66 Acceptance vs. Endorsement: A Critical Difference in Catholic Marriages

May 3, 2021

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Intro
1. It is good to have you with us,
1. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist
1. Weekly Podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Part of our Online outreach Souls and Hearts and soulsandhearts.com
1. Which is all about your human formation, all about shoring up your natural foundation for a solid Catholic spiritual life.
1. Episode 66 Acceptance vs. Endorsement: A Critical Difference in Catholic Marriages.
1. we are in the middle of a series on Sexuality in Catholic Marriages, but there is so much in here that is relevant about all kinds of close relationships.
Where have we been? Review the bed -- remember this canopied marriage bed represents the sexual life of a married Catholic couple.
1. The floor -- The Presence of God and His Providence -- everything begins here. This is the most fundamental piece of the whole metaphor. We need to be in contact with "I AM" with God who is the source of all reality. We can't forget that
2. The four legs
  1. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration and his own human formation
3. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation
4. 1. Leg 3. Understanding Attachment needs and integrity needs.
5. 1. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems -- Episode 60 -- How well do you really know your spouse?
    1. In that episode, I made five bold assertions:
      1. You don't really know your spouse.
    2. 1. Your spouse doesn't really know you.
    3. 1. Your Father doesn't or didn't really know your mother
    4. 1. Your mother doesn't or didn't really know your father
    5. 1. And you don't really know you.
  2. 1. Gave evidence for those bold claims are likely, not going to repeat all that evidence here, you can go to Episode 60 and listen to them again.
      1. For those of you listeners who are married:
        
        Can seem like spouse have such widely varying modes of operating
      2. like they can be even different people when they are in these different modes of being.
      3. Remember what your spouse or someone close to you is like when they are different states -- like when they are really angry, or really sad, or really anxious or really happy. How different they think, how their worldview changes in these different states.
      4. what we call parts: Parts are constellations of emotions, body sensations, thoughts, feelings, impulses, assumptions about the world and so many other things.
      5. Internal Family Systems thinking help us to make sense of our own internal experience and others' internal experience, breaking us out of the model that we have just one monolithic, homogenous personality.
      6. That's what episodes 60 and 61 are all about
      8. Surprising how not integrated the husband's internal object representations of his wife are -- surprising how unintegrated a wife's internal object representation of her husband can be. How confused.
        Definition time with Dr. Pete, Definition of internal object -- Roots in Freud, really developed my Melanie Klein: Internal object refers to the mental representation that results from how we have taken others inside of us and viewed them. Not necessarily similar to who the person actually is, it's how we construe the person to be, which depends heavily on our subjective experiences, including how we experience ourselves.
        Two dimensional -- sometimes even one dimensional
        
        You are the person who is supposed to make me feel better about myself, help me avoid shame
        
        Fragmented
        How much husbands and wives don't see in and about each other.

Three of these four legs are really helpful in accepting what the actual realities are inside your spouse.
The fourth one is great to have, but it's not as essential. It's the one that we sometimes require first, though
1. Just tell me what's going on -- assumption that she knows what's going on. 90% unconscious.
1. Sometimes she just cant.
The frame and the box spring -- the firm, unwavering commitment of the husband his marriage vows and the wife to her marriage vows -- separately. Independently
The mattress Empathetic attunement -- covered that in episode 65, last episode
Two pillows: Self-acceptance and Spouse-acceptance -- this is what we are focusing on today.
1. Pillows support us, comfort us.
2. Great security with pillows
  1. Pam travels with her pillow -- learned this from her friend Cabrina -- comfort in having your own pillow
3. 1. Comfort in being accepted by someone who knows you.
Bottom Sheet: sexual attraction, the intensity of sexual passion
Top Sheet: Communication between the spouses
The blankets: human warmth, emotional connection
Four Bedposts -- imagine two spiral intertwined, like the double-helix structure of DNA
1. Mindset
1. Heartset
1. Bodyset
1. Soulset
The canopy and the curtains -- to protect privacy and propriety or to hide dysfunction, exploitation, even abuse.
The sham, the bedspread, and the bedskirt -- Used to cover up the real bed, give an impression of the state of married life to the world.
Lay of the land:
1. Loving -- three elements: Benevolence, Capacity, Commitment/Consistency
2. Not only do we not understand our spouses very well
3. We also don't accept the realities about our spouses that we do understand
4. or the realities that we could understand if we allowed ourselves to see. But so often we parts that don't want us to see who our spouses really are. Some of that is due to confusion between acceptance and endorsement.
Acceptance vs. endorsement -- Definitions
1. Acceptance -- acknowledging the reality of who I am in my entirety, all my parts with their burdens, all the roughness, the wounds, the disorder, the imperfections, all the baggage, all the "stuff." It means admitting, conceding all the things that are really true about myself.
1. acknowledging the reality who my spouse Pam is, in her entirety, in her complete being, with her parts, with her perspectives, with her virtues her vices. Right at this moment
1. Endorsement on the other hand. means essentially approving or embracing as good some feature within myself or my spouse.
  1. So husband can accept the idea that his wife is abusing painkillers without endorsing her misuse of pain medication.
Why we struggle with accepting something about our spouse,...