Advice and Answers for Married Women Who Want to Have Better Relationships

If your husband had a different wife instead of you, but she was just like you, he would probably behave the same way, wouldn't he? But, if he were with a woman who encouraged him where he needed encouraging and who did not put up with his nonsense, he might behave very differently. So, what would happen if you became more like that second woman--earned his respect by not being needy and codependent, but helped him to grow in ways that were really good for your relationship? It might make a really big difference. These are the things that women learn to do with the support and skills of coaching. They learn to put an end to Loveless Behavior Patterns. It really doesn't matter if your husband "wants" to change or not; he will change when you do. But, if you try to change him just with words, it's likely to push him away and make your relationship worse. Words alone are not very effective in changing men's behavior.

There are a few signs that counseling would be better for you than coaching:

1. When your moods are unpredictable and or severe.
2. When your memories or personal history are causing problems in your current relationship.
3. When you have too much emotion to make positive changes, even when you know they will improve your relationship.

Relationship coaching offers some emotional support, but is mainly focused on discovering and implementing actions to achieve what you desire to happen. In relationship coaching, this means doing whatever is necessary to have a good relationship, even if it's not easy to do. People who have severe emotional problems often cannot make these changes. After counseling, though, they may then be ready for relationship coaching.

That is true. But, he could also decide that even if you don't improve your life. Rather than getting focused on whether or not your husband may leave you, a better focus would be on avoiding future regrets. Which are you likely to regret more later: 1) that you maintained a miserable life so that you could avoid any possible conflict? or 2) that you did with your life what you wanted, although it caused some conflict with your husband? Whenever you make a change, even a healthy one, your husband may not like it (or even hate it). But, he will adjust, and then things will be better for you and him, because you will resent him less. If you feel that your husband is stopping you from having the kind of life you want to have, your resentment will make your love for him fade away.

Most likely, you are getting burned out waiting for your husband to change, or burned out trying to fix your relationship in ineffective ways. Burnout shuts off our emotions. It is a built-in survival mechanism, that prevents from continuing ineffective or harmful actions. To get your feelings of love back, you need to deal with the burnout. That means stopping those things you are doing that don't work, to stop the energy loss; and starting to use effective actions which build hope and a closer relationship. The bottom line is that your lack of love is not a signal to end your relationship, but rather a signal to use different, more effective, methods to improve it. A relationship coach can help you with that.

Don't compete! Those things (or even other women) are not a threat to your relationship. Instead of competing, work on increasing your value to your husband and your own enjoyment of your life. A woman who has her life together and is valuable to her husband will only be rejected by a fool. Men don't want to lose someone of value any more than a woman does. But, someone they can disrespect and disregard are easy to replace. Working with a coach will help you to earn your husband's respect, decrease your neediness (which makes you worry about competing), and enjoy your life more. Your husband will either give you the attention you need or risk losing you. Although that might not bother him much now, it certainly will when you become a put-together, valuable woman. Not needing his attention will actually put you in a position to get his attention even more.

Excellent. You are both motivated toward the same goal (improving your relationship). If there are severe emotional issues for either of you, marriage counseling would be a good choice. If you are both emotionally stable and just need to know how to improve your relationship, then relationship coaching would be a good choice. Relationship coaching will give you both plenty of things to work on in a productive and positive way.

The main things to keep in mind are to not be rejecting (which would cause a defensive reaction) and to help him to look to the future.

Something like:

1. John, I'm unhappy with our relationship.
2. What I really want is to be close to you and to have a wonderful relationship.
3. But, if we keep going like we are, I'm afraid of what might happen.

If he says the relationship if fine and you are just making too much out of things, then, follow up with a question like. "John, if you are satisfied with the relationship, but I'm not, what do you think might happen to us in the future?" Then just leave him with that question for awhile. If later, he agrees you two need to work on things, then that's a good start. If he remains in denial, then start with a relationship coach by yourself. Doing nothing may eventually prove your point about the relationship, but it may be very hard to fix by that time and in the meantime, you will feel miserable.