Ever felt like your marriage is on the brink and you're helpless? Today, we bring you a powerful conversation with Melody Oseguera, Director of Coaching at Marriage Helper, who stood for her marriage when the odds were stacked against her. Listen as she shares her journey of resilience, patience, and personal growth, which eventually led to the reconciliation with her husband, David. Hear about the emotional and practical challenges that she faced, from work-life balance and parenting disconnects to dealing with separation and limerence.
In our chat with Melody, we delve into her experiences co-parenting during separation, and how she navigated the tumultuous terrain of her husband's limerence. She talks about the strain it put on their family, and how she maintained her beliefs and values during these trying times. Listen as we explore how Melody found hope in this chaotic period and how the Save My Marriage Program from Marriage Helper offered tools and support that helped restore equilibrium in her life. Let Melody's story inspire you, offer you hope, or prepare you for your own growth journey – don't miss this episode!
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!
Ever felt like your marriage is on the brink and you're helpless? Today, we bring you a powerful conversation with Melody Oseguera, Director of Coaching at Marriage Helper, who stood for her marriage when the odds were stacked against her. Listen as she shares her journey of resilience, patience, and personal growth, which eventually led to the reconciliation with her husband, David. Hear about the emotional and practical challenges that she faced, from work-life balance and parenting disconnects to dealing with separation and limerence.
In our chat with Melody, we delve into her experiences co-parenting during separation, and how she navigated the tumultuous terrain of her husband's limerence. She talks about the strain it put on their family, and how she maintained her beliefs and values during these trying times. Listen as we explore how Melody found hope in this chaotic period and how the Save My Marriage Program from Marriage Helper offered tools and support that helped restore equilibrium in her life. Let Melody's story inspire you, offer you hope, or prepare you for your own growth journey – don't miss this episode!
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!
If you've ever felt like you are crazy for wanting to save your marriage, or if you have ever felt like you've been standing for a really long time for your marriage and you just don't believe anything is ever going to turn around, then today's episode is absolutely for you. I'm joined today by Melody Ossuware. She's our director of coaching here at Marriage Helper, but before that she was a long-term client of Marriage Helper and I don't know there might have been several times you thought you were crazy for how long you stood. I did For your marriage All the time. I think that was crazy, but it turned out in an incredibly positive way for you.
Speaker 1:Definitely did, yeah, and I know many of our listeners or viewers have probably seen you on either YouTube videos or if they're in the membership or anything like that. They've definitely seen you, but many of them may not know more specifics about you and your backstory and things like that. So can you give us just a bit of an overview of what was going on in your life and in your marriage when you first found Marriage Helper?
Speaker 2:Well, we were very busy and David had taken a job, a contract, and he was working 7-12s, always at work. Of course, we had four kids at the house and I was working full-time. I was also in school at that time, and so we just had a lot of hustle and bustle which then created this emotional disconnect.
Speaker 2:Of course I was trying to change him to be who I thought he should be and all that, and coming to find out he didn't like that and so the gulf between us grew. And then he met someone else and we had a lot of back and forth. I did all the wrong things, like everybody does Push, try to convince, plead, cry, beg, all the bad things. And then one day I was like this is bigger than my knowledge of anything. So I typed in how do I save my marriage? And number one thing popped up it was Marriage Helper. And then that turned everything around. Not immediately and not because of the material, because my application of the material. I was okay at first and then, as time went on, applying what I'd learned, I saw the interactions between me and David change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how long had y'all been married at the time that all of that happened? Four and a half years. Four and a half years. And you were a blended family when you first got married, but you had had a child together as well. Do you feel like any of that played into your situation?
Speaker 2:The blended family- yeah, and it did, because each of us had this idea of what parents he's from Honduras, and so it was much more authoritative type environment than mine was, and he was like, oh, get the kids. And I was like, oh, let's just love the kids. So there was a big difference and so we had the disconnect of how we thought parenting should go, but also the cultural differences, age differences it all played into kind of the disconnect. The good thing is is that we overcame those problems, those issues in the relationship and now the family is strong and whole and all that. We're closer than we've ever been before.
Speaker 1:All of hearing that Now, when you found marriage helper and you said that you started applying the things for you, was that what you were looking for? Like were you at first kind of looking for how do I get him to stop being with this other person or to stop his affair? How did your mindset shift through your stand?
Speaker 2:So in the beginning it was he's the issue, because he's in this relationship with this other person and so if I can figure out how to convince him to not be with her, then everything will go back and be great again. And as I began to discover marriage helper and the principles and how you focus on you and all that, there is that struggle between yeah, but I really think he's the problem, and there was probably a lot of judgment on my part based upon our faith and my background and all that. But as time went on, I began to see oh yes, I have contributed to this as well. You know it isn't.
Speaker 2:And when I went into it at first Kimberly it was I was trying to change because I wanted to get him back and that fell. So, even though I was applying the right principles, my motivation was wrong. It was like I'm doing whatever I can to get him back and so in the times when he would temporarily move back towards me, I would mess it up because I would get frustrated if he didn't like come all the way in and then I would stop doing the right things, which then just recreated the thing where it pushed him away from me. So I had to have that mindset change of this is for me to be the best version of me.
Speaker 2:Hopefully the byproduct of that is that he comes back, but ultimately I have so much I need to change about me and when I began. Of course it's an evolution. It's not something that happens just like you do you do well and then you fall off, and then you do well and then you fall off. But my whole life began to change. I got promotions at work and people were coming to me for advice and my relationship with my kids became rich like really rich in love and acceptance, and people noticed the changes in me. David did too, but it was a while before that influenced him enough to want to come home.
Speaker 1:How long was it that you would say you stood for your marriage before reconciliation happened?
Speaker 2:Like two months shot of six years.
Speaker 1:Wow. Do you ever have clients that just like, want some of that motivation and dedication? Yeah, because I can imagine that a lot of people don't want to hear that. Yeah, they definitely don't want to get that and that's not the normal necessarily.
Speaker 2:It's not.
Speaker 1:But I mean there are those long. I think you and the coaching team call it like the long time standards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean the average time. It's about two to three years that people have to stand, but and there's a few of us on the coaching team that it did go longer, and I think that there were variables that are not necessarily in everybody's story, and a lot of times people will come to me and say, oh well, you're this superhero and I'm like I'm really not it's, it's the material. The only thing that I did was make the right choice to apply it.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:And I'm not equipped with anything that anyone else isn't equipped with. You know, I think I had made enough mistakes in my life and when I found Maritulper and began to begin to apply those principles, it really resonated with my spiritual beliefs. You know that. I think that was the thing that got me engaged first, but then when I saw my own emotional growth and healing in in in many areas, because it allowed me to heal from pain, from sexual abuse when I was a child and you know I'd already started to work on that from time to time, but it was just like it expedited that process and created the environment where I was feeling whole and healed. And that was long before David came back.
Speaker 2:People think that it takes both of the people to get on that journey and really, because if one just chooses to get on the journey, it can influence the marriage in the long run. Now it took a very long time. Now I'm convinced that we needed every second of that. I think that if he would have come back any point before that and some point in time, because there were, you know, the false starts where he'd come closer and then leave and come, come closer and leave, but I think if he had ever turned around truly and tried it, I don't know that I would have been in the right place to to follow through and it it turned out well. So, although it was hard and right out of the event, I would have said, oh, I don't want to do this again. But now, looking back, I'm like, wow, I think it. I think I would. If it meant we get what we got today, what we have now, I think I would do it again. You know not that I want to.
Speaker 1:Not signing up for that necessarily. What was the hardest part of standing for your marriage?
Speaker 2:I would say the waiting. The waiting is hard because people don't understand that it's small. It's the small changes in the interactions you know and knowing and there's variables that you can't control. You know his how he felt about the other people or any childhood pain that he was experiencing. If he wasn't willing to heal that, you know, I could have healed everything and he'd still not be in the right place. But I would definitely say the waiting. I mean that's hard because you see little bitty glimpses but there's so few and far between, yeah, but you can find hope and I always tell my clients count those things as small wins, don't let those things go when you see positive movement but don't think, oh, we're out of the woods now, because that's not necessarily true either.
Speaker 1:How did you handle the separate, or were y'all separated? Yes, we were for over five years. For over five years. And how did you handle that with the kids?
Speaker 2:It was well initially. He was in limerence at first, so I would say he was an absent parent. I would never call him. We've talked about this several times. He asked me do you think I was a bad dad? And I said I don't think you were a bad dad, but you were definitely absent in the first year-ish. In and out I did see the kids, but not often.
Speaker 2:But when you're feeling hurt, a lot of times parents will dog their spouse to their kids, and I knew enough not to do that, and so if they asked me a question, I'd tried to be as graceful as I possibly could and say dad's going through something, and sometimes when we go through things, we don't necessarily make the best decisions, and so it wasn't like, oh he's terrible, he's this bleep, bleep, bleep.
Speaker 2:I didn't do all of that. So I feel like that was good. But after a while David began to really miss the kids and wanted to get back involved, and so we actually would do things as a family together, even vacations, and people would say that's just crazy that y'all are not together and y'all going on vacation and all that, and sometimes it was emotionally hard for me to do that, but really it was the best thing for the kids and I thought, well, if he can't be here with me and us having those experiences, I want to do the best that I can to still have those experiences, because they need both of us in their life. So we did pretty well at co-parenting, did the?
Speaker 1:kids ever have. Were they ever sad or had hard conversations with you about how they felt during that time?
Speaker 2:Yes, All of them in different ways. I think the older two were hurting because I was hurting so badly and I wish I would have done a better job in the beginning not to show them that. I mean, they need to know that you hurt and you recover. But I feel like I had not found maritalpure yet, and so they saw a lot of me spiraling and I felt like that probably wasn't good for them because they immediately associated that with him and not necessarily the fact that I hadn't done work on myself, and so I wish I would have done that better. But as time went on I felt like I showed up as a better mom and it kind of helped with that.
Speaker 2:Now the third one just got really quiet. But the baby got very insecure and she was not by nature an insecure kid. She was one of those kids that I needed a leash Come here, come here. But she got really insecure. But the good thing is that even that has recovered. She did some therapy, he's done some therapy with her and that relationship has begun to repair. Now she still comes to me first, but I think that's more just because I'm the mom, but she loves her daddy deeply.
Speaker 1:What would you say to the person listening who is in that situation where either they've just found out in their spiraling or they're the one saying I have been dealing with this for years and I feel like I just want to give up?
Speaker 2:I would say that's normal. It's normal to feel like you want to give up, especially in the world today. They're doing you wrong, belle, but I would remind them, is what does your belief system say? Because if your behavior aligns with your belief system, you can lay your head on the pillow at night and, although you experience the loss, at least you know you did the right thing, and that was my thing.
Speaker 2:I got to the place where I was like I'm mad at him or I'm not attracted to him anymore. I'm disappointed in the things that he's doing, but his behavior does not give me a license to betray or to abandon my own belief system, and so I had to make sure that I stayed aligned. Now it did get to the place where I felt I had done all I could do and I was ready to move forward, but it wasn't because I was going to anyone else or anything else. I was just like I've put my life in a way on pause. I did continue to move forward, but on a way on pause. Now I'm ready. And then, not long after that, he turned around.
Speaker 1:And it was one of those situations where it's like if you had given up then you would never have known what was right around the corner. And then for the person who's spiraling right now they're just at the beginning of it doesn't know what to do?
Speaker 2:What would you say? I would say, okay, calm down. That would be the first thing. This situation didn't get here overnight. It's not gonna get out of it overnight and immediately I would go into.
Speaker 2:When you ask me that question, I want to go into coach mode, right, and so work on your pies. Definitely, calm down, get control, stop pushing all of those things. But I just want to say it's gonna be okay. I can't guarantee marriage helper, can't guarantee that your relationship is gonna turn around, but if you take the steps that we teach, the principles that we teach, and you apply them to your life, your life will get better, regardless of what happens with your marriage. Now. Ideally, our organization believes in marriage, loves marriage and wants to help you. Right. But there are things that we can't control, neither can you right. But if you begin to apply those things, you become victorious, even in the midst of all the, the chaos and the pain and all that. But it's up to you, the choice is definitely up to you aware of what to do, and where to start absolutely melody.
Speaker 1:Love your story, love just the this, the hope that people can see in it and the turnaround that's happened and the reconciliation between y'all.
Speaker 1:Thank you for coming and sharing that with the audience. And For any of you who are listening and you are thinking man, I really am not calm right now Then I would encourage you to look at joining our save my marriage membership and there's a special offer for our podcast listeners that is 25% off the first month of that. So you can do that by going to marriage helper comm slash podcast and in there in the membership you will get toolkits for how to calm down, how to work on yourself physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. Melody's team of the coaches they do weekly group support calls multiple a week where you can join and actually start hearing From a coach answering other people's questions throughout that time of how to implement some of these things. It's definitely an amazing resource that our team has created for you and we'd love for you to be a part. Hope to see you inside of the membership and, as always, until next week. Remember there is always hope.