Passive Persecution

Monday Devotion

“I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left; he was gone...I looked for him but did not find him.  I called him but he did not answer.”

Song of Songs 5:6

An entire category of wounding in marriage receives little notice, though it wreaks great havoc on many relationships.  For lack of a better phrase, I call it passive persecution.

There is a moment in a marriage when neglect—a passive reality—becomes persecution—an active wound.  What is withheld starts hurting, and it becomes a living irritant.  Its devastation grows worse when the sore wound gets regularly pummeled by continued neglect.

What makes passive persecution so pernicious is that those who cause the injury almost never realize it, or if they do, they minimize the pain their partners feel.  “I’m not doing anything,” they protest—but that’s precisely the point!  It’s their “not doing anything” that hurts so much.