Acceptance vs. Endorsement: A Critical Difference in Catholic Marriages

Intro
 It is good to have you with us,

 Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist

 Weekly Podcast Interior Integration for Catholics 

Part of our Online outreach Souls and Hearts and soulsandhearts.com

 Which is all about your human formation, all about shoring up your natural foundation for a solid Catholic spiritual life.  

Episode 66 Acceptance vs. Endorsement: A Critical Difference in Catholic Marriages.  

 we are in the middle of a series on Sexuality in Catholic Marriages, but there is so much in here that is relevant about all kinds of close relationships.  

Where have we been?  Review the bed -- remember this canopied marriage bed represents the sexual life of a married Catholic couple.  
The floor -- The Presence of God and His Providence -- everything begins here.  This is the most fundamental piece of the whole metaphor.  We need to be in contact with "I AM" with God who is the source of all reality.  We can't forget that
The four legs
 Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration and his own human formation

 Leg 2.  the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation

 Leg 3.  Understanding Attachment needs and integrity needs.  

Leg 4.  Internal Family Systems  -- Episode 60 --  How well do you really know your spouse?
 
In that episode, I made five bold assertions:
 You don't really know your spouse.  

Your spouse doesn't really know you.  

Your Father doesn't or didn't really know your mother

 Your mother doesn't or didn't really know your father

 And you don't really know you.  

Gave evidence for those bold claims are likely, not going to repeat all that evidence here, you can go to Episode 60 and listen to them again.  
For those of you listeners who are married:
 Can seem like spouse have such widely varying modes of operating

 like they can be even different people when they are in these different modes of being. 

Remember what your spouse or someone close to you is like when they are different states -- like when they are really angry, or really sad, or really anxious or really happy.  How different they think, how their worldview changes in these different states.  

what we call parts:  Parts are constellations of emotions, body sensations, thoughts, feelings, impulses, assumptions about the world and so many other things.  

Internal Family Systems thinking help us to make sense of our own internal experience and others' internal experience, breaking us out of the model that we have just one monolithic, homogenous personality.  

That's what episodes 60 and 61 are all about

 
Surprising how not integrated the husband's internal object representations of his wife are -- surprising how unintegrated a wife's internal object representation of her husband can be.  How confused.  
Definition time with Dr. Pete,  Definition of internal object -- Roots in Freud, really developed my Melanie Klein: Internal object refers to the mental representation that results from how we have taken others inside of us and viewed them.  Not necessarily similar to who the person actually is, it's how we construe the person to be, which depends heavily on our subjective experiences, including how we experience ourselves. 
Two dimensional -- sometimes even one dimensional
 You are the person who is supposed to make me feel better about myself, help me avoid shame

 
Fragmented 
How much husbands and wives don't see in and about each other.  

 

Three of these four legs are really helpful in accepting what the actual realities are inside your spouse.  
The fourth one is great to have, but it's not as essential.  It's the one that we sometimes require first, though
 Just tell me what's going on -- assumption that she knows what's going on.  90% unconscious.  

Sometimes she just cant.  

The frame and the box spring -- the firm, unwavering commitment of the husband his marriage vows and the wife to her marriage vows -- separately.  Independently
The mattress  Empathetic attunement -- covered that in episode 65, last episode 
 Two pillows:  Self-acceptance and Spouse-acceptance -- this is what we are focusing on today.  
Pillows support us, comfort us.  
Great security with pillows
 Pam travels with her pillow -- learned this from her friend Cabrina -- comfort in having your own pillow

 Comfort in being accepted by someone who knows you.  

Bottom Sheet:  sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion
Top Sheet:  Communication between the spouses
The blankets:  human warmth, emotional connection
Four Bedposts -- imagine two spiral intertwined, like the double-helix structure of DNA
 Mindset

 Heartset

 Bodyset

 Soulset

 
The canopy and the curtains -- to protect privacy and propriety or to hide dysfunction, exploitation, even abuse.  
The sham, the bedspread, and the bedskirt -- Used to cover up the real bed, give an impression of the state of married life to the world.  
Lay of the land:  
Loving -- three elements:  Benevolence, Capacity, Commitment/Consistency
Not only do we not understand our spouses very well
We also don't accept the realities about our spouses that we do understand 
or the realities that we could understand if we allowed ourselves to see. But so often we parts that don't want us to see who our spouses really are.   Some of that is due to confusion between acceptance and endorsement.  

Acceptance vs. endorsement -- Definitions
 Acceptance -- acknowledging the reality of who I am in my entirety, all my parts with their burdens, all the roughness, the wounds, the disorder, the imperfections, all the baggage, all the "stuff."  It means admitting, conceding all the things that are really true about myself.  

 acknowledging the reality who my spouse Pam is, in her entirety, in her complete being, with her parts, with her perspectives, with her virtues her vices.  Right at this moment

 Endorsement on the other hand.  means essentially approving or embracing as good some feature within myself or my spouse.  So husband can accept the idea that his wife is abusing painkillers without endorsing her misuse of pain medication.  

Why we struggle with accepting something about our spouse, even when we know we don't have to endorse it
 
Strong motivation to not see our spouses as they really are
 To not see the injuries, the deficiencies, the disorder, the areas of stunted development -- how wounded they really are.  

If we saw all those things, how would I get me needs met from my spouse?
 Needs for mommy, daddy

 Needs for God?  Broken idols

 Not gonna happen

 

Can be very difficult our parts to give up their illusions about the meaning and function of our spouse in our lives
 Parts want to be redeemed

 Parts want to be loved

 Parts want to have hope that things will be better in the future, that there is light at the end of the tunnel

 We want to outsource the messy business of learning to accept and love ourselves.  But no one can do that for us, no one can take our place in loving ourselves in an ordered way.  

So there is this tendency toward idealization of our spouses
 But when parts are disappointed, devaluation.  Pendulum swings the other way.  

So much this is outside our awareness
 We could say it's unconscious

 
Parts are impelling us to try to get our needs met, parts are acting with good intentions, in ways we don't realize
 Often very maladaptive

 
When they do that, they tend to bring about the exact opposite of what they hope for
 e.g. make spouse God -- the intention is to find safety and security

 But that breaks down.  

God loves us, and he is jealous for us, takes our idols away

 

Often no outside perspective

 

Sometimes we are motivated by our own parts to stick our heads in the sand and not see.  Like an ostrich. 
OK, so I looked up the ostrich thing.  I suspected maybe that ostriches were getting a bad rap.  In reality, Ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand when they feel threatened.  That's a myth.  The make their nests in holes they dig in the earth and the ostrich hen puts her head in the hole and turns the eggs. So it can look like the birds are burying their heads in the sand.  -- little zoological fact for today
Where were we?  Yes, so often we have parts that don't want us to see who our spouses really are. 
The ostrich metaphor didn't work out, so let's talk about monkey, instead.  Three monkeys 
Three monkeys named Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru who are about 400 years old.  We're talking about some old monkeys here.  
Mizaru -- hands over his eyes
Kikazaru -- hands over his ears
Iwazaru -- hands over his mouth.  

See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no Evil:  
From wikipedia:  The source that popularized this pictorial maxim is a 17th-century carving over a door of the famous Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō, Japan. The carvings at Tōshō-gū Shrine were carved by Hidari Jingoro, and believed to have incorporated Confucius’s Code of Conduct, using the monkey as a way to depict man’s life cycle. There are a total of eight panels, and the iconic three wise monkeys picture comes from panel 2. The philosophy, however, probably originally came to Japan with a Tendai-Buddhist legend, from China in the 8th century (Nara Period). It has been suggested that the figures represent the three dogmas of the so-called middle school of the sect. 

We can be like those monkeys, but not motivated by social harmony like in Confucianism.  
Motivated by defensive self-protection.  
If I don't see it, if I don't hear it, I don't have to deal with it.  I don't have to acknowledge it, I don't have to address it.  
Denial
Avoidance
Withdrawal

James 4:11-12  11 Do not speak evil against one another, brethren. He that speaks evil against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you that you judge your neighbor?
If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.  

Acceptance without judging the soul of another
 
Not judging self -- soul
 St. Paul --  I don't judge myself.  1 Cor. 4:3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself.

 
Not judging others' souls -- our spouse's souls
 We don't really know them

 
Cautions to new therapists
 Often tempted to align with the client's parts against a spouse.  

We can and often should judge behavior.  Catholic Theologian Edward Sri - Who Am I to Judge?: Responding to Relativism with Logic and Love -- excellent book.

 
We can and often need to judge actions
 Some are obviously wrong and easily identifiable as bad.  
Affairs
Drinking and drug use
Sexual abuse of children
Violence
Financial irresponsibility -- gambling, compulsive shopping

Some are not so obvious
 Gaslighting

 Psychological Manipulation

 My experience with cults

 Subtle abandonment, undermining

 Subtle shaming

 

Need for limits and boundaries
 Near occasion of sin

 

Complicated when we've been punished for having emotions or desires -- no distance. 

Lots of misunderstanding -- bad spiritual advice
 
e.g. Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer -- p. 130 "The Gift of Faith"  -- imprimatur
 "Anxiety and sadness are always bad and always flow from self-love."  Nonsense

 1769 In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the Lord's agony and passion. Jesus was anxious -- he was like us in all things but sin.  St. Paul.  Garden of Gethsemane 
Mark 14:32-34  And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.”[d] 35 
Luke 22:  And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony, he prayed the longer. 44 And his sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground.

 

WebMD Hematidrosis, or hematohidrosis, is a very rare medical condition that causes you to ooze or sweat blood from your skin when you're not cut or injured.
Doctors don't know exactly what triggers hematidrosis, in part because it's so rare. They think it could be related to your body's "fight or flight" response.
Tiny blood vessels in the skin break open. The blood inside them may get squeezed out through sweat glands, or there might be unusual little pockets within the structure of your skin. These could collect the blood and let it leak into follicles (where the hair grows) or on to the skin's surface.
Research suggests that tiny blood vessels that cause bloody sweat are more likely to rupture under intense stress. The stress can be physical, psychological, or both.
Jesus was sad
 Lazarus  -- John 11:33-36  Jesus wept over Lazarus  33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved[e] in his spirit and greatly troubled. 34 And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 

Wept over Jerusalem -- Luke 19:41

 
Mary, conceived without original sin was anxious -- searching for the 12 year old Jesus.
Reflects a failure to understand the human person and a failure to understand human formation.  
CCC on emotions. 
1763 The term "passions" belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil. 
1764 The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man's heart the source from which the passions spring.40

Anxiety and Sadness are emotions.  Emotions don't carry a moral weight in and of themselves. 1767 In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. 

We may have parts of us that hate other parts of us
Catholics often have parts that hate their spouses.  I mean hate.  Can be really threatening to think that my spouse hates me.  Easier and more accurate to accept that a part of my spouse hates me.  

What carries the moral weight is what we do with our emotions
 Hatred as an emotion

 Hatred as a position.

 
Bad idea not to accept that they exist -- if we see them as "bad." parts of us are tempted to suppress them
 Revenge of the repressed.  

Same thing with desires, impulses, attitudes, intentions, thoughts
 Case of scrupulosity

 
How it leads to self-absorption, difficult loving each other
 
Battle royale inside among parts

 Sympathy

 

Limits
Catechism on Marriage  1643:  "Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter - appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; CCC 1770 Moral perfection consists in man's being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm: "My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God."46

But we are wounded.  
You are gravely wounded
Your spouse is gravely wounded.  
Two gravely wounded people together
 Apollo 13 scene -- describe it.  Kevin Bacon and  Tom Hanks release the service module form the command module.  damage to the service module as it was jettisoned from the Command module.  

In the desert.  -- Bring in some Fr. Dajczer here.  

Signs of non-acceptance of another person.  
Too much focus on the spouse -- the spouses actions, the spouses thoughts, emotions, almost exclusively external perspective so that there is not a balance between a focus on the other and a focus on me.  
Too much of a focus on systems -- the back and forth.  
Systemic problems -- problems between spouse rather than within spouses -- e.g. communication
 He just doesn't know how to put his love into words

 Communication issues

 We just don't match up very well, we're not in synch.  

Time
 
Dwelling in the past
 She never used to be this way

 Living in the golden years, pining for the 

Flying to the future
 If I change this thing about myself, or if we do marital therapy, my husband will be so much better in the future

 
It will be better when
 We move to a real house from this little apartment

 When we have our first child

 When he gets a promotion and there's not so much financial stress

 When the last kid gets into school and we're not always changing diapers

 When the last one graduates and we are through the tumultuous teenagers at home phase

 When we retire.  

How much am I in the present when thinking about my spouse

 
Harboring bitterness, nurturing it, feeding grievances.  
Resignation vs. acceptance
 Resignation -- downheartedness and lack of hope for change.  

Certainty in the descriptions of the other spouse
Broad generalizations of the other spouse -- untempered, not nuanced, not appreciating the different dimensions and parts of the spouse.  
Lack of openness to new or deeper perspectives -- clinging to current assumptions
 Spouse is fearfully and wonderfully made.  

Two-dimensional representations
 He's withdrawn and silent, he doesn't talk, we're just like roomates, he has no emotions.  

One-dimensional representations
 He's a narcissist.  

Pendulum swings upon discovery.  

Loss of a sense of Providence.
 
This is the floor -- the rock solid foundation is your childlike trust in God's Providence
 And like other little children, you be imperfect, not do thing well, and make mistakes and still be cherished and loved by God.  

Some with an intellectual understanding of Providence
 But it's just head knowledge

 

We have parts that feels safer if they are driving our bus, if they are in control.  

Acceptance in the sex life.  
Is among the trickiest if not the most tricky area in the marriage.  
We will discuss this more next week.  

Recommendations
 Let's go a lot deeper.  Have the courage.  Have the trust that your needs will be met, not necessarily by your spouse, but by others, including God and Mary.  

Letting go of assumptions -- some of them very handy, seem helpful, seem like they explain things -- but they may not be true.  Filtered thr ough our lenses, through our parts' perspectives.  

Prayer:  
My Lord, My Lady, I accept whatever is in my spouse as reality.  
Lord, what would you have me to see, understand, and accept in my spouse.  
Why, Lord, are you showing me this new thing about my spouse now, at this point in my life?

Time each day to consider your spouse -- think of her, think of him
 Write about her, about him -- putting experiences into words.   

Break up patterns - mix it up, try new things  -- new behaviors

 Being a sounding board -- putting experience into words with another person.  A fresh set of eyes.  

Pilgrimage
 
Human formation
 We all need help

 We all need structure

 We all need support.  

Relaunch discussion.  
Get on the waiting list -- soulsandhearts.com/rcc  more than 100 on the waiting list so far.  
Mark your calendars  Tuesday, May 25 from 7:30 to 8:45 PM meeting about the RCC reopening, Q&A.  -- that meeting will be on our landing page -- register for it.  Also the link will go out in our next email to our waitlist which will be sent on Tuesday, May 4

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 Second Wednesday Zoom Meeting Wednesday May 12 7:30 PM to 8:45 PM -Time - that one is all about the changes in the community. 

Conversation hours Tuesday and Thursday May 4 and 6 -- 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time