Episode 106: The Undercurrent Of Discontent In A ‘Boring’ Marriage

Welcome to the Loving Truth podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host, relationship expert and certified master life coach, Sharon Pope. Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope, and this is the Loving Truth. Today we're going to be talking about the role of security inside of a marriage, because security is one of those things in a marriage that we look for at the beginning, but ultimately, it's one of the things that we end up sort of resenting in the marriage.

And so I get curious about how we get from one extreme to the other and why we view it so differently depending upon where we're at in our lives. So let me bring this to life for you through the eyes of one of the members inside my program, the Decision. So we'll refer to this member as Vicki, even though that is not her name. Obviously, it's not her real name, but I bet you might find yourself in some part of this story.

So Vicki was very clear about what she wanted and what she valued. She told me specifically, I valued security. Security in my marriage, security in my job or my profession, my career, security in my finances. So she built a life that was very secure, right? Through all the decisions that she had made throughout her life, her life had become pretty secure. She married the only boyfriend she had ever had.

They had been dating since high school, so he was all she knew. They didn't have a lot of debt. The only thing that they owed on was just their house. They had two children, right? So it was very structured, and it was very manageable. They both had their careers, but life looked perfectly fine, right? Their life looked perfectly fine. Their marriage seemed perfectly fine. But what she said was, I built a marriage that was structured, safe, secure, and oppressive.

Now you see where the rub comes in. See, she felt this, like, undercurrent of discontent in her life, and she didn't quite know what it was or how to fix it or who was to blame. She didn't know what to do with that. And I asked her about, tell me the last time you felt tremendous joy. And she sat there for about a minute or two, and she's like, I can't.

I can't recall a time that I felt real joy in the last year or two years of her life. I mean, I think that in some sense, she's bored in her life, but what she was feeling was so much deeper than boredom. This undercurrent of discontent makes you feel really restless, and again, you don't know what to do with it. Or how to deal with it. And when I think about how she organized her life, like her existence every day, day in and day out, moment to moment, was all about, what do the people around me need, Right?

If it wasn't something that her kids needed, it was something that her husband needed. If it wasn't something that her husband needed, it was something that they needed to have done around the house or for their lives. And if it wasn't something for their lives, then it was something that her boss needed or her company needed from her. And so think about that for a second, what that does to you over the course of a decade or two, where almost every element of your life is all about what someone else needs from you and there's no part of you in your own life.

So she was feeling just irritated all the time. And proximity is one of those things, we take it out on our partners just because they're the closest one to us. And so she started to just feel bored, irritated, resentful, and she didn't know how to fix it. So she didn't have anything for herself in her own life. That is, until she found herself in a three month affair with another man.

And now all of a sudden, there was this one part of her life that didn't require, you know, her checking the box, paying the bills, doing the things, taking care of everyone else and their needs. It was just for pleasure for her. In some ways it probably filled an empty space within her. And in other ways it probably helped her to just distract from not having to face the challenges in her own life and her own marriage.

And it was something that probably she's looking for something that will fill her up, fill that gap, that emptiness that she's feeling in her life. And so it's not uncommon for women by the time they hit probably mid-40s to mid-50s, when their children are becoming much more independent or maybe even leaving the house that now we start, we have that space for ourselves. We have the time to do something that would bring us alive and make our lives a little bit more meaningful, but we almost don't know what to do with that space.

And so it leaves us feeling very empty. And that's what she was feeling. And so lo and behold, then an affair comes along or gets presented to her. And that seems like the solution until it doesn't, right? Because affairs bring about a lot more complexity and a lot more confusion. So now she's more confused than she was before because she hasn't solved the original issue of this underlying discontent in her life and a lack of real meaning for her life so that she gets out of bed excited every day.

But now she's also got feelings for someone else and a marriage that's in crisis and trying to figure out, can we heal this and bring it back together or not? So I'll get back to Vicki, but I just. I just want to bring this up because I don't think that we are all that tremendously different from her. Right? Because if you think about it, when we were looking for or open to meeting our forever person, what did we go looking for?

We wanted that stability. We wanted security. We wanted to know who they are, and we wanted that to be consistent. Because it gets very tumultuous when you're like, at one point they're showing you one side of themselves, and the next day there's someone totally different. And, you know, like, that's very. Like, that's not the person that you're gonna marry, right? Because there's a lot of ups and downs.

There's a lot of turmoil in a relationship like that. So we want someone with shared vision for their life or common goals that we can both reach for. We want that stability and that security. And for some of us, where maybe we were hurt before and we chose the safe guy, right? Or maybe a marriage ended and that was a painful process for you, and you don't want to go through that process again.

And so you look for that person who's not going to bring the upheaval, who's not going to bring the drama, and who is going to be consistent and predictable, and it's going to feel safe and secure. That's what we go looking for. And so I think about it in the same way as, like, Maslow's hierarchy. Remember learning about that in probably the seventh grade, but it basically said that, like, on the bottom realm is you need air, food, water, shelter, things like that.

And if you don't have those things, nothing else matters, right? If you don't have water, clean water to drink, you actually don't care that much about whether or not you love your husband, right? If you can't breathe, if you don't have enough air, you're not thinking about how you can become your highest self. You're just trying to survive, right? So that's baseline level of stuff. And then from there, we reach for personal safety and security and health and employment.

And then once we have that, then we can reach for things like love and belonging and those sorts of things. But you can't Reach for love and belonging if you don't have air, food and water. So now let's extrapolate that into what I would call the relationship pyramid, something that I created. But it follows that same line of thinking, is that there is a hierarchy to what it is that we want inside of our relationships.

And a lot of women, by the time they find their way to my work, when their marriage is really struggling, they don't have any desire for their spouse, and they're like, so why should I bother, you know, trying to heal this if I can never see myself wanting to be intimate with them again? But to me, that's the top of the food chain. That is the top of the hierarchy.

But at the very baseline of a relationship hierarchy, we have to have security, safety, predictability. That's table stakes for being in a relationship. And then from there, we reach for trust and friendship and respect. Once we have trust and friendship and respect built on top of a layer of safety, security, and predictability, then we can reach for things like fun and adventure and spontaneity. And once we have that, then we can reach for things like intimacy and connection and ultimately desire and passion, right?

But we need the safety and security inside of our relationship, because if you don't have that, then you don't have a foundation. You're just trying to build a house on top of a very shaky or sandy foundation that's going to shift and move quite a bit. So it's interesting, isn't it? Like what we go looking for is that safety and security, the stability and the predictability. But then if you go back to the way that Vicki described her marriage, safe, secure and oppressive, right?

She sort of resented the life that she had actively built alongside her partner. That sort of insulated her into her comfort zone, which was all safety and security. But as we grow older and we become more independent, we have that safety and security. Whatever we have, we start to take for granted, right? I take for granted every day that I'm going to wake up and I'm going to have enough air to breathe.

I don't think about it. You probably don't either, right? So the things that we take for granted, we don't really value anymore. So that's why we can start out looking for that exact trait, that knowing who this person is, knowing that they're going to show up consistently, but then that turning into something that feels like prison or feels oppressive to us or feels like something that we want to just push away because we need both in our lives.

We need that balance. But what we shouldn't do is shun the safety and security and stability, because if you don't have that, then none of the other stuff even matters. Right? So I think that we've got to look at it through the lens of, yeah, that was what was important to me 10 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever it was for you. But it's not that it's unimportant to me now.

It's just that it's always there. So I don't value it as much as maybe I once did. But to call it then oppressive and turn it into something that is a negative, then all we're going to end up doing is swinging the pendulum the opposite direction and going for something that is not terribly safe. Right? We can blow up our lives. If you think about where Vicki is at right now, she's in the stay or go decision, and she's like, you know, do we separate?

Do we divorce? What's the impact to our kids? What if I'm alone forever? I mean, I've cut it off with my affair partner. He's probably moved on by now. So she had. She's, like, going through all these angles. She even was like, maybe I should just quit my job. Maybe I should get a new job, right? So she was looking for all these ways to, like, essentially blow up her life, all because she was seeking meaning.

And then she was shunning the stability and the predictability when you need that in order to reach for something more and something bigger and something deeper in your life. So I just thought that this was an interesting topic around the idea of security, because we know we need it. We actively seek it out when we're looking for a solid partner to build a life with. But then once we're together 10, 20 years, we kind of resent that security and that predictability because we start to get bored.

And my friends, here's what I would tell you. First of all, just the awareness of this is helpful because it will help you sort of reconnect to. Yeah, I need that safety, security, and predictability in order to go create the bigger things that I want to create for my life. So hopefully this has gotten you thinking about that topic a little bit differently so that then you can actually appreciate what it is that you have, and realizing that that's the very foundation that will help you go do big things in your life.

The second thing to bring up, though, is that this undercurrent of discontent, think about how that happens when you've built your entire Life around doing for everybody else. And then the everybody else's don't need you anymore. Like, the kids get older and they're more independent. You know, you've kind of got work down to a science at this point. You could do it with your eyes closed. You need something to sink your teeth into.

I think that that's human nature, and it's not asking for too much. I think you are a powerful creator in your own life. And so your life is just calling you forward. But sometimes we don't know what to do with that gap where life is calling me forward. But I'm back here and I feel that emptiness, I feel that discontent, and I don't know how to fix it.

So what I shared with her is some of this gets very pragmatic very quickly, which is like you need something to give your life meaning and to give it that little ounce of excitement that gets you out of bed, that makes you excited about your own life. And no one can answer what that is for you. But the power of having something to focus on is huge. Right?

Your focus used to be your kids. Well, now, if your kids don't need you as much, what is your new focus? Where do you turn to next? Is it building a side business? Is it learning a new hobby? Something that you've always wanted to do? Maybe you've always wanted to write a book, or you've always wanted to learn to play the piano. Maybe it's traveling to different parts of the world that you've always wanted to go to.

And maybe learning a new language so that when you go there, you can communicate with the people there. Right there. There's so many different ways that you can fill that space. And what was important for Vicki was, I don't want it to be just another thing on my list to do. I don't want it to feel like, oh, here's just another thing for me to fill the space.

And it's on my to do list. It can't be like that. It's gotta be something that sort of your heart sort of. It pulls you forward. It's something you want to do. It's not something you have to do or that feels like an obligation or something you should do. It's something that. Yeah, that. That's what I wanna do. And so to get to what that thing is for you is you've gotta explore a little bit.

You've gotta try some things. You've gotta say yes more often than you say no. And you've gotta pay attention to how those things, as you try them, make you feel. You've got to look back in the. In the archives of your memory and go, one day, I'm going to do what? Because now is that day. Now is that day to go back to those things that you. You always put off, but you one day want to do.

Now is the time to sort of dive in to those places for yourself. Because what we don't need to do is go out and find someone else to fill the empty spaces of our lives. Because that, my friends, not only is it not healthy, but it's also using people. If you think about it like, I'm going to use you as my distraction so that I don't have to fill this emptiness myself, so I don't have to do this work myself to take responsibility for how I feel as I move through my own life.

So I hope that that gives you something to consider. Security, stability and predictability is not a bad thing. It's a very necessary thing inside of a relationship. But we just can't stop there because we are creators and we're always going to be reaching for more. So once we have that, then we have to reach for trust and friendship and respect. Once we have that, then we can reach for more fun and more adventure and more spontaneity.

I think of my husband as a very stable, solid man. And sometimes I can be a little bit more of a free spirit. But the truth of our relationship is that I feel like I can fly a little bit further, a little bit faster, I can take more risks, because I know that I'm not going to become untethered. Because that stability in him, that foundation in him, that solidness of who he is as a man, as a human being, gives me the stability I need so that I can go create and do big things in the world.

All right, until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take really good care. If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a truth and clarity session with a member of my team. On the call, we'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage.

Go to clarityformymarriage.com to fill out an application. Now that's clarityformymarriage.com.