So, why do marriages end, and how can you prevent your marriage from ending? Hey, Cody here, marriage coach and founder of Better Marriage. If this is your first time here, we help men restore, repair, and rebuild their marriage, even when it seems completely hopeless. And if you want some more help on how to do that, we’ve got an absolutely free workshop. Links in the description, make sure you check that out. So let’s talk now about why marriages end and how we can prevent marriages from ending.
So, it really comes down to one thing: when hope leaves the relationship, one or both partners leave the relationship. Now, a lot of people confuse the end of a relationship for other things.
They say, “Well, my wife, she’s just shut down, she won’t talk, and that’s the problem.” My wife’s suffering from depression or my wife is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Or it’s something that happened in her youth. These are all just disguises of the fact that hope has left the relationship.
And it’s easy to lean on a childhood trauma, let’s say, and say the reason that I’ve completely shut down in this relationship is because I went through this trauma as a child, or because I’m going through depression or something else. It’s easier to say that than to talk to you anymore because a couple of things have happened.
Emotional safety has been completely destroyed. If your wife’s stonewalling you or she’s telling you she doesn’t want to talk, or you’re getting yes or no answers, this is emotional safety has been destroyed. And a lot of times, she’s going to use other excuses to avoid telling you that because if she tells you that she doesn’t feel safe talking to you, she’s going to get bashed emotionally.
She’s going to get verbally bad. She’s going to get a response that is going to cause more pain. In the same way that a lot of times, for example, we might go look at a car on a car lot, and instead of telling the car dealer that we’re simply not interested in the car, we tell the car dealer that,
“Hey, we’re going to think about it and talk to our wife about it,” when actually the reality is we have absolutely no intention whatsoever. But it’s easier for us to just say we’re going to think about it and come back than it is to say no because we know that if we say no, it’s going to bring about rebuttals and responses that we don’t want to deal with.
We don’t want to be put in a pressure situation, so we just say we’re thinking about it to avoid having the conversation. And this is exactly what’s going on in the marriage. The wife or the woman is avoiding the conversation and giving you a story as to why she wants to avoid the conversation, versus just telling you.
I don’t want to talk to you anymore, or the reality is, it’s a waste of time, which leads to the emotion that’s underlying that, it’s hopelessness. So when a woman is making a decision to leave the relationship, she’s evaluated the situation, and she’s decided, you haven’t. She’s decided on your ability to change, your willingness to change, whether you will change. She’s evaluated all of these things, and she has determined that you cannot change, you will not change, or you will not change to the degree or fast enough that she needs you to change for her to stay in the relationship. And there is no hope of change within the relationship, and she’s simply forced with a decision: “I have to live with this man like this for the rest of my life, the way he is, with absolutely no hope of change, or I make a break for it now.”
When the hope of any change has gone, then this is where she will say, “I’m gonna make a break for it because I don’t know what’s out there, but it can’t be any worse than this, right?” That’s the attitude that’s going on. Now, this is why rarely is a situation hopeless because that decision is being made based on the evidence and the information at hand.
When she’s saying, “There’s no way I want to leave because I can’t see any way that you can change, this is hopeless,” she has a preconceived idea of what you’re capable of, of the change that you’re capable of making, and she’s making that decision based on who she thinks you are, what she thinks you are, and your ability to change. Now, if you can bring new evidence, if you can bring new information to light, then she can change her mind.
Of course, she can. And this is where men say, “Well, my wife has told me it’s over, it’s hopeless, and there’s no way she’s changing her mind.” Of course, that, based on the current situation, that’s 100% true.
But when your attitude is right, the facts don’t matter. This is a very, very important thing to understand. And if you can start to show her genuinely, realistically, and you can give her hope that you can change, and you’re doing it because you want to change, not because she’s demanding it of you to stay in the relationship, then the hope is brought back into the relationship.
Now, the mistake that a lot of guys make is, “Well, I’ve told my wife I’ll change, I’ve told her I’ll do this, and it doesn’t do any good.” No, of course not. Of course, it doesn’t, because look at what you’re telling her. Effectively, you’re saying, “I can become anybody you need me to be. I can become anybody that you want. I can behave anywhere you need me to behave. You just tell me who you want me to be. I will become that person.
This is effectively what men are saying to their wives. And of course, she knows that’s fake. You’re not. Either you’re going to have to completely sacrifice yourself and forego your personality and your preferences and everything like that, or the change is absolutely temporary. Somebody coming to their wife saying, “Just tell me who you want me to be, and I’ll become that person.” The woman knows that that’s not real. The woman knows that that’s not sustainable.
Even though in your mind, you’re thinking, “I really mean it. I really make that change,” she knows that you’re not going to keep that change. That’s why it’s really important that you start to make the changes independent of her, which brings out one of the very important aspects of what we teach when we’re looking at marriage reconciliation. You have to detach from the outcome.
You have to detach from the reconciliation of the marriage, and you have to work on yourself because it’s the right thing to do and because you have realized that version 1.0 or version 1.2 of you is inadequate, and you’re no longer happy.
When you go, “I’m going to change regardless because I can’t live like this anymore. I’m going to change regardless because I’m not happy. I’m going to change regardless because it’s the right thing to do, and I’m going to do the right thing. And if I win my wife back, that’s amazing. And if I don’t, well, I’m going to do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do.” That’s when she can start to look at you and go, “Okay, there’s some hope that there is going to be change, and there’s some hope that there is going to be a possibility of change and a possibility of saving this marriage.” Now, it’s going to be slow, right? Again, a lot of guys go into this, and they start to make changes, and the changes are slow, or the wife’s response to the changes are slow, and they get frustrated.
And then that just tells the wife that these changes are motivated by her leaving, and that tells the wife or the woman that these changes are not going to be permanent, they’re not going to stick around. So we’ve got to completely detach from the outcome, the outcome being reconciliation of the marriage, and we have to really focus on the improvement of ourselves and creating the skills that we need to build a healthy, happy, successful relationship, and the skills that we need to accommodate another person in our life. Ultimately, the reason that your wife is leaving is because there’s just simply not room in your life for her.
There’s no room for her opinions, there’s not room for her views, there’s not room for the way that she wants to keep the house, there’s not room for the way that she wants to live her life. There’s simply not room in your life for her. When we could start to change these attitudes and the way that we live our life, and we do it genuinely for the right reasons, completely detached from the outcome, this is when the magic happens.
And this is where your wife will start to go, “Okay, there’s new evidence, there’s new hope.” To answer the question of why do marriages end, it’s because hope leaves the relationship. How do you stop that? You inject genuine hope back into the relationship. And this is what we help men do. And if you want to talk to us about that, there are some links in the description. We’re happy to jump on a call, talk to you about that. If that’s for you, awesome. If it not for you then I hope you enjoyed this, God bless you and we’ll see you all very soon.
