Individuals can bring a great deal of love and joy into a union, but, they can also bring serious past trauma and challenges. Therese and Jason Benedict shared, during their Kickass Couples Podcast interview, how they rose up to meet some very deep and serious issues they each brought into their relationship head-on. They candidly discussed how they addressed, overcame, and healed the challenges in their relationship. If you’ve had a history of emotional or physical abuse that you have brought into a relationship, we definitely suggest listening to their full podcast episode.
Therese and Jason were open books and they shared details of a tough past that you wouldn’t wish on anybody. They were completely vulnerable and talked about how these challenges transformed them individually, and as a couple. Therese said that what makes them kickass is their communication and respect for each other. Her advice is that you’ve got to be willing to break the routine. We agree. We get into ruts of how we do things or how we approach our spouse, especially in regards to communication. When communication becomes routine and automatic, then there’s not necessarily a lot of emotion and passion there. Therese and Jason both recognize that, and work really hard to make sure they keep their communication authentic, responsive, and fresh.
The Benedicts are active listeners. They’ve learned the hard way how to embrace hardship, work on it and not turn away. They face it together and conquer the challenge.
Jason talked about growing up. He was abused from the age of six to nine. His mother’s boyfriend raped and molested him. That obviously left huge scars, as well as a lot of physical and emotional damage. He really struggled for years and told no one. When he met Therese he learned how to talk about his past and came to understand it wasn’t his fault. He learned how to really use it as energy and strength to grow. His process of healing allowed him to grow in their relationship and in learning how to help others.
It was overwhelming and too deep for Jason to handle on his own. He got help. And that help came in the form of Therese. If you have struggled or been the victim of any atrocious behaviors, actions, or crimes like this, please get help. Support could come in the form of your spouse, a counselor, or a therapist. Jason admitted in our interview with him that if he’d not been able to unpack the trauma he suffered, he could not have moved forward in his life. He was self-soothing with alcohol and drugs, and he thinks he would’ve killed himself by overindulgence of just trying to find a way to escape and forget. Instead, he chose not to be a victim and got help. He was then able to move forward, and now he’s able to help others. He said love definitely overcomes because it did for him.
This is a beautiful story of being able to have a spouse come in and truly love you, see you for who you are, and help you work through the trauma. Not everyone is equipped to do that. In this case, Therese had the ability and it just happens to be one of her gifts. If you’re not equipped to handle that, we definitely suggest you get help from someone so you too can work through and learn how to overcome any historical trauma.
Therese also endured trauma in her childhood. She had a dad who was unfaithful to her mom and chose the other woman. Her mother didn’t give love because she hadn’t experienced it in her own life. And so here you have this sort of domino effect. You can see it happening in a couple of generations now. Theresa didn’t get the love and security she needed to be successful to love other people well in life. Neither Therese nor Jason came to this relationship equipped to be able to love well. They had to learn how to do it. And thankfully, Therese had the gift of being able to do that deep within her.
These two are great examples of what is possible to overcome, to change, and how to break the binding chains of deep wounds. She talks about those links that were formed, both in hers and Jason’s experiences, as ones that would want to bind you and keep you down. They had to learn how to work it out and how to break those links. Some were very big to work out with each other, but they learned how to make their relationship work.
Therese’s advice to her unmarried self would be to stand up for herself and not to settle. She would also tell herself not to settle for a convenient relationship, but to hold out for the real thing.
We give this couple a lot of kudos. They overcame huge obstacles, and are most likely still overcoming. We’re all a work in progress. They have done so much to have a wonderful, beautiful, and healthy relationship, despite all of the things that happened to them from their past.
If you haven’t heard the whole interview, we encourage you to go listen to it. It’s episode 13 on the Kickass Couples Podcast. Jason and Therese Benedict are definitely kickass in our book. We hope you’ll listen to their episode and keep coming back to our podcast, because happily ever after does not just happen. It’s on purpose.
