6 Reasons Why A Happy Marriage Starts With You
“It’s Not Him, It’s You,” is the title of this free talk I’m giving Wednesday evening. I could have just as easily titled it, “It’s Not Her, It’s You.” But since it’s part of the Mom’s Tele Summit, I kinda assumed most of my listeners would be women.
Anyway, this free talk will be an hour or so long. I’ll be delivering it via telephone from a hotel room in New York because, for some reason, I didn’t realize I would be on national TV at 9 am the next morning until, oh, about YESTERDAY. I usually try to only schedule one hard thing for myself a week. Now I’ve got two back-to-back.
Will I choke? Will I end up suffering from the worst fashion emergency imaginable? Will I remember to pack my underwear? Will I find enough time this week to prepare for the talk and for the TV appearance? Can I do it? You’ll have to dial in to see.
To help myself prepare for this talk, I thought I would cheat a bit and write some of it out, as a teaser of sorts. So, here goes. Here are 6 reasons a happier marriage starts with you.
- Unless you were on drugs, had a brain tumor, or were coerced, you willingly married your spouse. I’m guessing you did it because, at the time, you thought your spouse was one swell human being. And your spouse probably thought you were one mighty fine catch as well. Now you no longer think of your spouse as a swell human being. In fact, you might have a creative little phrase that describes exactly how you feel about your spouse. Here’s the kicker, though. I’m guessing your spouse has a similarly creative phrase for you, too.
- It’d be nice if there were some sort of drug that we could all slip into a spouse’s beer or coffee that would transform said person into someone who gets what we are saying. Unfortunately, there isn’t. In the meantime, the best strategy for getting your spouse to understand you lies in figuring out how to ask for what you want in a language that your spouse understands. You can either take the time to learn this language, or you can continue to shout more and more loudly in the one you know that your spouse obviously doesn’t get. It’s your choice.
- One of the marital improvement books I read by John and Linda Friel said something to the effect of this: We all pair up with our emotional equals. When I read that line, I thought I was the ONE EXCEPTION TO THAT RULE. I thought I was significantly more functional than my husband. As it turns out, I wasn’t. It’s possible that you are the one person who is the one exception to the rule. But it’s a lot more probable that you are part of the problem.
- It only takes one person to initiate peace. You can wait and wait and wait for your spouse to do it and then eventually die a sad and lonely death. Or you could be the person who does something about your bad marriage.
- You can’t control your spouse’s behavior, but you can control yours.
- From what I can tell, most bad marriages are about as dysfunctional as any addiction. Most 12-step programs start with admitting that you have a problem. If someone started a 12-step program for Bad Marriage Addiction, the first step would NOT be, “My name is Alisa and my husband is my problem.” No, it would be, “My name is Alisa and I am part of the problem that has contributed to my bad marriage.”
Do you think that you are part of the problem? Are you intrigued? Or are you kinda angry, thinking, “What does she know about my marriage. If SHE lived with MY spouse, she’d agree that it’s really MY SPOUSE who is to blame”? Let me know in the comments.
About that Telesummit
The Mom’s Telesummit is free and it includes information & solutions about marriage, parenting, household organization, work & family balance, and self care. Each call is led by a mom expert and is free. Sign up by visiting www.momstelesummit.com.
The summit starts Monday. Here are the speakers and the schedule:
Tracy Liebmann
Founder of Transforming Family
Twitter – @TracyLiebmann
Women’s Personal Development Coach
and Peaceful Parenting Expert
Monday May 10th @ 1 pm EST
Keys to Joyful Parenting
Friday May 14th @ 7 pm EST
Extreme Self Care for Mother’s
Melissa Lierman
Founder of TimeOutMom
Twitter – @timeoutmom
Renaissance Women doing it all!
Tuesday May 11th @ 1 pm EST
How to Organize and Balance Your
Day, Week, and Month With Your
Family and Still Have A Life!
Ellen Delap
Founder of Professional-Organizer
Twitter – @TexasOrganizer
Certified Professional Organizer and
Family Manager Coach
Wednesday May 12th @ 10 am EST
Organizing 101: Getting and Staying
Organized!
Alisa Bowman
Founder of Project Happily Ever After
Twitter – @AlisaBowman
Author of Project: Happily Ever After
(Running Press 2011)
Collaborator on 6 NY Times Bestsellers
Wednesday May 12th @ 7 pm EST
It’s Not Him, It’s You: Why A Happy
Marriage Starts With You!
Stacey Curnow
Founder of Midwife For Your Life
Twitter – @StaceyCurnow
Certified Nurse Midwife and
Happiness Coach
Thursday May 13th @ 8:00 pm EST
4 Simple Steps to Give Birth to a
Life You Love!
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
what a great post for my moment…. i’m having a crazy and distrusting moment. i feel i have caught the husband in a lie, and it makes me crazy – it makes me upset that i’m crazy, and suspicious…. it makes me angry that i have suspicions and that even once my suspicions have yielded a result.
My name is Marissa and I AM part of the problem. I have failure to communicate, constant misunderstanding, high expectations, and an ugly jealous streak. I am not as secure as i wish i were in my self and my relationship.
but i am working on it – and Alisa, you are always full of new perspectives and suggestions. I’m glad to have found PHEA!!
Note to self regarding #3: grow-up emotionally and find like-minded partner!
(Alisa, can’t wait to tune in to you Wednesday …you’ll be great!)
.-= Laurie´s last blog ..I’m Back =-.
Opposites attract, as we all know. Then, after a while, what attracted to you to your spouse, his/her different-ness, begins to grate on your nerves. I think I became part of the problem in my first marriage. We had a communication breakdown.
Thumbs up to this recommendation, Alisa: “The best strategy for getting your spouse to understand you lies in figuring out how to ask for what you want in a language that your spouse understands. You can either take the time to learn this language, or you can continue to shout more and more loudly in the one you know that your spouse obviously doesn’t get. It’s your choice.”
I thought exactly what you wrote, that it was all my hubby’s fault. He obviously changed after we said our “I Do’s”. Nope, it was me. Our relationship has changed so much since I got counseling. Last year (October – December), I wasn’t writing his eulogy. I was waiting for him to just die already. But by mid-January of this year, it all changed – why, mostly because I changed. I was finally able to understand/get that he does actually love me. Even with all the crap I’ve given him.
Is our relationship perfect. Not in the least. But we can now talk out our differences. And if we can’t talk about them, at least we can joke about them.
I think your talk will be amazing, Alisa. Do well!
#5 is something I tend to remind myself of frequently during rough patches. I have no control over how my husband will react or choose to “fix” a situation. He never apologizes exactly the way I’d like him to. He sorts the laundry wrong. However, me getting all uppity about this won’t solve anything. He knows how I feel about things (the two I listed were a couple examples that we’ve discussed… one a little more “serious” than the other). All I can work on is my perspective and my behavior. I’ve learned that if I can be calm and reasonable, he’s much more inclined to change his perspective also.
You can only control yourself. As much as we’d like to control our spouses, it just isn’t in the cards.
I heard a quote the other day – “when you blame someone else you give up all your power to fix the problem because you are relying on the other person to fix the issue for you…”
Interesting although you could always look at it like this ‘opposites atract.’ In reality you can only control your own actions, nobody else’s.
Oh wow. So true. I am part of the problem. I spent quite a while thinking it wasn’t me at all. And I have since realized that when I blame things on my husband, even small things, that’s when our relationship takes a turn south again, and it’s a surefire way to start a fight.
Eric – love the quote….what a great reminder. “when you blame someone else you give up all your power to fix the problem because you are relying on the other person to fix the issue for you…”
@ eric, I really like that quote;
also I have finally admitted that I am part of the prob, though
my spouse has not yet done the same. I also totally agree that dysfunctional marriages are like an addiction prob. but would also expand on this in seeing the similarities with AoD issues and the confusion and addiction to staying in a bad relationship.
Another great blog Alisa. I used to work with a young lady who this SO applied to. She had marred 4 times before the age of 30. Of course she always talked about how horrible the men were but it told me two things about her that would be HUGE red flags in dating somebody similar. Either 1) she would be really hard to get along with. 1a) The things that made her a very effective salesperson such as that bulldog tenaciousness that & never give up, very aggressive attitude would make her hard to live with. Or 2) She excercises very bad judgment & is very quick to leap without looking. Either way I wound RUN not walk if asked out by her lol
Now truth be told I didn’t know her outside of the office & don’t know all the particulars about her so I can’t pass judgment at all. Just saying I have known similar people both male & female. I do notice the pattern of people who marry so often & divorce so quickly is to usually blame the spouses for everything. Makes me wonder though if maybe a little self examination is in order?
@ a guy reader: what is an AoD issue?
Eric- loved the quote. My husband got so used to just accepting the blame and apologizing that we never got to really look at an issue and try to solve it. “MY fault, I’m sorry” was supposed to fix anything, Right? It took a lot of the counselor’s and my time to get him to understand that accepting the blame wasn’t as needed as why he would react the way he did, feel the way he did, or interpret me the way he did. After looking and understanding the root cause and validating HIS feelings we were able to move forward. It also meant I had to learn empathy, my problem not his. Drummer Guy is so right as are you all that until we look at ourselves to see WHY we do what we do we actually loose the ability to heal and grow in our relationships.
AoD – alcohol or drug;
that’s the current way of writing it for therapists and
legal folk.
What a great blog! Never a truer word has been spoken! Did my own fair share of thinking all the conflict was caused by my (now former) wife for a number of years, then slowly moved past the ‘power struggle’ stage and into acceptance and understanding – trouble is, I don’t think she ever got there as well. Over the years she had a couple of ‘meltdowns’ and told me how bad our marriage was, it was all seemingly my fault and I alone was the cause of her unhappiness, and the thought stuck me at the time that in all that there was not a single word about how she may have played some part in this. I thought this was pretty unfair and my suggesting that perhaps we both had things to learn and could do better just made her all the more defensive. Even when she decided that we would part she cited a long list of my perceived faults (one of them was that if I loved her I should ‘just have known’ how she felt), but again not a word about anything she could do, or that she even wanted to try – which indicates that she’d emotionally left a long time beforehand and was just waiting for the right raft (i.e. another person) to take her off the sinking ship.
Anyway, your six points do sum up very succinctly that it does take two to make a great or a bad relationship, and if you don’t truely believe that then you’re doomed to failure in every succeeding one.
You are so right in all your points here Alisa! It’s a hard lesson to learn since we always want to blame someone else (why is that part of human nature?) but when you are having trouble in a marriage the only person you can change is yourself. Good luck girl. You’ll be fabulous!
.-= Jennifer Margulis´s last blog ..Mothering Wins A Maggie Award =-.
A few decades former, if you were acknowledge alcohol addiction you’d be most likely to be greeted with tongues clucking. Although the stigma is yet attached, it’s remarkable that facilities and support groups are accessible and people are a lot more understanding with substance abuse right now.
What is the best way to recover from Substance Abuse ?;~’
Alisa, for what may be one of the first times I had a twinge of, “I just think that is hogwash!” The line that elicited that response? “We all pair up with our emotional equals.” I know this twinge stemmed from the resentment I felt when I was in the “put my marriage in a grave” state. I definitely did not see my husband as emotionally mature as I am. Now that he and I have worked through some of that, I can see where we were both emotionally stunted AND acknowledge how I sometimes try to overcompensate for my stunting. The true difference between myself and my husband is that he is a little less skilled at overcompensation. We really are on the same page, but I (must) sometimes forget that as evidenced by my initial reaction to that line. Oh, growth.
substance abuse could sometimes be deadly and it always destroys lives-*:
substance abuse will always to more addiction which causes overdose and then later on — DEATH’:.