Warning:
93% of the men I share this with become suddenly emotional.
Marriage can be a warm, wonderful, soothing and reassuring place where two people can give the best of themselves to each other to create connection, belonging and emotional safety...until it's not that place anymore.
There is a phase in most
marriages where the safe, warm, mushy feelings give way to a fearful, frustrated and painful experience of distrust and disconnection.
This phase is often called Disillusionment.
This means you've entered a
phase where your "illusions" of what you expected from your marriage and your wife can be shattered. You begin to feel a scary new illusion that you are no longer safe. No longer connected. No longer desired. No longer appreciated. No longer loved.
When I'm coaching a man who has
hit this phase, he often complains about all of the things his wife is doing to cause him this pain.
He tells me very specific stories of what she has said or what she has done to him. And honestly, I feel great empathy for him. I remember how it feels to hear her words of pain and her horrible historical accounts of all the mean mistakes I've
made.
When your wife is hurting badly, she will usually cope by inflicting a similar pain on you. As they say, hurt people...hurt people.
I could say, "Don't take it so personally."
And, of course, you would say, "It feels pretty damn personal, Steve!"
Then I use my secret trick to change your perspective just slightly.
I ask you to imagine the fear, anxiety and uncertainty inside of her heart.
I ask you to connect with her feelings of being minimized, criticized, neglected or ignored.
I
ask you to empathize with her childhood experiences of feeling shame, inadequacy and abandonment with her own mother or father.
And just when you calm down and tell me how you remember her painful stories of growing up with a mom or dad who never made her feel good enough...I show you this. It's her face at about 3 years old.
