Looking for Something to Blame When the Relationship Falls Apart
When I was married, my father-in-law died unexpectedly. Afterward, my marriage crumbled. So, I pointed fingers at that event and blamed my wife's reaction to it as the reason our lives went to hell.
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“My husband and I have been going to therapy on and off for over 5 years and nothing has given me more hope for restoring our relationship than this book has. This was speaking in his voice and he actually listened. Can’t say enough good things.” - Ashleigh L.
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I have a guy in my weekly coaching/support group whose marriage has gotten a little rocky in year 42.
Not a typo. They’ve been married 42 years, and this is the first time she’s been like: “Maybe you should go live at your brother’s house for a while.”
They live in their dream house—a low-cost (by oceanfront standards) beach house on the Atlantic coast of the United States, part of which they rent out to vacationers in the summer months.
It was a reclamation project. He’s a long-time handyman/home-improvement contractor.
In the short time (less than two years, I believe) they’ve lived there since relocating from the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area where they had previously spent their entire lives, a lot has happened to them.
He suffered a severe burn on one of his hands, which delayed their plans for him to renovate their new home. And she suffered a couple of health scares. Both needed one another to provide extensive care for the other through their recoveries, which lasted a couple of months each.
By moving several hundreds of miles away, he also lost routine access to his social circle and semi-local family, and his entire client base.
Stressful stuff, no doubt.
When you ask him about what’s happened to potentially jeopardize a 40-plus-year marriage, you might hear something that sounds like, All of this happened because we bought our dream house and moved far away, and none of it has worked out the way we had thought it was going to.
The reason their marriage is experiencing heightened conflict and trust erosion? They moved far away. Everything seemed fine back home.
…
I would have told you a similar story 14 years ago.
That’s when we lost my wife’s father. (For clarity—now my ex-wife’s father.)
We had been together for a decade, married for about seven years at the time, and our little boy was still sitting in highchairs and wearing bibs, and everything seemed great. (To me.)
We were a cute little family, and we always had a nice time with her parents, who had a lovely log cabin home and swimming pool on a private wooded lot that made for nice weekend getaways from our densely populated suburban neighborhood.
And then, one day I got a phone call from her cousin informing us that we lost her dad. Heart attack. Out of nowhere.
Despite my efforts (which I’m confident were missing the mark back then) to be comforting and supportive, our marriage became strained in pretty obvious ways. One night at dinner she dropped the bomb that she wasn’t sure whether she loved me anymore, nor whether she wanted to remain married.
I lost my breath, reeling on the inside while quietly sitting still on the outside.
It didn’t take long for anger and resentment to set in. She’s betraying me! She’s quitting on me!
I pouted and moved into the guest bedroom because she obviously doesn’t want me to sleep with her anyway!
For anyone unsure about whether that was a wise decision toward repairing whatever was broken in our marriage, I want to make it abundantly clear that it was not. As my wife experienced it, it was one in a very long, consistent string of examples of me choosing my wants and preferences and feelings over hers any time it felt inconvenient or uncomfortable for me to do otherwise.
About 18 months later, she finally packed a suitcase and moved out. I took it pretty hard—there was lots of crying and anxiety vomiting and things like that. You wouldn’t have been impressed. My book This is How Your Marriage Ends was inspired by all of those rock-bottom, I kinda hope I don’t wake up tomorrow happenings.
…
This is all a really long way of saying my father-in-law’s passing was not the reason I got divorced, even though you can trace the big, breaking shift in our relationship history to that moment.
In a similar vein, my awesome guy in Group is not experiencing marital strife for the first time in 42 years on account of moving to their beach house, even though it feels like the easy thing to point to.
When the fundamentals of healthy relationships are absent, we are vulnerable to external forces dividing us from our partner.
When the fundamentals of healthy relationships are present, we are galvanized and connected, and if not impervious—are at least robustly prepared to battle external forces together, as a team.
We spend a lot of time looking at external conditions—health, money, geography, work stress, children, family and friends stuff, and a million other things—and feeling their impact on our relationships. It’s easy to fall into the victimization trap when we do that because we all get to say “If x, y, and z hadn’t happened, then none of this other bad stuff would be happening.”
An infinitely more useful and trust-building mindset is: When I can trust myself, and my partner can trust me to consistently notice, and pay attention to, and Consider the impact of external events and my own behavior on them, then we will have safety and trust in our relationship.
When I can trust myself, and my partner can trust me to consistently Validate them when they tell me that something painful or otherwise negative is happening to them, then there will never be something we can’t have a healthy, peaceful conversation about. I will never feel stress or anxiety about bringing something up to them, or them doing so to me.
I really hate sounding coachy and preachy, because I have so much work to do in my own life. I just really want to encourage people to look inward, not outward, for reasons why we are where we are, and for the roadmap to wherever we want to be tomorrow.
We don’t get ride-or-die loyalty as an automatic life throw-in. We earn it by learning how to show up for people in a bunch of boring, unsexy ways, every day, consistently, always.
That’s how we arrive at Trust. That’s how we make it to Ever After.
Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.
P.S. - I know these things can present really small to some of you in your busy lives and marriages/partnerships. But that’s exactly why developing mindfulness and communication habits around these domestic scenarios is so critical to maintaining peaceful, loving relationships. If you have trust erosion, and/or pain points and frustrations around things like this at home, consider working with me as your relationship coach to develop these skills and habits. This stuff matters. Book your next appointment here. - MF
What a valuable lesson. Some of us learned this the hard way, I know I did. All the years I puffed my chest out and "stuck to my guns" were wasted years.
I love your insights. "An infinitely more useful and trust-building mindset is: When I can trust myself, and my partner can trust me to consistently notice, and pay attention to, and Consider the impact of external events and my own behavior on them, then we will have safety and trust in our relationship."
Bought your book on Amazon today, thank you <3