Review: “Combatting the Lies That Can Destroy Your Marriage,” a Focus on the Family Video

Source: Focus on the Family’s eight-part marriage video series featuring Robert Paul, Greg Smalley, Jim Daly, and John Fuller. Counts refer to explicit discussion in these eight videos, not in the book 9 Lies That Will Destroy Your Marriage, or every resource produced by Focus on the Family.

Color Code Legend:
Red (problematic) = 1/5 or 2/5
Orange (caution) = 3/5 or 4/5
Green (good advice) = 5/5

Quote: “there seems to be… the divorce rate and people’s disillusionment with marriage… some in the culture saying we need to do away with the nuclear family… I think it’s the beginning of the problems in the culture that we don’t have healthy, intact families” (00:17–00:40)Rating: 2/5

Pro: It recognizes that marriage breakdown has wider effects and that family instability can be painful and socially consequential.

Con: This frames the issue first as a culture-war crisis rather than a pastoral one. That can create a “save marriage to save America” tone, which pressures pastors and Christians to defend the institution before asking whether this is one of the marriages already being destroyed by adultery, abuse, addiction, coercion, or other covenant-breaking behavior. When divorce is treated mainly as a threat to society, it becomes harder to determine if the abused spouse in front of them needs rescue or should be given another checklist of ways to “fight for their marriage.”

Quote: “God created marriage… Satan hates marriage… committed to destroy marriage” (00:49–01:01)Rating: 2/5

Pro: Frames marriage as spiritually significant and worth protecting.

Con: In abuse cases, this framing can distract from concrete realities like fear, intimidation, sexual coercion, violence, or chronic degradation—and from the fact that an abusive spouse may be actively, willingly participating in that destruction. In effect, the abuser can end up volunteering to help Satan destroy the marriage, while blame gets displaced onto Satan in a way that softens the spouse’s accountability.

Quote: “He [Satan] wants couples to buy into lies…” (01:31–01:36)Rating: 2/5

Pro: Recognizes false beliefs can damage relationships.

Con: This can intensify self-doubt in already confused spouses, especially those who have been gaslit, spiritually manipulated, or blamed for the problems in the marriage. In abusive settings, language about “buying into lies” can make victims wonder whether their fear, exhaustion, or perception of danger is itself the lie. It also creates space for leaders or counselors to position themselves as the ones who can identify the hidden lies, which can deepen dependence and weaken a spouse’s confidence in their own judgment.

Quote: “These [church marriage advice] strategies cannot work.” (02:35–02:47)Rating: 3/5

Pro: Admits some church marriage advice is genuinely harmful.

Con: This is an important admission, but it stays frustratingly vague. They do not identify which strategies fail, why they fail, or in what kinds of marriages they become dangerous. Is the bad advice “submit more,” “meet all your spouse’s needs,” “keep trying harder,” “pray more,” “forgive faster,” “don’t rock the boat,” or “stay for the kids”? Without examples, the critique remains abstract and listeners are left to guess. That vagueness can also make it seem as though the real problem is merely poor relationship technique, rather than concrete patterns like domination, fear, coercion, deceit, addiction, or abuse.

Quote: “Well, [the couple] starts pointing to each other. Well, it must be there’s something wrong with me or I got a defective spouse. And the people are virtually never the problem. Its that they’re trying to use relational strategies that cannot succeed and they don’t realize.” (03:11–03:21)
Rating: 2/5

Pro: This perspective may help couples who are blaming each other for ordinary marital difficulties. Instead of labeling a spouse defective or fundamentally flawed, Paul encourages them to consider whether the relationship strategies they’ve learned are ineffective. That can reduce blame and open the door to constructive change in marriages where both spouses are acting in good faith.

Con: This is one of the most troubling statements in the series. What about a spouse who repeatedly commits adultery, intimidates or threatens their partner, conceals serious addictions, lies, or engages in coercive control?

In those marriages, the problem is not simply that the couple is using ineffective relationship strategies. The problem includes one spouse’s harmful choices and conduct. Those behaviors must be identified, confronted, and stopped. Robert Paul created the Hope Restored marriage intensives. When Robert Paul claims that people are “virtually never the problem,” this is not a casual line. It is a pattern of how Hope Restored diverts attention from serious wrongdoing and places it on self-examination. It raises serious questions about how his Focus Marital Therapy model identifies abuse, coercive control, addiction, and repeated betrayal.

“Happiness can’t be the primary goal.” (01:10–01:14)Rating: 4/5

Pro: Corrects unrealistic expectations about lifelong marital euphoria.

Con: This is helpful in ordinary marriages, but it can also be used to minimize legitimate suffering inside destructive ones. A spouse who is afraid, chronically demeaned, repeatedly betrayed, or living under coercion does not need to be reminded that marriage is not mainly about happiness; they need clarity about harm. In those settings, language like this can make serious misery sound spiritually normal, as though the real problem is unrealistic expectations rather than an actually unsafe relationship. It risks teaching people to endure covenant-destroying behavior as part of Christian maturity.

“My goal isn’t to be happy… My goal is… growth.” (01:47–03:00)Rating: 3/5

Pro: Encourages maturity rather than emotional idealism.

Con: Growth language can become dangerous when it is applied to marriages marked by chronic mistreatment. In a healthy marriage, growth means humility, repentance, and mutual change. But in an abusive or deceitful marriage, it can start to sound like the suffering spouse’s job is to become more patient, more understanding, more collaborative, or more spiritually resilient while the deeper pattern of harm goes unnamed. That shifts the focus from whether the marriage is safe to whether the victim is responding in a sufficiently mature way. It can quietly prioritize teamwork and endurance over truth-telling, boundaries, and protection.

“You want that trend line… improving over the course of your life.” (03:37–03:42)Rating: 4/5

Pro: Offers a realistic picture of gradual change.

Con: This assumes both spouses are capable of healthy growth and have the internal motivation to make better daily choices. That may be true in many struggling marriages, but not in all. Some spouses are entrenched in entitlement, coercion, addiction, deceit, infidelity, or abuse and are not meaningfully moving toward health. In those cases, “watch the trend line” can keep people waiting for a pattern of improvement that never truly arrives. It may encourage pastors or spouses to overvalue small gestures, apologies, or temporary calm while ignoring the larger reality that one person is unwilling to become safe and trustworthy over time.

“Oneness scripturally is meant to be unity… not the same.” (01:30–01:37)Rating: 5/5

Pro: Strongly rejects self-erasure and enmeshment.

Con: This is a very strong principle. It would be even stronger if they briefly showed how it applies when one spouse is controlling or coercive, because “unity not sameness” should also protect a spouse from being pressured to disappear.

“There’s me… and there’s us. You add a third journey.” (01:46–01:54)Rating: 4/5

Pro: Honors individuality alongside shared purpose.

Con: This is thoughtful and helpful, though the application stays vague rather than showing how it works in more dangerous or high-control marriages.

“All three have to matter.” (02:29–02:42)Rating: 4/5

Pro: Balances spouse, self, and marriage well.

Con: This is a healthy corrective, but it would help to say more about what happens when one spouse consistently acts as though only their needs, preferences, or power matter.

“God is love. We don’t create love.” (01:19–01:28)Rating: 3/5

Pro: Grounds love in God rather than emotion.

Con: It is spiritually rich, but still quite abstract in practice. The idea would land better with more concrete application to real marital harm and responsibility. Love should not be separated from truth, justice, repentance, and protection.

“I don’t feel love anymore… that’s one of the least troubling things…” (01:57–02:19)Rating: 2/5

Pro: Pushes back on panic over lost feelings.

Con: This may be true in some struggling marriages, but it can be misleading when numbness, withdrawal, or fear is tied to betrayal, abuse, or chronic mistreatment. Before treating lost loving feelings as a minor problem, a counselor needs to investigate what happened. Emotional withdrawal can be a response to actual danger, not merely a deficiency in the injured spouse’s capacity to love.

“All we have to do is ask the Lord to let us see through His eyes…” (02:25–02:41)Rating: 2/5

Pro: Encourages prayerful perspective and spiritual humility.

Con: This can become risky if it leads vulnerable spouses to question their own perceptions or stay focused on sacrifice when safety and protection are the more urgent need. Restoring Hope also emphasizes understanding the emotional wounds and sensitivities beneath reactive behavior. That may be constructive when both spouses are acting in good faith, but empathy for an offender’s wounds cannot substitute for confronting the harmful behavior itself. A victim may need clearer vision about wrongdoing, not additional reasons to overlook it.

“This is not about you being less than.” (01:40–01:45)Rating: 5/5

Pro: Excellent correction to self-negating marriage teaching.

Con: Very little to criticize here. The main limitation is simply that the series does not always carry this strong insight through consistently in its other teachings.

Bob Paul: “God truly is my source, not Jenny.” (02:48–02:52)Rating: 5/5

Pro: Establishes healthy limits on marital dependency.

Con: Could be misused to justify emotional withdrawal, neglect, or lack of mutual care. A spouse might twist this truth into, “I don’t owe you comfort, presence, or responsiveness because only God meets your needs,” when marriage still involves love, tenderness, and responsibility. It is healthy to say your spouse is not your ultimate source, but unhealthy to use that idea to avoid showing up faithfully in the relationship.

“Virtually all marriage issues are a result of misplaced responsibilities.” (03:06–03:23)Rating: 2/5

Pro: Insightful for many ordinary marital conflicts.

Con: This is too sweeping because it treats nearly every marital problem as a matter of confusion about roles, burdens, or boundaries. That may fit many ordinary conflicts, but abuse, coercion, chronic deceit, addiction, intimidation, and violence are not just “misplaced responsibilities.” In those cases, the issue is not merely that one spouse is carrying too much or too little; it is that one person is choosing harmful, destructive behavior that creates fear and damages the other.

We can learn to take responsibility for our own behavior without taking responsibility for another person’s wrongdoing. But Restoring Hope repeatedly emphasizes personal responsibility and warns therapists about becoming absorbed in a client’s complaints about a spouse (pp. 188–189). The critical question is whether that framework identifies when a spouse’s complaint is an accurate report of abuse.

A husband’s obligation to stop abusing, deceiving, or betraying his wife does not depend on whether she forgives him or changes her own emotional reactions. Both spouses are responsible for their own conduct, but they are not equally responsible for one person’s abuse.

A better video on this topic is Bob Hamp MFT’s.

Greg Smalley: “My wife felt so unsafe with me…” (01:37–01:43)Rating: 5/5

Pro: Honest and unusually self-aware. Greg recognizes that his wife’s sense of safety mattered and that his own behavior affected it.

Con: The admission is valuable, but the brief clip does not specify the conduct that made her feel unsafe or how he demonstrated lasting change. Recognizing that a spouse feels unsafe should lead to examining what created that condition—not merely helping both spouses feel differently.

“How do we create a marriage that feels like one of the safest places on earth?” (02:15–02:23)Rating: 5/5

Pro: Centers safety instead of performance or pressure.

Con: Doesn’t say what to do if safety never comes, or if one person gives lip service to safety while continuing destructive behavior. There is also a difference between feeling safe and being safe. A person may feel reassured by an apology, a counseling breakthrough, or a few peaceful weeks without the underlying risk actually changing. Effective safety assessment considers conduct, patterns, accountability, and danger—not feelings alone.

“When people feel unsafe and insecure, they’re guarded…” (03:00–03:06)Rating: 4/5

Pro: Describes relational shutdown accurately and helpfully.

Con: This is helpful in many strained relationships, but not all difficulties fall into the same category. A spouse may feel unsafe because of ordinary conflict, tension, or misunderstanding—or because there is actual intimidation, sexual coercion, threats, stalking, violence, or chronic degradation.

When those very different situations are described simply as feeling “unsafe and insecure,” listeners may miss the seriousness of abuse. Before asking a guarded spouse to become more emotionally open, a counselor should determine whether the guardedness is a reasonable response to danger. A protective response is not automatically a relational defect.

Greg Smalley: “My job became managing her emotions.” (00:45–00:51)Rating: 5/5

Pro: Clearly rejects emotional control and overfunctioning.

Con: Nothing substantial to criticize in the statement itself. This is strong and pastorally useful. The essential qualification is that refusing to manage another person’s emotions is different from refusing responsibility for harm that one’s own conduct has caused.

“What if I just started to care about how she felt?” (02:00–02:04)Rating: 4/5

Pro: Replaces fixing with empathy and presence.

Con: Empathy is a real improvement over fixing, dismissing, or controlling another person’s emotions. But by itself, caring how someone feels does not yet address what created the pain. In destructive marriages, the deeper issue may be not just emotional misunderstanding but concrete wrongdoing—harshness, deceit, intimidation, sexual coercion, contempt, or repeated patterns that make the other spouse feel small or unsafe.

If a husband repeatedly betrays his wife, understanding her hurt is not enough. He must stop betraying her. If he frightens her, the goal cannot simply be better emotional communication. He must stop the frightening behavior and accept accountability.

Empathy without repentance is not repair.

“Feelings are raw data.” (02:55–03:00)Rating: 4/5

Pro: Helps people value emotions without obeying them blindly.

Con: This is helpful as a basic principle, but it can oversimplify how emotions work in trauma. For many abuse survivors, feelings may be shaped by fear conditioning, hypervigilance, dissociation, shame, confusion, or years of gaslighting. A survivor’s panic, numbness, or shutdown may reflect real danger or trauma injury.

The danger arises when a therapist treats the emotion as the primary problem without adequately investigating its cause. Restoring Hope asks counselors to examine the emotions and sensitivities beneath the Reactive Cycle. That can be useful. But when a spouse reports abuse, the therapist must also ask whether the behavior that produced the fear is ongoing.

You cannot counsel someone out of a danger they are still living in.

“Marriage is a team sport.” (01:00–01:08)Rating: 4/5

Pro: Useful image for ordinary mutual conflict.

Con: This is a strong metaphor for healthy marriages where both people are acting in good faith, sharing power, and seeking each other’s wellbeing. But in an abusive or coercive marriage, the “team” image can become misleading because it assumes good faith and concern for the other’s best interests where those things may not exist.

One spouse may be intimidating, manipulating, degrading, controlling finances, coercing sexually, or using fear to dominate, while the other is trying to survive. In that situation, framing the marriage as a team effort can pressure the harmed spouse to communicate better or work harder with someone who is not acting like a teammate.

You cannot be a team with someone who is drilling holes in the bottom of the boat.

Teamwork requires a baseline of safety and good faith. When those are absent, the first task is not better compromise. It is protection and accountability.

“If either feels compromised… we lose as a team.” (02:16–02:25)Rating: 3/5

Pro: Promotes mutuality over domination.

Con: This sounds wise in healthy, reciprocal marriages, because it pushes against steamrolling and invites both spouses to matter. But in a destructive marriage, it can make a victim’s boundaries sound like selfishness or disunity.

A spouse who says no to coercion, refuses mistreatment, protects money, documents abuse, or leaves an unsafe situation may be made to feel that they are hurting the team. But a boundary that protects someone from abuse is not an unfair compromise imposed on the offender. The offender has no entitlement to continue the harmful behavior.

Without that distinction, teamwork language can shame the harmed spouse for resisting what should never have been demanded in the first place.

“He will not leave a couple in disunity…” (03:33–03:40)Rating: 1/5

Pro: Offers hope for struggling couples.

Con: This offers hope, but it can also create false hope in marriages where one spouse is committed to domination, deceit, addiction, or abuse. It suggests that if a couple keeps yielding to God, unity will eventually come, but God does not force an abuser to behave well if that person does not want to change.

In practice, this kind of message can keep victims waiting, praying, enduring, and trying longer in situations where the real need is not more patience with disunity but recognition that one spouse is refusing the good.

God’s mercy does not eliminate human responsibility. And a victim’s faithfulness cannot make an unrepentant offender safe.

Marriage Counseling Must Be Accountable, Too

People sometimes ask why I devote so much attention to scrutinizing Focus on the Family’s marriage advice and Hope Restored counseling model.

My answer is simple: To save lives.

I’ve worked in Christian divorce recovery ministry for nearly 30 years. Hundreds of people in my groups have attended marriage programs, retreats, and intensives, only to be persuaded by well-meaning but naïve leaders to remain in dangerous relationships.

When marriage counseling fails to recognize abuse, coercive control, serious deception, or danger to children, the consequences can be devastating. People may remain in unsafe relationships while believing they need to communicate better, forgive more, or take greater personal responsibility.

A therapy model that continually asks clients to examine themselves should be equally willing to examine itself—especially when clients remain harmed or treatment fails.

That means examining not only whether couples remain married, but whether they are safe, whether serious wrongdoing has stopped, and whether the counseling itself may have contributed to harm.

Accountability is not just for the people receiving counseling. It is also for the people providing it.

And this concern extends beyond Focus on the Family and Hope Restored. It includes FamilyLife’s Weekend to Remember and other marriage programs, retreats, and intensives that promise dramatic transformation or present themselves as offering almost miraculous results, but can endanger lives instead when serious abuse goes unrecognized or unaddressed.

I’m not suggesting that every marriage program is harmful or that every couple who attends one is endangered. Many couples may genuinely benefit. But programs designed to strengthen ordinary marriages must recognize when the problem is not poor communication, mutual misunderstanding, or insufficient forgiveness—but abuse, coercion, serious betrayal, or ongoing danger.

The question is not merely, “Did the marriage survive?”

The question is, “Did the people survive safely—and were they helped to recognize the truth about their circumstances?”

Related posts:

• Focus on the Family and Divorce: Why Abuse Victims Are Pressured to Stay
• Focus on the Family Teaches Abusers How to Get Away With It
• Will Focus on the Family’s Hope Restored Marriage Intensive Fix My Desperate Marriage?
• Hope Restored Marriage Intensive: Real Results From 44 Former Attendees
• Breaking: Hope Restored Marriage Intensive “Miracle Claims” Violate FTC Regulations
• The Truth About Focus on the Family and the Hope Restored Study: What the 2011 Research Really Says
• When Divorce Is Personal: What Greg Smalley’s Story Reveals About Church Double Standards
• Churches That Block Abused Wives (and Husbands) From Divorcing
• Marriage Counseling in Abusive Situations is Unethical
• Safety-First vs. Marriage-First Counseling