Is your marriage feeling suffocating? In this video, we discuss the signs of a suffocating marriage and offer tips on how to address the issue. We explore the concept of "pushes and pulls" in relationships, and how to identify and correct behaviors that are pushing your spouse away.
We also discuss the importance of self-reflection and communication in overcoming feelings of suffocation. If you are feeling suffocated in your marriage, we encourage you to reach out for help. Marriage Helper offers a variety of resources, including coaching and workshops, to help you improve your relationship. Don't wait until it's too late. Watch this video and learn how to create a marriage that you both enjoy.
In this video: • What does it mean when love feels suffocating? • Signs of a suffocating relationship • How to identify and correct push behaviors • The importance of self-reflection and communication • Resources for help
Watch now and learn how to save your marriage from suffocation.
Is your marriage feeling suffocating? In this video, we discuss the signs of a suffocating marriage and offer tips on how to address the issue. We explore the concept of "pushes and pulls" in relationships, and how to identify and correct behaviors that are pushing your spouse away.
We also discuss the importance of self-reflection and communication in overcoming feelings of suffocation. If you are feeling suffocated in your marriage, we encourage you to reach out for help. Marriage Helper offers a variety of resources, including coaching and workshops, to help you improve your relationship. Don't wait until it's too late. Watch this video and learn how to create a marriage that you both enjoy.
In this video: • What does it mean when love feels suffocating? • Signs of a suffocating relationship • How to identify and correct push behaviors • The importance of self-reflection and communication • Resources for help
Watch now and learn how to save your marriage from suffocation.
What do I do if my marriage feels suffocating? Chances are, if you're watching this video, that you might've thought that very same thought several times, or maybe you've heard your spouse say it. Well, that's what we're talking about on today's episode. Today, I'm joined by Jared. Jared is a Marriage Helper, certified Coach, and he also oversees our membership. But make sure and stick around to the end, because we're going to tell you how you can get signed up for that membership today. But right now, let's talk about what to do if your marriage feels suffocating. On today's episode of Relationship Radio. Well, jared, thanks for being here today.
Speaker 2:
Thanks so much, jason, it's good to be back.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely Jared. We were kind of talking about this beforehand. You said that you kind of have some personal stories to relate to this, so I guess the first question that I'll ask you, and then you can run with it, is what does it mean when we say love feels suffocating? What exactly are we talking about there?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, a hundred percent. So when I first became aware of marriage helper, I was actually what we affectionately call the reluctant spouse. I was the spouse who wanted out of my marriage. I was the one who felt suffocated. So suffocation can mean so much to so many different people. So there's really not a good, one-size-fits-all answer, but just general things that we hear. I feel like there's too many demands on me. I feel like life is just overwhelming in general and my marriage doesn't recharge my battery. It actually makes me less energetic when I have to deal with my spouse.
Speaker 2:
Or sometimes people feel suffocated when it seems like there's a different option out there. Why would I do the hard thing at home when there's this much, much easier person that I could relate to outside? We see that kind of thing happening all the time. So I think a good general strategy try to understand why you feel suffocated. Now many of you are here and it's your partner that feels suffocated and they're not really talking to you. In that case, I would strongly advise you, if you possibly can, think of everything about your partner that you know for all the years that you've known them and try to infer why would this person feel suffocated? Am I doing something that's making them feel suffocated that I could possibly correct, or is there some situation that exists that's making them feel suffocated that I might be able to influence in some way to create change? If there's nothing you feel like you can do, then the next right thing to do would be to work on yourself and wait until your spouse becomes receptive to working with you. In that case, you would be gaining a lot of personal confidence and strength and intellectually, you know, you'd be clearing your mind. You'd, emotionally, you'd be living the kind of life that you enjoy, rather than one that's just full of terror or anxiety or whatever you're feeling, and then, spiritually, you'd just be doing the right thing as much as possible. Now we call that system the pies and we have tons of resources that you can look up. That would be what you would do.
Speaker 2:
Now to my friends out there that are themselves feeling suffocated, I strongly advise that, before you make any moves with your marriage, why don't you try to understand why you feel the way you feel? Maybe you already know. Maybe you say my spouse is so controlling that I just feel like I can't be myself. I feel like I can't breathe. Every time I'm at home, I feel like all my agency is taken away. I have no choices, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:
If you are readily able to identify what your issue is, why don't you, before you move to a new situation, before you leave your marriage, why don't you see if there's to a new situation before you leave your marriage? Why don't you see if there's some kind of mitigating strategy? You can call and talk to one of our coaches. You can come to any of our weekend workshops that we do. We have toolkits for that kind of thing, boundaries and criteria, what we call stops and cores. There's all kinds of resources that we have.
Speaker 2:
If you either don't understand why you feel this way, or if you understand why you feel this way but you don't know what to do about it, just changing your venue, just going somewhere else, a different relationship or to your own place or something like that, it will not solve the problem. It can't solve the problem. If the problem exists inside of you, you'll take it with you when you go to the new relationship, and that is a very, very sad situation to see people end up in. And so you know, as a fellow reluctant spouse, my heart is for you. I don't want you to be in a bad relationship. Keeping marriages limping along for another few years is not the business that Marriage Helper is in. We want your marriage to be the kind of relationship that you really enjoy being a part of, and I will tell you, I am so very happy that I did not ultimately leave my relationship, although it still took me about two years to get back to reconciliation. I'm so happy I did not leave my relationship because today it's such a better place.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so, jared, what are some? What are some signs maybe of of a suffocating relationship? What does that kind of look like?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, um. So if you were going to try to tell if your partner felt suffocated, I would look for things like this Are they generally trying to avoid you? Do they seem annoyed when you're around? Are they using what I call comfort strategies, spending a lot of extra money or playing a lot of video games? Or maybe they're drinking a lot things of that nature? Does it seem like the same problems come up over and over again? I have this issue at work, or have this certain kind of health struggle, or I want to get fitter, but I just can't seem to be able to do it. Are you seeing patterns like that? If you are, it's possible that your partner is stuck and maybe your marriage relationship could be changed to enable them to get better.
Speaker 2:
If you are not certain if you are feeling suffocated or not, you're just generally unhappy, then what I would encourage you to do is why don't you just get alone somewhere with your thoughts? Get a notepad, write down everything you can think of, just for maybe like a day. Just get alone with your own thoughts. If I had my marriage any way I wanted it to be, if I could have the kind of job I wanted or the kind of house I wanted. What am I looking for? Here's a really great question to ask yourself. If money were no object, if failure was totally impossible and if nobody could be hurt, what would you do with your life different from what you're doing right now? And if you just cannot think of an answer to that, probably you're suffocating. If your answer is something like, well, I would have a billion dollars, well then, see, money is no object. Why did you pick a billion dollars? What would you do with it? If your answer was, well, I would go help people. I would help. What kind of people I'd help? The kind of people who are drowning with their bills. Okay, are you drowning with your bills? Like, see, whatever answer you're going to get from a question like that, it's going to reflect something inside of you. It's going to clue you into what might be going on on a deeper level.
Speaker 2:
And write all that stuff down and ask yourself that question, maybe over several days or even several weeks or months, and get a full orb view of what's going on in your mind, rather than just to sit in the pain of it when you kind of have like this weird cloud in your mind, rather than just to sit in the pain of it, when you kind of have like this weird cloud in your mind, you can't really think. You're just. I don't know what's wrong with my life. I just don't like it.
Speaker 2:
Please don't sit in that spot, because by the time people come to us and seek help, they've sat in that spot so long their heart has fallen asleep. Long their heart has fallen asleep. Their sensitivity is gone. They don't feel love anymore, really from any source. They just feel sort of an empty hollow. It's almost like they're dead inside and it's very hard to help people.
Speaker 2:
Now. We're really good at it, but it's so much easier to help people if they will reach out before they get to that state. And if you believe that your relationship is one that would never, ever change it doesn't matter what you do then you're in the most extreme danger of feeling suffocated. It's important that you reach out sooner rather than later. It doesn't have to be a hard thing. Call up one of our coaches, even if you just buy one hour, have somebody sit down with you and just look through your life and help you think about it, just with some extra eyeballs from an outside, objective source, somebody who's knowledgeable, somebody that's not going to get in there and just mess you up. There's all kinds of people in the world that will just mess you up, so you got to know who to trust when you open up like this. But uh, any of our coaches would be a safe person to do that with.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely Um Jared. What are certain behaviors that uh so for the spouse who might be suffocating the other spouse? What are certain behaviors that might make love feel suffocating? Would like jealousy or like control with those things be things that can make it suffocating? Would like jealousy or like control, would those things be things that could? Make it suffocating.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, a hundred percent. So here at Marriage Over, we have this concept of pushes and pulls. Everything you do falls into one of those two categories. It's either pushing your spouse further away from you or it's pulling them in Things like jealousy. Those are strong pushes, because jealousy makes it seem like you're doing something bad or wrong all the time, and I always have to watch over you.
Speaker 2:
I have to like you wouldn't just give me your affection unless I'm taking it. You know that's sort of the position that jealousy puts you in. I don't believe you would love me unless I'm taking it. You know that's sort of the position that jealousy puts you in. I don't believe you would love me unless I forced you to. Really is where you end up going with that. It's similar to control. Control would say I don't trust you to make the right decisions, so I'm going to make those decisions for you. You know, hey, I want to go hang out with my friends. Well, I don't trust you to go hang out with your friends and keep me in your mind. Therefore, you can't go hang out with your friends. Or, if you go, I have to come with you, or if we go hang out with your friends, we have to do these particular activities and we have to stay away from these particular people and you end up in a situation where there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of just anytime I'm not able to really truly be myself I'm. I end up getting held back. My personal growth and development ends up getting held back. Now I will say there's a flip side to that coin, because there are people in the world I was one of those people when I don't feel good, I use comfort strategies like playing too many video games or hanging out with my friends too much. It's entirely possible to go play too much ping pong and totally ignore your marriage and your bills and stuff like that, and whenever we do that, we're in danger of becoming addicted. So there has to be a balance between doing the right thing even if it feels uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:
Doing the right thing it's very rewarding if you do the right thing, but it does require sacrifice sometimes. Doing the right thing it's very rewarding if you do the right thing, but it does require sacrifice sometimes. And just living a life where you just do whatever feels good, with no real care or concern for how it affects other people. You might feel bad that your actions have hurt other people, but if you don't feel bad enough to actually correct your actions, then you're in a place where you're really going to be causing a lot more trouble. You're building up a debt that is going to have to be answered at some point, and so the strategy really would be examine your motives, examine what you do, actually Examine your coping strategies, the things that bring you comfort, and then examine whether you're acting in ways that is pushing your spouse further away or if you're acting in ways that's pulling them to you.
Speaker 2:
A wife who acts critically toward her husband that's a strong push.
Speaker 2:
But consider this husband and I'm not just picking on husbands, it's you know, wives and husbands both do this.
Speaker 2:
But consider this Does your wife really know that, if she had a problem, that you would take the time to listen to her not solve all her problems, but to listen to her? Does she know that? If she doesn't know that, might that be one of the reasons that she feels like she has to come at you with a lot of criticism? See, the criticism is wrong, and not listening is wrong, and so, in order to solve it, you can't just say well, look, you did all this bad critical behavior. Therefore, you're at fault and I'm not. Can't say that. We have to say I'm going to own 100% of my. Maybe I'm 10% wrong. I'm going to own 100% of that 10%, and that is the thing I'm going to work on, Because, before I give up on this particular relationship, I'm going to make sure I've done everything that I possibly can to make it better and, and if both partners are committed to doing that, there really is no limit to how good things can become.
Speaker 1:
And another thing to note as well with talking about push behaviors is if, if your spouse is feeling suffocated or feels like you're doing all these push behaviors and you don't think that you're doing all these push behaviors and you don't think that you're doing the push behaviors, they're the ones that get to determine whether it's a push or a pull, because it is all about the emotion that it that it evokes in them, not what you intend. So you might intend you know an action to to be great and your spouse it might evoke a negative emotion and that's considered a push. So the most important part, if, if that's the case, is to be, you know, very communicative with your spouse and understand what what the pushes and the pulls are in in each marriage or relationship, because it's it varies between each person. So, jared, if there's one single thing that you could tell someone right now that they could do if they feel like they are suffocated or are being suffocated, what is one thing that they could do right now?
Speaker 2:
Identify what that thing is that's suffocating you and try to address it. Now, for me, when I was the reluctant spouse, the thing that was causing me to suffocate was my own mind, because I wasn't talking to people, I was just staying inside of my own head and I wasn't giving my wife an opportunity to understand how much I was feeling hurt, and so, therefore, all the things that she tried to do to help make it better actually pushed me away more. Part of that was my fault. So one of the things that I did is I took the time to understand what my thoughts were doing through the day, and so I practiced what we call mindfulness. Lots of stuff out there.
Speaker 2:
Kimberly Beam Holmes has a bunch of stuff on her podcast about mindfulness and, in fact, if you go watch the Calm Down Toolkit, you of stuff out there. Um, kimberly beam homes has a bunch of stuff on her podcast about mindfulness and, in fact, if you go watch the calm down toolkit, you can find out what I did as an exercise that I call name the lies, say the truth. Uh, you can find out a lot about that, um, and it's in good detail in that toolkit.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, and uh. If you want to learn more about how to get access to that toolkit, it is in our membership, um, and so if you want to learn more about how to get access to that toolkit, it is in our membership, um and so if you want to learn more about the membership how you can get access you can click right here If you're watching on YouTube, or you can go to uh in the show notes if you're listening on podcasts or on YouTube. The link will be there in the description. Jared, thanks so much for talking to us today, uh, and we will see you all on the next episode of relationship radio.
