Episode 93: Will My Partner Ever Change?

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 talk about whether you want your marriage or whether you just want to want it. So this is an important distinction that we're going to dive into today.

And this is a phrase that I teach inside my membership program, the decision. And it's a phrase that often gets repeated back to me because it resonates so deeply with people. So I want to begin with the story of one of my clients. Her name is not sue, but I'm going to refer to her as sue. And. But honestly, this could describe so, so many of my clients.

So she and her husband have been together for more than 25 years, and she has described her husband as a good man and a great father, and they built a beautiful life together. She tells me that, you know, from the outside looking in, it all looks really good, right? Anyone would look at their lives and say, you've done a great job, and they would assume that they're probably pretty happy as a family and as a couple.

And now their kids are off building lives of their own and they're having to spend more time together as a couple, but they feel like strangers because even though everything looks great from the outside, being inside that relationship doesn't feel as great. She tells me that she feels lonely inside the marriage. She feels disconnected from her partner, and she feels discouraged that their relationship will ever be anything other than what it actually is.

And so she's been checked out for a number of years, and she's just been off building a life of her own that is not including, of not inclusive of her husband. And so that hasn't helped. They've just grown further and further apart from one another. And so now there are two people that are living under the same roof but not sharing a life anymore. Now, she has done all the things that you would probably try to do, which is convince herself that she's fine.

She's fine with how it is. I mean, this is just how marriage is after this many years, right? But that doesn't last very long. Like, we can lie to ourselves for a minute, but we can't lie to ourselves forever, because those longings, they don't get quieter. They only become more and more pronounced in our lives. And so she knew she wanted more. She wanted more connection. She wanted more meaning.

She wanted more adventure. And more experiences in her life. She wanted to be able to follow her interests and pursue her passions, and she wanted to feel alive again. I mean, after all, now this is the time in her life when it's not just about the kids, and she had time in her life for herself and her passions and her interests, and she really wanted to explore more of that, but she didn't feel like she had a partner that she could do that with.

So sometimes when people come to work with me, they genuinely want their marriages to feel good again. They're not sure if it's possible, but they really want to see if it's possible. And sometimes people, they want to want it, but they don't actually want the marriage anymore. And that's usually because they've been checked out for so long that now they can imagine a life being lived outside of that marriage.

And so they're not interested in seeing whether or not the relationship can evolve to a new place. So sometimes we want the marriage, and sometimes we just want to want it. And so what that manifests into is that we don't want to try anymore. So we're not going to put forth any new effort. And so, of course, nothing is going to evolve and nothing is going to change.

But here's what I would tell you is that, of course, if you are struggling in your marriage, and you have been for years, and you're at a place where you're feeling the feelings, like sue is, where she's feeling disconnected and lonely and discouraged, of course you don't want this marriage, right? This marriage isn't working for you. It hasn't been working for you for years. You just haven't really admitted that to yourself because you don't want to face what's on the other side of that decision.

So I say take that option off the table. And what I mean by that option is this marriage staying exactly as it is and you remaining inside of it, because of course you're not going to want that marriage. This is just a screaming outcry for it's time for this marriage to evolve to a new place. If it's going to work for both of you, it has to evolve.

Otherwise it's going to die. Right? We are always evolving in some direction. We're moving closer together, we're moving further apart. We never stay stagnant. So if you've been moving further and further apart, you're going to continue to move further and further apart until something interrupts that. So, of course you don't want this marriage that's where a lot of people get stuck on this phrase of, do you want it, or do you just want to want it?

Is they know that they don't want this. They don't want to live out the rest of their days feeling the way they do about their marriage today. And that makes sense. I just think it's a time when alarm bells are going off and saying it's time to see if this relationship can evolve or not. But sometimes people just are at that place of where they just want to want the relationship.

And here's what I mean. If we take sue as an example, she didn't want to create a problem where there wasn't one. It wasn't like they were arguing or being hateful towards one another. They were just disconnected and building lives very separately from one another. She didn't want to hurt her husband. She genuinely cared about him and she thought of him as a friend. So she wasn't actively trying to hurt her husband.

She didn't want her adult kids to get upset or to worry about either of them. She didn't want to have to sell the family home and move. She didn't want to change her lifestyle or split their assets. She didn't want to have to do any of that. And she also did not want to be seen as the bad guy in this story or the villain, which she thought she might be because everyone really enjoyed her husband and thought that they were a great couple.

Because, remember, from the outside looking in, everything looks great. And so if she's the one that leaves the good guy, isn't she going to be the bad guy in this story? She didn't want to face any of that. And so that's where she got stuck, is that she would say things like, maybe the marriage can evolve. Maybe we can get past this. Maybe one day we'll be close again.

But she didn't actually want this marriage anymore. She didn't want to be in this marriage anymore. She wanted to want it because she didn't want all the outcomes that would coincide with that choice to end the relationship. So ultimately, she was done, and she wasn't willing to put in any more effort. And I understand and respect, when we get to that place, too, when we let our marital challenges go on for far too long, this is what happens.

So it really just depends on where you're at in your marital struggle to figure out, do you want to see if your relationship can evolve to a better feeling place, or do you just want to want your marriage because you don't want the outcome of that choice because that can feel terrifying. So, again, when you're struggling in your marriage, and you have been for years, of course you don't want this marriage.

Of course you don't. That's okay. But could you want to have a new relationship with the same man, with the same partner, with the same spouse? Can you evolve the relationship? Are you willing to try to see, can our relationship evolve to a new place where it could feel good for us? Or has this gone on for so long that you're just done? And here's the reality. Look, everything's going to take effort, right?

You know that saying, like, choose your hard, like, dieting is hard, but being overweight is hard. You know, all those things. This is another one of those scenarios where, you know, kind of trying to reconnect with your spouse and seeing can this relationship evolve to a new place? Hard, right? And can feel intimidating, can feel a bit insurmountable because it's a bit of unchartered territory. But divorcing is hard.

Dating again is hard. Starting all over again with someone new, also hard. So we can either try to create a new relationship with the same person, or we can try to, in the future, create a new relationship with a new person. But the reason we get stuck in this place of indecision is because we want to want the marriage, but we don't actually want it. And so therefore, we're not making an effort, and therefore, nothing is changing, and the relationship just continues to worsen.

But we don't want the outcome of the choice to end the relationship because that impacts not just us, but also people that we love and care about. And that's why we get stuck in this semi comfortable place of indecision. And so this is why the waters of indecision feel really difficult to navigate. Because until you can really tease apart what's really going on and what it is that we really want, then we can't get clear.

And if we're not clear, then we can't take action forward without this fear of regretting our decision one way or the other. So sometimes we want our marriage to work and to feel good again. And even if we aren't quite certain that it could evolve to a new place, we feel some little glimmer of hope that it's possible and we're willing to put in some effort to make that happen.

And sometimes, my friends, we just want to want it. We want to want the marriage, but we don't actually want it. This is a really important distinction for you to know for yourself, because this journey has to begin with you telling yourself the absolute truth and then being able to make peace with that truth and then be able to move through that truth. So there's a lot to it.

And this might be if you've been stuck for a long time, it might be one of the reasons why you've been stuck. All right. I hope that that is helpful for you and it gives you something new to chew on and think about. Until next time, take 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 I and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to clarityformymarriage.com to fill out an application. Now that's clarityformymarriage.com.