Public Pressure Isn't Love: Protecting Your Spouse in Marriage

Key takeaways

• Public pressure is not romance. A grand gesture meant to win someone back can put the other person on the spot and embarrass them.
• Sharing is different from manipulating. Adam says he can speak openly about his marriage because he is not using an audience to make Ashley give in.
• Outside voices rarely settle a conflict. In counseling, Adam and Ashley have seen spouses cite parents, kids or pastors to prove they are right, and it almost never works.
• Decisions made alone tend to breed more of them. Isolation leads to clumsy attempts at repair that say something other than what was meant.
• Quick recovery shows what lies underneath. A small argument ends fast when there are no bigger wounds behind it.

A public apology that put pressure on her

Asked what they had planned for Valentine's, Pastor Adam Mesa and his wife, Ashley, said they were doing homework for their master's degrees in theology and eating a charcuterie board. The conversation turned to something Ashley had seen: a video of an Olympian who won a bronze medal. Asked how it felt to win, he said he had cheated on the person he loved, whom he described as the love of his life, and that it happened three months into their relationship.

Ashley and Adam pointed out that the woman already knew. They said she responded that she was keeping the matter private and did not want the world in her business. Adam allowed that the man might be truly regretful and heartbroken. Still, he said, looking from the outside, taking a global platform to talk about a personal mistake is manipulative. He imagined what follows: reporters asking her for a quote and whether she will forgive him, hoping for a comeback story.

Ashley spoke from her own point of view. She said she would never want to be publicly humiliated like that, because a cheating partner has already shown her that she was not enough. If she were done, she said, she would be done, and the matter needed a private conversation first.

Sharing openly and pressuring are different things

Adam and Ashley have shared parts of their marriage publicly, and both have heard someone say it was not their place to share. Adam's answer is that he does not go home with those critics, and the only person whose opinion matters on the subject is Ashley. She added that they are not afraid to speak about their hurts or their need for accountability, but they know each other well enough to see when something might wound the other.

Adam drew the line between transparency and emotional abuse. As he told Ashley, "I'm not emotionally abusing you or trying to manipulate you to get you to forgive me or to see my side." To show the opposite, he described standing on a stage and asking everyone to agree that Ashley should cook more. That would be a way of recruiting other people to put pressure on her until she does what he wants.

What they see in the counseling room

Adam says this pattern is familiar from counseling. Often the person who books the session is saying, in effect, that they know they are right and want Adam and Ashley to show the spouse why they are wrong. Adam stops it right away and tells them the meeting will not go that way. More likely they will be made to look in a mirror, and he says the people most eager to prove a point are often guilty of adding to the problem themselves. He added that not every request is like this, since some couples book a session out of love because they want to get healthy.

The same goes for the shame tactic: my parents agree with me, the kids think you are wrong. Adam says it almost never works. The spouse hears only that they were talked about when they were not in the room, and walls go up.

A story Adam had never told from the pulpit

Adam shared a story he said he had never told in a sermon, from about nine years ago. A man he pastored described himself as soft, kind and passive, a good man whose routine was work and home. His wife wanted more excitement. He came to Adam to say his wife was cheating on him, and that her boyfriend picked her up at the house. Adam said she did it where he could see, kissing the other man by the car while the husband stood outside asking her to come back in and watched the kids. The man was weeping. Adam believed she was trying to get a rise out of him.

Adam called it one of the most haunting cases they have walked through. He said it shows how a spouse can become so malicious that they want the other to hurt, and do it in public so it can be seen. He said that if the heart is cold enough, it will have no end, and everyone gets hurt, children included. They prayed for the man over the years, and Adam does not know where things went.

Decisions made in a vacuum

Back to the Olympian, Adam named the common thread. "When you make decisions in a vacuum, then more than likely you will try to recover in a vacuum," he said. He thinks the man seemed to be making it up as the interview went along, and he thinks the same thing happens in marriages when someone is processing alone. The attempt to repair makes sense to the person doing it, but it communicates something else. As Adam put it, "what you mean and what you communicate are two totally different things." The aim, he said, is to reach a place where what you say is what you mean.

He said that conversation belonged with three or four trusted friends, or maybe a counselor, and not with tens of millions of people. Some things should stay private, and the people you let in should be tested, true and trusted, though not perfect. Adam said both people ended up embarrassed, and a real accomplishment got overshadowed.

Ashley applied it to social media. "Certain things don't need to be a part of social media," she said, because not every day with your partner will be perfect, and you should not leave a relationship to the imagination of someone who does not go home with you. She also said that when you put yourself out there, "you give everyone else a pen." She has read comments on clips that ask who her husband is or whether she really submits, and she thinks viewers are better served by seeing real life, including the heated, funny and sad moments, than by a polished show.

The cinnamon argument and bouncing back

To show how fast things can spiral, Ashley told a small story. On the way to their son's basketball game, she took a sip of her chai and said it had no cinnamon. Then she tried Adam's vanilla latte and said it tasted as if it had more cinnamon than her chai. Adam said his had none. They went back and forth until she had to rephrase: she meant that it tasted like cinnamon to her, not that it contained any. They agreed to disagree.

Adam said what mattered was what came next. They talked about life and friends, took a phone call and sat in freeway traffic, and moved on. He believes that if you cannot recover quickly from something petty, the real issues in the marriage are bigger than the petty thing. People who are offended, he said, often want to stay angry and want the other person angry too, because that makes them feel seen and heard. He added that marriages are like siblings: Adam described their two sons screaming at each other one minute and sharing a blanket for a movie the next. He also cited their mentor Pastor Kenny's saying that hurt people hurt people.

What this means for you

If you are frustrated with your spouse, the Mesas' advice is to carry it to them privately, or to a few trusted people who will tell you the truth, and not to build a crowd around your side. You might ask yourself:

• When I bring other people into a conflict, am I looking for help or for backup?
• Would my spouse feel protected or exposed if they heard how I described this to others?
• Is what I say the same as what I mean, and how might it sound to them?
• When we argue over something small, is there a bigger issue we have not named?

Protecting the person you love means guarding their dignity, including when you are the one who is hurt.