Did you know that right now, it’s possible for you to completely turn around a bad marriage?
I’ll explain how in just a second.
But first, let’s talk about why so many people think this is impossible.
The truth is that you’ve been let down.
Let down by so many experts who want you to believe that “date night” and “communication” is the key to becoming happy in your marriage. (Those are the “good” experts, as opposed to the ones who tell you there is no hope and ought to end the marriage.)
And on the surface, I get it. It sounds good!
It makes sense that if you’ve been drifting apart for a very long time, then reconnecting with date night and being able to communicate sounds like it should work.
But let me just come right out and say it: This is dumb. Here’s why:
- Without repair to the relationship itself which has been damaged by cheating, fighting, abuse, neglect, and endless distance, there will still be a huge gap between you on that date night. No one will know what to talk about because there’s an elephant in the room!
People want to get over the past. They wish the past wouldn’t be biting them in the rear, but they might feel like crying for all the water that’s gone under the bridge.
Or worse, there’s so much left over resentment – baggage – and so many unanswered questions, that the couple can’t even think of what to say on this famous “let’s have a normal conversation” experience. Questions like, “Who was she?” “Where did you meet her?” “How many times did you go out?” linger in one’s mind.
The result of this experience is even greater loneliness. They tried. They really did. But nobody said anything significant or meaningful. “Do you know who I am after all these years?” They might be thinking. It’s intensely painful.
- What’s more, the problem itself – anger, abuse, cheating, etc – isn’t even the real problem. The real problem is what caused all that. Was there inadvertent neglect? Selfishness? Confusion about how to understand the opposite sex? Hang-ups left from childhood? An addiction? Interference by family? You see how it goes. Until such time as this elephant in the room is not only recognized but moved out of the room, nothing will change. No number of date nights and taking “nicely” will get at this real problem.
This is why so much of therapy ends up in finger pointing and raised voices. The people in pain are trying in their own – counterproductive – way to get to the bottom of the problem!
They’re correctly thinking that no healing can take place until the other person accepts responsibility. The problem here is that each member of this couple thinks the problem is the other person! So they go round and round. And no matter how skilled a therapist is at crowd control (joke intended) this method does not work.
It will not work.
Each person desperately needs and wants to be understood. When they’re not understood, they get upset and start losing their control of their temper or tears. The therapist tries to intervene to help each one express their pain better and that may calm things a bit. But it is a slow way of dealing with all the built-up pain and betrayal that may have taken place over not years but decades.
And since so much of the therapy has to deal with recovering from old pain, ironically, there is no time left over in the therapy session for learning what to do to recover! The time has been spent arguing while the hapless therapist tries to smooth over the rather bumpy process.
Weeks or months go by of digging into each problem, each sore spot, each moment of misunderstanding or outright abuse. The process is not fun and many people don’t have the stamina to go ahead. By the time they’ve covered every bothersome, painful instance (if they even can) one or both people feel beaten and exhausted.
- Even if people went into therapy to clear the past and they came to understand the sources of the problem, how do they know how to relate to one another? Once the elephant is out of the room, there needs to be a way to learn how to be intimate with each other. Without it, conversations on date night reduce to who is picking up carpool on Wednesday.
The therapist therefore tries to throw in moments of deep conversation between the members of the couple so that they will feel connected. Those are lovely moments, ones that give therapists hope for the future. However, the devil is in the details and it is awfully hard to teach all the necessary skills that a person needs in order to “get” their partner. This business of “getting” is what paves the way for intimacy.
Consider this: Aside from the process of healing from the past and restoring trust, how can you understand your partner – and the reverse, them understand you – without at least learning what they might be feeling and how to discuss it as well as avoiding all the pitfalls of automatic assumptions?
But the biggest reason of all is that none of these steps will rebuild trust…and that’s an absolute tragedy because without trust, no one will feel safe enough to share the intimate and private thoughts in one’s head or heart. But how in the world do you rebuild trust after so much damage?
So if that’s the old and dumb way…what’s the new and smart way?
Simple: the Marriage You Want program.
It is a program that teaches every skill you need while giving you ample opportunity to put it into practice. A program that is at once self-paced learning while holding you accountable by a trained Marriage & Family Therapist. A program like this heals the past, builds the self, restores trust, and promotes intimacy to get you the marriage you want. A program that is inclusive of your mind, your heart, your soul, and your brain.
Here’s why this is brilliant:
- Breaking the process up into small components leads to mastery quickly.
This way, people do not feel the need to waste time arguing, blaming, and feeling lost and hopeless. They can see the light at the end of the tunnel: They can tell they are learning and acquiring new ways to relate to both themselves and each other, the past as well as the future. This retains optimism and a high level of energy to do the necessary work.
- By covering every single – vital – behavior and attitude necessary, nothing that could be left out is.
Just learning how to keep a positive mindset in the face of stress, for example, can be a tremendous source of pride for someone who used to have a temper. And if it helps that person feel good about themselves, think how significant that one change could be in the eyes of the other person in the relationship.
People who do not or whose partner does not have a temper may not need that little piece, but it is there for everyone. When nothing is left out, everything there can and will benefit everyone.
- The learning format, when owned for life, means a couple can keep reviewing the skills to improve and improve.
And the best part is that by having your therapist overseeing everything you have total accountability – in both directions…Meaning that’s what’s going to enable you to focus exactly on the skills you need and not waste too much time on the ones you don’t need. And it’s going to hold your therapist accountable too because if there is (by some fluke) something you needed that wasn’t in the program, it can be easily added in.
All this without the long, drawn-out battles so common in the therapy room.
Do you see how powerful that is?
Here’s the thing, though: no one else is teaching this. Don’t get me wrong. There are courses out there created by brilliant researchers. Some focus on behavior change and some focus on emotions. Some are based on the latest research in neuropsychology so that we can take control of what we thought were automatic responses (like the flare-up of a temper or the sudden flash of anxiety). Some focus on intimacy which is clearly super-important. But oddly enough, no one combines all of the above.
In fact, on a personal note, I recall in grad school that it was looked down on if any therapist said they were “eclectic” (meaning they did a little of this and a little of that). We were supposed to uphold one and only one theory and approach. Well, the Marriage You Want program is a departure from that.
I’d love to talk you about how you can use this idea to get the exact marriage you want in a short time frame. Book a call: https://drdeb.com/book