Venerated Counselor and Marriage Advocate, Dr. Richard Marks, Tackles Difficult Relationship Problems / Moves People Toward Emotional Wellness

Ask those who’ve spent time strengthening marriages and families, and especially as a counselor or in public policy, and they’ve probably heard of Dr. Richard Marks. You might be familiar with his work at Smartmarriages or Christian PAIRS curricula, which he helped develop with mentor Dr. Lori Gordon. Dr. Marks served on the Florida Commission on Marriage and Family Support Initiatives, served Governor Brownback of Kansas in starting the statewide fatherhood and marriage initiatives, and founded non-profit Marriage for Life in Jacksonville, Florida, to run the area’s community marriage initiative. Prior to that, he was the family pastor at Jacksonville’s First Baptist Church and a professor at Regent University in the Counseling School.

Dr. Marks earned a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, and a M.A. in marriage and family therapy. He also earned a M.A. in religious education all from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, after serving in the U.S. Navy as a chaplain’s assistant. He was a licensed professional counselor for 31 years and remains a Clinical Fellow with the AAMFT, a member of the International Association of Marriage and Family Counseling, a member of the American Counseling Association and has spoken at many national conferences.

Now Dr. Marks focuses most of his efforts helping deeply troubled couples as they wrestle with how their struggles with trauma, substance abuse, sexual addiction, and general mental health issues affect their marriages.

With his trademark humility, Dr. Marks describes his work, “I show people how to become healthy mature adults so they can love maturely.”

This was a lesson he had first to learn himself. Raised in a chaotic, toxic family, Dr. Marks became the “hero,” leaving home at 18 to join the Navy. He was assigned to the chaplain’s office at a Destroyer Squadron, where his love for counseling was nurtured as he ministered to sailors staffing the 14 ships under his care and their families. During that time, he met his wife, Louella, to whom he’s been married for 39 years. Like Dr. Marks, Louella also grew up in an abusive home. He describes their attraction as “two broken people who found each other.”

Dr. Marks transferred to the reserves so he could complete seminary, then started mental health work at a private psychiatric hospital in Fort Worth. Even though Dr. Marks’ career was advancing in the mental health field, he realizes now he was still an “emotional child.” He described a turning point that happened during a marriage leadership training retreat he and Louella attended in 1994. During one of the sessions, Louella began weeping. When Dr. Marks put his hand on her knee to comfort her, the group leader, a good friend, shook his head, no. Worse yet, Dr. Marks overheard his wife afterward thank the leader for his intervention. When Dr. Marks queried his friend, he was told, “You have not earned the right to comfort your wife yet.” “I knew he was right,” Dr. Marks acknowledged. “I had been so manipulative and immature. I felt it at the cellular level. I made a decision. ‘I will become the man who has earned the right to comfort his wife.’” He extrapolated this experience into a principle that guides his work today: “People don’t change because they don’t care enough yet. When the pain threshold becomes too great, you will change, guaranteed. I learned how to be teachable.”

Subsequently, Dr. Marks built upon this desire to change to help others find a path forward. “Either you care enough, or you don’t,” he said. “When you decide you do, we’ll support you. The worst message you can send to a relationship is that you don’t care.”

Much of Dr. Mark’s current counseling work involves one-on-one intensives helping couples where one or both struggle with clinical depression, addiction, or other emotionally dysregulated behaviors that negatively impact their marriage. He believes many of the problems stem back to a person’s inability to bond and attach, a healthy emotional behavior often not developed in those whose early family experiences involved trauma or abuse.

“Depression is not the reason a person doesn’t relate well,” Dr. Marks said. “A lot of research shows depression does not create loneliness. Loneliness causes depression. It stems back to Genesis 2:18. Even though Adam was in the perfect environment with God, until Eve was created, it was not good he was alone. We are intentionally designed to need God and others. The remedy to human aloneness is healthy emotional connection, bonding and attachment.” Dr. Marks is quick to point out that one can be married and deeply alone.

He’s found those experiencing clinical depression or addictions are not best served by individual counseling. 50% of people in active recovery are divorcing, he said, because recovery teaches you how to stay sober, but not how to bond. Addictions are a bonding disorder. Addicts don’t bond to people – they bond through objects. They try to get their relationship and intimacy needs met through something. If you don’t have healthy attachments, you can never mature. Discipleship (mentoring/coaching) is the key. He recommends a biblically based, 12-step study that teaches how to emotionally regulate, bond and attach.

He’s found answers to four core questions are learned early in life:

1) Do I have value?

2) Do I matter?

3) Am I loved and lovable?

4) Do I have a purpose?

The way a person was treated in the early years will determine how they answer these questions, he said. “How many people in the last generation feel alone and disconnected? What do you do with the pain of aloneness so it doesn’t turn to addiction?” Dr. Marks begins by teaching individuals how to bond. “We need to find the answers to those questions in the work of the cross,” he said. “Ultimately, the cross declares I am loved and lovable.”

Dr. Marks wrote a curriculum called RelateWell for any relationship – youth, dating, singles, married – that teaches those skills. Even businesses are embracing RelateWell to improve their corporate culture, as it teaches how to apply emotional wellness to leadership.

The RelateWell model centers around a value system Dr. Marks created called H=REG – Humility = respect, empathy and goodwill, which “operationalizes the word ‘loving.’”

“Are you treating others with respect and goodwill? Are you being humble? What gets in the way of humility is pride,” he said. “Pride is the path to live for self. Humility is the path to live for us.”

The idea of us began showing up in Dr. Marks’ spirit in the mid 90s, he said. “Marriage is about living for us. It takes two to make an us. It just takes one to kill it. If you sow discord, you’ll reap it back.”

Dr. Marks trains marriage mentors how to use RelateWell in a nine-session weekend experience. The tools tested by two decades of experience are part of the coaching model that anybody can learn to help others, he said.

He describes the RelateWell Core program as “a research-based relationship program that teaches individuals, dating couples, married couples and even youth the principles and skills for healthy, loving and mature relationships,” on the website. Individuals or marriage champions can access the online program http://www.relatewell.us

In addition to several e-books, Dr. Marks published Relationships for Life: How To Improve Yourself and the Relationships Around You in 2011. Despite dealing with the most difficult relationship problems, Dr. Marks believes anything is possible for those who stay humble and teachable.