Sometimes your dreams can become nightmares. We’ve given countless illustrations of marriages saved, but in this episode of Relationship Radio, we get to hear a story of reconciliation from a couple first-hand about how they were able to not only save their marriage but themselves from the effects of multiple affairs and addiction.
In this episode, Dr. Joe Beam interviews Ren & Adelé, a couple with an amazing story of redemption.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Sometimes you may wonder, what’s the story of real people you guys at Marriage Helper help. I mean, you talk a lot about various things and give a lot of illustrations, but can we see a face, hear a voice, talk to somebody who exists? Well, today, you get a chance to do that here on Relationship Radio. Hi, I’m Dr. Joe Beam, and I’m joined from South Africa by Ren and Adele. Welcome to Relationship Radio.
Ren:
Thank you so much. It’s great to be with you.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Glad that you guys are here. Now, I’m just going to ask a few questions casually, if I may. Feel free to answer or not answer based on how you feel about it one way or the other. We’ve even written some down. So, I’m just going to start off to begin with, and you guys live in South Africa. You’re natives of South Africa. Is that correct?
Ren:
Yes, that’s right. Born and bred South Africans.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Okay. Very good. I love the accent, by the way. Here we are in Nashville, Tennessee, in the U.S.A. You’re a musician, so you know that probably Nashville, Tennessee, is considered Music City U.S.A. At some point, you got to get you over here and show you all around Nashville. Have you been here before?
Ren:
No, I haven’t. A lot of my musician friends have. I’m incredibly jealous of them, and the fact that we now know you, I’m trusting that somehow through that, we’re going to get there. I’m dying to get there.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Somehow someway, we’ll get you over here. Ren and Adele had been through various Marriage Helper programs. Let me just get a little background first. How did you guys meet?
Adelé:
That’s a fun story. We were working at the same company. I’d been there for about a month when my boss at the time brought this stud of a guy around to the office.
Ren:
Wait a minute. You didn’t think I was a stud of a guy when I walked in. Tell the truth now.
Adelé:
No, he was wearing a pink shirt. He had long hair. He looked; I was like, “what is…” anyways, my boss brought him around and introduced him. His full name is Renier. I was like, “Oh my gosh, how am I ever going to remember that?” It was quite awkward, actually. Then, we kind of bonded working together. We had a little two-week thing, and I just thought, “No. This is just not going anywhere. So, let’s just be friends.” We were friends for about a year, and then I was leaving the company.
Ren:
I got a call from her. I was trying for that year to get back with her, and she was having none of it. Then a year later, a phone call.
Dr. Joe Beam:
So you called Ren or Ren called you?
Ren:
When we met, I was a drunken rockstar, and when she rejected me after that initial two-week thing, I would do my thing and then think at 2:00 AM that I know this is a great idea. “Let Me WhatsApp a message to Adele. I’m sure she’ll be excited to hear from me.”
Dr. Joe Beam:
Yes, you’re a rock star. I mean, why wouldn’t she, right? Okay. So, how long did you actually date before you married each other?
Adelé:
A year. So then, I left the company, and we waited for a year. It was an exciting year because Ren was struggling with a lot of things, and I was, I suppose, struggling with a lot of things too. We both thought we were fine.
Ren:
Yes, there was a lot of brokenness. I come from a background of 20 years of drug addiction and alcoholism, and that played itself out in different ways as well, which I’m sure we’ll get to with unfaithfulness in the marriage and, and so on. There was a lot of brokenness in our relationship from the start.
Adele:
A year later, we got married, and we had the most amazing honeymoon that was two weeks. It was the best time of my life, and we got home, and all hell broke loose. It was just from the moment we got back from our honeymoon.
Dr. Joe Beam:
So, for two weeks, your marriage was good. Two weeks?
Adele:
Basically, two weeks.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Can you clarify a little better when you say hell broke loose? What does that mean?
Ren:
I had grown up in a Christian household and then lost the plot, became a musician, and involved in sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Shortly before we got married, I reconnected with God, and he did this amazing thing in my life, which I thought I had dealt with everything that needed to be dealt with. Very shortly after that, maybe a month or two, I started working for a church, and I became part of an episodic team that traveled the world and preached and led worship. I was never home. Maybe one or two nights a week, I was home.
My understanding I was kind of trying to make up for lost time because I wasted so much time being an idiot. So, I would say yes to everything work-related and ministry-related. My wife was definitely not; I just didn’t consider her. I expected her to understand that “Hey, I’ve lost so much time. I’m trying to make up for it,”, which as we know, is not how it works.
Dr. Joe Beam:
So, okay. That was the problem at that point, but it evolved into other problems, correct?
Ren:
Correct.
Dr. Joe Beam:
When and how did that happen?
Ren:
My first of many affairs was with a worship leader at the church that I was working at. There wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with our marriage. There was just a lot wrong with me. I think, because of the church I was raised in and because of insecurity and a need for affirmation.
Our marriage could have been perfect at the time, and I more than likely still would’ve done what I did. So, that was kind of number one. It was almost the start of the cracks reappearing for us. We never really recovered from that. I think, babe, if you want to fill in here, there was no real forgiveness from her side, and there was no real true remorse. I was sorry that I got found out, that I got caught. I wasn’t really sorry.
Dr. Joe Beam:
How long were you in it before you were found out?
Ren:
Nine months.
Dr. Joe Beam:
So, nine months into it, Adele, you found out, and so what happened then?
Adelé:
All hell broke loose. Again, I was validated in all the negative things I thought about my husband, all the things I thought were going to happen. All my worst nightmares were coming true, and I was validated. It was more the case of, “You see. I told you.” Rather than “Wow, this has happened. How do we get past this?” I never ever let it go. Never, I couldn’t. I couldn’t let it go. I had nightmares. It mulled around in my head for years, and there was absolutely no forgiveness. I tried to control everything rendered.
Anyone he had any contact with, any device he used, I put it kind of under the banner of we have open communication, and I’ll share my stuff with you and share. It was pure manipulation and control so that I would feel safe because if I could control this guy, then I could make sure that he wouldn’t hurt me again. That was the spiral. That’s when it kind of all went downhill. Ren is quite a rebellious person. So, the more I tried to control, the more he kicked against that, and it just drove this wedge between us. It was bad.
Dr. Joe Beam:
So, over time things got worse. We’re kind of condensing it; what’s the next big hurdle that you got her into after that, then?
Ren:
There were periods of me relapsing on alcohol and drugs. Then a couple of years later, I had another affair. I was using a lot then. Using drugs and drinking and staying away and meeting up with this other woman. It was less of a… Obviously, I was trying to hide it, but I wasn’t doing as good a job. It’s almost like this brokenness in me just grew. These things never stay at the same level. They get worse.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Right. So, this went on for a period of years, right? Off and on. Is that correct? Over a period of years, this kind of pattern repeated itself. Adele, why did you stay?
Adelé:
In the beginning, I stayed purely out of co-dependence. I couldn’t imagine being a single mom again; I couldn’t imagine life without him as bad as it was; it was bad, I knew. It’s that saying, “rather the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” And fear, I suppose. It felt like he went out and made all these mistakes, and all the responsibility to make the decisions going forward was on me. So he makes a mistake, I have to decide whether I stay or go. He makes a mistake. I have to decide whether our family stays together or gets broken apart. Anyway, so that amount of I’m an incredibly responsible person naturally.
Ren:
Right if something goes wrong, she’s responsible.
Dr. Joe Beam:
What ultimately led you to the point where something had to happen.
Ren:
There were a couple of things. So, off of the back of the second affair, I’m speaking of and the using and the drinking. The affair came out one night in a glorious mess. If we thought the first one was massive, this one was that this one was huge to the point that we laugh about it now. Not because we’re disrespectful about it, just because we’ve experienced healing. My phone went into the fish pond, and the conference of my studio ended up in the swimming pool. We’re talking max and guitars and bass guitars, and P.A. and things that I struggled to carry on my own. My wife carried all of that and threw it into the swimming pool.
Dr. Joe Beam:
I’m going to assume that you were miffed at that point. Is that correct, Adele? What did you decide to do?
Ren:
I had been going to a drug support group for a number of months and off the back of this massive thing happening, the suggestion was that I go to rehab, and that would have been my third rehab in my life. The first one I’d been married and had kids and the majority breadwinner in the house, so I was kicking against it. I said, ‘Who’s going to take care of my family?” Not like I was taking care of them properly, but I was trying to come up with excuses not to go.
Eventually, God spoke very clearly to me. I said, “If God says, I must go, I’ll go,” and he did. He spoke. I went for six months and came out, and nothing had changed.
I had learned a bunch of things that if one, they say that knowledge is power, but we know knowledge isn’t power. The application of knowledge is power. I knew a lot of stuff around recovery, but there was so much because of my past and the way I’d grown up; there was so much stuff that I hadn’t confessed. I was too ashamed of the things that I’d done.
I came out pretty much broken as I’d gone in. Went straight back into another affair that lasted two and a half years, and in that time, it wasn’t just the one woman. There was just a whole bunch. It was a lifestyle.
Dr. Joe Beam:
So, what ultimately led you guys to the point of saying, “We’re going to fix this. We’re going to make it better”?
Adelé:
So we tried during the 10 years where it wasn’t great before that, after the first affair, but before the second, we had gone to every marriage counselor couple that people had suggested every single one. I mean, there have been situations where I had walked out of a couple of marriage counseling sessions and went, “This is absolute rubbish. I’m out of here.”
Ren:
How many did we see 7-8?
Adelé:
Eight different couples. The last, and these are trained counselors and people who have sort of been through the same experience, but eight different couples we had seen trying to get help. The last couple that we saw were the most amazing people.
They were just so loving on us, but the problem I felt with the counseling was you would go somewhere for an hour, talk about all your problems, talk about why you don’t like it, and talk about why this isn’t working, and then they send you home.
So, you go home with all this baggage unearthed, and you’re feeling upset and anxious. Now they send you home, and you have to process these emotions. We just weren’t. It was very actually unhelpful.
Ren:
So, in answer to your question, what made us decide. In October 2019, I couldn’t handle the guilt and the shame anymore. I thought I had created too much of a web of lies, and there were too many women, and there were too many relapses for me to ever come back from that. So, I decided to leave Adele.
Adelé:
Well, kind of. I mean, he was vacillating, “Do I leave? Don’t leave. Do I leave?” Eventually, I say to him, “I can’t take this anymore. You make a decision right now. You either pack your things and go, or you fully commit to this family, and we find a way to make this work.” I was blown away when he turned around and said, “Okay, I’m going.” It was very traumatic because I really didn’t think that he would.
I think a part of me just wanted him to say the words, “Okay. I commit.” You know? Joe, I’m not for separation. I know very well that when a couple who have got a lot of problems separate, things naturally get easier, so they, therefore, think, “Okay, you see. We’re not meant to be together.” And that’s not the case.
Dr. Joe Beam:
That’s exactly what happens. So, so many times
Adelé:
This situation was so necessary because we were just killing each other. Absolutely. If Ren hadn’t removed himself from the situation, I would never have finally focused on me and realized how much I was contributing to this marriage. When I say contributing, I mean all the nonsense. The rubbish that I was putting into the marriage. It’s so easy as the one who didn’t have the affair to seem morally superior and “look how good I am. At least I don’t cheat.” Really the amount of rubbish that I contributed, I almost don’t blame him.
Dr. Joe Beam:
But you don’t set him free. In other words, you still hold him accountable for what he did. You’re amazingly strong, Adele because so many women would have not. Husbands or wives would not have lasted that long. So ultimately, how did you guys find us?
Adelé:
That’s an interesting story. Ren has now left, and I’m dealing with two little girls who are just heartbroken, sobbing. Don’t understand why daddy’s going. I still lie with my youngest child at night to put her to get sleep. While I was lying there, I picked up my phone, and I typed into Google, “can one person save a marriage?” Honestly, I was looking for “No, it’s over. Move on with your life. Let it go.” That’s what I was looking for.
I was looking for some article or some professional or some experienced person to tell me, “No, it’s done. You need to move on,” so that it would validate what I was feeling. Instead, I stumbled across the Marriage Helper video. It gave me the hope I didn’t want at the time because, at the time, I wanted to stay angry; I wanted to stay hurt. That gave me the hope I didn’t want. I’m so grateful.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Which video?
Adelé:
It’s literally called, “Can One Person Save a Marriage?” I was hooked. Then I lay there with my daughter for about three hours just watching the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one. Then my journey began.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Cool. So, Ren, you were already gone at that point, is that correct? Am I understanding that correctly?
Ren:
Yes.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Okay. So what led you then together? Was it just you for a while, Adele, or did you contact Ren? How did you guys start getting into our materials? Which ones did you get into, and how did you use them?
Adelé:
It was really only me. I think we moved almost, was it six months?
Ren:
Six months. Yes.
Adelé:
Six months that we were separated. It was just me. Ren, being the musician, was gone a lot of the time. Also, it was trying to juggle all these other women. He didn’t really have a lot of time, so he would visit the children every now and then. I got to one of the most amazing courses that Marriage Helper offers is SMART Contact. That course changed my entire life.
It didn’t just change my marriage. It changed my relationship with my in-laws. We hated each other. I couldn’t stand them. I felt that they were judgmental, and nothing I did was ever good enough, and it was an awful relationship. Now, they’re my best friends. I can call them in any sort of situation.
It changed my relationship with my teenage son. I made myself a safe space that my teenage son can come to me with his teenage problems. He doesn’t feel judged and that I’m going to mommy him, and that was all because of that smart contact course. I didn’t get to see Ren a lot during that time. But the little bit of time that I did get to see him, I SMART Contacted him so bad.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Yeah.
Ren:
You did the PIES course as well.
Adelé:
I started with PIES, but PIES is very much you’re working on yourself.
Dr. Joe Beam:
For those who are not aware, PIES is not like a pie; it’s actually an acronym. It stands for physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, PIES. We have a lot of information about how you can work on yourself, physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I just wanted to clarify that so that somebody around the country wouldn’t go, “Wow, what kind of pie did you eat?” You started with the PIES, and that helped you in what way? How did the PIES help?
Adelé:
Like I said, I had a very high pedestal of myself in our marriage. I was the good one, and I was the victim. “How dare he treat me this way?” PIES helps you to, especially working on yourself emotionally, really, you start to look at yourself, and you start to become a lot more self-aware. Once you become self-aware, it’s so difficult to go back. You can’t stick your head back in the sand. It sort of spiral from that point, and it was incredible.
Honestly, nothing Kimberly said in the PIES video was news to me. It’s not that I’d never heard things like, “focus only on yourself because you can’t control other people.” I’d heard all of that before because the drug addiction group that Ren attended has a supporters group, and I was attending that for a period of time. They would say all the same things to me.
What makes PIES so different is that they give you actual physical things that you can do to get yourself going. Because when someone says, “Just focus on yourself. Just work on yourself.” Just what does that mean? Like, I did 10 sit-ups today; is that enough? But the way PIES is set up, the fact that you can set a goal and the goals are not to lose 20 kilos. The goals are, I want to feel good. I want to have energy. I want to take my life back. That, to me, was incredibly powerful.
I moved from that to the smart-contact and then, I was unstoppable.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Very good. For those that are watching this, if you’re not familiar with PIES, we have PIESUniversity.com. I’m pretty sure that is PIES University. It’s whatever you’ll see on your screen if you have the visual version of this. If it’s the podcast, just audio, I think it’s PIESUniversity.com. I know there’s a podcast that Kimberly Holmes, our C.E.O. does called “It Starts With Attraction,” and you can find that on iTunes and wherever you listen to podcasts.
So, you got through the SMART Contact. At what point did Ren come home and why?
Ren:
Lost. In 2020, as we all know, it’s quite amazing to be able to speak to something that’s internationally known. South Africa went into lockdown because of COVID-19. In South Africa, the original lockdown was only going to be for 21 days.
Adele called me and said, “Please, can you come stay at home for those 21 days to come and help with the kids?” I really didn’t want to be at home around her. I was ashamed. I was guilty. I was in limerence and in a very serious relationship with somebody else that no one knew about. Still, I missed my children so badly that I thought I’m going to take the opportunity. It’s only three weeks, 21 days, and then I’ll leave.
On the second Saturday morning in March of 2020, we were sitting outside, Adele and I. She said to me, I feel. Ren, I feel like you have secrets, and I love you whether we end up together or not; I want you to be free. I want to be a safe space for you to let those secrets out so that you can be free and live free and find God again.” I felt very cornered. I felt like God was all over that moment. I hated it because it was lockdown.
Dr. Joe Beam:
It was quite inconvenient. It’s like, ‘You’re in my way. God.” So, did you open up and start sharing with her at that point then?
Ren:
So, I dropped 3 of the 3000 things that I’d done wrong, which weren’t quite as bad. They were kind of bad, but not too bad in that hope that Adele would leave me alone and God would leave me alone.
After I’d confessed those three things, she said, ‘Wow, that’s wonderful. I’m so glad that you’ve told me those things, but it’s not all. Just get it off your chest.” So, I proceeded for about an hour to confess years of woman after woman, after drug, after relapse, just everything, everything I had ever done, and 99.9% of those things were against her and affected her directly.
At the end of that confession session where I thought, “Okay, last time my studio ended up in the pool. This time she’s going to drive my car into the pool.” She came and sat next to me, put her arm around me, and just loved me, and said, “I love you. I’m so glad you’re free.”
I had in my adult life, I think because of my upbringing, because of the church I grew up in, and because of all the chaos that I’d caused and the fear of letting somebody know all of me, I had never in my adult life had a clear conscience ever.
I cannot explain the freedom to you. It is the most drastic life-changing experience I’ve ever had in my life.
This is a year later. We’re in March 2021. I still live in the fruit and the beauty of that. I stay in that space, and I’m able to stay in that space because my wife is a safe place for me. She decided to forgive me and never hold those things against me. Even now, something comes up; I’m just able to confess or share.
It’s not like I do those things anymore, but I’m talking about little things before they become big things. I’m just able to share that with her. Incredible. This woman is the most incredible gift God has ever given me.
Between Jesus, Adele, and Marriage Helper, you guys have given me a life. I thought I’d never lived. I was planning on taking my next paycheck before I confess these things, go to a drug dealer, and end my life. I could not live under the oppression anymore. Between the three of you, you have given me a new life. It’s a miracle.
Dr. Joe Beam:
We love teaching people. We think we have a lot of information that we can share. We think we have a lot of wisdom that we can share based on our relationships with so many people over so many years, but ultimately the work can’t be done by us. It has to be done by people like you. Adele, we may have to make you our “international poster child” because of the story I’m hearing, just absolutely remarkable.
You must be one of the strongest people I’ve ever met in my life to be able to do all that. The woman I’m married to, we are now in our second marriage to each other because I screwed up the first one. We’ve only been married to each other, but we have a story, and I think that probably she’s as strong as you, Adele. I haven’t met many people like that. You are one. Praise God for your strength.
At some point, though, you guys actually came to one of our three-day intensives, is that correct?
Adelé:
Correct. Yes.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Okay. How far along after March of 2020 did that occur?
Ren:
Quite a few months. It might’ve been August-September.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Actually, I remember when you came, and the reason I remember that is because of the fact that some of our folks on our team call me and told me about you. They said we have been talking to this most remarkable couple in South Africa. If I remember correctly, I think I actually did the workshop that you came to. Is that correct?
Adelé:
Oh, no. Dave.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Dave. Okay. So, I was in it. When David does his workshops, I do part of David’s workshop.
Ren:
Yes, that’s right.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Because I met you at that point. So I must have gotten some sections of David’s because I remember at least the workshop you were coming to. I think I was there. How did that, and of course, we were doing it online because of COVID. So, that’s how you could attend from South Africa. How did the workshop go? How was it? What are your views of the workshop itself? The three-day intensive.
Adelé:
It was completely life-changing. I mean, you think, so now we’ve forgiven each other, we’re in love again, and we want to make this work, and you think that’s enough, but there’s nothing stopping you from the same cycles starting over again. We hadn’t reached the point where those same cycles had started again. When I learned what I learned at the Marriage Helper weekend, I knew immediately then that we were being equipped with lifelong tools to never allow one of those cycles to take over our lives again.
Ren:
I think an understanding of my behavior, an understanding of her behavior, and the ability to be gracious towards each other through our differences and even celebrate those differences and understand and use them to work together instead of making them drive a wedge between us. There are three days of not a moment, not a second of that workshop that’s a waste.
Every moment is life-changing. It is life-changing. I’m 100% convinced that if one applies what you learned at that workshop, it’s virtually impossible for your marriage to fail and not just not fail, be amazing.
Dr. Joe Beam:
If people use it. Often people at the end of the first day are just a little overwhelmed and thinking, “we don’t know if we’ve been coming back the second day because it’s so intense.” How did you guys feel after the first day?
Ren:
I think we felt a bit punch drunk. A, because of the amount of information, and B, we’re in South Africa, so we got to bed at like 3:00 AM. It’s three days. Yes, it is overwhelming on the first day, or it seems overwhelming, but hang in there, man. It’s so worth it.
Dr. Joe Beam:
So, you feel it was very worthwhile for your relationship?
Ren:
Yes, key. Absolutely key. Not just worthwhile, Joe. Adele and I often speak about it. We just pray that God blesses us with a ton of money so that we can send other people, everyone we know to this workshop. We are passionate about it.
Adelé:
I have already decided that both my daughters will be attending the weekend workshop before they get married to their partners. That is going to be my wedding gift to them.
Dr. Joe Beam:
I did this thing with my daughters. Well, of course, the first one is already married, but I’ve done that with both my daughters. They’ve been through the program, so I get that. There must have been other couples in the same workshop with you, though, that we’re not as far along as you were. You guys are already made progress because of the PIES and because of smart contact. You saw other couples that were starting kind of from scratch, if you will, from the very get-go. Did you think the workshop was as effective for them?
Ren:
Yes, is the short answer. The longer answer is we saw it happen in front of our eyes. Probably, I don’t know, maybe two of the couples. One of the couples, the one person who was sort of off of the screen, didn’t even want to be seen. Another couple was sitting on separate couches, and the other couple were sitting on the same couch, but like oodles of space between them.
We get that everyone’s hurting and you don’t go come to a workshop like that if everything’s “hunky-dory.” I’m not making light of this at all, but we physically watched the space between those people in their breakout. There are five breakout sessions during this workshop. In our breakout session, we watched the space get smaller and smaller, where eventually they were holding hands or sitting on top of each other. Just incredible. So yes, we definitely saw a massive impact in those couples’ lives.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Good. I’m so glad. If you were going to describe the workshops to simply to another couple, not without elaborating too much, how would you describe the workshop? Each of you, I’d love to hear what you say.
Adelé:
I would say in one word, absolutely necessary. That workshop is necessary. Everyone needs to attend. Even if you haven’t been through an affair or if your marriage isn’t in turmoil, it doesn’t have to just be “blah.” It can be so much more. That’s what this workshop teaches how to have the best marriage you possibly can.
Ren:
For me, it’s awareness. It’s an understanding of our behaviors, our personalities, different kinds of love, why people have a phase and physical tools to fix those things and make them amazing.
Dr. Joe Beam:
If we have somebody watching this or listening to this as the case may be, whether they see the visual part or just the audio, who is thinking like you were thinking. Adele, when you typed into Google, “can one person save a marriage?” What would you say to him or her that that person listening or watching right now?
Adelé:
You absolutely can’t go wrong. It is worth it. I think a lot of people reach a point in their marriage where there’s been a lot of water under the bridge. There’s been a lot of hurts and a lot of pain. You think to yourself, you just can’t see yourself getting over this. You just can’t see yourself forgiving this person. In fact, you think to yourself, “Can I ever even love this person again? I hate them so much right now, or I’m so angry with them. I don’t think I could ever love this person again.” I’m telling you without a doubt that you can, and Marriage Helper can give you the tools to do exactly that. Do it.
Ren:
Sell it hard. If you have to, but do it.
Dr. Joe Beam:
It does take work, right? It’s not just you listen to it, and all of a sudden, something happens. You have to listen to it, then put an action. Did you yourself have anything else after the workshop from Marriage Helper?
Ren:
We’ve been very blessed in the fact that we’ve built a relationship with Marriage Helper, and we do some work. I’m part of the team on the weekend workshops. We have access to all the other courses, and they are absolutely mind-blowing. If I’m lying in bed at night and I’ve got nothing to do, I can’t fall asleep; I watch a Marriage Helper video on YouTube. Or I take a course, watch a video on a course.
Dr. Joe Beam:
What I just heard was if you can’t sleep, you listen to my voice, and I put you right out. That’s what I just heard. Is that correct?
Ren:
You do have the million-dollar voice.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Well, I’m not the only one that does our videos, and thank you for that, for you guys listening. People like Ren and Adele often end up saying, “Let’s be part of your team. We want to help out.” Actually, Ren particularly has been now helping in our workshops.
He’s been assigned a role that he’s doing in there, and we hope to develop them even more and more because, as you can see, if you can see them or hear if you just hear their voices, these are two, not only physically beautiful people.
These are people who are beautiful inside. It’s so amazing, Ren, to know how you have through your lifetime, gone in and out of that. Where I’m on a worship team, now I’m having an affair with one of the women on the worship team. This thing of struggling to become the you that you were supposed to be, that you are, I think that there are millions of people around the planet who relate to that.
I’m not trying to justify anything any of us does that’s wrong, don’t misunderstand. Being able to hear somebody say honestly and openly, “Yeah, I did that. I struggled through that, but let me tell you where we are now.” That’s just a fascinating story.
As we end this up, can you kind of sum up what you’ve said and give one last word to whoever might be listening or watching? Ren, I would like you to speak to somebody who was where you were when you were still separated. Also, Adele, if you will, as well. Not just people who are already ready to try to work it out. I think they’ve gotten a really strong message here, but the ones who are right now, even separated, contemplating that, what would you say to each of those? I’d love to hear both of you say that before we wrap this up.
Ren:
Sure. From my perspective, if anyone’s going through, I know my story is quite extreme. The one thing I learned that changed my life, changed our marriage, was understanding limerence.
Please YouTube Marriage Helper, “What is limerence?” Understanding that even though you may be separated, even though you may be in love with someone else other than your wife, and you’ve made a decision to leave that love that’s driving you to do that will end.
It might take six months. It might take three years, but it will end. There is a family who loves you, who God has put together. There is a woman who you’re supposed to be with who you are married to. There are potentially children. If you have children who need their daddy, who need their mommy, please access Marriage Helper content. The effects upon generations coming after you are too important. Too big of a risk to take just because of what you feel right now.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Tremendous. Thank you. What about you, Adele?
Adelé:
Again, I think I found the hope I wasn’t looking for. If you’re somebody who’s laying in bed, sobbing yourself to sleep because your husband has left you, or walked out on you or your wife has left you, and you think, “Oh, well, this is it now.” It’s not it. I decided that I was going to go down fighting to the very bitter end. I had reached a point where I became content with if he ends up divorcing me, then I will be okay because of PIES.
I will be okay, but I knew that I was going to go down fighting till the very, very end. They were going to have to force the pen into my hand and force me to make a signature on those divorce papers if that’s what it is. So, there is hope. Honestly, I know that when you’re in it, that pain that you feel. “How Could this person who came to love me, this person who said there’ll be faithful on our wedding day, promise me the world. How could they do this to me?” You think yourself, you’ll never be able to forgive that person, but I’m telling you, you can.
It’s actually easier than you think it is.
We tend to make things a lot more complicated than they are. You can forgive the person, and you can end up loving them even more than you did before. Because now I love him for who he is, even the ugly. I loved him when I only knew the pretty, and now I know all his ugly, and I still love him. All you really leave behind on this planet is your legacy. Do you want your legacy to be an abandoned family there or an abandoned hurt spouse over there? All you really leave behind is your legacy. Let it be worth something.
Dr. Joe Beam:
That’s awesome. I love that phrase. We have to find a way to use that more. “I Found the hope I wasn’t looking for.” I don’t know that I’ve ever heard that phrase in my life before. That’s powerful, young lady. I thank all of you guys; I really do. I look forward to the fact that we do more and more things together. Maybe I need to come to see you in South Africa, but I’d rather bring you here and show you around Nashville, Tennessee.
Ren:
I’ll come to Nashville, and you can show me all the music spots, and you can come to South Africa, and we’ll take you on Safari and show you some lions.
Dr. Joe Beam:
Wow, that’s great. I’ve never seen a lion except in a zoo or on T.V. That would be great. Just tell me we won’t be hiking where you can run away and leave me, and the lions can have me. I’m sure a lion would look at me. I’m trying to lose weight, but at this point in my life, a lion would look at me and think, “we could eat for a week.”
Dr. Joe Beam:
I have to do both those things. I think very highly of you. Thank you for helping us help marriages. I’m so happy to know what we’ve been able to do in part to help you help your marriage. As I’ve said earlier, we teach, and you have to apply it. You have to do it. You guys are remarkable. You really are a poster couple for us. Especially you, Adele, you’re our international poster child. So strong. Thank you. Thank you so very much.
Even if your spouse has already made up their mind about wanting to separate, there IS hope. One spouse CAN save the marriage.
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