Are you in a marriage that is unhappy, disconnected, disrespectful and totally lacking in the kind of closeness and connection that you want? Have you said to yourself, “I don’t want to be married anymore.” Or maybe “I’m unhappy in my shitty marriage.”
This is one of the most talked about issues in my Facebook communities.
Men are always asking, “Why can’t I let go?!” and “Why am I so afraid to detach from her?!”
In the video below I explain the two main reasons are:
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1. They are not yet clear why and how their marriage got to be so shitty and they’re afraid to admit it and face it.
2. They are not yet clear on what lies beyond this shitty marriage if they let go. They have no “new story” about what’s to come.
Watch this first and then I’ll continue.
How do you let go of a shitty marriage?
The first thing you have to do is realize that you’re IN a shitty marriage.
Sounds easy eh? But it’s not. I know, I’ve been there. I spent 28 years in a marriage which lacked some of the basic elements of a healthy relationship.
So the first thing you have to admit is that you’re in a shitty marriage.
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You may feel it, but you may not have said it out loud to yourself, or to a trusted friend, “…hey, I am in a shitty marriage” and then described WHY you’re in a shitty marriage.
What makes it shitty?
There are shitty behaviors, there are shitty thoughts, there are shitty feelings, the way you talk to each other is shitty, the way you think about each other is shitty, the way you talk about each other when the other person’s not around is kind of shitty too.
And when you go to bed, the way you’re thinking and feeling in your body is kind of shitty.
That’s a shitty marriage.
So say it out loud with me, “I am in a shitty marriage.”
The problem with letting go of a shitty marriage is that most guys have no idea what lies beyond a shitty marriage.
First you have to let go of THIS marriage.
There may be another one with this same woman that you can create, but that can’t happen until you admit and then consciously decide, “I’m letting go of this. I am done with this version of this life. This version of this marriage and this version of me. I’m done.”
What does it mean to be done with it?
How can you say you’re done with it if you don’t know what you’re going to do instead?
Here’s the problem with most guys…the day they meet a girl they think they’re gonna marry is chapter one, and this is chapter one of a 20 chapter novel they have in their head.
- Chapter one, meet beautiful girl.
- Chapter two, get married.
- Chapter three, buy a house, a fancy car, get some jobs that we really like and live in a cool place.
- Chapter four, make some babies.
- Chapter five, get a mortgage I can’t afford and a ride-on lawnmower and a couple of golden retrievers or whatever you thought your chapters are.
These are the things that you thought should happen and this is part of the problem you have with letting go of your shitty marriage.
You have all these chapters in this pre ordained 20 chapter book that you have in your head covering how stuff is “supposed” to go or how it “should” be going, how she “should” be talking to you and treating you, and how your sex life “should” look.
The reason I’m telling you to let go is because it’s the ONLY way you can realize what the next version of your marriage might be together.
You have to let go of this version of your life and relationship first.
You’re here at chapter 11, which means that now you have to know what chapters 12 through 20 look like.
This is the problem. For most men chapter 20 is you at 85 years old holding hands with her, drinking champagne on a beach while grandchildren run through the surf, or great grandchildren, whatever you think you get at 85 years old.
If you think that’s your chapter 20, you’re skipping ahead a little bit.
First you need to know what chapter 12 is.
So go get an ink pen and a whole pad of paper and start writing down a new chapter 12, a new chapter 13…
What is it that you want?
What is it that you believe in?
What is it that you value?
What are the relationship values that you want to share with this woman or any woman for that matter?
If you’re going to stay in a monogamous, exclusive, romantic sexual relationship we call marriage, what do you require of yourself? And what do you require for yourself?
If you don’t know answers to these questions, it’s hard for you to admit you have a shitty marriage, and it’s hard for you to let go because you don’t know what’s on the other side.
This is how you end up staying in the story of chapter 12 through 20 where every chapter starts with a shitty marriage, because you didn’t do anything different in chapter 11.
So what I’m here to tell you is that there’s a creative process that we do in coaching of reinventing who you are going to become by the end of your life starting at chapter 12.
You could do it on your own, you don’t have to have a coach, but I’m telling you it will go a whole lot better and quicker toward what you want if you do.
I want to help you create this vision of what’s possible in your relationship, in your marriage, how you communicate it to her, how you think about it inside yourself, and how you let go of the first 11 shitty chapters that got you to this point.
So you can recreate a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of speaking and a whole new way of behaving that can create a totally different version of this marriage with her.
Another key aspect is that I’m not tied to the outcome.
It doesn’t have to be with her.
I would love for it to be with her, but I know sometimes that doesn’t work out.
And therein lies the other fear.
What if you do all this work and get coaching and do all this personal stuff, and it doesn’t work?
What if chapters 12 through 20 don’t involve her starring in the role as your leading lady?
You can’t help that.
I can’t help that.
Because there’s another part of this equation that involves her.
You and I don’t control that.
But what I do know is that the only chance you have of creating an amazing chapter 12 through 20 is to be independent from the outcome of who’s going to be traveling with you in those chapters.
Yes, act as if it’s going to be her and treat her every day as if it’s going to be her, but make sure you’re paying more attention to yourself, how you think, how you speak, and how you act in accordance with the values that you need to have an amazing chapters 12 through 20.
That’s what I want to help you with.
That’s what you need to do.
That’s what makes an amazing life for everybody.
When I use the term “let go” I am referring to letting go of everything that has created what you’ve got up to this point.
Every single man must go through a phase of life where he makes mistakes.
We don’t know what we don’t know and we keep using the same tactics we learned when we were 13.
These are our bad habits of defending, intimidating, criticizing and stonewalling. We spend years in marriage trying to get our needs met via negotiation, sacrifice and compromise only to find out those are useless tactics for getting what we really want.
How does a man get what he really wants?
1. He becomes crystal clear about what he believes in and what his expectations of himself are.
2. He becomes unapologetic about what he expects FOR the life and relationship he wants to experience.
3. He chooses to live DAILY in the skin of a confident man who knows his values. From here he is able to GIVE the things he used to only try to GET.
4. He learns to MASTER his emotional world and stop reacting to everything as a victim.
5. He learns to use his own thoughts to take on a whole new perspective which gives him the clarity to CREATE new circumstances for himself.
It is in those 5 steps that help you create dramatically new habits and new responses to the old version of your marriage.
And it’s these new responses that allow you to create a new story about what lies beyond this shitty marriage.
There’s a phrase we often use in my community and that;s “Take it to the men!” Most guys know what that means but the problem is they don’t have ANY men to take things to!
Well, we fixed that!
Here are three options for you.
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That’s what we want for you brother.
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