ADDICTED TO SAVING YOUR MARRIAGE

Hello again!  I can’t believe it’s been another week already.  Spring has been flying by!  I’m a member of our local Garden Club and we had our Season Kick Off meeting the other night. When we finished out last season, April felt so far off in the distant future and yet, here we are.  My garden is POPPING and everything is so green from all the rain we’ve had mixed with unseasonably warm weather.  I’m feeling a bit rushed to get a few projects in before we miss the spring planting season.  One of those is a Conservation Project I’m diving into. I didn’t expect to be the caretaker for this section of Earth but life is funny that way and we’ve found ourselves with a nice piece of land not too far from where we live.  It’s virtually untouched, minus pesticide pressure from surrounding farms.  I have 250 Evergreen trees on order to plant in May to help provide wind and overspray protection but I need to get planting native seeds and grasses in an open field area sooner than later.  

I leave tomorrow for a trip to Door County. BY MYSELF!!!! WHAT!?. My mom and I are both artists at Edgewood Orchard Galleries and it’s the weekend to deliver our art and attend the annual Artist Dinner they put on. I’m driving separately and I’ll be staying with my mom and her husband for a few days but then they will leave and I plan to stay a few more days! I’ve always wanted to have a personal retreat but have never taken the time. Of course it comes with a lot of mom guilt and spouse guilt over leaving my family for that long.  Ben is so gracious about it though and literally is happy for me to have a chance to get away.  

I still am amazed that I am married to him and how encouraging and supportive he is to me (and he's cute too!) It was NOT always like this for me. If you’ve read my “about me” section, you know I’ve been married before.  It was ROUGH.  We were young, yes, but our marriage wasn’t good.  I never felt like I was good enough for him, mostly well, because he told me.  I distinctly remember him telling me once that he “just wanted me to want to be a better person for HIM.”  Um, that’s not how that works, buddy!  There was also a lot of jealousy, especially once I opened my coffee shop. Like, if he wasn’t happy, I wasn’t allowed to be happy.

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I tried everything that I knew how to do as a 25 year old. Honestly, as a now 44 year old, I’m not sure what else I could have done!  I invited him to the church I was attending because he never came with me.  Nope, that wasn’t going to happen. I said, “let’s find a church to go to together.”  Nope, not that either.  Okay fine, let’s try marriage counseling.  No, absolutely not interested in that.  

He was not interested in doing or changing anything to save our marriage.  Once I realized that, and thankfully I recognized that pretty quickly, I knew there was no hope.  Why should I continue to stay in a relationship when my partner didn’t care enough about me or us to work hard to save it?  

When the time came to tell him I was going to pursue divorce, he was LIVID. Of COURSE this was my fault. I was the one ‘ruining the marriage.’  Was I perfect? No. Absolutely not. I have no doubt I made mistakes and screwed things up too. But I had been willing to try to fix things with my spouse.

Do I see this amongst my consults and clients?  Heck. Yes. 

They will have begged with their spouse to go to marriage counseling. After a flat out refusal, or maybe if they’re lucky, a lukewarm attempt with a session or two, they are back in the same marriage cycle.  They will have pleaded with their spouse to work together to fix their marriage, only to find themselves being the only one making the effort.  Oftentimes the spouse will try for a week and then hit their limit and fall back into their old behaviors.  My belief is that the offending spouse actually WANTS a divorce too but doesn’t want to be ‘The Bad Guy’ or look bad to their family, friends and co-workers by filing.  They are protecting their ego by staying married.  They would rather drive YOU to the point of filing so YOU can be “The Bad Guy.”

I was willing to take the fall for the sake of the rest of my life.  

Some clients call me ready to go. They get it.  This is going to be a cycle.  Usually if children are involved it takes longer for them to come to that conclusion because they are concerned about their well-being. Once they acknowledge that the example of a marriage they are setting for their children is toxic and NOT one they would wish on their children, they understand that the next step must be to file for divorce.

Others though, not so much. They will call me after YEARS of this cycle.  YEARS of begging their spouse to attend therapy. YEARS of feeling humiliated. YEARS of being broken down and desperate.  At this point, I like to call this being “Addicted to Saving your Marriage.”  

It becomes an obsession or addiction like gambling.  They put in, figuratively speaking, thousands of dollars into their marriage to only get an occasional $10 or $20 in return.  Those $10’s and $20’s spark hope. They get a small amount of attention from their spouse and think, “This is it! They GET it! We are going to make it!” only to be thrust back into the abuse cycle within a few weeks, if that.  Perhaps their spouse agrees finally to attend therapy! Hurray! But then after a few sessions the spouse feels attacked (because, you know, they’re being asked to NOT be a jerk) and they refuse to return. 

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Abuse -> Threats of Divorce -> Concession from Spouse -> Hope -> Therapy -> Defensiveness - Another Letdown -> -> -> And so it continues…

If you are in this cycle, you need to understand, this will never stop until one of you dies.  I have had 82 year olds call me still in this cycle.  

If you have given your spouse at least two legit, valid chances to work together to fix your marriage and they have flat out refused, that needs to be your sign that they have ZERO interest in working on your relationship.  

I know that is painful to hear. I know this hurts. I know this is not what you want. I know you WANT your spouse to change and adjust and WANT to fix things. Not only for you but for your kids. They don’t get it.  

And it is NOT your job to suffer in hopes they someday have the lightbulb moment where they figure it out. Because they probably won’t.  And even if they DO, by then you’ll be so worn down you won’t care anymore. Their efforts will slide off because you’re so exhausted. You won’t love them anymore. You’ll have animosity towards how many YEARS they treated you poorly. You won’t be in a place to receive their love. 

I know this is not what anyone wants.  It’s sad and depressing.  It’s not the love story you thought you had when you met them.  It’s not the ‘Til Death Do We Part” that we are promised.  

It’s hard to see it but it’s better to get out while you’re ahead. BEFORE the animosity is too strong between you two.  To divorce and move on while you two can still be civil, perhaps even gracious towards one other.  Before you have an affair out of desperation for love. While you can agree to co-parent WELL together and not dig in your heels out of hatred for each other.  

Speaking of affairs, while I never judge my clients if they let me know they are having one, I will tell you, it makes the divorce SO much more complicated. Not only are you balancing a huge mix of emotions, you also risk your spouse finding out about your new lover.  That’s not really a problem in the sense of the legal proceedings (more on that another time)  but what it DOES do is it gives your spouse a target of hatred if they do find out.  They can RAGE about your new lover and too often they’ll tell the kids about it. And then the kids are hurt and mad that you did this. The divorce appears like it’s happening for a frivolous reason: simply for the affair, rather than the REAL reason and that’s the years of abuse.  

I know you want love and to feel attractive and to feel cared for.  If you can hold off on meeting someone I would encourage you to do that.  It will over complicate an already stressful and complicated life event.  

All of this to say, I get it.  I’ve been there. I’ve helped my clients through it.  I’ve heard it ALL. I love watching my clients go from scared and depressed to empowered, free and happy.

I hope this gives you something to think about. You are not alone in how you feel.  I've been there and there are thousands of people feeling like this.  Do you want this to be the rest of your life?

XO
​Katie