{"id":3708,"date":"2014-01-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/a-source-of-misery-in-your-marriage\/"},"modified":"2020-05-11T20:48:58","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T20:48:58","slug":"a-source-of-misery-in-your-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/a-source-of-misery-in-your-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"The Source of Misery In Your Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been counseling couples now for 8 \u00bd years.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen them at every stage and, of course, I\u2019ve experienced most of those stages myself.\u00a0 With all of that to witness, one myth sticks out as a continual source of misery in so many marriages.\u00a0 The myth?\u00a0 That your partner is there to make you happy.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Think about it.\u00a0 When we first got together, they did<\/i><\/strong> make us happy!\u00a0 So happy, in fact, that we would lose sleep, skip work or classes, spend less time with our friends and family.\u00a0 We would sacrifice ourselves in order to get more of the luscious joy they brought to us at the very sight of them.\u00a0 So what did we do?\u00a0 We married them.\u00a0 We signed on for a lifetime supply of that happiness!\u00a0 So where does the misery come in?<\/p>\n

When we first meet, we are making sacrifices \u2013 a lot of them \u2013 in order to get that happiness.\u00a0 It is because<\/i> <\/strong>we are making those sacrifices that we are getting the good stuff.\u00a0 It feels good to our partner to be romanced and pursued, to receive gifts, to be admired, to be praised, to be taken care of, to be wanted.\u00a0 And we get the same in exchange for our sacrifices.\u00a0 We put all of our focus on our lover because the return on investment is so good!<\/p>\n

So here is where the winds shift.\u00a0 You can\u2019t do it anymore.\u00a0 You can\u2019t keep up that level of giving for very long.\u00a0 Work calls, the Xbox beckons, the baby cries, an aging parent wants their grass mowed \u2013 and slowly you stop giving as much to your mate because you just can\u2019t do it all.\u00a0 Your loved one can\u2019t keep it up either.\u00a0 Now the relationship begins a downward spiral.\u00a0 The less you give, the less they give, and the less they give, the less you want to give. \u00a0Neither realizes what is happening, both people just both feel increasingly more and more rejected and unloved.\u00a0 They both respond by giving less. No longer is your lover doing the job that you effectively hired them to do \u2013 i.e., make you feel good like they did when you first were dating.\u00a0 This is when bad stuff starts to happen \u2013 contempt enters the marriage, affairs (find someone else to do the job), divorce (\u201cI picked the wrong one\u201d) \u2013 you get the idea.<\/p>\n

Picture this:\u00a0 I go to the vending machine at work every day.\u00a0 I put money in, it gives me a candy bar.\u00a0 The candy bar tastes good and makes me happy.\u00a0 So I keep going.\u00a0 Every day.\u00a0 One day, I don\u2019t have enough money, so I try to get the vending machine to give me the candy bar for less.\u00a0 It refuses.\u00a0 I\u2019m mad at the vending machine.\u00a0 The next day, I don\u2019t have any money.\u00a0 The vending machine stares at me with all of its candy bars that it could<\/i><\/strong> give me, but it won\u2019t.\u00a0 I punch the vending machine (which surprisingly doesn’t motivate it to dispense it’s tasty goods to me!).<\/p>\n

Get the idea?\u00a0 We stop investing in our relationships, but we expect the same gushing, loving, admiring treatment that we got when we gave it our all!\u00a0 And then we blame our mate for it.\u00a0 Not a good recipe for a lifetime of love!<\/p>\n

The source of misery in your marriage is a combination of our own decreasing effort combined with our expectation that it is our partner’s job to make us feel good.\u00a0 The quick answer to stop the misery?\u00a0 Stop expecting and start investing.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 And if you need help cleaning up the damage you caused beating on the vending machine – well, you\u2019re probably going to need a counselor for that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been counseling couples now for 8 \u00bd years.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen them at every stage and, of course, I\u2019ve experienced most of those stages myself.\u00a0 With all of that to witness, one myth sticks out as a continual source of misery in so many marriages.\u00a0 The myth?\u00a0 That your partner is there to make you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[628,536,396,960,1033,479,429,1193,1194,409,1195,1067],"class_list":["post-3708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage","tag-arguments","tag-conflict-in-marriage","tag-divorce","tag-divorce-busting","tag-how-to-get-the-love-back","tag-love","tag-marriage","tag-miserable","tag-misery","tag-relationship","tag-romance","tag-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4334,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions\/4334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}