How many people feel real physical and emotional pain through their relationship and use that message to leave their marriage?
Naturally, it makes total sense for anyone to leave a relationship that’s full of pain.
So if it keeps being painful then obviously the relationship is the problem so leaving it will stop the pain – right?
Well, I helped this lady learn that she would be safer if she took a deeper look.
She came to me because she was suffering in her marriage. She was crystal clear her marriage was wrong for her and she wanted out.
I could see that her husband had struggled to understand her but to be honest I haven’t met a man yet who really understands his wife.
As we dug deeper into the marriage I could see they had natural problems, but her pain was very deep and very real.
I spent some time with her on her own because I could feel she was very lost and didn’t know who she was anymore.
I wrote the word “freedom” on the whiteboard.
She burst into tears.
“That’s it, that’s what I want”
I told her I agreed but I felt that her real answer sat in her ability to be FREE to be her true self with her husband.
The question that would lead her to safety was: why could she not do this with her own husband?
This is a very common problem, people can lose a sense of who they are for many different reasons, feel terrible about themselves and then blame the marriage.
We had to help her rediscover her true self whilst she was with her husband to give her an authentic answer.
He learnt with me how to create an emotionally safe place for her at home whilst I worked with her.
We learnt that her mother had given her a powerful message. You can only rely on yourself and never give all of yourself to a man.
So essentially she lived in her marriage waiting for an axe to fall.
Her mothers’ unfortunate message had disabled her. She didn’t feel safe to be a wife and a lover at home and so she made being a MUM her primary identity.
As a naturally loving person, this protection pattern was making her suffer because she didn’t feel safe to give love to her husband.
This understanding was the foundation of her breakthrough.
- She learnt she could be herself with her husband.
- She learnt that she was the creator of her own feelings
- She learnt that with some guidance her husband did love her but he needed some support too.
I’m passionate about helping couples that want to learn how to really understand the problems they are in and give them the new understandings and tools to navigate a passionate and successful life together.
The key to solving a couple’s problems is to help them see where the real problem sits. If this woman had left her husband she would found another man to fall in love with and run the same destructive pattern with him.