My email exchange on the marital debt continues under the auspices of anonymity. The emailer insists that therapy is the answer. This same critic also seemed a bit confused by my writing about happy women when the previous emails were about all the sad ones that bad things happened to.
This raises an interesting question: Can people who suffer be happy? The answer is demonstrably “yes.” More on that later.
The emailer is specifically concerned with women from complex, puritanical origins. They are steeped in shame and, seemingly, in the estimation of this individual, incapable of levity, light-heartedness, and happiness in the realm of human sexuality.
The plot twist: the emailer and I are talking about the same women. There are no anointed happy people set apart from the common sorrows of our shared humanity. Yes, there are people for whom circumstances are much more favorable. Anyone who views the world honestly must acknowledge that bad things sometimes happen to good people.
That is the case now for the people of such concern to our emailer; and, we must not forget, it was also the case for women who came of age 50 years ago. The emailer is particularly perturbed by the assertion that marriage can be the path to health and healing without therapy.
Certainly, marriage passively experienced will do little good for anyone. However, accepting marriage as a path to holiness and happiness opens up the possibility that the marriage itself—with all its deficiencies and flaws and miscommunications—can lead to greater health. Not always; there are no guarantees. And it will not just happen. But it is also a process that we must commit decades to in order to see it bear fruit.
Through the patient progression of years, some of the women who were raised in puritanical homes, violated in unconscionable crimes, steeped in insecurity and shame, have arrived in the autumn of their lives with a sense of confidence and peace. How? That is what I would like to know. I find their personal experiences much more compelling than strident claims that therapy is a requirement.
What is required? The restoration of agency. Perhaps the reason why therapy can prove unhelpful is because it can undermine the agency of the individual in distress. Our emailer seems to broadly apply the dictum that therapy will solve X type of malformation when, in reality, there are many different paths to health.
I am not alone in questioning the therapy industrial complex that has been given so much fuel in recent years. Dr. Roger McFillin, clinical psychologist, recently wrote, “The more we fixate and ruminate on our worries and struggles, the worse we feel. Therapy often perpetuates this process, with many therapists believing that discussing these experiences is inherently healthy. They are wrong. This approach can create a harmful cycle of excessive rumination, exacerbating the very issues it aims to resolve. We are ultimately creators of our reality, and where we direct our attention is critical. By continually focusing on our problems, therapy can sometimes produce negative outcomes, a reality that is rarely acknowledged in the mental health industry.”
For issues related to the intimacy that is the glue of our marriages, seeking therapy can be unhelpful when it amounts to identifying dysfunction with ever greater specificity. Instead of talking at length about precisely how messed up we all are, maybe we could just take a break and find something enjoyable to do. Which approach is more likely to lead to more general intimacy between spouses?
There’s a rather brutal analogy having to do with the unnecessary killing of a nest of baby birds that illustrates an important principle: Letting other people solve their own problems. Assistance of variance kinds may be in order, including therapy. However, on the issue of the marital debt, if we make the statement (directly or implicitly) to a woman that she is incapable of experiencing pleasure and there is something fundamentally wrong with her in the realm of human sexuality, that is decidedly unhelpful.
It is also, important to note, not definitively true. While an awkward woman of 22 or a woman of 35 shackled by painful experiences and bad ideas may not easily come around to the idea of a pleasurable, carnal relationship with her spouse, stating as a stagnant fact that she is psychologically and physically damaged will likely ensure continued unhappiness and make further inaccessible the possibility of growth and levity. It is possible. Not for everyone at all times, but there are women whose lives attest to the process of healing and integration that can occur over years of marriage.
In the realm of the marital debt, we should all check our prurient concern for the marriages of others. The wedding night need not be a literal phenomenon, among other basic facts that apparently need to be stated directly now. In the sacred space of privacy, people are capable of knowing and being known. When that is violated, we cannot expect intimacy to develop.
To those seeking alternative (but morally licit) perspective to inform their own, I would again commend the work of Ellen Holloway. I have not ventured into all of her teaching but what I have listened to has been sound, helpful, and life-giving.
There is hope for those who suffer. That is not a glib statement but a recognition of reality. How can we be sure? The examples of people who suffered and prevailed. Better yet, the example of those who continue to suffer but find great joy in the life they have been given.
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