Saving your marriage can feel like more than saving the relationship between two people – it can feel like saving a life.
Your entire world is wrapped up in your relationship. What you eat, the bed you share, where you live, your friends, children, home, hobbies – your husband has a hand to play in all of these. He shapes every aspect of your life big and small.
I know it can feel like you’re in the midst of an apocalypse and that your world is under attack. Even though it’s tough to see, there is a way forward. As evidenced by Angie, Monique, and Loree– women who have been in your position – there is a way out of the doom and gloom that you’re experiencing right now. These women have been able to create amazing shifts in their marriages.
The issue is finding a viable way forward.
I’m fascinated by the differences between women that save their marriages and those that don’t. The chief difference is that successful women are willing to take the steps needed to create shifts from within. Instead of idly waiting around for their husband to take a more active role in creating change, successful women act as the catalyst.
You can’t control how your manager treats you, if you get cut off while driving, or if it’ll rain on your picnic. What you can control is how you interact with the external world. You can’t snap your fingers and make your husband change – you can’t change him.
But you can change yourself.
There are three ways to create meaningful internal shifts that fastrack your marriage towards being saved.
Have you ever gone surfing before?
One of the first pieces of advice they’ll give you is to get your head up and look to see where you want to go. If you look at your feet or your board worried that you’ll fall, you will.
Instead, you have to focus on where you want to. Naturally, your body will follow.
I too thought this was a load of half-baked bull until I actually gave it a try.
This exact tactic applies to saving a marriage. To get what you want, don’t focus on the negatives, but rather on what you want from your relationship. Invest your time in cultivating what you desire most instead of worrying about the negatives of your relationship.
Focusing on the negative leads to dwelling. Focusing on the positives or on what you want leads to solutions. Nothing good every comes from brooding about something bad that happened to you. What if instead of focusing on the negative after it happens we create a pathway towards making sure that doesn’t happen again?
There is power in positivity and focusing on what you want most from a relationship.
Realize that you’re magnetic. However, you can choose what you want to attract.
You just may need to put your ego to the side when choosing what you want to attract.
Any marriage counselor will tell you that the foundation of any good marriage is honesty and communication.
Whenever something feels off you want the ability to sit down and get down to the bottom of it with your partner. The ability to communicate openly and honestly is an indicator of the success of a marriage.
But it doesn’t matter how you and your partner have communicated in the past, what matters is how you communicate now.
Figure out why your husband is discontent by sitting down and talking to him. If you don’t want to dramatize the chat, simply start by asking him about his day. If communication isn’t your strong suit you may want to ease into an emotional conversation.
Listen to what his says.
Your job right now isn’t to yell at him or question in a combative way why he feels the way he does. Your job is to simply put yourself in his shoes and listen.
Perhaps he’ll list out a number of reasons why he’s unhappy in the relationship, or maybe he’ll struggle.
It can be puzzling why men want the relationship to end even when all seems to be going well.
Psychotherapist Esther Perel has written in length about why men in happy relationships stray.
Happy in the relationship or otherwise what is certain is that there is a deficiency in his life. One that he’s seeking to address outside of the relationship.
You can’t immediately fix the issue at hand so don’t try.
The next step is to take ownership of both how he feels and the future of the relationship. Maybe you had a hand to play in how he feels about the relationship and maybe you didn’t.
What’s important now isn’t the role you played but the role you’ll play in addressing the situation.
Think about how you can do better as a partner. Find deficiencies and address them.
And look, I know.
It may feel like it’s his fault, and you know what, it might be.
But you can’t control him. You can’t scream at him and convince him that he needs to change. If only it was this simple.
Instead, you need to put your ego aside and tackle the only thing you can really take care of which are your actions and behavior.
To be clear, detaching doesn’t mean that you don’t care. It doesn’t mean turning away from the relationship.
What detaching from the outcome means is being okay if the marriage works out and being okay if it doesn’t.
By moving away from the tunnel vision we all get when we really want something to go our way we’re able to invest in other areas of our lives that need attention.
Tunnel vision will lead to smothering and anxiety. You can’t try to repair and save your marriage 24/7. You need to focus on other things you have going on as well.
Work on who you are, spend more time with family and friends, write that book, go to yoga, and realize that your life is so much more than this one relationship. You define what your life is and how you want to live it. Your life doesn’t orbit around a single relationship. If it feels that way it’s because you’ve allowed your life to do so recently, but you can change that.
You’re more able to adapt and change than you give yourself credit for.
But realizing our ability to transform can be difficult. Sometimes we need a little help.
I’ve helped hundreds of women just like you.
They want to save their marriage but don’t know how. They want to grow, heal, and create a better tomorrow but it’s difficult to see a brighter future when the world around you is up in flames.
Let’s extinguish that feeling right now.
I have a concrete plan developed through the years to help women such as yourself save their marriages. How do you know it works? Just ask the women that have come before you.
The Authentic Relationship System that I’ve developed will help you understand male psychology and help you heal from within.
But it’s so much more than a program. We’ve created a caring an supportive community of women just like you. They know what each other is going through and as such provide loving and empathetic support when you need it most.
Let’s talk privately about your marriage and how we can go about saving it when you book a 1-on-1 call.