How To Stand Up For Your Marriage Without Ending It

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Standing for your marriage isn't being a doormat.

Nobody wants to beg. Nobody wants to plead. Nobody wants to text their husband's affair partner tips on how to cure his headache.

Yes. That actually happened. To a friend of mine.

She chose misery over being alone. She ended up in the hospital. Her house stayed dark for months. She became a shell of the woman she used to be.

All because she was too scared to stop allowing it.

In this video, I break down the difference between being a doormat and being a bulldozer, and why there's a third option most people never learn.

You can't control what your spouse does. You can control what you allow. You can control how you treat yourself.

That's the shift.

I'll walk you through the three changes in thinking that help you respect yourself again, set the right kind of safeguards, and actually make your spouse take notice. Not by punishing them. Not by pleading with them. By becoming someone worth respecting again.

Because here's the truth. You'll keep enduring whatever you keep allowing.

Life is already hard enough. Don't let a lack of self-respect make it harder.

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Transcript

Miserable Instead Of Alone

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I'd rather be miserable than alone. I'd rather be treated like a doormat. That sounds ridiculous, but the truth of the matter is there are a ton of people who act that way, but no one would actually say it. Yet it is how we treat ourselves in many circumstances in our marriage. I was just on a live call and show earlier today, and we had a caller who was really struggling and said, My wife is in the middle of an affair. And I just told her to stop talking to him as much about things that were super emotional. But you're still okay with her talking to him. You're still okay with her being in love with him as long as she just doesn't leave you. That's pretty much what he said. He didn't realize it, but he was enabling what was happening because he was scared. He was being a doormat because he would rather be miserable than alone. I want to tell you a story of a friend that I have. When she found out that her husband was having an affair, it absolutely wrecked her. It devastated her. And she didn't beg, she didn't plead, she didn't whine. She did the worst thing of all. She just let it happen. In fact, there was one night that her husband was over at the affair partner's house and he had a really bad headache. And so she, my friend, ended up texting the affair partner to tell the affair partner how to best help her husband heal and get over his headache. This is this is crazy. When you hear this, you're sitting there likely thinking, how in the world could you do something like that? In fact, you may even think, oh, that sounds so sweet. It wasn't. It completely destroyed her. In fact, she ended up being put in the hospital from losing so much weight, from not being healthy, because she was continuing to live in this situation day after day after day for months. She was honestly losing herself. She stopped showing up. She stopped showing up for her family, for her kids, for her friends. She became a shell of the person that she was. Her house was dark all of the time. She was living in this inner state of darkness because of all of the turmoil of the situation that she was living in, but allowing it to happen. Now, I'm not saying that she should have gone completely on the other end and done a bunch of things that would push him away, but the fact that she continued to allow it, continued to enable it, and didn't want to push her husband to make a decision one way or another was literally killing her. She was losing herself. She had to respect herself for her husband to respect her again. There was no reason for her husband to end the affair. There was no purpose for him. He could have his cake and eat it too until she decided to do something different, until she decided to see her own self-worth. So that's what we're going to be talking about in this video. If you're tired of being a doormat and you actually want to see change in your marriage, but you don't want to do it in such a way that it's going to wreck your opportunity to save your marriage because you don't want to be, you don't want to be a bulldozer, but you don't want to be a doormat. So then what do you do? Just like my friend, you have to start changing the way you think about yourself. You have to start setting boundaries in the right way. You have to do the things that are going to save your marriage. Because by doing this, it didn't just save her marriage, it saved her. So let's talk about it. I'm going to give you three things that you need to do. Know, understand, new ways you need to think about yourself in order to truly respect yourself. Here's number one: you need to see yourself as valuable and not as crap. Here's the thing: the more that you think that you're unlovable, that you're not good enough, the more likely you are to endure the things that you're experiencing. And this can come from a variety of situations that you've had in life. I know for my friend, she had major abandonment issues because of her parents divorcing that stayed with her, that carried on with her up for 30 years later, 40 years later, it still affected her. And she was so scared of abandonment that she was willing to be miserable as long as it didn't mean that she had to be alone. But in doing that, she also started seeing herself as someone that should endure those things, that should just put up with whatever someone was saying about her, doing towards her, because she didn't want to stand up for herself. But in doing that, her husband didn't respect her either. But it had to start with her. She had to start seeing herself as valuable, truly saying, you know what? I don't like that this is happening. I wish it wasn't. But it's not because of me. And I don't deserve this. Again, that doesn't mean that we become narcissistic. It doesn't mean that we go the opposite way. But we can have a healthy dose of self-esteem where we're able to say, you know what, there are boundaries that I have of what I'm going to accept and how I'm going to accept someone to treat me, especially in my marriage. And it doesn't mean you have to divorce your spouse. Absolutely not. I feel and fear that that is the major rhetoric that's happening in the world. Well, if your spouse is doing something you don't like, just divorce them, just leave them. No. Just properly set what we at Marriage Helper call stops and cores, safeguards that offer protection and continuing our relationship essentials. And those are things that I'm not talking about in this video, but they're part of the process of what we teach at Marriage Helper and in our workshops. In fact, our workshop is the absolute best thing that you can do if your marriage is in a situation like my friends is or like the caller that I was talking about at the beginning, because we truly set you up for success in how to actually implement what everyone else calls boundaries. But when they say boundaries, they're actually talking about ways to punish the other person but feel good about it while you're doing it. We talk about stops and cores, safeguards that offer protection in order to implement natural consequences, continuing our relationship essentials. These are the things that have to happen for accountability and trust to be rebuilt. But that's something that you'll learn when you come to our workshop. If you want to know more about that, just click the link in the show notes below. Ultimately, you have to change the way you view yourself. It's important. Here's number two. You can't control what they do. You can control what you allow. My friend could not control the fact that her husband was madly in love with someone else. She could not force him to stop. But she also didn't have to allow him to sleep in her bed, to be at home all the time, knowing and allowing it. And not just that, but enabling it because she was so scared that if she tried to set a proper safeguard that offered protection, that would make him so mad that he would leave. That's what she was scared of. That was her ultimate fear. She can't control what he does. You can't control what your spouse is doing, but you can control what you allow. So don't allow them to treat you like crap. Don't allow them to just walk all over you. And you might be thinking, well, Kimberly, how am I supposed to do that? By growing a backbone. By actually being willing to address some conflict head on. I know it's uncomfortable. I know you're scared that they may walk away. But guess what? The more that you just allow them to walk all over you, the less they're going to respect you. And when they don't respect you, they're not going to find you attractive. When my mom left my dad and then they ultimately remarried three years later and had me as a result of their second marriage, one of the things that they say often about their story is that in that time of them reconciling and in their second marriage, my dad noticed something different about my mom. She wasn't just going to let him walk all over her like she did before. She grew a backbone. And when he started doing things to try and control her, she would speak up and say, please don't speak to me that way. When he would make decisions without her being involved, she would say, We're going to make that decision together. Let's talk about it. She would stand up for herself because she now realized that she also had worth in this marriage. And so it changed. And what my dad has said time and time again is that made her so much more attractive. Now, in the short term, it may not. When your marriage is in crisis and your spouse is wanting every reason to hate you right now, then some of those things may feel like they're going to backfire majorly. But what you actually have to like decipher down for yourself is what are the things that I'm allowing that are causing me harm? Because physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, I just can't keep doing it. Like I said, my friend ended up in the hospital because it was wrecking her. She couldn't endure it. That is a clear sign that she needed to say, I can't do this anymore. Not meaning that it was going to be a divorce, but I need you to stop going to see that woman. If you're going to be coming home, if you're going to be, there's ways that you could do it. That's one of the things that our coaches, when you join our program, help you with massively. Because I, in one video, cannot explain to every single one of you exactly how this needs to be implemented for you. I can only teach you the overarching principle that you're going to have to do the work because your marriage matters, and you're going to have to get with one of our coaches when you join our workshop and our workshop program, which includes coaching, and they will get you started on this. Okay. So that's what you need to do. But overall, the principle is you can't control what they do. You can control what you allow. So don't allow them to treat you like crap. So that brings us to number three. You can't control how they treat you. You can control how you treat yourself. So don't treat yourself like crap. Don't throw yourself never-ending pity parties. Don't just wallow in your agony. Don't just allow yourself to do things that you ultimately know are bad for you. We've worked with many couples at Marriage Helper where there was a spouse who wanted out of the marriage, and maybe they ended up wanting to have an open marriage, or maybe they wanted to have a threesome, or do something that ended up violating the standing spouse's beliefs. But because they were scared of their spouse leaving and they didn't want to make them mad, they ultimately ended up doing that thing, which is treating yourself like crap because you are submitting yourself to doing things you know aren't good for you, you know aren't good for the marriage, just because you're trying to appease someone else. Don't do that. The way I kind of view it is like my wedding ring. So this is monetarily expensive. It's the most expensive piece of jewelry that I own. But it's also expensive to me because it's it's priceless. It was my mom's diamond, which means a whole lot to me, especially considering my parents' marriage story and how they had divorced and gotten remarried. So this diamond represents more than the money that I could get in exchange for this ring ever could, but it's also the exact setting I wanted, and it's beautiful. Anyway, so this ring is worth so much. I wouldn't just hand it over to anyone for them to do whatever they wanted to with it. I don't let my daughter wear it around the house. I don't do certain things when I have my ring on. I'm not gonna go clean toilets or or anything that could put it at risk. And you know what? I get it checked, I clean it, I make sure that the prongs are steady because I don't want to lose what's in there because it's valuable. You are two. I'm not gonna treat my ring like crap. I don't want other people to treat my ring like crap. Aren't you worth more than just a diamond ring? It's true. So you have to shift the way you're thinking about yourself and the way that you're showing up in your marriage. You'll continue to endure what you allow. Life's already hard, but don't let your lack of self-respect make it harder. That's ultimately the key. If you're struggling with this, I know. I know that it's hard. And it doesn't mean that you're broken, and it doesn't mean that there's no hope for you. We can help. So just click the link below. Uh apply for one of our workshops, get started, have a conversation with someone on our team to see if this is a good fit for you. Because if you keep staying where you are, nothing changes at best. And at worst, your marriage ends. So, what are you gonna do about it? I hope you do something.