Is Your Marriage Even Worth Saving?

Ever grappled with the pain of infidelity, manipulation, or the aftermath of separation in your marriage? Are you seeking clarity and perspective to illuminate your path towards self-love and a healthier marriage? We have conversation with Cody Wambolt, a client representative at Marriage Helper, who shares the stories of those confronting these struggles and the transformations they've experienced.

Stories of personal growth and transformation are at the center of our discussion. We unearth the journey of a woman who, despite enduring verbal abuse and demands for divorce, managed to turn her life around. The story unveils how understanding her husband's personality, learning to communicate more effectively, and making significant changes in her behavior, allowed her to not only impact her marriage but also her children and social and professional circles. This compelling account underscores the power of personal growth and how it can create ripples in all aspects of life.

As we wrap up the episode, we share how to get in touch with the dedicated team here at Marriage Helper. Tune into Relationship Radio to fill your hearts with hope and your minds with invaluable advice.

To book a call with Cody or another Client Representative,
visit https://marriagehelper.com/apply1

Relationship Radio is hosted by CEO of Marriage Helper, Kimberly Beam Holmes, and founder of Marriage Helper, Dr. Joe Beam.

Regardless of your situation, what we teach will not only make your relationships better, but will also help you to become the best version of yourself along the way.

Relationship Radio is released every Wednesday and is an extension of Marriage Helper.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. We love hearing from you!

For more resources about your specific situation, visit marriagehelper.com.

We have a new website for the It Starts With Attraction podcast!

Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:31

On this episode of Relationship Radio, our CEO, kimberly Beame Holm, sits down with client representative Cody Wombolt to talk about his role with the company. Give a story of hope and how you can move forward in rescuing your marriage. All that and more on this episode of Relationship Radio.

Speaker 2: 0:53

One of the most common things we hear when people contact us at Marriage Helper is I feel like I'm completely alone or I feel crazy. I want to save my marriage, but everyone in my life is telling me not to, and my spouse is doing things that I wish they wouldn't be doing. Should I even try? Today, in this conversation, I'm going to be speaking with Cody Wombolt Is that how you say? It Nailed it, I did really yeah, he really did.

Speaker 2: 1:21

I'm going to be speaking with Cody Wombolt. He's on our team, he and his wife, malia, and he's one of our client representatives and what he does on a day-to-day basis is talks to people just like you and helps them see what the strategy and focus can be, honestly, just the hope that they have and hope we know at Marriage Helper is helping someone see a vision and then creating a path to get to that vision, and that's what Cody does.

Speaker 3: 1:48

Yes, I certainly try.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Certainly try. You certainly try so, cody. What are the people that you contact? And we have I mean you personally have hundreds of people you talk to every single month. What would you say are the top two to three situations that clients call and it's the situation that their marriage is in.

Speaker 3: 2:07

Yeah, it's hard to really answer because I don't want to make it sound like any two situations are exactly the same.

Speaker 3: 2:16

We all have different lives, circumstances, family dynamics, brokenness in our past all these things that culminate into where people are at by the time we talk to them.

Speaker 3: 2:27

So it really is kind of case by case in terms of the specifics, but generally, what I would say are the things that are making someone feel like I need to take some kind of action. Here are things like I found out about an affair, or my spouse told me that they no longer love me anymore and I'm panicking. Or my spouse just left the house, or asked me to leave the house and we're now separated. So it's usually like these things are pretty fresh and people are kind of scrambling, searching for answers to figure out what to do in a situation like that. So that's what I would kind of say is, more times than not, it's not something that you've been sitting with and dealing with for months and months or years before they reach out. It's more like whatever the crisis is of the moment is pretty new and people are found us because of that. They were looking for solutions for a recently painful situation.

Speaker 2: 3:32

Yeah, and what do you help with when they talk to you on the phone?

Speaker 3: 3:37

Yeah, well, I think my number one objective going into any call is number one to just get clarity for myself what it, what is going on, what are the issues that they're facing in their situation. But then, secondly, what kind of help are they actually looking for here, you know, because that's gonna be different person to person. So, yeah, get clarity on what they're dealing with, get clarity on the type of help that they're looking for, the type of solutions that they're they're trying to get to, and Then make recommendations, based on what we do at marriage helper, on how to get that specific health, how to help and health and reach, reach that specific goal that they're hoping to see in their marriage.

Speaker 2: 4:20

Yeah, there was. You're so good at when you work with clients and speak with them. You share in our team slack channel like wins and things that you hear back from them, and there was one that you had probably a month or two ago now of a woman. Mm-hmm whose husband was totally disengaged and she ended up going to the solace vows workshop. I'm not. I'm trying not to say her name, but you know who I'm talking about.

Speaker 2: 4:44

Okay, can you share a little bit about that story, just like how she first contacted you to where she ended up?

Speaker 3: 4:51

Yeah, well, I mean, as of the recording of this podcast, her story is very much still unfolding, but it's already been a victory and it is my. I mean, I love, I live for the transformation that we see here. Like that is what keeps me going. But her story was just so unique because I think it it's just like it's what we, what we all, live for. What happened in her, her situation, is like such a beautiful, powerful example of what people can find through this process and so, without giving away, you know, too much information, she was basically someone who had been Standing and fighting for her marriage for about three years before before we spoke, which kind of goes against what I was saying in the beginning. But but there were certain things that had happened more recently that really made her feel like I got to do something different than what I've been doing and just Really really difficult situation. Lots of infidelity, lots of lying, lots of manipulation, lots of control issues and Many of those things were in both directions. But she for lack of a better word like she was broken.

Speaker 3: 5:59

When I first spoke to her, she was. She was crying, she was just struggling, she had Not even a modicum of of self-esteem, like she didn't see her own value at all In her situation. You know, I was encouraging her to understand that, like you need to understand that you deserve better than what you've been getting out of life Better from certainly your marriage, but also the way that you're treating yourself. Like you need to learn to love yourself too. And she said to me on that call like I don't even know what that would look like. I live my whole life for other people. I'm a nurse. She's pouring out every day at work. I have young kids, I have a husband who will give me nothing, whom I love desperately, but I can't get anything back from him.

Speaker 3: 6:49

So she was living this existence of giving, giving, pouring out, pouring out, pouring out every ounce of her every day and getting literally nothing back from anyone else. But she wasn't giving herself anything either. She's like I don't even know what loving myself would look like. And a huge part of what we do as CRs is we need to evaluate where is the other spouse that's not on the phone. What's their current mentality towards the marriage and attitude towards the marriage? Do they also wanna work on things or are they communicating? I need space. I'm not interested things like that, and that's a very key thing for us to understand, because it helps us to recommend the right path forward.

Speaker 2: 7:29

And there's a path for both.

Speaker 3: 7:30

Certainly, and so for her it was very clear that her husband would have 0-0-0 interest in doing a workshop or working towards reconciliation. At the time of the call, it was clear that what she had been trying for two and a half years previous was making things worse and pushing him away. Even though she couldn't really see that at the time, I could see it pretty clearly, and so my suggestion to her was to take what are kind of solo track right, like, find the healing and the clarity and the path forward that you need right now for yourself, invest in yourself and focus on the things that you can control in your life. Stop focusing on your husband for a little bit. And honestly I just said you need a win, like you need some people in your corner because you don't right now, and you need to love yourself and invest in yourself a little bit, because until you do that, you're not even gonna be able to see the things that you need to change. And she heard me and she agreed to take a step of faith in that direction, and so she signed up for our solo spouse workshop like a week or two after that call and, as I like to do, I checked in with her right after the workshop and I have since sent the recording of that call after her workshop and a Facebook post that she made on our Facebook group the day after that workshop to dozens of other clients to help encapsulate and demonstrate this as a possibility for them, what can happen when you actually engage in this process, and her example was one of immediate transformation. It's not always gonna be that quick, but it does work that way.

Speaker 3: 9:15

And so, basically, in summary, she did the solo workshop with Dr Joe, was leading hers that weekend and she had such a mindset transformation in that weekend that all of these kind of blinders that she had about her whole life really her relationship to her husband, certainly, but even her relationship to her kids, her own relationship to her past and things that she had gone through and experienced all throughout her life she realized so much about herself that needed to change and but it wasn't like shame induced, it was I deserve better than what I've been giving myself. I'm worth more than what I've been experiencing life up till this point, and she found forgiveness for herself in so many of those things. But then she forgave and released so many of the pains that she was holding onto in her life towards her husband, towards you name it. She even humorously referenced the grudge that she had been holding onto since third grade where another girl stole a crayon that she loved and but she was being kind of, she was joking, but she was serious that she was still holding onto it. It's still haunted her like small things like that and just kinds of goes to show like where she was at. And so she told me I'm a different person because of this workshop. It literally changed my life and but that's just the beginning. That was the immediate impact for her as a person.

Speaker 3: 10:45

But then she decided to try asking her husband to join her in the couple's path one more time, because she had been asking and it had not been going well.

Speaker 3: 10:54

For two and a half years he had been screaming in her face I don't want to work with you, I want to divorce you, I'm not in love with you the most hurtful things you could feel from your spouse and she decided one more time, based on the things that she learned and the differences about her communication style and things like that, to try a different tact. And she had learned, even though her spouse wasn't there, by virtue of the things she learned through the workshop about personality types, communication styles, attachment styles. She gleaned so much about her husband, even though he wasn't present. You're able to go through those things and kind of look it through the lens of like, yeah, that really seems like my spouse. And so she learned a better approach, and I'm not kidding. The first time she asked him, after taking the workshop less than 24 hours, in a new way and in a fresh way, with a new mentality, he agreed to come to the couple's workshop with her and as we stand right now I think they're one or two weeks out from actually doing that.

Speaker 2: 11:57

Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

Speaker 3: 11:59

And look, we don't know we don't know right.

Speaker 3: 12:01

We don't know where that's going to end up, because it's ultimately their choice, but that alone speaks volumes to the transformation that can occur from just learning about yourself and changing your own behaviors and actions based on what you learn through this process. And so obviously our hope and prayer is that he has a similar experience and then he gets on that train with her and starts making the changes he needs to make for the marriage and for himself. But no matter what, she's better off. She's better off because she's found so much healing and clarity through this process so far.

Speaker 2: 12:36

Oh my gosh, absolutely. And I think I also remember as part of that story, in the middle of her going through the solar spouse workshop, like her kids started to say Mom, you're different.

Speaker 3: 12:48

Yeah and I say that to people all the time like the stuff that you learn through this, and I've been to the workshop, right so, with my wife, so I experienced this firsthand and that was what I experienced in myself in my own marriage, and what I observed in the people that we were with that weekend was what motivated me to want to do this, for other people to be in this job, ushering and shepherding people into this process, because I've seen it and I continue to see it, and it's not just impactful for your marriage that is, of course, what we're all about but the principles and the truths that you learn permeate your whole life.

Speaker 3: 13:26

It's not just relating to your spouse, it's relating to your kids, it's relating to your parents, your friends, your coworkers, because you're becoming a better version of yourself and so that's going to lift the tide of your entire life. And so she felt the need to go to her own kids after that as well and say you know what? They're young they were like younger than 10, but they understand a lot. And she said to them I'm sorry, mom hasn't been the best and Mom's been angry and I've made a lot of mistakes, and her kids cried and said and thanked her for saying that. And it's okay, mom, we love you, we understand and yeah, so it's healing her family already.

Speaker 2: 14:10

Yes, absolutely, and it's, you know, I think, one of the things that you hear, I mean we hear often, and I know you hear it is but shouldn't I just wait until my spouse is ready, right? And a lot of people say that they're like, well, I'd rather do the couple's workshop, I'd rather wait for him to go along or her to go along, and what would your? I mean, you've been saying it, but what would your encouragement be to that person?

Speaker 3: 14:34

Yeah, I think this can be a kind of a tough love type moment, like a hard truth type conversation and I ask a lot of people when they say that because it's a natural thought what is the point of doing anything if my spouse isn't going to do it? If they're not willing, Like how could that lead to?

Speaker 2: 14:54

How's it going to?

Speaker 3: 14:54

work Something better, and so one of the questions I'll ask is like so okay, are you saying then that there's no point or value in becoming a better person if your spouse isn't willing to work with you on anything there's? Is there really no benefit to that? Just objectively because, at the end of the day, no matter where you are in life, no matter what the state of your marriage is, we all have that opportunity, but I would also argue, responsibility to always be striving to be something better, to grow and to learn and change in life, and the outcomes of doing that are never guaranteed. But you can never convince me that it doesn't increase the chances that it's gonna help your marriage Becoming something better, becoming something more, becoming a more whole person, a more self-sufficient person, a more healed person a better communicator, a more trustworthy person.

Speaker 3: 15:52

All the outflows of this process are going to impact every part of your life. And what do you have to lose, really, in doing that? It feels to me like you only have things to gain. And so if your choice is to wait and tell your spouse I don't know magically becomes ready to work on the marriage all of a sudden, after months or, in some cases, years, of showing no evidence of wanting to do that, then when will it happen?

Speaker 3: 16:21

So it's like you have to focus on what you can control, and you're never gonna be able to control your spouse, and I'm willing to bet the reason you're on that call in the first place is probably partially because or if not primarily because you have been trying to control your spouse and control things that you can't. You know if, until you start focusing and making the changes on the things you can control, nothing's really gonna change, and if it does change, it's probably gonna get worse trying to control the things you can't control. So yeah, that can be a hard thing to hear, because when we're in pain, we just want solutions.

Speaker 3: 17:01

We just want the pain to go away Immediate gratification Right and what I love about what we do here at Marriage Helper is we don't lie to people, we don't make guarantees that we can't back up. And I'll say to you out there, if you are seeing things that are making guarantees about your marriage, you might want to think twice.

Speaker 2: 17:21

For sure.

Speaker 3: 17:22

Because it's a process and it's about decisions and choices that you make in your life. We're just here to help you learn what those things can be and to guide you along that process.

Speaker 2: 17:34

Yeah, and make no mistake, we want to fight like hell to get that marriage to being saved, absolutely. We're recording this after a day of our team like spending hours just pouring into what can we do to better serve our clients, into their marriage being saved, and so, for sure, that's our goal. But, as you're saying, at the end of the day we really are the facilitators of the process and of a God-given process that we're stewards of.

Speaker 3: 18:04

And that most everyone here is a living testimony to the power of Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:11

So for the people listening who say, okay, maybe I want to have one of these calls and just see what the client representative recommends and what could be the best next step for me, what can they expect and what's the best way to do that? I laugh because I'm typically the one who says that, but now I'm asking you All right.

Speaker 3: 18:30

So to clarify your question someone who might be considering reaching out to us. What can they expect?

Speaker 2: 18:35

on that call.

Speaker 3: 18:36

And what was the second part of that?

Speaker 2: 18:37

And how do they do it? How do they get signed up for a call?

Speaker 3: 18:40

You may need to speak more specifically to that, because you know all the We'll give a link.

Speaker 1: 18:44

Yeah, you know, all the We'll give a link.

Speaker 3: 18:47

Yeah, there will certainly be calls to action, I'm sure, at the end of this for you to follow up. But, as far as what to expect, expect to talk to someone who genuinely cares about you, like who truly, truly, has probably been where you've been in some way, has seen and spoken to people who have certainly been where you've been, and really every circumstance under the sun that you can imagine when it comes to marital crisis. So, you know, a question we get a lot is like have you ever seen anything like this, like my situation, or is it even worth? Yeah, is it fixable, is it possible? Is there any hope? And I get why you would feel that way, because you've only lived your experience. Well, we've seen miracles and turnaround in every situation you can think of.

Speaker 2: 19:36

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 19:37

And so expect hope from us that we're not going to tell you ever that if you want to fight for your marriage, that we won't fight for you and with you.

Speaker 3: 19:48

We're never going to tell someone who doesn't want to give up that they should give up. And it breaks my heart and blows my mind when people tell me oh, I did talk to this other group or I did do counseling and therapy or the other things that they've tried and everyone else in their life, even the people in groups who are supposed to help marriages, are telling them give up. We're never going to tell you to give up, because we've seen what happens when you don't give up and you engage in this process and make them control the things you can control. You're going to see someone who wants to give you hope. You're going to hear someone who genuinely cares about you and wants to help you and, to be honest, someone who is going to be willing to say the hard things that maybe you don't want to hear sometimes. And it's not because we're trying to bring about shame or be critical, it's because sometimes we all need that little push and we need someone to tell us the things that we don't want to hear.

Speaker 2: 20:40

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 20:42

And so we'll do that, and it's because we care.

Speaker 2: 20:43

Absolutely. I like to think of it as one of our core values, which is courageous compassion, and our listeners probably don't know we have five core values. I think they're listed somewhere in the depths of our website. But a question for you which one of our core values is your favorite and why?

Speaker 3: 21:04

I mean, I think they're all great, I think when the first thing that came up was find a way, because I think that's the difference between us and so many other things out there. It's like what I just said we won't give up and we want to find a way to get you where you want to get to, to find restoration in your marriage ultimately, but just healing for you. We want everyone that we work with to be better off through this process than they were when we first talked to them.

Speaker 2: 21:35

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 21:36

And we want to find a way to get you to that place and we'll do whatever. We'll do whatever, we will do whatever it takes to get there. So that can look like a lot of different things, but find a way, I think, really speaks to the spirit of what we're all about.

Speaker 2: 21:51

I agree, if you are ready to speak with someone on our client representative team like Cody, and maybe Cody, depending on, depending on how it evens out but if you are ready to speak with someone on our team, you can go to marriagehelpercom. So marriagehelpercom slash, apply one and you can also find that link in the show notes. Whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening to this as a podcast, we sure to have that link there for you and we would absolutely love to help you and help you get started in the best first step for you in saving your marriage and getting clarity for yourself and in having a better future, no matter what, and next week, remember, there is always hope.