Podcast Epsidoe 20_ Your Husband Doesn’t Have To Change Before You Do
===
[00:00:00] Hey, ladies. Welcome to Soul Care. This is my podcast, and I am your host, Christi Dunn. I'm so glad you're here. I know I took a couple of weeks off. I was refocusing some things in my business, but I am back, and we are ready to go to talk just about how your husband doesn't have to change before you do.
So this is gonna rub you the wrong way probably at first, and that's okay because I think sometimes we need somebody to say the thing that isn't necessarily the thing we want to hear. So here it is. Your husband does not have to change before you do. And before somebody hears that and thinks I'm saying, "Well, if your marriage is struggling, you need to work on yourself," no, that is not what I'm saying.
If your husband betrayed you, lied to you, had an affair, has a drinking problem, is addicted to porn, or hiding things from you, what- whatever it is, I'm not somehow turning that [00:01:00] around and making it your responsibility. I wanna make it very clear, his choices are his. His behavior is his, and if he has things he needs to change, then yep, he needs to change them.
But here's the part I wanna talk to you about. How long are you gonna wait for him before you start doing something for you? I see women get stuck here. They get stuck thinking, "If he would just go to counseling with me, then our marriage would be better. If he would just tell me the truth. If he would just understand how badly he hurt me.
If he would just be transparent and stop lying, you know? If he would just apologize." But pretty soon, your entire life is sitting there waiting for this man to do something, and I get it. Of course, you want him to change. You want your marriage to be all the things that you had hoped for on your wedding day.
Um, but [00:02:00] You're sitting there thinking, "Excuse me, I'm supposed to do more work now?" I know. I know. It feels completely unfair, and frankly, some of it is unfair. You may be dealing with consequences, real, live, hard consequences from decisions you didn't even make. You had no part in them, you didn't want them, and now you're dealing with them.
You're also trying to heal from something you didn't choose, and that is awful and painful. I'm not gonna put a cute little bow around that. But here's where I think we have to be careful. Somewhere along the way, the idea in our head of, "He needs to change," can turn into, "I can't get better until he changes.
Our marriage can't improve until he changes." And those things are not the same thing, and I don't want you giving somebody else that much control over your life. [00:03:00] I don't want you handing over your entire future, your happiness, your joy, your peace over to another person, even if it is your husband, your soulmate, the person you thought you were gonna spend the rest of your life with.
Because what if he doesn't? Seriously, like, what if he doesn't go to counseling? What if he keeps drinking? What if he keeps lying? What if you explain it perfectly and he still doesn't understand? Then what? And that is the question I think we don't get asked enough. It kind of gets buried down there. We spend so much time asking about, "How do I get to him?
How do I get him to understand, or to tell me the truth, or to open up, or to take responsibility? How do I get him to stop doing this?" You know? But listen to what's underneath every one of those questions. How do I get another grown adult to do what I need him to do? [00:04:00] Well, the honest truth, which you guys know I will speak the truth to you, but with love, is you might not be able to.
And I know that's not a satisfying answer , but like I said, it's the truth. There is no magical sentence I can give you that guarantees your husband suddenly goes, "Oh my gosh, you're right. I completely understand now. I'll change everything immediately." Wouldn't that be nice? I'd bottle that up and sell it for $19.99 , but that's not real life.
So instead, I want you to start asking a different question. What am I going to do if he doesn't? And whew, that's a whole different conversation because now we're not talking about him, and I think sometimes we actually hide in that. We hide in the fact that we spend our life, energy, time Talking about him and what he is not doing in our marriage, it's a safe place [00:05:00] to be, if that makes any sense.
Because now to ask the other question, we're not talking about him, we're talking about you, and that can be scary and unsettling and, you know, just a whole lot of scary. It's scary. So but what, what do you need? What are you okay with? What are you not okay with? What needs to change for you to feel emotionally safe in this marriage?
And what happens if he doesn't change? Are you willing to continue living like you are? And what aren't you willing to live with? I know these questions are scary. Sometimes focusing on him, like I said, feels easier. If I'm focused on getting him to change, I don't have to think about what I'm gonna do if he doesn't, 'cause that, that is the scary part Because now you have to make some decisions.
You might have to say something. You might [00:06:00] have to hold a boundary, and it's really uncomfortable at first. I'm not gonna lie about that. Um, you may have to disappoint somebody. You may have to stop pretending something is okay when it is not. And you may have to face the fact that you don't actually control what happens next, and that's hard.
This work is hard. I don't wanna sugarcoat it for you ladies. Sometimes I think we've made healing sound like it's gonna be this big, beautiful journey where you journal and take bubble baths and suddenly discover your worth. But sometimes healing looks like sitting in your car crying because you just held a boundary, and every part of you wants to go back inside and take it back because you have all the feelings: guilt, remorse, uh, uncertainty.
You know, the whole, "I love him and I don't wanna make it hard for him." But it's not, and sometimes it's, it's not [00:07:00] sending the text. Sometimes it looks like going to bed without checking his phone. Sometimes it looks like saying, "No, I'm not actually okay with this." And sometimes it looks like getting help even though your husband thinks you don't need it.
That's not fun, but it changes you. And here's the other thing. You don't have to decide today whether you're staying married or getting divorced. Just put that up on the shelf, okay? I get that you may have spent two months, six months, two years, 10 years, 50 years trying to decide your marriage, but has anything changed with that?
Or are you still thinking the same thoughts you thought six months ago and six years ago, you know? No, it hasn't. So take that pressure off yourself. Put it up on the bookshelf. You're, you're not gonna decide that today. In my plan, in my, um, Soul Care Pathway, my program, we don't decide that. That's not our focus.
I think women hear, "Focus on yourself," and [00:08:00] immediately think somebody is trying to prepare them to leave their marriage. No. You can desperately want your marriage to work and start getting healthier. Those things actually exist or can exist together because you can love your husband and set a boundary.
You can hope he changes and stop waiting for him to go first. You can pray for your marriage and still acknowledge that something isn't okay. You can work on yourself without knowing exactly where your marriage ends up Actually, I think that's incredibly important because whatever happens with your marriage, I want you making those decisions, and I want you making them from a clearer, stronger place.
Not from panic, not after being awake until 3:00 AM in the morning checking his phone. Not because he had a good week and suddenly everything feels fine again, and not because he had a terrible week and now you're ready to, like, burn everything down. [00:09:00] I want you grounded enough to look at what is actually happening and trust yourself.
And this is also why I'm probably not the right coach for everybody. If somebody wants to sit with me for eight weeks and spend every conversation analyzing her husband, I am not your girl. And it's not because I don't care about what he's doing. Of course I do. His behavior matters, especially when we're talking about rebuilding trust.
But ladies, he's not sitting in front of me. You are. And I refuse to spend eight weeks helping you become an expert on him while you completely lose your mind and yourself. I would much rather help you become an expert on you. What do you need? What are you feeling? What are, what is your body telling you?
What does healthy actually look like for you? What are your boundaries? What are you responsible for and what are you not responsible for? What can you control and what can't you? Uh, and like, [00:10:00] what am I going to do with that information? Because that's where things start changing. Maybe he changes too, and I hope he does.
I hope your marriage becomes healthier and stronger and there's reconciliation and hope for you in your future I hope that there's real repentance if he has, um, hurt you, and accountability, and transparency, and whatever else needs to happen in your particular mar- marriage. But I can't promise you that.
Nobody should promise you that. But what I can tell you is that you don't need to spend another year sitting around waiting for somebody else to decide whether you're allowed to get healthier. You can actually start now. You can ask for help now. You can learn how to regulate yourself, ba- set boundaries, stop playing detective, start trusting yourself again.
You can start asking, "What do I want my life to look like?" Not someday, not when he finally gets it, now. So [00:11:00] if you've been waiting for him to go first, maybe today you don't need another conversation about what he needs to do. Maybe the question for today is simply, what am I willing to do? Not 10 things, ladies.
Let's break it down. Just one. What's one thing you've known you need to do that you keep putting off because you're waiting to see what he does, for life to get easier, for things to calm down, for a better day, a better week? No. What's one thing your gut is telling you you need to do? And I'm not talking about staying or going in your marriage.
I'm talking about what is that one thing you're thinking of right now that you know you've needed to do for a long time? That's where I would start And if you're sitting here thinking, "Okay, I know it. I know I need to do something, but I just don't know how. I know what that thing is, but I have no idea how to start that, implement it, do it, [00:12:00] be brave enough to do it.
H- oh my goodness." So good. You don't have to know yet. You just have to be willing to start. And I think that's actually all I wanna leave it at today, because this is pretty heavy, and it's maybe something new that you haven't thought about, but I want you to start focusing on you. You are a grown adult woman who is able to make grown adult decisions for yourself.
I think sometimes as women, we feel like we can't for some reason, and I don't know what that is. I've spent a lot of time trying to think about why don't we feel like we can't have permission to do X, Y, and Z without him? And I don't know what that is, but that's a lie. You're allowed to make decisions.
You get to say what goes into your yard and what goes out of your yard, and nobody else gets to say that. It may feel like that at some times, especially if you're in a [00:13:00] controlling marriage, but I'm here to tell you that's not truth. That's a lie. You're being manipulated, and you need to turn your ears off to that.
So go back to that one thing that instantly popped into your head that you know you need to do, and I want you to go and do it. And if you need help doing that, my program, Soul Care Pathway, that I love, is r- ready and waiting for you to join. I'll, uh, put the sales link, uh, to the page of the information page about it, but I love my program.
This is gonna take you and transform you in a way that you probably can't even imagine that you could be at in eight weeks. And I'm not promising to fix your husband and I'm not promising to fix your marriage, but I am promising to walk with you over the next eight weeks, taking you through the different steps you need to grieve the loss of what you thought, to grow, to rebuild, to learn how to stand up and set boundaries in your [00:14:00] marriage, to say what is okay and what's not okay, to start respecting yourself and trusting yourself.
And you're gonna get to do it with a community of women who are all going through the same thing, and that is the heart and soul of Soul Care is that when you can get with a group of women who know exactly what you're going through, they empathize with you. They don't just pity you or sympathize with you, they actually empathize with you because they're going through it too.
All the stories can be different. The trauma The stories are all different. The trauma of what happened can be different, but the pain is the same, and you're just met there with no shame, no guilt, just love and support for your soul, and I just love it. It's my heart and soul. I could talk for hours with you ladies about it.
But if you're curious about my program, click the link below. It will lead you to a page that will talk about it. Um, and if you're seriously considering it, I [00:15:00] would love to get on a phone call with you to learn about you and your circumstances and figure out whether this is a good fit for us both. Okay, ladies?
Well, thank you for tuning in and listening. I will see you next time
