The Loving Truth

Marriage Requires Delicate Balance

• Sharon Pope • Episode 122

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This falls into the category of “Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me” (before I got married!) If you’ve reached midlife and you’re married or divorced: You probably didn’t think about any of this either. 

It’s easy to ‘lose’ yourself within your relationship—especially if you’re a woman. But it doesn’t have to be like this! (In fact, it shouldn’t be like this.)

In this episode, I’ll give you the remedy to (re)balance ‘you time’ within your marriage—even if you have a busy family life. I’ll take-on some well-worn marriage advice I disagree with and explain how women (even mothers!) can prioritize themselves and their desires… for the health of the marriage and the family.

“De-prioritizing yourself does not serve your relationship—or the people you’re trying to prioritize.” 

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the.

Speaker 1:

Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host relationship expert and certified Master Life Coach, sharon Pope. Hello, loves, this is Sharon Pope and this is the Loving Truth. Today, I want to explore with you this concept of maintaining a delicate balance between being part of a couple in a marriage and not losing your sense of individuality. Now, this falls into the category of the 101 things that I wish someone would have told me before I got married that you're going to have to pay attention to once you get married, which is not losing your sense of individuality. Now think about it. When you and your spouse had first started dating, maintaining your sense of individuality was not something you even had to think too much about. It wasn't terribly difficult. You probably lived or had your own place. You probably had your own set of friends that you came into the relationship with. You probably had your own career. You had your own hobbies and interests and things that you pursued. You know, like, maybe you love to paint, or you love to run or you read whatever you know. There were things that you enjoyed doing and you probably had your own goals. Now, maybe you had kids, but maybe you didn't, so you had time for yourself, particularly if you didn't have children. Then you had time for yourself when you two were just dating and getting to know one another. But now fast forward to being married together for call it, at least 10 years and think about how all those things have changed. Right Now you're living together. You're also. When you think about your friendships, they're probably like other couples that you're both friends with. You might still have. You know, each of you have one or two friends that are sort of just yours, but a lot of times our friends are sort of joint friends. You probably still have your own career or ways that you contribute to the family, but it probably looks very different than it did, you know, when you were dating. You know, maybe the two of you started a business together, or maybe one of you decided to stay home and take care of the kids full-time and that's your way of contributing to the family, or maybe you both still have careers that are just different than they were before.

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When you think about your hobbies or your interests Now, once you get married and then certainly once you start having kids, I get it that a lot of us put our interests and hobbies sort of on the back burner. Not that I'm suggesting we should. I just know that so many people do so. If we're even pursuing our own hobbies and interests which many of us aren't, many times what people end up doing is that the hobbies and interests that they pursue have just changed. They're the things that we can do together as a family. Now, right, and so the ways that I spend my downtime and the ways that I enjoy myself are really focused around things we can do together, maybe as a couple, but probably more than likely just as a family, and so a lot of our self-interests and the things that used to light us up sort of kind of fall away and we don't even really notice that it's happening and we don't even really notice that it's happening.

Speaker 1:

And then goals well, where we used to have goals for ourselves, some of us may still have goals. We may have career goals or things that we're moving towards in our life, but oftentimes, if we're going to have goals, technically they should be like family goals or couple goals, things that we're working towards together. But there's not a lot of couples that sit down, call it once a year and talk about. What are their goals that they're working towards together? You know, if you think about how most people live, we're just trying to get through the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year. We're not really thinking about goals that far ahead. Certainly there are some people that do, but the majority of people just don't live like that.

Speaker 1:

So I tell you all that just to say that the circumstances have changed and so it's really easy to fall into this place where everything is around the couple, or everything is around the family, and not so much around you as an individual, because there's this prevailing theory. I guess that you know if you're single, it's okay to maintain your sense of individuality, but once you get married, that's got to go by the wayside. You've got to give all that up because now you're part of a couple. So everything has to revolve around the couple, and I just disagree. Now, I'm not suggesting that you swing the pendulum too far the other way, right? So you've probably heard me say health resides in the middle, it never resides in the extremes.

Speaker 1:

So if you have too much individuality, then that's where you start living like roommates, right, where you're both sort of operating completely independently of one another. You're not really connected. You don't have a shared vision for your life. You certainly don't have shared goals for your life. You're just sort of I think of it like passing in the hallway. You know, in your same house. You don't have a shared vision for your life. You certainly don't have shared goals for your life. You're just sort of I think of it like passing in the hallway, you know, in your same house, like you're living in the same house, you're operating together, it looks like you're operating together, but it doesn't feel like you're operating together. So that's when you have too much individuality and you're not doing a lot of things together, you're off doing things on your own and your, and also if you have too much togetherness as a couple, then you can lose your sense of self.

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And, my friends, we need both. Now I know there are some of you parents right now listening to this going wait a minute, sharon, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Like I hear you. This sounds great that we should be part of a couple and we should be an individual. But, by the way, none of that matters once you have kids, because what really matters then is the kids, and they need a whole bunch of stuff. They need a whole bunch of my time, and so I don't know where you think I'm going to find all this time. I hear you, but your kids need you to have both too, so hear me out.

Speaker 1:

I think your kids need you to model for them what a healthy, loving, connected relationship looks like, because that's how they're going to learn. There's no course book that they're going to get that. That's how they're going to learn. They're going to learn from their experience growing up, because that's where you learned. So that's where they're going to learn, and they need you to model that for them. But the other thing is that they need to know you as an individual.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm going to speak specifically to women here, because I think that women in particular are more likely to sort of subjugate their needs for the benefit of the children. I think your children need to see you not just as a mother, not just as a wife. They also need to see you as a woman, pursuing her goals, pursuing her interests, the things that light you up and bring you alive. Especially our daughters. They need to see you doing that so that they know that when they grow up, if they want to have a family. They don't have to abandon themselves in the process. It's not an either or. I can either maintain my sense of individuality and have my own dreams and goals, or I can have a family and give all that up. Those are the options, and why can't we make space for all of these things to coexist?

Speaker 1:

So I hear you that there's only 24 hours in a day, but I think that our kids need us to model this behavior as well, and I think that marriages begin to struggle when we lose ourselves, that marriages begin to struggle when we lose ourselves. Right? Because, if you think about it, when we lose our sense of individuality and we make it all about everybody else, we prioritize everybody else's needs above our own. We make sure that everyone else is tended to and they have what they need, but we're not really tending to ourselves and making sure that we have what we need. At some point in our lives, we start to get a little resentful about that. We start to get a little salty and we're like when is it my turn? We just get tired right and we're like when is someone going to prioritize me and my needs the way I've been prioritizing everybody else and their needs for the last 20 years. When is someone going to do that for me? When is it my turn?

Speaker 1:

And we can't blame our kids. We won't blame our kids for that, because it's not their job to make sure that we're tending to our needs. But we will blame our spouse, won't we Right? Because they're the person that's supposed to sort of fill us up so that we can keep showing up day after day. At least that's what we tell ourselves. And so then we sort of even though it's not really logical, right, it's not our spouse's fault that we've subjugated our needs. But especially if they haven't subjugated their needs, we're kind of like either join me in my misery over here, give up everything, and we can complain about it together, or I have to join you and we both are able to pursue our dreams and goals and interests while still having a loving, healthy relationship and a functional family, right?

Speaker 1:

So if we are blaming our spouse in some way, if we're feeling upset in our lives, we're feeling disconnected, we're feeling kind of dead inside because we have subjugated our needs for so long and we've lost our sense of self and our sense of individuality, and we kind of blame our partner for that, even if it doesn't make logical sense, we kind of blame them and then that resentment just mounts little bit by little bit. Think of it like a brick at a time. And we're building this wall around us, a brick at a time, and then when that wall gets pretty high, we're pretty disconnected, because it's hard to connect to one another when there's a big brick wall between the two of us. And so we're super disconnected to the point where we're not even sure if we want this marriage anymore. We're not even sure if we love our partner anymore, and we're not even sure what it is that we're really seeking or what it is that we're really after. Because we've lost that sense of self, we can feel the disconnection from self and we're kind of upset about it and we've sort of placed the blame for some of that at our partner's feet, and then that's created a bunch of distance between us that now we don't know how to bridge. And maybe what we're seeking isn't so much a different marriage or a different relationship, but maybe it's a different version of ourselves. It's the self that we've suppressed, it's the girl who still dreams and who still has goals and desires for herself that we've just sort of paused or suppressed, I guess is the best way to say it, so that we can function in so many other areas of our lives. I wish someone would have told me that when you become married, you're going to have to navigate this very important balance between being part of a couple and also being an individual. Because, my friends, the other element and how this relates to marriage is that when you lose your sense of self, when there's not a whole individual that's still there, there's not a separate person for your partner to love, it's like everything just gets sucked up and absorbed by the relationship. And what you still want, especially if you want desire to be a part of your marriage, is you need a separate person to be able to stand a bit apart from and look at and create some sense of desire about.

Speaker 1:

In Esther Perel's work, she talks about how the times when we are most drawn to our partner is when we can stand back and see them in their element, see them in their passion, see them really thriving, doing something that they love to do. I have a really good friend and I asked her when is she most drawn to her partner? And she said when he's skiing a black diamond because they're big skiers out in Colorado, and for her to just stand back and watch him ski down a black diamond, like it's no big deal, like that creates desire for her. But if he didn't cultivate that, if he just gave up on ever skiing again because now you know like he's part of this couple and there's kids and he just doesn't nurture that, he wouldn't be skiing down black diamonds anymore. So we need that separateness in order to help us come together and be closer and be healthier as a couple.

Speaker 1:

It sounds crazy, right, because the prevailing thought is the closer the better, the more we do together, the better, the more we know, the better. It's all about togetherness and we don't really emphasize or appreciate the value that comes from a healthy degree of separateness and individuality. All right. So I hope that that gives you permission to not lose your sense of self and if you have lost it, to go find it, because it's an important part of your life. It's important for your children to see that and it's important for your marriage to be able to have a bit of separateness in order to create a bit of desire between the two of you. And if you've been sort of hacked off at your partner because they have their interests and they haven't lost their sense of self. I just ask you to give a little thought to how you want to feel about that. Maybe you want to follow their lead a little bit. Just something to think about. All right, until next time, please take really good care.

Speaker 2:

If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a Truth and Clarity session with a member of my team. On the call. We'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to clarityformymarriagecom to fill out an application now. That's clarityformymarriagecom.