Love: The Path of Least Resistance

Spring 2010 Issue | Posted by Tim Drake in Marriage

Despite a 13-year marriage and two children, Mickey and Denise Neal found themselves at a crossroads. Denise — a clinical risk manager — found herself veering toward the path of least resistance.

One weekend in spring 2007, while their two boys were playing outdoors, Denise told Mickey she might want a divorce.

The short conversation ended, and the two soon began the process of meeting with a mediator and dividing up their belongings. But they hesitated before sharing the news with the boys …

Denise and Mickey met in a dorm during the first two years at the American International College in Springfield, Mass. It was the spring of 1988, when Moonstruck was winning its Oscars and “Got My Mind Set on You” was climbing the pop charts.

Mickey was attracted by Denise’s big brown eyes and amazing smile. Denise liked Mickey’s laid-back manner.

“He was sweet and friendly,” said Denise.

They soon began an on-again, off-again romance that was on again when Denise finished nursing school in 1990. Mickey graduated with a degree in international business a year later.

After Christmas dinner at Denise’s family home in 1992, Mickey handed her a Christmas gift. As she began opening it, he dropped to his knee, but found himself unable to ask the question he was prepared to ask.

One of Denise’s uncles helped him out: “You have to ask her.”

“Will you marry me?” Mickey was finally able to get out.

“Yes,” she said.

Mickey grew up in the Congregational church; Denise grew up Catholic. The two were married May 6, 1994, at St. Rose de Lima Catholic Church in Chicopee, Mass.

Shoveling Rocks

According to Denise, the two were living separate lives almost from the beginning of their marriage.

Almost immediately after a weeklong honeymoon cruise to Bermuda, Denise returned to school while also working four 10-hour shifts every week.

Mickey was working as a salesman for an electrical distributor.

When she had free time, Denise would spend it with a close friend from college.

“Because Mickey was in sales, he would have to take out customers,” explained Denise. “He would often be out late drinking.”

The two seldom went out with one another. If they did attend a party together, each spent time with their own friends rather than with each other.

“On the weekends I would do my school work,” said Denise. “During the week, it might take all week for me to get my papers and assignments done. It was stressful.”

Household chores became the first bone of contention.

“It’s amazing how something like household chores can be such a big deal,” said Mickey.

“I didn’t really do that kind of stuff growing up,” he said. Now he did.

But “mostly it was just to appease Denise so that we wouldn’t get into a yelling match about who did what.”

Denise remembered. “Mickey would give me a hard time about spending so much time on my school work,” she said, “I constantly had to ask him to help out around the house.”

She said, “I didn’t feel that he was supportive at all.”

Mickey really wanted to own a home, so the two began the process of building.

They moved into their home in December 1995. It was there that they became pregnant with their first child, Joshua.

Denise remembered one particular low point during the pregnancy.

“I was six months pregnant and we were having a few tons of rock delivered to our house for landscaping,” said Denise. “Mickey was planning to go out with his buddies. I told him, ‘Make sure you come home at a decent hour because we have to move the rock.’”

Denise received a telephone call at 3 a.m. that Mickey wouldn’t be coming home because he had had too much to drink.

When he finally came home the following morning, Denise was outside shoveling rocks.

“I was not a happy woman,” said Denise.

Joshua was born in October of 1997.

“At first things were better,” said Denise. “Mickey was attentive and caring. He went to childbirth classes with me and seemed excited to have a child and start a family.”

But three months after Joshua was born, Denise went out for the first time — to a bridal show with her best friend, who was getting married. Mickey, who had never been alone with Joshua for longer than a couple of hours, kept calling Denise on the cell phone, wondering when she would be home.

“I felt like he wasn’t wanting me to do anything but be at home,” said Denise. “I felt like I was carrying the burden of caring for Joshua and wasn’t getting any relief at all. That was tough.”

Even when Denise returned to work full-time, Mickey would call, wondering when she would be home.

“I felt like a prisoner,” said Denise. “Like I couldn’t leave the house without constant telephone calls.”

Meanwhile, Mickey had become involved in a men’s deck-hockey league. That often meant practice a couple of days per week and games twice a week.

About a year after Joshua was born, with things not improving, Denise reached a breaking point.

The two sought help from a secular counselor.

“The counselor identified that we were making parallel decisions and not communicating,” said Denise.

Denise was less than satisfied with the professional help.

“I felt like Mickey was trying to sugarcoat everything and that I couldn’t be honest because I felt the counselor was siding with Mickey,” explained Denise.

“I liked what he had to say,” said Mickey. “He reaffirmed everything I was thinking.”

They were able to learn some things from counseling and work through some issues.

“We moved on and conceived our second child,” said Mickey. “I didn’t want to end up a statistic like everyone else
in my family.”

Jacob was born in December of 1999. Again, the issue of childcare reared its head.

“I was tired and felt that Mickey wasn’t helping out enough around the house,” said Denise.

Three years ago, while sitting in the living room, Mickey first expressed his own dissatisfaction.

The conversation again went nowhere.

“We couldn’t seem to discuss things,” said Denise. “I felt at my wit’s end and decided that I couldn’t go on living with a stranger.”

On her own, Denise met with a lawyer to learn about the steps involved in a divorce. About a month later, she told Mickey.

“I thought it was probably the best thing to do,” he said. “Our conversations weren’t conversations, but arguments, and the boys could sense the hostility.”

The Crossroads

Through their meetings with the mediator, they agreed to sell the house and get separate homes. Denise started boxing up their possessions, and they had agreed on how to divide up time with the boys.

Through it all, Denise was fervently praying.

“I was praying every night, seeking God’s will,” said Denise. “But things weren’t moving fast enough. I had told Mickey I wanted a divorce in April and now it was July. I wondered why it couldn’t be over, but reached the point where I totally gave it up to God, saying, ‘Maybe you have something else in mind. Perhaps this isn’t your will.’”

Then, Denise prayed, “If this isn’t your will, tell me what you want.”

At that moment the words “Marriage Encounter” came to her mind.

“I didn’t know why they came to mind,” said Denise. “I can’t recall ever hearing about it.”

So Denise jumped online and looked up the ministry. Mickey was downstairs. Denise called him up.

“She told me she had found something called Marriage Encounter, where you go away for a weekend, and she wanted to know if I would give it a try,” said Mickey.

At the time, Joshua and Jacob were on vacation in Vermont. Mickey and Denise had planned to tell them about the divorce the upcoming weekend when they returned home.

Mickey dreaded having to do that.

“I automatically said, ‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ even though I had no clue what Marriage Encounter was,” said Mickey. “What probably made me say Yes was the boys — and not having to tell them about the divorce.”

Just two days later, they headed to East Hartford, Conn., for a Marriage Encounter weekend.

“When I walked into the hotel meeting room to begin the weekend, there was a banner on the wall,” said Denise. A yellow road in the shape of a Y, with a stop sign on it. “It said, ‘Love Is a Decision.’ I felt like that was a message to me from God and that he was trying to tell me something. I knew at that moment that I was at the right place and was meant to be there and that I should pay attention.”

Mickey wasn’t sure what to expect.

“We walked in and there were a bunch of other couples,” said Mickey. “You don’t know what kind of situation they are in.”

Denise saw a big shift — eventually.

“At first, I didn’t know if I could trust to be open with him,” she explained. “I was reserved at first and was worried we would spend the whole weekend fighting.”

As the weekend progressed, it was transformative.

“The weekend was formatted in a way so we could be paying attention to ourselves and our own feelings,” explained Denise. “It was designed so that we could finally understand how each other felt. It wasn’t designed to focus on our daily troubles, but to guide us through different topics that we might not discuss in a normal day.”

“Right off the bat,” said Mickey, “we really learned how to talk to each other and communicate and express our feelings so that the other person could understand what you were feeling.”

By Saturday evening, Mickey said that he knew that everything was going to be okay.

“The weekend was incredible,” said Denise. “We were totally two different people after the weekend. It was like night and day. We went in headed toward divorce, not trusting one another and not wanting to be in the same room.”

“I don’t think in the past I had ever listened to Denise or heard what she was saying,” said Mickey. “The weekend helped me to listen for probably the first time. It was an amazing experience.”

After the weekend, Mickey went to tell the mediator that they wouldn’t be coming back.

Mickey and Denise continue daily to use the dialogue technique that they learned during the Marriage Encounter weekend, and now teach it to others.

“We found out later that we should have gone on a Retrouvaille weekend because our marriage was in trouble,” said Denise. “But I know now that God had other plans for us.”

“It took that weekend to open up our eyes,” said Mickey. C

Tim Drake writes from

St. Joseph, Minnesota.

Information

Marriage Encounter is designed
to make good marriages better. WWME.org

Retrouvaille, a separate
but similar ministry, is designed
for marriages in trouble.
Retrouvaille.org

... each spent time

with their own friends rather than

with each other.

... we really learned how to talk

to each other and communicate ...

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