What to Do When You’re the Only One Trying: Leslie Vernick on Emotionally Destructive Relationships
Episode Notes
Every marriage goes through difficult seasons.
But what happens when you're the only one willing to do the work?
When every conversation ends in blame, defensiveness, or silence? When you're trying to repair the relationship, but your partner refuses to take responsibility?
In this week's episode, Dr. Alison sits down with licensed clinical social worker and relationship expert Leslie Vernick to explore the difference between a marriage that's simply hard and one that's become emotionally destructive.
Together, they unpack the patterns that quietly erode trust, why healthy relationships require repair, and how to begin reclaiming your own stability—even if your spouse never changes.
You'll learn:
- The difference between a difficult marriage and an emotionally destructive one
- Why repair—not perfection—is the mark of a healthy relationship
- The warning signs of blame, gaslighting, and chronic deflection
- How to stop centering your life around changing another person
- Why becoming a God-centered person changes the way you navigate unhealthy relationships
- Practical first steps you can take when you're the only one pursuing growth
Whether you're navigating a difficult marriage yourself or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers wisdom, compassion, and hope.
Because healing doesn't always begin when someone else changes.
Sometimes it begins when you discover what it looks like to stand on your own two feet while remaining deeply rooted in God.
Take Leslie’s free quiz “Are you in an emotionally destructive marriage?”
Make sure to read Leslie’s book “The Emotionally Destructive Relationship: Seeing it, Stopping It, Surviving It”
More Resources:
You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.
Want to hear more like this? Start here:
Episode 203: Staying Close When Connection Feels Hard—The Relationship Skills No One Taught You (with Relationship Expert Dr. James Cordova)
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
No one gets all 52 cards in the deck. So do you know which cards are missing? Not everyone comes to
the marriage. Nobody comes to the marriage. Perfect. whole or halves everything together. So those
are the things that create disappointment. That pattern of deflection, blame, gaslighting, those
are your red flags. It keeps happening and there's no repair and it destroys trust.
If it goes on and on and on, it can destroy your own mental health and your own physical. Ask
yourself the question, have I been a husband centered or a marriage centered or a man centered
woman instead of a God centered woman? Have I put all my self-worth into him loving me well.
And when he fails, I'm devastated.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's deep dive episode of The Best of You. As you know,
if you've been following the podcast over the last few years, I've had some incredible guests on
the podcast, experts who are talking about marriage and relationships and communication and skills
and how to show up as a healthier version of yourself with the people that you love. And almost
every time I air one of these episodes, I get some interesting emails.
I love getting these emails, by the way. So I love hearing from you. And often I hear, you know,
this was so helpful. This thing cracked a code in my own marriage or this naming really got us
unstuck. And almost always, I also get an email that essentially goes something like this.
Allison, you know, this is all great. But what do I do when I'm the only one in my relationship
that's willing? to do the work? And I get it. I hear this question.
It lives with me. Even when I'm having the conversations with maybe the marriage expert on the
podcast, I'm thinking in the back of my mind, what about the folks who are in a marriage where the
other person just not only isn't doing the work, but is actually maybe even sabotaging or
undermining or creating a toxic environment? And this is real. This happens.
And so I've been wanting to have my guest today on for a long time because I want to talk about
what I think she names so beautifully. My guest today is Leslie Vernick.
She is such a trusted voice in this space. She's biblically grounded and she has so much compassion
for women in these kinds of marriages, marriages she describes as emotionally destructive.
I've known Leslie for a number of years and I've come to really trust her voice in this space.
She's a licensed clinical social worker. She's a relationship coach. She's a speaker, and she's the
author of several books, including her book called The Emotionally Destructive Marriage and The
Emotionally Destructive Relationship. And she has spent decades in the trenches with women who
aren't just navigating a difficult season in marriage, but something more serious than that,
which again, she has come to call an emotionally destructive relationship. And what I love about
Leslie is the nuance she brings to this conversation. Leslie has been married for 50 years herself.
She believes deeply in what marriage can be. And perhaps because of that belief in what marriage
can be, she refuses to let women confuse a marriage that is hard or a marriage that is
disappointing with a marriage that has crossed a line into something that is destructive.
And she doesn't offer easy answers for what to do when that happens. She does help us name it,
and she comes to us with really practical skills and a practical starting place for where to start
if you think this is the kind of marriage or relationship that you're involved with. In today's
conversation, she talks about the difference between a difficult marriage or a hard season and a
destructive marriage. And I found this so clarifying. I think you will, too.
We talk about the role of the church, how to find wise, helpful friends to come along.
side of you and what you can do, not as the extremes, right? Sometimes we think we have two
options. We can leave or we can just suffer. She talks about this middle ground of different steps
you can take if this is the kind of relationship you're in. One of the things I love that Leslie
describes in today's episode is this idea of, yes, we are all sinners, for sure, as we come to
marriage, but that there are healthy sinners and unhealthy sinners. And I just really liked how she
named that. We're all imperfect, yes, but there are different degrees of how we're managing our
imperfections or how we're dealing with our sin, especially in the context of our closest
relationships. I'm so excited to bring you this conversation today, and I think there's a lot of
wisdom in it. Whether you're someone who thinks you might have what Leslie is calling an
emotionally destructive marriage, or whether you're someone who's walking beside a friend or has a
family member or someone you love who's in a marriage that seems to be beyond something that's just
hard, right? It's something that is not only not flourishing, but maybe causing damage to someone
you love. There's real wisdom in this conversation. And it also just helps us understand just the
normal seasons of marriage, of close. relationship. So I'm so excited to bring you Leslie's wisdom.
If you are listening, I wanted to mention this right at the top. In addition to Leslie's resources,
she has a ton of them and she'll talk about them throughout the episode. But if you find yourself
wondering, is this me? Is what she's describing my marriage? Leslie has a free quiz on our website
that you can take. It's at leslievernick.com and it will help give you clarity. And so I'd
recommend that to you if it's something you're wondering about. She's also got a supportive digital
community to come alongside women who are struggling in marriages where maybe they don't want to
leave or aren't ready to leave, but they do need support in a way that's wise and helpful and
healing to the soul. So again, that quiz is over at leslievernick.com. We'll link to that in
today's show notes. All of Leslie's resources are super helpful. I'm thrilled to bring you my
conversation with Leslie Vernick.
I'm thrilled to have you here, Leslie. You are just such a trusted voice as I've gotten to know you
for so many women. And I think I mentioned this to you when I reached out, but we've had a couple
of marriage experts, relationship experts on the podcast over the last year, and they have great
wisdom and great, you know, just nuggets of insight.
I almost always after those episodes, both in the back of my mind, but then I get the emails
saying, but what if your partner isn't doing the work? And what do I do in those situations?
And I kept thinking to myself, I've got to have. Leslie on to speak to so many women who are
willing to do, would love to be doing the work of couples counseling or each person learning those
skills, but their partner isn't willing to or able to or wanting to do that work.
I mean, I guess they're able to, but they're not willing. So thank you just for your years of hard
-earned wisdom in the trenches, helping women in what you've coined this term, emotionally
destructive relationships. Yeah, thanks, Alison. When I first started thinking about this in my
practice, when I was doing marriage counseling and I saw either the woman being mandated to do all
of the work, the heavy load of the marriage, like forgive 70 times seven and keep trying to trust
and keep forbearing and keep... and keep sacrificing or the other person just wasn't willing to do
the work. You know, it's what's the answer for this? And how does she live in a relationship where
she doesn't feel safe and she can't trust the person she's living with? And that's pretty darn
hard, whether it's a husband or a roommate or an elderly parent or whoever it might be.
Your body doesn't live very well. And so this was the break point when I had a woman. She was
seeing me for counseling and she was. drinking vodka and taking Xanax every night so that she was
able to have her conjugal duties with her husband. And she was just a mess emotionally,
physically. But this was her Christian duty. And I thought, certainly, God, you have better answers
for women than this. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. What a moment to go. There's got to be something else.
So let's dive in. here. When you talk about an emotionally destructive relationship,
what do you mean? How do you define it? How is it different from what we might think of as a
difficult marriage, right? Just a marriage that's hard, which is a lot of marriages or a
disappointing marriage, or maybe even a marriage going through a hard season. What is an
emotionally destructive marriage and how is it different than those other categories? Yeah. So let
me just say that I've been married 50 years to the same person. So that gives me some credibility
that I've been through difficult. I've been through disappointing. There's not a few destructive
moments, all right? And we're still together. So it doesn't mean that you are going to have a
horrible marriage if you go through those seasons. Those seasons are directed by God in some ways
to help you mature and help you grow and help you do the work that you're avoiding, that you've not
done before marriage. Because who gets totally mature when you're 23 or whenever you get married?
So marriage and family life, having children taught me a whole lot about maturity and how I have.
to learn to control my temper and how I had to learn to speak the truth in love and all the things
that maybe I didn't have to be so careful with, with another grownup. You do have to be so careful
with, with a little one. And so all of these opportunities to self-reflect and look at yourself
are part of the deal in family relationship. God cares about this. All of the 10 commandments have
to do with relationship building or relationship repair, or not to do something that will hurt a
relationship. So we know that God cares about relationships. And so every relationship has seasons
of difficulty. I would define those as outside pressures. You know, one person's in the military.
Somebody's chronically ill. You have a child with special needs. You have financial difficulties.
You're out of work. Pressure, stress. Every family goes through that. And this is part of learning
to. problem solve, learning how to manage your body when you're under stress.
How do you not let it deform you? And how do you let it create some formation in you? And all of
the things that we've learned spiritually and we're working on. So that's difficult. Everyone goes
through seasons of that. Disappointing is everyone, I think, goes through seasons of that a little
bit too, because the person that we marry usually isn't the person we completely thought they were.
And hopefully it's not a big disappointment. When I used to do premarital counseling, I used to say
to people, No one gets all 52 cards in the deck. So do you know which cards are missing? Right?
Because your husband might not be real handy. And that might be really important to you.
Or you might not be really good with managing a budget. Do you understand that ahead of time when
you're accepting that? Or maybe they have a porn issue and you don't know that.
And so not everyone comes to the marriage. Nobody comes to the marriage. Perfect.
Full. or has everything together. And so the more that you know someone well and see clearly,
the more you can make choices of, hey, he's a great guy, but he's so disorganized.
I don't think I could live with that. And to know that, but we don't. We get married young and we
don't know those things. So those are the things that create disappointment. In my book, I write
about a woman who grew up in a very chaotic family. This guy was a steady Eddie.
He was very responsible. He went to work every day. He paid his bills. He was a good guy. He was a
Christian. And oh, so boring.
She loved him. She married him and she thought, this is my safety net. And after a couple of years,
his responsible work ethic, steady Eddie kind of guy was rather boring for this woman who grew up
in this. Totally chaotic environment. And she was tempted to have an affair. And so she came to
counseling. And so this would be a disappointing marriage. She's disappointed that it's not
everything. There is no marriage that's everything. And so I think part of our maturity is coming
to accept and love the person we're married to.
Destructive marriages. Unless we handle it in a destructive way.
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that's so good. That's so helpful to just talk about what a destructive marriage isn't.
And there are different paths to working through those disappointments than when we get into this
category of destructive. It's not that it's not hard. It's not that it doesn't require something
else. And that's where it strikes me, Leslie, as you're talking some of the, what I feel like the
The biblical passages that get over or misconstrued in certain settings actually...
apply. In some ways, often they're used too simplistically,
but where this idea of we do want to work it out. We don't want to just check it in because of a
disappointment in that regard. So then tell me then what is different about a destructive marriage?
What are some of the signs that we've moved? Because I could imagine some of that. There's some
overlapping circles, but how do we know it's moved into the category of, no, this is destructive?
So I think that there's two big signs. First of all, I want to say that all of us are capable of
doing a horrible, destructive thing in a marriage or to your children. I mean,
who hasn't screamed horrible things to your child when you are dysregulated and tired?
And then you come back and you... own it and you apologize and you hopefully don't do it again.
It's a wake up for you to say, oh my gosh, I don't want to ever do that. I don't want to ever see
my kids scared of me again. Right? So any one of us could do something horrible. A husband can
cheat on a wife. A wife can call her husband horrible. It happens. It happens. We're sinners.
So one incident doesn't create a destructive marriage. It can destroy a marriage for sure.
One is, but it doesn't, I wouldn't call that it's destructive. pattern of relationship.
And so what incident, now we're going to look at something. So when something destructive happens,
he lies to you. He cheats. He doesn't tell you something that was important for you to know, like
he didn't pay the taxes, right? Or that he has a porn addiction before you got married, right?
And so there's some deceit or there's some mistrust going on or some safety issues,
right? That may happen in a marriage. He lies to you. So what happens next is really important.
Because what happens in Christian counseling is it gets levelized.
Well, we're all sinners. Who are you to judge? Right? We're all sinners. And that's true. We're all
sinners. And so what I say is, okay, what does a healthy sinner do when they have caused harm to a
person they say they love? When they have broken trust in a relationship, what does a healthy
sinner do? Well, most healthy sinners admit it. They apologize. They do do the work.
So that they don't repeat that again because they see how much it's harmed someone they say they
love. Whether you're a parent, whether you're a spouse, whether you're a grandma, whatever you are
in this relationship, a healthy sinner owns it, accepts responsibility for the consequences,
does the work to repair the relationship and does the work internally so they don't repeat that
behavior again. Yes. An unhealthy sinner denies,
I didn't do it, what are you talking about? You're imagining things they blame. It's your fault I
did it. Right. It's your fault I watch porn because you won't hang upside down and let me have sex
with you five times a day. Right. It's your fault that I acted this way. Or, you know,
it's really you. You're too picky. You're too sensitive. So it's completely gaslit,
deflected, not blame shifted. So that pattern, when someone does something wrong,
which every marriage is going to have. incidents of wrongdoing. That pattern of deflection,
blame, gaslighting, ignoring, minimizing, those are your red flags.
It keeps happening and there's no repair. There's no taking responsibility. There's no change.
And so that becomes the destructive pattern in a marriage. And it destroys trust. It destroys
safety. And if it goes on and on and on, it can destroy your confidence.
your sense of who you are, your own mental health, and your own physical health. And so that's why
it's so important that we talk about it. So good. I love how you just take that language of we're
all sinners and turn it on its head. Yes, we are all sinners. And also there are healthy sinners,
healthier sinners, and unhealthy sinners. That's such a wonderful way to flip that because I think
so many women have heard that. So, Leslie, before we... want to just pause here for a second.
So because I see this a lot and I get questions about this a lot. What about this category?
I love how you're describing the destructive patterns, the way we deal with when we do something
horrible becomes that differentiating factor between being destructive and not.
What about marriages where someone, maybe they're not watching porn,
having an affair. Maybe they're not even lying. But they're just not interested in looking under
the hood. They're just not. And there is some willfulness in it.
I don't even know what to call it, right? They're just not willing. And I want to say anecdotally,
I have found in my own work with women myself, if you're an Enneagram person, if you're not, that's
okay. But saying, you know, we don't all marry Enneagram twos. You know, and so there are types of
men and women, but we're mostly talking about men here that aren't going to have that emotional
awareness, that aren't going to be wanting to look at their feelings. And that could come in that
category of disappointment. But man, they are handy or man, they are great, you know, whatever. And
that's a thing you have to accept and agree. But there is this category that I see sometimes where
it isn't so much a personality thing, but just I don't want to look at my childhood trauma. I'm
doing good enough. I'm loyal. I'm bringing on the paycheck. I'm going to work. I'm here for the
kids. But there's a shutdownness. Does that make sense to you? What do we do with that situation?
Where does that land? So it can land in one of two places, depending on how the person who's living
with the shutdownness of the person handles it. Right. Yeah. So I think that I think someone is
shut down for a reason. Either it could be. It's too scary. It's too painful.
I don't want to go there. I don't go deep. Those are some phrases I've heard. Or I'm kind of lazy.
And, you know, laziness, Scott Pack from The Road Less Traveled said, that's one of the hugest
issues for people. It's one of those absolutely sins. And some of us are just kind of lazy. We want
all the perks without having to do the work. And so we, that sloth is,
you know. This is one of the seven deadly sins. And so I think it's important that we as a partner
of someone like that kind of be discerning. And if it's laziness where I expect all the perks of a
great life without having to put in the work, then that's a different kind of response to I'm so
afraid to go there. Yeah. So I think that the wise has to have some discernment about which.
category that is. But you talked about how do we sometimes enable sin.
And I think sometimes part of our job with our spouse, as well as our children, is to invite them
into that work. Now we can't force someone into their work. We can't even force our kids to do
their own homework. I mean, once they get to be, you know, past seven or eight years old, I mean,
you can sit them down and you can tell them to do their work, but you can't make them read. You
can't make them put it in their head and have it come out their hand and do math problems.
And so I think that it's really important that you invite someone to do their work by saying some
things of the impact it's having on you. Like, I would love to have a better relationship with you
sexually, but you don't feel close to you when we can't ever talk about anything that's bothering
me, that I seem to just be a body that you want to use when you're horny and not a person to get to
know as a woman. And that bothers me. That's so good because that can become destructive.
And I love how you're saying that laziness, that just like deception, just like coveting, just like
cheating can become a destructive pattern because it's a willful unwillingness to,
to your point, engage in this, in this intimacy, in this relationship. That's so helpful.
And I think, I think how a woman approaches that is because, you know,
we've all had the story and I'm sure you have to Allison too. You're much younger than I am, but I
grew up in an area, I got married in an era where we didn't have phones and GPSs and all that. So
we had to actually stop and use a map or ask for directions. And so when we would get lost, I would
say to my husband, you know, there's the gas station, let's just go stop. And he would be like
insulted, like, no, we're not stopping. Don't you think I'm capable of figuring this out? And so
there's this way that we approach someone about their... They don't know something.
And for males, they get very insulted if you criticize them or you somehow imply that you don't
respect something about them. Like you don't know where this is. Let's ask some other guy. Right.
And so if a man is lazy, I think how we approach it is important because if you just call him lazy,
it's probably not going to work. But to say, I'm concerned that you're not willing to put the work
in to grow. And that's what God. YouTube, then you're functioning as his, as are his biblical
helpmate. Yeah. And then it's in your office. Yeah. I love that. So this is, this is good.
So this is what I want to get into now is how do we, um, you know,
so we hear them, the marriage advice, like I said, at the beginning, some women are like, I'm
willing, I'm willing to put the work in, but they're not willing for whatever reason, for whatever,
all the reasons we've, maybe they don't want to, maybe they've developed a porn addiction and they
don't want to face it. They don't want to talk about it. They want to, you know, gaslight, maybe
they, they just are lazy. They, for whatever reason, they don't want to, whatever the reason is,
you're, you're kind of getting there. You're, you're, you're giving some good principles, but what
are some principles for women that what I see is it's, it's, there's these,
these two extremes, you know, one is sort of those, those simplistic church. messages, just love
him into change, which can become enabling and doesn't work. But then the other extreme is,
and I get it, is just like, I've had enough. I'm gone. I'm out. Right. I can't. And what I find is
there's a lot of middle ground there. Talk to us a little bit about how a woman who's,
who's in a marriage that feels destructive on some level. It's not just a discipline.
This isn't working. What are some steps she can take between, I just have to keep trying to kind of
create a climate where he doesn't hurt me, you know, over responsibility, to I've got to give him
an ultimatum. I'm out. What are some things she can do, you've touched on it,
to honor herself, honor her own dignity, and invite him into change without trying to sort of
pretend like things are fine. Yeah. And I think that's the right word, pretend. Yeah.
So I think that Christian teaching has sort of given this pressure for women to pretend all is well
when it's not. Yeah. And so I think there's two things. One, the phrase that we use in our ministry
is that we say that you have to begin to shift. So the woman is going to change. All right. So
instead of being, oh, I'm going to do everything and just love him into change, which doesn't work.
And, or I'm done. I've had it. Before she gets to that place,
she may still get to that place. But before she gets to that place, there's things for her to learn
in the middle ground that she will miss out on if she doesn't take that time. And so the first
thing that she needs to learn is to ask herself the question, have I been a husband centered or a
marriage centered or a man centered woman instead of a God centered woman? Have I put all my self
-worth, all my potential, all my wellness, all my life into him loving me well?
And when he fails, I'm devastated. I'm empty.
I'm bereft. Well, I think that God says that although marriage is supposed to be a wonderful
relationship, it's not your primary one. Our primary relationship, where we get our identity and
our sense of who we are is not from a husband who may say, I don't really want to invest much time
or energy in loving you because you're not that important. Cohen is much more important to me. He's
not going to say that, but that's how he's saying it, right? And so she's devastated in her self
-esteem because she's allowed him to define her as not worth much when she's been a husband
-centered woman instead of a God-centered woman. So that's the first shift that she's invited to
make in the hardship of this kind of icky marriage. So just to pause there,
that's powerful what you're saying, because two things can be true. She didn't cause whatever it is
that he's doing. It's not saying, oh, it must be my fault. I love how you said there's actually
growth for her. And again, not because she's carrying the weight of his actions,
is responding to the invitation of, okay, here's the reality. This is a destructive marriage.
This is a marriage that is not thriving. Before I make any big decisions,
what is the invitation for me? Again, I imagine abuse and domestic violence aside, that's a
separate category. Physically safe, yeah. As long as she's physically safe. Is there an invitation
here for me? Have I subtly... put so much energy into him and trying to get this marriage to where
I want it to be that I've lost sight of my true focus. And can I really, I think of that word
differentiation. Can I really find some kind of a re-centering in Christ?
And my marriage doesn't necessarily get better, but I actually find some, that's a really powerful,
profound step. Do you see women able to make that distinction?
Well, this is what I see, Allison. I see one of two things. If they don't make that distinction,
they will either live in bitterness and resentment.
Yep. Or they will end this marriage and look for another man. And we have women in our organization
who have been married three, four times to destructive men because they haven't done their own work
first. Right. And so we invite you a woman who's in a difficult time.
Yes. You're, you're probably perfectly diagnosing him. Maybe, maybe not. Mostly you are,
you're correct. He is a narcissist. You're correct. He is me. You are correct. He is lying to you.
And how is that impacting you? Yes. That's the question you need to do because you can't fix him.
Yeah. Right. But you can learn to set boundaries. You can learn to become a God-centered woman
instead of a husband-centered woman so that his words aren't as potent as they might be if you're
so focused on his words. Oh, that's good. And that is powerful. And that will change something.
He may not like it. I would, you know, initially at first, because I do think what I see in long
term marriages that kind of function are dysfunctional is it does shape you. It does shape one of
the partners. You do build yourself around that. And you are essentially saying it is very similar
to what we do in family systems. You're like, I'm going to break this cycle. Can't change them, but
I'm going to break this cycle by changing myself.
And the other thing I would say, Allison, is your kids, the little kiddos who's watching what's
happening in the marriage.
They need one help.
And so when you are unhealthy in your own way by saying, like Leah, please love me.
If only I have one more baby, he'll love me. Please, he'll love me. You know, the story of Leah and
Jacob. You know, she's thinking, if only I have one more baby, then he'll love me, then he'll love
me. And then finally she realized, wait a minute, he's probably never going to love me like I want
him to love me. And God loves me. I am a loved woman. I don't have to live with this empty.
anymore and it's not about him it's about me trusting God and that's a huge shift that a woman can
make because your children see what's happening even if you don't explain it with words they feel
the energy in the marriage they feel the lack of love in the family and so as you're handling your
side of the street not as a pretend faker but as a godly strong woman who is truthful hey daddy and
I don't have a great marriage you're right you observe correctly kids and You know what? It's not
going to destroy me.
It's so good. As someone, I married later. I didn't meet my husband until my late 30s.
I was single for a long time. I will say that was hard. There was a lot of pain in that. I will say
that is one of the things that I took from that time that has helped me so much is you have to,
you have no choice but to figure out how to be a whole person by yourself. And it's hard and it's
lonely. And it's not, I prayed for, I didn't, it's not what I wanted. And in marriage now,
16 years in, I'm like, actually, that's one of the things I'm most grateful for that skill.
So I know it's possible. I think it's hard within marriage, especially when you marry young and
you've kind of built your identity around this person. But it will help you in every,
in every way. So what? I know, Leslie, you have so many resources, and this is part of why I wanted
to bring you to my audience, not only for your wisdom, but to introduce them to your resources.
This is hard to do alone. And there are, I don't want to, I think the church can be an incredibly
helpful support network, and it can also be hard for women in these situations. So talk to us
about, I think knowledge is power. What might, for the woman listening is going,
this is me. What should she know about church messages that won't be helpful to her?
So she can kind of steer away from them or just not absorb them, just kind of go, that's not for
me. And what support does she need? Because I would imagine this is not something you want to do
alone as you take this step. I think it's much harder to do it alone. And again,
we crave community. We crave companionship. God is just wired as that. And so it's really important
that the Bible does tell us to pick our friends wisely because they will influence us. And so you
do want to have wise companions when you're going through tough times, because otherwise they may
drag you down into your anger, your resentment. We all have those things. And so depending on the
company you keep, one will help you to deal with it in one way and one will help you deal with it
another way. And so you get to pick who you hang out with. But I think in churches, at least my
experience in A lot of it's changing in some churches. So I'm very grateful for that. But I think
that this sanctity of marriage, we need to keep the marriage together. So don't talk about it.
Don't be honest. Don't be real. Don't don't bring your garbage here because we don't know how to
deal with it. They don't say it that way, but they kind of give you these platitudes like, well,
you know, you're not you're just a sinner like him and love covers a multitude of sins and love,
you know, believes all things and love always trust all the things that we get taught. You must die
to yourself. So thinking about yourself and your own feelings and your own lives is selfish and
setting boundaries is selfish. So there's a lot of spiritual bypassing and twisting of scripture.
God hates divorce. It never says that in Malachi, but we do get told that. It says God hates when a
man treats his wife treacherous. That's what God hates. He hates the way a man treats his wife, not
the institution of divorce. So I think. God loves the sanctity of marriage,
but not more than the safety and the sanity of the individuals in the marriage. So if a woman is
listening right now, God sees. God saw Abigail in her marriage with Nabal. And Abigail was a
strong, resourceful, beautiful woman in an empty marriage. And sometimes you may choose to do that
for the sake of... Your children or for the sake of finances that you are 65 years old and you've
tried to support him and his business and you haven't worked and you don't have a retirement
account. And so it's not financially wise for you to end this relationship. So how do you live in
this relationship as safely as you can with a person that you're not going to feel close to,
but you don't feel afraid of? That's good. That's really good. That's really good that.
And. Touching on the friend, the wise friend versus,
tell me a little bit about that. Both as a friend, I've noticed it's easy to, again,
friends can, they can join us in building resentment. They can offer quick fixes.
What does a wise friend look like? What are we looking for? Yeah.
So a wise friend, one, is going to sit with us in our sorrow, you know?
Job's friends, when he was so broken over everything that happened to him, when they were in their
better self, they were sitting with him and they didn't give him advice. They didn't say anything.
And so a wise friend will let you be in your place,
your sadness, your hurt, wherever you are, even in your resentment, without trying to drag you out
of it or without trying to tell you why you're wrong for being in it. Right.
They'll just sit with you for a bit. That's good. And then friends will give you feedback,
honest. They're honest to you. So they might say, you know, it sounds like,
this is a funny story, Allison, but a woman who was at a conference with me, a business conference,
she wasn't even a Christian. She heard what I did and she said, oh, I was married to a narcissist.
It was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I'm like, what? Tell me more. She said, it
taught me how to stand up for myself. It taught how to have boundaries.
And so that's what I would say to the woman, that you have things to learn in this fire. And it
might be, I need to learn to find a good attorney, or it might be, I need to learn first before I
take that step to just set some boundaries. Or maybe I need to learn to work.
And I need some friends who will support that journey. What kind of friends will not tell me,
oh. You're putting your kids in a public school. Shame on you because I thought you were supposed
to homeschool when you need to go to school so that you can relicense yourself as a nurse so that
if your marriage doesn't work, you can support yourself.
Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love the friend of Job analogy,
kind of with you in it, because it strikes me there is a grief in this,
whether there's a loss and whether it is the loss of a marriage, whether you stay.
And realize this is not what I had wanted or even what I think God wants for marriage.
There's a loss in that. There's a loss if you leave. The loss if you leave is at least more open.
And that's also its own grief and has a different sort of pain. But almost there's a, I feel like
almost for the woman who's like, you're saying for whatever reason, I'm going to stay. I'm going to
do my own work. I'm going to differentiate. I'm going to find my wholeness in Christ even as I stay
because, like you said, it's not what I want and it's not even what God wants,
but I'm not going to leave because I'm not unsafe for whatever reason. That loss strikes me as that
grief is really hard because it's hidden in a way.
And I would imagine that's where you need a couple of friends who really know what's going on,
where you're not the only one carrying that. And that's actually, you know,
15 years ago when I was starting this book, my book came out and I was, you know, getting a lot of
phone calls and I'm thinking, I can't carry this whole load by myself. And so we started a support
group called Conquer with the other women could meet each other and they could, you know, even if
it was online. And so we have grown and we've got women all over the world who are identifying as
being in a destructive marriage. And they are, you know, they're happy to be able to. contact
someone who knows what their life is like, who's not going to judge them, who's going to support
them, who's going to, maybe they're a little further along in their journey. And so they may have a
little bit more wisdom on, you know, hey, I wouldn't say it that way. I said it that way.
And that's what happened. Maybe you could say it this way or those kinds of things. And so you can
be really honest and have that support and have those wise friends, because God says, when we hang
out with wise people, we will grow wiser. And we hang out with foolish people. we will become more
foolish. And I find that sometimes Christian women who have been so burned by Christian pastors,
churches that have not seen or heard them, start listening to their secular friends and they may,
you know, start going to the bars and start flirting with other men at the bars. And that feels
really good, but it's not getting them healthier. Yeah. Yeah, it's an avoidant,
it's an escape tactic. And like you said, it will catch up at some other point. And I love what
you're saying. You're not saying, You know, you've been very clear, like there may be a time where
you leave. There may be a time where you decide to leave and then after a process start dating
again. But that's very different. That's a mindful, intentional process of letting the spirit do
its work. And you will be so much better off later for having done that work.
Yeah, I would say that to any person who's ended a marriage that if you.
don't know how to stand on your own two feet. So part of adulting, and I say this more to women,
but men too, part of adulting is learning to stand on your own two feet. And you had to do that
because you didn't get married right away. But some people, yeah, I got married right out of
college. I never had to stand on my own two feet, but my husband got very ill early in our
marriage. And I, with a, with a, he had cancer. And so I thought, oh my gosh, I'm going to be a
widow. And so I made sure I knew how to stand on my own two feet early in marriage, not only
financially. but emotionally and spiritually and physically so that if I became a widow,
I could take care of my kiddos and whatever. So I think it's really important that women stop,
you know, even with this whole trad wife movement and all this, you know, oh, he's going to take
care of me. Well, that's great if he takes care of you for a season, but you should also be capable
of taking care of him if he needs a break or it's disabled. And if he cheats on you or leaves you
or abuses you, You don't want to be stuck because you can't take care of yourself. Yeah. Yeah. You
don't. Yeah. You want to be that you want to be staying in the marriage out of not because you're
trapped, but because you're choosing that out of agency. I love that.
You want to be a God centered woman above and all. Marriage doesn't doesn't go above.
And you're right. There is some because of the and again, you and I both are, you know, you've been
married 50 years. Like I. You know, we're pro-marriage, you know, there's a lot,
but marriage doesn't come above our relationship to God at the end of the day.
I've always wondered, you know, I'm kind of asking you this out of left field, but when Jesus says
there is no marriage in heaven, you know, I don't really know what that means. But to me, there's
something in that of what we're saying. At the end of the day, it does go away at some point on
some level. Yeah. And I think, you know, he talks a lot about the most fundamental relationships
going wrong, like in the Psalms, where he says, if your mother or father forsake you, the Lord will
lift you up. So he's saying, you know, and he says, I'll be your husband.
God even says, I'll be your husband. And so I think that we have made our human relationships,
which he wants us to have, and he wants us to have good ones, but we have made them into what they
were never meant. An idol, sort of. Yeah. Where they come above.
And it's subtle. You know, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking that could happen. Again, you're
married really young. It's not conscious. It's not like you thought, I'm going to make my husband
my world. It's just over time, your soul kind of gets shaped.
And that's the invitation. It's so powerful. Leslie, as we close, what would you say?
What would you speak directly to the woman listening? is in this position of recognizing there's
something destructive here. What would you say to her? So I would ask her to ask herself.
And so what women do that we work with in this situation is they're trying to change the hell in
order to fix whatever's going on. So the impact that you have on me. So now I feel insecure. Now I
feel like. you know, garbage because you called me a name or now, you know, whatever. So we try to
get him to stop doing those things or start doing those things so that we don't feel insecure. We
don't feel afraid. Let's switch that around. The serenity prayer is really good. Lord, help me to,
you know, accept the things I cannot change, change the things I can change and the wisdom to know
the difference. And so. Part of our work with women who come to us saying, what do I need to do?
What are the magic words, Leslie, that will wake him up? What do I need to say? What boundaries do
I need to have to shake him? The question I want you to ask is, what do I need to feel safe?
What do I need to trust this person with my children, with my finances,
with my life, with my health? What do I need, right? And so ask yourself,
then he may not be giving you that, right? For sure. So now I'm not getting that from him.
What do I need to do to get my needs met? Right? Because I might need,
so I might need to create some boundaries. I might need to sleep in a separate bedroom if I'm not
safe. I might need to go to a lawyer. I might need to understand the law and what rights I have.
I might need to get some coaching or counseling so that I get stronger inside. Instead of focusing
on how do I... How do I be the person to change him? That's not your job.
Your job is to love him, honor him, not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
How do I do that? How do I speak the truth and love to him? It's all your work to do, right?
But if you need safety, then the person who needs to take care of that for you is you,
the prudent see danger and take refuge. Yeah, yeah. That's good.
What do I need to be this, this person? I, I, I think that's so helpful.
Tell my listeners where on that night, if they need more support, if they need, if they're
listening to this, where they can find you and your resources and what's the best place to plug in
with what you're doing. Cause you're helping so many women, Leslie. Yeah. Thanks Alison. Let me
just say one more thing about that if I can, because I think that so many women start to feel, feel
so selfish. Bible tells us not. So let me just say one more thing. There's a couple phrases that
I'm just going to say. Guard your heart above. Of all else, it is the offspring of life. Proverbs
says, set for you if you don't. Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
Who does that for you if you don't? And so you are called to steward your one precious life and not
to squander it living afraid because he's given us a spirit of fear.
All right. And so those are the things that I really encourage you. And this is hard work to do all
by yourself. And it's hard to find someone who gets it. So we have an organization and we have lots
of resources. And so you can start by just taking a quiz. Am I really in a destructive marriage?
It's on my website at leslievernick.com and go through the quiz and evaluate yourself. Watch the
videos. What does God have to say? And then if that resonates for you, then you might want to. Join
some small groups that we have, or you might want to join our Conquer. We have some coaching groups
around these issues that will really help you do your own work so that this isn't as devastatingly
awful as it could be if you don't do your own work and then you just go repeat the pattern in the
next relationship. So good. So good. I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for your ministry.
And thank you so much for just taking the time to be with us today. Thank you, Allison, for having
me. It's been great. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would
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