Episode 120: Why Most Couples Don’t Have A Great Marriage

Hello, loves, this is Sharon Pope, and this is the Loving Truth. Today I want to talk to you about the biggest reason that I think most couples don't have a great marriage. But I want to begin with a quote that I heard from Dr Joe Dispenza. He said temporary discomfort is the price of freedom.

So there's a bunch of things that I'm trying to do in my life right now new goals and objectives, things I want to change or achieve and sometimes it brings up discomfort. And so this idea of temporary discomfort that's the price you pay for the freedom that you seek completely resonated with me. Completely resonated with me, and I think that temporary discomfort is one of the reasons, probably the biggest reason, why we don't have great marriages right now. So let me explain.

Think about it. Anytime you're trying to do something new and that new thing can feel like losing 10 pounds, it can be something like reconnecting in your marriage, right. But whatever it is that you're trying to do, because it's new, it's going to feel uncomfortable, right? And human beings, we don't like feeling uncomfortable, right? Those old habits, the way we've always done things, that's what's comfortable. And so the minute a bit of discomfort shows up, we quit, we stop pressing towards whatever it is that we really want to achieve or what we want to reach, and then, by the way, we create beliefs that support us in remaining squarely in our comfort zone.

I think of it like your brain's handy little self-protection mechanism, that part of your brain that tells you well, my situation is different. You know, my situation is so much harder. I mean my kids. They're young. Or my kids are teenagers. They're gonna understand what's happening in my marriage and I'm not gonna know how to answer them. They're right in the middle of football season and I don't want them to have to navigate between two homes. Like all of this stuff. Right, like my situation is different. You don't understand. My husband drinks, or my husband overworks, or my husband watches porn, or, or or we think that our situation is different.

That's just that part of your brain that's telling you. That's why you should stay right in your comfort zone. Or it'll tell you, like well, this is just how marriage is after 20 years. Maybe what you're asking for is just too much. Maybe your expectations are just too high.

Why can't you just be happy? Right, that part of the brain just wants to keep you safe. It's the reptilian mind and its entire job is to keep you alive another day and so doing things that are uncomfortable, that feel scary, that bring up fears, that make you feel discomfort. It doesn't want you doing any of that, because that is viewed to that part of the brain as if it's life or death. So we're not using the thinking part of our mind, the prefrontal cortex. We're using that habitual part of our brain, the brainstem or the reptilian mind, and it does not matter what we're talking about.

Anytime you're trying to do something new or something that feels important or big in your life, it can be having a very necessary but difficult conversation with your spouse about the state of your marriage. Conversation with your spouse about the state of your marriage, right, that part of your brain it doesn't want you having that conversation that feels terrifying. What if it goes really bad? What if it turns into a big argument? What if he gets mad and then you two don't talk for five days? What if it all blows up and it ends up in divorce? Right, you don't want to do that. No, no, no, let's not do that.

Or what if it's setting a necessary boundary that has needed to be set for years but that you've been avoiding. Maybe it's asking for what you need, just simply saying what it is that you need in your marriage. Maybe it's attempting to reconnect when you felt disconnected from your partner for a long time. Maybe it's being affectionate again or, oh my God, even intimate again when that train left the station a year or two ago, right, all of these things are going to feel really uncomfortable. There's no path through any of those challenges where you get to remain in your comfort zone, and that's why most people don't do it, because the minute it becomes uncomfortable, we quit and we come up with reasons on why we quit.

That's that brain self-protection mechanism and then we take behaviors or we take actions that just keep us stuck in the exact same place, and all we're doing is just avoiding the discomfort that is necessary in order to reach that next level, in order to reach that goal that we say that we want. And every single time we are sacrificing, we're gaining the short-term comfort for our long-term goals, and it's just a sacrifice that we're making, even though we're not really that conscious of it, and right.

And so this is where it's like well, it's just easier to pour another glass of wine and numb out on Netflix. It's so much easier than confronting the challenges in my relationship. So, yeah, wine and Netflix, that sounds like a better idea right now, right, and we tell ourselves it's just right now. But then a day goes by, another day goes by, another day goes by, but then a day goes by, another day goes by, another day goes by, and then these conversations are just never had.

Or it's so much easier to talk to our friends about the struggles in our marriage so much easier than actually having the conversation with the person that we're in the relationship with. It's easier to talk about it to someone else who we know loves us and supports us and is a cheerleader for us than actually having the conversation with the person that we're in the marriage with that we're having the challenges with.

But that's the only way we're ever going to overcome those challenges. We're not going to overcome them by talking to our friends or our sister or our mothers. We're only going to overcome those challenges when we sit down and have that hard but heart-to-heart conversation with our spouse and then we tell ourselves we'll just put it off, we'll do it later, we'll do it when things calm down, when things aren't so busy. When does that ever happen? It never happens. So we just put it off and we tell ourselves like we'll do it later, we'll do it tomorrow, we'll do it next week, we'll do it next month, we'll do it next year, whatever.

We tell ourselves these things and if we're really honest, we know we're lying, we know we're lying to ourselves. We're never going to come back to it. We're just going to keep kicking the can because we don't want to feel the discomfort in the short term, which means we will never feel the freedom in the long term. And that's why most of us don't have the marriages that we want, because we're not willing to endure the discomfort, to feel the feelings.

Feelings are actually meant to be felt, that's why they're called feelings. But when they come up and they don't feel good, all we want to do is run away from them. When we feel fear, we want to run. When we feel anxious, we want to run. When we feel anxious, we want to numb out. When we feel scared or I guess that's the same thing as fear, maybe it's like when we feel guilt or worry then that's when we're going to go talk to someone else and get their opinion. Maybe that'll feel productive, like getting more opinions, getting other ideas that'll help me Right.

So all of this comes down to our inability to live with a bit of discomfort, and it doesn't mean you live with it forever, but you feel it in the short term so that you can get the result that you want long term, so that you can get the result that you want long-term. Because, my friends, this is how days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months turn into years and years turn into a decade. It is not uncommon for me to meet a new client who has been avoiding conversations and avoiding the challenges in their marriage for more than a decade and you might look back at that or look at that and go, well, how could they possibly just let that go for 10 years? Because they let it go day by day by day by day by day, and that's how it works.

And so it's our inability to live with a bit of discomfort to navigate through that discomfort. I mean some women, they'll avoid conversations for years and I will tell them when I'm talking to them about the kind of conversation that they need to have with their partner to open up the dialogue, to see if something can sort of crack open between them to see if something new can evolve or not, because we don't know until we try. And when I'll express to them look, look, you have a choice.

You have a choice between two things 30 to 60 minutes of probably a really uncomfortable conversation, or a lifetime of dysfunction and loneliness inside your marriage. Those are the options. When you put it in those terms, well now, the 30 to 60 minutes of discomfort feels like a no-brainer.

But we don't put it in those terms to ourselves, right? We just listen to that primitive mind telling us no, no, no, this is just how marriage is. Don't do that scary thing, it's probably not going to work anyway. And they don't understand. Your situation is different. Right, don't bother trying, it's not going to work. Just give up now. Right, don't bother trying, it's not going to work, just give up now. Deal with it when the kids are 18, right, all of this stuff.

The reason we don't have great marriages today, by and large, is because we have almost no ability to sit with some discomfort temporarily so that we can get the ultimate goal that we want. So I want to bring you back to that quote of temporary discomfort is the price of freedom, and freedom can look a lot of ways, like freedom to love, freedom with your time, freedom with money, whatever.

Freedom is a very broad umbrella, but think of it as like it's the price you pay for whatever it is that you want, because anything that you want you would already have. If it was in your comfort zone to get it, you would have it already. Everything you have today, including your relationship with your spouse, that resides in your comfort zone, that resides in your comfort zone.

But when you want something more than what you already have, you have to be willing to move through the discomfort. And it's like anything right. If I wanted to learn Italian, then I'm going to have to navigate the discomfort of not knowing the language, not knowing the dialect, being willing to screw it up and do it badly for a pretty long time until I can get better and better and better at it, or else I'm never going to learn Italian.

And we understand this in so many ways, but for some reason, when it comes to our marriages, we just refuse to get uncomfortable in order to have the kind of relationship that we want and the kind of deep, loving, connected relationship that most people want. That's the deep end, my friends, and so we've got to be willing to not just stay in the shallow end but want what's in the deep end. If you want what's in the deep end, you've got to be willing to swim in the deep end.

You've got to be willing to feel a bit of discomfort, not forever, but occasionally, until it becomes more comfortable. Everything that is new feels uncomfortable until it becomes more habitual, until it becomes more routine. Until it becomes more habitual. Until it becomes more routine, having hard conversations becomes easier the more you do it.

Setting boundaries becomes easier the more you do it. Choosing to love when you've often chosen to not be very loving, becomes easier when it becomes a habitual practice in terms of how you want to show up in your life. So everything we want is outside of our comfort zone, otherwise you'd already have it. So the more that we can get comfortable with a little bit of discomfort in our lives, the more we will be able to create all the things in our lives that we really want, including a great relationship.