Hey Cody here from Better Marriage in the Marriage Recovery Program, and the question I want to answer today is, “What do I do if my partner, my spouse, my husband is not cooperative in the process? They don’t want to go through coaching, they don’t want to go through this process.”
I hear that all the time. Well, the answer to that question is, this process is really about you. It’s not about your partner. Quite often, or really all the time, very rarely are two people in a relationship going to be ready to take the same step forward at the same time. Somebody is going to want to push forward the restorative process more than the other partner. One is going to be more keen on taking action, such as coaching, than the other one. Generally speaking, usually it’s the woman that’s more keen on taking that action, not always, but usually.
So, it’s not uncommon at all for your partner, the man, the husband, to be a little bit less engaged in the process, a little bit more hesitant to go into the process. So, what do you do in that situation? Well, here’s the basic answer to the question: it doesn’t matter. Because this is not about becoming the best version of yourself for him at all. This is about you. This is about your needs, your sanity, your health, and you becoming the best version of yourself.
Now, here’s the thing, right? If you become the best version of yourself, and what I mean by that is if you become the strongest version, the emotionally healthy version, the most attractive version, the best version of yourself in every way possible, it’s about focusing on you and you becoming the best version of yourself you can possibly be.
If he can’t respond to the best version of you, then let me tell you something, unfortunately, he’s not going to be able to respond to any version of you. And then you’re going to know that this relationship is probably and unfortunately over.
Because let me ask you a question. If you become the absolute best version of yourself, the most attractive physically, spiritually, emotionally, every way possible (and I’m not just talking about looks here and appearance), I’m talking about becoming the best version of yourself, getting some interest, starting to put yourself first, starting to think about what it is that you need, starting to get your needs met, and you started to grow as a person again, you’re starting to flourish, you started to get that glow back about you, and you really being the best version of yourself instead of some beat-down worn-out tired (now I’m not saying that to you, but some version of yourself that is less than optimal, some tired exhausted worn-out empty person that has spent too long giving themselves to somebody else and not getting anything back), if you become the best, best, best version of yourself, and he can’t love that, he can’t respond to that, he can’t appreciate that, and that doesn’t encourage him to pick his game up.
Then I’m just here to tell you that you are with somebody who probably is never going to be able to love you. In which case, you probably know what to do at that point, right? You can leave the relationship guilt-free, with no remorse, no regret, and you’re going to know at a later date, guilt-free, that you did the right thing and there was nothing left.
Now, if he can’t love the best version of you, how is he going to love any other version of you, right? How is he going to respond to any other version of you? Now, generally speaking, when a man starts to see the woman improving herself, he’s going to take action on that. He’s going to be, for one of a better term, guilty-shamed. He’s going to be motivated into taking action.
Now, you don’t motivate a man and get him to move by nagging him and telling him he needs to do A, B, and C. You just let him sit on the couch, eat his Doritos, drink his beer, and watch his sport, and you start to improve yourself. You start to become a better version of yourself.
And as he starts to see you improve and you get better and your life flourishes outside of him, when he sees your life flourishing outside of him, he’s either going to want to be a part of that, he’s going to want to get involved with that, or he isn’t. And if he doesn’t want to get involved with you flourishing, that doesn’t encourage him to better himself, then unfortunately you’ve got a decision to make. It probably needs to be a very hard conversation about where the relationship is going in the future.
So, if your husband is not entirely responsive to this process, or if you’re a man and your wife (like we work predominantly with women, but we do work with men as well), if your spouse is not responsive to this process, it doesn’t matter.
Go through the process yourself so you can learn how to communicate your needs in an effective way. If you communicate your needs in an effective way, then it becomes their responsibility, right? If you fail to communicate your needs in a way that they can hear, then you have to take responsibility for that. They can’t be held responsible for not responding to a need that they never understood.
If you communicate what you need in an effective way that a man or a woman clearly understands (and we teach all of that stuff in the Marriage Recovery Program, how to communicate your needs in a way that can be heard, understood, and responded to), and they still don’t respond, then it’s on them. It’s on them. It’s not on you anymore. Same with improving yourself. This is about improving yourself.
Improving you. We don’t go to a marriage to change the other person. We go to a marriage to improve ourselves. So, the way we improve our marriage is by improving ourselves, not by nagging the other person. It’s never going to work, it’s never going to end well, and it’s not going to help your marriage at all. It’s just going to create resistance.
So, if your partner, your spouse, your husband, or wife is not responsive to this program, do not worry. The key is to start moving forward, and they will either move with you or they won’t. If they move forward, happy days. If they don’t move with you, then happy days as well because you know exactly what to do.
So, if you’re interested in learning more about how we can help you as an individual, how we can help you as a couple, to repair, restore, and rebuild your marriage, as well as eight weeks guaranteed with our proven process, we don’t subscribe to the conventional talk therapy where we talk about our problems for years and try to understand how we’ve arrived at where we are. We really don’t care about any of that stuff.
Here’s the deal. We ask, do you want to be married? Yes or no. Are you willing to do the work? Yes or no. Then let’s just draw a line under what’s happened and let’s put a plan in place to move this marriage forward. Let’s do it. We don’t need to talk about what’s happened, we don’t need to understand why what’s happened has happened. We just need to understand that we want the marriage to work and we’re willing to do the work. And we’re going to give you all of those skills in a step-by-step, easy-to-follow, paint-by-number program called the Marriage Recovery Program.
We’d love to talk to you about that. So, if that’s something that you’re interested in, if you’re really serious about restoring your marriage, rebuilding your marriage, bringing back the intimacy, the love, the connection, the communication, which can all be restored at the snap of a finger, it’s nothing more than a change of philosophy, a change of paradigm, a change of the way that you see your life, your marriage, and the way things work. That’s all it is. It can happen. Total transformation can happen in the snap of a finger.
If you’re interested in learning about how to transform your marriage very, very quickly, much faster than you imagined.
Go ahead and schedule a time to talk with us. We’d love to talk to you about how the Marriage Recovery Program can help you restore your marriage. So, can’t wait to talk to you. Talk to you soon. Bless you all.
