Crystal and Pierre Dunn are our DOZ Show Preferred Guest for this issue of DOZ Magazine. The couple met as teenagers, and in September 2000, at 21 and 20 years old, they were married. Their family was made complete with the arrival of their daughters, and though they had several challenges being married young and having their first child so early in their marriage, they were a team. They conquered their problems together.
However, after 13 years of marriage, infidelity was committed, and Crystal and Pierre divorced. Although it wasn’t easy, for the sake of their girls, they remained connected. They began seeking God together as parents, and that’s when God began to heal their relationship. On April 8th, 2018, after being divorced for nearly six years, everything changed. Pierre got on one knee in front of their church family and asked Crystal if she would take him back as her husband. On June 2nd, 2018, they once again became Mr. and Mrs. Dunn and began the ministry Better2Gether.
Read and be inspired to fight for love, as Crystal and Pierre share with us their fantastic love story.
You both divorced about seven years ago as a result of infidelity, and now you are remarried after being divorced about six years. Please take us on that journey, so we understand how and why you divorced.
Crystal: So, Pierre and I had been married for about eleven years, and I found out that Pierre had had a relationship with another woman, and it kind of spiralled down from there. I thought I forgave him, I thought I was over it, but as time progressed, I realised that I wasn’t. And I didn’t get divorced from Pierre because I didn’t love him, I got divorced for one reason, I thought that it would make the pain stop or it would make my expectation of marriage stop. And I didn’t want to be married to someone that I thought could do that again. I couldn’t overcome the infidelity while we were married. It was one thing to say that I forgave Pierre, but it was another thing for him to come home and look in my eyes and know I haven’t forgiven him or the day to day harassment, asking questions, where have you been? Who was that on the phone? Or looking over his shoulders when he’s texting. It was just draining, and that’s not how I wanted to spend the rest of my marriage – playing an investigator. And so that led to me filing for divorce, I left and moved in with my mother with our two daughters. I moved us out, and we moved in with my mother and started preparing to be divorced. I didn’t know what that journey would look like; we were separated about a year before our divorce was final. I couldn’t handle the infidelity. When you’re married, and as long as you feel you’re on the same team, you can face adversity, and some of the things that we went through in our marriage, but once you stop feeling like you’re on the same team it is very difficult to recover from that.
Pierre, while all of this was going on, did you try to do anything to reassure her or to hold on to the marriage or make it work?
Well, at that point, the scrutiny, at times, was a bit overwhelming. Did I want a divorce? The short answer is no. I did not want her to divorce or leave; we have two daughters so that part was hard. But at the same time, you could tell that she was in a place where she couldn’t get past what had happened. So, I guess the short answer is, no don’t leave, but at the same time we both didn’t want to keep going through the agony of our marriage being broken. And it was a lot of pride in me; I was in a place where I did not want to negotiate emotionally, it was, hey, I’m sorry and get over it, at that time. It was a very immature place as far as dealing with her emotions.
Pierre, at what point did you decide that you wanted your marriage back and what happened to bring you to that place? And what made you think Crystal would be willing to marry you again?
Okay. So, the point where I wanted my marriage back – it was in the fifth year after the divorce I started asking God, hey I have been divorced five years, and I want to be married, and He gave me a few dreams of Crystal and me getting married again and I’m putting a ring on her finger, and I’m like, no Lord we’ve done that. And every so often He would remind me, and I would just try to keep living my life. But I guess the second part of that question; I did not know that she would say yes, she had no idea that I was going to ask her to remarry me and to be fair I didn’t know that I was going to do it in that manner. I had made up my mind that I was going to ask God first, and I did not know when, and I did not know where, it was just when it was time, it was time. So, it was as much a surprise for me as it was for everyone else that Sunday morning when I stood in front of the church and asked her to marry me again. The night before, it was really heavy on me, and I think we had done a family thing with the girls, and we hung out with them; they wanted us all to hang out. And it was just heavy on me, and I had text my pastor and my pastor, he was really excited because he had been in our lives for quite some time, and he said, hey we could do it this way, but I told him I wanted to do something very discreet and very inclusive, and that was the night before, and no one else knows that. So, the next morning, his wife turned around and asked me to give my testimony – just to give a testimony, you know, the things I’ve been through in life. So I went up there, and I started giving my testimony, and I could hear God saying, now, is the time, and I was up there struggling with that voice in my head and I’m like well, I don’t think now is the time, crystal don’t even know I’m about to do this, there’s no type of briefing on either side, maybe a pre-warning, this is not how to do it. We have a church of over five hundred people, and I’d become very uncomfortable. And I heard it again, now, is the time, and that was in my ear, and so I prayed to God. Now, I’m giving my testimony, and I’m all the way caught up to the present day in my testimony and I said I’ve been praying to God to be married and to get my family back and I asked Crystal to come up in front of everybody and not knowing, not having a clue, she could have said no right in front of everybody. So, I was vulnerable, exposed, everybody was watching like, what’s going to happen next? And I got down on one knee, and you could hear a pin drop. And I asked her would she do it all over again, with no ring, I didn’t have a ring, I was not prepared, and she said yes.
Crystal, what was going through your mind when Pierre knelt in front of the entire church and asked if you would take him back? And were you ready at this time to take him back? If so, what had brought you to that place of readiness?
Okay, so let me back up. On April the 8th that Sunday of 2018, I was ushering people to their seats and serving like I would normally do and when Pierre went up to testify. Our Sunday morning services are pretty much structured, we might not have a time frame on certain things, but it’s structured, and this particular Sunday morning they had decided that we were going to add cameras and we were going to record, just different than how I was used to us doing things, so it already felt kind of different that day. Pierre was not the only person to testify that day, he was one of three, but we tend to remember the third because that’s the one that affected me the most. As Pierre went up to testify there was already some emotion there because, at this point, I may not have been in love with him, but I still loved him, this was still my brother in Christ, as the church world would say. So, I did care about him and I knew that he had gone through some stuff so to see him go up to testify and not just testify, but prior to the divorce and separation – my husband’s a preacher, he’s a minster – and it had been a long time since I had seen him up front as well as our daughters as well as our church family. So, if I could paint the picture, our church family means a lot to us, and they were there for the marriage and the divorce. So, he’s testifying, and I’m pretty sure there are different emotions in the sanctuary, but he’s testifying, and you just see God is working on him, and while he’s testifying, his sister was working with me that day on ushering, and I told her, something feels different, something is happening. Because I felt like God was doing open-heart surgery on me and by the time Pierre got through testifying, and he would call my name up there, it was like God had just said, okay, that’s enough you can move forward now. And you have to understand my personality; I’m not doing nothing I don’t want to do. So just because I’m being asked or called up in front of however many people were there that morning, it didn’t guarantee a yes. And not that long before that Sunday I had expressed to Pierre, you know I’m not in love with you anymore. And so, I know that God allowed that time to be there and when He said enough is enough, He had us both. I was just as shocked to say yes as our church and Pierre was. If you see our video, when he asked me if I would do it all over again, the church went silent, and it’s so funny because we have interpreters in our church for the Hispanic population that attend our church and they say that they just went silent and those they interpret for were like what’s happening? And so when I said, yes, it was like – we sing a song in our church, He won again, and it wasn’t just a win for Pierre and me, it felt like it was a win for us, our kids and the entire church. And so, you can’t play a miracle, and that’s what I have to equate that one because that was not one that was scripted, planned, or in the book, it was truly God. And even saying yes, I had to go home and let that sink in, I went to church single, and I’m leaving engaged to a man that I’ve already married before.
You now run a ministry called Better2Gether; please tell us what experiences from the time you were first married and the time you were divorced helped you reach this conclusion that you are better together or that married couples are better together? And would you please tell us how this vision was birth?
Crystal: I think, the Better2Gether part, first of all, when you are used to being married, again we were married for twelve years, you are used to that companionship, you are used to that relationship, you’re used to doing what married folks do. So, when you have six years of missing that true companionship and missing that intimacy, you’ve got a lot of time to think and weigh things out. So, once we initially got engaged again, we were out shopping, and I had done volunteer work for an event here in our city, and the volunteer shirt I had on was Better2Gether, and we stopped and took a picture, and I posted it, and it kind of took off from there. I think I tagged the picture Better2Getter2.0 and the way the community – our friends, our family – embraced it, even before we got married, we started getting inboxes or calls or text messages, hey can we talk to y’all? Will you talk to me? My marriage is going through this, or I’m thinking of getting married, can we just sit down and talk? So, I think ministry started for us even before we got married just because the engagement itself represented a type of forgiveness and hope. And from there it’s just kind of taken its own identity.
Pierre: And I think for me, the Better2Gether ministry has been important for friends of ours that share what’s going on, the good and the bad. Every marriage has its turbulence, and so it’s important that they have somebody that’s been through some things, has some experiences, and they’re able to share with that person, with that group. And it’s quite a show of trust when they talk to us about their issues because they know that we have been through the worst; the good, the bad, the ugly, all the way to divorce and mend it back together. So they trust that we will give sound advice, and a lot of it is forgiveness, respect, gratitude; that’s huge to me that you do not take another person sharing their life with you for granted, and that is better or for worse. Keep in mind that this might be a bad time or season in their life that they need to get through, and they’re going to need companionship, a praying partner, a sound mind, to get through this time in their life. So, if they’re willing to humble themselves and not take a selfish moment or what about me moment? Those are very easy to get into in marriage; I am a witness to that. And you’ll lose that other person every time you take that on; marriage is not to be selfish.
Crystal: Pierre mentioned gratitude, appreciation, and what I realised that I lacked in our first marriage was appreciation. I had a lot of expectation, but I didn’t have appreciation, and an example of that would be, yes I expect my husband to go to work, I expect him to come home, I expect him to take out the trash, or I expected him to be a husband. But did I ever show him or tell him that I appreciated that? I can’t say that I did that. And since we’ve gotten back together, one of the things we tell people is you’ve got to have appreciation, not just expectation. You’ve got to communicate differently, and I think that is one of the things; I appreciate marriage, I respect marriage, and I appreciate my husband in a way that I was too immature to do or didn’t realise I wasn’t showing appreciation. Our story is about marriage, but the bigger picture is about forgiveness, that’s what we try to promote. Better2Gether came about because of our remarriage, but the bigger picture is forgiveness, and that’s something we try to push through when we talk to anybody, married, single, or just different scenarios. We went through a lot; we’ve had job losses, we’ve lost homes, we’ve lost cars. Yes, appreciation versus expectation is huge.
Thank you for talking with us Crystal and Pierre, how can our people contact you to know more about what you do?
Crystal: They can follow us on Instagram. We’re better2gether.us on Instagram, and in our bio, it lists our YouTube page, and it lists our Facebook page, as well as videos. It’s all on our Instagram page, and that’s better2gether.us
