You're listening to this save the marriage podcast,
your marriage can be saved and strengthened if
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information,
Join doctor Lee Ba as he explores ways
for you to improve your relationship and your
life, starting right now.
Hey, this is Lee welcome, and this is
the save the Marriage podcast.
The podcast that I designed a number of
years back. Now in order to help you
save your relationship. You know, when I started
this podcast, I wondered
exactly how much I had to talk about.
And here we are almost 400
episodes in if you include a couple of
bonus episodes.
Wow. What a journey it's been? This has
been listened to around the world. It's been
download now over 3750000.00
times it amaze me. It tells me a
couple of things. 1 thing is that people
are out to save their marriage. The other
thing it tells me is that people are
in trouble in their marriage. And I want
to be a part of your process of
rebuilding wherever you are In fact,
that's what I wanna talk about today. Where
you find yourself in the midst of this
crisis?
Are So in my saved the marriage system,
which is really kind of the the beginning
point for a lot of people of walking
into saving their marriage.
They have to get there first, but that's
the place where they dig in and really
learn the skills where you can learn the
skills you need to save your marriage. But
in that program,
have a quick start guide.
What I realized years ago is that you
can't just say, marriage crisis. Here's where you
are, and and get busy, it's marriage crisis,
there are 8 stages to a marriage crisis.
And each 1 actually needs a different approach
Now there are parts that, you know, they
might share. So 1 and 2 have some
similarities and, you know, 7 and 8 have
some similarities. There's a big break at 1
point that... Now really kind of changes the
whole pattern of this, and that is when
a spouse moves out, and I I go
through that in each of the stages.
And describe that for you in death.
But
that is kind of the stage of the
marriage crisis.
And what I wanna focus on today is
the stage of your awareness
of the crisis.
Because that can happen at at different levels.
And in fact, it can grow as it
it goes along, but there are different levels
to
understanding and realizing what's going on on around
you. You have you notice that some people
just kinda go through
and are kind of oblivious of things that
are going on around them.
And I've had this experience where I've talked
to people and 1 person will tell me
about off these horrible things that happened, and
someone who was with in the same time
will go, wow. I didn't even notice that.
I wasn't aware of that going on. All
So we all have a different level of
kind of
situational awareness to use a term from, you
know, from
military and from safety perspective.
Situational awareness means it went... Wherever you are,
you kind of understand
what's going on around you that may put
you at risk.
Situational awareness is something that, many people who
are, you know, trying to be in protective
occupations want to practice. In fact,
when I was going through all of my
first aid training, it's kind of the first
point is situational awareness stop and notice what's
around you.
I remember the... And the times when I
was going through each of the first aid
trainings, And I I've done so many first
aid trainings in my life. I remember, you
know, when I was,
training for junior lifeguard guarding, as a teenager
at the pool, we had to go through
that. And then, again, at another program, I
was in, we had to all be certified
in first aid. And then again, when I
was helping out with my son's a Cup
scout and then voice out program. And then
again, as I was training to be a
Scuba instructor, I had to go through an
extensive first aid training. And the first rule
stop and notice.
Before you just jump in and do something,
stop and notice.
That's building the situational awareness.
You're able to look around and and kind
of scan for what the threat is. What
what problems do you might have coming towards
you.
So Well, this is partly the case with
a marriage crisis.
A lot of people people... A lot of
times, people just jump in. And start doing
everything they can,
looking at articles, looking at videos, looking at
all kinds of things and they just kinda
throw it under this thing of I'll do
this. Right? And and it kinda feels like
that, you know, throw everything against the wall.
Let's see what sticks,
except for some of them fight against each
other.
And if you're not aware of the subtle
of what you're doing just because you don't
have the awareness, you just start sling stuff
at your marriage.
Much to the cha of your spouse and
much to the detriment of the relationship.
So part of what we're starting with is
this
situational awareness of where things are. So let's
just talk through
these stages.
That happen
when there's a marriage crisis. So first of
all, we've already assumed
that there is a marriage
crisis.
And the starting point for this, the starting
point, the first stage,
I referred to is
asleep.
That's when,
you know, the crisis is brewing, things are
happening, but the person is just like they
asleep at the wheel. They don't even notice
what's going on around them.
And for most people, this is a starting
point.
Oftentimes, a spouse is struggling long before the
spouse admits to the struggling.
And by the way, oftentimes the marriage is
kind of sliding into a crisis,
and neither person is even aware of it.
Sometimes people talk to me, and they'll tell
me you know, that the crisis started, and
they'll name a time a week ago, 2
weeks ago, a month ago, 6 months ago,
a year ago, 5 years ago. But as
they start talking to me, it's very clear
that the crisis pre their awareness.
So what was happening?
There were asleep.
They didn't notice what was happening.
So sleep doesn't mean you're trying to ignore
it. Right? It means that
Your mind is elsewhere,
sleeping,
zeroed in on another reality.
Kinda reminds me of what I see so
often with that push button, the pause button
marriage, that pause button marriage, meaning they hit
the pause button, they pushed it
of and they didn't really think much about
it,
but slowly over time, the relationship is being
eaten away, and they don't know it.
Because they're in the La land of whatever
it was
that led them to hit the pause button,
parenting or job or whatever it was, so
they hit pause and they stopped paying attention.
So they fell asleep in the midst of
the whole marriage
Here's the problem.
In those situations,
once spouse often wakes up before the other
1 does.
And realizes there's a problem.
So 1 person often coming to me has
been asleep for some time and wasn't aware
that maybe even the spouse was doing some
things either to help the relationship or to
help themselves,
to deal with what's going on to deal
with the disconnect to deal with the pain,
but they have that level of being having
been asleep.
So sleep is what happens when the crisis
is going on and you're not even aware
that it's building.
And so then we hit that next point
of aware.
You know something's is not right.
And many times,
this can be either a person who kinda
of wakes up and says, things aren't right.
There's something wrong here. I'm aware that my
spouse is always irritated or I'm aware that
my spouse doesn't wanna spend time with me,
or I'm aware that I am always irritated.
And I don't wanna spend time with my
spouse. I'm aware we're not getting what we
want out of relationship. I'm aware that things
have changed.
So there's an awareness to this.
And at this point,
it would be really cool if everybody suddenly
it, hey, we need to address this.
We're where there's a problem, let's figure out
how to get through it. The reality is
that's not the case.
When I first wrote
the primary module in the saved the marriage
system,
I wrote it as a way for people
to have a great marriage.
And the problem is that very few people
look at a marriage
process or a marriage program,
not when their marriage is okay, and they
wanna make it better.
They don't look until it's
less than okay. Right? It's in trouble.
Or
And the problem with
aware
is that most people just kinda go, oh,
I hope it kate takes care of itself.
Well, we'll wait for the kids to get
old enough. Well, we'll wait for this other
time to come.
They don't really take action.
And the problem is that being aware of
a problem
and not taking action
doesn't change the trajectory very much.
Sometimes people tell me about this stage as
the place where they, you know, maybe try
to take a few changes.
Maybe they tried date night a little bit.
Or maybe they try to be really nice
with the presence or try a a holiday
or a vacation or something like that. Just
something that they felt might be like a
band aid.
And what they didn't realize was there was
always
already a fest
infection going on in the relationship.
And so the awareness usually doesn't lead to
much change. In fact, in the cases I've
seen where they become aware and decide to
take action. It doesn't take a whole lot
to get things back on track.
But most of the time,
they let it go.
They're aware that something's not right,
But they don't take the time, the energy
the effort to figure out what it would
be to turn it around.
Which leads to the next stage,
which is when you go on alert.
When you're at alert,
you're very clear that something is wrong.
And it usually is something that is about
your spouse Right? At alert, most people are
looking for what's wrong with my spouse? Why
is my spouse not happy? Why is my
spouse? Know, spending time away. Why is my
spouse not wanting to have deeper discussions. Why
is my spouse not wanting to spend times?
It's it's in many ways, you almost a
blame of the spouse. The spouse is the
problem here.
Not noticing that it's the relationship that's the
problem. It's So at alert,
sometimes people begin to get into a blame
process.
They start making accusations to each other.
They're on alert that something's wrong. They're on
alert that the marriage is having trouble, but
they're also
under the belief.
That the spouse needs to change something.
Something's wrong with that spouse and they need
to get it right.
As you can imagine,
spouse has a different opinion about that. Know
what happens in a marriage when both people
believe that it's the other person.
That's causing the problem.
And so unfortunately, even at alert, only a
certain percentage of people will take action
and others continue to think that the spouse
will get in a better mood. The spouse
will come around. The spouse will figure out
what's wrong
and they keep moving forward,
which leads us to
the next stage.
And and that's alarm.
Now the alarm bells are going off.
Now we see that there is a big
problem. Now we see that things are beginning
to fall apart.
And suddenly, at alarm, people in in reactionary
mode. They're desperate to go to therapy or
go to a conference or have a book
read a a spouse read a book or
do something active.
And so in alarm, they're suddenly doing everything
to scramble around to get things going. Now,
the problem is,
that while their activity level suddenly skyrocket,
the relationship energy has bottomed out.
The connection has bottomed out.
And so they're applying all of this to
a more desperate situation and often
just the app actions of that drive the
spouse even further away.
Had somebody who said that just this last
week that their spouse had said, you know,
don't know what to do. I think I
need to get out of the relationship. I
don't want to be married anymore.
And the other spouse, I And the next
moment said, here's a book about how we
can work on our relationship.
And the spouse looked at and said, I
just said,
I don't want to be married.
Now, what happened was the spouse with the
book had hit alarm.
The spouse
that didn't wanna work on things was well
past alarm at this point.
They were well aware of the marriage crisis
long before both of them became aware of
it.
And that's generally what happens. There's an uneven
place in this.
Many times, I hear people say, you know,
I I worked on this for years,
but the spouse didn't know about the crisis,
while 1 person is
saying they're working on the relationship.
You really can't do this. You can't say
you've worked on the relationship when your spouse
isn't even aware that there's a problem, but
that's often the claim that's made.
So we would progress through that process. On
a regular basis I see this.
People go from asleep to suddenly being aware.
Something wakes them up and they go, oh,
we've got a problem here. Well, I hope
it goes away to alert.
This problem seems pretty bad. Come I hope
my spouse gets in line
to
alarm. Oh my gosh. We're really in trouble.
My spouse
has to... Shift gears has to come back
into this relationship so we can make it
work.
So what's the alternative?
Oh, it's real simple.
1 word. Act.
When you become aware that there's a problem,
act.
When you have an alert,
going off that something really is brewing and
and your spouse really isn't a happy.
Act.
When you are at alarm, you still act,
but you have to act more carefully.
Back when I was a hospital chaplain. Sometimes,
we had a couple of cases where someone
would come in who had been suffering from
hypothermia, extreme hypothermia so much so that the
person was coma and very close to death.
And what they had learned over the years
is you can't simply warm the person back
up rapidly. You have to slowly
bring them back to body temperature.
Otherwise, they go into shock. They can't handle
the stress of the change.
They've gone into it kind of a deep
state of hi nation. With a cold,
and you can't suddenly bring them out of
that right up to normal body temperature. The
body shuts down, the heart has
an attack. And many things happen they go
wrong because of that. And so it has
to happen very slowly,
but persistent
they have to act. They can't simply have
the body sitting there, waiting for it to
naturally warm up, They have to move it
along,
but not too fast.
And the fact is that many times I
see people taking the wrong actions. So you
have to act
but you wanna act to make sure you're
doing it in a way that actually addresses
the issues that have been a problem.
Many times, people tell me about things they're
doing to fix the issue,
but they fail to notice what the real
issue is.
Had somebody said, well, I tried to do
date night.
And
my spouse said, I have no desire to
go on a date with you. So I
don't know what to do now. See, the
problem was,
the real issue was disconnection. And date night
is a leap frog in connection. It's kinda
like adding too much heat to that poor.
Hyper
body that hypo body can't handle that much
connection.
It has to be slowly warmed in. There
are ways to do it.
But the danger is trying to throw everything
at it at once.
You can easily
overwhelm
a spouse when
there's a big crisis,
and you simply are doing it because you're
in an alarm stage and desperate to make
things right.
So what do you do?
I've already said it at every stage act.
My hope is that first 1, asleep.
That you're well beyond that.
In fact, my guess is you're well beyond
to sleep because you're listening to a podcast
on how to save your marriage.
Which tells me that you are at least
aware, if not at alert or alarm.
So you wanna make a shift to act.
How are you gonna act that will bring
the system back online that will bring the
connection. Back into the relationship.
Here's my hope for you. I have the
save of the marriage system. It's a program
that I have had now
for 20 years in various stages of development.
As soon as we figure out something better,
we added in. And I have a team
of coaches that work with me to make
sure that we are keeping on top of
that.
Because what we do is we learn, we
reflect and we teach.
And part of what we're trying to do
is make sure that you have the most
helpful.
Most effective and most up to date information
to help you move through that process. The
save the mirror system is designed to walk
you from disconnection back to connection to understand
how to do that.
That It works from A3C
model. That's my model. My 3 c model
for restoring a... A relationship which is based
in connection. Change and creating a new path.
Those are the 3 c's. Only 3 c's
you have to focus on,
connect, change, create a new path.
My hope is that if you haven't found
a path that's working.
Even if you've made mistakes in the past,
Even if you've
chosen to ignore it in the past that
now you're stepping into this, now you're ready
to take action. And if you are, Please
join me at save the marriage dot com
that's save the marriage dot com. If you
already have my system,
notice where maybe you have been waiting for
something to shift instead of taking action.
It's time for us to move this along.
It's time for us to make sure that
your relationship comes back to where you want
it to be a loving relationship that you
both would treasure.
So join me at save the marriage dot
com. Now, to get the most up to
date leading edge
information on what to do.
Take the free week of Vip. I offer
it there. It's a free week of my
Vip program. Go ahead and grab it. It's
1 free week.
And also sign up to meet with 1
of my coaches. It's also free.
It's about a 15 to 20 minute get
started session to make sure we get you
on the right path.
The path that doesn't work
is being asleep,
slowly waking up to an awareness.
But allowing it to go further to the
point where you're suddenly alert to the problem,
still not taking action up aligning yourself with
alarm
and then still not acting.
Wherever you are
aware, alert, alarm.
It's time to act. Join me at save
the marriage dot com that's save the myriad,
dot com.
This is Lee Ba wishing you the best
as you work. To save your marriage.
You've been listening to save the marriage podcast
For more information and help, please visit us
and save the marriage dot com.