HOW TO GET YOUR SPOUSE TO CHANGE

In your quest to fix your marriage, you may
encounter resistance--from your spouse!

Your spouse may dwell on the 101 reasons why "this
just won't work for us" and blame you for every
one.

Or, your spouse may be emotionally "checked-out"
of the marriage and not care about your efforts to
improve the situation or be willing to extend any
effort of their own.

This is, by far, the most common question people
ask me: "How do I get my spouse to change?"

Why would your spouse resist POSITIVE change in
your marriage and what should you do about it?

Hi, I'm Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

There's a deep-seeded belief in our culture that
people resist change, no matter what. But is this
true? Do people really want things to remain
status quo? Do we really not want things to
change? If you look closely at human nature, it's
not change itself we resist; it's change that's
IMPOSED UPON US.

Think about it. We have no problem with change
that WE INITIATE ourselves. But when we feel
forced or manipulated to change, then we resist
WITH ALL OUR MIGHT.

Your spouse may not be willing to change for the
sake of your marriage right now, but that’s not
because your spouse doesn’t want a great marriage.
Everyone wants a great marriage. It’s because if
they’re going to change, they want the change to
be THEIR IDEA!!!!!!

I promise you; your spouse will decide to change
when they’re ready to change and not one second
before. And the more you push them, urge them,
nudge them, ask them, scream at them, or beg them,
the LESS LIKELY they are to change. I know it’s
hard to wait, but you have to let it come from them.

It’s possible someone could INSPIRE your spouse to
change, but the person LEAST LIKELY to be the
inspiration is YOU. It’s sad but true. A complete
stranger is more likely to get through to your
spouse than you are. A chance experience or
encounter is more likely to shake up your spouse
than anything YOU could do.

Mary Ellen (name changed) came to me for marriage
coaching. She knew she had to make changes and
came to our sessions with a genuine interest to
improve her marriage. She wanted Tom (her husband)
to be part of the process, but he wasn’t willing
to join her. She had been asking him to go with
her to get help for over a year. But Tom
consistently refused.

I met with Mary Ellen twice and convinced her to
back-off Tom and just let him be for a while. I
counseled her to make some changes that created a
more positive energy in their relationship. When
the time was right, I suggested that Mary Ellen
ask Tom is he would be willing to speak with ME
for 10 minutes. Mary Ellen’s timing was good. Tom
agreed.

Within 7 minutes of my conversation with Tom he
agreed to join Mary Ellen in the marriage coaching
sessions.

Why was I able to get Tom to agree to something in
7 minutes that Mary Ellen couldn’t get him to do
in over a year? It’s true I know how to handle
these situations, but there were 2 other important
factors:

1. For the first time in over a year, Mary Ellen
backed-off far enough so that Tom had the space to
make his own choice.

2. The inspiration came from someone other than
his wife.

Your effort to change your spouse is probably
COUNTERproductive. The chances are good that
you’re "in the way." You need to get out of the
way and create the space for your spouse to CHOOSE
to change. That’s the only way it’ll ever happen.

I can’t tell you how times a spouse will say to me
that their husband/wife changed for a few days,
but then returned to their old ways. That’s
because they never really decided to change. They
were pressured. They were manipulated. And so it
didn’t stick.

If you tell your spouse what to do; it's a
challenge. If THEY decide to do it; it's a great
idea. YOU HAVE TO LET IT COME FROM THEM. That's
the only way it'll make a difference long term in
your marriage.

Now you're probably thinking, "Makes sense, but
isn't there anything I can do to encourage my
spouse's choice?" YES, there is! YOU CAN BE AN
INSPIRING EXAMPLE and let your spouse see how
the choices YOU'RE making impact how YOU feel
about yourself and your marriage.

Resist the urge to believe that your marriage
won’t change until your spouse "gets with the
program." The love YOU feel is much more a result
of what YOU DO for your marriage than what your
spouse does for it.

We tend to think that the love in our marriage is
in our spouse's hands. But it's not. Love is a
verb. And if we do it--if we love--then we feel
love. THE CHOICE IS OURS.

Consider the love you feel for your children. Is
it because of everything they do for you? Is it
because they’re such angels? Of course not. The
love you feel for your children is a result of
what YOU DO FOR THEM. The love you feel in your
marriage is a result of what YOU DO too.

Furthermore, there's no better way to inspire your
spouse to make the choice to change than to make
that choice yourself.

It happens quite often that one spouse will
register for the Marriage Fitness Tele-Boot Camp
in the "Lone Ranger" track and then half way
through the program they will switch to the "Duo"
track which is designed for couples participating
TOGETHER. What caused their spouse to change their
mind? Simple. 2 things. First, they learned to
create a space in their relationship for their
spouse to make a choice to change. Second, they
showed their spouse, through their EXAMPLE, how to
make that choice and the impact it could have on
their marriage.

Very often one spouse will come to me for marriage
coaching and ask if it makes sense for them to be
coached alone. The answer, is ABSOLUTELY yes! One
spouse can make more than a 50% difference in a
marriage. And that difference is often exactly what
will get the other spouse to open up to marriage
coaching too.

"You can lead me a mile, but you can’t push me an
inch."

So, bottom line...as Mahatma Gandhi said, "You must
be the change you wish to see..." It's YOU
changing that has the greatest impact on YOUR
EXPERIENCE of your marriage AND it's YOU changing
that is the single most important thing you can do
to motivate your spouse to change.

If you’re ready to learn what changes you need to
make in your marriage and if you want to learn how
to inspire your spouse to begin to make changes
too, then subscribe to my FREE breakthrough report
"7 Secrets to a Stronger Marriage" and get a FREE
marriage assessment too. CLICK HERE to subscribe.
It's FREE.

Warm regards,
Mort Fertel
Author of Marriage Fitness
Marriage Coach


Add Comment
 
 
The following article is from Mort Fertel founder of the Marriage Fitness program.  I am an affiliate of his programs, please know that you are not obligated to purchase anything...Mort's article are jam packed with great insight...for FREE!  I highly recommend his work and programs.  Many of my clients and forum members have received great results after workign with the Marriage Fitness program.
Picture

HOW TO GET YOUR SPOUSE TO HEAR YOU

 

Recently I had a series of private phone sessions with a person who was very frustrated. Listen to how this person described their situation. I bet you’ll be able to relate to it.

 

This person said they felt trapped in their basement trying to communicate with their spouse via Morse Code. They said they were banging on the pipes trying desperately to be heard. They would bang on the pipes and wait for a response. Bang and wait…bang and wait…bang and wait. But each time they finished banging, there was silence. No matter how hard they banged and no matter how long they waited; their spouse never heard them.

 

Hi. My name is Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

 

Are you trying to get heard? Do you feel ignored? Is your spouse not responding to your communication?

 

We live in an interesting time. With one click, you can communicate with anyone in the world. It’s easy, quick, and free. You even have options. If you don’t want to click, you could dial, beep, page, instant-message, or Fed Ex. It’s true. Your ability to communicate with the outside world has become increasingly easy. But my guess is that your ability to communicate with your spouse has become increasingly difficult.

 

The reason for this is that most people confuse INFORMATION communication with PERSONAL communication. Technological advancements give us all sorts of options to communicate information. But how do you feel the pulse of someone’s soul? How do you communicate the subtleties in your heart? You can’t text message that. You can have the latest and greatest in communication gadgets, but it won’t matter. PERSONAL communication is a whole different ball game. And it’s PERSONAL communication that determines the success or failure of your marriage.

 

I’m reminded of a scene from a Broadway play. A man and woman happen to meet on a train and engage in polite conversation. They were both headed home to New York after a day in New Haven, CT. After further discussion, they learned that they were going to the same building on Fifth Avenue. Lo and behold they discovered that they had the same daughter and lived in the same apartment. They finally discovered that they were husband and wife.

 

You know what’s killing marriages these days? EMAIL! More and more I’m seeing husbands and wives resort to email to communicate with each other. You want to do something tangible TODAY to improve your marriage? STOP EMAILING YOUR SPOUSE! Email is for INFORMATION. But in a marriage you’ve got to HEAR each other. And I don’t mean hear the sounds of each other’s words. You’ve got to be able to hear the silence between the sounds and interpret the unspoken meaning of a pressed lips or teary eyes. You’ve got to be able to hear the shapes and sounds in each other’s heart. You can NOT accomplish this via email.

 

And let me be clear about something; you can’t do it with communication techniques either. There’s no clinical communication therapy that can help you and your spouse think each other’s thoughts, feel each other joy, and cringe from each other’s pain. My 1-on-1 phone session schedule and the Marriage Fitness Tele Boot Camp are filled with casualties from traditional communication strategies and the usual marriage counseling approach. If you’re like most people with marriage trouble, you’ve been down that path and you know that it does NOT work.

 

Today my 4-year-old son came to me with a bruise on his leg. He was crying and I could see that it was black and blue. He said, “Daddy, I need a band-aide.”

 

I responded, “But it’s not bleeding.”

 

He said again, “Daddy, can you put a band-aide on it?”

 

I realized that my son’s perspective was that when something hurts a band-aide makes it better…even if it’s a bruise and not a cut.

 

So what does this have to do with communication in a marriage? Because most people think that if spouses aren’t hearing each other that communication techniques will solve the problem. But that’s like putting a band-aide on a bruise. It’s the wrong solution.

 

Communication techniques can help colleagues transmit INFORMATION clearly. Communication techniques belong in seminars that teach negotiation and sales. But you’re not trying to complete a transaction with your spouse; you’re trying to renew a relationship. I can almost guarantee you that your problem is not clarity; it’s concern. Ironically, communication techniques sometimes give people clarity that they don’t care what their spouse thinks or feels. They “got it,” but “it” doesn’t matter to them anymore.

 

How do you get back to the place where you and your spouse care again?

 

This is one of the things that’s unique about the Marriage Fitness approach to repairing a relationship versus traditional counseling. Most approaches to marriage success preach communication skills. But communicating effectively will NOT create love in your marriage. In fact, the correlation is the opposite. Creating love in your marriage paves the way for effective communication. I’ll prove it to you.

 

Think about when you fell in love. How was your communication? Good, right? In fact, when you’re in love, you communicate with the wink of an eye and you can finish each other’s sentences. And yet you haven’t known each other that long and you haven’t learned any communication techniques.

 

Then, years later, after getting to know each other inside and out, employing psychologically tested and proven communication strategies, and taking into account all the differences between Mars and Venus, you can’t get through to each other.

 

Listen carefully: Communication has very little to do with techniques or knowledge of each other. It has everything to do with the depth of connection between the communicators.

 

The question you should be asking is NOT, “How do I communicate effectively with my spouse.” The question you should be asking is, “How do I connect with my spouse again?” Once you reconnect, you won’t be sitting in silence in the basement. You’ll hear the sound of the pipes from above. It’ll be your spouse. You were heard. 

 

If you want to learn how to connect with your spouse again, subscribe to my FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and get my FREE marriage assessment. CLICK HERE to subscribe. It’s FREE.

 

Warm regards,

Mort Fertel

Author of Marriage Fitness

Marriage Coach

 


Add Comment