00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 288, "When You're in a Tough Marriage." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Alright, hello there, my friends and welcome to the podcast today. So glad to have you here. A couple of things before we get started. I have had enough interest in the physical and emotional intimacy discussion group that I want to start that...we're gonna do that, but I'm going to wait until the first part of March to do that. So if you are not signed up for my email and you are interested in that, go to tanyahale.com, go to the "contact me" button and scroll down just a bit and you can sign up for my "weekend win" and I put information out on that as this gets closer. It's not going to be super expensive, but we're gonna meet every Saturday morning for, I'm looking at about four months at this point, and I think it's gonna be pretty great. Physical and emotional intimacy I think are so intricately connected that we need to understand them better and a lot of us just don't. I know I had a lot less understanding in my previous marriage and for a lot of years until I started like really digging into learning some stuff and figuring some stuff out and I think it will be a great great group. So make sure you're signed up for my email if you want to make sure that you are getting information on that. 

01:39 

Also transcripts of these podcasts are now available. Not all of them. We're starting with the current ones and working back. This one should be out by, so these come out on Monday, it should be out by Tuesday or Wednesday latest. And we're just working our way back getting them done as we have time to take care of those. So that's working and also the last thing. 

02:01 

If you've been interested in coaching with me and you want to find out a little bit more about it and you've thought about doing a consult, this is a really, really good time. I'm trying something new and that is that I'm moving my 30 minute consults into 90 minute consults. And the reason I'm doing that is because the 30 minute really just kind of gives me time to kind of find out your situational bit, talk to you about what coaching is and how I think it helps and then you get to make a decision. And I've decided that I want something a little bit deeper than that. So I am moving these into some 90 minute consults. So when you get on a call with me, we're going to talk about your situation. We're going to do some coaching on it and actually help get you started on the path of where you want to go and help you see the things that you need to see a little bit more clearly, help give you some information of how you can move forward. And then we can talk about coaching and see if it's a good fit for you. But I just want to connect a little bit more. I want to create more relationship in these consults that I'm doing. So if you've not set up a consult with me before and you would like to, this is a great time to do it. And if you have set up a consult with me before and you chose not to coach and now you're thinking, "maybe it's a little bit better time." I don't know. Get on and come find me again. And let's chat again. Let's do this. This should be a really great opportunity to do some coaching and to help give you some clarity in the direction that you want to go. 

03:40 

Alright. That being said, we're going to jump in today. We're talking about when you're in a tough marriage. Now I think that being in a tough marriage is one of the hardest things that I've ever done in my life. Hard because I felt so much commitment to stay married. But I just couldn't figure it out. Whatever I did always seemed to be the wrong thing and always seemed to make things worse. And it seemed as if my previous spouse and I were always in a stalemate. And I had thought that marriage would be a partnership, two people working together to make each other's lives easier. And it seemed that all we were doing was things to get each other mad. And I felt like I was trying so hard to show up well. In fact, I really thought that I was. And I'm pretty sure my previous husband thought that he was too. And to be fair, I think we were both showing up the best we could. We just didn't know what else to do. And I don't think I have ever felt so lonely in my life as when I was in the thickest part of my dysfunctional marriage, not being seen, not being heard, feeling as though he didn't care about my wellbeing or safety, feeling like I was always giving to the point of emotional and physical exhaustion, never feeling connected. And then there's not a lot of people you can talk to about it either, right? You don't want to. talk to your family because if you figure things out, you don't want your family to all hate them. And so, and you want to talk to your friends for the same reason, and it's a really sticky, sticky place. And I felt completely stuck in a place that offered no hope for a better life and no peace of mind that things would work out and be okay. And I'm pretty sure my previous spouse would say that he felt the same way. Neither of us had the awareness or the tools to create something different. 

05:20 

So what do we do when we're in a tough place like this? So the reason this topic came up for me is because I read a Facebook post the other day that describes a tough marriage situation. And I remember thinking, "oh, I remember how tough it is." Anyway, so I copied and pasted her review and I don't have her name or anything...probably would not love to have this put out there with her name on it. But I want to read you what she said. And then I want to talk about what options are when we're in this kind of a situation. She starts off by saying, "I need to vent. I want to scream, cry, puke. I don't know. I'm so upset. Every birthday and Christmas my husband fails to get me a gift. I always end up having to get really hurt and freak out and he goes to the gas station on Walmart and gets me some crap that I don't want or need. Usually a purse when I never use a purse. I hate purses. Haven't used one in 25 years. Anyway, this year I've been working 2 full time jobs, 6:45am to 1am every day while he isn't working or making any effort to. I ended up in the ICU last week from all of it. Despite working those hours I managed to do all the Christmas shopping. He didn't help with one thing. Didn't offer to help. Nothing. I used my short breaks to plan out an amazing gift for him a month in advance. Now it is Christmas Eve. I asked him to stay awake for when my shift is over tonight so we can have some romantic time and exchange our gifts. I immediately get the deer in the headlights look because he hadn't even thought to get me a gift. Now he is out last minute and I don't want a last minute gift. I'm so insulted. I don't know what to do. We've been married 9 years and I still don't even have a wedding ring. I was a single mom for 16 years and never once got a gift during that time because it was just me and my kids. We have a massive fight every birthday and every Christmas for 9 years. What is so hard about this? I'm honestly considering asking him to pack his things and get out before I'm done with work." 

07:23 

Okay, that's the end of her post. Okay, so sounds like a pretty tough situation and first of all, to whoever this woman is, I am so sorry that this is your situation. I can see that you're exhausted, that you're lonely, that you're hurt, that you're done and it is such a hard place to be and it can be pretty scary as well. As outsiders of this situation, let's stand back out of the emotion for a bit and take a look at our options when we're in a place like this, when we're in the heightened flooded prefrontal cortex. We don't think clearly. So if you're in a tough situation as well and trying to figure out what to do, allow yourself to feel the strong emotion. They're going to come up, right? Like this woman right now is just, you can tell her emotion is so, so strong. Allow yourself to feel it. Give your body time to process it. And then when the feeling starts to settle down a little bit and we get our prefrontal cortex back online, then we can think. We do not want to be making important decisions from our emotions. 

08:26 

Okay, so now let's take a look at our options. So I see that she really has, or anybody in a tough marriage situation, really has three main types of choices. But of course there will be myriads of adaptations within these options. And I'm not presenting them in any order of what she should or should not do or what I think she should or should not do, because nobody can figure that out except for her. But let's first look at the fact that she cannot change her husband. If changing people were an option, I'd be teaching y'all to do that since it would have to be easier than changing ourselves, but it's not an option. Her husband gets to be the adult person he is choosing to be, end of story. Okay, can she make requests? Absolutely. We can make requests in any relationship that we're in, but the other person doesn't have to do that. Now, we don't know the reasons he is choosing to show up the way he is. And I'm gonna bet that there's probably some pretty good reasons for it, but if he's not willing to figure those out or go to coaching or counseling or do something else to help him see the situation more clearly, most likely things are not going to change. Now, I'm also not saying that his behavior is okay. I'm just saying that as an adult, his agency option is to behave however he wants to, and there's nothing that we can do about it. Learning to stay in our lane incorporates honoring his agency to be the person that he wants to be, regardless of how that behavior impacts the other people around him. And that sucks sometimes, but that's the truth. Learning to honor other people's agency is a huge part of God's plan for us. This is when we get to learn how to step into our own agency with more power. 

10:11 

So first option: she can continue as is. She can feel stuck. She can continue to feel as though she is a victim to his behaviors. She can harbor resentment and frustration, hitting her breaking point every birthday and Christmas, settle into a miserable existence, possibly complaining to people around her whenever the option arises. And it sounds like she's been living this way for some time, so it's nothing new. So staying in this place is nothing new. And I think many of us in a tough situations in our relationships like this, understand this space of stalling, of "I don't know what to do," so we stay there. Our brains are stuck. So fascinating to me, and they find some weird sort of satisfaction in being a victim. And it's because when someone else is the villain and we're the victim, we don't have to take responsibility. They are the ones who need to change in order 

for us to feel better, and it's an easier path to blame and not take responsibility. Of course, it also leaves this feeling completely disempowered, but the payoff of not taking responsibility can seem like an okay trade-off sometimes. And even if the situation is miserable to our brain, it is a known miserable. And our primitive brains would rather stay with something miserable and known than to venture out into the unknown. What she has right now is safe. Safe in the sense that her brain already has its work arounds, patterns of behaviors that feel comfortable and that don't require consuming energy to incorporate them. 

11:54 

Okay, so our brains create a lot of fear around leaving a situation like this. Will I be okay? What will happen to my children? Will I slip into poverty? Will I be ostracized from my religious community? Will I be alone for the rest of my life? Will my children hate me? Will we have to move? What if he puts up a huge fight and the divorce takes years? Our brain is going to offer all of this because leaving requires a lot of energy. This is one reason why many of us stay in challenging relationships for so long. The fear of change. So staying and not changing anything is the most comfortable option. At least short term, which is all our primitive brain is worried about. Short term. Am I comfortable right now? Primitive brain does not care about tomorrow or next year or next week or even two minutes from now. Primitive brain is saying this second right now... is this comfortable? So option one is staying where she's at and continuing to live life with the way that things are. 

13:05 

Option two, she can stay and do the hard work to change her mindset about it. Now I have many clients who work with me who don't want to get divorced for a variety of reasons but also don't want to be miserable. Sometimes they just don't want to be bothered with the challenge of divorce. Sometimes they want to keep their family intact. Sometimes they really love their spouse and want to give him every opportunity to engage in a relationship. Everyone has different reasons for wanting to stay and work on their part and all of those reasons are valid. This is the part where we get to use our own God-given agency to choose what we want. Every client who has come wanting to stay in their marriage has had very good reasons for their decision. And we work on them really learning how to change how they think about their spouse and how they think about the relationship. We work on them offering an abundance of grace to their spouse and giving them the space to have very good reasons for their behaviors, even if they don't ever figure out or share those reasons with us. People generally have good reasons for bad behavior, so we work on that. We work on them learning to love their situation the best that they can to appreciate the lessons available to them in becoming more Christlike, in learning to love in a cleaner and better way, in learning to offer grace for their spouse's humanity, and though very often their spouse doesn't really change, they do. And that changes everything. When they can learn to see their spouse through God's eyes, with a lot of compassion for their pain, even though they may not know what that pain is, with compassion for their struggle then showing up with greater patience, with more love is actually much more doable. 

14:54 

In this space, we also get to learn how to be really clear on what is okay and what is not okay and set appropriate boundaries. We learn how to set these boundaries from a place of love and compassion and not from a place of trying to manipulate the other person or shame them into doing things. We work on communication skills so they can show up as equal partners rather than always one-upping or one-downing their spouse. We talk about what equal looks like and sounds like and how to open up tough conversations around wants and needs. When my clients learn to communicate better, when they learn to show up from a more compassionate place, they feel more empowered and less like a victim. They are moving themselves forward, even if the other person is not changing their behavior. And that empowerment feels amazing. Has their husband changed? Nope, he didn't need to for her to feel better. She is in charge of her own emotions. Now, sometimes once my clients start showing up more equally, more compassionate and more kind, it creates a safe space for their spouse to start looking at themselves and how they're showing up and they start making some positive changes, but not always. And when we're working from this premise, we're not showing up the way we are to try and change their behavior, to manipulate them into doing something different. In fact, we're not showing up this way for them at all, really. We are showing up this way because it is the kind of person we want to be. And that always feels good to step into greater love and kindness and letting go of resentment and wanting to control another person. 

16:33 

But for my clients who want to stay in their marriage, this is a place where they can be happy, where they can be empowered to make decisions that feel amazing to them, where they can set appropriate boundaries to protect them from abuse, even when their spouse is not on board. Okay? Sometimes my clients start showing up better and find out that their spouse was there and waiting for them the whole time. They realize that they were the ones who were holding up the process. And that's great because then things really begin to change for the better. And sometimes when my clients clean up their behaviors, their spouses start seeking change for themselves. And this is always great as well. So the second option is staying in the marriage and working on our own behaviors, our own mindset, learning to create grace and compassion for our spouse. And this works. Is the end result always ideal? No. Sometimes these spouses don't get what they want because we can't control the husband, right? But they do move into a place where they're like, "I feel good about where I'm at right now and I feel good about how I'm showing up."And sometimes that's what we can do if we want to stay in a marriage. 

17:46 

Okay, so then the third option is that this person in this situation can decide to get a divorce. I get a lot of clients who are trying to decide if divorce is the right option for them. And first, that is never my decision and not anything that I would counsel a client to do or not to do. My job is to help them gain clarity on their own thinking and their own situation and collect good data so they can make a decision they feel confident in. So if my client is still trying to decide, we go through the steps above for the client who wants to stay. And here's why: when we clean up our own dysfunctional behaviors, and we all have them, then we can see the cause and effect that those behaviors are having on our own situation. So we work on better communication and showing up as an equal. We work on thoughts about our spouse doing the best they can with the tools that they have. We focus on being more compassionate and showing up with more grace for their humanness. We start seeking to recognize their pain and what good reasons they have for making the choices that they're making. And we start collecting data. When we clean up our stuff first, when we really learn how to love better in such a difficult situation, we are changing the situation. 

19:04 

An analogy I've used in the past is a petri dish. You know, those ager-filled, round containers when you took science either in high school or college. So if I take a petri dish to collect samples from the door handle, they are sterile. And if walking to the door handle, I'm playing with the gel ager on the way, putting my fingers all over it, bouncing because it's kind of like jelly, right? And then when I swabbed the door handle and put that sample on the ager, it's not clean. I have no way of knowing if what grows was from me playing with it, touching it with my fingers and what comes from the door swab. So in our relationships, if I want to collect data to make the divorce decision. I have to make sure I'm presenting my spouse with a clean petri dish. I have to clean up my behavior, getting rid of the accusing, the attacking, the blaming, language, and behaviors. When I can show up as clean as humanly possible, then I can collect clean data. And clean data is good data. And if the data is consistent, then I can be closer to making a decision that I can be confident about. Now, are we ever going to clean up all of our stuff? No, we're humans. Do we make lots of mistakes? Absolutely we do. But we've got to clean things up as much as we can. And part of that means that when we make a mistake and we show up accusing, blaming, attacking, whatever we do, we circle back around. And we clean things up from the back end sometimes. But we have to show up as cleanly as possible to be able to get the best data. 

20:38 

So other clients come to me having already made the decision to divorce and that's great too. We work on showing up the kind of person that you want to be in the divorce process. It can be really easy to turn into some weird, terribly mean and angry version of yourself when you're getting divorced. And that never feels good at the time or later on. It might feel a little bit powerful at the time, but when we look back on our behavior and we resent ourselves or we feel shame for our behavior, that's not a good place for us to put ourselves in either. So my goal with these clients is to help them be clear on what they want and the person that they want to be. And how do they still show up with compassion and kindness while not backing down from a difficult situation? How do they stand up for themselves without yelling or throwing the kids in the middle of the mess or trying to take advantage of the other person? I want each of these clients to walk away from their divorce feeling really proud of the person that they were while going through it. Creating the safest, healthiest place for their children and other family members who can sometimes feel stuck in the middle. I want them to walk away confident in the decision that they made. Because I believe that sometimes divorce is the right decision. Sometimes we are in a really unhealthy situation and things are not going to change. I think sometimes we need to get really clear on whether the situation is a good thing for us or not. 

22:04 

And when we choose divorce, I believe that God honors our agency to make that decision and He doesn't turn his back on us in disappointment. I believe He says, "okay, you've made your decision. Now let's get to work helping you move forward and grow into the person you're capable of becoming." When making this decision, I feel it's really important to ask ourselves why we are staying or why are we going. The honest answer to that question lets us know whether there is more to it, more for us to learn in that situation or whether we are ready to create something different for ourselves. So if you're in this place and this concept intrigues you, go back and check out podcast number 210. It's a Greatest Hits one of an earlier podcast called "Love It Before You Leave It." And it talks a lot about how do I love my situation before I leave it and why is that important? So that would be a really great reference for you to check out. That's podcast number 210. 

23:10 

So marriage is meant to be a partnership. When God commanded us to be one, I don't think He was talking solely about sex, as I thought when I was younger. I believe God wants us to learn to show up as individuals, but learning to work together as one, learning to honor each other's agency, learning how to love like we have never learned to love before. Sometimes we are married to someone who wants to create this amazing oneness with us and we've just gotten bogged down in dysfunctional patterns of behavior along the way and now our relationship is messy. Other times we're married to someone who's just in it for what they can get out of it and they don't have any desire to create an equal partnership. And sometimes people are married to someone who has fundamental ideas about the intimacy that they want in the relationship. And they're different. The basic fundamental ideas are different. Okay? And only you can know where you are or discover where you are. 

24:12 

But here's the deal, my friend. What you want matters. You deserve to be in a partnership where you are seen and heard, where it is safe to share your emotions and your wants and your needs. A place where your desires and dreams are taken seriously. Sometimes things can be worked out in a presently dysfunctional marriage and sometimes they can't. But whatever you decide, I don't believe God will strike you down and write you out of the will. He will compassionately wrap His arms around you and start giving you what you need to heal and become strong again and to work through your situation. At least that was my experience. He will provide opportunities for you to learn and grow and it's your responsibility to open yourself up to the spirit and to truth both inside and outside the church in order to understand how to move forward along your path. If you're in a tough marriage, I see you. I know how painful and scary and lonely and overwhelming and stuck it can be. I also know that God doesn't want us to suffer just for suffering's sake. We can definitely learn and grow from tough situations and sometimes that progress comes from staying and sometimes it comes from growing. And making that decision is part of the beautiful gift of agency that God has blessed each one of us with. So if you're in a tough marriage, you can figure this out, my friends. I know you can. And I think moving into this place of confidence and our ability to create what we want. It's one of the beautiful parts of growing up. And not saying that growing up is easy. Sometimes it's super, super difficult. But it's a place that's available to all of us and becoming more emotionally mature is a is a great process to be engaged in. 

26:15 

Alright. That's going to do it for me. If you thought of somebody while this podcast was going and you're like, "oh, this person could use this," send it to him. Copy the link. Send it to them. Tell them that you'd love to talk with them about it or something like there's so much good information here. Alright, so share the podcast if you want. If you've not left me a review yet, I would love to receive a review. You can go to Apple and do that and you can share this information that way as well. And if you would like to work with me, go to tanyahale.com. Go to the top where it says "free consultation" and it will give you a link to my calendar where you can sign up for a day and a time that works for you. And again, I've moved those to 90 minute sessions so that we can really dig a little bit deeper and actually get some coaching done. So hopefully that will be helpful. And that's going to do it for me, my friends. Have an awesome, awesome day and I will see you next time. Bye. 

27:16 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.