What Parts of Your Past Affect Your Marriage? Featuring Dr. Dan Allender Part 1/2 [Podcast Transcript]

Title: What Parts of Your Past Affect Your Marriage? Featuring Dr. Dan Allender Part 1/2

Podcast Date: February 25, 2025

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Description

Today Heather Creekmore interviews an author, therapist, and pioneer in the trauma and abuse world, Dr. Dan Allender. As we wrap up our month-long series on marriage, today Heather and Dr. Allender explore how our past traumas impact our marriage, how our hurts from our family of origin may have actually impacted who we chose to marry, and how we can help our spouses heal and name their own woundings so that together we can have more than just a "good marriage," we instead can grow together as a couple who is able to honor and delight in each other.

🔹 Understanding Trauma in Marriage Relationships: Dr. Allender talks about how both capital T and small t traumas can shape our behaviors and even our choice of a marriage partner. Many of us aren't aware of these subtle influences rooted deep in past experiences.

🔹 Transformational Stories: A personal story shared by Dr. Allender highlights how pivotal moments in marriage, filled with exposure and invitation, can lead to profound transformation and healing.

🔹 The Promise of Deep Connection: Through challenges and growth, marriage offers an opportunity for unparalleled joy and awe, as Dr. Allender describes his journey of delight and honor in his relationship with his wife.

Come back for part 2 of this interview on Friday.

Learn more about Dr. Dan Allender and his new book: Deep-Rooted Marriage here. (Amazon affiliate link)

Learn more about Compared to Who? or join the next 40-Day Journey to Body Image Freedom here: https://www.improvebodyimage.com

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:02]:

Life audio. Hey, friend. Heather Creekmore here. Glad you're listening to the Compare To You podcast today. Today as we finish our February marriage month, our last interview on the topic of marriage is with, really, a personal hero of mine. Doctor Dan Allender has written, I think, 24 books. He's a pioneer for his unique and innovative approach to trauma and abuse therapy. And as I'll share in this episode, I started reading his books when I was in counseling about seventeen years ago, and they've had a profound impact on my life.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:40]:

He's currently the founder of the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, where they train therapists, pastors, artists, leaders to more effectively serve in the context of the twenty first century. And he served as the president of that school for several years. Now he's writing and speaking, and he has a podcast called the Allender Center podcast, which I highly recommend. And today, he's here to talk about his brand new book, The Deep Rooted Marriage. And I cannot recommend this book to you enough if you are ready to go deeper in your marriage. So the next two episodes today and Friday, oh, we're gonna go deep. But, friend, like, I told one of my coaching clients today, stop trying to count the flowers. Like, your issues are under the soil.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:29]:

And, friend, I think that's where we need to ultimately go in our marriages. And I even asked Dan today, like, what to do if you're ready to go there and your spouse isn't, And he has a very insightful answer for that. But I think today's episode is gonna encourage you, don't be afraid to go there. I think that's the theme. Hey. If you're ready to go there with your body image issues, we've got another forty day journey starting March 10. We've moved the date to Mondays because I heard you loud and clear that Tuesdays don't work for some of you. So try Mondays with us this time.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:58]:

We're doing forty days through Lent starting Monday, March 10. You can join us at lunchtime or in the evening, depending on your time zone, of course. Go find out everything you need to know about joining us on that journey at improvebodyimage.com. Look for the forty day journey tab. Hey. It's super affordable. Just $49 for six weeks. It's as close to group coaching as you can get at a crazy affordable price, so I hope you'll join us.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:24]:

Now let's get to today's amazing interview with doctor Diane Salander. Doctor Dan Allender, thank you so much for being on the Compare To You podcast today.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:02:42]:

Oh, Heather. My delight. My delight. And let's just be honest. We had a very, shall we say, an elegant beginning because

Heather Creekmore [00:02:52]:

I

Dr. Dan Allender [00:02:53]:

couldn't find the not record, but the microphone on button. And to be able to say, as I've experienced you on your other podcasts, you're a very kind and gracious woman. So thank you for having one and, shall we say, enduring my mechanical or technological incompetence.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:15]:

Oh, no. No. So, I mean, what you need to know, Dan, is that there are probably only four or five authors, and you're you're more than an author, but four or five influential voices that I, you know, books I've read that I I would love to meet the author. I'm I boy, I'm losing my words today. And and I would say two of those men are are have passed on. And so it is just a great honor to talk to you because, Dan, like, you ruined my life in the best way. Mhmm. Well, thank you.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:03:54]:

But just to say, I again, so honored and I'm grateful I've not passed on.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:59]:

Yes. I'm grateful for that too. But but so it was about seventeen years ago. My husband was a student at Dallas Theological Seminary, and we had our first taste of biblical counseling. And it wrecked our lives. And as a part of it, our biblical counselor in Dallas said, you need to start reading these books by Dan Allender. And so we consumed, we worked through the to be told story book, rewed wounded heart. My husband was all about leading with a limp.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:36]:

I mean, so your your whole repertoire just impacted us at such a deep level. And and what we're gonna talk about today is this brand new marriage book you have, but I really hope that we go so much further than that. We're gonna have to talk fast. We have an hour. But one of the things for me, and the reason why I use the word ruined or or devastated, destroyed, like all of those synonyms are appropriate. Mhmm. Because the old Heather, seventeen years ago, really did have to crumble lest she continue the patterns of her her family and her past and her woundings and and really the words you use through this book and the word that's, I guess, used everywhere now, but I I wanna talk about that too. But the word trauma, like, I didn't think I had any trauma.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:30]:

My parents were still, they still are married, you know? I mean, you know, I didn't have the big capital T trauma stories. And so I looked at my story and it was like, I should be fine.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:05:43]:

Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:43]:

There's nothing wrong here. Yeah. And and what I love about your new book is how you you talk about, oh, so many things related to this. So can I just start with a question? Oh. Like Let's jump. Do we all have trauma?

Dr. Dan Allender [00:05:59]:

Well, let's just say anyone who lives East Of Eden. And, if your address, includes, you know, again, not just the word Eden, but actually you've not left Eden, then no. You wouldn't. But if you have, like most of us, then the reality is, and I love the way you put it, like most people think of capital T trauma, that's significant emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. But the complication is no matter how good your parents are or were, they were sinners. And if we take Matthew five, Jesus's words about the nature of sin seriously, it means that as a father, with adult children, I struggle past, present, and future until I see him and then I become as he is with sin. And sin is this interplay of lust. And, again, we quickly think that's sexual, which certainly includes, but it's desire, craving gone mad, the demand to fill something that feels, empty, within us.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:07:15]:

And then anger. And, again, we know Jesus talks about lust as adultery, which, again, in the Old Testament particularly, but even in the New Testament, is more akin to the word idolatry. So we make idols of our Bible reading, we make idols of having a new car, etcetera, etcetera. So when we begin to explore how we attempt to find life, our own idolatry plays itself out with our children, with our spouse, etcetera. And then when we don't get what we crave, then we're gonna make someone pay. And often that's our spouse or someone, but it can be ourselves. We can make ourself pay. We are murderers, Jesus says.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:08:09]:

So again, that kind of hyperbolic language, if I were just to say it, and even when I do, I think a lot of people think it's hyperbole. And you kinda go, well, if you wanna blame Jesus for hyperbole, that's fair. But you also have to take seriously what he's addressing. So as a spouse, adultery and murder is playing out all the time between me and my children, between me and my parents who are no longer on the earth, but nonetheless, if we begin to look at what we'll largely call developmental trauma, was there true attunement? That sense of I feel you, see you. I experienced something of your world. And then a a kind of I can hold. We call that containment, but I can hold your your big emotions. I'm not undone.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:09:07]:

I don't have to resolve, but I can engage you, and I can repair, all the ruptures that occur. So when we think about, did your really good mom or dad truly get you? And then did they free you and yet hold you in terms of what you experienced? And maybe the most important, did they have the ability to say, Heather, I just I I I don't know if you've heard it, but I was unkind to you. And my comment to you had a bite to it. I wanna own that. So that ability to enter into what we call small t developmental trauma is probably where most of us have our deepest structure of becoming who we are, and that is playing out in marriage every

Heather Creekmore [00:10:01]:

Yes. Well, so I'm I'm thinking here about my audience who's by and large women. I I don't know how some men listening to it. You know, I exclude them. But but by and large, where people where there was a wounding early on in some way, shape or form recognized or not. Right. That told us there's something wrong with our physical bodies. We're supposed to look different We're supposed to and, you know, we can control that.

Heather Creekmore [00:10:31]:

There's some way to make it right to correct this wrong through the pursuit of beauty or a smaller body or, you know, whatever those things look like. Like, can you explain maybe what some of the little t traumas you know, obviously, there's big t traumas that can affect that too. But what what would that maybe typically look like for someone with this set of challenges?

Dr. Dan Allender [00:10:56]:

Well, if we start with the larger realm, which is hardest to do because it's just the the water we swim in like a fish. The fish doesn't, like, have a a kind of like, I'm in water. No. It's just the world they're in. Mhmm. In the same way, what I would say is patriarchy plays a phenomenal role that women are to be small. Small. Like, don't disrupt me.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:11:25]:

Don't invite me as a man to face my own lust and anger. Don't show the results of my adultery and murder. In fact, you are the helpmeet, that's meant to sort of allow me to do the big things and you, little woman. Again, I'm speaking about voice, presence, power, but it certainly affects that sensibility of there is a view of beauty that's not only external but internal as to you are meant to conform to my definition of what it means to be a woman, let alone a beautiful woman. And again, it's dark. It's just it's the intersection of exploitation, lust, and degradation, murder.

Heather Creekmore [00:12:24]:

Mhmm. Wow. Wow. But the gospel has a I mean, you know, I I know Jesus wasn't wasn't the champion for the patriarchy, but the gospel has a richer answer than just down to the patriarchy. Correct?

Dr. Dan Allender [00:12:41]:

Well, it it again, who's the first evangelist? Who who who is the first to proclaim the resurrection? It's a woman.

Heather Creekmore [00:12:52]:

Mhmm.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:12:52]:

And that's not a small incident. Like, oh, it just happened. Mhmm. Again, as if anything just sort of happens, the sovereign work of God. Mhmm. But I think there's meant to be. Look, if the gospel wasn't true, you know, if you were trying to say in that day how to make sure people believed, you wouldn't have a woman be the first testimony of the resurrection Right. Because a woman was never even allowed to be in a court of law offering testimony.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:13:28]:

So the reversal. Oh my gosh. It's so sweet. It it's it's like you just go, oh, Jesus. You were like, this is a new thought. You really knew what you were doing.

Heather Creekmore [00:13:42]:

So one of the things I I tried to read through this whole book yesterday and let me just, like, warn anyone, you can't read the book in a day. It's just way too much to digest. And in some ways that I'm reading it, I was thinking like, it's taken me like sixteen or seventeen years to even be able to start digesting some of this. So there there's a lot there. It's so rich. But you talked about how we often find a mate who I don't, you didn't use the word compensate. I wish I had the quote pulled up, but, but our, our choice of a marital part of a spouse is often about kind of healing or thinking we're avoiding something from our our past. Right? I'm gonna marry someone who's different than my mother was, so I don't have to face that same pressure.

Heather Creekmore [00:14:33]:

Can you fill that out?

Dr. Dan Allender [00:14:35]:

Oh, well, I again, the best way to do it is to say that Becky had my wife, Becky, had, what I would call a very critical and, really, the better word is cruel mother who, in many ways made her pay for having a voice. So she learned two deep things. One was to keep her mouth shut. Mhmm. And if she was gonna do something, be very sneaky about it. And then she would play in a closet to avoid having to deal with the judgment of her mother. But she also learned to be incredibly independent where she needed very little from anyone. My background is I have a mom who fits the term borderline personality disorder.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:15:26]:

People don't know that term. It's my mom could be hilarious, witty, playful, and the next moment be weeping, literally collapse on the floor, and then be cruel and demeaning. And, again, we're talking minutes now. Laughing, then collapsing, then cruel, and then look at me or anyone and be like, what's your problem? So I lived in absolute unpredictability, but my major role was as a surrogate spouse to my mom. My dad wouldn't engage her. So as an only child, my job was to keep my mom as sane as one could hope. So right there, if you see the interlocking worlds, I don't wanna marry somebody who needs me, but somebody who, is intrigued, and open to what I did as a boy, which was I talked. I'm a storyteller.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:16:33]:

I kept my family alive by stories. So Becky was quiet, but independent. Mhmm. I was wild, but at one level, centered enough to never bring the kind of cruelty that she had suffered with her mom. So it worked. We worked great for a while until and I really mean this, until Becky began to mature. And then

Heather Creekmore [00:17:02]:

all

Dr. Dan Allender [00:17:02]:

of a sudden, there were disruptions. She began to name, you know, you're an angry man. You isolate to your books. You're idolatry. You know, you're not you're you're not drunk on power or this or that, but you're an isolated man who would prefer to just go to his library and read for two days. So as we began to just engage the normal realities that people have conflicts in, like sex, money, children, in laws. Oh my gosh. The reality of our what we married for was redemption, and what we found, was a taste of hell.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:17:46]:

Mhmm. And I I think that is where I would say I've never, never in any relationship had a taste of what I believe heaven will be as I have with Becky. But I'd also say just as I just said, I've never had a taste of hell like I've had with her. So when you begin to own that marriage, if it's, I I think, growing, that's a keyword, growing Mhmm. Will be a a a marriage of extremity. There will be exposure. There will be heartache and hurt. There will be confrontation.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:18:21]:

There will be invitation. There will be transformation. And when you begin to play in those realms, like, nothing I have ever done in my life, has been more important than conning Becky to marry me.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:38]:

And and that was a fabulous story in the book. I didn't I hadn't seen or heard all of all of the richness there for sure. You know, the story you told at the beginning of the book about the ski trip.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:18:53]:

Yeah. Oh, it's such an important I mean, it was transformation for us of me acting out in anger toward my son who wouldn't ski down. And, and Becky and I and our son, Andrew, he's about eight, and it's not going well. Our daughters have skied away to go in for an early lunch, and I'm pressuring. I I'm I can be intimidating. I can be belligerent. That was what I did to keep my mother from consuming me is my mother and I would rage at one another. Not exactly a healthy mother son relationship.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:19:34]:

But that level of intensity, I was bringing, and Andrew was getting terrified. And Becky's response was, go ski down. You can go on down. I'll get him down. And, I could see from three, four hundred yards below that her encouraging presence was not working. So I finally decided to have to clump my way back up on a icy slope. And by the thirty, forty yards up, I am literally sweating like a madman. And by the time I got up, I'm not hot angry.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:20:10]:

I am cold furious. I remember skiing toward them. Put my skis on and moved toward them, and, Becky skied in front of Andrew. And I mouthed the word move. And she very quietly, no anger, but just quietly shook her head. No? Mhmm. So I got to her, and I'm about to, in one sense, tell her to get down and that I'll get my son down. And probably one of the most shocking moments again, there have been many, but I'd say one of the most shocking moments was when she put her hand on my heart and she said these simple words, I know the men who have humiliated you.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:20:58]:

And that beginning portion of that first sentence, I I could not I mean, if if I'd been struck by lightning, I would not have been more shocked because in an instant, literally, a millisecond, I have the right hemisphere of my brain passing images, moments, and at a speed literally of four, five hundred miles per hour. And then she looked at me, and then she said, a hand still on my heart. I know that's not what you want to do with your son. And one of the sweetest moments of tears came. I wish they had come a hundred times before and a hundred times after, but they came. And she put her hand a bit firmer on my heart and gave me, unquestionably, the sweetest again, to even use the word accolade is too small, but the greatest award I've ever gotten, and that's when she said, you're a good man. So that story is longer, but let's just say that was, for both of us, another moment where she's taking on the voice of not being small. She's actually bringing my story into play, but she's also calling me, exposing me, calling me.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:22:29]:

I and, again, they're almost so simultaneous that it's hard to differentiate the two. She's exposing and calling me into the man that I long to be, have the ability to be, and often I'm not. So we look back to that as you know, we have a lot of origin stories, but we would look back to that as one of our major origin stories for both of our transformations.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:55]:

Yeah. Wow. I just I I would love to meet Becky. I wanna come to Seattle and have coffee with her. Yep. So if you could set that up.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:23:04]:

Plan on it.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:06]:

For courage. I mean, especially when, I mean, and I I relate to this when you were a little girl who faced an angry parents and you couldn't stand up to that.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:23:21]:

Yes.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:22]:

To not just replay that with you and be like, okay. You know? And, and, wow. Like, I mean, I was, I was very touched by that story, but how did Becky, Like, I mean, I know the holy spirit obviously, but, but the healing that had to take place, I think for her to get to that place, to have the courage with you and then how she just like had the healing touch of that in your life. I I'm I'm just I'm in awe of that.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:23:53]:

Me too. And and yeah. But, I mean, there are hundred other stories. I mean, another context well before, but but not, like, years or a decade before. We had been this was a season where we didn't have a caller ID. So we get a phone call at our home. And when people call me, I'm a therapist. When people call me, it it's not usually with good news.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:24:19]:

Mhmm. So I often wanted Becky to answer the phone before I knew who was gonna be on the other line. It gave me ten seconds.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:26]:

Mhmm.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:24:27]:

And if it were particular people, it'd be like, no. This is not a good time. Mhmm. So I would have her answer, and she would say, well, hi, Fred. And then I I would shake my head. I'd go like, no. No. No.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:24:39]:

No. And she did it. She covered for me. She was being, quote, unquote, a good help meet, which is not what the scriptures teach with regard to an Azer, a woman who is indeed a warrior.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:55]:

Andrea Wien Just say it's a military context, right? Doctor. Andrew Roark Exactly. Doctor. Andrew Roark

Dr. Dan Allender [00:24:59]:

So anyway, so that's the context. And I shook my head when Fred called, and I remember the day that Becky looked at me and she goes or no. She said to Fred, Dan, I I I'm not sure what he wants to do, but whatever he wants to do, I'm gonna put his put the phone down and let him decide. And I'm like, oh, good lord. And she walked away. And, I mean, I my eyes followed her. And it was like, this phone call is not gonna last for infinity. So I talked to Fred for a bit, hung up, and then I hunted her down.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:25:34]:

And that's a heck word. It really is a tragic word. I hunted her down. She was in her office reading, and I opened the door. And, again, anger, has been my means by which to keep the world at bay, to keep from being largely eaten by a devouring mother, and to call to some degree my very passive disengaged father into some level of life. So all that to say, I opened the door, enraged, and then said as coldly as a little serpent like, what were you thinking? And then she held the book up and said, trying to live out what you have brilliantly written in the book, bold love, but have yet to actually

Heather Creekmore [00:26:31]:

Wow.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:26:31]:

Begun to do on my behalf. And I remember looking at her thinking, oh, that was brilliant. Yeah. Brilliant. I mean, it was so well done that I couldn't just I I certainly didn't repent at that point, but I remember walking away going, I just got handed my own book. Mhmm. And but more importantly, of course, I handed what I do claim I want to be. Mhmm.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:27:00]:

And yet, in my own lust and anger so often fail. So that intersection of the invitation exposure, offering a a taste of goodness in the face. In some sense, what she was doing was, at that moment, blessing her enemy. How she has grown to be that woman. There are a lot of factors, but a lot has been engaging over many, many moons the reality of the harm and then coming to not only grieve but be angry, but even more so to begin to honor more the reality of her own parents' effect on her. You honor not by dishonesty. And the more she has named her own story, engaged something of her own failure to love in the way that she was meant to. Our lives, again, we would never say we are finished by any means, but there is, after forty eight years, just delight, delight for one another and honor.

Dr. Dan Allender [00:28:12]:

And that's what we want to say is so crucial for a marriage to grow in this sense of ability where delight increases your sense of gratitude for one another. And honor opens the door to a sense of awe. Like I look at my wife and at times just go, Who are you? How did you become who you are? That is one of the greatest thrills, I think, in a marriage.

Heather Creekmore [00:28:41]:

I love that.