Coach Darla

Cold War and Peace

It didn’t matter that we were in the middle of a Texas summer’s extreme heat. It was freezing in my home because of the almost constant cold wars between my husband and me.

I felt like I was always walking on eggshells around him, not knowing what would set him off. He couldn’t even tell me he loved me.

How could this be? He came from his country on a fiancé visa to marry me. We had to prove our love to the U.S. government, for crying out loud. I was a virgin when we married, and we went to church as a couple every week. It seemed like we were set up for happily ever after.

How could we be living without the intimacy for which I longed?

It hurts to remember those arguments where I would explode and raise my voice. He would get upset, and there would be name-calling. I remember thinking “I hate you” and even saying it under my breath. He would go on a trip to see his family or out of town on business, and I wouldn’t miss him. I felt like I had to burden most of the responsibility around our home.

I assumed that this was just what marriages morphed into if couples stayed together long enough. I’d always heard about the honeymoon phase ending and love being a choice. Well, that choice would have to hold me through long years of marriage because I’d made a covenant before God that I would stay married. So many ups and downs…why can’t people stay in love?

This was before the Six Intimacy Skills™.

Thirteen years into my marriage, I happened to randomly read a few reviews online about the book The Surrendered Wife by Laura Doyle. Most of the reviews were great, but I felt most marriage books were the same. Maybe I could glean a little wisdom from reading it? I didn’t want to waste money on the book, just in case it was like all the rest, so I checked it out from the library. What did I have to lose by reading it?

I didn’t know anyone who had read the book, so I just experimented with the suggestions one by one to see if the Skills Laura wrote of worked.

Boy, did they ever! Within two weeks, my marriage felt totally different!

I always knew I was supposed to respect my husband, but I never knew how to do it or that things I did were disrespectful or controlling.

Now I could say things like “Whatever you think,” “Ouch,” and “I can’t,” and my husband would respond with the intimacy I was yearning for. Arguments and cold wars that used to last days or weeks would dissipate instantly or within a few hours. He initiated handholding and cuddling. He started to really talk and tell me personal things because I listened instead of giving advice and trying to solve his challenges.

I started to tell everyone about the book, and even the marriages around me were getting better. Since then I have bought every book Laura wrote!

Practicing the Skills was making me a better person. These Skills were spilling into other areas of my life. Shortly after reading The Surrendered Wife, I was in church and the pastor “just happened” to speak on surrendering. At the end of the service, I asked God if there was anything I needed to surrender in my life. I thought I wouldn’t hear anything because I was now an “expert” in surrendering, hahaha.

I heard the words “your reproductive tract.”

God was right. I had not surrendered that part of my life. I had a beautiful almost nine year old and was satisfied with having only one child after complications during my first pregnancy. I knew what surrendering meant now. It meant saying “Whatever you think. I trust you know best.”

Within a few months, I was pregnant and would have a baby at 40. My pregnancy and delivery were actually a lot easier than my first about ten years earlier. We had a baby boy, and he has filled our life with so much joy. God really knows what’s best, and I can trust Him with “Whatever you think.”

When my baby was seven weeks old, my husband sat me down. He was crying and almost unable to speak. He confessed that he had an affair five years earlier with a friend of mine (this was before the Skills). My heart was so broken. I felt so naïve and dumb. How could this have happened?

The Skills helped me stay on my paper as I processed and healed from the knowledge of the affair. I realized there was one thing I could do that was on my paper: forgive. I did decide to forgive him and the woman he’d had an affair with. I realize that forgiveness is more for me than the person I am forgiving.

We didn’t go to marriage counseling because I knew that would only lead to listening to disrespectful talk about my husband and hearing words like “You know you have a right to leave him.”

I talked to a friend who had gone through an affair and stayed, and I read books on healing and forgiveness. I didn’t berate my husband or even talk to him much about it. I starved it of oxygen and focused on the present evidence that he is a good husband and everything he does proves he loves me and cares for me and our children.

It took me a while to get over it emotionally, but we made it. I’m sure showing him disrespect in earlier years contributed to the affair, but I know it was his choice. I don’t feel the need to remind him of it.

Now I’m happy to say we celebrate life together. Most of the time our marriage feels like we are in love… like when we were dating. Not long after I started practicing the Skills, he said that he felt butterflies when he kissed me.

I get a lot of help from him. He takes our daughter to and from school most days so that I can sleep in. He asks me to sit closer to him on the couch. I don’t feel overwhelmed. He became the primary source of income (after I surrendered the finances) so that I can stay home part-time with the kids.

I miss him when he is gone a few hours.

I am so blessed. Thank you, God, for my relationship restoration and for allowing me to marry the man of my dreams. Thank you, Laura Doyle, for your incredible insight and the Intimacy Skills.

I decided to become a relationship coach three years after discovering the Skills. It was awesome to meet coaches and classmates for whom the Skills had also worked incredibly! Being submerged in the Skills during Relationship Coach Training really helped me to cement them into my marriage life.

I want to help women have a fantastic marriage and help end world divorce. I know that it is possible now! I truly believe my marriage will be a triumph, and I’m confident yours can be, too!