It can be easy to feel like your man is not cut out for a great marriage, especially when your relationship is feeling hard, communication is breaking down, and arguments--or distance and cold shoulders-- are the norm.
In the back of your mind you may think you are falling short, too, but often it feels like so much of the problem is HIM...something seems to be wrong with him. He has a closed heart. An inability to love you for real.
You sometimes think you made the wrong choice when you married him.
What if all this just comes from a few misunderstandings? I’ve been around enough men (I’ve got lots of brothers, dads, sons, and have worked with many male clients) to know that most are very decent human beings.
They are human beings who love their partner, who want to love them even better. Who value love and healthy relationships. Who want peace and enjoyment, romance, and deep loving support in their marriage.
But —just like you— they don’t always know how to do that. How to be that great partner.
Because they’ve never been taught.
Because they’ve often been taught the opposite (like so many of us).
Because they had a hard time in their childhood or learned to mask over deep insecurity themselves.
Because they were sculpted as youngin’s to mask their heart. And haven't yet figured out how to overcome that--even now when they most want to love well.
Many of us women have trouble remembering this when things are hard in our marriage, because, naturally, we are caught up in feeling our own lack of being loved.
Which makes our partner’s inability to be how we want him to be seem like an insult to us. Like he's the bad guy, and we are adversaries. Instead of the allies we most want to be.
One of the very first steps to improving your relationship is to go from resentment and bitterness to compassion for and acceptance of your partner.
You’ll never do that if you can’t see that:
he doesn’t know how to do all the things you wish he would because he simply wasn't born knowing how-- and our culture hasn’t supported him to learn how.
deep down this person, this man, wants to love, wants to feel understood, and, like you, feels confused, afraid, and hurt, too.
When you are caught up in how he isn't loving you right and focused on him not being who you him want to be, you see only that.
You miss out on seeing how much he is wishing he could be all you want, and not knowing how. You don't see how much he's feeling like a disappointment.
Instead, you may point out his shortcomings, tell him to do things differently, complain or get on his case. So he feels more and more like a disappointment to you, and less and less safe and loving towards you.
You stay locked in a worsening cycle that will eventually stomp out the last breath of love between you, and turn you into the enemies you sometimes feel like already.
Someone has got to step up and stop this cycle. It will likely be you --or no one.
Luckily, it just takes one small shift in the way you think about things to start a deeply healing cycle that will return your marriage to the loving allied partnership you want so much.
So what if you really opened your eyes to see that your partner does deeply want to love you in a way that makes you feel so loved, but he simply has a lot covering his ability to do so easily?
How would that change how you feel? How might you approach him when you feel that way?
AND what might be the result of that?