Is my marriage the problem?

People so often leave perfectly good relationships only to make the same mistake all over again.

Half of all marriages end in divorce. That is a fairly, well-known statistic. But what you may not know is that the risk of divorce increases with each subsequent marriage. Second marriages have a 60% divorce rate, while 73% of third marriages end in divorce.

I have worked with so many couples who blame their unhappiness on their ineffective, uncaring, unreasonable partner.

There are a myriad of reasons as to why this can happen but in so many cases there is a real misunderstanding as to what is really going on and with the right help this can be addressed and can lead to a happy, fulfilling and rewarding relationship.

Relationships need to feel vibrant and energised. When something isn’t growing, moving or changing, it stagnates and dies. But how do you keep a marriage healthy?

Well we all know that honest and open communication is all-important. Most of us know that we need to communicate honestly with our partner about our feelings in order to have our needs met. Although many of us don’t even do this and expect that our partner should be able to KNOW what we are thinking. This will be the subject of another post as I want to focus on a more subtle virus here.

What we often don’t think about is how we communicate with ourselves about the relationship. The inner dialogue we create which is constantly creating beliefs, analysing and attaching meaning and setting little invisible tests for our partner. We often play games with ourselves and attach meanings to the outcome and our partner may be completely unaware of these little games and how they feed into our internal narrative.

For instance I worked with a couple once where the man was convinced the woman didn’t love him because the way she did things was different to the way he thought they should be done. He had tried to get her to do things his way but she continued for the most part to do things her way. This caused him to criticise her and withdraw from her which in turn caused the relationship to suffer badly. Both of them felt unsafe in the relationship and started to protect themselves from the other.

He had convinced himself that there was a “right way” to do things. This was “his way” and if she didn’t do things his way, then the relationship was doomed. When we explored this and that he was reacting to the stories he told himself and not actually to his wife he was able to create new healthier stories.

We need to take a close look at what we BELIEVE about our partner, marriages in general, what is possible. What we believe becomes our reality.

Beliefs are just thoughts that we have practiced thinking. And what we practice we get really good at!

This is really important.

BELIEFS ARE NOT FACTS.

Let’s have a quick look at what happens when we have a NEGATIVE LIMITING BELIEF about our partner :

- We wont feel good about them

- It will make us feel reluctant to contribute in a positive way to the relationship

- The marriage suffers

- The unhappy marriage becomes proof of the negative belief

- The cycle continues

Over time the gap between how you would like the marriage to be and how it actually is becomes wider.

It can be really difficult to see these things for yourself as you are so caught up in it.

I can work with you to help you see things that you couldn’t see before and to create the relationships you want in your life.

You deserve to be happy, to have meaningful connections, to be seen and heard and celebrated. You deserve to have fun and laughter and to thoroughly enjoy this precious life.

Remember that just because you can’t see the potential doesn’t mean that it isn’t there!