Even Santa Can Have A Marriage Crisis

When you or your partner question you commitment to your marriage, you feel as though your situation is abnormal. You feel ashamed or guilty for you or your partner's uncertain commitment to the marriage. Yet a crisis in a marriage is actually more common than you may think.

Often my clients find that when they open up to others about their marriage crisis, that other family members and friends share stories of uncertain times in their marriage.

A crisis reflects both dissatisfaction with the marriage and the opportunity for a new, improved relationship. I liken a marriage crisis to the stock market. When stocks are overpriced, then stock prices are prone to sharp drops. These sharp changes are described as market corrections.

Similarly, a crisis in your marriage can signal the need for a correction in the relationship. With the crisis comes greater willingness to examine how the relationship has been negotiated. Has one partner been too passive and allowed their spouse to largely define the relationship. Has one been too aggressive negotiating for what he or she wants. Either way, the marriage becomes an unequal partnership defined by one partner rather than each.

A crisis can trigger a renegotiation of the relationship that offers the opportunity to compromise what each partner wants in order to create a mutually satisfying relationship.

Perhaps Santa must make up for devoting so much time to work prior to Christmas. Mrs. Claus needs the opportunity to redefine their relationship so that they can spend more time together and reassess their priorities. Santa may need to devote more time to letting Mrs. Claus know how important she is in his life.

Killing Your Spouse (or How to Save Your Partner’s Life)

Image via Wikipedia · If your partner is obese, you are more likely to be obese.

· If your partner does not quit smoking, then you are less likely to be successful in quitting.

· If your partner has heart disease, then you are more at risk for heart disease.

So if you want to kill your spouse, the best route short of prison, appears to be to take on an unhealthy lifestyle. Your unhealthy lifestyle is likely to encourage the same lifestyle for your spouse, increasing his or her chance for a premature death.

On the other hand, your lifestyle choices can not only benefit you but also your mate. By making changes in your health habits, you can extend your life and that of your spouse. What is the best way to make sure that your partner joins you in healthy change?

Discuss the Health Benefits You are Striving For

Research has shown that focusing on positive outcomes with clear health benefits can motivate change. Tell your partner what you wish to accomplish. Avoid pushing you partner to adopt the same goals. If he or she is not prepared to adopt these goals, then such a push is unlikely to be successful.

Discuss Potential Stumbling Blocks and Enlist Your Partner’s Help

It is beneficial to anticipate obstacles to change. This is not negative thinking, because you are also considering ways to avoid or overcome such obstacles. By enlisting your partner’s cooperation in this effort, you will motivate your partner to consider the effort necessary for change. Indirect suggestion that change is possible is more powerful that full frontal assault on your partner’s resistance to change.

Encourage Your Partner to Verbalize Objections to Change

When your partner suggests that attempts to change are likely to be fruitless, it is tempting to argue that change is possible. Instead, listen to your partner and show acceptance for his or her viewpoint. Clarify your mate’s views and the reasoning underlying these views. Accepting his or her views as legitimate will not encourage your partner’s negative thinking, it will actually soften such thinking. Arguing for your view will create polarization, a hardening of one’s position.

Ultimately, the most powerful force for change will be your success in change. If you stop smoking, then your behavior will demonstrate that stopping smoking is possible. Regular exercise will yield results that will demonstrate the benefits rather than simply talking about them.

Your effort to improve your behavior will not necessarily result in your partner’s change, but you can rest assured that you have done your best to be a positive influence on your partner’s health.

Blaming Yourself for Your Partner’s Distance

“If I was sexier, slimmer, smarter, wealthier, etc., etc. my partner would remain devoted to me forever.” This sounds unreasonable, yet this is the reasoning many adopt when their partner’s commitment to the marriage becomes uncertain. Why do folks tend to examine their faults and assume unnecessary blame when their partner distances?

At times the distance you experience in your marriage is a signal. It signals that the relationship has become dissatisfying for your spouse and the distance is really a way of communicating a desire for change. If you are willing to examine your contribution to the relationship problems, then you can inject hope that the relationship can improve. A typical example is a husband who becomes too devoted to his job or a wife who becomes consumed with mothering, each neglecting to care for the marriage while they nurture their career and children.

But even when their spouse is involved in an affair, a rejected partner can question what he or she has done (or failed to do) to cause the distance in the marriage. Even when the distancing partner says, “It’s not you, it’s me” the rejected partner will continue to search for something they have done that caused their partner’s distance.

Our instincts make us sensitive to pain, so we can preserve our lives by avoiding the causes of pain in our lives. If we become sick, we consider what we ate that caused our illness. This desire to control our environment in order to avoid pain can lead to self-blame for things outside our control. It feels better to focus on something that is in your control than to accept that your pain cannot be avoided.

Your partner’s commitment to the marriage is not something you earn or can manipulate. Commitment is a choice. Committed spouses choose to work on their marriage.

Avoid holding yourself irrationally responsible for your partner’s lack of commitment to the marriage. Remember that you can contribute to improving your relationship with your partner only if there is a mutual commitment to working on the relationship. It is fine to consider ways that to show that the relationship can be improved, but blaming yourself for your partner’s distance will only lead to diminished self-worth and make you less attractive as a partner.

Using Sex and God to Save Your Marriage

What one thing can you do to save your marriage when you fear losing your partner? This question reflects on your fear and the desperate desire to turn your distancing partner around. After you have recovered from the shock of hearing, “I’m not sure I love you anymore” you are likely to start to grasp for anything that will end the crisis.

Just as a family member may turn to God to bargain for sparing a dying loved one, you may turn to God to bargain for your marriage to survive. Or you may take matters into your own hand to bargain more directly for the survival of your marriage.

Vanessa describes her reaction to her husband’s distancing from the marriage, “I became so focused on saving my marriage that I could think of little else. Even my children took a back seat to the marriage. I sought out every avenue to let my husband know that I wanted to be married to him. I ignored my hurt and worked to be kind, I tried to start conversations and show interest in him, and I pursued sex like never before!”

Unfortunately, Vanessa’s efforts did not and will not work. This is because she is not protecting her self-worth in the relationship. She is saying, “I’ll give everything and I expect nothing in return.” This communicates that you want the relationship at all cost—not a message you want to deliver. You don’t want a relationship in which you are diminished and do not receive in proportion to what you give. You deserve a partner that values you and wants to give to you just as you want to give to him.

You can preserve your marriage and offer a message of self-worth. Turn to God for strength not for magic, you will need strength to weather this storm. You want to preserve yourself as well as your marriage.

Magical Thinking During a Marital Crisis: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Remember "Step on a crack and break your mother's back."? This childhood game represented the magical thinking of a child. A child exaggerates their impact on the world, in this case his or her mother's health.

During a marital crisis, you can also be susceptible to magical thinking. In this case, the magical thinking is driven by a desperate desire to end the pain of the crisis in your relationship. You say if I do ______ , then I will restore my relationship with my spouse. Examples are:

• If I am unconditionally loving, he will draw close to me once again.


• If she sees what it is like to have to pay her own way, then she will end this separation.


• If I take every opportunity to show my love, then he will know that nobody will love him the way that I love him.


• If she realizes that I will fight her for custody of the children, then she will end her affair once and for all.

If your partner is ambivalent about his or her commitment to the marriage, it is highly unlikely that any effort on your part will end the ambivalence. Threats can actually create more motivation to survive apart from you. Efforts to show love without expecting to receive love in return can diminish you in your partner's eyes. You appear to be throwing yourself at your partner without regard to your self-worth.

Ann Landers, the popular advice columnist used the expression, "Wake up and smell the coffee." to suggest that the reader needed to come to grips with the reality of the situation. Magical thinking results from your struggle to accept how serious the crisis in your relationship is.

Be gentle with yourself, but accept that there is no easy, quick solution to a marriage crisis. Understand that the crisis is not an emergency and that time is necessary to encourage good decision making. Give yourself the gift of time so that you can more completely absorb the reality of the distance between you and your partner.

Why Men Cheat - Oprah Show

The Oprah Show featured an author discussing his findings on why men cheat. The most important finding is that men typically choose to cheat for emotional rather than sexual needs. They don't seek out a hot, younger woman, but rather "fall into" an emotional affair that becomes sexual.

The affair begins by meeting the man's need for admiration, someone who looks up to him and shows interest. They interviewed several men who had cheated and each admitted that the affair was not something they did out of strength but out of weakness. They felt that their relationship with their wife was not meeting their emotional needs.

From my experience, their weakness is passivity. If you have emotional needs that are unmet in the marriage, then you ought to be able to address this with your wife in a very forceful manner. She has to be aware of her husband's emotional needs in order to address the ways she is falling short. If the husband does confront the wife, it is important for her to focus on defending the relationship instead of defending herself.

It is OK to fall short in meeting your partner's needs, but it is not OK to not care if you fall short. Defending yourself communicates a lack of caring about your partner. The husband must be mature enough to know that he will not always get his needs met. Realistically, women have more things pulling on them for attention than ever before, so the husband must know that his wife does care but give her "permission" to fall short (just as he will fall short in meeting her needs).

The man who chooses to have an overlapping relationship will have his needs met at a terribly high price. He will place himself in a position to make a decision about his marriage and his lover simultaneously. This places him in a position to make emotional decisions that are often regretted.

Men must be strong enough to maintain a commitment to the marriage. Commitment does not mean that you remain married, but that you continue to confront the shortcomings of the marriage until you determine that the relationship cannot be satisfying. Failing to confront the shortcomings of the relationship through an overlapping relationship leads to emotional decision making and pain for many who are affected by your decisions.

Minimizing the Effects of Shock During a Marital Crisis

Learning that your marriage could end is overwhelming. When your body is seriously injured , it can go into shock in order to preserve your vital organs. Psychological shock serves a similar purpose. Your ability to process information becomes muted. You feel as though you are on automatic pilot; it is a struggle to do the basic tasks of life.

Psychological shock helps you to absorb reality slowly. Information seeps into your awareness instead of flooding you with more information than you can handle.

The following guidelines are to help you understand your response:

• Understand that your reaction is normal and not a sign of emotional disturbance.


• Avoid trying to make any important decisions while you are in this state.


• Reduce stimulation by "quieting" your environment. For instance, you may temporarily need time away from parenting responsiblities.


• Seek social support from family and friends. Do not seek this support from your partner.


• Focus on basic self-care activities like sleep, eating well, and simple activities. Reduce your expectations of yourself!


• Avoid telling yourself that your are depressed or suffering from a mental disturbance.


• Reassure yourself that your reaction is normal and you will recover your normal mood.


• Remind yourself that a marriage crisis is not an emergency. Let your partner know that you are not ready to make any important decisions at this time.