Finding Your Bliss When Your Relationship Isn’t Perfect

This is not a podcast about being broken, although you may have been. This is a podcast about strength for women who find themselves in difficult relationships, including that sometimes difficult one with yourself. We'll look at your relationship through a lens of psychology, faith, and a little dash of my own kind of feminism. We're not fixing them. We're fixing you. And that changes everything. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Save yourself, heal your relationships. Listen in. Hey there, it's Dr. Zoe. I'm so glad you're here today. Today's topic is finding your own bliss when your relationship isn't perfect. But first up, my win and my fail. My win is that I've gotten into a great groove with my workouts. I just started a 5-day cleanse and I'm just doing so much better with my body and working out because, you know, it was slipping a little bit there. But that actually leads to my fail. So it's a confession. My 9-year-old daughter and I were snuggling on the couch and she told me I needed to take a shower. Since working from home, things are very different. I love it, but it's really different. I used to have a schedule where I get up, work out, get showered, head over to the office. And I still do all of that, but But I found out accidentally that I can extend my workouts if I don't shower before a session. And I figured I'm on video all the time, they can't smell me. But my intentions of showering later in the day didn't really happen either. I know it sounds gross. My daughter called me out. And from all the Instagram and TikTok videos, I know that plenty of you were dealing with that over COVID season. I'm just a little behind in the game because I'm just now moving to working strictly from home. And I'm realizing that I still do need to invest in that shower. So there's my fail. I think I'll do better next week. So how do you find your own bliss and your happiness when you're in the middle of a marriage that is unhappy? Sometimes the answer to an unhealthy or a less-than-perfect relationship is to leave. Sometimes that can be the most caring thing that you can do for yourself and your spouse. But sometimes that's not the answer. Sometimes the answer is to stick in it, to grow, to honor your commitment. Now, this episode is not about telling you what to do because, well, I can't. I can't do that. As I've said before, I don't believe that we should stay married at all costs, even for women of faith. I don't believe that making an idol out of your marriage and being miserable and unhappy was ever God's plan for us. But I also strongly believe in the commitment and the covenant of marriage, and I don't believe that these 2 beliefs are contradictory. For example, I believe that suicide is never okay. I believe that life is sacred and it's ordained by God and we don't have the right as humans to take it away. But I'd also like to make it clear that I don't ever want my heart to be kept beating and my lungs to be kept breathing on a machine. If that is my only existence, if there's nothing left of me, please pull the plug. I don't believe that God intended us to live that way. And I don't believe that those 2 beliefs are contradictory either. I feel the same way about marriage. Sometimes we have to pull the plug on something that is already dead. Okay, enough about my beliefs because we're not really talking about that today. Today we're going to talk about when your relationship is quite dead. It may be headed that way, or it may have been running on half a lung for decades. But when you haven't chosen to leave, how can you find your own bliss in a marriage that is not giving you what you want or need? First, stop arguing about the same darn things repeatedly. Be done with it. Now, this is if and only if you have already clearly stated all of the issues that you have with this particular thing in your marriage. You've come to some type of resolution, even if it's that your partner doesn't care, that your partner won't acknowledge or follow through on it. That's still a resolution. You must have expressed yourself and your needs clearly, and if you've done that, It's time for acceptance. Make a pact to yourself that you will not bring this up unsolicited again. This is a type of detachment that can be healthy when done intentionally, and this detachment allows you to hang on to your own sense of well-being instead of continuing to expect someone to be something that they aren't. Remind yourself that you are choosing to live with this issue in your marriage and that it will not change. Your job is to work towards acceptance. So when he does that thing or he doesn't do it, whatever the issue is, you do that by working on your self-talk. Remind yourself, I am not stuck. My situation is not hopeless. Now I know this might not feel like the truth, but you make choices every day. Sometimes you feel like all the choices are bad ones, but you still make choices. And you have to be able to acknowledge to yourself that you're not stuck, even though that might feel a little uncomfortable. It might feel better to feel like, well, I'm just stuck. But you aren't. You're choosing. Wasting time arguing over an issue that won't be worked out is sucking your emotional energy and happiness, so that's the first thing you need to work on stopping. Number 2, find things to be grateful for. I know this is hard, and trying to practice this on the regular can feel self-defeating and useless. So instead of asking you to practice something that you probably won't do, I'm gonna ask you to stop right now. Whether you're hiking, taking a bath, driving a car, or cooking in your kitchen, pause this episode and say out loud to yourself— or if you're on an airplane or somewhere where you can't say it out loud and that would be weird, say it inside your head— 5 things you're grateful for in your life right now. Then say 2 things you're grateful for in your spouse. I know you can think of all the deficits, but I want you to just focus on the positives for this second. They're there and you can find them. If you're feeling especially hopeless about your marriage, your spouse may suck as a husband, but maybe he's a great provider for your family. Or maybe he sucks as a provider, but he's a really good father. Say the things for which you are grateful about him. It's okay. Doing this does not negate other issues, but it does give you more space for positive feelings in your life, and you need that. So try to practice this daily. Elizabeth Lesser talks about creating an autobiography of joy. I love the way that sounds, where you document the happy moments in your life. And I love this because you can start looking at patterns when you start documenting things. If you keep a journal and you document anytime you notice you feel joy, you'll start to see something, a pattern over time. And when you do, make sure that you start cultivating more of that. She also talks about creating an autobiography of grief, where you document every time you notice you feel grief. Keeping track of this also gives you a clear idea of what you might need to remove from your life when you see those patterns. Number 3, remember that your happiness is a one-person job. It's true that the people who you choose to associate with in your life have a significant effect on your psychological well-being and your overall quality of life. But you can be intentional about protecting your happiness on your own and not expecting anyone else to do that for you. Your happiness is a one-person job, and you are up to it. Number 4, don't abandon your faith. When your partner doesn't share the same faith as you do, or is not practicing it in the same way that you are, it becomes really easy to make small compromises or small changes in order to reduce conflict, or in order to just increase peace in the moment. But eventually that leads you to larger compromises, and it leads you to distance with God. Be intentional about your practice. Choose to engage, choose to be active regardless of what he does. Number 5, be realistic. The reality is it's tough to feel happy and at peace in the midst of a relationship that itself is unhappy. That's real. So you've got to give yourself grace for the times that you feel down. You've got to give yourself grace for a trigger that happens that reminds you of all the things that you don't have or you wish you did. This finding bliss thing is a lifelong practice. You can consistently come back to it when you stray, but you must realize that your marriage does influence you greatly in your life. It's impossible to never feel this influence, but you can minimize the influence by how you respond and the words you say to yourself. Remember, you're not stuck. You have choices. Remind yourself that you're currently making the choice to stay in this marriage for what feels like a very great reason. Remind yourself of that reason and regularly check Check in and make sure that it still applies in your life. Number 6, sometimes we attribute our unhappiness to our spouse when really we're struggling with our own personal losses and we just need someone to blame it on. These might include perceived failures, feeling overburdened, which is a valid marital issue if your husband isn't carrying his weight, financial distress. You've got to ask yourself, is this a marital issue or is this a life or personal issue? Depression. Unrealized dreams. Identity crisis. Life transition. Sometimes life transitions, such as the empty nest transition, can highlight problems that were much easier to ignore with the distraction of the kids. Look at these and evaluate whether you might need to get personal therapeutic help on these issues, which can increase your happiness even if your marriage doesn't change. So friend, it boils down once again to the fact that you can change you, not anyone else, but working on yourself is the very best investment. If you're struggling in an unhappy marriage, these are some books that I suggest: Alone in a Marriage by Susie Larson and Loving Your Spouse When You Feel Like Walking Away by Gary Chapman. You've got this. Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Difficult Places. New episodes generally go up on Tuesdays. Subscribe to my email list so that you can get encouragement from me. Have a strong week. Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Difficult Places. New episodes go out on Tuesdays. Please subscribe to my email list so that you can get encouragement in written form from me. From my box to yours, have a strong week.