I myself used to subscribe to this myth. After all, I was a marriage counselor. How do you do marriage counseling with only one person??
That was until, we’ll call him Joey, came to see me, insisting that his wife wanted no part of therapy. We worked slowly together for a couple of years. It was a long, drawn out process because, well, that’s how therapy can be.
(Not for this post; see a previous one about the time therapy takes vs. a systematic method of delivering value + coaching)
But here’s the point. The wife came in one time to get very angry with her husband (well deserved because he was rude). A second visit I had with her was by phone where she blasted me that her husband “needs” to be on medication. I could not get a word in edgewise and I told Joey that he was right: His wife would never come in for therapy.
Besides, she had her own therapist that she’d been seeing for 25 years. (Save *that* topic for another post, too.)
Joey and I worked on his victim thinking, his immediate tendency to flare up at anyone, even innocent bystanders like his poor wife, just because he could not control the horrible feelings he had inside.
We worked on his skills at getting people to listen to him without being forceful, dominating, angry or controlling. Over the time we worked together, he lost friends, and alienated people who he’d known for a long time because it just took him a long time to “get” the skills.
So three years went by.
But the funny thing is, he “got” the skills he needed. Oh, and he was refusing medication the entire time. His wife had been insisting he was Bipolar, and he was insisting he was not. To me, the label made no difference (see the post on that topic) anyway. What mattered to me was to see if he could learn the skills he needed to get permanently calm — to literally not be affected by events the way he used to. Also to “read” his wife and come out of his pit of confusion about why people, particularly women, but men really as well, say what they say and do what they do and what it all means.
And he did.
Amazingly enough, he did. He did it so well that he and his wife became friends and lovers. Everything changed radically. Not only that, he started to win friends of the male persuasion and was doing very well at work.
He became my poster boy that you could go it alone. So when I created my program and tried out the early versions with a beta group, I accepted a lone man into it, thinking that it ought to work if it already worked for someone else.
This person had similar problems with his wife to Joey and his wife wanted no part of the program. As she told him, “You’re the problem, not me.”
He didn’t care so much for how she put that, as you could imagine. But he thought that trying my program was the lesser of two evils. Really, what other choice did he have? His wife refused counseling and he had unsuccessfully tried it.
The magic of the second man is that it worked in three months. Start to finish, he reversed himself completely. And then his wife commented that he had radically changed.
Lest you think that the only ones this happens for are men, that is not so. Women can work on themselves and bring their man back simply by being different. In fact, many, many marriages have been saved by one heroic woman working on her own issues first.
What makes it work when one person starts alone?
The simple answer is that the pressure is completely removed in the marriage. Once one person, anyone, is working on and looking at *themselves* the other person no longer feels pressure. Let’s take 3 examples, just for fun.
Susie has always been a nag. She wants more attention, more time, and feels terribly lonely. Her husband is now out the door. Susie learned that she needs to love herself first because then she won’t be so needy. Once she does that, the pressure is totally off of her husband who starts to become curious as to why she isn’t after him multiple times a day.
Pete is very, very laid back. Too much so for his own good. His wife is a workaholic because the money has to come in the door somehow and Pete is not doing it. Well, he is, but not to her requirements. He has been used to someone else thinking for him. It’s not that he likes it that way, but that’s all he knows. Maybe because his wife is such an alpha sort. He learns, however, how to take responsibility, why he originally allowed himself to be bossed around, and how to assert himself. His wife likes that, actually. That was her secret desire because she is plum tired.
Sharon has been a really quiet, shy person, afraid to express herself and ask for what she wants. To her man, she looks cold. They’ve drifted apart and he had a secret affair. She was just watching, devastated, as it all unfolded. But she learned to connect with who she is at the core — and like, no, love, that person. The more she shined, the more attractive she became to her husband and he returned home.
I used to think that the real problem in marriages was that one person was playing victim. In fact, I wrote a book on it. And while I don’t disagree with that point, I think the important step that needs to be taken is a positive rather than a negative. Instead of “don’t play victim” it ought to be “love yourself.” This little change from negative to positive makes all the difference in the world.
We all need to love ourselves and even if we think that we do, we can do it better. We can take care of our Souls better. This I can tell you because I’ve seen it again and again. So if one person is working on that alone, it has the power to turn everything around.
And in the very worst case scenario, where the spouse is blind or unwilling to believe that Life can be good and therefore can’t believe that the spouse has, indeed, made permanent changes, the person who did all this self-work is now armed to face life and start over.
Is this a bad thing?
Well, I will tell you my personal story. I wanted my husband to join me in counseling and he wouldn’t. Then he died. But my personal work paid off. I was and am strong enough to not only cope but flourish. I would not turn back the clock for any money; these are the best years of my life. All because I take my own advice daily and shower myself with well-aimed doses of self-love and gratitude (among other things).
So yes, starting off alone in a marriage dilemma can be challenging but ultimately it is a win-win. For personalized help with this, book a call: https://drdeb.com/book.