What do you do when two people have a love for each other but have lost the ability to be in love with each other?
It’s very common for couples to lose connection and not know why.
In today’s post, I’m going to show you what I’m seeing and what the solution is.
As you read below you will see some hidden forces that are stopping couples connect, the subconscious mind is very powerful and can with the best of intentions kill the very thing they want to keep.
So people in relationships can develop behaviours they are not even aware of.
So when I see this problem the first step is to help each person individually understand how their minds are blocking their feelings.
The mission is to discover what is stopping each person’s ability to fully invest in the marriage.
What I typically discover are two fundamental problems.
Their inability to invest is tied to their lack of understanding of their partner and this means they are attaching the wrong meanings to their partners’ behaviours – this is one place to start looking.
The other challenge is the wrong meanings will disable their ability to be themselves in their relationship which will also cause them to suffer.
Not being able to be themselves is another place to explore.
For many, the relationship can create a reinforcing energy that connects them directly to old emotional patterns and that can help them live in the wrong identity within the marriage.
Many people suffer from identity shifting.
The subconscious mind will see a problem and will shift them to live in the decisions they made many years before, many will connect to a time long before the marriage.
This will dramatically change how they show up in the marriage.
They simply won’t feel like they can be themselves, and many will feel very lost and this is a problem.
As you can see if this is happening at a subconscious level how will the couple ever get to it to solve it?
I’ve seen men lose confidence, some ending up walking on eggshells around their wives.
I’ve seen women become overly masculine/aggressive as she loses connection from herself.
She will stop feeling motivated to connect to him emotionally as it will not feel safe to do so.
He may no longer want to talk because there is no point.
The casualty for many of these couples is their sexual connection can become mechanical and for some non-existent.
This unhappy state can build problems where each person can become quick-tempered or harsh with each other as life isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
No matter how much the couples talk to each other about the problem as they see it, the talking will never solve this problem.
In fact many will find talking about this problem actually makes it worse.
It’s why I have so many people do the usual rounds of talk therapy without any luck.
Talking the problem out will never bring the breakthrough the couple need, education is required to understand the solution.
I’ll show you what I mean.
In some cases, people are protecting themselves not just from what their partner has done, but from unpleasant life experiences long before the marriage even existed.
This will mean they are today living in the wrong version of themselves within the marriage.
This identity-shifting problem is very common and very few people are aware it’s happening to them.
You see old outdated emotional patterns can be designed by undeveloped minds and the person running the pattern can be unaware they are running that pattern as an adult.
Can you now see it too? No conversation with a partner doing this will help, in fact, it will only send them deeper into their outdated pattern.
Patterns that are designed to protect the person do not want to be discovered, so they stay on red alert helping the person avoid feelings that will lead to any kind of vulnerability.
It’s why when you get close to a persons truth in this space, they are likely to respond aggressively.
I remember testing this with this lady, I helped her get close to her truth and she naturally became aggressive with me, as I smiled at her to break her pattern she became very uncomfortable as the pattern within her knew I could see it.
At a conscious level, she was embarrassed and apologised, but it wasn’t her fault.
What I have to do is help them see this outdated pattern whilst supporting their partner to create a safe environment for them, so they feel safe to grow out of this pattern.
This process allows the person to understand themselves differently and understand that this pattern is designed for protection, but for a very different time and life condition.
That means the protection it was designed for would no longer work today and could actually hurt all those people that person loves.
So a significant part of what I have to achieve is to help each person learn the identity they must live in to be of value to themselves and the relationship they want.
When people do this consciously they become the observers of their own behaviours and they will see the old destructive patterns appear.
Now seeing them they can make a choice that wasn’t there before and this enables them to repattern their emotional system.
They are now both freeing themselves to be themselves and they can swap their self-protection for love and compassion.
Now they are being themselves.
This is critical for each person to reinvest in a healthy way.
When safe investment happens authentic feelings can return.
This simple yet powerful process is why many people tell me that sex used to be a chore now they feel free to use sex to gain a deeper connection.
They stop making the relationship about them.
Some tell me that they used to look forward to their partner going away, now they miss them when they do.
Some tell me they now get excited to talk about their relationship now they understand it, whereas before they both retreated when problems strike.
The mission with all the couples is to help them build an ability to trust themselves to bring out the best in themselves and each other.
A couple who live in this space is no longer fearful of when things go wrong because now they know what to do.
Now they are a team where a far more exciting energy can now flow.
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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