My Toxic Marriage: the best thing that ever happened to me

My husband can't take me sharing a different opinion.

He has an anger problem.

I am embarrassed to say it, but he's not attracted to me.

He’s blames me for everything.

These are all things I said to close friends and family members in the bad old days of my marriage.

And they said they were sorry. They said they saw it too. They got angry for me. They said things to my husband. They encouraged me to consider boundaries, counseling, and books...for my husband.

But in all the years that I went to my friends and family talking about my husband, nothing changed. In fact, I began to feel even more hopeless, because people that I respected saw the same things I did. So now I just had confirmation: a happy family and intimate marriage was impossible for me.

But then one day I asked Google, "What do I do if my husband isn't attracted to me?" and for the first time in all my years of marriage, I didn't get confirmation. Laura Doyle popped up in a blog and she asked, without asking, Would you be willing to tell me the part of the story you left out?

She was talking about respect in a way that I just knew I didn't have it for my husband. For years I'd been trying to help him understand how to be a father, a husband, a son-in-law, a Christian, an equal house-cleaner, an appropriate joke-maker. I realized as I read that blog that I'd left out a whole half, or more, of the story. Not only for others, but for myself. I had deceived myself.

And leaving out all my part of the story was the very thing keeping me in this toxic relationship. 

But with the emotional strength of a whole community of women and a new set of Skills, I found the courage to try out letting go of my old spin on the story and picking up the only part of things I had control over: my own.

It was scary to trust the process at first, but Laura was promising me that if I would go this journey of telling the whole story and be open to learning what respect really looks like in all the areas that I'd disrespected my husband, my toxic marriage would end, and a happy, peaceful, intimate one would begin.

And that's precisely what happened. When I told the whole story, God began to heal me. And then my marriage started changing without me trying. And I couldn't keep telling the same stories about my husband because he was changing.

Don't throw out your toxic marriage. It's the biggest gift you never wanted, and God wants to use it to give you a life you can't now imagine.

Don't throw out your husband. There is a good guy in there. And he can come back quicker than you think.

If you'd like to journey with a community of brave women who are ending their toxic relationships and starting new ones with the same man, join us for our next section of Winter Group Coaching focused on Laura Doyle's Six Intimacy Skills.

I can't wait to meet you!

https://www.marriagecoachingwithsage.com/services-store/p/basic-service-5tdyg