This man was in the depths of sadness; his marriage was over, but he didn’t want it to be.
They had seen numerous counsellors who had all concluded the marriage was indeed over.
He had lost all feelings for his wife.
Due to being so stuck for so long, he had started an affair.
But even though that affair ended, he couldn’t shake the feelings the affair had created.
His memory of his marriage was not good at all.
He had historical love for his wife, but he was not actively in love with her.
The feelings the affair gave him were compounding his inability to take part in the marriage.
He knew how good he could feel and hadn’t felt that for years in his marriage.
Everything was pointing to the fact the counsellors were right.
So he stayed away from her; he felt irritated by his wife and yet couldn’t leave her either.
I see this type of challenge a lot – a person has lost their feelings and feels getting them back is impossible.
He came to me alone, wanting to see what was possible.
As I looked into their dynamic, I noticed something very interesting that became the tipping point that enabled him to see his relationship with his wife differently.
When they met, they were attracted to each other due to a distorted dynamic – this is critical to understand.
In other words, their fear-driven needs had found a home with each other.
It was like the perfect storm.
She liked being in control, and he found this attractive.
He liked her taking control, leading the relationship and making decisions.
What he didn’t know was she only liked being in control because she feared being vulnerable.
He was happy for her to lead; his father had done the same with his mother, so for him, it was normal.
So they liked their dynamic unaware they were sitting on a time bomb.
As the years progressed, he started his own business and became more confident.
He became a leader and a contributor, and a decision-maker, so he is no longer passive.
In contrast, she had become a mum and was becoming more reliant on him.
Their emotional roles were reversed.
She was becoming vulnerable, and this created fear in her – she needed him.
He saw this fear and lack of confidence in her as her becoming needy, and it didn’t fit his attractiveness model.
So he emotionally moved away, which made things worse as it compounded her neediness.
The gap grew so big he started an affair with one of his employees.
When the affair finished, he felt totally lost.
He didn’t want to leave his wife but couldn’t find a way back and was left addicted to the feelings the affair gave him.
He asked me whether it is possible to fall back in love with his wife.
He said, “I have a lovely family. My wife knows about the affair, and she wants me to stay. It’s far more than I deserve.”
“I just don’t know how to meet this generosity in her” – he was so lost he started to cry.
What came next was a process to help him understand what had happened and why.
I started here.
“Firstly, when you first met, you were attracted to your wife because you played a more feminine role.
Your feminine energy was attracted to her masculine energy.
The problem is her masculine energy was only there because she was stuck in it from childhood.
This role she played was not reflective of her true nature.
She learned at a young age she had to become her own protector.
She felt no one could be trusted to do that but her.
So she felt at home in her masculine energy not because it was good, it was simply a familiar home/identity.
Through pregnancy and life challenges, she became vulnerable, her worst nightmare.
She changed into a more vulnerable feminine energy and felt destabilised here.
You coded this as unattractive.
BUT… what you had not noticed is you had changed too, and you liked the change in you.
Your strength and confidence are something you liked in your business.
But you’re not applying this at home because this is not in your mind the attraction dynamic.
Your attraction dynamic says you must be feminine at home, but it didn’t now feel good, so you felt bad and attached that feeling to her.
You attracted your affair partner through your strength and confidence to lead.
So now he could now see why he stopped finding his wife attractive.
This made total sense to him.
Now we had to overcome two big problems to make the marriage work.
- His addiction to the emotions the affair gave him and reigniting his love for his wife.
I helped him reduce his feelings for the affair partner by helping him understand how that addiction was built.
He learnt his feeling were nothing to do with her and had everything to do with him. - I then helped him rebuild his emotional system in regard to his wife by reactivating the future.
People who live in troubled relationships usually lose connection with the future, so they have nothing to step towards – no growth.
No growth for a human is emotional death.
It took about eight weeks to undo what wasn’t working and rebuild what reflected the truth of their relationship.
Today he is back in love with his wife, he is an active protector of her, and he is designing and excited about their future together.
He has become a powerful role model for his children, and his wife is now safe to be vulnerable with him.
A series of massive breakthroughs have led him to avoid a life-changing mistake.
There were many life-changing strategies that took place to help him out of his place of hopelessness, that culminated in him becoming as powerful at home as he was at work.
He told me he was so thankful he didn’t give up.
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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