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There are too many marriages flirting with divorce. You may be one, if not you probably know several.
Maybe you’re at a spot where you don’t want to be there.
…you want to run away.
…you’re exhausted.
…your spirit is broken.
Maybe you’ve only ever thought it or maybe you’ve admitted it to others.
I want to invite you to take the power you have to see that there may be a real strategy to get this thing turned around.
The podcast I released is a roadmap on how to get this thing turned around where you maybe, could possibly want to stay married.
It’s not easy when you have been beaten down, neglected, rejected, controlled…
What can you do?
I want to give you 5 Steps that if followed in order, can quite possibly save your marriage and actually make you want to stay in it!
I don’t have to convince you that your life (your kids’ lives…) would be better if your marriage became healthy and loving again.
I hope you’ll take the encouragement to focus on this and make these important changes.
transcript
0:02
Welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me belah rose as I dive deep into the beauty, power and truth about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. delight your marriage. All right, welcome. Thank you for joining me, Happy New Year. If this is you joining in the present, I want to thank you. And on this podcast, we talk about marriage and intimacy and the value God has on it all. And today, what I want to talk about is for couples who are struggling in their marriage, and, and maybe you’re one who is really pretty close to throwing in the towel, you don’t really know if this is worth it to continue. And maybe you don’t feel love for your spouse anymore. And if that’s you, but you know, God wants you to be married. And you know, God wants your family to stay together and your kids to have a happy marriage to witness. I want to give you a bit of a roadmap on next steps for you. Because there truly is a roadmap here and I want to give that to you in this podcast. So before we dive in, I’d also like to invite you to download a framework for your marriage, which basically, as a husband, let’s say you can understand what your wife is craving. And a wife, you can understand what your husband is craving from marriage. And when you fulfill those things, then your partner almost naturally responds to fill you up as well. So to get that framework, you go to delight your marriage.com/framework. Again, that’s delight your marriage.com/framework. And I encourage you to go ahead and sign up and get that as soon as you can. Otherwise, you might forget, I know I do. So go ahead as soon as you can there. Alright, let’s dive in. Alright, so you may be at a spot where you just don’t feel love for your partner anymore. And you feel really hurt in many, many ways. Maybe the culture of your marriage doesn’t feel safe, it doesn’t feel loving, it doesn’t feel warm, you feel rejected or neglected, you feel like she cares more about the kids than she does about you. Maybe you feel like he is pressuring all you all the time, pressuring you all the time or high expectations or whatever it may be, that you all are facing, I want to invite you to consider that there could be a strategic way to change all of this. Especially if you have kids. One thing that I think about a lot is that the partner no matter what will, will always be in your life. So even if divorce is on the table, the spouse will always be there, you will never not have connection with this person. So it is best to try to work it out even practically speaking, but for your kids. It is huge to grow up in a divorced household. It’s a big deal. And I know that as as myself i i experienced divorce later in life from my my parents, but a very negative marriage is what we all witnessed for our whole lives. And then now as an adult there, it’s very hard to do family engagements and who gets invited to what Christmas party or what birthday party or who’s on the text message chain or what have you. Because of divorce, so it’s just so much better for so many reasons to stay married, but actually to change it, but actually to transform it. And that’s the amazing thing about God is He can use just one of you to transform the marriage. Yes, he can do it. He can do it through just one of you. And I want to kind of give you a semblance of step by step what what that would look like. So if you’re at a spot where you just want to throw in the towel, you want to you know you’re not even out of spot that you want to fight for the marriage. Maybe you just are done. You don’t feel love for your spouse anymore.
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You’re exhausted. Here’s what I would suggest. I would suggest your first thing Your first order of business is to fill yourself up, fill yourself up. And I mean, through joy, recognize that there are good things in this life, let’s say, let’s just pretend if the visual that you have in your head of if I were just out of this marriage, I would be able to blank. What is it? What is it that you would be able to do? Now aside from, you know, finding another partner? I mean, what would you be able to do in this life? That right now you feel like your marriage is blocking you from? You know, a lot of times people don’t actually think about it, what is it that I actually want? I just know that I don’t want this. Now, I’m inviting you to get a little more purposeful, a little more intentional, what is it that you do want, so you at least have a place to go a vision of a purpose. You know, a lot of times people say, well, it’s just so there’s no peace in our home, I just want peace, I just want calmness, I want to be able to be myself again. And we kind of get to a space a lot of times is we start blaming our spouse for every bad thing in our life. And forget that wait a second I, I get to, I’m responsible for myself, I’m responsible for my own joy. I’m responsible for my own happiness, I’m responsible for my own relationship with God. I’m responsible for that. And so right now, that’s number one is you get to fill yourself up, get to a place where you have a strong relationship with the Lord. What does that look like? It means having a routine where you daily are spending time with him where you’re in the word, where you’re thinking about him where you talk to him, where you spend time in nature connecting with him. What else does that look like getting a sense of what His purpose is for you? What is he calling you to do? And be about? What specifically does that look like? Start doing some of those passions, whether it’s a hobby, like going fishing, or whether it’s, you know, singing through worship music or, or being part of a band, or all sorts of different things that you could do. And even in the midst of COVID I mean, there’s so many opportunities to connect to people or do certain things, actively serving and loving others through the internet. I mean, there’s so many opportunities. And so the other piece is really defining and moving towards what joy is for you. Some people really love to craft others like to paint others like to would work in their wood shop. Others like to be really great with their kids and in different adventures that they go in together. Maybe it’s soccer, maybe there’s all sorts of things. What is it that fills you up? So that’s the first piece you you need to feel filled up as a woman or as a man that you feel like, life is good. Okay, so that’s kind of your first priority. The second priority. The second step, I would say is boundaries. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. are this is really key because your if somebody is disrespecting you it’s actually your responsibility to fix it. If they disrespect you. You are allowing yourself to be disrespected. Now, if you’re in a controlling marriage, and you’re a husband, I have a whole course for you on that. It’s called from controlling to carefree and it’s just a wonderful step by step guidance on going from controlling to care free, but it’s important for you to understand what boundaries are boundaries is respect. Boundaries is I respect my husband, he respects me. There are certain things that are just his and there are certain things that are just mine. I’m not going to control him. He’s not going to control me. So what does that look like practically? Well, my husband trusts me. And he doesn’t go through my phone and he doesn’t check my email and he doesn’t ask me who I’m on the phone with when I’m whatever I’m doing. He he trusts me, he respects me. He accepts that this is who I am. And he’s not trying to change me. He accepts me.
9:48
He gives me freedom. And because it gives me freedom, I’m actually drawn to him. See, when you don’t have boundaries, what that means is that One person is controlling the other person. And sometimes it goes back and forth one person controls in one way, and the other person responds by controlling in another way. Another way of describing that is one person’s critical in one way, and then the other person’s critical and the other way and accusing and accusations back and forth and back and forth. And it’s terrible to terrible environment. But when you decide, You know what I am going to change this environment, I’m going to stop controlling, I’m going to stop criticizing going to stop telling them what to do. And it’s saying, you, you have to be who I want you to be, you have to change according to what I want you to be, or do. Instead, you start putting boundaries around, around yourself. And so if so, my main encouragement around boundaries is it is kind of a hard thing to understand. But it’s basically saying, I get to only control myself, I don’t get to control or change someone else, I only get to control and change myself. The beautiful thing about that is when you change yourself, it if you let go of somebody else, you let go of requiring them to change and you just trust God, that you’re going to do your best and you’re going to trust God to to change hearts or do what God’s gonna do. But the main thing is, we can’t control other people, God’s the one that has to change hearts. And instead, we need to let it go. Now, because I have been in a relationship where I felt controlled, if I could go talk to my past self, the thing that I would say is, I can’t control the other person. I can’t tell them to stop controlling me. But what I can do is when a behavior occurs, I can say, if this happens again, I will do this. And if that thing happens again, then I do my response. So for example, I’m going to throw myself under the bus here. When I used to be controlling of my husband. I remember we went to a wedding. And I physically pushed my husband into conversations because I wanted him to engage in my friendships and relationships with people. But he’s, he’s quiet. And he’s a he’s a relaxed guy, and he’s not really interested in being the center of attention. Now, I can do that all by myself, but he likes to be calm. And he’d rather just be kind of sitting quietly with a beer. That’s that’s observing, observing the party not not really interacting in it. And that’s okay. That’s, that’s how he is. That’s how God made him. No problem. But it didn’t used to be Oh, no, I had a clear, clear vision of who he should be in that party. Anyway, what what could he have done? Well, he could have said something like, Honey, I don’t want to speak to the people you want me to speak to? If you forced me to do it, I’m going to go sit in the car until the wedding’s done. So that would have said, you know, clearly, that’s kind of like a warning, this is the boundary, if you do this, I will do this. And there it is. I mean, in the car, he could have taken his beer and sat there and talked on the phone to someone if he wanted to whatever, but that would have made it clear like, okay, he has to have a boundary, if I’m controlling him, it’s actually his responsibility to respect himself. Does that make sense? If you’re being controlled, it’s your responsibility to respect yourself, and not allow that to happen. The thing he could not do in terms of healthy response is it wouldn’t help for him to say you can’t tell me what to do. You go talk to them, or if he started telling me what to do. See, that’s just more control. I was controlling him, then he’s controlling me or back and forth critical. The only piece is, honey, I don’t want to talk to those people. If you continue to do force me to do it, I’ll go wait in the car until the wedding is over.
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So that can happen in lots of ways. Now, you don’t want to do a boundary that’s really extreme. Like, if you keep pushing me into the conversation than I am leaving, like that would be a crazy extreme. We don’t need that. But we can make it smaller. We can make small boundaries. It’s kind of like with kids. I have made lots of mistakes. where, you know, the punishment never fit the crime. Like, you know, my son did something simple. And then I said, I’m taking away this toy forever or whatever. And, and then he, he, he reacts in such a huge way. Because it wasn’t fair I didn’t need, all I needed to say is I’m, maybe I’m not gonna let you play with the toy for the next half hour or something, it just needed to be small. So he knew he was going to get the toy back, he didn’t need to freak out. And that’s the problem. I think a lot of times people have with boundaries, as they don’t realize it doesn’t have to be huge. But it does have to be something, you do have to have consequences to actions. So boundaries are key. So if you’re feeling a lot of times, when marriages fall apart, it’s because boundaries were not expected, respected. One person did not respect the other person’s boundaries. And the other person in turn did not respect the other. So it’s just back and forth critical arguments, negativity, and it deteriorates the entire marriage. And it’s not one thing, it’s it’s days and days and months and years of arguments that were just ridiculous, really, when you look back at what specifically caused each and every argument, it’s ridiculous, but it’s heaped upon each other. But when you establish boundaries, and you stick to them, then your spouse and you have some separateness you have some space, which is vital. So again, my husband and I have, I think, very healthy boundaries, where, you know, he’s sitting right here listening. But um, yeah, I mean, we have, I don’t like I said, I don’t check his email, he doesn’t check mine. We don’t check it, check others things, we trust each other. Because if we don’t trust each other, there’s no attraction and freedom has to be part of your relationship. Otherwise, there’s there’s no love God knew that. Because when He created us, he had to create us with freewill. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be love. So your spouse has to have freedom in their lives, otherwise, they will not love you. And in the same way, if you feel like you don’t have freedom in your marriage, then it’s hard to feel love towards your spouse, right. That’s why it’s your responsibility to put boundaries in place. That’s why it’s your responsibility to put boundaries in place. So a phenomenal book is called boundaries in marriage. And if you haven’t read that, and you don’t understand boundaries, I get it. It’s a little bit hard to catch. But I would love for you to go and listen to that book on audiobook or read it either way, but alright, so boundaries is that the next piece number three is forgiveness, after you have boundaries in place. And after you’re consistently working on filling yourself up according to God’s will for your life. Then it’s forgiving your spouse. Why is this so important? Well, after the the wounds and the hurts and the difficulties of your life, with your spouse, it’s like every single wound is a little pebble. And then every pebble turns into a rock and every rock then there’s then there’s the big things are the boulders and the heavy rocks and and basically every wound of your past everything that you’re disappointed with your spouse, you are now carrying all of those things on your back. Which means that
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when you are approaching your spouse with all of that pain, all of that history, it’s like you’re approaching them and of course you’re exhausted. Of course you don’t have anything left to give you don’t have any energy to to to give anything else to your spouse. It’s because you’re exhausted. You’re exhausted you’re carrying so much. The one encouragement I have for you is that Jesus specifically He says, if we do not forgive others, he will not forgive us. And if you can imagine, if we’re, Who on earth are we supposed to be forgiving, except for the one person that’s the closest to us. Now, forgiveness does not mean you’re going to let them walk all over you for the rest of your life, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to be treated badly. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be abused and let yourself live that way. But it does mean you’re going to responsibly put boundaries in place. And you’re going to forgive. I want you to get to a place where the only times and the only reasons you would ever bring up negative things that happened between you and your spouse, is because you want it to be a learning for someone else. But it’s not out of animosity, it’s not out of resentment, it’s not out of meanness. I hope that’s the freedom I have in my heart with my spouse. And even with my past, it’s only ever to give somebody else the gift of understanding and learning from my mistakes. I want that for you, I want you to have full forgiveness of your spouse, because you cannot employ new things. If you were still weighed down by the past. Anything, I could tell you all the tricks, I could tell you all the things to do, it doesn’t matter, because you won’t have the energy to implement it and implement it from the heart if you do not forgive, and that truly is the case, it has to be implemented from the heart. It’s not surface level. It’s not just strategy, it truly has to permeate deeper. And so how do you even forgive? Well, it’s a process. It’s not a once and done thing. But what I like to encourage my students to do is to write down every single thing you’re holding against your spouse. And I really do mean write it down, articulate it, get it in writing, what are the things that pain you what are the things you’re holding against your spouse. So then get some quiet music on and talk to God about that. And ask him to help you to let these things go, to let these things go. And then that this whole experience, you get to do again, and again and again. Until the anger and the frustration and the resentment and the bitterness, you feel it leave you, you feel it come off you. And when I work with students on this, it’s like week by week, when they do this forgiveness meditation. They are it’s like I have less things on my list. Now I feel lighter. I feel like I appreciate my spouse more now. So that’s that’s the the the next piece is forgiveness. But what happens after that, number four, is begin affirming the good. So this is the part where you are now looking for the good things in your marriage, the good things your spouse is doing or has done or is changing. And recognize. The fifth thing is Love is an action. Love is an action. So love is patient love is kind, right, those are those are active qualities. patience, kindness, you have to act kind you have to act patient, right, that’s an action. So you have to act loving, you have to do the work of loving your spouse before it ever becomes a feeling. And that’s when it does is the activity of continuing to love your spouse, the way they receive love.
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And the beautiful thing is they start to change, they start to soften up, things shift. But you have to go first. So let’s just review the first one. fill yourself up through your relationship with God through your personal joy, your personal purpose and fulfillment, making yourself happy. And do it while you’re married. Right You don’t have to be separated from this person to fill yourself up you can do this. Number two is boundaries and that is It’s important to have on top of your all the things we just talked about. So boundaries. And the third one is forgiveness. Now I encourage you, make sure you do number one and number two before you focus on forgiveness. Because right now you probably are so exhausted and frustrated and angry and sad and hopeless for you to even want to have any kind of motivation to forgive. But when you are feeling filled up personally and with God, and then you have got strengthen your boundaries, and you’re more confident in yourself, then forgiveness becomes much easier to know that, okay, forgiveness does not mean bending to their will, or they get to control me. That’s not what it means. Jesus forgave all of us. But he did not let people tell him what to do. He had some very choice words for for even his friends, who were not respecting him
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and respecting his boundaries. So that’s the third one. The next one is affirming the good
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to your partner telling your spouse, the good things, they’re doing complementing in the way you want them to go complementing in the areas that your spouse is growing or changing. And the fifth thing is Love is an action before it will ever become a feeling. So my invitation to you is to write down this roadmap, put it somewhere, and recognize this as a roadmap that’s going to take six months to implement. Assume that you can strategically change the way you feel about your spouse, you loved them, once you chose to get married at one point, you decided maybe to even have kids with them. You’ve had wonderful experiences and terrible experiences, I’m guessing, but God can change this is gonna take perseverance and patience, and your work. But God can change this. And this is worth it. Oh, my gosh, I hear it over and over again, I’m trying to think if I heard it today, I mean, probably today because I just hear from men who literally come from separated, separated from their families. And then suddenly, they’re they’re connected again, they’re loving each other again, or wives in similar situations where they attract their husbands back from from an affair. I mean, this is this is real life, and it can change. If you do the work. If you do the work, trusting God in this and using the actual wisdom, living it out, I believe this will change for you. So first things first, get yourself filled up, do the things that make you smile. Focus on your relationship with God focus on the on the reason he made you make it making yourself filled up with joy and peace and love. And then boundaries, then forgiveness, affirming the good and then finally Love is an action before it becomes a feeling. Alright, let me pray for you father. You know, this individual, you know them and, and you know, you know the pain that they have suffered, maybe for years that they don’t, they don’t take their marriage lightly. They’re not. They’re not lazy. And they’re not running away, because because they’re being selfish, I think that what they are doing is recognizing that. I mean, I’ve been there that maybe their their spirit feels crushed. They feel like they’re not themselves that they don’t have the ability to be themselves that what they’re supposed to do in this world isn’t happening because of their partner. So God, I asked for a vision of something new for them. I pray God that even in this conversation, there would be a spark of hope for them, that truly things could change for them for their marriage. I do believe that in Jesus name. Amen. You know, I feel like it would be good to just tell you a couple things that are coming schedule wise in the near future.
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So one is I’m going to be doing another masculinity reclaimed program. It’s, it’s incredible. I’ll be telling you more about that. But it’ll be happening in mid March. So I encourage you to just put that on your calendar, start budgeting, so you can put some money away to actually be able to do that. This is a life changer for for couples where even if the wife doesn’t know, the husband’s going through it, she changes in intimacy, so much so that even, I’m just thinking of one in particular situation that I just heard about, of a wife who had trauma early on in, in her life, and now she’s initiating in ways that she never had ever with her husband. And she doesn’t know he’s doing the program. So that’s, that’s not uncommon, or a husband that attracted his wife back even though they were separated. That’s, that’s not uncommon. And now they’re living together. It’s not uncommon. But it does take work. So So that’s mid March, that’s the the men’s program masculinity reclaimed. I also have a women’s program called intimate freedom. And it gives women an opportunity to be with other women to talk about the hard things and the difficult things and actually have other women supporting them. So if you would like information on those things, what you can do is sign up at delight your marriage.com/framework select whether or not you’re a husband or wife, and then just respond to the email that gets sent to you what program you’re interested in. The wives program is available now. I can send you more information on that. The husband’s program will start in March. All right, I I just want to encourage you, there is hope for you. There is hope for your family and your marriage. There’s so much hope there’s so much reason to hope I’m on the other side of this. I get to see this. There’s so much reason to hope. Anyway, I love you. God bless you. I’m praying for you. And I look forward to speaking to you next week. Thanks so much.
32:05
Bye