Trigger warning: This is a follow-up to the previous “Presence Without Performance” series and deals with one specific problem from that series that has a much deeper impact on society than most people realize. This is part two of seven.
Part 2 of “Weaponized Peace”
My Marriage and the Lie We Lived
Proverbs 27:6
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.(ESV)
Some marriages are built on love, others on compatibility. Ours—at first—was built on survival.
When Alona and I got married, I was carrying the kind of anger that doesn’t sit quietly in the background. It shows up in your voice, your posture, your reactions. It lives just below the surface, always scanning for the next hit, the next wound, the next betrayal. I was fresh into healing and hadn’t yet learned that survival and peace aren’t the same thing.
My only priority at the time was to not be hurt anymore. And when you’re hurting, everything looks like a threat. It’s hard to tell friend from foe. Every disagreement feels like war. Every word feels like a weapon. And so, I reacted like I had been trained to—quick, decisive, and aggressive.
False Peace Is a Wound Dressed in Silence
Like most couples, we had our arguments early in marriage. But there was a difference. I came in with an aggression threshold far beyond what most people consider normal. I didn’t know how to argue without a fight mindset. The baseline around me growing up was already violent. Fights were fast, brutal, and started over nothing. You handled it now—or you got owned forever. That was the prison mentality I had inherited.
Alona, on the other hand, was quiet, gentle, and far more peace-seeking than I understood at the time. In those early years, she gave in more than she should have—not because I was right, but because she wanted peace. And I told myself that’s what I wanted too.
But the truth is, what we built in those years wasn’t peace. It was compliance dressed up like agreement. A fragile truce that avoided pain but never confronted the real problem: my unresolved trauma and her unspoken fear.
I had told her from the beginning that I expected her to stand up to me, even when I was angry. But I underestimated my own aggression. I underestimated how much damage false peace can do when it silences the one you love most.
Silence Is Not Submission. It’s Suppression.
The wounds we don’t speak about become the cracks in the foundation we build on. And in our case, they did. That kind of false peace—where one person suppresses their voice for the sake of keeping things calm—will always rot the relationship from the inside out. It delays the eruption, but doesn’t prevent it.
Looking back now, I can still see the hesitation in Alona’s eyes when certain topics come up. She doesn’t fear me—not anymore—but she carries the memory of a time when her voice didn’t feel safe. Those years left scars. Silver and ugly against the otherwise beautiful tapestry we’ve woven together. And those scars don’t lie. They tell the truth about what false peace really costs.
The Theology of Intimacy Requires Truth
This isn’t just about marriage—it’s about the spiritual blueprint of love.
1 Corinthians 13:6 says that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”(ESV)
Ephesians 4:15 commands us to “speak the truth in love.”(ESV)
Real peace—God’s peace—cannot exist without truth. Silence that covers pain is not fruit of the Spirit. It’s the echo of the fall. The same shame that made Adam hide still drives us today. And when that shame is reinforced by anger or control, silence becomes the only way to feel safe. But that isn’t healing. That’s captivity.
What Happens When We Start Telling the Truth
We’ve moved past those years. Slowly, painfully, through repentance and growth, we’ve rebuilt something real. Not perfect, but real. We learned to fight for each other instead of against each other. “You are not my enemy” became a mantra that we both repeated ad nauseum. And that started when we stopped pretending we were fine.
When the truth entered the room, so did Jesus.
If you’re reading this and you recognize your relationship in our story—don’t wait. False peace feels like rest, but it’s rot. The sooner the truth is spoken, the sooner real healing can begin.
Next in the Series
Next time, we’re going to take this same lens and apply it to the Church—how silence in the name of unity often becomes a cover for spiritual abuse, manipulation, and fear-based leadership.
If your peace has ever cost you your voice, your healing, or your truth—then it wasn’t peace. And you’re not alone.
The truth isn’t the enemy of peace. The truth is what makes peace possible.
Walking With Christ 
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