So when a person has spent years suffering in a marriage it stands to reason that leaving that marriage is the correct decision.
Well… the answer to this is not always.
There are certain situations where someone can make a decision to leave their marriage and discover later they have made a terrible mistake and will have to live with that regret forever.
For those that have children, they can then suffer from terrible guilt.
My regular readers know I’m not a fan of blindly fixing all relationships because some people really shouldn’t be together…
…BUT I am a huge fan of helping people discover their truth.
So the story you are about to read can relate to many of my past clients, to help you to see what I saw I’m going to share one particular story.
A lady married with small children had decided her marriage was over and told me so in the first session whilst her husband sat helplessly looking at the floor.
As she explains her story of being married and the problems she faced I could hear very clearly why she felt awful and why she felt the need to go.
Her husband was clearly terrified of this life-changing situation and was willing to do anything to convince his wife to stay – he loved her but she was not convinced.
He said she was correct that everything she was saying about his past behaviours was true but until now he had never really understood the true gravity of her complaints because to him they were not big issues.
His lack of connection to her very real problems resulted in her feeling alone and rejected.
So over the years she had become emotionally disconnected from her husband as he didn’t seem to care about what she was feeling and she was exhausted as a result.
The moment she told her husband she couldn’t continue with the marriage and was leaving him the gravity of what she had been sharing historically hit him like a train…
…but for her, it was now too late.
She told me that what seemed to be a total U-turn in his care and attention was, on one hand, good, but it had taken years of her being in pain for him to see this and so she couldn’t now trust him.
It was too little too late, she no longer loved him.
So, at first sight, you could argue she was right to leave him.
BUT I was not convinced that his lack of care historically was at the root of this problem.
So I spent time with both people separately so I could explore my thoughts with each person.
One of the problems I noticed was this lady had lost connection with her true self. This alone would help her to feel very uncomfortable, emotionally empty and feel exhausted all the time as a result.
Essentially she had shifted into a trust no one and protect me energy – this wasn’t her at all at core, she was a naturally loving and giving person.
This process of losing herself was at the root of why she had lost her love for her husband, you see you can’t protect yourself from someone and still keep the love alive – it’s impossible.
So her love for her husband had been dying BUT what she didn’t know was she was creating this new self-destructive feeling.
She took this feeling as a sign the marriage was naturally wrong for her so the need for self-protection accelerated.
We also discovered she had used this shutdown pattern when she felt unsafe in her childhood so it was armour she could call upon when she needed it.
She had no idea this was destructive for her as an adult.
So this lady had shut her own feelings down without knowing it by using an outdated protection pattern – this had to change to a far better way to protect her.
She needed a protection pattern that connected her emotionally not disconnected her from herself and in turn her husband.
When I spoke with her husband I knew he really loved her, but as with all men that attend my sessions they really don’t understand their wives and the emotions their wives are going through.
Ironically wives that believe their husbands should understand them also don’t understand their husbands.
Sadly the wives believe their husbands either should understand or if they don’t there is something wrong with him or he doesn’t love her – to all women reading this I have never met a man that understands her emotions and I too was once in that camp.
Men are REALLY not equipped to correctly translate what a woman needs and he can inadvertently hurt her in his quest to look after her.
In this case, he kept telling her to ignore her feelings because that’s what he does when problems strike. Make your feelings smaller focus on the positive was his fix to her problems.
This was devastating for her so she stopped trying to connect with him because she felt he didn’t care – she was very wrong.
It’s not he didn’t care it’s that he didn’t know how to.
In fact, I had to tell her that the pain she was going through for all these years would also be mirrored by her husband.
She had never considered he was suffering too.
What you were failing to see was he was in pain too simply because you were not happy and he had no idea how to help you so he was failing so he became lost too – just like you.
She began to cry…
I told her I didn’t know for sure if your marriage is right or wrong for you but, if you give it a chance you could avoid stressing your family unnecessarily.
She agreed.
To get her to this point took just a few meetings –
- I took her through processes to help her reconnect with her true identity.
- I helped her see for herself how she created her own feelings good and bad
- She learnt how to interrupt bad feelings and choose better ones
- She learnt how to connect to powerful feelings she had forgotten about that would give her confidence
Essentially she learnt how to become resourceful and confident and why it’s so important to never slip into a survival pattern that disconnected her from herself again.
She told me that her depressive and anxiety had shifted and was replaced by a far happier feeling.
This was the energy I needed her in to learn if her marriage was the right one for her.
She felt terrible that through being so consumed with her own self and pain she had failed to see what her husband was going through at the same time.
I feel it’s so important to help couples learn before you make life-changing decisions it’s critical to see the full picture before you throw in the towel.
This lady was in danger of either repeating the same destructive problems with someone new or giving up on love forever.
This new understanding was a gift she could pass onto her children and this created a far better connection with herself.
Her big concern was after living so disconnected from her husband could her love return?
The answer is if the relationship becomes a place where you are free to be yourself and there is a flow of healthy energy that creates attraction then yes the love can return.
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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