The Loving Truth

Why You Might Need to Lead the Way

• Sharon Pope • Episode 174

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Sometimes you have to be the one to step forward in your marriage—even if it doesn’t feel fair. 

Many women ask, “Why should I be the one to do the work when he’s the one with the problem?”

But someone has to nudge the relationship into motion.

If you’re the one uncomfortable or ready for change, it may have to be you.

I also talk about the role of the victim and how staying passive keeps you stuck.

Using real stories, including an example from Simon Sinek about creating understanding where it seems impossible, I show why initiating change—even alone—can create fertile ground for real growth in your marriage.


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_00:

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_02:

Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope, and this is The Loving Truth. Today I want to explore the topic of why should I be the one to go first, or why should I be the one to lead the effort to fix our marriage? And I also want to explore the role of the victim. This is going to be a really interesting conversation because I'll tell you, I get a lot of people that will give me a little bit of pushback when they're looking at whether or not to work with me, let's say. And they'll say, well, why should I be the one to do this work? I mean, I do so many things for our relationship. And by the way, he's the one with the drinking problem, or he's the one with the anger problem, like whatever it is. He's the one with the problem. So why shouldn't he be leading this? Or why do I have to do it by myself? Why can't we both be doing this together? Like, why should I be the only one working on our marriage? And it's a valid question. And it doesn't seem fair because it's not fair. It's just not. And what I have often said is a few things. I've often said, well, why not you? Someone has to lead the effort. Someone has to make something go, like a ball, uh, what is it? Something in motion stays in motion, something not in motion stays not in motion until something forces it. So we need someone to give it that gentle nudge or that push in the right direction. And if you've been following my work, you're probably more equipped than the average bear to be able to do that successfully. You could wait until you're both ready to work on the relationship in the same way at the same time, but you might be waiting forever. And granted, if both of you were to work on the relationship in the same way at the same time, would that be better? For sure. Of course it would be better. But if I can't have that because my partner refuses to work on it for whatever reason, then your only option isn't just to sit back and suffer and play the victim. It's to do something, to do what you can do. And so that's what a lot of the women who I work with take that option to be able to do. And the last thing that I have often said is you're the one that wants change in the relationship. You're the one that's uncomfortable or bothered about what's happening in the relationship. He's probably not uncomfortable or bothered by what's happening in the relationship. You're the one that wants change. So why shouldn't you be the one to lead the effort? In Harriet Lerner's book, The Dance of Intimacy, she has a quote that I'll read to you. Caring about relationships, working on them, and upgrading our how-to skills have traditionally been women's domain. When something goes wrong, we are usually the first to react, to feel pain, to seek help, and to try to initiate change. It's still not fair. Just because it's written in a book, just because that's the way it's always been done, doesn't mean that it's fair. So I understand why people are upset. And so while these things are all true, these answers aren't terribly satisfying. And most people don't like that answer. I'll be honest, I don't like that answer. I wish it were different. And I see more and more men stepping up. I'm actually, I'm working with more and more men now, and it's pretty exciting, to be honest, of where they're stepping up and saying, like, yeah, I want to be a part of this process of making the marriage better. But way, way, way too many men are not doing that. And so here we are. As women, if we want to have better relationships and we want to create change, sometimes we are the ones that have to lead. So now I have heard another answer to this question of why should I be the one to act first? Why should I be the one to initiate the healing or to, you know, open up the difficult conversation about the state of our marriage and where are we headed and where are we going? Or to join a program. Why should I be the one to go first? I've heard a new way to think about this that I want to share with you. And it's the reason why the person who should go first often doesn't. Now, the context that I'm going to share this with is it's off-topic of relationships in a sense, but I promise that it's relevant, okay? So just stay here with me. This is a story that I heard from Simon Sinek. Love his work. He was a guest on the Modern Wisdom podcast, and I heard him there, and he shared this story. So I'm going to share it with you. But please, you know, if this is of interest to you, go listen to the Modern Wisdom Podcast where Simon Sinek is the guest. So there's an activist and filmmaker. Her name is Dia Khan. She's a Muslim woman from the UK. And years and years ago, she was on the BBC and she made some comments about a multicultural society. And those comments went viral. She started getting a lot of hate from, let's just call it white supremacists. And she was getting a lot of threats, including death threats. And it got so bad that the police advised her to not stand in front of any open windows. That's how much her life was in danger because of the comments that she said on the BBC. And the way that she responded to that is she decided to move to the US and get to know white supremacists. Shocking, right? Like, who responds like that? Most people would go into hiding or something. And I don't know if you remember, but there was a few years ago where the white supremacists were marching in Charlottesville. And she went there. And she didn't march with them, but she walked with them. And she started to get to know them. And she gave them, she interviewed them and gave them a safe space to be able to express their perspectives. And this sounds crazy, right? That the Muslim feminist woman is giving a safe space to a white supremacist to be heard and understood. It should be the other way around, right? Except it's never going to be. He spoke to her after the George Floyd murder. He spoke to her after the event on January 6th. And every time he speaks to her, she says something like, You are not going to like my answer. And her answer is that in all the research that she's done, in every circumstance, if there is going to be understanding and there's going to be change, the victim has to go first. Because the oppressor or the villain in this story is never going to go first. So she created a documentary called White Right, meaning the enemy. And you can tell in that documentary, she doesn't believe the same things that white supremacists believe. And she doesn't affirm their perspectives in any way, shape, or form, but she offers them just a safe space to be heard. And over time they begin to trust her as they get to know her. She challenges them, she questions their thoughts and their beliefs, but they're able to express themselves and they grow to trust her. And they get to know her. And then one by one, some of them stop, start to drop out of the movement. Now that wasn't her reason for doing this, but it's the outcome of when you give, when you're the one that it extends the olive branch and you're the one that sort of steps into that gap, and you let the other person feel understood and heard first, then they're more open to understanding and hearing you. And when we can understand and hear one another, that creates fertile ground for change in our lives, in our perspectives, and certainly in our marriages. So when your partner is in the wrong, like maybe they do have a drinking problem, and maybe they do have an anger problem, or whatever it is, they might be dead ass wrong. You can sit back, play the victim, suffer, and wait and wait and wait for them to do the right thing. Because should they do the right thing? Come to you and say, you know what, darling? You have not gotten my best. And I apologize for that. I am deeply, deeply sorry. And I'm gonna do better moving forward. Should they do that? Absolutely. But the likelihood that they're going to do it is very low because they haven't done it yet. Now, why don't they do it? Either they don't know that they need to or that they should. Maybe they just don't care. That's possible. Maybe they just don't have the skills to take that step. Maybe they're embarrassed about their behavior, or maybe they're embarrassed that they don't have the skills, or maybe they're they're scared, or they feel shame. Like, I don't know what the reasons are on why a human being wouldn't make amends when they've had some bad behavior, especially in their marriage. I don't know. But it's not typically because they hate you, or they woke up today and said, How can I make her life miserable today? It's usually pain within them that's being acted out upon. And so then comes the question of, all right, if I'm going to lead this and I'm gonna do the hard thing, how do I do the hard thing? And so I want to give you some language that can be helpful. Here's what it might sound like. Like, let's say that you and your partner have been arguing incessantly for the last year, and the house has just gotten loud, and you don't say you love each other anymore. Right now, you're not even sure if you like your partner, and you're pretty sure that they don't like you. So here's what you can say. I'm really struggling with something, and I need your help. I'm telling myself a story right now that you don't like me. And I have no idea if that's true or not, but I can but can I tell you the three things that have happened recently that's made me feel like not only don't you not love me, but you don't even like me. They're gonna say yes or no. Yes or no, I want to hear the three things that have led to that. And then that can open a conversation for deeper understanding. Or it can sound like this. I know it's uncomfortable, but I want to be able to put this hard thing on the table, whatever it is, because I care about you and I care about our marriage. I don't know exactly how to have this conversation, so I might, you know, clumsily make my way through it. But I don't want to shy away from talking about the hard things with you, because that comes with its own set of difficult outcomes if we just ignore the difficulties in our marriage. It's another way you can initiate the conversation that needs to be had. So let's talk about the victim. Because if I asked you, do you want to be the victim? Like no one wants to actually be the victim. That means that something is happening to you, and you're you have no say or control in it. And it usually means it's something bad that's happening to you, to be honest. No one wants to be in the role of the victim, but what it means when we go there, because sometimes we go there, is I'm not accountable for my own choices, actions, and behaviors. And that's why it's an unhealthy place to be. And it's difficult to get out of that victim role. Because if you think that you don't have any responsibility for the only things that you have any control over, you're going to feel completely powerless in your life, which makes creating change incredibly difficult if you don't feel like you have any power over anything that you can actually control in your life. You might try to control other people because you don't feel like you have control in your own life. But that's an impossibility. That's like trying to control the uncontrollable. So the victim role is like this is happening to me, and I'm just a passive player in this. And look, that may be true. Right? If your husband has a drinking problem or an anger problem or something like that, you may feel like this is happening to me, and I am not doing anything to instigate that. Like he's making his choices about picking up the bottle of scotch every night. That's his choice. But here's there's there's a subtle element, which is we get to choose how we respond and we react. We can turn away from it and ignore it because it's too painful to look at, hope that something magically changes. Or we can set healthy boundaries for ourselves and say, I'm not okay with this. And I don't, I'm scared of what you're doing to yourself. I'm scared of what you're doing to our family. And so, unless you are willing to seek some help for yourself, here's what I'm going to do. That's what boundaries are. Boundaries are about what I what action I'm going to take. It's not about controlling the other person, it's about controlling yourself and saying, this is what I'm going to do, based upon the circumstances that that has been created here between us. Because you don't want to just sit back and be like, oh, poor me, and then suffer. You have to do something, right? And that's how you get out of the role of being a victim. Now, the victim role, we've all gone there occasionally, haven't we? Like sometimes I just need a poor baby. I just do. Right? So the victim role feels easy because we don't have to do anything when we're the victim. The other reason why we play the victim is because most of the time when we're the victim, we get the sympathy. And so it feels kind of good. It feels kind of comforting. But what we're doing is that we're trading that short-term ease for long-term dysfunction. Because then when we play the victim, we don't create change, nothing changes in our lives, and we live in a dysfunctional environment for the rest of our lives. So we trade, right, short-term ease for long-term dysfunction. Never going to lead to a healthy marriage, and it's not going to lead to a happy life either. And if you think about it, so think about when maybe you've made the decision or you've had the conversation with your spouse about potentially ending the marriage. And they get into the role of the victim. You're the villain, you're doing this to them, and they're the victim. But isn't it true that they had a role in the creation of this experience that brought you to this point to where you said, I can no longer do this. Now, maybe you are the one that is taking the action, making the decision to say, This no longer works for me. But that doesn't mean that you have to take on 100% of the accountability and be the villain. This is why sometimes your spouse will take on the role of the victim, is because they get the sympathy. They check in on him, make sure he's okay, and no one's checking in on you. That happens. And the other thing that happens is not just that they get all the sympathy, but no one wants to be painted as the bad guy. That's the other reason why sometimes we will go to that place of being in the victim mentality, is because we don't want to be the bad guy either. And so here's the reality. Should you both want to do the work to heal your marriage so that your marriage can feel good again? Yes, of course you should. And I'm going to do a podcast about that very soon. But that rarely happens. And so if the choice is to do nothing and suffer, or do something, do what you can do so that you can try to create change in your marriage, then my vote is always do what you can do. Because we can't control everything in our lives, but we can control some things. And someone has to lead the effort. And maybe it is the one that shouldn't have to do it, as you heard with the story of Dia Khan. But I think if she can do that, if she can do what she did, in order to create understanding between two, between people who see the world very, very differently. And that leads to change, even in the smallest of ways. If she can do that, maybe you can do this and lead this with the person that you pledge to love forever. I hope that's helpful. Until next time, take really good care.

SPEAKER_01:

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 ClarityformyMarriage.com to fill out an application now. That's Clarityformy Marriage.com.