My Marriage Isn’t the Same Anymore. Now What?

Season #1 April 07, 2026

What do you do when your marriage doesn’t feel like it used to — and you want it back? This episode explores why going back isn’t the goal, and how shifting toward self-validation can change how you show up and experience your relationship.

Key Talking Points

• Why trying to “get back to the way things were” often keeps you stuck
• How relying on your partner for validation creates frustration and disconnection
• The shift from emotional dependency to self-validation—and how it changes your behavior and your marriage

This Week’s Invitation

Notice when your mind tells you a story about what your partner’s behavior means.

Practice choosing a different interpretation and experiment with how you show up when you assume love instead of doubt.

Resources

• Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch
• Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt
• Parenting concepts from Amy McCready

Connect

Have questions?
Have a story to share?

Share your story with me here: complexcouplescoaching.com/questions

If you need further help with this, this is the work that I do and I’m passionate about.
If you’d like to learn more, I created a Free Guide called "When Your Spouse Comes Out: 9 practical tools to help you navigate the aftermath of disclosure or discovery."
You can download it here.

Email me at: heidi@complexcouplescoaching.com Your emails help shape future episodes. You don’t have to face this alone.

Episode Transcript

My Marriage Isn't the Same Anymore. Now What?
===

I don't remember the bulk of that conversation.

But I remember, at one point,

my husband just sighing

this deep long sigh

and looking at me and saying,

"Heidi, sometimes I just wish

when I said,

'I love you'

you'd believe me."

And so I just decided. I'm gonna believe him.

I'm just gonna try it.

Why not?

I have nothing to lose.

Hello, friends. I'm so glad you're here

that you're facing the difficult questions

that your marriage might be bringing forward. Today I'd like to talk to you about a question that comes up

not just for people in mixed orientation marriages,

but for all of the couples who come into my office.

And that question is,

"How do we get back to the way we were?"

Often, people remember the early stages of marriage

when things felt really good,

and they were really in love,

and they felt their partner's love for them.

And there's just a sense of

wanting to go back to that

when there are struggles or problems.

And that makes a lot of sense

that we would want that,

especially not knowing what's ahead of us.

Um, and I feel like

I was in that stage for a while of wanting to go back.

And honestly, when I was in grad school

and I started learning about

theories of what makes relationships work,

at one point I thought I had found the theory

that would help me go back to the way we were.

And this theory taught that,

your significant other

should be a place of security and safety.

That they are essentially your safe haven.

And, well,

the way I interpreted it was,

I'm not saying this is the actual theory,

but the way I interpreted that was that

my husband just needed to love me

and everything would be fine.

He needed to validate me

and make me feel good about myself

and our relationship would be great.

Well, as you can imagine, that left me looking for evidence.

I was looking for proof everywhere that he loved me.

And the reality is, I wasn't finding much.

I really was finding all the ways

that I thought he was proving he didn't love me.

For instance, my husband works really hard in his career and he cares about it a lot.

And I would think that if he was staying at work late,

maybe he was trying to avoid me.

Or he has a lot of hobbies and interests.

He water skis nearly every morning in the summer.

And sometimes I would tell myself that he just prefers his friends over me.

Or whatever it was that he was prioritizing.

Well, I tried to just tuck this away.

I didn't really bring it up,

but this really started wearing on me until one night everything just erupted.

It was probably one of the biggest fights I remember having with my husband.

We're not big, loud fighters.

But this night, I remember that

our fight did wake up my oldest daughter.

It was really, really ugly.

And I really thought that it was all his fault.

That if he had just loved me more

or showed me that he loved me more,

we would not be having this argument.

So after a good night's rest

and a day to cool off or so, I don't remember how long it was.

We came back together and we started talking about what had happened.

And I don't remember the bulk of that conversation.

But I remember at one point

my husband just sighing this deep long sigh

and looking at me and saying,

"Heidi, sometimes I just wish when I said, 'I love you', you'd believe me."

I think he'd said similar things before,

but for some reason at this point,

I really started to think,

'What if I did?

What if it is about believing him rather than about the lack of love?'

And so I just decided. I'm gonna believe him.

I'm just gonna try it. Why not?

I have nothing to lose.

Um, I do think that his coming out

had made me question that love even more.

Because I felt like society was telling me

'it's not possible for him to love you if he's attracted to men.'

But I really was at a point where I thought, what do I have to lose?

I might as well try this.

So from that moment,

when things would come to my mind

that told me the story, 'he doesn't love you.'

For instance, if he was working late

and my brain would say,

'Yeah, he really just doesn't like spending time with you. He's avoiding you.'

I would say to myself,

"You know that's not it. You know he loves you. So what else could be going on?"

And I just would engage in that process over and over.

Every time my brain told me that,

I said, 'No, that can't be it. It must be something else.'

And started looking for alternatives.

The reality is in that moment,

I didn't really know if my husband loved me or not.

I still had a story in my head that I didn't think he did.

But just that mere act of telling myself,

"I know he does," really helped me show up differently.

Instead of nagging and being angry and criticizing,

I started to actually see that my husband had a life of his own.

That he had stressors that were present that I hadn't been paying attention to

because I was so worried that he wasn't thinking about me enough.

I started to see that he had a life outside of me.

And it really started to change how I treated him.

And as I showed up differently and more respectfully

and more invested, I would say,

in what was going on for him,

there was a new warmth that developed

because he saw that and quite frankly,

I was more pleasant to be with,

and so I didn't have to be worried

that I was the reason he wasn't coming home.

It became less of a concern

because my behavior was more pleasant.

And along with that, I started to see him treat me

with more warmth, because I was more warm to him.

Throughout time as we start to see kind of the warts and the flaws

and the insecurities of our partner,

we're less able to fill in the gaps.

And it's not as validating,

it doesn't feel as good because we might be arguing about those points.

Or seeing things in our partner that we don't like, or in ourselves.

So in a lot of marriages there comes a point where this system breaks down.

And this night was kind of our breaking point. Even though my husband's coming out was, you know, disruptive.

But somehow this was the point where

we really had to push ourselves into a new framework.

As you can imagine, I abandoned that theory.

I don't practice under that theory

because I saw it happen in multiple couples

that if I promoted the idea that

there was a safe haven in their partner,

it only led to frustration and incredible feelings of being gypped.

I, like you, wish that that were true.

I wish that my partner could be that for me.

But the reality is they have their own struggles, their own insecurities.

And if I'm reliant on

someone who is human to do that for me,

I'm going to be disappointed.

So, the benefit, the advantage of this breaking point

was that it pushed me to be desperate enough

to try something different.

And what I tried was essentially self-validation.

Determining that I was going to believe

that my partner loved me and

how would I show up if that were the truth?

And it really started a change.

Sometimes imagery is helpful for me.

A way to think about this is,

the difference between a, thermometer and a thermostat.

So if, I am more like a thermometer

and my temperature goes up and down based on my partner's temperature.

That is gonna fluctuate a lot.

I'm gonna move every time they're in a bad mood.

I'm gonna worry that it might be something about me. And I'm gonna shift my temperature according to how they show up.

A thermostat on the other hand, it's consistent.

It's set to a certain temperature,

and it maintains that even if someone comes in colder or warmer.

Like there might be small fluctuations,

but its work is to monitor its own temperature.

That is our work as well.

Our work is to maintain our own thermostat setting and not be moved.

That doesn't mean we're not influenced by our partner.

Of course, we want to listen to them and allow them to influence us.

It just means that there's a steadiness about the way we do it that isn't as disruptive.

And it can help us, determine

what we're going to do with our emotions and feelings

rather than just allowing our emotions and feelings to run the show.

So that's second stage of development in marriage

and it's difficult to nail down exactly

who identified the three stages of marriage.

Harville Hendricks is someone

that you can look into if you wanna know more.

David Schnarch, his work in Passionate Marriage

talks about kind of this shift into differentiation model.

But you can look at some different stages there. And, there is a third stage that eventually couples move into

that is essentially a more, it's more of a generativity.

It's more of a generosity in love,

where it's really just two stable people choosing each other.

But I don't wanna give you the idea that everyone gets there.

This is an effort.

It takes work to get to the second and third stage of development. It takes acceptance that these are the terms of making a better marriage.

Moving out of dependency

and into a place where

you can feel good about you no matter what.

And you can take into consideration

your partner while also holding on to your desires.

And it requires work to get there.

It's not just going to happen.

But if you're interested, it's possible.

If you're wanting to go back, you're perfectly normal.

Yet, there's something so much greater if you will move forward.

If you'll choose to move out of the framework of 'other' validation

and more into a framework of self-validating.

It's so rewarding, even if it doesn't change your partner.

Because again, my behavior changed so much

that I really felt more capable of believing my husband.

Believing that he wanted to be with me.

And also, believing that I was someone worth being with, even if he didn't choose me.

And so then, it enhanced my ability to

invite or ask for more, at times, instead of less.

But in a way that honored his agency and his ability to choose.

Now, I don't wanna give anyone the impression that I was perfect at this.

Anytime we're trying to make changes,

we're going to make mistakes

and we're going to backslide.

It's a part of development that is really real and natural.

So don't get wrapped up in the mistakes.

If you make mistakes,

um, I learned this from Amy McCready. She's a parenting expert, but she says

"embrace redos."

And it has become a philosophy of mine.

We're so used to showing up a certain way. That it's very habitual.

So sometimes what I will do is

if I show up a certain way, I will ask for a redo.

I've done this with my children.

I've done it with my husband.

Where I say,

"Hey, okay, I don't like how I showed up in that moment.

Can I please have a redo?"

And I will literally step out of the room,

think about 'how do I wanna show up here?'

And then come in again and try again.

And eventually you start changing those behaviors

and becoming more a person that feels lovable.

So in conclusion, I would encourage you

when you are tempted to ask, 'how can I go back?'

I would instead encourage you to ask a question like,

'how can I facilitate movement toward the next stage?'

For me, it came from believing my husband loved me no matter what.

If that helps you, to tell yourself that story instead

and start looking for alternatives to why they are behaving the way they are,

I would love to hear what you find out.

What you start to notice.

You might start to notice that your partner's behavior

actually has very little to do with you.

And a lot to do with their own insecurities

and their own desire to be loved.

Or their own concerns about how to be a loving spouse.

Which might show up in terms of

'I've gotta provide well for my family.'

You might be surprised what you find,

and I'd love to hear some of those things.

This week, I would encourage you to ask yourself that question

and to embrace redos as you try something new.

Instead of criticizing yourself for the times you don't get it right,

just redo it and try again.

And you'll start to really like the person that you're becoming.

But in the meantime, remember, you have value.

You matter no matter what.

That is not based on how you behave.

You are going to need that value to be anchored in something solid.

So, if it takes just believing me right now,

or if it takes a spiritual component,

tap into that value as you are trying new things.

I hope you have a wonderful week. Thank you for listening.

If you're interested in learning more, this is my passion.

That's what I love doing. Go to my website. It's

complexcouplescoaching.com.

And you can click on the resources there.

I'm developing more as we speak.

You can sign up for my email list

so that you can be the first to know when things are available.

Have a wonderful week

and

I'll see you next time on Complex Couples Podcast. Bye.