Hey guys, welcome back to Partnership Aligned Podcast! So today I’m going to get a little personal and tell you about my experience with marriage and how it led me to be an amazing relationship coach!
So to give you a very brief rundown of the details, I got married to a man I was very much in love with in August of 2018. We had been together for a few years and had been through some ups and downs.
Long story short, my husband was an addict but was in full swing recovery. We met in AA. I’m also in recovery so clearly that was a bond. But after we got married and had a baby, he stopped keeping up with his recovery program and eventually relapsed.
Luckily, I did not, but you can only imagine the chaos of your husband relapsing while trying to care for a baby. I went into total survival mode. This happened in 2020 during full swing COVID. But I had so much going on inside my home that when I went out and saw people with masks, I remember thinking “oh right, there’s a pandemic happening.” That’s how crazy things were.
There was an 8 month chunk where he was relapsing off and on. During that time, I was holding it together on the outside but falling apart on the inside. I prayed every single day for 8 months for God to give me clarity on what to do about this marriage. I had compassion for him because I have a very good understanding of addiction but I didn’t want that life.
One day, I went to an AA women’s meeting and shared with the group what was going on. After the meeting, a woman came up to me and asked me if I had ever heard of a life coach named Jody Moore who had a podcast. I hadn’t. This woman went on to tell me that this podcast talks about marriage in a way that’s different and how it helped her so much in her marriage.
I’ve always been a seeker. It’s one of my favorite things about myself. If someone makes a suggestion or tells me about a book/podcast, I’m looking into it. I love to learn and I have a fierce desire for inner growth. Always have.
So a few weeks go by and my husband, who was sober for a short time, decided he was going to start playing video games ALL NIGHT LONG. When I say all night long, I don’t mean until midnight. I mean he would come to bed at 4am and wake me up from all his tossing and turning. For anyone who’s ever had a baby, you know that you become a light sleeper physiologically so that you can hear your baby if they are crying.
Then of course he would be too tired to help with the baby in the morning, or he would go to work and come home cranky because he was so tired and the whole thing was just annoying. So at first I didn’t say anything. One of my recurring patterns in my marriage was my desire to be the “cool girl.” I figured, it’s better than drugs so it would be dumb to say something. Also, I didn’t want to be the wife who tells her husband what to do. Again, wanted to be cool.
But you see what happens when you don’t speak up about how you’re feeling, aka you people please, eventually you can’t take it anymore and you end up saying exactly how you feel by lashing out. This was my pattern. I would stuff things deep down and decide they were no big deal. Then eventually I would feel rageful and let it all out.
The solution, of course, would have been open communication. But at that time, I didn’t have the capacity for it because I didn’t have the awareness of my pattern and how it was playing a major role in the conflict.
So after lashing out about the video games, I went for a drive to get some space. Threw my baby in the car seat, because that was the only way he would nap at the time, and just went driving. And crying.
Then, I remembered that podcast that woman from AA had suggested. I thought, well this might be a good time to listen to that. So I did. In those 35 minutes, my life changed. This woman had a guest named Brooke Castillo and the two women spoke about marriage and how to take ownership for your own happiness. I won’t go into the details of that particular episode, but I will tell you that I had a complete shift.
By the time I got home from that drive, I had decided to release my husband from being the person I wanted him to be. It wasn’t working, it didn’t feel good, and it was exhausting. I made an oath to myself that I was going to focus on becoming the healthiest version of myself. And that’s exactly what I did.
I got serious about prayer and meditation. I started to work out. I spent time with women who had what I wanted – a healthy relationship with themselves. I had had it before but I had lost it and I needed help getting back. I hired a life coach who was trained in the work I fell in love with on that podcast and I GOT TO WORK.
With the help of my coach, I got honest with myself. I came to terms with the fact that I was falling out of love with this man. But more importantly, I came to terms with the fact that I was a big part of the problem. Not in regards to his addiction, but in regards to my own resentment and frustration. I was not a victim. I chose him every day and then got pissed that he was the same as yesterday.
Eckhart Tolle says that if you are in a situation that causes you stress, then you have two options. Either find acceptance or leave. Anything else is insanity. And it was insanity. It was crazy for me to sweep those red flags under the rug. It was crazy for me to stuff down my feelings and say yes all the time when I wanted to scream no. It was crazy for me to try and use sex to save the marriage. It was crazy for me to continue believing a lot of the things he was saying. The whole thing was insanity.
Because I hadn’t been honest with myself, I also hadn’t been honest with him. I never let on just how I was feeling. I never was experiencing my emotions in real time. Which meant I couldn’t communicate them either.
My relationship is as healthy as I am. You see, I had actually had two healthy long-term relationships in my 20’s. I was in a healthy place most of my life. But I was not when I met my husband. I was in early recovery and had not yet healed from what I had been through or the shame I was left with.
I think this is actually the biggest lesson of all. We often don’t see that it is our own mind that needs to be stable in order to have a stable relationship. Because I was in such deep denial, I let very big red flags go. I didn’t want them to be true, so I swept them under the rug never to take a look at them again. Then we blame that person for having red flags when we were the ones to ignore them!
Long story short, on August 10th 2020, I overheard him on the phone with another woman. He was having an affair. Because I had been working on myself so deeply and had reached a new level of self-worth, self-trust, and standards for myself, I left him that day.
I had total clarity because I was in touch with my feelings. I was a healthy version of myself in the midst of a very toxic situation. I felt good about my decision and I never looked back. There has been grief and anger of course, which I’ve processed, but never regret or shame.
At this time, I was working as a therapist. I started to have this experience in my sessions of longing. Longing to do this work with other people. I got more relief and made more progress in just a few coaching sessions than I had in over a year of therapy. I was working with patients who were unable to do this work because of their diagnoses. I felt stuck. I was no longer passionate about what I was doing because there was this other thing I was yearning to do.
So, I quit and went and got certified as a life coach under the woman who I had heard on that podcast on the drive that day. Between my experience as a therapist and the personal experience I had being coached, it was an easy transition for me. It felt right. All of this happened to get me here. So I can help other women.
So, you may be asking yourself, well how does that help you help other women who want to stay in their marriage? The answer is that I have experienced total inner peace while living with an active addict who was secretly having an affair. And the only reason I experienced it is because I did the work that I now guide other women to do. Deciding to leave was after the fact. In fact, to me, it was barely relevant to my inner experience within that relationship. All the growth had already happened for me.
Most people are not living in the chaos I was living in. Most women want to change their husband. They want him to see things their way or stop being moody or parent differently or whatever. But I know the secret. I know that you can’t change him and you don’t need to. All you need to do is to go through this process of working on yourself and you can feel any way you want to feel in your marriage.
So if you’re interested in knowing what I’m talking about, go ahead and schedule a free consult with me through the link in the show notes. I have a fabulous 1:1 coaching program where I guide you through knocking down every obstacle between where you are now and where you want to be in your marriage.
