Jamie and Elizabeth D, Marriage issues and Career change

Jamie originally contacted me with a long list of grievances about his wife, Elizabeth, and the state of their marriage. 

He felt, that they were not on same page and were being torn apart by jealousy and unmet expectations.  This led to their having trouble trying to communicate what they were feeling and what they needed

without fighting.

Jamie was honest and said he was feeling desperate, and this was his last effort to make the marriage work.

When I explained I work with couples, but do the sessions individually, they were both skeptical. 

This is very common when I first introduce the idea, because it is so different from the regular counseling model where many couples spend the entire session fighting and trying to get their spouse to change so they can finally be happy.

According to Elizabeth, what she realized is, the big benefit of individual sessions is that you don’t feel attacked during the session or end up leaving feeling worse than when you came in.

I found from personal experience, the traditional counseling model left me feeling hopeless and angry after every session.

I instead focus on empowering each person individually by working through the issues you bring to the marriage.

I refer to it, like in tennis, working your side of the net.  Once you see what hurts, past wounds, and expectations you are bringing to the marriage, you can be responsible for yourself, heal what needs to be healed and change your approach.

Then, to further use the tennis analogy, when you hit differently to the other person, they respond differently, and you will get different results.

You are not waiting for them to change. You change!

So instead of trying to control the other person, Jamie and Elizabeth made the decision to try and work on being better for each other. 

By changing how they approached each other, they were able to create more intimacy, be more authentic and vulnerable. This deepened their love for each other.

They let go of their list of grievances and their expectation that I fix the other person. 

They learned instead how to shift how they react and stopped trying to control the other person’s reactions.  Instead, they learned how to control themselves and to think and behave differently with their words and actions. 

When Elizabeth and I started working together, she told terrible stories about herself and had terrible self-talk, which caused her to feel very insecure and led to problems in her relationship with Jamie. 

I kept asking her, “Why are you telling yourself that story?” I helped her stop the negative self-talk and helped her to recognize that none of it was true.

She said that asking herself, “Why am I telling myself this story?” literally changed life her life.

I also helped her see how her fear of what people thought of her, was holding her back from making good decisions for herself and their marriage.

For example – She thought living in an apartment at her age was shameful.  Selling their house made fiscal sense, but she had to let go of her perceptions and societal expectations that she needed to live in a house. 

I kept asking her why and helped her dig deeper.

When she finally let go of her false ideals, they sold their house and they have been so much better off financailly ever since. 

Some times we have to face our biggest fears to find out that everything we feared was our greatest growth and learning.  It never turns out not to be as bad or awful as we expect.

Elizabeth also worked in a very stressful job and industry and was the main provider for Jamie and her 4 kids. Her dream was to teach fitness classes to help women achieve their goals, but felt stuck being the provider. 

I encouraged her to go after what she wanted, start taking steps and visualize how to move towards her goals.

She eventually had the courage to quit her job and she says she has never been happier and is now living the life she always wanted to live.

Her stepping out of the provider role, encouraged Jamie to work on being a better man and a better provider.

He now has his own very successful career and says he is even able to help other people as well because of coaching he received.

They tell me they now regularly ask themselves when issue pops up, “What would Wendy tell us?”

You will hear in the video them saying If they hadn’t met Wendy, they would not be where they are today – married and thriving!