Standing When Your Spouse Checks Out

Everyone around you is starting to ask the same question.

Why are you still trying?

Your spouse is checked out. Maybe they've stopped sleeping in the same bed. Maybe they've moved out completely. Maybe there's someone else. And nothing you've tried has moved the needle even an inch.

So the people who love you start looking at you sideways. They think you're standing in a graveyard.

Here's what they're missing.

Standing for your marriage doesn't require certainty. It requires confidence.

You can't be certain what your spouse will do. They're a grown adult making their own choices, and nobody can honestly promise you a specific ending. But you can be confident that change is possible, because we've watched thousands of couples walk out of situations that looked exactly like yours.

And here's the part almost nobody tells you.

Standing changes you long before it changes anything else.

In this video, one of our coaches shares what three years of standing actually looked like. His wife stayed in the affair the whole time. The marriage ended in divorce. And he still says he'd do it all over again.

Not because standing saved the marriage.

Because standing made him someone worth being.

If your confidence has been living inside your spouse's approval, this one is going to sting a little. In the best way.

Because it's never wrong to do the right thing.

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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When A Marriage Feels Dead

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever wondered if saving your marriage was worth all the trouble? Your spouse is checked out emotionally. The two of you aren't sleeping together, or maybe they've moved out of the house completely. No matter what you've tried to do to get your spouse to re-engage, it feels like nothing is working. And now your best friends and family are starting to look at you side-eyed, wondering why are you still trying to breathe life in what they perceive to be a dead marriage? Hi, my name's Nathan. I'm a marriage helper coach and a workshop leader. And if the description that I just gave of a dead marriage sounds surprisingly close to what's happening in your relationship, and you're wondering, how do you know my situation? It's because I've lived a situation like that. And there are a couple things I've learned along the way that I'd like to share with you if you feel like giving up. First, a couple

Standing Spouse Versus Reluctant Spouse

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of definitions. Typically, when there's one spouse who wants to save the marriage and one spouse who doesn't, we use terminology like standing spouse and reluctant spouse. The spouse who wants to save the marriage, who is kind of aware of the situation, is doing everything they can to turn it around, we call that spouse the standing spouse. They are standing for their marriage. And the one who is disinterested or unaware, we typically call the reluctant spouse. My suspicion, if you're watching this video, is that you see yourself as the standing spouse. And more than likely, you're getting really tired. And that's what I want to help you with today. The first thing that I'd like to share with you, if you're the standing spouse, is that standing for your marriage doesn't mean smooth sailing. Some of you are hearing me say that, and you're saying, Nathan, you don't need to tell me that. I'm dying over here. And I know, I've been there, but I feel like there may be something that you're missing. If you step back and think about it, the greatest accomplishments in our life are achieved by overcoming the greatest obstacles. So if you're here today saying, Yes, Nathan, nothing is more important to me than my spouse and my marriage, to you I say, good. Keep that in mind. Standing will be tough, but it will definitely be worth it. One of my favorite sports to watch is basketball. And one of my favorite teams to watch, especially years ago growing up, was the Dallas Mavericks. If you're not a basketball nerd like me, hang on. I promise this will make sense. The Dallas Mavericks in 2011

Expect Obstacles And Stay The Course

SPEAKER_00 2:40

were on their quest to become NBA champions. And they did make it into the playoffs, but they were not the number one seed. They too, like people standing for their marriage, had a lot of obstacles to overcome. In their march to make it to the finals, they had to overcome some perennial all-stars like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant. Surprisingly, they made it all the way to the finals, which was a rematch of the 2006 NBA Finals when they were facing off against the Miami Heat. The thing about this Miami Heat team, though, is it was a lot different because the greatest player on the planet, LeBron James, had just taken his talents down to South Beach and formed what became known as the big three. Chris Bosch, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, all three going up against Dirk Navinsky and the Mavericks. Oddsmakers gave them the Heat a 67% chance of winning. Everything was stacked against them. Early on in the series, it looks like the Oddsmakers were going to be correct. The Mavs were down one game to two. But you know what I loved about that team? Is when the reporters would be asking them what they thought about the finals and what they thought about their performance, everybody on the team was giving the same message. They were saying, we expected this. Nobody said it was going to be easy. They were ready for the challenge. And I gotta tell you, if you're standing for your marriage, I want you to expect difficulty, but I want you to be ready for the challenge. Here's

Confidence Without Certainty

SPEAKER_00 4:20

a second thing that I've learned as I stood for my marriage. And that is standing for your marriage doesn't require certainty, but it does require confidence. Can I be real with you just for a minute? Part of me would love to tell you, if you just do these three things, you'll have your spouse crawling back to you. But I can't say that to you because I know it's not true. If your marriage is going to get to a place where it's turned around, at some point it will require your spouse to start to do the kinds of things that make marriages work. Your spouse is a grown-up. They get to make their own decisions. I don't know them, and I don't know what decisions they'll make. While I can't be certain that your marriage will turn around, I can be confident that it can turn around. Because we've been doing this for a very long time, over a quarter of a century. We've been working with thousands and thousands of couples, and we've seen the worst situations, not just turn around, but create a new marriage, one where both spouses say they're happier than they ever have before. I can't be certain of what will happen in your marriage, but I can be confident of this. If anything works, our system works. What I want to give to you is a similar kind of confidence. My favorite player on the Dallas Mavericks in that 2011 championship team was a player named Jason Terry. He was commonly known as the Jet. And what I loved about the Jet was his confidence. Jason Terry wasn't even in the starting five on the Mavericks. He was what's called as a sixth man who would come off the bench and score lots of points. And every time he saw the floor, what just exuded from the screen was the confidence in which he carried himself. He knew that he had something to contribute to the team. And every time he got in there, he made an impact. One of the things that exudes confidence the most, one of the things that epitomizes the confidence of Jason Terry was what he did before the 2011 season even began. Before that season started, he got a tattoo on his bicep of the Larry O'Brien trophy. The trophy that you get at the end when you win the championship. The season hadn't even started, but he was telling the rest of the world, I think we can be champions. And it was so cool when they finally were able to hold the trophy up high and you could see on his bicep the image of the trophy that matched what was in his hand. Jason Terry had confidence. If you're standing for your marriage right now, there's a likelihood that the word confidence is not a word you would use to describe your situation right now. But my friend, I'm telling you, there is a way to gain that. There are things you can do, despite whatever challenges you may face, to begin to walk with confidence. And that's going to be really important as you stand for your marriage. Here's the main thing I want you to take away from this video today. Standing for your marriage does not disappoint. When it comes

The Hard Lesson Of Focusing On You

SPEAKER_00 7:35

to the Mavericks, they faced the adversity. They carried themselves with confidence and they became NBA champions. When it comes to my marriage, I know what it feels like to feel all alone, to feel betrayed. Because in 2019, I discovered that my wife was in an affair. At that time, I was convinced that if I could just get her to a marriage helper workshop, if I could just bring her in front of Dr. Beam, he could convince her that what she was doing with that other guy was a total mistake. And so I was super excited to sit down in the room with my wife beside me, essentially handing her off to Dr. Beam to do all the work. But I realized something after attending a workshop. I realized that my focus was on the wrong person. My focus was on my spouse, on the person she was with. You want to know who my focus was not on? The person that I can actually control, which was me. I was waiting on my spouse to change in order for me to feel better, in order for me to be confident, in order for me to overcome obstacles. My spouse has to do X, Y, or Z, end the affair, move back in, whatever it is. That's not the answer, my friend. As I began to learn these principles, I started to stand differently. I gotta be honest, my wife continued on in her affair even as I made the changes. Days of standing turned into weeks. Weeks of standing turned into months. And somewhere along the way, despite my changes and the fact that my wife was still in the affair, my friends started telling me, Nathan, are you sure this is worth it? Why are you still standing? Isn't it time to move on? But I didn't give up. I believed that things could change for the better. Months turned to years. And three years of this going on in my life, my wife in my first marriage got what she originally wanted. She got the divorce she was looking for. Many people looking at me and my story may say, okay, Nathan, it wasn't worth it. Must have been a failure. But what did I tell you at the beginning? Standing for your marriage doesn't disappoint. The man that you see today, the person that I've become, never would have emerged if I didn't stand for my marriage the way that I did. Many times when people ask me, Nathan, if you could go back and do it all over again, would you make the same choices? Or would you just go ahead and move on knowing that you're not going to save your marriage? And here's what I'll tell you. If I could go do it all over again, I would. And the reason is because the things that I learned and the changes that I made made me the best version of myself. But Nathan, who were you before? Well, I wasn't

Growth After Divorce And New Hope

SPEAKER_00 10:35

a bad person, but there were definitely pieces of myself that needed to come out. I wasn't really very strong. So much of how I saw myself was through the eyes of other people. I loved getting pats on the back. I loved receiving praise. And if I was receiving that praise and those pats on the back, if my wife was telling me that she loved me and she appreciated me, I felt confident in that. It wasn't really confident in who I was, it was confidence in what other people thought. And so when now my marriage is being threatened, when I'm not getting the pats on the back and the affirmations, I'm becoming a shell of myself. I'm doing whatever I need to do to get my wife to say what I want her to say so that I can feel better. And if you're in a place like that, I get it. But ask yourself, is that the best version of you? Is that the most attractive version of you? Going through what I went through made me realize that I shouldn't see myself through the lens of other people. Really, I should see myself through who I truly am. And as I began to work the principles that I learned in Marriage Helper, I started to really like who I became. I became the most attractive version of myself. I'm not going to lie, it was really tough when the divorce went through. But by that point, three years of standing the way I had, it kind of felt like nothing could overcome me. I had so much confidence in myself and who I had become that while it was difficult, I kept doing the same things that I had been doing before. And you know, it was really cool. In time, a beautiful woman started to take an interest in me. That's when I met my now wife, Mia, who I love and can't imagine doing my life without. That's why we say it's never wrong to do the right thing. I did not anticipate this would be the final, uh, the ending point in my journey. But it's honestly even better than I could have imagined. When given the opportunity to anybody who will listen, I always tell them that Marriage Helper changed my life. The man that you see today would not exist had I not gone through what I'd gone through and had the support of this marriage helper team.