For her, it was a miracle. Six months earlier, her husband told her he needed to leave her. She and their daughters were totally devastated at his decision.
Six months later they are back together!
For her it was a miracle and I can totally understand why she sees it that way.
When they both came to see me from his perspective the marriage was over and he had to go.
From her perspective of powerless panic, I knew she felt the situation was hopeless.
She had one hope in her mind, I would somehow magically stop him leaving and fix their marriage.
I rarely agree with separation but in this case, I knew if he didn’t leave the marriage they would never get the chance they needed to discover their truth.
I had one request – he leaves but carries on seeing me on his own, he agreed.
What she sees today as a miracle I simply see as good strategy.
When a couple comes to see me I’m looking at the most effective way to help that couple discover the truth about where they are and what is really possible for them.
I don’t fix them; I educate them to understand their emotions, their relationship, their history and what’s possible.
I piece it together in such a way the couple can safely find a way back to each other if that’s the right outcome for them.
Every situation and every couple is different but if the couple follow my instructions it helps them effectively navigate a very difficult time, one they would make worse without the right strategy.
Relationships are complex at the best of times, but the moment the couple starts to disconnect their behaviours can start to confirm some distortions.
One distortion is couples can wrongly attach their pain and suffering to the wrong things and end up making life-changing decisions that can negatively affect the rest of their lives.
Imagine leaving a marriage and a family only to discover the problems the person escaped from is happening all over again in the next relationship.
My advice is don’t blindly try and fix your broken marriage, you don’t want to wallpaper over the cracks.
You see if you know what you have to do to create more love, connection and passion.
You know how to keep your attraction alive, you know how to define your purpose of being together and you can plan for excitement then you are both in charge of your destiny.
If you cannot influence these critical moving parts, the relationship is always out of control and vulnerable to more challenges in the future.
This is why it’s critical to find out the reason for the disconnect.
Has it’s broken was due to genuine incompatibility or are there hidden distortions that if corrected could reveal the relationship you should have always had?
You see, the objective is to help couples come out of their crisis with the knowledge and tools that make their relationship the best it can be.
Many couples who have arrived in crisis tell me their relationship is now far better than it’s ever been.
Again this simply comes down to effective strategy to get them out of the crisis and tools to put them back in control.
For example, I’m not happy to put two people in a room and get them talking about their problems when neither person has the ability to translate the other persons’ problems.
This is why when two people start sharing their problems with each other, the conversation disintegrates.
So much has to be understood before the couple can effectively interact.
If a couple come to see me with an affair in their marriage and they want to stay together, it’s a totally different strategy to if one person wants to leave.
The key to success is to understand the driving forces within the two people so the person helping them becomes a genuine support for both of them.
When the gentleman told me he had to leave his wife, I helped him see I understood why he felt that way and why he had to go, but I also supported him to learn more about those emotions and what they were attached to.
Though our meetings he discovered the real reason he felt he had to leave her and it wasn’t what he thought.
A new understanding developed in him…
He discovered the reason he felt so bad in the marriage was not about the marriage; he was out of control of his own life.
His misunderstanding of his wifes’ behaviours had compounded the problem. He had no way to influence his own life and his wife.
His lack of knowledge made him powerless and craved freedom in the form of separation.
What he really needed was the freedom to take control of his life and freedom to be the man he wanted to be in his own marriage.
Exactly what his wife always wanted for him. Now they are aligned and can create the future they always should have had.
So not a miracle just an intelligent approach to rebuilding a couple’s connection.