Coach Julie C.

My husband and I started our marriage as bright-eyed, passionate Bible College graduates ready to take on the world. He entered full-time ministry and went to work winning like a hero but then came home to an exhausted wife begging for more help with the kids. As with many young moms, my way was not always his way, and I just didn’t understand why he took offense to my direction and correction. He threw up his hands on many tasks until I was overwhelmed at home.

By the time our children were three and five, we felt distant and disconnected, but I didn’t understand why or honestly have the energy to investigate.

One heartbreaking night, my husband finally sat across from me on the bed and said the words of every wife’s worst nightmare: he had been unfaithful. This was the very last thing I dreamed could happen to us, and I couldn’t understand how it had.

Our life as we knew it was destroyed. To top it off, the week everything came out, he slipped and fell on the stairs at our home. He had a spinal fusion of the disks in his lower back. This 6’3”, 300-pound-man had been reduced to nothing in just one week.

We moved into his parents’ basement in another state with our small children for a fresh start.

The first year was the hardest as I worked the night shift to pay the bills while he recovered. With God’s help, the support of family, individual counseling, mentors, and a precious new church, our marriage healed from the deep wound of infidelity. Life began to feel pretty good.

But the storms of life came again, as they always do, when my husband’s work with a nonprofit in our community unexpectedly ended and his ongoing back problems began to worsen. Although I was already working a full-time office job, we began a journey to grow a small business from an idea to three locations. Superwoman Julie began to grow too, but not in a good way. I contributed more direction and more correction, he threw up his hands, and soon I was completely overwhelmed again. I resented my “disabled” husband who had left me holding it all together and doing everything again.

Our relationship had become strained, and this time I knew something was wrong. I suggested counseling, which was fine, but it didn’t move the needle. I grew more frustrated that my helpfulness only ever seemed to make things worse.

In a few landmark arguments, my husband was giving me clues about the problem: “Julie, I don’t know how to make you happy; I’ve just stopped trying,” and “Julie, are you even capable of apologizing?”

I replied, “Well, it’s hard being right all of the time.” It sounds like a joke, but I meant it.

I was so blind and could not see my part in the problem. While I could see that my husband was committed to me and our kids and determined not to repeat the failures of his younger self, I felt that familiar distance and disconnect between us.

One night, through tears, I asked if he even still loved me. He responded that he would try harder to show me he did.

Just one week after that tearful plea, I commented to a woman from church, “Oh you know, marriage is hard sometimes.”

She replied, “You know, I used to think so too, but I found this book that has helped me.” She said she didn’t know if I was in a place to hear it, but the practice of the skills she learned from it had changed her marriage.

I listened to one of Laura Doyle’s books on the 6 Intimacy Skills™, finishing it in a day and a half, and a week later I had my first opportunity to experiment.

My husband decided to start a new project remodeling the laundry room. I had a hundred other projects on my list for him, with the laundry room at the very bottom. I started with the Skill of “relinquishing inappropriate control,” responding to just about everything in that project with “Whatever you think.” I did not counsel, interfere or criticize one tiny bit of the process. I contributed only gratitude and praise for the beautiful result.

I remember him commenting on how “nice” I was being to him. My eyes began to open to how he had been seeing me. The needle began to move.

I had been unaware of all the ways that I was contributing to the diminishing intimacy between us. I had been mothering him, scolding him and being generally impossible to please. All that I had taken on was overwhelming, and I was not taking good care of myself. I wore the martyr title like a badge of honor. My superwoman cape had been flying high but not taking me anywhere that I wanted to go.

After nearly a year of practicing the Intimacy Skills on my own with some moral support from the girlfriend who had first bravely shared her experience with me and listening to podcasts, I plateaued a bit. I was ready for breakthrough in some final areas. By this point, I was convinced these Skills were for me but also convinced they were for other women too. I wanted to be able to share all the transformation I had experienced so that others could too.

I expressed this new desire to my husband to join Relationship Coach Training. With very little pause, he was eager to make it happen.

The cape looks great on my husband, who now shows up as tender or strong as I need. I am now aware my real power is not in how high I can fly but in the ongoing pursuit of replenishment, surrender, real respect, faith over fear, and the spirit of gratitude.

I’m bright-eyed and passionate again.

Coach Training really gave me the clarity I needed on a few blind spots I still had, and now I feel so empowered. My outlook on all my relationships is so positive. Training has also equipped me to meet other women with empathy and inspiration to see transformation as well.

I’m thankful everyday for God pairing me with such an amazing man to take on the world together.