Latest / Behind Every Great Man / EP 44: Marriage Isn't Hard. Unhealed People Make Marriage Hard
Transcript
- Jessica Zubchevich: Behind every great man is a great confident exceptional woman. Hi, and welcome to Behind Every Great Man. I am Jessica, your host. We're doing it a little different today. Behind every great marriage are two people who know that healing themselves is the greatest gift they could give their spouse. I know the title of this episode can be a little hard-hitting. Marriage isn't hard. What's hard is bringing two unhealed people into one home. I know some of you probably just rolled your eyes like, whatever, Jess, you don't know my husband. True, I don't, but let's talk about it. Before we go any further, I want to just say not every problem in a marriage comes from childhood wounds. Some people just make destructive choices. What this episode is about is two people who genuinely love each other that keep having these. Recurring issues come up. They somehow keep hurting each other. This conversation also isn't about who's to blame here, who brought more baggage into the relationship. One person can come in healed. Both can come in healed. Two people can come in unhealed. But it's not about blaming anybody. It's about asking questions, important questions, like What if the biggest obstacle in my marriage isn't my spouse? What if it's me needing to ask questions like, what needs to be healed within me? What parts in me still need healing? Or even bigger than this, what if the most powerful work you can do in your marriage is the work God is calling you to do within yourself? That's big. That's deep. It's big, and it's so good. That is not an easy question to answer. It is not. It is so much easier to look at the other person and what they need to do, what they are getting wrong. That's easy. And you hear it all the time. What's tough is, ooh, what do I need to do? What did that bring up in me? What did that trigger in me? Why did I have such a massive reaction to that situation? These are the things we're looking at. When I got married, I thought the biggest challenges would be combining our lives, bringing two people together and sharing a house now, building a home, blending our families. For sure, that was not easy. For me, the most challenging part of being married isn't learning each other. It's learning about ourselves. And I'm not a therapist, I'm not claiming to be. I'm a woman that is in a marriage, a healthy marriage that has gone through this process. And that's why I'm talking about it. And I'm still going through it. I know what's been working for us. And that's what I want to share with you. Keith has shared openly that he was not healed in his past. He was married twice before. I'm number three. And he wasn't healed. He started therapy. Not for six months, for 20 years. Twenty years plus he was in therapy before he met me. He did the work. And then we met. And I was coming into our marriage with my own story. My parents divorced when we were very young. And I somewhere along the way made up stories that I wasn't good enough, that marriages don't last, men can't be trusted. Love leaves. And before I got married, I was in therapy for a number of years. My faith changed my life first and foremost. Therapy changed my life. Experiential work programs that I've taken changed my life. So I did a ton of work before I stepped into this marriage. Now I had a lot of healing. But I wasn't healed. And I don't believe healing is some finish line that you hit. It is an ongoing journey that you continue saying yes to and being open to. And in all honesty, what I did bring into my marriage that was unhealed that I didn't even know about till we were married was my belief around intimacy. There was something in my past. That made me believe that sex intimacy was expected of me, that you need to do this in order to make your man happy. Instead of leaving it this beautiful thing that it's, you know, sex and intimacy in marriage is God's gift to a husband and wife and closeness and affection and playfulness, connection, safety. Being married revealed to me that I had this underlying expectation of me. That had nothing to do with Keith. Keith's just a man wanting to be intimate with his wife, a basic thing in marriage. And I brought in this expectation. So that was mine. And I didn't know it till I got married. Once I saw it, like, wow, where in the world did that come from? Did digging in therapy, he would get hurt and confused by my reactions at times. And until we really dug in, until I really took a look at what was going on in me and did my work, we weren't able to really pinpoint what it was and work through it. So there are still these challenges that come up. But now with that. I know where it comes from. So I had to work through that, and I still am. And I honestly believe that one of the greatest gifts that Keith and I give each other in this marriage is not expecting the other person to heal us, but being committed to our own healing. We hear couples say all the time our problem started when we got married. Our problem started when we moved in together or our problem started when we had kids. Maybe maybe. But I don't think those seasons created the problem. I think they revealed what was underneath the surface, that the pressure didn't create these issues out of thin air. The pressure revealed it, exposed what was going on under the surface. Let's pull from an expert here. Dr. Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, said love is not the cure for old wounds. Love is the place where those wounds are most likely to surface. And that's an important distinction. I've watched relationships all around me my whole life, and you probably can relate to this. I also was a court reporter that worked in divorce court, so I saw a ton of it. But friends and family, my loved ones closest to me, I'm not gonna name names, the conversations almost always sound the same. If only he would do this, if only he would have done that, if only she knew this about herself, if they could just change this, if he would just be different with this, you almost never hear, here's what I need to work on. Here is what God is trying to heal within me. Here's what I'm going to do differently. My next relationship. I always listen for it, but I never hear it. And then unfortunately, the next relationship comes and it's pretty much the same thing. And I speak confidently in this because that was me. I was doing that until I realized, wow, they didn't create that in me. Yeah, they have their own shit, but so do I. And I can't control them, I can control me. That's it. Marriage is wild because it truly reveals so much about ourselves and our partner. It can reveal things in you, insecurities you didn't know you had, fear of abandonment, mine, control issues, perfectionism, pride. That is a mirror shooting up in our face. And it is hard to look into it. It is easier to make it about them than to take that mirror and realize it's something that you need to be looking at. We often can mistake that mirror for the problem rather than, man, this is revealing something to me right now. Because we can spend so much time wondering why is my spouse making me feel this way rather than What is this revealing in me? That is so not easy to do, especially when you've been hurt, especially when you've been wronged. It's so much easier to just stay on what they need to do versus, man, what do I need to do here? And if we want our marriages to work and to thrive, these are the questions that we need to be asking ourselves. When Keith and I have a disagreement. We always, and I can say that word always, start with acknowledgments. We start with acknowledging rather than accusing. You did this, you made me feel. What it sounds like is I felt this. When you said that, this is how I took that, that hurt my feelings. It's never you did this, you made me feel this way. You're a ba-buh buh. If you approach disagreements with acknowledgments and ownership rather than accusations, watch how the conversation changes. I would love to hear from you about your experience with this and how it really can change the whole dynamic. One therapist said something a long time ago that always stayed with me. Our deepest wounds are almost always activated in our closest relationships. Of course they are. Those closest to us can hurt us the most. Our husband, our children. Research has shown that the attachment patterns we develop early in life often shape how we experience trust, conflict, closeness, and emotional safety in our adult relationships. It said so the way you learned to receive love as a child often becomes the way you experience love as an adult. Maybe you grew up in a home where you felt that you needed to earn love. And now how that shows up in your relationship is if your husband's distracted or something, you feel like you've done something wrong. Maybe you grew up in a home where you felt like you had to walk on eggshells. And now in your marriage, if you and your husband have a conflict, it's horrible. It feels dangerous rather than something that can be healthy and productive. Maybe you felt that. In order to be loved, you have to be perfect. And now in your marriage, if you guys have a disagreement or something, you feel like s it's broken. This isn't gonna work out. Rather than this is just part of being married. Marriage doesn't invent these stories. It shines a light on them. This reminds me of something that Michael Singer wrote about in The Untethered Soul, amazing book. He gave the image of a thorn in your side. And you can spend your whole life trying to protect it, trying to keep people away from it, building your life where nobody touches this. And if somebody gets close or they try to touch it, you lash out. You jump and you're reactive. You get defensive because they're touching a wound or trying to touch a wound. That you know hurts so bad. So you live your life with this guard up because you don't want to get hurt. Or you do the hard and painful work of excavating it, of pulling it out. So painful. But what's on the other side of that pain and then that healing is freedom. And I always thought that that was such a powerful analogy. Read the book. It's so deep. It's so great. And once that wound is gone, you're no longer organizing your life in a way trying to protect this wound. I've gone through this process and it is so painful and it is so hard. But once you do it, once you get it out, you're free. And not saying things don't come up in the future, but when they do, you see it, you know what it is. It's not so painful anymore because you've already done the hard work. And maybe marriage to build on that is simply revealing those thorns that we've had inside of us all along. Here's something that we need to look at within our marriages. We spend so much time trying to fix. The behaviors like, okay, we want less yelling in our relationship, better communication, more communication, spending more time together, date nights, more appreciation for each other. All of these are important. All of these are great, but we're treating the symptom and we're not really getting to the root of the problem. Because you can be a great communicator. But have massive insecurities under the surface. You can learn conflict resolution skills, but that doesn't mean that you still don't have a deep fear of abandonment within you. You can read every marriage book out there and still feel like you're not good enough. If we don't heal what's underneath, we continue to turn to our spouse to heal the things within us that they did not. Create. And it's not like you're never gonna be triggered again in your life. Of course we will, but they'll be diffused and they won't control you anymore. And you'll learn to apologize faster and recognize things quicker, and learn to not quickly go into blame. Rather, ooh, what was that? What made me feel that way? Becoming more aware of what I like to say, what's alive inside of me. Keith makes fun of me for that. It's very woo. Healing doesn't make you perfect. It just gives you your power back. It's time for a weekly pause. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, please just take these couple moments for yourself. If you can. Close your eyes. Let's all take a deep inhale together through your nose. Exhale it out through Exhale it out. One more deep breath in You to think, sister, about the last argument or disagreement you had with your spouse, or maybe something that's recurring in your relationship. Don't replay it in your head. Just notice it. Bring it to mind. What emotions came up in you? Fear. Rejection. Not feeling enough. The need to be right. Feeling alone? Fear of losing control? What if this moment wasn't just revealing a problem in my marriage? What if it was revealing a place where God wants to bring healing within me? What is underneath this emotion? Why does this keep coming up for me? Is this a common theme that's been happening in my life? What is God trying to show me? What is God trying to reveal within me? You're not alone in this sister. These aren't things that are easy to face but necessary. For your freedom. Let's all take one last deep breath and together. Exhale it out. And open your eyes. Maybe you've been praying, God, change my marriage. But maybe today God's inviting a different prayer. God, show me what you're trying to change within me. Because maybe the most powerful work you can do on your marriage is the work God is inviting you to do within yourself, behind every great marriage. Are two people who know healing themselves is the greatest gift they could give their spouse. Thanks for taking the time to join me on this week's podcast episode. You can find more episodes on Behind Every Great Man on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if this spoke to you, please subscribe and why not share it with a girlfriend. Thanks again, and I'll see you next week.