RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS
We’ve been asking people ‘what hurts you the most?’ and one of the most common type of responses come under the heading ‘relationship problems’. This covers answers like ‘breaking up with my boyfriend last year’ and ‘people saying mean things about me at school’. Anything to do with rejection, conflict or abuse would fall under this heading. In one sense you could say other issues could sit under this heading if it was made even broader. For example family, loneliness and bereavement while we have them as separate categories they are all profoundly relational problems. Loneliness and bereavement are to do with the loss or absence of relationships. It would also be interesting to learn how many of the ‘negative emotions’ responses have a relational cause – past abuse, neglect, or rejection.
Human beings are profoundly relational and social creatures, we should not be surprised that so many people said that the one thing that hurt the most was to do with other people.
Here are some key statistics:
It’s the second most common issue – 16.5% of all responses.
It’s the most common issue to come up for those aged 0-17, over a quarter of children that age gave this as their response, the highest for any issue in any age category.
The older people get the less likely they are to say that a relationship problem is the thing that ‘hurts the most’.
This issue has become less common since we began asking people in 2011, overtaken by ‘negative emotions’. This raise some interesting questions: has an increasing emphasis on mental health issues led to people feeling more likely to give this answer? Has rising social media use over the last decade made an impact?
Christianity offers unique resources to help people deal with not just the effects but also the causes of relationship problems, below is an article I wrote in 2011 about the issue.
People sometimes say ‘I can’t live with them but I can’t live without them’. According to this survey that seems tragically true. In the final chapter we consider the pain of living without those we love; in this one we look at the pain of living with them. For many people the most painful thing in life is what other people have done to them. Here are some more responses to the question ‘what hurts you most?’
When people don’t understand the way I feel
Criticism from others
Arguing
Lying
Selfishness
Somebody lets you down
Broken promises
Ending of a marriage
Anger
Hate
Rejection
Deceit
Abuse
But there was one answer which stood out from all of them, because I realised in a way it summed them all up:
Not being loved
At the very root of all this painful stuff was a lack of love. One of the most watched videos in the world is the artist Adele singing the song ‘Someone like you’. It ends with the haunting line... ‘Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead’.
Many people are longing for a relationship that will fulfil them. Jesus once met someone who had been hurt by relationships. This lady was what we might call a serial monogamist – someone who had gone from one serious relationship to another, had married four times, but now was with someone else and not married to them. She had clearly given up on marriage and had become very cynical towards it. I think there are many people like her today. Here are some quotes and popular statements about marriage:
Married life is very frustrating. In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the wife listens. In the second year, the woman speaks and the husband listens. In the third year, they both speak and the neighbours listen.
I never knew what real happiness was until I got married and by then it was too late.
Cher says: ‘The trouble with some women is they get all excited about nothing – and then they marry him.’ Ouch.
Marriage is very much like a violin; after the sweet music is over the strings are attached.
I think, therefore I am single. 35
So Jesus meets this lady, who has become wary of marriage, and enters into a conversation with her at a well. Being thirsty, he asks her for some water but instead receives a rebuff because he’s a Jew and she’s a Samaritan and the two communities don’t associate with each other. Undeterred, he uses the water to make a point: “If you knew... who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water”. “What are you talking about?” she replies, perhaps a bit mockingly, “are you greater than the man who gave us this well?” Jesus answers her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst, indeed the water I give them will become a spring of water welling up into life 36.
A person can survive for weeks without food but only days without water. And Jesus saw that this woman’s heart and soul had become like a desert. All the past relationships had left her dry and lifeless. That’s true isn’t it? Painful relationships can kill the life in you. People say things like “A little piece of me died the day you said you didn’t love me anymore”. But Jesus says there is hope, he can restore you to life again and give something even better than what you have known; something far more satisfying. He can turn your desert into an oasis.
He says the answer to the pain of broken relationships is something he can give you, he calls it life. I want to share with you three things that Jesus does which give us life again.
Jesus shows us the love we really need
One writer says this: “If God had a fridge, your picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring, and a sunrise every morning.” 37
If I was to sum up the life of Jesus in one sentence, I would say “Jesus was a man who showed people how loved they were”. Jesus told lots of stories to get this across. One of the most famous is the story of the prodigal son. In the story a son asks his father for his inheritance early – which was a really rude thing to do; it was like saying “I wish you were dead”. He goes off and lives a lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock and roll and blows the whole lot. In one scene Jesus describes him so hungry he contemplates eating pig food. At that moment he has an idea, “If I go back to my father, I can be a hired hand and eat better than this, I will tell him how sorry I am”. The son comes back to his father, but to his amazement the father runs out to him and hugs him before he even reaches home. The son apologises and they have a party to celebrate. Jesus says, God is just like that; waiting to run out to us if we only come back to him. 38
Jesus also showed us how loved we are when he died for us. People might say no-one really loves me. I say Jesus does. People might say no-one would die for me. I say Jesus did. And this love liberates us. Jesus was once asked “what’s the most important thing we do in our lives?” He said “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbour as much as yourself”. 39 Once we receive the love of God we are liberated to pass it on. It’s quite hard to love when you’ve not been shown how to love but Jesus has shown us when he died on the cross. As the Bible puts it ‘this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us’.
Jesus bore the shame for their lack of love
A young woman named Margaret had spent decades battling depression and anxiety that were traced back to a horrible day in school when a teacher, frustrated with her tardiness, made her stand in front of the room and then invited all the students to come up to the chalkboard and write something bad about her. The kids were ruthless. They wrote things like, “Margaret is ugly!”, “Margaret smells”, “Margaret is stupid”. All twenty-five students went up to the board and wrote these hurtful things. This event inflicted wounds that Margaret found difficult to heal. She battled depression, discouragement, and was angry all the time. Finally she went to a psychologist for help. She spent two years meeting weekly but finally they had reached the end of their sessions.
The counsellor said, “Margaret, I know this will be difficult, but just to make sure you’re ready to move on, I am going to ask you to do something. I want to go back to your schoolroom and detail the events of that day. Take your time. Describe each of the children as they approach the blackboard, remember what they wrote and how you felt – do this for all twenty five students.”
In a way, this would be easy for Margaret. For forty years she had remembered every detail. And yet, to go through the nightmare one more time would take every bit of strength she had. After a long silence, she began the painful description. One by one, she described each of the students vividly, as though she had just seen them, stopping periodically to regain her composure, forcing herself to face each of those students one more time.
Finally she was done, and the tears would not stop, could not stop. Margaret cried a long time before she realised someone was whispering her name. “Margaret, Margaret, Margaret.” She looked up to see her counsellor staring into her eyes, saying her name over and over again. Margaret stopped crying for moment.
“Margaret. You... you left out one person.”
“I certainly did not! I have lived with this story for forty years. I know every student by heart.”
“No, Margaret, you did forget someone. See, he’s sitting in the back of the classroom. He’s standing up, walking toward your teacher, Ms. Garner. She is handing him a piece of chalk and he’s taking it. Margaret, he’s taking it! Now he’s walking over to the blackboard and picking up a board rubber. He is erasing every one of the sentences the students wrote. They are gone! Margaret, they are gone! Do you recognise him yet? Yes, his name is Jesus. Look, he’s writing new sentences on the board. ‘Margaret is loved. Margaret is beautiful. Margaret is gentle and kind. Margaret is strong. Margaret has great courage.’”
And Margaret began to weep. But very quickly, the weeping turned into a smile, and then into laughter, and then into tears of joy. 40
When Jesus died he became like a sponge and absorbed all the pain and shame of sin, a bit like that board rubber. The Bible says “He who had no sin became sin, so that we might be the righteousness of God”. 41 A sponge doesn’t work if it’s dirty, it can’t absorb dirt if it’s full of dirt already. Jesus was perfect; he was a clean sponge that could take all the dirt away not just our wrongs but the dirt of what other people have done to us.
Jesus took the blame for our lack of love
There is a famous passage about love in the Bible which people often read at weddings, so whether you are a regular churchgoer or not this passage might be a bit familiar to you. But look at what happens when you replace the word ‘love’ with your name.
______ is patient
______ is kind
______ does not envy
______ does not boast
______ is not rude
______ is not self-seeking
______ is not easily angered
______ keeps no record of wrongs
______ does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth
______ always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 42
The hard truth is that we too fail to love other people. Imagine there was a room and it in you could put all the people whom you consider to have really hurt you at one time, because of their lack of love. How many people would you put in: 5, 10, 20, 100? Now imagine another room but in this room are all the people who you have hurt because of your lack of love for them. How many people would there be in it? I have a theory – that there would be about the same number of people.
The Bible says: “You... have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” 43 We really hurt because of what others have done but deep down we also hurt because we do the same things. We’re not just a victim, we’re the problem. What’s the answer? We can’t hide from how much we’ve hurt people because we know how much it hurts. Do we just stop caring? Or is there another way? Jesus offers to take the blame for us.
It’s quite a profound thing when someone takes the blame for you. When I first started dating my wife Christine we went on a youth group trip to a church variety show. Thinking I was being really funny I secretly entered Christine for a quiz that was due to take place in the interval. I informed her of my ‘funny joke’ just before they started pulling people’s names out of the hat and her face suddenly fell. She looked utterly devastated. The problem was I didn’t know her very well and hadn’t realised that she really hated standing up in front of lots of people and that she particularly disliked quizzes.
I desperately hoped her name wouldn’t be picked out fearing it might spell the end of our relationship but my worst fears were realised when her name was the very first to be read out. To my great relief a close friend took her place, she even stood at the front and said her name was ‘Christine’ when it wasn’t. It was a strangely beautiful moment – she had lovingly taken Christine’s place and wonderfully taken the blame for my stupid mistake.
Imagine now one of the most shameful mistakes of your life. Imagine if just at the moment when your mistake was to be revealed that someone else piped up and said “I did that.
I take the responsibility for this, it was my fault”. One day we will be held responsible for the things we have done wrong but if we ask him, Jesus takes the blame for us, that’s what he did on the cross. It was the day when he said “I did it, I take responsibility for the wrongs in this world”.
35. All from J John and Mark Stibbe, A Box of Delights
36. John 4:13-14
37. Ibid
38. Luke 15: 11–32
39. Luke 10: 27
40. Sharon Jaynes, Your scars are beautiful to God
41. 2 Corinthians 5: 21
42. 1 Corinthians 13: 4–7
43. Romans 2: 1