Buckle up. I’m gonna get vulnerable on you. This is my marriage story:
My husband and I hit rock bottom so early on in our marriage.
We married in the spring of 2008, became pregnant with our first son a quick month after our wedding, and then the economy collapsed. And my smart, successful, confident husband came home in the middle of the workday with a suspicious box and an expression on his face that I’ll never forget.
That day, through no fault of his own, he lost an 11-year job to the financial crisis.
And on that same day, our sweet happy “honeymoon phase” died an abrupt death.
Instead of focusing on my status as “new wife” and “first-time-mom-to-be”, now I was focusing on my husband’s shitty mood. And everything he was doing that I didn’t like… and everything he wasn’t doing that I liked. All while my husband focused on securing our financial well-being, and my emotional well-being, all while the due date of our first child grew closer every day.
But I was too one-sided to see the situation with compassion and empathy for my husband. I was too caught up in my own needs. What I wasn’t getting. How my fairy-tale-based expectations of marriage weren’t being met. In hindsight, such a hollow mindset, yet not an uncommon one by any means.
As my husband focused more and more on work and became emotionally distant and stopped telling me details about things, I became cold… punishing… withholding… bitchy. I even threatened divorce.
So we tried therapy.
And talking about our relationship issues and rehashing old fights didn’t work for us.
Not only did we waste a ton of time and money on both male and female therapists, we’d often leave our sessions worse off then when we arrived.
Then something totally unexpected happened.
I began my formal training to become a Certified Life and Relationship Coach, and this thing I learned in one of my very first courses absolutely blew my freaking mind.
It changed me forever, actually.
This enlightening course was all about our “Six Universal Human Needs” and there began the process of me developing a deeper understanding of why I do what I do … and why others in my life very important to me do what they do… that upleveled my way of thinking. I was able to make so much more sense of my Self and others, empowering me with a way better mindset.
It was the exact self-awareness slap in the face I needed to wake up and recognize my own power and ability to create change.
Now I help others save their marriages.
And I get a lot of individuals and couples who come to me after having tried therapy, wanting to try the coaching approach.
Want to discover how personal coaching can help you transform your own relationship? If the answer is YES, I invite you to apply for a FREE 30-minute Certified Coaching Call with me here:
Client testimonials and experiences: www.JenniferBlank.com/testimonials
