: Kate asks, Whats wrong? and Louis criticizes her text message as being callous; she defends herself, stating her rationale of having wanted to give him the gift of lightening up the situation with a diversion. Does that solve the problem? No: he is still upset, because she has essentially reiterated her text message, which is what hurt him in the first place. Even if she sees the validity of his position, understanding how he might have taken it the wrong way, she chooses words that defend her rationale. But he takes her words as dismissive of his upset, and interprets her defense of herself as saying, You are wrong to have felt that way. But this does not solve the problem. So this is how the conflict would play out with a couple who is committed to the Imago dialogue process. Louis comes home, upset. But instead of displaying icy behavior, he asks Kate: Can we please set up a time to discuss something? I am somewhat upset and would like to talk it over with you. Kate is tempted to rush in and say, Of course! because she does not want a problem in their marriage. But she knows that she is not emotionally present right now, because in Louis absence, she has carried all the weight of their home and work lives, and is exhausted. So she says, Lets talk about it tomorrow morning before work. Making an appointment to dialogue when both parties are emotionally available is the critical first step. [Sidebar: Make an appointment to dialogue.]

12 When they sit down to talk, Louis is the one who speaks first. They know that the process will include two main parts: Louis turn and then Kates turn. [Diagram of the 2 turns, including the 3 steps each party takes, including leading phrases.] In Louis turn, he expresses what hurt him. He might say, When I received your text message, I felt distance from you; I felt no compassion or understanding from you regarding where I was and what I was going through. It hurt me that it felt like you were not interested in my mothers situation, and like other things were your priority. Notice that he makes I statements, rather than blaming her (You should have been more understanding of my mothers situation.) The speaker must phrase his feelings in these terms, since only they are accurate. He would not be accurate to say, You should have been more understanding, because he does not actually know whether she was understanding in that way. All he knows is that the text made him feel like she had no understanding of his mothers situation, and so he must speak only of his experience. [Sidebar: Replace telling what the other person thought, meant to do, or did, with statements about your own experience.] Then Kate responds with a three-part response: she mirrors, validates and empathizes. She really does not agree with what he said. She thinks he is crazy for having interpreted her that way: after all, she LOVES his mother, has sent his mother lots of cards, and has never done anything but support him in his relationship with her. How dare he interpret Kate so unfavorably??? But Kate knows that she will get the chance to speak her mind when it is her turn. She also knows that, by the time she is speaking, she will be able to do so in a much more thoughtful, less caddy way than she would if she blurted out what she is thinking right now. She would be alright with their priest

13 watching this whole conversation, and she has a little butterfly in her stomach, pleased that she can avoid a fight and proceed in an honorable way. She begins her response by mirroring. To mirror is to state back to the speaker what he said. Kate mirrors: If I got it right, my text message upset you because you felt that I was distant from you, that I was not compassionate or understanding of your situation. Is that right? For many couples, this stage is the most humiliating to have to do, the one that makes us feel the most unnatural. While it seems terribly tedious, stilted and awkward, it is a godly thing to do for two reasons. [Sidebar: If I got it right, . . . . gets your mirroring off to a good start. Finish with, Is that right?] First, when a person is being criticized, she often has a hard time hearing the details from the speaker. She shuts down her receptivity sensors: the message gets jumbled as it squeezes through the mess of defenses and feelings inside her. It is a noteworthy feature of the Imago process that mirroring properly includes saying, Have I got it right? since so many times the speaker does have to correct the recipient. If couples in conflict were better at mirroring, this feature would not exist. But it does precisely because it is typical for the recipient to hear a distorted message. Getting an accurate message is godly because it is on the side of truth: I am the truth, (Jn.). Secondly, while the recipient mirrors the message, she is actually engaging her prefrontal cortex. She is helping her brain shift from an animalistic response from the base of her brain to an engagement of her problem-solving ability. Analyzing whether the data she received is accurate or not is an intelligent activity of the more sophisticated part of her brain. In mirroring, she is setting herself on a peace-making, reconciliatory path, which is a godly choice. Blessed are the peace-makers, (Mt.).

14 Kate mirrors Louis and he corrects her: I also felt like you were not interested in my mothers situation, that other things were a priority for you. Kate mirrors: If I got that right, you felt like I was not interested in your mothers situation, like my fixing the sprinkler was a higher priority to me than your mothers life and death situation. She

has mirrored accurately. She finishes mirroring by saying: Is there more? [sidebar: Is their more?] These are the three words that have the power to soften both people. They are words of generosity: keep in mind that she is hearing something with which she strongly disagrees. When the recipient has properly received the message, she then proves her non-defensiveness to her spouse by asking for more from him. She lives out her desire to turn the other cheek and does so in a healthy, loving way by asking for more feelings of upset from her husband in the safe context of the dialoguesafe because he is making I statements, not making unfair accusations. This is the actualization of the selflessness that she wants to have with her husband but so rarely can on her own. Kate feels grateful in that moment that she has a process that can be the structure upon which to build her loving response. In fact, there is more. Louis opens up in a sad way about the ways that he has been hurt in this time of his mothers illness. She is able to see that her text was really the straw that broke the back on a mounting problem that she had not detected. She realizes that he is not crazy after all, that there has just been a lot confusion and misunderstanding. She mirrors each of his points, and is proud of herself each time she mirrors. Now she is not feeling the need to protect herself and thus mirrors correctly each time. He is grateful, even though he is not showing it yet, that his feelings have been heard. It is the relief he needed that his feelings of anger, a real, albeit temporary,

15 part of him, could find a place in their marriage. Now it is time to work on what to do with them. Kate takes the second step of her response: she validates. She begins with phrase, It makes sense that. . . . [Sidebar: It makes sense that. . .] This beginning ensures proper validation. Kate says, It makes sense to me that you would feel distance and disinterest from me because of that message. My text spoke of something trivial, when you were absorbed in something of the highest importance. I can really see how that would indicate to you that I was not also absorbed in your mothers situation. Louis feels even more relief, and now it is visible on his face. She is proud to be showing such maturity, affirming his experience, even though she has a huge protest to the content. She is succeeding in her goal: to bring them onto the same side of the great line that was dividing them. When she steps onto his side of the line as his friend, then the line actually disappears. Then, as friends, they can solve the problem. Lastly, she takes the third step: she empathizes. [Sidebar: Empathy is the heart of Christian love, the wellspring of compassion.] If I were in the middle of a huge life crisis with a loved one, I would want to feel like my spouse were totally engrossed in the crisis with me. That is what we pledged to each other when we got marriedin good times and in bad. I also want you to be with me in my bad times, and I can really empathize that you were wanting to feel my presence with you through your challenging days at the hospital. Kate has successfully loved in action: she has loved her husband with an empathetic love. Empathy is the heart of Christs love. It is the key to his Incarnation, coming among us in flesh and taking on our experience. Hence she has fulfilled the greatest commandment: Love one another, (Mt.). She has loved him

16 well, even though she has not been heard or understood yet. She is still perceived as the enemy, not having shown why she was not so bad to send the text. Thus she has been helped by the Imago process to be humble, to refrain from defending herself, and allowing her husbands experience to have its dignity, even if it is not her own. Now it is Kates turn. She speaks of her experience: I sent the text message because I had been so concerned for your well-being, and knowing how burdened you were, I wanted to give you the gift of a light-hearted moment. I thought you would assume how much I was with you in your pain, carrying it in my own way at home with you, and assuming my closeness to you, we could together reflect on something else for one moment just to preserve our emotional state through this very hard time. She has expressed her experience of sending the text. Louis takes the first step of his response, mirroring: If I get you right, you did feel close to me, and your message was supposed to show that. Kate responds, No, that is not what I said. Let me say it again. She re-sends the message of her experience. He mirrors again, this time accurately: You were trying to give me a gift, a light-hearted moment. You thought I was assuming your closeness with me in this time. Is that right? Kate says yes. He says, Is there more? She says, I felt like you could assume my closeness with you because I have shown my concern over and over. As you know, I have sent cards, called on the phone, prayed for her in our family night prayers every night. I thought that all of these actions showed you how very much I am absorbed in this problem. Plus, I have been home, doing lots of extra work, just so that you can be with her. I was happy for you to spend the money to travel to be with your mom, which again shows my prioritization of this problem. Lastly, I am not a mean or callous person,

17 and only the meanest and most callous of people would actually prioritize a do-it-yourself home improvement project over open heart surgery!! I assumed I could count on your knowing that, and that you would give me the benefit of the doubt. Louis is relieved to hear these words, the evidence that she is on his side. He is still frustrated with the text itself, and still thinks it was the wrong choice of what to text him while he was at the hospital. But he no longer fuses her choice of what message to type with her as a person, and he no longer thinks of her as calloused. He now thinks of her as a kind person who made a choice he did not like. He now does the second step: he validates. It makes sense to me that you would assume I would receive your message as a gift. I can see how a person might need a break in the midst of a trial, and I can see how you would like me to assume that you are not actually prioritizing the sprinkler over Moms health. After all, I have seen the many things you have done to show your compassion and concern of my mother in this time, including cards, phone calls and prayers. I can see that you have carried an extra-heavy load at home while I was away. I can imagine that you would want me to interpret that as a display of your compassion for Mom. That makes sense to me. He validates her experience, and resists the temptation to say, It was just a horrible way of showing it. He then does his third task: he empathizes. I know what it feels like to give a gift that is not taken well. I know the feeling of intending to be supportive and uplifting, and for my effort to utterly fail. Gifts backfire sometimes, and it feels horrible when they do. I really empathize with how bad it feels to go through pain with someone, be on their side, and then to find that you have inadvertently hurt them. I know that you must feel awful in all this, to have carried such a heavy load while I was gone, only to have me be

18 upset with you upon my return. Kate is greatly relieved that he can see the problem from her vantage point, and articulate what she has been experiencing in such compassionate terms. She feels his love. Now they are able to talk, as friends, about their problem in constructive ways. They consider what changes in their behavior would help in the future. Louis says that words of support, rather than actions alone, would mean a lot. Kate says she needs him to assume confidently her support, and not second guess it. They now have the tools in their toolbox that they will need as they continue to go through the challenging time. Were his mother to die, Louis would not interpret any of her behaviors that he thinks are poor choices as coming from a unsympathetic disposition, which safeguards their marriage in the midst of hard times. Kate knows she should speak of her support and all her compassionate feelings, even though she does not normally do that. She decides to write him cards whenever she writes his mother a card, just so he will have more evidence in words of her presence with him through this challenging time. They both have to stretch to meet the other persons needs, since Louis really thinks she makes strange choices of what to say, and Kate really hates to speak sympathetically, as she feels awkward and wishes he could just see it. But they choose to love the person they married, and accept and find their love amidst the limitations and imperfections of the reality of who they are. At some other time in their marriage, a time that is not so lean, their affection for one another will grow exponentially, since their foundation is not cracked with unresolved frustrations, and instead has been fortified with transparency, unconditional acceptance, and mutual commitment.

19 Exercise: Appreciation Dialogue Now it is your turn. A great and easy way to learn to dialogue is to use the Appreciation Dialogue. You and your spouse can follow the outline below, each taking a turn to express to the other person something about them that you appreciate. Find a private space, and sit, facing each other. Take a moment to look into one anothers eyes in a loving way. Take another moment to breath deeply and invite Christ to be with you. Then, take turns, following these steps exactly. Do not deviate from the wording or from the order, and do not skip steps. Let the process feel contrived. You are learning a skill that soon will feel comfortable. But for now, be strict with yourselves and follow the format faithfully. It will soon pay rich dividends for you.

[Insert the appreciation dialogue format, pp. 47-48]

If you desire more education on this process, look into the DVD and workbook entitled, Couplehood as a Spiritual Path: the Imago Journey for Catholic Couples. [provide contact info.] There is also a world-wide network of Imago trained therapists for those with problems that are not able to be managed at home. See the Imago website, www.

Chapter 2: Reconciliation Having looked at communication as the first major way to reinvent your Catholic marriage, we come to the second critical issue in marriage that must be handled wisely in

20 order for marriages to thrive: forgiveness and reconciliation. Communicating without yelling, without being defensive, without avoiding or minimizing problems is the way to clear the marriage of some of its worst toxins. Every marriage has an environment: it is either sunny, fresh and healthy, or it is full of smog, pollution, fires and trash. Getting cruel or angry words out of your marriage is a huge first step. But many marriages are left with big debris items that need to be cleared away in order for the landscape to be beautiful once again. Catholic marriages are greatly enhanced by the sacramental grace that is afforded them, as well as by the guidance that is theirs through the Scriptures and Church teachings. But some of these teachings can be confusing as to how to apply them to marriage. The Scripture says, I say unto you, forgive him not seven times, but seven times seventy times. Is Susan supposed to forgive her husband every single night for his intoxication and the alarming behavior to which his drinking leads? The Scripture says, Turn the other cheek. Is Mark supposed to say nothing each time his wife sneaks off, engaging in an affair? When do we forgive? When do we protest? What is Gods will?