Do you find yourself fairly miserable within your marriage? The person you thought you married made you feel happy and strong at one point and this person in front of you now makes you feel unhappy and weak? Do you sometimes think that being alone or starting over with someone else is the answer to all of your discontent?
The answer to your state of unhappiness is inside of you and even more important it is not what is happening within your marriage but more what happened within your childhood and adolescence. No, I’m not trying to blame your parents for all of your problems, in fact, I’m certain they are no more to blame than their parents. However, your great-grandparents, your grandparents, and your parents have unintentionally written the story of your past as well as your future. From the time you were born till after adolescence, you have been provided a story of who you are, what love looks like and means to you; it has set fears and insecurities in place or sometimes false notions of importance or strong sense of inner and exterior strengths. Whatever your story may be, it has been created generations before you, it lives within your family, it lives inside of you and it will be passed down to your children in one form or another unless you start to identify the story, understand where it came from and begin to alter it as you wish.
These stories that were implanted in us also dictate who we are attracted to and fall in love with. If we sat down and listed all of the ways you think your spouse makes you feel, I guarantee it will align with the same feelings you had or have toward your family or childhood. We are at our most vulnerable in life in our childhood and adolescence. This is the time when we are still growing and forming both emotionally and physically. We are built to survive this time by developing psychological defenses. Later in life, we unknowingly choose relationships that will bring out those wounds of our childhood, our psychological defenses are broken down because we are adults and more capable of healing and dealing with these wounds, and we are forced to truly face our pain.
Face our real pain – not the pain you think your spouse is the cause of. Once you understand your story, face the fact that your pain comes from within you and not because of whatever your spouse is doing, you can move toward being 100% in charge of your own happiness. You can free yourself from the story your childhood established for you, stop this story from continuing to replay in your life over and over in each relationship you develop, and choose your future story based on real facts and knowledge about who you truly are. You have all the power within your life to change it and you have all of the power within your marriage to change it as well.