The Loving Truth

Ask Sharon: Is Your Spouse Helping You Grow or Manipulating You?

• Sharon Pope • Episode 166

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When your partner gives you advice on how to love or live, it can sometimes feel like an invitation to grow.

But it can also mask manipulation.

One listener shares how her spiritually focused husband tells her she doesn’t know how to love and is not living in her true self.

I explain how these comments often reflect his own projections, not her reality.

I talk about how we can learn to trust our inner wisdom instead of being swayed by criticism, and how to create healthier conversations in our relationships.

The key takeaway: separate your ego from the truth and learn to listen to your body for guidance.

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:

Today, on the Loving Truth, I'm giving you a behind-the-scenes look at my signature program, the Decision, which is the only place where I offer direct coaching. You'll hear real questions from members navigating the uncertainty of their relationship, along with my coaching and insights to help them move toward clarity. If you've ever felt stuck, unsure whether to stay or go, these conversations may give you the answers you've been searching for. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2:

How can I tell if my husband is pointing something out that I need to look at or if he is manipulating me? For example, my husband is very spiritual and I believe a lot of the same concepts, but when we have disagreements, it's almost like he uses it against me. He tells me things like I don't know how to love him because I don't love myself. I can't be happy somewhere else if I'm not happy with him. I'm not getting the purpose of real love. He knows me better than I know myself and can see that I live in my ego and not my true self, which, by the way, is most of us. I'm willing to be open to look at things I need to work on, but when he is saying these things, I feel so guilty and wrong, like I don't know how to love the right way and question myself on everything. Also, he's 23 years older than me, and so I take his wisdom seriously, but at the same time, something doesn't feel right, like I can't just be my own person and learn the way I learn. I have to do it his way or it is wrong. Here's what I want to say. I don't have an exact stat, so I'm going to make this up. That's what I was just reaching for in my head. Is it 98%? Is it 99%? Is it 99%? It's somewhere in there. But, yeah, a very high percentage of the time when someone is telling us about ourselves, what they're doing is telling us about themselves. So when he is telling you, you don't know how to love and you don't know how to love him, or you don't love yourself enough, you can't be happy somewhere else and you don't know how to love him, or you don't love yourself enough, you can't be happy somewhere else if you can't be happy here. All of that our stuff, our words that's an action in the model, that's the action line. Our words are about our emotions and our emotions are about our thoughts, and it's the same for him. So there's a couple of things that we need to tease apart here. He is doing the same thing to you that he's sort of griping about to you. So he's actually doing it. So what he's doing is he, and through what he's, through his actions and through his words, he's actually doing a similar thing to what he's accusing you of. And so here's what I want you to know. Look, I get it.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people go down a spiritual path and they learn a ton. But then what many people do and it's not productive, it's not helpful is then they want to teach everyone who's not asking how they should live, how they should love, how they should be. So I have two rules I don't coach anyone who doesn't ask for it and I don't coach anyone that doesn't invest in it, because if those two things are not present, they can't hear me. Anyway. I'm talking into the air. I can't tell you how many times people are like oh, I'm in your neighborhood, I want to, you want to go have coffee? No, no, no, cause I'm just going to waste my time. Like, if you want to hang out and just talk about, I don't know, your work, I don't know, but now your relationship. But what most people want is they want like free advice, right, but free doesn't help you. The reason is because you can't hear it Like you know the $20 gym membership that you never go to.

Speaker 2:

It's kind of like that. But when I don't know, let me get a different example. When I, when I well, we'll just take the gym example. So my Pilates membership costs me $229 a month, I think more than you all pay, but don't. You know, I show up. I show up for that shit because it's several hundred dollars a month, so I'm not going to blow that off. I'm not going to be like, yeah, I don't feel like it. And, by the way, if I don't show up to a class I signed up where they charged me an extra $15 to not work out, don't show up to a class I signed up for, they charge me an extra $15 to not work out. So the asking for and the investing in is really important You're not doing either.

Speaker 2:

Also, you cannot coach your spouse. Take it from me. You cannot coach your spouse. It doesn't matter how freaking smart you are or think you are. They will hear it differently from you than they will hear it from some neutral third party, and they should. The reason why is because you, you, the collective, us human beings, we cannot separate ourselves from a personal situation. So he cannot tell you about you without factoring in what he needs, what he wants, what he wants to see. You can't and it's true in every situation.

Speaker 2:

Okay, like, if you're going to go buy a car, the person selling you the car cannot not factor in well, which car is going to get me a better commission. They can't not factor in their I don't know what the word is their needs, their principles, what they want. Maybe there's like a few ninjas on the planet that can do it, because they're super hyper conscious. This person isn't right, so he can't separate what he needs and what he desires from what he's telling you, and so therefore, he should not be trying to coach you, because you will hear coaching from your spouse differently, and call it coaching, call it teaching, call it whatever you want. You're going to hear anything Like if Rochelle said Sharon, you know, are you okay? I've noticed you've gained a little weight. Like you would never say that I know, but imagine I'm going to hear that very differently than if my husband says what's going on, you've gained a little weight, we're going to have problems. We're going to have a whole night conversation where Rochelle I'd be like I don't know, I don't even get on the scale. Maybe I would hear it differently. And that's the same.

Speaker 2:

And we only speak from our perspective, and our perspective always includes what we want, what we need. And trying to change someone isn't love. Bullying someone isn't love. So he's telling you you don't know how to love him. I would turn it around to something like tell me what I'm missing here in terms of how you need to be loved. Speak to me, because you can say these things to him. Speak to me from your experience. Only. Stop telling me about me. Tell me about you. What is the love that you want to receive from me that you're not receiving? You can start having those conversations, but the only way to make that healthy is when you're speaking from your perspective. He's speaking from his perspective. He's getting into your business, so trying to change you, he's doing one of the cold hard truths If you would be different, I would feel better.

Speaker 2:

If you would just learn like me, think like me and really it's a projection, it's how I want to be. If you would learn like I do, think like I want to think, behave like I want you to Like. It's all. I need you to be different so I can feel better, and so that's not practicing it. And this is where some of that stuff gets a little tricky and I'll say it's pretty rampant in the spirituality world is people want to tell you how to be when they're not living it. One of the very first I mean it's probably like the first or second week of coach training. When you go through Martha Beck's coach training, there's some pillars that she doesn't negotiate on, and one of those pillars is you have to live it, to give it, because if you don't live from these places, you cannot ever teach it.

Speaker 2:

There's something that happens energetically that if I tell you to do something that I would never be willing to do, there'd be something there that you wouldn't do it. Like if I told you. Like if we take the meditation example because it's kind of a funny example, because I remember her saying if you aren't meditating, I will know. And I was like, how is she going to know? Because you know, you know by the nature, I can't ask you to do something that I'm not willing to do in my own life. You will know, in the same way that I knew with Martha, you will know with me and you won't do it. There'll be something you won't quite trust. There'll be something you'll avoid. You won't necessarily say, well, I know she's not doing it, so therefore I'm not going to do it. You won't make that connection, but you have to.

Speaker 2:

This is one of the things, and this is just an opinion, right? So this is just Sharon Pope's opinion. It's not. I usually tell you when it's like, because everything I try to share is what I consider fact-based and where it proves true across almost everything. This is just an opinion.

Speaker 2:

I think that there are many therapists in the world who have learned the principles. They've gotten it intellectually, they've learned it and they've gotten the degrees and they've done all the things, but they haven't lived it, they haven't gone through a lot of it themselves, and so that doesn't mean that they can relate to it, right. So it's a difference between I can read about something and then I want to go be a teacher of it, versus I've gone through it and I've learned and now I teach. So it's a distinction, right. And so I just you know, you say your husband's very spiritual. To me, what that means, given the example you've given me, is that he likes to think of himself as spiritual. You like to think of him as spiritual. I think we're all spiritual, whatever you want to call that, but I think that there's some like his ego is playing into it, because our ego plays into almost everything. You have to be hyper-conscious to not have your ego at play on the daily, and it's playing out here.

Speaker 2:

So the other thing I want to say is the truth feels different in the body. You know, if someone said to me Sharon, you're a liar, at first it might sting but it wouldn't stick. Because for me, like I'm, many things Some of you might put in a good bucket, some of you might put in a bad bucket, I don't know. But I know that I'm not a liar. But if you told me something I don't know I'm trying to think of something, but if you told me something that really resonated, it lands different. You feel it differently. You're like, oh, yeah, that's true. Like I remember this isn't a good example, but it's the one that came to mind when I was in corporate America and they were like you should know your numbers better. That was always on my annual review Know your numbers better. I'm like yeah, I should. It's true, it lands.

Speaker 2:

So if there genuinely is something that he's sharing with you, like I don't want you to write it all off and I don't want you to ignore it all. And I don't want you to take it all in and say, oh, want you to ignore it all. And I don't want you to take it all in and say, oh, I have to do something about every single one of these. I want you to, just after one of those experiences if it continues, which I think that there's a conversation that could help the two of you connect in a new way, so that it doesn't continue in the same way because it's not helpful or productive and it's not actually, I think, who he wants to be.

Speaker 2:

Then go sit in stillness and quiet, noticing your breath in and out of your body, and go like I'm here and I'm listening. If there's something here for me, I'll feel it. Is this true? Am I operating out of my ego? Is that true? Like, sit with that for like five minutes. You'll know whether or not it's true. I promise you, every single person has inner wisdom. The problem is we're too noisy. We cannot hear it because we're all up in our heads and thinking about all the things and judging everybody else and telling them how they should be, and that's what he's doing, I. But if you're open to doing better or receiving feedback, just sit with it and you'll know It'll land. It'll feel differently or it'll feel like they got that wrong and it's okay.

Speaker 1:

All right. If today's episode resonated with you and you're ready to find real clarity about your relationship, I'd love for you to take the next step Apply for a truth and clarity session where you'll speak with a member of my team about where you are in your marriage, what's keeping you stuck and whether my coaching is the right fit for you. You don't have to navigate this alone. Go to clarityformymarriagecom to apply now.