Coach Mari H

Trying to Save My Marriage, I Saved Myself

I met my second husband eleven years ago, at a happy point in my life. I was separated with two young children, and he was separated with three children a few years older than mine. We laughed constantly—it was such a light and easy relationship.

Unfortunately, that carefree, passionate love for each other took several large hits. He was in a car accident that sent him into a deep depressive episode, and he had an affair before our marriage. I learned about some of his struggles with mental health and just scratched the surface of the effect that his time in the military had had upon him.

After the affair we came back together, wanting to make things work, and we got married. Although we were dedicated to each other, the hits kept coming: My youngest stepson moved in with us, and blending our families proved bumpy. That same stepson developed thyroid cancer (he defeated that, fortunately!), my middle stepson stopped speaking to his father, and with each blow my husband’s mental health issues seemed to increase, with diagnosis piling on diagnosis. He compensated in a lot of hurtful ways: messaging other women online, drinking or just lying about random things.

Each time that I caught a lie or infidelity, I got more insecure, more controlling, more difficult to live with. I lived in constant fear of rejection, terrified that our lives would be torn apart again and again. I felt like the only grownup in the house, and I treated my husband more like a child than an adult.

I knew we were in trouble, but I also knew that I loved him and so did my children, so I kept trying everything I could think of to make things better, to make things work and to keep our family together.

I was suffocating my marriage trying to save it.

Finally, shortly before our seventh wedding anniversary, my husband announced that he was moving out as a last ditch effort to save our marriage. I couldn’t understand how that could work, and I flipped from raging to pleading to placating, sometimes all in the same conversation.

That was when I found Laura Doyle. Someone in a Facebook support group mentioned The Empowered Wife. I read it and felt like the curtain had been ripped from my eyes and I could see my marriage for the first time from my husband’s point of view.

From that moment on, I tried implementing the Six Intimacy Skills™, which were so foreign from what I had seen among friends, my mother (who also had two divorces), and in movies. I found duct tape and relinquishing control to be the hardest—as a courtroom lawyer for over twenty years, I use words and work in a masculine world where I have to control everything.

Although I was getting some positive responses whenever I expressed gratitude or texted my husband an apology, I found that the book wasn’t enough to change all of those ingrained patterns.

I just couldn’t change so many habits alone!

I joined the Ridiculously Happy Wives group then the Diamond program. It was so hard to relearn habits that had been with me my whole life. There’s no way I could have done it without the support and help of the amazing women I met in those programs and of course my own private coach.

I was soaking up learning and finally changing old patterns, but by this time my husband was already out of the house and planning a move out of the state. I told him that I was standing for our marriage, that I would not stand in his way if he wanted to leave but that I was changing and still believed in us.

I knew I had to change. I was staring my second divorce in the face (I had never wanted one, much less two!), and the only common factor was me.

Before learning the Intimacy Skills, I thought that I was such a good wife, that I had done everything right. Finding out how wrong I had been and how badly I had been hurting my marriage gave me such motivation to change not only myself by going into Relationship Coach Training, but to be an agent of that change for other women, too.

I’ve come so far from being that woman sobbing and yelling and throwing things since I decided to invest in myself and take the leap into Coach Training. I’m still staring that second divorce in the face, as my husband has filed papers and stopped speaking to me a few months ago.

But I am not the same person.

I feel so much lighter and happier and freer. I know that I am going to be okay, no matter what, and I know that I finally have the tools to treat a man with respect and to be cherished and adored in return.

I’ve learned to be responsible for my own happiness and how much difference the smallest amount of self-care can make. I’ve learned not to put myself last but to put my own oxygen mask on first so that I can be my best self for my children and for everyone in my life. I know that if I’m depleted, I will be cranky and snappish and nothing good will come of it.

I know that I don’t have to show up to every argument I’m invited to.

I know that letting go of the control I never had anyway is the only way forward.

I thought all of the women who said they wouldn’t change their journey were crazy—now I’m beyond grateful to be one of them.