My husband says everything will be fine if I just...

Endeavourer

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Much of my undergrad work was about marriage, I have created a marriage preparation program, I have trained for Gottman's workshops, I have studied trauma and addictions/mental health at the graduate level, and I work very closely with families with attachment issues, anxiety, trauma, and other relationship/social issues. I am fully qualified, and on many threads, I have given sound advice based on my wealth of knowledge. I think it's rather unfair of you to presume that no one here is qualified to provide sound advice based on research rather than experience.

Yet most marriage counseling fails, and an astonishing percentage of marriage counselors themselves do not have good marriages.

What do you think of this article?

How Dr. Harley Learned to Save Marriages

One of the points Dr. Harley makes is the following:

"I learned that marital therapy had the lowest success rate of any form of therapy - in one study, I read that less than 25% of those surveyed felt that marriage counseling had helped. A higher percentage felt that counseling had done more harm than good."

I have a wonderful marriage and we follow Dr. Harley's simple methodology.

My husband and I do not fight, since fighting kills marriages. We've encountered several conflicts that could have had devastating impacts but we stubbornly refused to let the other person's giver compromise, and stubbornly refused to coerce the other into what one wanted. Either one abandoned his/her desires or we found something that the other was mutually enthusiastic about. This is described here:
The Giver & Taker
The Policy of Joint Agreement

My husband and I follow these methods to a "T" and are always more in love during and after resolving a conflict than we ever thought possible.

In my volunteer work with marriage coaching, couples are overwhelmingly successful and fall in love again when they both follow this structure. Husbands like it because it's an easy plan that provides results. Wives like it because they like the results.

I couldn't be here on these boards giving advice about marriages if I was not in the most amazing marriage ever. I've spent several years studying the mechanics of how/why an amazing marriage works, and why bad marriages don't work.

I applied my studies to my own situation and I'm in the marriage that most people could only dream of having. I wake up every day with a huge smile nestled in my beloved, besotted husband's arms, and go to sleep the same way.

That is what I want for everyone, but there is so much misinformation and bad advice out there, particularly in the Christian community where abused spouses are advised to just pray and wait on God, or subjected to sin leveling, instead of getting advice for taking the necessary action that will remove them from abuse. Same thing for betrayed spouses not getting good advice to recover their marriage from an affair or for just thetypical unhappy couples to save their conflicted relationships.
 
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Almost there

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...go back to treating him like he’s the love of my life.

He and I fought so much since about May 2016 and even before that but 2016 was when he found out something terrible from our breakup in 2012 before we were married... a secret I kept... and he flipped out. Instead of embracing trauma I went through and trying to nurture me, he treated me like I was some kind of horrible person.
I fell out of love with him that fall and even told him so when he asked why I was acting so wonky at the beginning of this year. Then being apart helped me remember some of the good stuff and I moved back in May of this year (gone 3 months). But my feelings of being “in love” were never restored.
Guilt? Yes. Lots of guilt.
Do I want to try to honor the vows I made? Yes.
Is it worth staying with a person I’m not in love with? My parents do that.
They are more like good roommates.
Is it worth trying to rekindle the love? Sometimes I feel it is, but then we have a fight and he’s mean and I feel like it’s not.
Do I always care about him and want him to heal and get over his ptsd and eventually go and start a business and be happy and make friends? Yes. Always.

One time I heard of a concept where if you’re unhappy pretend you’re happy and eventually you think you’re happy.

I wonder if I start saying and doing all the things that I did when I was madly in love with him if I would go back to believing I am madly in love with him.
I do know for a fact half our fights would go away.
Every human being on the planet is both lovable and hateable. When you marry them you make the commitment before God and men, to be in the former group. You commit to being on "their side" until death us do part. If a person falls out of love with a person, it is the responsibility of the person falling out of love.

And and marriage is not really about that kind of love anyway. It is about love as an action and a choice. You chose to "love" this person until one of you dies. And they did the same regarding you. It's nice if you are also "in love with" them, but it is by no means a requirement.

I was married to a woman for 20 years who just got tired of me and forced divorce. I've now been married to the love of my life for 20 years. And I am the love of her life. And it grows stronger every day. It's surpassed my wildest dreams.

But we sincerely look past each other's faults. We know we are not perfect. Our entire relationship is like playing "The Gift of the Maggie" over and over again. And it is amazing.

Try this: Everything you do, do it for him and his happiness and well being. Make it your life's goal. See where it gets you.
 
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ValleyGal

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Yet most marriage counseling fails, and an astonishing percentage of marriage counselors themselves do not have good marriages.

What do you think of this article?

How Dr. Harley Learned to Save Marriages

One of the points Dr. Harley makes is the following:

"I learned that marital therapy had the lowest success rate of any form of therapy - in one study, I read that less than 25% of those surveyed felt that marriage counseling had helped. A higher percentage felt that counseling had done more harm than good."

I have a wonderful marriage and we follow Dr. Harley's simple methodology.

My husband and I do not fight, since fighting kills marriages. We've encountered several conflicts that could have had devastating impacts but we stubbornly refused to let the other person's giver compromise, and stubbornly refused to coerce the other into what one wanted. Either one abandoned his/her desires or we found something that the other was mutually enthusiastic about. This is described here:
The Giver & Taker
The Policy of Joint Agreement

My husband and I follow these methods to a "T" and are always more in love during and after resolving a conflict than we ever thought possible.

In my volunteer work with marriage coaching, couples are overwhelmingly successful and fall in love again when they both follow this structure. Husbands like it because it's an easy plan that provides results. Wives like it because they like the results.

I couldn't be here on these boards giving advice about marriages if I was not in the most amazing marriage ever. I've spent several years studying the mechanics of how/why an amazing marriage works, and why bad marriages don't work.

I applied my studies to my own situation and I'm in the marriage that most people could only dream of having. I wake up every day with a huge smile nestled in my beloved, besotted husband's arms, and go to sleep the same way.

That is what I want for everyone, but there is so much misinformation and bad advice out there, particularly in the Christian community where abused spouses are advised to just pray and wait on God, or subjected to sin leveling, instead of getting advice for taking the necessary action that will remove them from abuse. Same thing for betrayed spouses not getting good advice to recover their marriage from an affair or for just thetypical unhappy couples to save their conflicted relationships.

I am not a Harley fan. I found "His Needs Her Needs" very sexist, among other issues with some of the concepts. I'm a Gottman fan, and he also states that traditional marriage counselling doesn't work. But Gottman therapy is actually quite successful - as long as both spouses are equally invested and make the efforts in a genuine way.

Truly, marriage is not difficult. Be each other's best friend. If you find yourself treating your spouse in a way that you would not treat your best friend, stop how you are treating him/her, and start again being his or her best friend. It's also the place to grow in spiritual fruit...love, patience, etc.
 
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Endeavourer

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I am not a Harley fan. I found "His Needs Her Needs" very sexist, among other issues with some of the concepts.

This could not be further from the truth. His foundational policy is that nothing happens without mutual enthusiastic agreement of both spouses. No coercion, no domineering. That is as far from sexist as you can get.

Dr. Harley doesn't believe that a woman will stay in love with a man who is domineering or demanding. His entire body of research is surrounding how men and women stay in love with each other.
 
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tall73

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Perhaps we could stick to advice for the particular poster's situation. I started a thread for discussion of the merits of people's preferred system, counselor, school of thought, program, etc.

In any case, I don't see how the advice here could be cohesive. It is each person given their take based on their experience. Posters know that going in. So let's spell out how we think our advice applies, how it could help the situation and go from there.

It seems any solution here has to address both the marriage issues and the role the PTSD is playing.
 
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ValleyGal

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This could not be further from the truth. His foundational policy is that nothing happens without mutual enthusiastic agreement of both spouses. No coercion, no domineering. That is as far from sexist as you can get.

Dr. Harley doesn't believe that a woman will stay in love with a man who is domineering or demanding. His entire body of research is surrounding how men and women stay in love with each other.
To each their own. I'm just a Gottman gal. But I believe it even goes deeper than Gottman. When there are deep fundamental differences like if one has a negativity bias and the other has a positivity bias, for example. Those kinds of things can be devastating to a marriage, but they are not really things that most people will look for when they are deciding on who to partner with or stay with for a lifetime. Those kinds of things are, imo, part of what it means to have an equal yoke.
 
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LinkH

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Yet most marriage counseling fails, and an astonishing percentage of marriage counselors themselves do not have good marriages.

Kirk Cameron has said something like, "I'm no expert on marriage. I've only been married once." I wouldn't want to go to a marriage counselor who had a bad marriage or one who'd had failed marriages or even one failed marriage-- definitely not if the counselor had just decided to call it quits over something like 'irreconcilable differences'. You might be able to get some useful insight from someone who had a divorce, but if they are going to specialize in it, it's good if they have operated at the highest standard themselves.

I knew a man who was a marriage counselor, very active in church, even. But he had a big secret. He had a mistress. He left his first wife for a woman with a very similar name and children who were about the same age. It was weird. I'd rather take my chances asking marriage advice from a taxi driver than someone who was living a life like that.
 
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LinkH

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...go back to treating him like he’s the love of my life.

He and I fought so much since about May 2016 and even before that but 2016 was when he found out something terrible from our breakup in 2012 before we were married... a secret I kept... and he flipped out. Instead of embracing trauma I went through and trying to nurture me, he treated me like I was some kind of horrible person.
I fell out of love with him that fall and even told him so when he asked why I was acting so wonky at the beginning of this year. Then being apart helped me remember some of the good stuff and I moved back in May of this year (gone 3 months). But my feelings of being “in love” were never restored.
Guilt? Yes. Lots of guilt.
Do I want to try to honor the vows I made? Yes.
Is it worth staying with a person I’m not in love with? My parents do that.
They are more like good roommates.
Is it worth trying to rekindle the love? Sometimes I feel it is, but then we have a fight and he’s mean and I feel like it’s not.
Do I always care about him and want him to heal and get over his ptsd and eventually go and start a business and be happy and make friends? Yes. Always.

One time I heard of a concept where if you’re unhappy pretend you’re happy and eventually you think you’re happy.

I wonder if I start saying and doing all the things that I did when I was madly in love with him if I would go back to believing I am madly in love with him.
I do know for a fact half our fights would go away.

I haven't been on the forum much recently, so I apologize if you have shared more backstory and i do not know about it.

What are you expecting for feelings? If you had butterflies in your stomach so intensely that you couldn't eat or sleep, and you felt wonderful like some kind of drug high part of the time, and then nauseous when you were around him, you may not get that back. I've read that sort of thing wears off, and it's probably a good thing. I wonder if it continued for years and years if it would give you a heart attack.

I had feelings like that at times going through puberty. By the time I met my wife, I had wonderful strong feelings for her, without the nausea or drug high. I'd sit around happily thinking about her staring into space at times, that sort of thing. I still love my wife now, but I probably don't have the same rush of emotions in the same way I had early on.

Movies and TV and other people teach us to think of marital love as some sort of great feeling. Foolishly written movie scripts teach people that when you feel a certain way you'll know. And so some short-sighted gullible people out there fall for drug addicts, drug dealers, con men, inappropriate content addicts, gold diggers, etc. because they think if they feel a certain way, that makes it real.

The Bible says, 'Husbands love your wives.' It does not say, 'Husbands, have a feeling of butterflies in your stomach for your wife, and feel like you are floating on the clouds whenever you are around her." Proverbs 5 does speak of always being enraptured by her love. That's in the context of sexual love. Some of these kinds of feelings are desirable in marriage. But some emotions kick in early in a relationship and can be replaced with something more mature, something that won't give you stomach ulcers in the long run.

In your case, it sounds like your husband upset you and you lose respect for him. The Bible says to respect your husband. One translation says 'reverence' there in Ephesians 5. It could literally be translated 'fear.' Christians are to have the fear of the Lord, also. I don't think it is saying be afraid that your husband is going to hit you with the newspaper or something like that, but rather talking about the deep sense of reverential respect you should have for your husband, which you should have as a Christian wife out of reverence for the Lord.

And if he is going to be enraptured with your love, you need to love him, too.

So if you have some realistic expectations about what kinds of feelings you want to have, how do you get those feelings if you are upset with him? This is something you should pray about, but you need to consider if you have any kind of bitterness or unforgiveness toward him. Those are things to pray about. It might also help to consider his perspective on this traumatic experience. If something happened that he thought you should have told him before you got married, as if it was almost being deceptive accepting a proposal without telling him first, he could have reacted that way. But sometimes people just act in irrational bad ways when they hear news they do not want to hear, instead of being supportive to the other person. That's not good, but it can happen.

If he handled it totally the wrong way and he was just wrong, and you did everything right that you could, you still need to forgive him. Jesus taught His disciples to forgive others or the Father would not forgive them.

There have been times when my wife and I have gotten out of sync, where it seemed like conversations turned into arguments. A new conversation carries the emotional baggage of yesterday's conversation and puts it on the trajectory of an argument. Usually, when this happened, my wife was going through a time in which she did not have the best feelings about me. It seems like times of stress-- moving, being around in-laws, post-partum, etc. when I was unemployed were difficult for her. And when she got like that, I didn't always have the greatest feelings toward her.

What I learned is one way to get out of the cycle. We'd just pray and humble ourselves and ask God to help, then confess sin to one another. It's good if you can do this without accusing. Then you forgive each other and pray to God and ask him to get into your hearts and heal them and restore them, including feelings. I can think of two or three times we've gone through these experiences in our marriage restored through prayer.

There was another time when my wife was pregnant where she had a negative attitude toward me and treated me with disrespect. I prayed about it, a long list of things related to how my wife treated to me, and asked God to speak to her about it. Within a number of days she sat me down for a conversation-- but it didn't look like she wanted to argue. She acted nice. She started telling me I was a good husband, and then took me through a list of things she said God spoke to her about-- walking me through my prayer list, but in much greater detail. It was quite incredible actually. And her attitude totally changed. In terms of feelings and how we got along, it was like we went through a newly wed stage. Not totally the same since she was about 8 or 9 months pregnant, but it was really good for our relationship. She's had times when she's prayed about me, too.

Anyway, my point is that you can see great success in this area of your life by praying to God in faith and doing the things Jesus taught, like forgiving.
 
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DZoolander

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Kirk Cameron has said something like, "I'm no expert on marriage. I've only been married once." I wouldn't want to go to a marriage counselor who had a bad marriage or one who'd had failed marriages or even one failed marriage-- definitely not if the counselor had just decided to call it quits over something like 'irreconcilable differences'.

I understand where you're coming from here, but I think that your positions ignores a pretty obvious fact of life...that some marriages need leaving. Sometimes the main failure in a marriage was simply bad selection of spouse before you got married in the first place. Not everything can be fixed. Not every scenario is worth even trying to fix.

People seem to think that remaining married is hard. Nah, it's really not. Just don't get a divorce. That's all you need to do. Do that, and you can remain married to one person all your life.

Now whether or not you actually had what anyone else would consider a "good" marriage is another issue entirely - and not covered by that...lol
 
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