Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Hurricane Lesson”

In the immediate afterglow of Hurricane Charley, I saw with my own eyes how neighbors pitched in to help each other clear the debris up and down the street. When the rain had let up, people emerged from their shaken homes with their pruning saws and rakes to create teamwork the neighborhood hadn't seen in a long time. A block party with a serious purpose. Since then, I've heard heartening stories, such as people mercifully running extension cords from the electrified side of the street to the non-electrified. As amazing as the storm was, it seemed to bring people together as if it were an outer-space enemy we all had in common. This too was amazing. I had the sense that “We are all in this together”, and I piously thank Charley for a lesson which some couples could learn to bond their marriage relationship.

A serious relationship can get derailed by the failure to look out the window to see all the outside threats to bonding and intimacy. Our everyday worlds are filled with stressors due to the demands of jobs, getting the kids to school, or maybe illness. I mean things that happen to a marriage that are nobody's fault and cannot apparently be controlled. Or look at the dreaded Doppler radar of relationships and see the big red and yellow ball of danger and divorce that might be heading toward your marriage. It's enough to make loving people shudder and huddle together, but they usually don't. Nonetheless, the problem is jointly owned. So why not fight it like it was a mutual enemy, I say. Pull together!

The partners in a marriage already share a lot in common that they don't always acknowledge. Deep down, married people all have the same fears, needs, and dreams as their spouses. Look inside their hearts and you'll see that both partners have a desire to love and be loved. Mars and Venus notwithstanding, husbands and wives are a lot alike, and could benefit from helping each other overcome the relationship wounds they have brought to the marriage. If you dare to bring the gremlins of the unconscious to the surface, a marriage becomes just the right place to work out the old hurts. This is because the reason you picked the person you did was for the grand opportunity of finding healing. Not kidding! Author Harville Hendrix says marriage IS therapy. You just have to know how to let it work for you.

“We are in this together” in a marriage because all spouses are fighting the same battles. What appears external is really internal and personal. The marital fights that we have with our spouses are, in actuality, the inner conflicts we have with ourselves. Usually phrased as “what we hate in the other is what we hate in ourselves”. The marital scourge of criticism, for example, will reveal itself as fundamentally a criticism of our self. With few exceptions, what is unresolved in our own individual and internal emotional/spiritual life, we tend to externalize, see it in our mate. And then we try to deal with it by projection, albeit inadequately. I don't say we do this intentionally, but it happens to all married people. Those closest to us become the target that we are chicken to deal with through honest self-examination. That is why individual therapy is part of marital therapy.

Why not share the compassion, and see that your lover is as wounded by life's storms as you are? If we are in this together, we, as couples, can work together. Help and be helped. Heal and be healed.

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