Building Walls

This is a very insightful read that I found in a book called "The Walk Out Women" by Dr. Steven Stephens & Alice Gray. The book is written mainly for the Walk Away Wife, but it has a lot of very insightful information for men. I have changed the wording a bit to make it more applicable for both sexes.

Marriage walls start small--a single brick and then another, a thoughtless remark, a testy reply, a sigh of frustration, a decision that working through a particular problem is just isn't worth it. At first the wall seems so insignificant that you hardly notice it, or if you do you can easily step over it. However ignoring it is the worst thing you can do, because unless the early layers are knocked down, the all gets higher with each unresolved frustration or challenge. Before you realize it, it is so high you can't crawl over it, and soon you loose touch and sight of each other. One day when you try to reach out, you'll find out the barrier can not be penetrated. You're on separate sides leading more or less separate lives, with little in common and little to talk about.

When marriages reach this point, counselors call them "parallel marriages" or " "emotional divorces." Others see the husband and wife as "married, but single." Whatever name they go by, it seems so tragic when a husband and wife who once loved spending many hours together now avoid each other as much as possible, separated by a wall that one or both have built.

Why Build a Wall?

Very simple, a wall is for protection. We build walls and fences around our homes to keep our children safe inside and to keep dangerous intruders out. The same principle applies when we build walls in our marriages: We are walling something in and/or something out. When you have been deeply wounded, it is difficult to continually expose yourself to hurt and disappointment, so the walls you build may be forms of self-protection. By locking your love and desire inside, you feel less vulnerable. Even if you long for emotional intimacy, you might be plagued by fearful thoughts: If I let my guard down, they will disappoint me. I can't risk being hurt and going through the pain again.

The risk of being hurt is part of any relationship. Caution and concern are natural and may be necessary at times. But the walls you build to protect yourself can also trap you inside--stunting your growth, blocking your vision, and fueling your fear. Soon this fear becomes so strong that you start believing you cannot survive one more hurt.

Walling your spouse out is a sincere attempt to protect yourself from this pain. But by locking your emotions safe inside, you lock your spouse outside. You emotionally disengage, keep distance between the two of you. This may cause tension, but you don't necessarily mind because tension helps the distance grow even wider. You might even be grateful for it since you lack the energy or desire to work on the relationship. However, this type of protection can set in place patterns of events that numb you to love and can permanently separate you from your spouse not only emotionally, but at every level.

One women who responded to our marriage survey described her walls this way: “I've been hurt, angry and disappointed for so long that I don't want to resolve problems. I just want to start over.” When someone has been hurting this deeply, it is natural for them to reinforce the wall—adding more bricks and spreading extra mortar in the cracks—doing everything they can to keep their spouse from reaching their heart.

Mortar and Bricks

The beginning of the wall building is often unintentional, but if you don't stop the process, the power of making it higher and stronger becomes almost addictive. If you are in the habit of blaming and complaining instead of reasoning and resolving, it is likely that you are feeding the addiction. You soon realize that building the wall isn't just about protecting yourself; it is also a way of hurting your spouse. You come to see them as the enemy—the cause of painful conflict, hurtful words, broken promises, belittling, criticism, and thoughtlessness—so you reach for the bricks and mortar. If you are wondering what kind of actions build walls, here are just a few examples:

Silence. You may deprive your spouse of connecting with you by refusing to talk to them or, when they try to talk to you, refusing to respond—or give vague, evasive, fake answers. Inside you feel too worn out even to discuss the issue, you may tell yourself that he doesn't really care so there's no point in talking, or you may be consciously trying to punish him.

Coldness. You keep your spouse at a distance by refusing to show them, kindness, affection, or vulnerability. You may be openly rude or coldly polite, but wither way, you lock your heart by not showing emotions—not even tears.

Sexual withdrawal. You seldom are “in the mood” and you deprive your spouse of intimacy by avoiding physical connection, even touch. You may ignore them or belittle them if they don't approach you in the right way or at the right time—or even you may just always have an excuse.
Intensity. Attacking, threatening, or manipulating your spouse wither verbally or non-verbally. This can be done with a glare, a certain tone of voice, or an aggressive body posture. Anyway you send it, the message is clear: Just stay away or you will regret it.

Busyness. You may be preoccupied with hobbies, children's activities, work related duties, friends and church responsibilities. You are rarely home when your spouse is, and when you are, you just don't have time to connect with or give attention to them.

You may not be the only one building the wall, of course. In fact, you probably aren't the only one. Your spouse is on the other side, adding their own bricks and mortar to wall themselves in and keep you out.

The tragedy of this whole process is that the more the two of you try to protect yourselves, the more harm you are doing to each other and to your marriage. Whatever materials you use to build your walls—and however high they have grown—our hearts go out to you because you are avoiding all that will help your relationship and choosing instead what will destroy it. Although you are just trying to protect yourself, you are actually building a deadly trap that undermines communication and destroys hope.

If the wall between you continues to grow, before long it will cast a shadow over everything good in your relationship. If it is not torn down, it will ultimately end your marriage. What is divorce, but the final brick in the wall between to people? Just as tragic is when you remain together but the wall between you grows so thick that you have a marriage in name only—devoid of the support and intimacy that was intended for marriage.

Poem by Richard A. McCray

Walls

Their wedding picture mocked them from the table,
these two whose minds no longer touched each other.
They lived with such a heavy barricade between them
that neither battering ram or words
nor artilleries of touch could break it down.

Somewhere between the oldest child's first tooth
and the youngest daughter's graduation,
they lost each other.

Through out the years each slowly unraveled
that tangled ball of string called self,
and as they tugged at stubborn knots,
each hid his searching from the other.

Sometimes she cried at night and
begged the whispering darkness to tell her who she was.
He lay beside her, like a hibernating bear,
unaware of her winter.

Once, after they had made love,
he wanted to tell her how afraid he was of dying,
but, fearful to show his naked soul,
he spoke instead of the beauty of her breast.

She took a course on modern art,
trying to find herself in colors splashed upon a canvas,
complaining to the other women about men
who are insensitive.

He climbed into a tomb called "The Office"
wrapped his mind in a shroud of paper figures,
and buried himself in customers.

Slowly the wall between them rose, cemented by
the mortar of indifference.

One day, reaching out to touch each other,
they found a barrier they could not penetrate,
and, recoiling from the coldness of the stone,
each retreated from the stranger on the other side.

For when love dies, it is not in a moment of angry battle,
nor when fiery bodies lose their heat.
It lies panting, exhausted,
expiring at the bottom of the wall it could not scale.