The First 3 Steps To Save Your Marriage

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Your marriage didn't fall apart overnight.

It won't be saved overnight either.

But it can be saved.

Most people in a marriage crisis do the wrong things. Not because they're bad people, but because they're in pain.

They beg. They plead. They give ultimatums.
They go silent and call it "boundaries."
They follow every piece of bad advice the internet throws at them.

And it pushes their spouse further away.

In this video, I walk you through the first 3 steps of our 7-step plan to rescue your marriage and your sanity.

Calm down.
Get clarity.
Stop your pushes and start your pulls

These aren't fluffy concepts. They're the same framework we've used with thousands of couples over the past 25+ years. Couples you'd look at and say "there's no way that marriage survives."

It survived.

The truth is, every marriage is two imperfect people. Both bringing baggage. Both doing things that slowly erode the relationship, sometimes for 6 years before anyone asks for help.

You don't need a perfect spouse.
You don't need a perfect situation.
You need a framework that actually works.

That's what this video gives you.

I'll show you the breathing technique that resets your brain, the mindset shift that changes everything, and the push-pull dynamic that is the foundation of every healthy relationship.

Even mine.

If you're struggling in your marriage, don’t wait. Get our FREE resource: The 7 Steps to Rescue Your Marriage 👉 https://marriagehelper.com/free

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Transcript

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Seven-Step Rescue Plan Overview

SPEAKER_00 0:00

At Marriage Helper, because of the work that we've done with thousands of people over the past 24 years and counting, we have actually been able to develop a plan to help people follow in order to rescue their marriage. We actually call it the seven steps to rescue your marriage and your sanity. We added that one in because we realized not only do you need help in how to have a different relationship, but as part of the process in saving your marriage and having a better relationship, one of the benefits that you're going to see is you're going to become a better version of yourself as well. Many people have come to us in the process of saving their marriage or after they saved their marriage and they said, these principles didn't just change my relationships, they changed me. Many people have even said it saved their life. If you feel like you're at the end of your rope, we want to help you crawl right back up it. There is always hope, and we're going to teach you how. I'm actually going to share with you the first three steps of our seven-step plan on how to rescue your marriage, but I'm going to give you a brief overview of all seven so you can see how this all plays together. You see, the first step in saving your marriage is calm down. We're going to talk more about that in a minute. The second step is to get clarity. The third step is to stop your pushes and start your pulls. You may be thinking, what in the world does that mean? That's this isn't tug of war. We're not in kindergarten. You're going to understand exactly what it means and it's going to make a whole lot of sense. That's going to be in the next video. But our fourth step is to forgive and reconcile. The fifth step in rescuing your marriage is to rebuild trust. The sixth step is to reignite passion and intimacy. And the seventh step is to build your dream life together. Isn't that what you want? Don't you want your spouse to come back to you and not just go back to the marriage that you used to have, but to have a marriage where you have trust again, where you have intimacy, where you have passion, and where you're creating an ideal future for your marriage. Yes, that is what you want. And I'm here to tell you it's possible. But you can't get to those final steps unless you actually do the first three steps first. So that's where we're going to start.

Calm Down Before You Act

SPEAKER_00 2:19

The first step is to calm down. What does that mean? Many times when people are going through a marriage crisis, they end up acting out of their emotional hurt and pain, and they end up doing things that actually push their spouse even further away. I remember when I was going through my own marriage crisis, and my husband would come home after a long day of work. He was in the military at the time. And of course, he was completely drained and didn't really want to interact with me anyway. But my behaviors and actions when he walked through the door didn't help either. Because I was looking for how he didn't like me, because I was looking for all of the things he was doing wrong, when he would come home, I would just begin to beg him, to plead him, to follow him around the house, just trying to get him to talk to me. Maybe you have experienced this. Maybe you have even heard advice to say that when going through marriage crisis, you should send your spouse a text message every day or call them every single day because they need to remember you. And you're probably doing this in hopes that one day they're just gonna pick up, admit that they're wrong, and come crawling back to you. But it's not going to happen. The things that you're doing are pushing your spouse further away. But maybe you might be thinking, I'm not doing any of those things. In fact, I'm following this no contact rule and I'm just ignoring my spouse because then they're gonna see how much they miss me. Then they're gonna come crawling back to me. And I'm here to tell you it's manipulation, and that's not gonna work either because you're still employing that tactic, not out of a place of strength, but out of a place of hurt, out of a place of not being calm. It's still a tactic that you're using as a way to get your spouse to do what you want them to do in a very unhealthy way. You see, when you actually can get control of your emotions, when you're able to feel the hurt, feel the pain, feel the anger, feel the jealousy, but not act based on those emotions. When you're able to, even in the middle of hearing your spouse say how much they want to be away from you, when you're able to be calm and respond to them in a way that is calm and strong and gentle, that's when you know that you have been able to calm down. Now, this doesn't mean your emotions aren't valid. They absolutely are. And it's okay to feel your emotions and you should. But if you want to save your marriage, then you should not treat your spouse or interact with your spouse in a way that is emotionally fueled. You might be thinking, this sounds hard to do. And that's because it is, but actually, when you learn some of the techniques that can help you begin to calm down, it's actually going to become easier than you think that it would

Box Breathing To Reset Fear

SPEAKER_00 5:14

be. I don't have time in this video to go through all of the science and all of the techniques that you can use to begin to calm down, but here's one thing I can begin to tell you breathing. It's actually called the four by four box breathing method. And if you take three minutes a day to proactively breathe in for a count of four, hold that breath for a count of four, breathe out for a count of four, and hold the breath empty for another count of four, and just do that over and over for three minutes, which should be about 12 times of breathing that way, then it can actually help your brain to calm down, your amygdala, which is kind of that fear center of our brain that gets ignited when we become scared about something or fearful that something's going to happen. It can help to reset our amygdala so that we can better handle any stressful situation that might come to us that day. Is it a magic pill? Is it going to completely fix everything to where you're going to be clear-headed and have no worries the rest of the day? No, but it's an important step in the right direction. You see, when you can begin to calm down, then you can begin to positively change the communication cycle that you're having with your spouse to one that doesn't always end up in fighting and tears and crying and yelling, and instead to change it into one that is respectful and loving, and you're actually listening to each other, and you'll begin to see that your spouse is actually willing to hear the things that you have to say when they don't feel like they're being guilted or manipulated or controlled by the way that you're treating

Get Clarity On Root Causes

SPEAKER_00 6:50

them. And it's important to do that because if you're not calm, then you can't move to step two, which is get clarity. You see, many times people come to us and they say, My husband just told me he doesn't love me anymore. My wife just said she's in love with someone else. I don't know what to do. And if you aren't calm, then you're gonna look at all of the wrong things as the thing that you need to focus on in order to save your marriage. If you've found out that your spouse had an affair, then you may say, Well, what I need to do is give them an ultimatum. I need to tell them that if they don't choose me, then I'm kicking them out of the house, I'm taking them out of everything, and that's gonna get them to turn around. That's gonna get them to change their ways. But you might find out, as many of the people that we've worked with have, in fact, one couple in particular I'm thinking of, his wife was having an affair and he wanted to give her that ultimatum. But it when he actually calmed down and was able to logically look as logically as he could, this typically takes the help of a third party that's that's an outside party, not your family, not your friends, but maybe a marriage coach like ours or someone on our support team inside of the products and services that we offer. When you're able to have someone help you look at the situation in a more non-biased, logical way, this man, what he realized was man, the reason that my wife is wanting to leave me is because for 20 years of our marriage, I've been controlling her. I've been telling her everything that she's done is wrong. I've been telling her how to think, how to vote, what to do, what to wear. And so she was pushed out of our marriage before she was pulled out of our marriage by someone else. And he realized that while her affair is wrong and while it's never justified, he saw that he actually had been doing things that pushed her away long before the affair started. And he just hadn't been listening. I'm gonna talk more about those pushes and pulls in the next video that we do. But here's what I want you to understand in this video. This man realized if I give her the ultimatum, it will be the end of the marriage because it's just another signal to her that I don't love her, that I don't respect her, that I'm trying to control her. When he had clarity about what the true core issues were in his situation, he was then able to realize the things that he actually needed to do that could begin to positively change the situation and ultimately bring his wife back and save their marriage. Here's what I want you to hear. I'm not saying that the negative things that your spouse is doing is justified. I'm not even saying that because of what you have done, you are the problem that has pushed your spouse away. I'm not saying that at all. Here's what I am saying. Every marriage is comprised of two imperfect people. Two imperfect people who bring their own baggage, their own life experiences, their own habits and annoyances into the relationship. And both of us in a marriage, no matter what ends up leading to the crisis point, both people have likely done things over time that have led to where you are now. I can tell you that from the research, marriage crises begin six years before a couple starts getting help for it. And it might start in ways you wouldn't expect. It might start with just no longer eating dinner together, no longer talking to each other anymore, beginning to point out more of the things you wish your spouse would do differently, or your or your complaints turning into criticisms by basically telling your spouse, what is wrong with you? Why are you doing things the way you're doing them? Why are you the way you are? And it's these little jabs, slices over time that just begin to eventually knock the marriage down. You might wake up one day and say, I don't know why my spouse wants out. This just happened overnight. It didn't. It happened over a period of time. Your marriage is not going to be saved overnight because it didn't devolve overnight. But when you work on these two things, calming down and then having someone help you actually get clarity on what the true core issues are, then it is a catalyst on moving you forward on the seven steps to rescue your marriage.

Push And Pull In Marriage

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Now, in the next video, I'm going to talk to you about something incredibly important. And it's actually the basis of all healthy human relationships, especially marriages. And it's this concept called push and pull. So what is a push and what is a pull? A push is anything that we do in our marriage that evokes a negative emotion within the other person. Not long after my husband and I got married, we actually moved to South Korea because that was his first duty station that he had in the army. And so during the day, he would go on base, he would go fly, he was a pilot. He was gone about 12 to 14 hours. And I had moved halfway across the world, not knowing anyone, just knowing him. And I was stuck at home because I didn't have a car and I didn't have an easy way to get through the country at the time. And so when he would come home from this long, stressful day at work, what I was wanting was connection. I was dying to talk to someone. I am an extrovert, he is an introvert, and I was just craving human connection. But he would come home and he was completely spent after a long day's work. And see, what begun to happen was he would come home and I would start just talking to him and wanting to spend time together and wanting to go do things. He was needing some time to decompress, but I didn't believe that that's what he actually needed. I believed what I needed was more important because look at all I had given up. I had given up my job. I had moved away from my friends, moved away from my family to move here to be with you. You should be wanting to spend time with me. But he didn't. And in fact, the more that I would follow him around the apartment, the more that I would beg him to try and spend time with me or talk to me, the further it pushed him away. To the point where I would just cry, plead, beg, why do you not want to spend time with me? Why do you not love me? Because that's exactly how I felt. Why don't you love me? And because I felt like he didn't love me, I began to do things to try and get him to love me. I would do the pleading, begging, whining. I would start fights with him just to get him to talk to me when he would get home. And finally, it became this vicious cycle to where he would come home from work and he already knew that I was gonna want, I was gonna complain, I was going to beg, I was gonna plead, when all he needed was some time to decompress. You see, my behaviors pushed him even further away because it evoked an emotion within him that he did not enjoy feeling. Now, if my husband had been a different personality type, then maybe that whole process would have been different because the key of pushes is that the recipient of the behavior, so my husband in that situation, he is the determining factor on whether what I'm doing is a push or whether what I'm doing is a pull. And see, what we tend to do is we tend to say, well, my spouse should understand my intention. I want to be with him, I want to spend time with him. He should want me to do that. Therefore, he should feel differently about what I'm doing. Or we get into this other negative cycle of saying, I wish my spouse was different. If only I had married someone different, if only I had married an extrovert, then this would be easier. But as I said in the last video, the truth of the matter is anyone who we marry is imperfect. Two imperfect people is what comprises every single marriage. And you may think that you are trading in one set of problems for a set of solutions if you were to just divorce this person and marry the next. But I'm here to tell you if that's what you're thinking, then the next person you were to hypothetically marry are still gonna have their own set of problems. They're still gonna do things you wish they did differently. There's still going to be a certain way in which if you do a certain behavior, it could still push them away. It's not about trying to concoct the perfect person where we get to do whatever we want to do. It's about learning how to reduce our pushes and increase our pulls.

The PUSH Behaviors That Repel

SPEAKER_00 15:59

We actually have an acronym for the word push. Pleading, begging, whining is what the P stands for. Unengaging with your spouse, actually beginning to ignore them as a way to try and get them to communicate with you or to talk to you, starting unnecessary fights because that's the only way you can actually get your spouse to talk to you. So you try and push their buttons just to get some kind of reaction, or even doing hovering or tracking or trying to be controlling and manipulative of your spouse's behavior. If you're trying to follow them around to see what they're doing, to try and catch them in a lie, then those things are pushes. And many times when people suspect their spouse of having an affair, that's one thing that they begin to do. They begin to try to break into their social media or they begin to try and read their spouse's emails or check their spouse's text messages in order to catch them in a lie. And while you may feel very justified in doing that, because they're the one hiding things, they're the one having an affair. What I'm here to tell you is they're going to see it as you invading their privacy, and it's only going to push them further away. Again, we need to reset our intentions, reset our understanding of what makes a healthy relationship. And this isn't to say that your spouse's behaviors are justified if they're doing things that are hurting your marriage or hurting you, but it's to say we can't control them. We can control us. When we disengage from our spouse, when we stop being genuinely curious and interested in them, when we stop doing the things that build love, and when we start doing the things that destroy love, it pushes our spouse away. And the key here is understanding what is it that you do that's pushing your spouse away? What are the things that when you do them, it evokes a negative emotion in your spouse? Think about it. Think back to the last month, year, decade of your marriage. You may know some of these things. It may be that you know every time that you critique how your spouse does something, they roll their eyes. It's pushing them away. It's evoking a negative emotion within them. Anytime you do something that evokes in your spouse or basically says to your spouse, you're not good enough how you are, and I need you to change, in order for me to love you, you're destroying your marriage. All of us have done this. And in our future, even if we try and reduce all of our pushes, it is impossible for any given person to have absolutely zero because we're all human. But the goal here is to identify the things that we are doing, especially the big pushes, and begin to stop doing those. But it's also not just about stopping doing the things that evoke negative emotions, it's also about starting to do things that evoke positive emotions. And if you were to think back to when you were dating, you can likely remember the things that your spouse did for you that evoked positive emotions within you. You likely had long conversations about fears and desires and the wants and needs that you had for your future. You likely, when your spouse said something that was difficult for you to hear, it may have hurt you, but you likely responded in a way of seeking to understand why they did that or why they felt that way instead of just berating them for how they should be different. These are things that can begin to happen. The things that we did that actually evoked positive emotions, we begin to do the opposite and it's pushing our spouse away. Think back. What have you done that has evoked positive emotions in your spouse that they enjoyed feeling? It wasn't until I began to stop my pushes and actually increase my pulls, actually look inside and say, what are the things that I can do because I made a vow? I made a commitment, because I don't want my husband to feel like I love him based on conditions, but because I want him to feel like I love him unconditionally, how can I begin to do things to evoke positive emotions within him? And so when he would come home from work, I would just ask him how he was doing. And if he didn't feel like talking, I would give him the space that he needed. But over time, we learned how to communicate better again. He began to feel accepted by me, realizing he didn't have to change and become someone I wanted him to be in order for me to love him. And ultimately, this ended up leading to him actually coming forward and telling me about some things that he had been struggling with and an addiction that he had been hiding for the first four years of our marriage. And because I had been focusing on the pushes and the pulls, stopping the pushes, increasing the pulls, when he told me that thing that was really difficult for me to hear. I was actually able to look at him. And instead of yelling at him and saying, How could you? I can't trust you ever again, I was actually able to look at him and say, Thank you for telling me. How can I support you in finding help moving forward? It was a turning point in our relationship. And I couldn't have done it without the things I had learned from Marriage Helper. But not just the things I had learned, the things that I implemented.

Increase Pulls And Rebuild Safety

SPEAKER_00 21:35

But the other thing that you need to understand about pushes and pulls is that there's not just the pushes and pulls within the marriage, although those are there, but there's also things outside of your marriage that can begin to pull your spouse away. Things that evoke positive emotions within them that they begin to feel away from you. And this could be them chasing a lifestyle or a fantasy. It could Be them chasing another person. It could even be them chasing the peace of being away from you. This makes it even more important to decrease our pushes inside of the relationship and increase our pulls outside of the relationship. It's not that we're trying to compete with the things that are pulling from outside of the relationship, but actually the best way I can say it is this. People don't leave what they have unless they believe what they are going to is better. It's about what they believe might be better, even if we can look at it and say, but it's not. Sometimes people end up actually going into situations that we say, how could they do that? We had a couple come to one of our workshops where the woman went from being in a wife of the most wealthy family, and her and her husband were the most wealthy family in their small town in Texas, to actually falling in love with a guy who lived in a trailer on the other side of the railroad tracks. And you might look at that and say, there's no way that situation was better for her. But she believed it was because that guy evoked emotions within her that she enjoyed feeling at the time. So there's going to be things trying to pull your spouse away. There's going to be things trying to pull you away from your marriage. It might be people even telling you you'd be better off not standing for your marriage anymore or trying to save it. Just do what makes you happy. But here's the thing: doing the things to save your marriage not only can lead your marriage to be better than it was before, but if you just follow your heart, if you just do what makes you happy, you're never going to find true happiness. Because if you base your happiness on how any given person makes you feel in a moment, you're going to be going through a lot of relationships. The real key to long-lasting commitment, acceptance, feeling truly loved and accepted for who you are is in committing to one relationship. It's in marriage. And so doing what you can to fight for this one is the best thing that you can do for you, even if it ends up not working. But the second important part to this is if you have kids, it is so important that you do everything you can to try and save your marriage. Again, even if it doesn't work out, your children will see a change in you and they will see what it looks like to value marriage and why it is important for a strong family unit. I don't have time to go into all of that research right now, but I can tell you it is. Marriage is extremely important for children. It's important for society, it's important for us as individuals

Commitment, Kids, And Real Hope

SPEAKER_00 24:55

to be in a healthy, sustainable, successful marriage, one that's deeply satisfying, where we feel loved. And you might be thinking, but I don't feel any of that right now. And my spouse isn't even talking to me. But if you can trust me, not just because of me, but because we have a team at Marriage Helper who has worked with thousands of people and helped them save their marriage from the circumstances that you would think were hopeless. But we have seen them saved. You could not really tell me any new marriage situation or marriage crisis that would surprise me at any point. And even further than that, you really can't bring me a situation where I could look at it and say, that can't be saved. Because at Marriage Helper, we believed that every marriage deserves the chance to be saved. We believe that nothing is unrecoverable. And if you don't have hope today, you can borrow some of mine. And you still might be saying, How is this even possible? Like, how can we make this work? Is it really this easy? It's not easy, but it is this simple. The seven steps that I taught you in the first video, and the first three that we've been going through in the last video and in this one really are the first three steps that you can begin to work towards in rescuing your marriage, in saving your marriage. And you'll begin to see how it can help you save your sanity as well.

Book A Call For Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Hey, I am so glad that you finished this How to Get Your Spouse Back mini course. And I fully believe that if you can begin implementing some of these things, that you'll begin to see some small wins. But here's the thing: what you've learned in this mini course is just the beginning. If you are truly wanting to see transformation in yourself and in your marriage, then the best next step that you can take is to book a call with one of our team members. On that call, our team member is going to ask you about what your goals are for your marriage, what you're hoping to see happen, and tell you how we can best work with you at Marriage Helper to see your marriage saved. Because here's the thing: most people don't get this far. Most people in your situation, they give up. But you haven't. You're still here. You're still willing to do what it takes to make a difference in your life and in your marriage and for your future and for your family. So book a call. Speak with one of our workshop advisors. See how Marriage Helper can best help you. See and learn more about the programs that have given over a 70% success rate to marriages in crisis, marriages that are in a place just like yours is now. We have seen them saved, transformed, and stronger than ever before. And we would love to work with you as well. Book a call, and we hope to see you soon.