Gottman WaPo Article on Marriage Myths - Divorce Minister
Last Friday, The Washington Post ran an article addressing five myths regarding marriage.
The article is entitled, “Five Myths About Marriage” and is written by John Gottman and Christopher Dollard.
For those who are unaware, the Gottmans are relationship research experts due to their very thorough longitudinal scientific study of relationships. They are giants in the literature as it comes to developing and maintaining healthy relationships.
You can ask pretty much any academically trained psychologist or therapist, and they will recognize the name.
Back to the WaPo article, I am not going to dig into each of the myths mentioned.
Rather, I want to focus on the so called myth number four. Quoting from the article:
“MYTH NO. 4
Affairs are the main cause of divorce.
…
In their clinical work, John and Julie Gottman learned that partners who have affairs are usually driven to them not because of a forbidden attraction but because of loneliness. There were already serious, if subtle, problems in the marriage before the affair occurred.”
This sort of drivel drives me nuts!
If spousal loneliness is such a major cause of affairs, why do otherwise lonely faithful spouses not cheat? Logically, they should be “driven” to cheat as well.
The reason lonely faithful spouses do not cheat is they understand cheating is NEVER an acceptable option even if one is lonely!
I am bother by this article because it really furthers victim-blaming in our culture and churches as pastors listen to Gottman as an authority. Sadly, those same pastors and Christian counselors fail to apply basic critical thinking skills to such conclusions from Gottman.
They prefer the narrative–for whatever reason–that cheaters are driven to the sins of affairs than the biblical narrative that cheaters are active agents choosing sin. Cheaters are not the victims of marriage “loneliness” driving them to sin.
The other part that bothers me by this sort of answer in the article is how it underestimates the damage of affairs. The marriage might have been sick before the affair; however, that does not mean the underlying sickness killed it.
We still consider a gun man who shoots a cancer patient dead responsible for murder even though his victim had terminal cancer.
Sure, many marriages might be lonely prior to the affair. At best, that is correlated to infidelity and divorce. Calling it a cause or identifying it as what “drives” people to cheat is adding causation to correlation. Loneliness does not cause adultery.
God is clear on what causes adultery:
Sinners choosing sin.
The Ten Commandments do not include an injunction against allowing loneliness in one’s marriage. However, they do include an injunction against committing adultery (see Exodus 20:14).
It makes no sense for God to include such a command against committing adultery if cheaters are such slaves to marriage circumstances as the worldly wisdom of Gottman suggests.
My recommendation is to recognize such worldly wisdom and reject it in light of God’s wisdom: Affairs and divorce are not caused by circumstances but by actors making choices.
