There Are Two Ways To Change Your Unhappy Marriage

The second option really sucks

Change. Some love it, most don’t. Depending on the moment, I can eagerly embrace change or dig in my heels to resist. Can you relate?

Why do we resist change?

There are many reasons we avoid change, starting with the fear of the unknown. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know, so goes the adage. I’ve seen this time and again in my own life and when I’ve worked with coaching clients.

That fear can keep us staying in crappy jobs and hanging onto toxic relationships. Not a good strategy!

We also fear loss of control. This can be especially difficult for trauma survivors who learned strategies that gave them a sense of safety and control. This goes hand in hand with mistrust if the change being implemented by another person, like say, your boss or the company you work for.

Then there’s the work required to change. It’s an especially hard sell when there are no perceived benefits. Ditto for the fear of increased workload. What if it doesn’t work? What if I fail at yet another attempt to lose weight? (That type of thought leaves me searching for the peanut butter Oreos.) Why even bother trying to start a new meditation practice because it’s never worked for you before?

Our attachment to the status quo is yet another factor. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! So, let’s just keep doing the bookkeeping with a ledger and a pencil. UGH!

Finally, I’m guilty of this one big time, negative experiences from your past that scream, “It didn’t work then, it’s not going to work now!” It’s like the brain can recall every instance of perceived failure in order to protect you from another undesired outcome.

Clinging to these reasons and avoiding change at all cost is a road map to misery and victimhood. Where we get these ideas that things should remain static and stuck puzzle me. Especially since nature demonstrates the ongoing nature of change. The Grand Canyon demonstrates that even rock changes in nature. Why does it have to be so…so….HARD?

Even if we understand the value of implementing change for health’s sake, it’s enormously difficult. Just ask a nurse who works with non-compliant diabetics. Or a cardiologist who tells the sedentary patient to change or die. Knowing this adds yet even more negative emotions into the mix.

It is not something unique to the times we live in either. If we go back to Biblical times, the Apostle Paul observed, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:19)

So how the hell DO we change? There are two approaches. (And there are certainly a gazillion twists as to how the details plays out in your life.)

Change option #1 — change from within

First way, you find the inner strength to create the change from within. You get tired of treading the same old cow path or as Anaïs Nin sagely observed, the pain of not changing becomes intolerable

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

I was really struggling with my wine habit when I was going through divorce. Oh, scratch that. There was no struggle, I enjoyed every numbing glass of merlot I poured. But when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and learned that alcohol contributes not only to the risk of cancer but also the risk of recurrence, I decided it was time to stop. Dealing with breast cancer one time is more than enough for me.

I wish I could tap into the single focus I had when I decided to quit drinking because I certainly have other areas in my life that I struggle with, be it worry tendencies or a love for peanut butter Oreos, (which are at odds with my desire to shed weight).

This could also be the woman who puts her foot down and says NO to an abusive husband and leaves. Or the employee learns to advocate for themselves and then develops their exit strategy for a better job.

Change Option #2 — an outside event happens

Not sure why this trailer ignited outside the park where I live but I betcha the owner wishes he could go back in time and change something to prevent the conflagration.

The other way we change isn’t pulled up from the depths of our being, it comes from the outside. A spouse dies. A company merges and fires 90% of the staff. A hurricane wipes your home off the map.

It’s the shit that you didn’t ask for but here it is. It is now your responsibility to address it.

There is not one of us that hasn’t experienced being forced to change because of circumstances beyond our control. But sadly, if we don’t initiate change from within, circumstances do have a way of coalescing into an untenable shit-show. And you are forced to change.

I was scared to death of divorce. Deer-in-the-headlights scared. Every possible horrible thing played over and over again in my mind and often kept me awake at night.

I could list off every single factor of why I was afraid to initiate divorce even though the handwriting was on the wall for a few years prior to pulling the trigger.

Until my then-husband had an affair. This was my outside event that blew up my world and forced my hand to take action. Oh, I had still been tolerating the increasing contempt and trying to do the work for both of us (Ha! Like that ever works!)

There had been plenty of other intolerable behaviors that I tolerated in the name of “giving him space.” But I know that wasn’t entirely genuine. I was scared. Scared of the change of becoming a gray divorcee after a lifetime of not being the main breadwinner. Scared of living alone. (What if I choke on a stupid vitamin and no one’s around to give me the Heimlich maneuver?)

Now telling me he had fallen in love with another woman and no longer believed in marriage. Talk about being gobsmacked by outside forces.

You’d think that would have pushed me out the door that very same day. But nooooooo. Fear still kept me clinging to a marriage that had nothing left to cling to.

It took me the better part of a year before I finally made an appointment with a mediator to file for divorce. (By the way, the cost of a mediator was a fraction of the cost of an attorney.)

Divorce was hard enough. Infidelity made it even more difficult.

Getting diagnosed with breast cancer five weeks after the divorce was a twist I most certainly never saw coming. Because of this, the inner work I needed to do post-divorce took a back seat.

It’s been about 3 years since separation and the divorce and I can honestly say that my deepest regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. Perhaps if I had, I would have been spared the pain of the betrayal. But who knows? To pay much attention to that thought is a fool’s errand.

The fear is still there, especially over finances and the ongoing health issues I have, compliments of chemo. But the level of fear is much lower. My self-confidence took a hit too. I am still learning to trust myself more as well. Nothing like betrayal to stir up all sorts of self-doubt.

And even though I have a wonderful new partner, it can still feel scary trusting another human. But time, patience and plenty of love are healing my wounded parts.

So, to you dear sisters who are struggling in an unhappy marriage…

I hope you can take stock of your situation and initiate the change(s) needed before something else comes along and knocks you upside the head. Please, don’t let the fear of change keep your stuck in an unhappy or worse yet, a dangerous relationship.

By initiating the change, you are empowering yourself. If you allow inertia and a misguided belief that something magical is going to intervene and make things all better, well, you’ll be waiting a long time. And the consequences for not being proactive may be more catastrophic.

Know there are helpers just waiting for you to utter one word: Help! I have truly been blown away at how help rushed in around me in my hour of despair. Both during the divorce and then breast cancer treatment.

Remember what Mister Rogers always said, look for the helpers! Start with your close friends. Talk with someone at a women’s shelter, they likely have many connections that could be useful. For instance, the women’s shelter I called told me they had an arrangement with a local attorney for a free consult. Even though I found a mediator at a much lower rate, the attorney had valuable advice. Especially when I learned that our situation was fairly straight-forward since there were no young children at home nor any pools of money to squabble over. The mediator I found was more than competent as well as kind and compassionate.

Ask a new question

Finally, when you are contemplating change and find yourself asking, “What if it doesn’t work out?” I encourage you to ask a new question: “What if it DOES work out?”

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