“I Won’t If My Spouse Won’t” — And You Are Stuck
https://savethemarriage.com/stmblog/wp-content/themes/corpus/images/empty/thumbnail.jpg 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D. Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D. https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/669b7e375d93f77521ddaba08adb8063?s=96&d=blank&r=pg
A few days ago, that was what he said on the phone, “I won’t work on my marriage if my spouse won’t.” Now note: he had contacted me — I help people save their marriage.
“Huh?” I uttered.
“Look,” he said, “if you think I am going to start working on my marriage by myself, that ain’t gonna happen. Why don’t you convince my spouse to work on the marriage?”
“First,” I replied, “I am not in the market of trying to get someone to do something, neither you nor your wife. Second, if you are always waiting for your spouse to do something before you do, you are probably very stuck. Could I suggest something?”
“Probably not, but go ahead and try,” he said.
“Okay,” I pushed on, “what if you were to start working on things? What if you were to just start moving in the direction of your marriage, seeing if you could improve the connection? Is it possible that you could START the process, and your spouse could JOIN the process?”
“Maybe….”
Good enough for me.
You see, this is one of those stuck points of marriage. If one spouse is refusing to do something until the other does something — and the spouse is doing the same thing — the marriage is frozen in place. Stuck.
Someone has to shift. Someone has to blink. Someone has to be willing to change something in order for something to change.
Let’s talk about this stuck point — and how to get beyond it — in this week’s podcast (below).
(I mention a resource in the podcast. FIND IT RIGHT HERE.)
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