If you are interested to understand how to help a couple from a destructive relationship and into one that works for both people then this is for you.
Step one: Save Your Marriage From Divorce
The first step is helping both people in the marriage take steps to reclaim their true identity. Couples with problems lose confidence in themselves and each other because they are not living true to who they really are.
As problems escalate, this loss of identity is debilitating and will create confusion and fear in themselves and in their partner.
This ping-pong effect is destructive if not fully understood.
Many people in martial trauma have to cope with life feeling very wrong with their partner. The result is they then have to cope with many of their own fears. This helps them to focus on themselves and protecting themselves from their own translation of what their partner is either doing, or not doing.
The coping version of them is very different to the true essence of who they really are. This version not only feels wrong, but also creates behaviors which are uncharacteristic of that person.
On some level both people usually turn up to sessions with me in these coping versions and are displaying behaviors which will usually add more fuel to the fire as they try to get through to each other, totally misunderstanding each others perspectives.
The key to their success is helping them understand what they have created within themselves and why.
The couple will struggle to fully connect with each other if they are trying to protect themselves from their partners behaviors and so the reasons why the couple have changed identity needs to be understood before the couple can trust in their future again.
Most people feel that for the relationship to work one or both people have to change. Change for many people is a trigger for fear, because they want to be loved for who they are.
So it’s critical that the couple understand that changing them is not the goal, helping them to become more of who their really are together is.
Our identities play a significant part in our lives and losing our sense of self will never work long-term if happiness is the goal.
In the next post we will look at Step Two in how to save a marriage from divorce.
