The Trauma-Informed Marriage

This coming Sunday marks six years of marriage for Grace and me. Six years. I’m not sure where the time went. In some ways, it feels like I met her just yesterday. In other ways, it feels like we’ve been together forever, like our souls have known each other for much longer than our calendars suggest. From the beginning, Grace and I were committed to one thing: we never wanted to pretend our marriage was perfect. We both agreed that showing up as real people in a real relationship mattered more than curating some flawless image of #marriagegoals. And while we don’t always do this perfectly (not even close), we try to live in such a way that honors the beauty and the mess of marriage.

After years of being immersed in youth and emerging adult ministries, as a participant, leader, and pastor, I’ve seen the ways marriage gets put on a pedestal in Christian spaces. We romanticize it, idealize it, and preach about it as the golden prize for purity, patience, and prayer. But here's the thing: marriage is beautiful, yes, but it's also hard. It's messy, dreamy, confusing, frustrating, sanctifying...and sometimes all of that before 12:00 PM. I think that, in many ways, Grace and I bought into the idolization of marriage. Because, let’s be real, it’s what young Christian couples do. We walked down the aisle with wide eyes, full hearts, and absolutely no consideration of a few critical things: past trauma, lack of healthy relationship experience, and wildly unrealistic expectations. None of that was on our minds. What was on our minds? Independence. A fairytale life. And, yes, sex. That’s the kind of honesty you get here. It didn’t take long for the dream to get real.

We quickly discovered that marriage wasn’t just about love and romance. Emotional maturity? That was the real MVP, and we didn’t have it. At least not in the ways we needed. We both realized, pretty fast, that neither of us had sufficient tools or examples for regulating emotions, resolving conflict, or holding space for one another in a healthy way. So instead of offering patience or understanding, we turned to blame. If young Grace and D’Vante could sit across from us today, I think they’d be shocked. Back then, we were fighting over the smallest things, walking on eggshells, and trying so hard to get each other to think and feel the same way about everything. We were two hurt people trying to hold each other up while barely standing ourselves. But we didn’t know that. We just thought the other person was the problem. The truth? We were the problem. Each of us. See, we brought love and passion into our marriage, but we also brought trauma, unrealistic expectations, and pain we hadn’t fully named or processed. And when you don’t know your own trauma, you start making your partner responsible for wounds they didn’t cause. We laugh now, but we were so committed to making things work that we essentially white-knuckled our way through those early years. Divorce wasn’t an option, partly because of the very conservative view we held at the time, and partly because we were just too stubborn to let go. Honestly, thank God for that season of holy stubbornness. Because it got us to year two…and year two was the breaking point.

After years of yelling, crying, apologizing, and repeating the cycle, the Lord pressed something deep on both our hearts: you need help. Not couples counseling. Individual help. At the time, we didn’t fully understand why that was the nudge from the Spirit, but after a few months of disobedience (we’re keeping it real here), we listened. Now, let me be honest: that wasn’t easy. For Grace, the idea of therapy felt like admitting something was wrong with her, and that wasn’t a message she could receive at the time. In her mind, the issue was obviously me. (She wasn’t entirely wrong…but also not entirely right.) For me, therapy felt like betrayal. As a Black man, I’d internalized the message that therapy was “a white people thing.” I carried the cultural stigma. Black men don’t talk to strangers about their problems, we pray, we push through, or we stay silent. Dr. Allen Lipscomb, a professor and therapist who works specifically with Black men, has said it best: “Black males are least likely to seek psychotherapy and counseling services to treat mental-health-related challenges.” There’s a reason for that. Lack of access, culturally irrelevant care, and generational mistrust have made therapy feel more dangerous than helpful in our communities. I was living in that tension. And yet, somehow, we both took the leap. And let me tell you: it changed everything.

Through therapy, we began to realize that our marriage wasn’t the problem. We were the ones bleeding from wounds we didn’t know we had. We weren’t broken beyond repair, but we were fractured in some deep places. Grace was navigating what we later learned was a brief psychotic episode. I was carrying unresolved father wounds that manifested as imposter syndrome, shame, and a fear of emotional vulnerability. Had we known more about our own trauma walking into marriage, we would have moved slower. We would have asked better questions. We would have built more grace into our expectations, for each other and ourselves. But that’s the power of a trauma-informed lens. It doesn’t change the past, but it transforms how you understand it, and how you move forward. Now, as we step into year seven, we’re in the best place we’ve ever been. Not because everything is perfect. It’s not. We still have arguments, face seasons of exhaustion, and get things wrong. But we’re finally informed. We see our patterns. We recognize our triggers. We have language for our pain, and a deep compassion for one another’s inner world. And that changes everything.

If you’re married, or thinking about getting married, here’s what I hope you hear: your love isn’t enough if it’s not also honest. Do the work. Not just as a couple, but as individuals. Name your stuff. Own your history. Invite God and wise counsel into the places you’ve been afraid to go. Because love is not just about compatibility, it’s about capacity. And when trauma goes unaddressed, it can limit your capacity to love, listen, and live with grace. Our prayer for you is simple: may you be trauma-informed in how you love. May you carry tenderness for your spouse’s history. And may your story be one of healing, redemption, and radical hope.

We’re six years in and just getting started!