Are you stuck in an unhappy marriage while your spouse is not interested in facing the fact and refusing to acknowledge it, or just won’t deal with it?
Well, what you can do all by yourself when you are in an unhappy marriage is… PLENTY!
You, alone, can do all that is needed to revitalize your marriage. Better than any couples counseling can ever do.
Founder of The Marriage Foundation
Truly, a non-cooperative spouse is normal 90% of the time. But that does not mean you cannot save your marriage. You can absolutely fix your marriage when you are doing it yourself and alone. In many ways, the outcome is as good or better.
Marriage experts know full well that it is very rare for both partners to want to heal their marriage at the same time, and that one of the couple agrees to counseling only reluctantly.
But those marriage counselors aren’t properly equipped to help you as an individual (sad to say couples counseling is usually a fast track to divorce) so they make it sound like solo effort is doomsday for your marriage. They will tell you that a reluctant spouse is showing his or her true desire, but It isn’t like that.
The “it takes both” claim is nonsense. In fact, the best marriage help and most permanent successes occur when only one of the partners takes the lead and does all the work. The reasons are numerous and I will share a few with you later.
Let’s begin by going right to the heart of marriage, itself and talk about why we get married because this is so important. It is where you should start here to fix your marriage. Because
Unless you are clear about what fixing your marriage means you don’t stand a chance.
On the other hand, when you know what you want and know how to get there all you need to do is follow common sense methods (like our courses provide) and you get the happy marriage you want and deserve.
Why Did You Get Married?
You wanted to be happy and… and you still do!
All of us got married because we knew intuitively that marriage is supposed to make us happy.
You wanted to feel love and ever-expanding love… and you still do!
All of us got married to experience ever-expanding love, marital love.
The love and happiness we wanted were not just so we could get married. Love and happiness are what we all want for the rest of our life.
We crave love and happiness because we are souls. Love, joy, and wisdom are our essential nature. We all get married for two “food for the soul” reasons, it is what we crave. While mainstream thinking only identifies the essential needs of our psychophysiological selves; body and mind they blatantly ignore the fact that we are souls. In so doing they don’t address our core needs. Of course, they cannot help a marriage with that grand omission. Marriage is between soulmates.
Fixing your marriage so that you can be happy and feel love must be your highest priority and approached from a realistic point of view of what we are and what we need.
When you fix your end, it is a gift of love to your spouse. You show you care so much for them that you are willing, ready, and able to take the lead. If you were right on in your marriage you would not even hesitate to take the lead because the strong should always make up for the weaknesses of the weak. That’s basic.
Lifting your marriage back to cloud 9, like it might have been in the beginning (not all marriages even start out right) is not as hard as you may think. You still can have ever-increasing happiness and love. That shoul be your lifetime passion if not your obsession. nothing is better.
How to see your spouse not being where you are about fixing your marriage?
When you understand more about marriage, love, and each other, you will remain focused on your marriage in the right ways and not be bothered by their seeming current apathy.
The trouble is we were not taught about marriage so we all got off on the wrong foot. We think fairness is part of marriage even though we know perfectly well that there is no such thing in the real world. The idea of fairness is dangerous in marriage so it should be ignored.
It is because of the untrained mind that we hold back, not the heart! How ironic!
In this article, I will show you what you can do, by yourself, alone, to improve your marriage to levels that will change your lives when you are stuck in an unhappy marriage to turn it around. I will show you what is required to make that marriage happy and float in endless love.
I won’t show you how to convince your husband or wife to join you in your efforts.
You, Alone, Can Heal Your Marriage
I will prove to you that it is practical and better to heal your marriage than to feel like a victim. Those are the two options.
What you need to learn, and forever know
- You need to all about marriage.
- You need to know the benefits of marriage are well worth your efforts
- You need to know that you have more power to change your marriage than you imagine
- You need to know the actual steps you need to take
Don’t skip ahead to the steps! And, yes, it includes using our marriage-saving courses. There is just too much to learn for an article or learn from my youtube videos.
I will show you how to make your efforts scientific so that you can count on the results you want.
Proof and credentials
Proof of my knowledge is that for over 20 years I have been showing individuals how to successfully save and rebuild their marriages, by themselves. Read our reviews. The process I developed is common sense, methodical, and importantly, effective. You practice as you learn and will turn your marriage around in record time, never to go back to what you are enduring now.
Before I woke up and switched my practice from divorce mediation to marriage help I was quite successful. I spoke at Second Saturday support for women (if our program fails you, which it won’t). I had a successful and lucrative mediation practice in San Diego. I gave it up for you and everyone else, and so I would make good karma.
Not having a psych background I had to reinvent the wheel when it comes to understanding marriage. That turned out to be a very good thing. Because I quickly realized that the psych community does not understand marriage the way normal people do, and we are right, and they are wrong.
Mainstream thinking, including the alternatives, doesn’t understand marriage for what it is and what it is for.
Here is their dumb definition, which I just found by searching.
The Wikipedia definition is just as useless.
“marriage is a formal union and social and legal contract between two individuals that unites their lives legally, economically, and emotionally”
That’s it! Is that all marriage is?? Hell no!
Where is love??
Legal? Not always.
Economically? Not always.
Emotionally? Emotions are only software programs of the mind, they are not real to the soul. Love is what is real!
Soul connection, that is what marriage is all about!
Marriage is the most elegant creation God has given us for happiness and love…no joke
Most “experts” barely mention love or make that the goal. How can the definition not include love?
Most marriage experts think love is an emotion, just an increased “like”. Clearly, they have not felt love.
Most marriage experts think solving problems “fix” your marriage. So, when is marriage fully functional?
Most marriage experts think compatibility is a major key to happiness. Compatibility is good for dating.
Most marriage experts think divorce is no problem. This one bothers me the most. Divorce is horrible.
Most marriage experts don’t understand the 3 main components of marriage
Your mind – and how to master it
Love – what it is and how to cultivate it
Marriage – and how it works
And, they seem intent on ignoring gender differences – and how they impact the mind of each. Didn’t they ever notice…ahem…
Getting You On The Right Track To Marital Happiness
First Understand What Marriage is
We define things by their purpose. A car, for instance, is a vehicle that takes you from pt. A to pt. B.
A toaster is a device that makes your bread more tasty by making it toasty.
A boat is a vehicle that goes in the water, and so forth.
We learn early on what things are and what they do. Then, when we want one we learn as much about them as we need. Isn’t that so? That way we can get the most out of whatever “it” is.
Unfortunately, and I’m not blaming anyone, we never learn much about relationships or marriage that is of any use, and what we do learn is usually destructive. It is this nearly complete lack of marital education that is the biggest cause of everyone’s marriage problems. Your marriage being in trouble is technically not your fault and it is not your spouse’s fault.
Think about it. You know enough about your car and the rules of the road so that you can safely drive. Unless you are driving drunk you will probably never have an accident. If there is a mechanical problem with your car you can go to a repair shop and fix it, no worries. Cars and driving are understood in the same way by everyone.
Why is your marriage is a train wreck? Because you nor anyone else has any clear idea of why or what you need to do to fix it. Why isn’t the psych community fixing nearly every marriage after a hundred years of effort? How can they claim to know what they are doing while the divorce rate goes up and up and their clients get divorced?
As a group, psychologists have a higher than average divorce rate. They too got married without learning about marriage or the rules of the marriage road. Psychotherapy is nothing like the medical profession or mechanical professions. Psychologists do their own thing. They don’t have universal protocols or a universal understanding of marriage.
It should be no wonder you are in the pickle you are. Just about everyone is.
To make matters even worse our mainstream “experts” routinely give very bad advice based on things they heard from other “experts” but none of what they advise is for the purpose of marriage. Do you remember the purpose of marriage?
Here is the definition of marriage you should stick with. Yes, I came up with it, and I think all of us can agree
“Marriage is the committed union of two souls who wish to learn to love each other unconditionally in happiness and harmony until the end of life.”
That’s right.
You got married to be happy
You got married to learn to love, unconditionally
This basic knowledge is absolutely 100% critical to know and then refer to. Otherwise, it’s like getting on a sailboat without a compass, or any practical training.
Solo Marriage Fixing Is The BEST Approach
This is also true if both of you work on your marriage individually at the same time. About 10% of our clients sign up and then sign up their spouse who asked to be signed up.
When I shifted my career from divorce mediation to marriage-saving over 20 years ago I, too met with couples, together, just like I did when I helped them through divorce mediation. But, I was still re-inventing the wheel so naturally, there was some trial and error involved. That mistake I saw pretty quickly.
My process was didactic right from the beginning because education was so crucial. But the negative dynamics from having both of them in the same session (except for the 1st session) was evident right from the start.
These are, what turns out to be, inevitable negatives
- The couple competed;
a. For my attention
b. To make sure their complaints were seen as more valid
c. To prove that only they were the real victims
d. To prove that they were the most sincere
e. For me to be a witness to their blaming - Both of them paid lip service to show they would be the “good guy”
- Neither was willing to own up to their real errors in front of their spouse
- Both pretended to ‘get it’ so they appeared smarter than their spouse
The list can go on but I am sure you are getting the idea. Sessions become competitions, sometimes subtle but always there. Any therapist who tells you the above is not true is lying and any therapist who tells you they can control it is lying even more. Human nature is not going to be put aside. We are individuals who are controlled by our drive-to-survive to one degree or another. That’s what makes us competitive.
When I saw the above in real-time I changed my process to use the first session for reasons I will not disclose here. But then I met with the couple individually and, wow! What a difference!
The first thing was that I was able to see who was the one who would fix their marriage. It was almost never, both!
These are the inevitable positives of solo marriage-fixing
- The spouse who takes it on is ready!
Not everyone is ready to face the challenges within themselves which is part of the process because we are ready only when we are ready. But when you ARE ready nothing will stop you (except discouragement caused by previous failures and not knowing what to do).
The idea that we should be ready together is crazy. Think about it with honesty.
Hasn’t your marriage been getting worse and worse for a long time? So, why now? Why are you ready? Because it is your timing, not theirs, just yours.
Maybe they will be ready sometime in the future (or now, which is rare) but now you are ready, and they are not. - Your efforts will not be slowed by trying to maintain equality.
Again, human nature dictates that we reduce our efforts when our partner is not making enough. So, when you are on your own you get to give it all you got and wisdom dictates the amount of effort you need (as well as guidance from the course).
It takes effort. There is no getting around that because you are fighting the negative momentum, your habits, fears, and emotions. The course takes all of everything into account to make you’re transitioning from a dying marriage to a revitalized marriage but it takes some big efforts in the beginning. - Your focus is on yourself, not the marriage or your spouse.
TMF is the only large marriage help organization that recognizes that marriage help must be individual self-help in the context of marriage in order to gain the two permanent benefits of ever-increasing happiness and ever-expanding love.The self-help part may seem counter-intuitive but that is only because we have been on a steady diet of misinformation all of our lives.
I have been doing this for over twenty years and assure you that the process I created works and works incredibly well.
Steps You Should Take To Save Your Marriage Alone
- Start familiarizing yourself with what marriage is all about. The best and no-cost ways are to read my articles and watch my videos.
- Compare your thinking about marriage with mine and start to adjust yours, focusing on becoming a better spouse to your husband or wife.
- Sign up for the free 3-day trial for the course of your gender. It rolls over to a 90-day guarantee so there is everything to gain and nothing to lose.
You can without missing a beat or risking a penny
The courses begin with a 3-day free trial. You are not charged, then it rolls over into an incredible money-back guaranty that requires nothing other than a request for your money back. Nobody asks you anything if you want to cancel. You just get your money back. I instituted this so those who are not sure if their marriage is beyond saving will at least try. If you try you will know.
Some people try to save money. They think that just watching my videos will be enough, or reading my articles will work for them. Others are willing to spend a few bucks so they get one of my books.
Please, don’t do that. You want to have a great marriage not just a fixed marriage and certainly not a marriage held together with duct tape. Be smart. Get the course!
Do you have any questions? Our counselors will be happy to help you. Go to our ask a counselor page and ask away. God bless you.