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All The Wrong Reasons: Should You Stay Together?

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 December 18, 2019 December 10, 2019

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

December 18, 2019

We continue with listeners’ questions on the Save The Marriage Podcast. And in this episode, I pull together a central question about “Should we stay together because of this Insert Bad Reason Here?”

Several people told me they were still married, just for the sake of the kids. Several told me that their spouse was still there because they could not afford to separate, much less to divorce. And some told me they stayed married just to avoid having to hit the dating scene. And then, there is that anxiety of “what will people think?” So, they stay together.

But is that enough, they ask? Should they only stay together for these “wrong reasons?”

You can make a perspective shift and use those “wrong reasons” to get you to the right place in your relationship.

I cover 4 ways to get there in this episode of the podcast.

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Fighting for… Connection

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

December 11, 2019

“Should I even keep fighting for my marriage?”, asks “G.”

Oof, that word… “fighting.” I hear it often. But so many times, when someone says they are “fighting for” their marriage, they end up “fighting against” their spouse. The spouse who doesn’t see how to move forward.

Which is rarely helpful for the process. But I watch person after person “suit up” to do battle, not even sure on what they are fighting.

So, let me clarify that with the question from “E.” She asked why I always talk about connection… not romance, playing “hard to get,” doing “No Contact,” or reverse psychology.

Those two fit together… the “fighting” part and the “connecting” part. You are fighting for connection! For some very specific (and deeply rooted) reasons.

I discuss both in this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast.

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How To Guarantee No Divorce

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

December 4, 2019

Over the last episodes, I have been answering listener questions (you can submit your question by email – CLICK HERE). In this episode, I respond to Susan. She wants to guarantee that she does not get divorced.

So, I reveal how you can guarantee that you won’t get divorced (you may not like my answer, but it is important).

And then, I discuss what to do if it is too late to get that guarantee.

More importantly, I discuss why people want that guarantee, and what to do about that.

Oh, and I even tell you the exact ingredients in your process to save your marriage.

Simple. Not easy. But powerful when understood and applied.

Looking for a guarantee? Tune in to learn more.

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Heavy Holiday? Marriage Crisis and the Season

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

November 27, 2019

When life is hard, Holidays can feel heavy. When there is a marriage crisis, it can be tough to muster the energy to even move forward — especially when all the commercials and movies push the “merry and bright” of a mythic holiday.

And here we are, on the cusp of the Holiday season! It cuts across nations and beliefs. The season is here.

A client recently told me, “I just want to crawl into bed and get up on January 2nd.”

What a loss! No chance to find the deeper meaning of the Holidays. No chance at connection, re-connection, and healing.

Her real desire was to avoid pain. But her solution did more than avoiding pain. It avoided life, and all it offered.

My suggestion: deal with the heavy Holidays in a way that brings depth, connection, and healing, by engaging in the holiday.

I have 5 suggestions on dealing with Holidays in the midst of a marriage crisis. Listen below.

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Is “Space” the Opposite of Connection?

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

November 20, 2019

It is such a common demand from a spouse during a marital crisis: “I need space! You just need to give me space!”

Yet here I am, telling you to connect with your spouse, to rebuild the broken connection that led to the crisis.

Are they opposites?

One listener to the Save The Marriage Podcast was wondering. Which means that others might be wondering the same thing.

Here is the problem: When your marriage is in crisis and a spouse asks for space, if you can’t give it, your spouse will demand MORE space. And if that is not given, your spouse will force even MORE space. Each step causes deeper disconnection and a deeper crisis.

And yet, you know you need to fix the disconnection in order to heal the crisis. It just seems that connecting and giving space are opposite ends. But that is mainly because of the way you are trying to connect. You can accidentally be crowding, not connecting.

Listen in to discover the truth about “space” and how to connect without crowding.

(And if you have questions you want answered on the podcast, CLICK HERE TO SEND THEM.)

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The Problem with Changing… and Proving It!

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

November 13, 2019

Things hit a bad spot in your marriage… and your spouse isn’t sure about staying or leaving the marriage. Sure, it may have been a relationship issue, but you may be feeling blamed.

It’s pretty common to go looking for the “bad guy” in any situation. And even if both of you are in pain and frustrated, you may be wanting to stay. While you may be able to point to things your spouse needs to change, you can probably see that approach is unlikely to get you very far.

And noting the relationship problems? That might “fall on deaf ears,” too.

Which means you may just be catching the blame.

And maybe you even agree with the critiques aimed your way. Maybe you even agree that there are some changes you need to make.

Now what?

Yes, you absolutely want to make the changes.

Maybe to prove you can. Maybe because you know you would be a better person for having changed.

Here is the problem: Change is hard, and rarely straightforward. When we make any significant changes in life, we are highly unlikely to hit 100% success. Every now and then, you are likely to fall short. You are likely to drift back into old habits, old actions, old responses.

That doesn’t mean you have failed. Only that change is often a journey.

But those slips? They will absolutely be seen as failures by a suspicious spouse who is not trusting the changes (or even your capacity to change).

And that is the problem with change.

In this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast, I cover some questions about this that were submitted by listeners. Take a listen below!

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Pushing Through…

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

November 6, 2019

What do you do when you feel like giving up, like nothing you do is making a difference? Or when your spouse says you are trying to hard, or acting strange? Or when you have dragged your spouse to retreats, therapy, workshops… and at every turn, your spouse throws up a wall?

What do you do to push through?

That assumes that, for right now, giving up is not what you want to do.

You could do that. You could walk away. That is an option at any time.

But what if you don’t want to do that?

In this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast, I answer listener questions about how to continue in the face of failed efforts and resistant spouses.

We also look at the effects of depression on the process.

And I give you three pointers to keep moving forward… including why that “love language” may be failing in translation.

Listen below.

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Turning Conflict Into Intimacy

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

October 30, 2019

Relationships of any depth and any magnitude are going to hit up against conflict. It is just the nature of being close to someone. You are going to have differences that emerge. It is not a question of if, but when those differences appear. And then there is another question: how do you deal with the conflict? Does it serve to push you apart or does it pull you together?

In marriage, you are tying your life to the life of a spouse. That intensifies the potential for conflict, and the importance of that conflict. If someone else’s life has no real bearing on mine, I can disregard and ignore our differences… and we can even go our separate ways.

But in marriage, you pledge to move through those tough times, to find a way that works for both of you. And that raises the potential for the conflict.

For many couples, conflict only serves to divide and separate, not strengthen and pull together. Which means that an opportunity has been missed. A bridge has been lost.

On this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast, my guest is Mari Frank. What makes Mari’s outlook interesting is that she is an attorney. A divorce attorney. Not one who likes to take relationships apart, but an attorney who sees the sadness of relationships that could survive, that still have potential… where the spouses can’t see a way through their conflict.

After Mari watched marriages ending unnecessarily, she decided to do something. She used the skills developed over the years of navigating negotiation and mediation to help couples get below their surface issues and resolve their deeper conflicts.

And she realized that couples could do this before they landed in her office! Before their marriage was in jeopardy! Not only that, the conflict actually created a path to intimacy, if the couple followed it.

This led to her book, Fighting for Love. And in this episode of the podcast, it leads to our discussion of how conflict can be turned into intimacy

Listen in as Mari and I discuss the 6 A’s To A Long Relationship, and how to use HARD LOVE to get out of conflict.

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Your Questions About Infidelity, part 2

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

October 23, 2019

In the last episode, I answered questions about infidelity and marriage. Well, I started answering questions. Since I started asking for your questions, I have received quite a few about affairs and infidelity. So, I continue answering questions in this episode of the Save The Marriage Podcast.

Last episode, we focused more on what to do while there is an affair, emotional or physical.

This episode focuses a bit more on the aftermath. What do you do when the affair is ending/has ended? Especially if there is still contact!

What do you do with those thoughts and fears? What do you do about trust? How do you rebuild the relationship in the shadow of cheating? Especially if the cheating spouse is not doing what you want them to do in the recovery process?

And by the way, what’s “normal” in an upside-down reality?

We cover that and more!

Listen below for my answers to listener questions on infidelity (part 2)

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Your Questions About Infidelity, Part 1

By: Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.

October 16, 2019

Someone cheated. What now? Can a marriage survive infidelity, either physical or emotional? Can a relationship recover after an affair?

Over the past while, I have been answering listener questions (you can submit by emailing here). And this week, we turn our attention to the subject of infidelity and affairs (both physical and emotional).

To be honest, I receive more questions on this topic than any other (which is the reason I wrote the book on recovering from an affair). So, this is only part 1 of my answers.

Affairs and infidelity affect many marriages. They are a risk during a marriage crisis, and they deepen a crisis already happening. Infidelity is less a cause of the actual crisis, and more a symptom. But a discovered affair is often the first clear sign of the depths of crisis.

How do you deal with your emotions? How do you deal with your spouse? And how about that other person?

We touch on this and many other issues in the episode below. Listen in.

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