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The Loving Truth
As a Relationship Expert & Certified Master Life Coach, Sharon Pope has helped thousands of women gain the confidence and clarity they need to either fix their struggling marriages or move forward without regret. On The Loving Truth Podcast, she shares advice on how to navigate deep marriage hardships, challenging common beliefs about what love and relationships “should be” and providing realistic steps towards peace and happiness. If you can’t decide whether to stay or go in your marriage… you’re facing infidelity… you’re terrified of hurting your kids… you can’t bring yourself to leave your marriage, even though you want to… or you’re wondering whether it’s possible to respark the desire between you… tune in to the weekly episodes.
The Loving Truth
Ask Sharon: Truth or Trust?
When trust breaks down in a relationship - whether through gaslighting or financial secrecy - it leaves us feeling unsteady, unheard, and stuck.
I’m coaching through two painful but common dynamics: what to do when your partner denies your reality, and how to move forward when you're being kept in the dark about finances that impact you both.
I walk through what it looks like to reclaim your power: setting real boundaries, challenging the belief that we have to suffer to justify leaving, and choosing love or clarity, not because someone finally changes, but because you do.
You’re not powerless and you deserve more than suffering in silence.
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.
If you've ever found yourself questioning your relationship, wondering should I stay or should I go, you're not alone. Today, on the Loving Truth, I'm sharing an exclusive peek inside my membership program the Decision, which is the only way to get live coaching and support from me. You'll hear real members ask their biggest questions and I'll be coaching them through the doubts, fears and complexities of making this life-changing decision. If you've been craving clarity and guidance, this episode is for you. When I finally get the courage to tell my husband that he has hurt me in a respectful, kind manner, but he just flat out lies and said that it didn't happen Major gaslighting it makes me angrier. It should. There's no acknowledgement of any wrongdoing, but instead just tells me I'm making it up. What can one do? So gaslighting is like they're not giving you anything to work with. Because if someone is like because here's the thing that I find really interesting when you're expressing how something hurt you, let's hopefully you're talking about it from your experience of this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm making it mean and this is what I'm feeling and that's not how I want to feel in my marriage. It really like makes me scratch my head when someone else looks at that and says, no, you shouldn't feel that way. It's your experience. You get to have your experience and your feelings matter. So how is anyone else outside of you supposed to tell you how you should or do feel? It's kind of ridiculous Because we all have a different experience, because we all have a different lens through which we see and experience the world. So no one can tell you what you are feeling and what you're not. So he's just like that's his way of shutting this down because he doesn't want to take any responsibility for it. So you're not in relationship with a healthy person. So until he learns, until and unless he learns to be able to take responsibility for his choices and actions, you don't have a lot to work with there. That can be healthy. So this is the time that we start having to have real hard boundaries and you start having to have real conversations, because, while he can choose to just keep doing that, you get to choose to not remain in your most intimate relationship with him If he's going to disregard and not acknowledge any of your feelings or the gaslighting part is making you feel like you're going crazy.
Speaker 1:Like wait a minute, maybe I didn't experience that correctly or maybe I didn't hear it correctly when you start to question yourself, that's when you know it's gaslighting. Do we just keep showing up through the suffering and then give a time? No, all right, I'm gonna finish the sentence. And if they don't eventually meet us halfway, then that helps us get to. So, no, I don't want you to suffer at all, and so part of this conversation is helping you to realize that you are in charge of this, that you get to choose whether or not you're in the degree to which you will suffer. But it's not sit back, suffer, endure it long enough so that then you have a very justifiable reason. No, I'm like look, care so much about how you feel that you don't want to suffer. Then be brave enough to have the open, honest conversations about where you're at so that you can try to see if the relationship can evolve to something new.
Speaker 1:Sitting back and waiting to see if something magically changes and paying your dues this is not the path, but it's what a lot of people choose. To be honest, but you didn't join this program to just sit back, suffer a little bit and wait for it to blow up, did you? You joined this program because you're like okay, if we're going to give this a shot, let's give it a real shot. So that means I've got to engage with it, I've got to be able to talk about the challenges and the gaps and how I'm feeling, and I've got to be curious enough about what his experience is of the relationship and what's working and what's not, and start having some of those open conversations. Now I'm not suggesting you should go have those conversations today, because if you're new to this program, then I want you to get I want you to get those baseline tools before you have those conversations, because otherwise you're just going to approach the conversations the same way have been and it probably hasn't been going well, or you've shut down and you're not having those conversations, which isn't helpful either.
Speaker 1:How do you get unstuck when you see him trying hard, showing up for his kids, etc. Okay, so there's a thought there that he should have been doing this all along, but he's doing it now. So now I'm mad about what he wasn't doing, even though he's doing it now. I'm mad about what he wasn't doing, even though he's doing it now. Handed him a draft separation agreement on Tuesday and he handed me a love letter. Why is our timing so off? Am I being manipulated? Why is he pulling out a few but not all stops now? So the reason for that is because human beings don't do what they should do. They do what they have to do, and it's true for us too. Like you know, we could have dealt with these marital challenges five or 10 years ago, but we didn't. We're dealing with it now because now it's like we have to do something. I have to do it, I have to figure this out. And he's doing the same thing. Like until you were ready to walk, he wasn't ready to show up as the man and husband and father that you needed, but now he is.
Speaker 1:The problem is you still have resentments about what he wasn't doing before, and so, if you can see it through any kind of a lens, this is to help lessen your suffering of well, he's doing it now. When you know better, you do better. He's doing it now. I can choose to hang on to my resentment that he should have been doing it 10 years ago, or I can choose to appreciate what he's offering now and receive it with the love that it's probably intended with. You're just blocking the love because you feel justified in it and you feel resentful about it. But that's where the suffering is.
Speaker 1:I listened to different YouTube channels and stuff and one of them this morning that I was listening to. They were talking about how resentment and a lack of forgiveness is sort of like you push the. If you take a cork and you put it underwater. You can hold it underwater, but the minute you let go of it it pops back up. And that's the same thing, like when you let go of that resentment of who he wasn't being call it a year ago when you needed him to be that way, and he lets. Then you let go of the cork and it bobs back to the surface. Then you're suffering. But as long as you're holding it down, you're suffering. So that's a way that we can think about forgiveness. But this is so common, like I just don't want you to think that, like you guys are so unique because, or that this is so insurmountable. The reason your timing is off because, as human beings, we're ready for different things at different times. This is so insurmountable. The reason your timing is off because, as human beings, we're ready for different things at different times. This is why I'm always like look, if you wait until you're both ready to work on your marriage in the exact same way at the exact same time. You could be waiting forever, because we kind of do this we come at it at different times. So he's now ready to deal with it when you were ready a little bit ago. And so what's happening?
Speaker 1:Sometimes I'm afraid of just getting hurt again. Yeah, the thing about the walls that we build to protect ourselves from being hurt. Like brick by brick, we load up that wall to protect our hearts because we've been hurt. So then we're like oh, I can't trust, I can't feel, I can't open myself, I can't. It can protect you from some hurt, but it's very predictable because it's also very lonely back there behind that wall and it's hard.
Speaker 1:Like lonely when you're not in a relationship is one thing, it's a rational emotion. Feeling lonely when you're in a relationship, I feel like that's just so much worse. So sometimes the feeling of I'm going to protect so I don't get hurt, like what if your husband came home today and said I no longer love you? I'm not sure I ever loved you, we're all done here. Like you can't tell me that's not going to hurt. It's going to hurt Like having someone say that to you, that would hurt. Or him judging you or him criticizing you. That's going to sting.
Speaker 1:So sometimes I think it's like this false belief of like I'm protecting myself. Are you really, though? Because if someone's hateful towards you, that stings, even when it's like a stranger that's hateful towards you, that stings me some days, but when it's someone that is supposed to be your most intimate partner, there's a lot of risk there, and so it's going to hurt. So this idea that I'm protecting myself from hurt, I don't know. I think we could challenge that a little bit and go. Is it really Because he can still hurt me? That's the nature of being in relationship. If I never want to ever feel pain, then I should just go become a monk and live in a cave and meditate all day, because human beings, we hurt each other, even the babies who we love. Sometimes the babies can say something that'll sting, right, so we don't mean to, but we do and we have feelings.
Speaker 1:Oh, I feel as though he has caused me to suffer. Shouldn't I be angry about that? Are you new? I kind of want to punt, because I want you to get to the point of where you're learning the model. The model will help you to see this, because people can't make me feel anything without my co-signing on it. So this takes away all your power. This is a victim mentality that's not going to serve you very well. He's making me suffer. If he's that powerful, like if he could make people suffer or make people happy, he should take that shit on the road. There's a lot of unhappy people. He should charge 10K a session and make people happy. We can't force someone to be happy, just like we can't force someone to suffer. Now, can we force? Can we like human beings, can we forcefully cause pain? Yeah, we like we could, but I don't think that. I think we're talking emotional pain, not physical pain here.
Speaker 1:One of the things I worry about is my husband's spending habits. We both keep our finances secret, although I used to keep him informed about what was happening financially. We once had an agreement that we would discuss any large purchases, but that has fallen by the wayside. I worry that he will end up filing bankruptcy. He already has three times before we were married and I will lose my credit that I've worked really hard to get Okay. So best to find out as much as you can now because, yeah, if he files bankruptcy. You essentially I can't really say this for sure, because I don't know where you live.
Speaker 1:I don't know what country you live in. I don't know what state you live in. I don't know the laws in your state. In many states, let's say it like this many states in the US, if he files bankruptcy, it's not just him. Say it like this In many states in the US, if he files bankruptcy, it's not just him. Sometimes it's both of you that have to file bankruptcy. So let's not wait until it gets to that point for you two to figure this out. You might need to do something.
Speaker 1:I for sure think that you should keep your spending separate, but if it's going to get to the point of bankruptcy, then that certainly has impact on you. So I just I would try to understand like I hesitate to say, like get on top of it now, because that means like I have to control it, but more like let me understand what I'm really dealing with here, because right now it sounds like there's a lot of assumptions, because it's all secret, so there's a lot that you don't know. You just don't know what you don't know and our brains don't like not knowing. So it's going to fill in the gap with the scariest story. I wish our brains would fill in that gap with the best possible outcome. I don't know why our brains do that, but it always fills it in with the worst possible outcome of he's going to declare bankruptcy. We don't actually know any of this because it's all secret. So I would want to know. So it shouldn't. Finances should not be secret. They can certainly be separate, but they shouldn't be secret. And if it is that you know like where it's really, it's really dire. Then you might need to talk to an attorney and talk about how to separate yourselves legally.
Speaker 1:I saw a again this was something that I saw on Facebook where it was his parents. His parents divorced because his father got cancer and was super, super sick. His parents divorced because of the bills, because they didn't want a bankrupt mama, so they divorced, but they're still living together, they're still in love, they've been married 50 years or something like this. But they divorced, still living together, they're still in love, they've been married 50 years or something like this, but they divorced because of finances. So that might like that's an example of where, like you, can actually not be legally married but still choose to love each other and respect and honor each other in the similar and still be an intimate relationship with each other. So these two things might be two separate things, but first we got to know what we're dealing with on the financial stuff. So don't ever whether it's about the struggles in your marriage or about money or whatever really check yourself when it comes to I'm not going to ask the question because I'm scared of what the answer is. So then I just never asked the question and I let my brain fill in the blank with the worst possible outcome and I assume that that's the case. And then I suffer, I worry, I stress, I overeat, I do all the things right, so let's just get on top of it.
Speaker 1:She said he lies when I ask him. So I would like make it a real like sit down conversation, not like, hey, what's going on, like, don't be shy about it, like we're going to sit down and we're going to have a discussion, and if he flat out lies to your face, well then, how are we going to create a healthy marriage? And say that to him Like, how are we going to create a healthy marriage If you're just, if you're going to lie? We can't lie to each other and we can't keep secrets. So, as ugly as it might be and I might like I can't promise I won't freak the hell out I might freak out, I might need to step away to process what I'm going to hear but we got to know we can't keep secrets. There's no path to a healthy marriage to do that. And so if we're not willing to do that, well then we know how the story ends and we can get there sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1:Like, start having direct conversations like that Cause if he's just going to lie to your face like I don't know, like I guess if you want to stay in that marriage, you can, but why? If you're feeling stuck and unsure whether to stay or go in your marriage, you don't have to figure it out alone. The best next step is to apply for a truth and clarity session, a private conversation with a member of my team to explore what's really going on in your relationship and whether my coaching is the right fit for you. Visit clarityformymarriagecom to apply today.