Movie Review of Fireproof- and its Connection to COUPLE COMMUNICATION

Movie Review of Fireproof – and its Connection to COUPLE COMMUNICATION

Many of you COUPLE COMMUNICATION (CC) Instructors have no doubt become aware of Fireproof, a movie that quickly engages the viewer as it demonstrates the values of committing to and working to save a marriage. Dr. Henry Virkler, a long-time Certified CC Instructor and currently Professor of Psychology at Palm Beach Atlantic University, has written an “opinion piece” about the film. While Henry originally directed his ideas to his students, we believe the lessons he takes from the film extend to any who teach and serve couples.

Fireproof: What Is the Next Step?

In recent years there have been various movies that have encouraged couples to strengthen their marriages rather than file for divorce.

The Story of Us (1999) was a powerfully acted movie starring Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer as husband and wife (Ben and Katie Jordan) who have spent 15 years together, have two children, but who separate for the summer while their children are at summer camp. They try to get back together a couple times, but both times get into shouting matches and eventually Katie, the wife, decides there’s no hope for the marriage.

In the last five minutes of the movie Katie engages in a powerful soliloquy in which she reviews the history of their family and decides, despite the problems she and Ben have, that they have too rich a history as a family to let that all go, and recommits herself to the marriage.

Fireproof (2008) is a gripping story of a younger couple (Caleb Holt, the fire chief in Albany, Georgia, and his wife Katherine, who is the public relations director at the local hospital) who have become totally alienated from each other and are on the verge of divorce. Caleb’s father shares with him that he and his mother were also on the verge of divorce but have now renewed their marriage and asks Caleb to commit to reading through a journal (the Love Dare) and for 40 days commit to changing the way he treats Katherine. At the midpoint in those 40 days Caleb becomes discouraged that his efforts are having no effect. His father encourages him to invite God into his life, and let God enable him to love Katherine with a deeper love than he can do through self-effort. He does this and it changes his life dramatically, but Katherine (who is being wooed by a doctor at the hospital) remains sullen and angry throughout the entire 40 days. Only at the very end of the movie does she realize that Caleb has really changed and does she become willing to recommit to her marriage.

From a Christian counseling standpoint there are many things to affirm in these movies. Both encourage viewers to commit to making their marriages work. Fireproof includes the added dimension that having God in our lives has the potential to transform who we are and give us an ability to see our partner and love him or her in a way that we could not do on our own. It also includes the behavioral dimension of being willing to practice (incrementally over time) stopping the harmful behaviors we have been engaging in over time and replacing those behaviors with loving ones.

However, I believe, from a mental health perspective, that there is another component that these couples need to have a healthy marriage. Let me draw an analogy from Cognitive Problem-Solving and Skills Training (PSST), an empirically substantiated approach to helping children and teens who have difficulty getting along with peers and adults. PSST theorizes that these children have problems getting along for two primary reasons: (1) they misinterpret the behavior of others (e.g., often believing others are being offensive when they are not and as a result become angry unnecessarily), and (2) they don’t know how to be assertive, so instead act out aggressively. PSST teaches children and teens how to “check out” their interpretations in order to reduce unnecessary anger, and then teaches them how to respond assertively rather than aggressively.

In watching The Story of Us and Fireproof, one can see the same two skill deficits—both couples frequently misinterpret something their spouse says (often something that was completely innocent), and then they quickly move to a heated battle of words because they don’t know how to communicate and resolve problems assertively rather than becoming aggressive.

This is the component that I believe both movies are missing. It certainly is important that couples have a foundation of commitment to their marriage when they face challenges and difficult times in their marriage. It also is important for couples to have God in their lives, providing the potential to love their spouse in ways they could not in their own strength. Likewise, it is important that couples be committed to acting lovingly and refrain from acting unlovingly each day. However, unless they also learn the skills of “checking out” their interpretations and learning to communicate and resolve conflicts in healthy ways, I believe most marriages will end up accumulating a growing number of unresolved hurts and issues.

Therefore, I think it is important for churches and counselors to be able to provide these kinds of skills training for the couples they serve. There are multiple skills training packages out there: one that has some of the strongest empirical validation is COUPLE COMMUNICATION. It can easily be integrated into church programs or marital counseling.

So if you work with married couples and are involved in a church, I encourage you to train couples in these skills. For young couples who have not developed significant problems, this often can be done in a marriage education or enrichment group format (either in a private practice setting or as an elective in a church setting). For couples who have developed serious problems, helping them learn these skills by working with them one couple at a time may be more appropriate.

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Some of you CC Instructors, who also teach the CORE COMMUNICATION Program for individuals, will recognize that Dr. Henry Virkler is the author of the “Theory” chapter in the CORE Instructor Manual. In that chapter, he discusses the Awareness Wheel as it relates to historical and contemporary psychological theories and the Listening Cycle to counseling theories.

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