Most Couples Are Trying to Fix the Wrong Problem in Their Marriage

Many people have spent years going round in painful circles either on their own or with some kind of external help that is only prolonging their suffering.

So what do you do when you discover that for the duration of your marriage, every time a problem struck, you learnt you were trying to fix the wrong problem?

This is the frustrating reality most couples face as they go through their program steps. They start to see why their problems were never resolved.

You see, without knowing, both people are usually doing their best to be happy with each other. They are doing their best to support the marriage, explain their pain and solve what they believe is going wrong.

But there is so much they cannot see about themselves, their partner and the dynamic they have created together that their best efforts can actually make matters worse without either person meaning to.

The result is, lovely people end up doing hideous things to each other without ever realising.

This is one of the hardest truths for any married person to understand.

They are not necessarily failing because they don’t care.

They are not necessarily failing because they haven’t tried hard enough.

The problem they believe they have

Most couples arrive in crisis with a very clear idea of what is wrong with their marriage – They present a problem that I see is a symptom.

• Some believe their problem is communication.
• Some believe it is a lack of sex or intimacy.
• Some believe their partner is too angry, controlling, selfish or emotionally unavailable.
• Some believe trust has been destroyed.
• Some have experienced an affair.
• Some believe they have simply fallen out of love or become incompatible.
• These problems are real and they can create enormous pain, but they may not explain what is driving them.

You see, there is a significant difference between where a problem becomes visible and what is actually causing it.

A lack of communication can be where the problem appears, but it may not explain why two people can no longer talk safely.

A lack of intimacy can be where the pain appears, but it may not explain the resentment, rejection or fear that has made intimacy impossible.

Anger can be the behaviour both people want to stop, but it may not explain what the person is frightened of, what they are trying to protect or why their emotions have become so intense.

Even an affair, which creates real damage and requires honesty and responsibility, may not explain every driving force that existed inside the person or the marriage before it happened.

Couples can be totally honest about what they are experiencing and still be wrong about what is causing it.

This is why their solutions so often fail.

Imagine discovering a crack in the wall

Imagine discovering a small crack in one of the walls of your home.

It doesn’t look too serious, so you fill it, sand it down and paint over it. The wall looks perfect again and you assume the problem has been solved.

A few months later the crack comes back.

This time it is slightly bigger, so you buy better filler, more expensive paint and make sure the job is done properly.

But six months later the crack is back and now another one has started to appear above the door.

At this point, you can keep repairing what you can see or you can find out why the wall keeps moving.

A structural engineer might discover the wall was never the real problem. Perhaps an old drain has been leaking beneath the house or the ground underneath one corner of the property is slowly moving.

The crack is real.

It needs attention and it may be getting worse.

But the crack is simply the place where a deeper problem has finally become visible.

The crack was not lying. It was accurately showing that the house was under pressure and action is required.

What was wrong was the diagnosis.

If you keep treating the crack as the cause, you can spend years improving the repair while the structure underneath continues to move.

This is exactly what happens in so many marriages.

Couples can spend years repairing the place where their pain becomes visible without ever understanding what is creating the pressure underneath.

Two real-life examples

One couple believed the husband’s stonewalling was destroying their marriage.

Whenever his wife raised a problem, he went quiet, left the room or buried himself in work, which she translated as proof he no longer cared.

The more he withdrew, the harder she pushed for a response, totally unaware that he was shutting down because every conversation left him overwhelmed and convinced anything he said would make matters worse.

His stonewalling had to change, but it was the crack in the wall rather than the root problem.

Underneath it sat fear, emotional overload and a man who had learned to protect himself by disappearing. Asking him simply to communicate more only increased the pressure that made him shut down.

In another marriage, the wife’s controlling behaviour appeared to be the problem. She questioned his decisions, monitored how he spent his time and became anxious whenever plans changed. Her husband protected his freedom by sharing less and making decisions without her, which made her even more uncertain and more determined to control what happened next.

Her behaviour had to change and understanding the fear underneath did not excuse it.

But her need to control was also the crack in the wall.

Underneath it sat fear, a loss of trust and two people whose attempts to feel safe were creating the opposite. One tried to escape uncertainty by withdrawing, while the other tried to remove uncertainty by controlling.

Both couples were focusing on the visible behaviour without understanding what was moving the wall. Their best efforts were making matters worse

These couples had not ignored their marriage.

They had tried many times to fix it, but were trying to fix what they could see or thought they knew.

They had both agreed to communicate better, promised to spend more time together, arranged weekends away, tried to become more affectionate and agreed not to argue in front of the children.

A date night will not resolve resentment that has never been understood.

An apology will not create lasting change if the person apologising has no understanding of the real problem.

To be clear, communication tools, time together, intimacy, apologies and forgiveness can all play an important role in rebuilding a marriage.

But they must be applied to the right problem or they will all fail everytime.

Some couples don’t repair the crack, they hide it

There is another type of couple I see.

They know there is a problem, but instead of repairing the crack they place a picture over it and try not to look too closely.

Distraction is used to keep thyem busy, focus on the children, work harder, build the business, book another holiday, move home or tell themselves they will deal with the marriage when life becomes less stressful.

Some couples can live like this for years – but the problem will always grow even if they don’t talk about it.

From the outside their marriage can look incredibly successful. They may have a beautiful home, children, financial security, holidays and a life other people admire.

They can attend dinners, family events and business functions looking like a perfectly happy couple.

But inside the marriage they are slowly learning not to be honest with each other.

One person learns that sharing how they feel creates conflict, while the other learns that asking difficult questions creates withdrawal.

So they stop asking, stop sharing and stop taking the emotional risks needed for the relationship to grow.

The marriage starts to function, but it stops developing.

They become very good at managing a life together without being genuinely connected inside it.

Then one day someone says:

“I don’t think I want to be married anymore.”

The other person is totally shocked.

They believed the marriage had problems, but they had no idea it was this bad. From their perspective the decision feels sudden, confusing and completely out of proportion to what they thought was happening.

But it wasn’t sudden.

The crack had been developing for years.

They had simply become very skilled at not looking at it.

• Some people are aware their marriage is in trouble, but hope the problems will eventually sort themselves out.
• Some believe their partner would tell them if they were seriously unhappy.
• Some tell themselves every long-term relationship becomes disconnected.
• Some know they are unhappy but are frightened to discover what the truth might mean.

This list is endless…

So why would two intelligent people risk something as important as their marriage by either solving the wrong problem or avoiding the problem altogether?

Fear.

Fear and lack of knowledge

These are the two driving forces I see underneath so many marriage crises.

Lack of knowledge means the couple cannot accurately see/translate what is happening.

Fear determines how they react to what they think is happening.

Most people have never been taught how to understand what happens inside a relationship when one or both people feel emotionally threatened.

They may be highly successful in business, medicine, law, finance or leadership, but they have never been taught how fear, shame, abandonment, rejection, resentment and self-protection affect two people inside an intimate relationship.

So when their partner behaves in a way that hurts them, they naturally create a meaning for that behaviour.

• He withdraws, so she decides he doesn’t care.
• She becomes angry, so he decides she doesn’t respect him.
• He becomes defensive, so she decides her feelings are not important.
• She becomes more emotional, so he decides she is irrational and impossible to please.

Once each person believes they understand what the behaviour means, they start reacting to that meaning as though it is a fact.

This is where fear and lack of knowledge become such a destructive combination.

Lack of knowledge creates the wrong diagnosis and fear makes the person protect themselves from what they believe the diagnosis means.

Their protection then creates more pain for their partner, their partner protects themselves and the cycle becomes stronger.

• Fear creates protection.
• Protection is misunderstood.
• The misunderstanding creates more fear.
• More fear creates stronger protection.

Eventually each person is no longer responding to the person in front of them. They are responding to the meaning their mind has attached to that person’s behaviour.

She is not only responding to his silence, she is responding to her belief that his silence means he doesn’t care and is preparing to leave.

He is not only responding to her anger, he is responding to his belief that her anger means he is a failure who can never be successful with her.

Both people believe they are reacting to facts, but much of their relationship can now be built on assumptions, mind-reading and fear.

You see, once a person becomes frightened they naturally want certainty.

They want to know why their partner is behaving this way, what it means and what is going to happen next.

But because they don’t have the knowledge needed to understand the dynamic, they create certainty through judgement.

• “She is controlling.”
• “He is selfish.”
• “She wants conflict.”
• “He doesn’t love me.”
• “He only cares about himself.”
• “She will never change.”
• The judgement may help them make sense of their pain, but it also stops them being curious.

Once they become certain they know what is wrong with their partner, they stop looking for the driving forces underneath the behaviour.

The person becomes the problem and the marriage becomes a battle to prove who needs to change.

Understanding does not remove responsibility

I’m not suggesting affairs, lies, anger, sexlessness, rejection or emotional withdrawal don’t matter.

They matter enormously.

An affair creates real damage.

Dishonesty destroys trust.

Anger can make a person feel emotionally or physically unsafe.

Constant rejection can destroy confidence and connection.

Nor am I suggesting abuse, violence, coercion, addiction or ongoing betrayal can simply be translated away.

Understanding why a person behaves in a destructive way does not remove their responsibility for changing that behaviour.

It helps us understand what needs to change, whether they are genuinely willing to change and whether the relationship can become safe enough to rebuild.

Not every marriage should stay together.

Sometimes a correct diagnosis reveals an ongoing affair, addiction, abuse, dishonesty or a total unwillingness to take responsibility.

Finding the real problem does not guarantee the marriage should survive.

It gives the couple the truth they need before they make a decision that may affect the rest of their lives.

The objective is not to blindly save every marriage.

The objective is to discover what is true.

Diagnosis must come before the solution

When a couple comes to see me, I am not initially looking to decide who is right and who is wrong i’m not their referee.

I am looking to understand what is really happening.

Most importantly, are they trying to solve the problem that is actually causing their marriage to fail?

The process is to diagnose the fear, correct the misunderstanding, stop the protective behaviour and only then solve the real relationship problem.

Before you decide your marriage is permenently broken

If you have been working on your marriage and nothing seems to change, it does not automatically mean the marriage is impossible to save.

You have probly been trying to solve the wrong problem.

• You may be trying to stop the arguments when you first need to understand what both people are frightened of and why conflict has become their protection.
• You may be trying to restore sex when the deeper problem is rejection, resentment, emotional safety or a loss of trust.
• You may be trying to rebuild trust while both people are still hiding, controlling or protecting themselves.
• You may be calling yourselves incompatible when neither person has felt safe enough to be themselves in the relationship for years.

Or you may have placed a picture over the crack and hoped the problem would eventually disappear.

It won’t.

The crack is information only.

It is showing you where pressure has become visible, but it is not always showing you where that pressure started.

Before you have another big conversation, make another promise, try another surface-level solution or make a decision that will affect the rest of your life, ask a better question:

Are we trying to fix the problem that is actually causing our marriage to fail?

Couples don’t always lose their marriage because their problems were impossible to solve.

Some lose it because they spent years solving the wrong problem.

Others lose it because fear persuaded them to avoid the problem altogether.

The tragedy is not always a lack of love or effort.

Sometimes it is years of effort invested in the wrong diagnosis.

With so much hanging in the balance, discovering the real problem before applying the solution is one of the most important skills a couple can learn.

Before you decide your marriage is broken, make sure you know what is actually broken first.

Before I go I want to share one last story.

I worked with a lady and her husband after years of a troubled marriage.

They were so relieved to have reconnected.

She wrote to me and thanked me for the support I gave them.

In her letter she said something very interesting – she said she was delighted to have her husband and marriage back, but the solution I gave them was a real surprise to her.

This is because I helped them solve the problem they couldn’t see.