His life was falling apart. His relationship was over his business was on its knees nothing was working and he was not just depressed he suffering severe anxiety.
How do you come back from that?
When he came to me on the back of months of what he described as lost in darkness after he had to leave the marital home.
I knew what he really wanted but he had no map to achieve his goal.
He wanted his marriage back but I could see he had no internal map of how to build love he only understood how to take it – this was a very childlike model.
He was convinced his marriage was over so it didn’t form part of his brief to me to help him rebuild his life.
I knew the way he would have shown up in the marriage he would have been very needy he needed a lot of reassurance and I could hear from him he was testing her a lot. When men test women it never works out well.
She would have struggled to love him as a lover so if I ever met her I knew I was effectively going to meet his mum and she would be just getting through life one day at a time.
It’s the only way they could have lived together and functioned but the clock would have been ticking towards the day they both couldn’t do it any more, which is what happened.
So regardless of the marriage and it’s current trajectory towards divorce rebuilding this man and helping him to connect to the best version of himself was the mission.
Reconnecting him to his true self and giving him the tools to control his emotions and add value to what was important to him would give him clarity and direction.
I wanted him to learn how the depression and anxiety were created so he could take control of that. This would create the right foundation to help him save his business and either save his marriage or find someone he could add value to.
I did say to him that I would like to meet her at some point I knew she would need help too as she would be lost.
The root of this man’s problem was a traumatic childhood event that had stuck within him. Unfortunately, he ran this outdated pattern in his life as an adult and it was destroying everything and making him feel very unwell.
As a child, he had worked out that by playing the victim after this event he achieved love and sympathy and he was now totally unaware had used this model to grow his entire life.
So he lived a mix of being a very capable businessman and husband but when thing went wrong which they would a lot he would switch on the outdated victim pattern.
This was very damaging in his marriage as it had brought out a very nurturing side of his wife to start with, but she never really felt safe with him.
This pattern of him testing her effectively turned her on one hand into the protector of him and his mum.
This dynamic would have killed their attraction because she became her own protector, effectively he had done himself out of a job and she didn’t need him.
He kept bringing an emotional roller coaster to his wife which stopped her being the feminine energy she really wanted to be in her marriage.
Trying to fix the marriage with him this way would have been very unfair on both of them I knew we have to get both people to a much better place before I even brought it up.
Over several weeks he learnt what had happened to him, why his marriage had failed and what he had to do to break these destructive patterns.
I also took him through some strategies that would have changed his subconscious minds triggers. This was important because he was easily triggered into his very unhelpful little boy fear system.
One layer at a time we dealt with each problem getting him back to work and freeing him from his old destructive patterns.
Getting him back to work and with more confidence enabled me to help him understand that being a good husband was about supporting his wife in the way she needed.
So I asked to see her to see her to discover what was possible for her.
It turned out she did want the relationship but she was suffering the scares of years of also losing who she really was.
This is what can happen for so many couples they lose themselves in their distorted relationships.
Her life had become stagnant, as we talked I discovered she was actually really ambitious and she wanted so much more than just being a mum to everyone.
I spent some sessions with her so she was able to connect with how she wanted life to be moving forward.
He was now out of the darkness and they started couples work together to see what they could create with the right advice.
He learnt how to have a better relationship with himself.
He discovered how to become valuable to his wife and she learnt that she can now go to him and he won’t protect himself from her he now steps up and connects to her. She is now at last free to have independent emotions and he is now there for her rather than making her emotions about him.
Understanding all this changed his whole life and hers.
So many people are affected by patterns within that disable them from living to their highest standards and so they suffer whilst hurting a relationship they actually want to keep.
Add to that not understanding how to be valuable to each other and how successful relationships are really built – everyone self protects and resents each other and their life.
I built a program to help this man have a much better relationship with himself before I could help him have a relationship with anyone else.
This is why for some couples I won’t see them together before I’m convinced they will bring the best of themselves to their partner.
So empowering two people to be effective partners before I put them together is one strategy I might use to help couples on the edge of divorce learn what really going on and what’s possible for them.
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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