If your marriage is falling apart and you’re not sure what to do about it, I’m here to share with you five things you can do right now to help turn things around. You might be wondering how do you fix a relationship that is falling apart? I’m Cody Butler, a marriage coach and founder of Better Marriage, where we help men win back their wives and turn their marriages around, even when it seems completely hopeless.
How Do You Fix a Relationship That Is Falling Apart: Key Steps to Rebuild and Restore Connection
Finger-pointing and blame never work to bring a wife back or reconcile a marriage. Instead, you need to point the finger in one direction, and that’s back at yourself. It’s important to understand that we get back what we put out, and the law of sowing and reaping cannot be avoided. If you plant blame, you will reap blame. If you want to see change, you have to become the change you want to see. We don’t tell people to change; we show them how to change through our good behavior and change.
I’m not saying that your wife is absolved of all responsibility for the breakdown in the marriage. I’m sure she has a great deal of responsibility. But the bottom line is that she’s free to do whatever she wants to do, behave however she wants to behave, say what she wants to say, and think what she wants to think.
We have no right to impose our views, our attitudes, or how we think she should behave. We have no right whatsoever to impose that upon her. We only have one right, and that is to act upon ourselves. And if we don’t take that right, if we decide that we’re going to act on somebody else, and a lot of men come to me with the question, ‘How do I change my wife?’ the answer is: you don’t. You can’t change your wife. If that is your attitude towards saving your marriage, you’re going to have real problems because you’re going to get back what you put out. The person in front of you is simply reflecting back what you give.
So if you want to see positive change in the relationship, then you have to become that positive change. You have to be the person that is moving forward and making that change, and doing it because it’s the right thing to do, not doing it from a condescending place or a place of moral superiority. But doing it because you genuinely realize that you’ve fallen short in the relationship, and this is why the relationship is failing. Especially if your wife is leaving you, it’s because there’s something about your behavior that she does not like.
On the flip side, attitude matters. This is a beautiful part, and why marriage restoration can really be very easy sometimes, is because people are attracted to behavior. They’re not necessarily attracted to the person themselves. You can say, ‘Well, they’re attracted to personality,’ but personality is just a collection of attitudes and behaviors. Our attitude produces behavior. If we behave in a certain way, then we’re going to get a certain outcome – a very predictable outcome. And this is really easy to demonstrate. If we go out to the grocery store today and we’re just in line waiting to pay, and we’re extremely rude to the person next to us, what kind of response do you think you’re going to get back?
A very predictable one. You’re going to get a very hostile response, and it’s not going to be a very friendly experience. Whereas if you go the other way with that and decide to give them a compliment or say something really nice to them, you’re going to get nice behavior back. What we are seeing back from somebody else is always a reflection of what we’re putting out. And if we don’t understand that, then we can start to think that the person is giving us negativity when we’re giving positivity out. But this simply isn’t the case. If somebody is giving you negativity back, it’s because you’re presenting negativity with them. If somebody’s giving you positivity, it’s because you are giving positivity to them. So, our attitude is critically important. One of the things we say when we’re working with men in the program is, “when your attitude is right, the facts don’t matter.” Men will come and say, “well, this is the fact and this is the fact and this is the fact.” It simply doesn’t matter when your attitude is right, the facts don’t matter.
That being said, the only question anybody really should be asking themselves is, what is the right attitude? And the first right attitude is accepting responsibility for the situation. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard where there’s just an impossible conflict within the marriage where neither can move past the conflicts and issues and challenges. And as soon as one of the partners, one of the people, one of the spouses says, “I’m to blame for this. I take responsibility for what has happened here,” the other person immediately softens and says, “it takes two, it takes two to cause an argument, it takes two to fight.” And as soon as one person softens, the other person softens as well. Now, the key here is not to do it to manipulate the other person and to get them to soften. It’s to do it because it’s the right thing to do. So, step number one is to accept full responsibility for your role in the breakdown of the relationship and to not pass any blame onto the other person.
Very important now, the second stage is to get some education.
We need to focus on relationship education because the reason we are in this mess is due to a lack of education within our relationships. A relationship is a skill, and having a good relationship is a high-level skill. Most of us simply don’t know how to do it. It’s easy to look at our partner and say, ‘Well, she doesn’t have the skills, but I do.’ However, another rule we have in our program when working with men is to never grade your own homework.
Many men come to us claiming to have great relationship and interpersonal skills, but upon evaluation, they are not as proficient as they think. It’s problematic to think that you have great communication skills when, in reality, you don’t. It’s easy to victimize yourself and claim you’re making an effort to reconcile the relationship when, in fact, you’re not making any meaningful effort.
Therefore, it’s essential to understand and evaluate your communication skills, implement them effectively, and seek feedback. It’s not only about having the skills but also implementing them effectively.
This leads to point number three, creating emotional safety within the marriage.
This is fundamental, and we emphasize to our program participants that their success or failure depends on their ability to establish emotional safety and security. Nothing will improve within a marriage until a wife feels comfortable communicating her problems to her husband, which requires emotional safety and security.
However, one significant barrier to reconciliation is when men claim to have created emotional safety but still don’t receive communication from their wives. In reality, if a wife is not communicating with her husband, it’s because she doesn’t feel safe doing so. It’s crucial to acknowledge this and accept responsibility for destroying emotional safety within the marriage.
I know this may be a difficult truth for some to accept, and there may be disagreements, but it’s essential to address this problem and work towards creating emotional safety and security within the marriage
Point number two is about getting some education on how to recreate emotional safety and not evaluating your own homework or grading your own work. Doing so would be catastrophic. Another thing that we love to say is, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be married?” Sadly, many men choose to be right over being married. They would rather be right in thinking that they have created emotional safety and done everything they need to do, and that their wife is the problem, not them. However, I am telling you categorically that if your wife is not talking to you, it is because emotional safety is not there yet, and more work needs to be done. There are loads of other videos on this channel, so check some of those out, and you’ll start to see that emotional safety is absolutely fundamental to the whole process.
Now, step number four is about humility.
It’s very simple. What is one of the most powerful things we can do to restore our marriage? Develop humility. Adopt a sense of humility and don’t grade your own homework on this. I know some people will watch this and think, “Well, I have humility within my marriage. It’s my wife who doesn’t.” Let me tell you something, brother. There’s no humility in pointing the finger at your wife. There’s no humility there whatsoever. Instead of looking at ourselves and admitting that we may have gotten things wrong, which is humble, or that we need some help, which is humble, or that we could do better in creating emotional safety, which is humble, or that we need to accept responsibility, many men want to point the finger and label their wives with personality disorders like narcissism. Instead, we need to be humble with ourselves.
Pointing the finger at your wife’s past or history is not helpful. It doesn’t matter what has happened in the past, what matters is what is happening right now. If your wife tells you that she can’t talk to you because of past trauma, it may actually be code for not feeling emotionally safe talking to you. Having the humility to accept that you may have contributed to the lack of emotional safety is crucial. Acknowledging that you don’t know where you are in the marriage right now and that you need help is important. Many men watching this video are in a difficult state, yet they may disagree with everything being said. This is because they want to be right more than they want to save their marriage. However, if you want to remain married, there has to be a certain level of humility present that creates an environment for transformation to take place.
Therefore, becoming the change is step number five.
It’s about taking responsibility for your own actions and being willing to change. It’s about acknowledging that you don’t have all the answers and seeking help. It’s about being humble and admitting when you’re wrong. You can’t change your wife, but you can change yourself. By becoming the change you want to see in your marriage, you create a positive environment for transformation to take place
Finally, tip number five, and we’ve kind of touched on this, but bringing it all together is that you have to become the change that you want to see. Many men simply want to see their wives change. They come to me asking, “How can I change my wife’s mind? How can I make her see things differently? How can I make her see that I’m right?” The answer is you, but you can’t. There’s no we’re not witch doctors here.
We’re not casting spells, making them change their mind. If you want to see change in your wife in any aspect of life, you have to become the change that you want to see. You have to become that change. If you want to see your wife open up and be more caring, sensitive, and more open, you have to become that change. If you want to see your wife start to take responsibility for her role in the breakdown of the relationship, it starts with you. This is why it’s number one to take responsibility.
If you want your wife to take responsibility, you have to take responsibility yourself, and you have to take that change and do it from a place of humility and from a place of really wanting to create that emotional safety. If you’re doing this to change your life, if you are making these changes or you’re changing simply because this is how you get her to change, there’s no humility in that. That’s called manipulation, and it’s going to be seen through. Women are very sensitive, and they are very perceptive, and they see through what we’re doing.
The only way to actually reach your wife and to change the marriage is to change yourself, and this is the one area where we have complete authority and we have complete control. In fact, it’s the only area that we are able to actually work on within the marriage. We have no right to impose our views, opinions, or thoughts upon our wives or how we think she should behave.
The only way and the only place that we have any authority whatsoever to take action is upon ourselves. When you start to work on yourself, when you start to better yourself, when you start to improve your communication skills, when you start to level up with your humility, when you start to own what’s gone wrong in the relationship instead of blaming somebody else and being the victim, magic will happen in your marriage, and it can turn around in an instant.
There are lots of videos and stories on this channel of men that we’ve worked with. Find some of them, check them out to give yourself hope, and see just how quickly really hopeless situations turn around very quickly when you have the right attitude, when you have the right tools, when you have the right skills. So, if you want some more skills for free, check out the links in the description. We’ve got a free workshop on the three pillars of rebuilding your marriage.
We’ve got a ton of free resources, and if you want our help, then book a call with us, schedule a call with us. We help men restore their marriage, and like I said, check out the other stories on this channel of men who have successfully rebuilt their marriage in completely hopeless situations, and you can do the same. So that’s it for me, bless you, and we’ll see you in another video.