When working with couples in crisis you are going to see a lot of distorted behaviours and after nearly 20 years of doing this, I have seen and heard pretty much everything.
People do and say awful things to each other and it’s my job to find out why.
When I first started this job of helping people fall back in love I expected the normal problems but on top of that I saw volumes of open relationships, people using private investigators and escorts, I saw people in multiple affairs and that’s the tip of the iceberg.
One gentleman came to me full of stress and guilt he had a wife who was convinced he was having an affair but had no proof, he was a businessman who had to travel for business.
It’s was normal for him to be away a lot, what she was not aware of he was actually having four affairs.
He had one affair in New York and this lady didn’t know he was married and didn’t know about the other affairs.
He had one affair in Scotland and she did know about an affair in LA but not about the wife or the one in New York or Kent.
The one in LA did know about the one in New York, but nothing else.
The one in Kent thought he was going to propose and was oblivious to any other women, all she knew was he was a very busy successful businessman who loved her.
He came on his own to see me and said I’m in a mess can you help?
I’ve seen so much that I’m rarely surprised.
“The problem is you are too fat!”
So when a man tells his wife in a session she is too fat, I know he is not aware of what the real problem is.
It’s like the couples that argue about who does what in the home, that conflict is rarely about who does what.
People are having feelings and are attaching those feelings to what their minds are educated to create, but they can’t see all the moving parts so their assumptions are rarely accurate.
Sadly many believe their own stories and it takes them to the edge sadly some tip over.
So a couple in conflict over domestic chores is highly likely to already be an emotionally disconnected couple where resentment is going to be a big part of their emotional model.
People who are “in love” and “resentment free” are more accepting of each other’s traits/differences especially if the pleasure is high and the resentments are low, people in love pick up the slack and help each other.
They are a team.
Resentful people don’t generally want to do that, they stop looking for what they can do to help and start demanding what their partner needs to do to help them.
This is the perfect conflict and bickering model.
So a person in love may roll their eyes and playfully say “…you are so messy as they kiss them on the cheek…” to that person it’s not a big deal they feel good because they feel connected who cares about a bit of mess?
Let’s take a step back to understand
A person on their death bed never says I wish you had been a tidy person. At that point that stuff is irrelevant, what they might regret is not having the courage to love freely and love passionately enough.
The problem is the resentment, if the resentment is high then the thinking can be naturally negative; “look at how much I do for you and what do you do to help?”
Unhappy resentful people can points score and pick at their partner for not doing things their way it’s why the person starts to bring in their rules.
So what they have really lost is the energy needed to keep their connection and attraction alive, without that energy the relationship can feel strained and people start to search for what is wrong.
People start to control when the connection changes or dies.
He told her she was too fat
So the man that tells his partner in a session she is too fat has also lost this energy with her, he is feeling something is wrong so he concludes it’s how she looks.
So either he never loved her, doesn’t know how to love another person, or he just lost critical energy with her.
Looking at those three options it’s critical to discover the truth.
You see we all have a physical preference when we think about what our perfect partner is like especially when we are in our younger years.
But when we meet our partners they will either fit that model or not, either way, we build a love for them because we are attracted to them.
As the years progress what we all look like naturally changes.
So the love we experience isn’t attached to how they look, it’s attached to the energy the couple creates and keeps alive and it’s either an attractive energy or it’s not.
A couple that doesn’t know what they are doing will feel this energy at the start and then kill this energy over time.
Attractive people become very unattractive if the energy isn’t right.
If the energy is not attractive one person is going to be looking for what’s wrong and when they do that they will find something that makes sense to them and make that true.
Keeping the pleasure high and the resentments low is a critical skill to master, but it is the one most couples fall foul of.
In fact, when resentment starts to build many start a process that is guaranteed to kill their sex life, they would be mortified if they knew.
They don’t know how to read each other correctly so they judge and so their resentment builds too high and that kills their attraction.
Now the snowball effect is in motion and many couples are doing this.
All these couples needed to be assessed so they could see the real problem.
The problem has to be understood before a plan to help them can be created.
Harley Street Expert | Founder & High Performance Coach
With two decades of experience helping couples out of crisis, Stephen the founder of The Marriage Breakthrough Program, uses his proven system for rescuing and rebuilding relationships on the edge of divorce. A trusted advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders globally, his work blends emotional intelligence with strategic clarity. Known for navigating highly complex relationship challenges, Stephen helps individuals and couples find clarity and direction when everything is at stake.
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