Stephen Hedger

Crisis Marriage Advisor | Harley Street London

Many years ago in my 20’s I was told the story of “The Boiled frog”.

If a frog was put into a pan of cold water and that pan was brought to the boil the frog would just sit in the pan and slowly die. But if you dropped the frog into the boiling water it would jump out immediately rejecting this hostile environment.

[This of course is a metaphor for life, so please don’t do this!]

This story had a profound effect on me. It got me thinking am I a boiled frog? Is my life slowly killing me? Am I staying in a life that doesn’t work, or make me happy?

So as you have been reading this when you consider your relationship and life, are you putting up with an environment/life/relationship that you would have easily rejected years before?

If you knew your life was going to be this way, would you have still made those decisions or would you have chosen differently.

Many people just like the boiled frog change themselves over time to adapt to their environment and put up with a hostile environment because it’s becomes’ their home. So they are in a strange place, they love ‘home’ (the life they know), but ‘home’ causes them pain.

This can be those on the receiving end of, one example: controlling partners. In essence if you have had to change YOU negatively to stay in your life/relationship then you are a boiled frog.

Many couples that come to see me have changed their behaviours for example: to protect their relationship from failure. A woman may not be honest about how she feels in her relationship because if she is, he might leave her. So she lives in fear emotionally she is dying inside.

Or the man that’s lost his masculinity in his quest to please his partner and she controls him because she knows she has the power.

You see many people stay in lives that really don’t work for them, their intention is great but the result is personally damaging. What’s important to know is it doesn’t have to be this way.

For you to be happy you have to be true to you, you have to be honest and authentic.

Start today, are you being honest with you about your life and relationship?

Have you become a boiled frog? If so what are you going to do about it?

  • If this is you please contact us for help today!
Stephen Hedger
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