When to Seek Outside Help in Marital Issues

“When should we seek counsel from outside our marriage for an issue versus protecting each other by just dealing with it ourselves?”

This question was asked at a previous SWO Marriage Conference, so we wanted to share Rob Conti’s answer here. Let’s dig in.

Finding the foundation

So, I will start with the foundation. The foundation of checking your own motivation for why you would want to communicate with somebody else. I think that is an important step — you probably have experienced this, you’ve seen it, if not struggled with it yourself, you’ve heard somebody else do it where you maybe made the mistake of asking them how their spouse was doing, and next thing you know you are 10 minutes into it and they are just on a rant about their spouse.

And if you’re on the other side of that, it’s uncomfortable like, “Oh man, this guy is trashing his wife right now,” and if it’s a dude, I’ll stop them saying, “Time out.”

So what’s the motivation?

Am I simply gossiping? Am I slandering? Am I trying to gain attention and sympathy by belittling my spouse and making myself look better? It’s simply just motivation. So what’s at the heart of this, and does it check against the Gospel?

Hopefully, slander is not the case, right? But if it is, that’s a sin that needs to be repented of and worked through to guard and protect one another. That should always be the motivation in your marriage, to guard and protect, not to hurt and heap shame. Always be working towards redemption and the picture of the Gospel.

Deciding who to go to

I think from there is having the conversation, not amid the conflict, but backing up from the issue and saying, “Alright, what are we comfortable sharing with other people?”

Just having that conversation with one another and you know people in your life that are very, very guarded where you don’t know anything personal about them, when you try to ask them these questions they’re deflecting, and then you know other people who overshare leaving you saying, “I never wanted to hear that. And I don’t think I can ever talk to you again.” Right?

Somewhere in the middle is what we’re all aiming for, but to have the conversation, “Okay, what are we comfortable saying? And who are we comfortable sharing sensitive information with?” Because for my wife, she may have friends that she would desire to share things with and go, “You know what, I don’t feel the same. It’s not against that person, but I just don’t trust this sacred information from within our family to that person. What about this person, or what if we went outside a little bit further to an older godly couple that’s not as tied in as tightly to our community? We go to them to get counsel on this specific thing.”

Having that conversation and always seeking to be on the same page with one another, I think, is really important. So then, from there, I would say there are a few people and situations where receiving help should be obvious, but maybe in that situation it doesn’t feel obvious, or you don’t feel freedom here.

In situations of abuse

I want to say, if there’s abuse, whether that’s sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, where you’re being physically assaulted and sexual assault is happening. It’s not uncommon within marriage that sexual assault happens, and if that’s the situation, then absolutely, you need to get help from the outside.

And if in a moment of clarity in the light of day, if your spouse isn’t on the same page with you on that, they wanna hide and cover that sin in the sense of a fig leaf, then yeah, you may have to take some drastic steps where you say, “You know, I love you, but I gotta get help, this is not safe and this is not healthy,” and you need to get outside help to bring in a pastor, a counselor, or maybe even legal help in a situation like that.

Oftentimes, especially for women in an abuse situation, they feel so isolated and alone and that there will be even greater repercussions if they go outside the home with that, but it’s truly the only way to help.

Somebody to help him get through those hard issues that would cause him to do any of those things. So I think those are obvious ones where you have to get help. You need to go to somebody you trust, who can be your advocate to get you the type of help that you need for your marriage. And there’s so much I wanna say there. And men, if that’s you, if you are the abuser, you have to muster up at least enough courage to go ask another man to help you. If you know at home when no one else is looking, that you’ll put your hands on your wife, or your children, and you can’t control yourself then you better muster up enough courage to go outside your house and look at a man in the eyes and say, “I need help.”

That’s a big deal. Oftentimes, both people feel trapped there; the one being abused feels trapped, and then the one who’s the abuser continues to lie to themselves and tell themselves that, “I will never do that again. I’ll never do that again, I’ll never do that again.” You lie to yourself, and you put yourself back in the same situation.

You have to break the cycle, you have to get outside help.