Coping When Your Marriage Ends

Posted on March 20, 2013 | 6 Comments

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Divorce doesn’t have to mean complete cutoff. And it doesn’t have to mean your life is over. The relationship is over as you know it. But if you have kids together, this isn’t the end of the relationship.

When you are in pain, you want to avoid what triggers the pain. So you try to avoid the person that ended the relationship. Or you deny that the relationship is over. In trying to avoid being reminded of what you lost, you realize this pain follows you wherever you go.

“Days like this I want to drive away. Pack my bags and watch your shadow fade.” ~ Katy Perry, Part of Me Lyrics

“Tried to forget you. But I can’t get you outta my head.” ~ Daughtry

If you can’t get the lost love out of your head, you try to cope by cutting off from yourself. You look for ways to check out, numb out, and not feel. Some of you will jump into a new relationship to try to feel better, while others will want to check out from relationships in general.

If you don’t want the marriage season to end, it can be hard to imagine ever feeling happy again. Together let’s explore how people cope with the flood of emotions that accompany divorce without more cutoff.

While I am not the expert on you, I want to share what I have learned from you and many others. As a individual and relationship counselor/coach, I have the opportunity to hear how people adapt to life challenges as well as what gets in their way.

Stages of Breaking Up

Your loved one tells you, “I think I will be happier on my own.” Your mate is done, but you are not done trying. Ending a relationship isn’t like turning off a light switch, it takes time to adapt to this new reality. You may experience any or all of the following stages:

Stage 1: Reconcile Attempts – Hearing the news that someone wants to end a relationship with you is very hard. You want to hold on tighter as it’s hard to let them go. You may plead for them to try one more time. To cope you hold onto hope that you will get back together.

Stage 2: Depression – Eventually you begin to accept that the marriage is over and your loved one is not changing their mind. With less hope for reconciliation, you may hit a new low. The reality is setting in, and you can’t imagine life without them.

Stage 3: Introspection – Despair invites you to look inside and learn from your struggles. You begin to realize the relationship didn’t end overnight. Each of you had a part in getting the relationship to this point. In this stage, you try to make sense of the relationship ending.

Stage 4: Re-Group – Eventually you realize that you are living without your loved one. Either through anger or desire, you start to turn your hope from reuniting with your loved one toward renewing yourself. At this stage, you find you are more able to get on top of your feelings that were once raw and exposed.

How to Cope When Emotions Are Flooding You

When emotions are flooding you, it can seem impossible to get on top of the way you feel. But our amazing brain has the ability to override emotions by accessing the thinking part of the brain. By focusing more on goals and functioning, you can’t stop the hurt but you can keep living and connecting.

I hear the challenges that you face when a relationship ends. And this is what you tell me helps you cope when emotions are crashing at high tide:

1. Focus on Daily Functioning – While you can’t stop the hurt from following you around, you can focus more on your functional goals. The more you focus on your goals/functioning, the less you focus on the discomfort of living through the breakup. Then, you realize you are doing it.

Set simple goals like: 1) getting out of bed, 2) taking a shower, 3) going to work, 4) feeding the kids, 5) helping kids with homework, etc. List 1-3 small daily goals. The goals must be so important that you need to do them even though you feel miserable right now.

2. Get More Connected – When you are losing someone, you lose an emotional resource. It’s more important than ever to get more connected. Reconnect with friends and family you’ve lost touch with. In developing relationships, you find reassurance that you are less alone than you thought. You also hear how others navigate living through their ups and downs.

3. Set Emotional/Relational Goals – At some point, most people decide they don’t want to be done in by their divorce. Begin setting long term goals to help guide you through the rough waters that lie ahead of you. Goals I hear you setting are: a) letting go of resentment, b) not putting kids in the middle, c) not taking all the blame, d) finding cooperative ways to communicate with your ex, and e) not viewing differences as a threat.

Many people find meaning once they go through hard times. They realize they can do hard stuff. Instead of letting it crush your confidence, it can boost it. Divorce invites you to re-evaluate your life, to reinvent yourself, to try new things, including how to relate in different ways.

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the
quiet voice at the end of the day saying,
“I will try again tomorrow.” – Mary Anne Radmacher

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Visit my new resource page. It is packed with resources on: marriage & family, counseling & coaching, health & wellness, & simplicity & productivity!

Photo Credit: “Sunflower Rain” by H. Koppdelaney

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Cultivate Positive Thoughts About Your Spouse

Posted on March 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

Editor’s Note: This is part 3 of Marriage Series

Love-is-tree

“Love changes over time, it becomes deeper, calmer.” ~ Helen Fisher

While people aren’t actually calmer, the fireworks of falling in love does calm down. When the passion calms down, what is left? The potential for a deeper, longer lasting connection.

I don’t think you’ll always feel connected or positive with your spouse, but you can become less allergic to the daily ebb and flow of your relationship. When you become more observant of the part you play in relationship patterns, you can nurture the present. Instead of daydreaming about the early years or hoping to change your spouse in the future, embrace what is.

You can deepen your marriage friendship by nurturing how you think and relate to your spouse now. John Gottman, marriage therapist, researcher, and author, is right on when he says that happy couples think more positive thoughts than negative thoughts about their spouse. The longer you are with your spouse, the more negative thoughts and patterns can develop.

8 Ways to Cultivate Positive Thinking About Your Spouse

We’ve been exploring how marriage changes and possibly erodes over time, but now it’s time to discuss how to reverse the erosion. That is, how to cultivate a more positive marriage friendship from the inside out. Remember, the goal isn’t to eliminate all negative thoughts, but to have more positive than negative ones!

1. Boost Your Self-Awareness: You won’t know what to work on if you can’t see what you are doing. Instead of relying on someone else to point out what you need to work on, become a great observer of yourself. Observe what it’s like to be married to you, to argue with you, and to try to get close to you.

2. Notice Negativity Generation: We often think that our spouse is causing our negative thoughts and feelings. But look for instances when you are creating negative thinking all on your own. Notice what inside you triggers the negative feelings about your spouse. It’s hard to get close to someone when you generate negative feelings about them.

3. Appreciate Differences: When you want to win or be right, it’s hard to be more open and neutral about differences. Instead you are trying to prove your way is better. Begin to see differences as just different, not better or worse.

4. Accept Responsibility for Your Part: Marriage conflict and emotional distance are co-created by both partners. Even when you find it hard to see your part, commit to accepting responsibility for part of the problem. The more awareness you develop about your part in co-created conflict and/or distance, the less negative you become about your mate.

5. Manage Your Emotions: Instead of trying to calm down or shape up how your spouse reacts, work on managing your own emotional reactions. Even if you can’t see your emotions, they are reacting quickly to what they perceive as a threat. Unless you tell them to chill out, they will rule your interactions.

6. Respectfully Speak Up: Many couples have learned to avoid difficult topics to lower tension because it works. Yet avoidance leads to distance. When you have a different idea than your spouse, represent your self by expressing your different thinking. Do this without pressuring your spouse to adopt what you think.

7. Resist Taking All the Blame: Another way people deal with tension is to accept all the blame for a problem. You are only part of the problem. Own your part without expecting your mate to take his or her part in the problem. Your mate can stay in denial if they want, but you don’t have to take all the blame.

8. Embrace Works in Progress: Embrace your marriage as an adventure, where two people are works in progress. It is normal to feel more or less connected from moment to moment or day to day. The important part is to keep observing, seeing, and trying to find a better way to relate the next time.

While I hope you find something useful in my blog, please don’t over-value my advice. I know what works for me but I am not the expert on you. Observe yourself and your own relationship. Work on what you see in yourself. Find out what works for you to feel more positive toward your spouse, so you can enjoy each other again!

What do you do or think that helps you have more positive thoughts and feelings about your spouse?

“Years subdue the ardor of passion, but in lieu thereof friendship and affection deep-rooted subsists, which defies the ravages of time, and whilst the vital flame exists.” ~ Abigail Adams, Wife of President John Adams

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When your spouse wants to end the marriage, getting closer to your spouse is no longer an option. My next post will explore how to cope when one spouse wants the marriage season to end: Subscribe here to stay in the loop.

While you are waiting, visit my new resource page. It is packed with resources on: marriage & family, counseling & coaching, health & wellness, & simplicity & productivity!

Photo Credit: “Love is being stupid together” by Nattu

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Is Your Marriage Eroding?

Posted on February 20, 2013 | 1 Comment

Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of the Marriage Series.

couple-desire-reach

I hear your life stories rooted with desire and fear.

You married someone that you thought w0uld be great to start a family with. Now the kids are getting older and you are looking for something more. Is it too late to have passion with your spouse?

Or you had a fiery romance with your spouse and after you moved in together, it started to simmer down. When you don’t feel the passion you once felt, you worry if your marriage is in trouble.

I too used to worry about my marriage when the high of falling in love simmers down. But now I view marriage with more smiles. To have a best friend that you still get to have sex with after all your years together doesn’t sound like a failure to me.

“The mad passion, the ecstasy, the longing, the obsessive thinking, the heightened energy: all dissolve. But if you are fortunate, this magic transforms itself into new feelings of security, comfort, calm, and union with your partner.” ~ Helen Fisher, Why We Love

I am not sure marriage is a magical transformation of calm and union, but I do think we can either get in the way of embracing the change or we can grow to love the change. A marriage relationship can still grow as it evolves from passion to life companion. Let’s explore what cultivates as well as erodes this marital friendship.

Eroding the Marital Friendship

While many variables can contribute to the erosion of the marriage friendship, I think expectations play a big role. We each carry expectations about what makes a good marriage. And these images feed what we expect our spouse to do to meet our needs. Expecting someone else to make us happy starts the unintentional erosion process.

If you expect to feel like you did when you fell in love, you will be let down. Love hasn’t always been apart of the decision to marry but now the majority of people say not being in love contributes to their wanting a divorce.

I love the romantic loving feeling too. But when we focus too much on our feelings, we get anxious and worried about them. One way we deal with anxiety is to blame our spouse for our feelings.

The more we focus on our spouse as the problem, the more negative we think and the more unromantic we act. In turn, our spouse reacts to our negativity with more negativity, proving to us that they are the problem. So we try harder to change them to feel better, and the vicious circle continues.

Now imagine both partners have unmet expectations and negative thoughts about their spouse. Put both together and the marital friendship starts to erode away as the soil dries up. Both partners are helping create these negative interaction patterns from the inside out.

Although it may be hard to see your part in generating negative patterns that get in the way of positive feelings or cooperative interactions, it is present.  No matter what season your marriage is in, you can always work on your part, how you interact, and what you think about your spouse.

This is the work of marriage. Not shaping up your mate, but exploring new depths within your mind’s soil. 

What kind of soil are you nurturing in your mind about your marriage?

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Stay tuned for Part 3 of Marriage Series where I explore how to cultivate your marriage friendship by nurturing your mind’s soil. Subscribe to stay in the loop.

Photo Credit: “Come Together” by Hartwig HKD

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