If you're married or even seriously dating you might read books and blogs with marriage advice. You'll hear advice from pastors, family, friends, maybe even strangers. A lot of that advice will be good for some, or even most situations. The problem is when you are hearing and reading advice that isn't good for you. The person giving the advice will mean well. But they just can't see the full picture. Today I want to talk about some advice that can actually be harmful if implemented in a toxic marriage. I'm not listing these in a particular order. I'm just writing as I think of these.  Don't talk negatively about your spouse to other people. See the problem with this? If you are being abused in some way, keeping quiet about it is the last thing you should do. This just enables the abuse to go on. Tell people what is happening to you. Some may not believe you. Find someone that will.  Don't focus on the change your spouse needs to make. Focus on...

It can be hard to pinpoint what exactly abuse is when it's not in a physical form. There are a lot of checklists people can refer to online if they are wondering if they are in an abusive relationship. Those lists ask questions like: Does he yell at you? Does she criticize you in front of others? Does he control how you spend your time and who you are friends with? During my marriage, I went online a number of times and looked at those lists. I determined that I must not be in an abusive relationship because I couldn't check enough of the boxes. We really need a better way of helping people. If the people in the abusive situations don't think they "qualify" based on these lists, then the people they go to for help surely won't. What can we do? How can we help current and future abuse victims to know that they are enduring abuse and that they can and should get out? And how can we equip communities to see the signs and help sooner, rather than later? ...

I've been thinking I should probably write a post to clear up a few questions that some people may have about my blog and its purpose.  I'm going to try to do that today. My blog is to help me heal emotionally, and hopefully help someone else who is going through something similar. I want to tell people that need to hear it that change can come to their lives, and they can be strong enough to take steps that they need to take. Some of you may be wondering how I feel about marriage now that I've been wounded so much by someone who was supposed to love me. I still believe in marriage. I've seen too many good marriages to believe that good marriages don't exist. Of course they require a lot of work by both people involved for it to be that way. I do feel like it's not fair that I went into marriage willing to give it my best, and my husband went into it...I don't know. I like to think he probably had good intentions at first. But he certainly didn't...