Tag: strategies

Am I Responsible for Fixing My Husband?

Am I Responsible for Fixing My Husband? [Episode 167]

If you break abuse down to the nitty-gritty, at its heart is something called “emotional childhood.” Abusers think everybody should make their life work. Everyone should cater to their whims. Everybody is responsible for their emotions. For fixing them, moment by moment. They shouldn’t have to do anything. Like a stunted emotional child.

If you’re a wife in this situation, you come to believe that you are supposed to fix your husband. You think you’re the only one who can (and that “fixing” him is even possible).

Any movement to protect yourself, to detach, to assign responsibility to him for HIS OWN LIFE and CHOICES, feels like betrayal and selfishness and just plain gross. Your husband and many religious people would agree.

Which leads us right back to: Am I responsible for fixing my husband? Is detaching from him to protect myself wrong?

I’ve been asked these questions hundreds—if not thousands—of times, so I’ve fleshed out an answer that addresses them AND all those icky rabbit trails in your mind.

And unlike what you’ve been told in church, online, or by your husband, this answer doesn’t require you to throw yourself in a pool to save a person who wants to drown…and drag you under too.

More
How Writing Will Help You Figure Out Your Confusing and Painful Marriage

How Writing Will Help You Figure Out Your Confusing and Painful Marriage

If you are tangled up in a confusing relationship, one effective strategy to gain a solid footing (and eventually a voice) is to write things down. It doesn’t matter if you are a good writer or not. Your purpose isn’t to win a Pulitzer prize. Here are three important things you can record on paper (or on your computer) that will be tremendously helpful to you over time.

More
How Do I Know What Is Real or True When My Husband Gaslights Me?

How Do I Know What Is Real or True When My Husband Gaslights Me? [Episode 165]

Is the last thing you googled, “Am I crazy?” or “Why does my husband hate me?” or the literal title of this episode?

Bleh. Living in such horrible, constant confusion can make us obsessive. Not crazy obsessive. The “desperate for answers” kind. The “I’m living in purgatory and I hate it!” kind. The “Is it me even though I’m trying so hard?” kind.

If you’re looking for a fixed point of reference—a way to know what’s real and true, then you’ve stumbled across something better than 6.84 million Google results. Because I’m going to answer your question in incredible detail.

More
An Emotional Recovery Tool That Changes Everything

An Emotional Recovery Tool That Changes Everything [Episode 160]

The only reason I’m where I am today — divorced from an abusive husband, healed, remarried to a good man, helping others, and thriving — is because of one simple tool.

I share it in Flying Free and Flying Higher, my online coaching, education, and support communities that are worth their weight in fat-melting chocolate (please science, make this real).

Today, I’m sharing the best thing I have.

You get a free, front-row seat to this show. Prepare yourself. Cause I absolutely stake my secret pie stash on the fact that if you use this tool, it will ROCK YOUR WORLD.

More
Ten Thoughts Confident Women Think When Their Husbands Act Like Jerks

Ten Thoughts Confident Women Think When Their Husbands Act Like Jerks [Episode 159]

It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?

A grown man throwing a tantrum. Stomping around, calling you names, slamming doors.

Hits you right in the feels, eh?

Or maybe he’s the quiet type of mean. Stonewalling. Sleeping for days. Leaving for hours without warning.

However a husband’s jerky behavior manifests, most Christian wives are taught to respond the same ways:

Assume you’re the problem. Feel shame.
Assume you have to endure his behavior. Feel despair.
Assume you have to make his life work. Feel resentment.

For all these common feelings, I’ve got some uncommon alternatives. And they WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Which is a lot more attractive than a grown man acting like a two-year-old.

More
How Do You Break the Cycle of Emotional and Spiritual Abuse?

How Do You Break the Cycle of Emotional and Spiritual Abuse? [Episode 157]

Hit it with a hammer.

Done.

If only it were that easy.

In reality, the cycle of emotional and spiritual abuse feels like a freight train rushing down the tracks of your everyday. An unstoppable force. And if you stand in its way, you’ll be run down. A sad little pancake beholden to the destructive patterns you’ve existed in since…who knows when.

My dear. You forgot about two things.

First: You can’t stop that train.

Second: You don’t need to stop that train to heal and be free and come into your power.

Remember the handle thingy on the side of the tracks, controlling the railroad switch?

Yup. Start there.

More