The Loving Truth

Have You Lost the Energy?

• Sharon Pope • Episode 140

Share episode

If you’ve lost the energy and enthusiasm to keep investing in your marriage, I want you to know you’re not alone… and there’s nothing wrong with you.

We all start relationships with a full tank, but when things get hard (and they do), that tank can run dry.

In this episode, I’m sharing how the “hard” in marriage is often misunderstood, why the fantasy of ease with someone new won’t save you, and how to create a spark again! Not by forcing something fake, but by reconnecting to your own growth, intention, and choice.

The truth is, it’s not about finding the perfect person. It’s about how you choose to show up when things get hard… because that’s when transformation happens.

“No one has ever beat themselves up for trying. But sometimes we regret when we haven’t given it our best.”

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 1:

Welcome to the 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.

Speaker 2:

Hello loves, this is Sharon Pope, and this is the Loving Truth. Have you lost the energy in your marriage? That's what I want to talk about today is the energy that we have in our marriage, because when it's low, we have very little to give and when it's high, we have a lot to give. So there's a quote from Jay Shetty. He was doing an interview and he said there's no perfect person that you find. It's who you make it work with and it's who you have the energy and enthusiasm to invest with someone. And here's what I thought, like when I first heard this.

Speaker 2:

The first part there's no perfect person that you find.

Speaker 2:

That really speaks to this idea that, oh, that you find that really speaks to this idea that, oh, this is really hard with this person and that if I only had the right person, then this would be easier, then this would feel better. And it becomes all about finding this magical person that we think exists out there the soul mate, or this one person that's going to make it all easy. Okay, the second part of what he said it's who you make it work with. While that's true, it feels a little bit like tough love of, like that's just about who you're going to show up for and make it work with Right, like. I hear different people say things like that and I just know that that doesn't always resonate with my community because it feels very like suck it up buttercup. But, my friends, the last part of this quote is what really hit me and I think is what is worth exploring it's who you have the energy and enthusiasm to invest with right, and that's what's something that's worth diving into, because here's the thing.

Speaker 2:

I think we all intellectually understand that relationships are hard work. I think we don't like that answer. I think, subconsciously, we think that if we're in the quote right relationship, it won't be such hard work. That ease is what makes it the right relationship. So I think we understand it. We don't like that answer that it's going to be some work. But I think we really underestimate what is required of us to have a healthy, loving, connected relationship.

Speaker 2:

Because we seem genuinely surprised, after 15, 20, 25 years of marriage, when things get really hard, that we're struggling in this way, that it's requiring so much of us in order to make this work or in order to make this feel good. And you know, maybe it's the degree of hardness that we're experiencing, right, like, okay, sharon, I hear you Relationships are hard work, but I didn't know it was going to be this hard, right. So maybe it's the degree to which we feel it's really difficult. Or maybe it's the length of time that we've been in the struggle, like if you've been struggling for years or a decade or more and you've been thinking, well, this is just a phase, you know, once we get past this thing, like maybe it's once you get past this huge project at work, you won't be so stressed anymore. Or, you know, once your kids are grown, then it will be easier to make a decision about your marriage. Or, you know, once my health condition improves, then I'll have some capacity to really think about this. So sometimes it might be the length of time that we've been struggling that drains our energy and makes us feel more hopeless about the relationship. And maybe for some of you it's about the type of difficulty that we're experiencing, right Like, maybe you might be thinking okay, well, you know, I know that every couple argues on occasion and of course we're going to disagree. But when we disagree, my husband belittles me, he yells at me, he insults me, he diminishes me, like that isn't healthy. So maybe it's the type of hard that we're experiencing, so we get tired.

Speaker 2:

When we endure these things, whether it's over a long period of time or the type of hard that we're experiencing, or the degree of hardness that we're experiencing inside the relationship, we lose that energy and enthusiasm for our relationship that we once had. You know, if you think about what you have energy and enthusiasm for in your life in general, isn't it the stuff that feels really fun and easy and interesting, yeah, like there's many things in my life that I have energy and enthusiasm for, but when things get hard it's really easy to lose the energy and enthusiasm for those things. I think I can liken this to being an entrepreneur. There's a reason why 90% of the world works for somebody else and only 10% of us crazies are out here being entrepreneurs. Because you have to love so deeply what you do and you have to maintain energy and enthusiasm for that thing because it's going to get hard and if you just lose your energy and enthusiasm for it, you'll quit and give up inside the first year of being in business, certainly inside the first five years of being in business. Because if you think about it and I've been on both sides of this equation I used to work in corporate for 20 years before I became an entrepreneur and a coach.

Speaker 2:

So when I was in corporate, if there was a really hard decision to be made or something was really shifting with our business and we had to pivot and we had to figure out the really hard stuff, there was usually somebody else there that was going to make the decision and tell us what we needed to do, and the rest of us would go out and do that. Whether we agreed with it or not, our job was to go make that happen. But when it's your business, you have to make those hard decisions over and over and over again. You have to face when the market shifts or when your business is shifting or your customers they're shifting or they want something new, like you have to make those hard calls. And when things get hard and they do and they will, that's the nature of it, that's what we signed up for and they will, that's the nature of it, that's what we signed up for Then you have to, like, manufacture your energy and your enthusiasm for this thing that you love, because it's not just going to come naturally.

Speaker 2:

You're going to get challenged in that way, and so it's the same thing in our marriages. If we just wait for it to just naturally be there, it's only going to be there when things are easy, right, Like early on in the relationship. So marriage is going to be hard, no matter who we're with right. There's going to be work involved, probably a higher degree of work than we are comfortable with, and I think that here's something that I just want to. Well, I'll get to that later. There's something I want to explore, but I want to make sure that I get to it, so I promise that I will. I'll get to that later. There's something I want to explore, but I want to make sure that I get to it, so I promise that I will. So if marriage is going to be hard, no matter who we're with, and there's no magical unicorn person out there, that's really going to make it easy.

Speaker 2:

Now I hear you, some of you, back here in the back of your mind. If there's an affair person, affair partner in your life, you're like, yeah, but Sharon, this person's so easy to love, they're so easy to be in relationship with. I have a lot of energy and enthusiasm for that. But here's the reality is that spend 15, 20, 25 years with that person. Remove all the newness of it. Remove the passion, the adventure and the secrecy that surrounds it, all the context that makes affairs intoxicating. Remove all that. Spend 20 years with them and I promise you the work will begin. The energy and enthusiasm will be very different than what you feel today, because that is the nature of relationships.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so I want to tell you a quick story. I have this great niece who is three years old and we were on a family vacation together and I fell asleep on the couch and I was curled up under her Paw Patrol blanket and I guess at some point she came over and she got under the blanket and curled up next to me and fell asleep next to me and someone snapped a picture of it and it's literally. I have it on my wall and it just makes me so happy every time I look at it. This three-year-old is so damn easy to love, like she's so sweet. And I think, why can't everyone else be that easy to love? Why can't the person I have chosen to spend my life with? Why can't he be that easy to love? And here's the answer Because she is not here to force me to grow and evolve the way my husband is here to force me to grow and evolve. Here's what I wanted to get into.

Speaker 2:

If you go back a few generations not even like one or two generations marriage was still about this transaction of I'm going to give this to you and you're going to give this to me. So, for women, women were going to give to their husbands I'm going to take care of you, I'm going to have children and I'm going to take care of the family and in doing so, that is going to help you flourish more and thrive more professionally. For men, their transaction, what they would give, is I'm going to provide for you and provide protection for you, which might just be social protection, because if a woman wasn't married by the time she was 30, there was something wrong with her, right. So there was this transactional sort of relationship of where I'm going to give this to you, you're going to give this to me. But today, now fast forward, even just one or two generations later, the transaction isn't really there anymore, because women don't need providing and protecting the way that they used to need Even providing, for we can make money. Women know how to make money, we do it every day and we can provide for ourselves and we don't need that social protection so much because we all know someone who's been divorced and we all have. We all know people who are single, who are amazing people. So we don't have this like cloud over top of us that if we're married, if we're not married, there's something wrong with us, right. So that transaction, that exchange, is no longer valid anymore. And so what are relationships for today where we want our partner to be, you know, our best friend and our greatest lover, where we expect so much of our relationships. When we have elevated the relationship to that place in our lives where it needs to feed us mentally, spiritually, emotionally and physically. Well, now the relationship's purpose? It isn't for providing and protecting anymore, and it isn't for bearing the children and taking care of the family, because now that's a joint effort, except for bearing the children. I guess that's still forever going to be a woman's effort but it's to help us grow into becoming who it is we came here to be. That's what I think relationships are really about. Our intimate relationships are here to help us grow into who.

Speaker 2:

It happens in the little stuff throughout the day, the little choices that we make, for instance, when we avoid those difficult conversations and then we have to carry the weight of not speaking our truth and feeling the heaviness of that and then needing to go beyond that, forcing us to feel the discomfort of not speaking what's true for us or avoiding the difficult conversations until it gets to the point that it becomes too difficult to ignore. Right? If you ignore difficult conversations inside your marriage for 10 years, eventually the disconnection between you is going to become so wide that you can't ignore it anymore, and so now you're ready to deal with it because it becomes so painful and uncomfortable. Or you have those difficult conversations, and they're hard that's why they're called difficult conversations, right and sometimes they don't go as well as you think they should go. They certainly never go the way that you plan it out in your head. They certainly never go the way that you plan it out in your head and that helps us to grow. Then we get better at having difficult conversations. The more we're willing to do it, the better we become at it.

Speaker 2:

Or we trigger one another, which is really just bringing up our unhealed stuff. Like, my triggers and your triggers are very different from each other, and the reason for that is that there's not these universal triggers that everyone gets triggered by. Our triggers are personal to us because it's all of our unhealed wounds that just continue to pop up and then trigger us, and it's meant to be an alert system of like, oh, here's something for me to deal with, but I promise you your partner is going to trigger you. They're going to bring up all your unhealed stuff. It's almost like this divine thing the way that we will choose a partner who is going to press all the buttons for the very things that we need to heal. If I never got enough attention as a child, my husband will pull away his attention from me and that will trigger me. It's like these people that we choose forever and ever are the very people who are meant to help us heal.

Speaker 2:

We're going to hurt and betray each other in a million different ways Not intentionally, but it's going to happen. Right, we're going to say something that then we can't take back. We're going to do something that's going to require an apology. It's going to require us to go. You know what? I could have done that better, or you know I'm really sorry I said that, or I'm really sorry I did that. It's going to force us to put our ego aside and realize that we're not perfect and when we can forgive ourselves and we can ask for forgiveness, we're going to be much more forgiving of our partners. That helps us grow.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to tell you something we're going to bring our best, most patient, most loving selves to many different areas of our lives, to being a parent. We're going to bring our best selves to our kids. We're going to bring our best selves at work. We might even bring our most compassionate and loving self to the homeless man we see on the corner, but we will oftentimes at least occasionally we will bring home scraps and that's what we give to our partner, because we're so exhausted at the end of the day and all they get is what's left over at the end of the day, and so we don't connect, we barely talk, and we're exhausted and so we bring those scraps to the relationship and then, of course, the relationship doesn't feel better and that's going to cause pain and that's going to cause discomfort and disconnection. And now we got to deal with it and it's going to help us grow.

Speaker 2:

And here's just the very basic reality is that when you choose to live a life alongside someone, they're another whole, separate, sovereign human being who has all their own thoughts and feelings and opinions that we're going to have to consider, that we're going to have to navigate or factor in, because we've chosen to live life right alongside this person. And so the environment that's created from our most intimate relationship is what is going to create an environment in which we grow into who we came here to become and who it is that we're meant to be, and help us grow beyond who we are today and nothing's gone wrong. That's just the way of it, isn't that good to know? So if you have lost energy and enthusiasm to invest in your marriage, I get it and I understand why that's the case. And I also want you to manufacture some energy and enthusiasm to at least try. Because here's what I will tell you when you try, you're going to gain new information, and when you gain new information, you're going to learn, like huh, maybe this relationship could shift and evolve and change in a new way, or maybe it can't.

Speaker 2:

But no one has ever beat themselves up for trying. But sometimes we regret when we haven't given it our best. When we just said, yeah, I just you know, I know I said till death, do us part. But really what I meant is I'm going to love you until I don't love you anymore, until I lost my energy for you, until I don't have any enthusiasm for you anymore, until I get bored with you, right, and none of us mean that, but we also can't operate from that place, right? So see if you can manufacture just like entrepreneurs do every day, right, manufacture some energy and enthusiasm to invest in this, because when you do, it doesn't mean you'll save the marriage, but it means you will show up as the person, the woman, the man, the person that you want to be in your life. You'll show up as a person that you're proud of being because of how you're showing up in your own life. All right, I hope that's helpful for you. Until next time, please take really good care.

Speaker 1:

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 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.