Lindsay (00:00)
It is January 1st. You are going to be waking up today. I mean, you already woke up. You're to be seeing all of the talk about New Year's resolutions online. And if you are someone who is thinking less about resolutions and thinking more about how you can't do another year like this in your marriage, I just want you to know that you're not alone. And if you are thinking this, then this moment that you're in right now, it is actually one of the most important choice points of your whole entire life.
I am Lindsay, this is Loving With Intention, let us dive right in. So tons of experts say that January sees the most breakups, the most separations, and there's also a real uptick in people filing for divorce compared to the previous few months. So basically it's like you just survived the holidays together, you showed up at functions, you put on a happy face, maybe you were arguing about finances, there were differing expectations around the holidays.
Maybe you're feeling unappreciated or disrespected, unheard about what's really important to you, lots of bickering,
challenging extended family situations that just really highlighted everything that's not working in your marriage. And now you're sitting here thinking if nothing has changed in the last three years, in the last five years, 10 years, maybe even 20 years, then it probably never will. And here's the thing, that feeling that you're feeling, it is real. For one thing, external stressors absolutely put strain on relationships.
So it makes sense that things feel extra hard around Christmas because the holidays come fully loaded with expectations and emotional ties from the past to the holidays. There's highs and lows, changes in spending and schedules. The list goes on and on and on. And did I mention extended family stress? Because I know I did. I'm just saying it again because...
This is something that I hear from so many of the people that I work with and also just from people in my life. I've talked about it before, we get triggered with our partners. Well, we definitely get triggered in extended family situations. If you're with your parents or even grandparents and you're seeing them interact, we get triggered with our family of origin. So it makes sense that there is stress. So just naming all of that, that it makes sense that these external stressors
really bring out stress in our relationships. And if you're finding that that heaviness is remaining now that it's January and my gosh, it's January and you're really questioning things, it is possible maybe that you have hit a breaking point that the holidays amplified the problems you know you have in your marriage to the point where you feel like you can't ignore them anymore. And here's what happens at breaking points.
A lot of people will make the, you know, fine, I'm done decision and leave. Like this is it, the final straw. I'm just done. Or the dust will settle, life will get busy again. And a lot of people, just don't decide on anything, really. They just go back to the unhappiness, back to going through the motions. And then another year passes and then another one. And the truth is there is another option. And that option is really making a conscious choice.
And I am not here to tell you that if you are having these big feelings about your marriage and questioning things, that you need to stay in your marriage. Sometimes divorce is the right choice. I don't actually believe that everyone should stay together. Hopefully, you know, if you can, if you do leave your marriage, it can be done with love and respect and you can move through it in that way and have someone support you in doing that. And what I do believe is so many people break up.
separate and even divorce without ever having the tools in the first place to have a thriving, loving, connected marriage. We never learned how to do this, so of course we all struggle. So here's what I know and want to say all the time, and if you've been here before, you've heard it before, nothing changes if nothing changes. So if you don't change something, nothing around you is going to change. If you don't make a conscious choice, if you just let the dust settle and go back to going through the motions,
you actually are choosing by default. And that default choice is choosing another year of the same unhappiness, more resentment building, another year of feeling disconnected. So here's what that conscious choice actually looks like. It's a commitment to figuring it out. Not just I'll try harder or not just thinking maybe things will get better. I mean, making it your mission to create change if there is a part of you who still
wants to be in your marriage and thinks that, you know, maybe you don't even think something is possible, but wonders, you you've been here at Loving With Intention and you wonder, could this really be possible in my marriage? Could the things that Lindsay's saying that she's sharing about her clients and her relationship, could this be possible in my marriage? If you're thinking any of those things or you're just like, ⁓ I don't want a divorce. ⁓ I hear a lot of clients who come to me and they say divorce is more expensive than relationship coaching.
So we're diving in here and sometimes they say that with kind of a laugh and it's also legit. So if you're thinking any of those things, it's this commitment to actually learning how relationships work, maybe even getting support just to do whatever it takes to see if there is a path forward that maybe you just can't see right now. So for me, when me and my partner got back together after our breakup years ago, my conscious choice came from a place of I can't have a repeat
of our relationship before the breakup. We broke up because of, like I've shared, frequent blow up fights, both of us not feeling heard or seen or understood. There were heaps of resentment, a very large lack of repair. Very, my God, it's very rarely did we repair, and if we did, it was very surface level and my gosh, like just thinking to the past, even my apologies that felt so genuine, I never really understood the depth.
of what I was apologizing for and I would say that probably goes for him as well. So I was just like, I don't want to do that again. There was so much hurt and we knew we loved each other. We got back into a relationship. I knew that there had to be a better way. So
My conscious choice was I'm going all in. I'm choosing to figure this out, so I read the books, I listened to the podcasts, I made it my mission, and then I got a relationship coach. And notice that I said I did all of that. At that time, my partner, now fiance, was not doing any of the work with me, quote unquote, doing the work. So if you're listening to this thinking, but my spouse won't work on things, they've said no to therapy, they've told me they don't care about emotional stuff or they don't want to talk about emotions.
or they don't care about intimacy or that they don't want to work on themselves. They just don't. I know they don't. That, all of that, it doesn't dictate your conscious choice or the possibility of your marriage getting better. I held that belief for the first part of our relationship before the breakup that I needed him to want to change and get on board with that. But getting back together, I decided I was done telling myself that I needed him to do the work with me. So when I fully dove into learning how to have a healthy, loving relationship,
it revealed so very much to me, including the fact that every time I approached him to do the work with me, I was doing so many things that were actually pushing him away. And it turned out he wasn't actually opposed to working on things, even though he kept saying no. So of course I would think he's never going to work on things and he doesn't want to work on things. That wasn't actually the reality when I changed my patterns and my approach.
then he started to do the work with me and like I've shared these days, he's all in. So I can completely understand now when I look back why he would have kept saying no. I was full of blame and shaming. I was focused only on my needs. I was making him out to be the bad guy. I was disrespecting his choices in our arguments. I was just using relationship poisons. I was just using hurtful things and I was never trying to see, or understand him.
So why would he want to join in and do the work with me? It makes perfect sense that he wouldn't want to in that state.
So the thing is, when I talk about you going all in on you, I don't mean forever on your own. Of course, it's so important for your spouse to look at their own patterns and to work on things too. And the reality is that is much more likely to happen if you go first. And I'm not saying that they are going to start relationship coaching even, but that you're so much more likely to be able to have conversations about relationship things if you start to do the work first.
Whether you do choose to work on your marriage or you choose to leave, it's powerful to make that choice consciously. Not made out of exhaustion and emotion in a moment of just like, fine, I've had it. And not made by just doing nothing and hoping that it gets better. If you're thinking about this now and thinking, okay, I do want to see what's possible. I want to know if there's a path forward that I can't see right now. You can head to the show notes, grab my free Love Journey roadmap. It is 17 pages, this guide, and it dives into the three pillars of the love journey process.
that I use in all of my work with couples and individuals, giving you action steps so that you know you're actually making a conscious choice and conscious change, the kind that makes a difference in your marriage. And I really wanna celebrate two individuals. So from two entirely different relationships, two individuals joined my love journey private coaching over the holidays, and I celebrate the heck out of them because they made the conscious choice to go all in.
And honestly, just making that choice, it starts the momentum of things changing. That's where everything starts to shift in a new direction. So your intentional action this week is to grab that roadmap in the show notes if you want to explore what's possible. And of course, my email is in the show notes too. If you do want to go deeper, I have so got you. Thank you so much for being here. And truly, if you are feeling any of those hard feelings, if that heaviness is still lingering.
past the holidays, I just want to say that I see you. It makes sense that this comes up. The holidays are such an emotionally ridden, that's not even a sentence. They are just, it's a lot. It is a lot. So I see you, you're not alone. You can always reach out just for an ear. And remember, truly nothing changes if nothing changes. So let's make the conscious choice together this week, this new year, to do things differently, whatever that might look like for you.
Thank you again so much for being here and if you are loving the podcast, I would so appreciate if you would share this episode or your favorite episode with someone else so that we can spread the love repuls in the world. Sending so much love, goodbye.
