9/14/22
If you’ve seen my Facebook or Instagram lately, you know that I’ve been working on something I’m super excited about. I’ve put together some very succinct, step-by-step ways, ladies, to F.I.X. Your Husband. It’s been prompted by a couple of different things. First, because I’m now single, I’ve joined an online dating site. Can I just stop right here and tell you that I’m thinking about writing a book about my experience? It’s been wild! Some of the stories would blow you away. I don’t wish this on anyone.
But because I’m considering getting into a new relationship, I don’t want to bring any old and potentially unhealthy patterns into something new. So, I’ve been taking a look at my life, and specifically my 30-year marriage to Brian. We were married young, right out of college and had a lot of growing up to do in those early years of marriage. We made a lot of mistakes. Some decisions were just sabotaging our relationship. Looking back, it’s so clear that the way we were relating to each other was no doubt damaging. There were things he was doing that I thought was just him misbehaving. On purpose. And I felt like the only way to respond was to tell him how he needed to do it better, different. Take two selfish, immature young people and throw them in a house together and there’s bound to be a lot of conflict. Somehow, though, we worked it out. But not without inflicting harm on one another.
If he were here today, he would probably want you to know that he gave me a nickname. Do you remember the 1990’s movie Dances With Wolves? We had been married two years when that film came out. A major character was a white woman who was adopted into the Sioux Indian tribe. She was given the name Stands-With-A-Fist. No doubt because she felt like she needed to fight for herself - for her survival. Well, yep, that was my nickname. Stands-With-A-Fist. And the more my husband misbehaved the more I stood strong with my fists clenched. I certainly wasn’t going to let him get away with all that misbehaving. Part of survival is not letting someone take advantage of you or run over you. Right? My husband needed fixing really bad! And quick or we weren’t going to make it.
Another reason why I wanted to create something specific for married ladies is because I’ve had several come to me just wishing their husbands would behave a little differently or show up in their relationship differently. Some wondering if their marriage is even worth the effort anymore. Some married a couple of hand-full of years and others married for a long, long time. I started working with them to make some small, subtle shifts in their interactions with their husbands. And they also started using some very specific words when talking to them. The results were surprisingly instantaneous. And then we added a few more things to try, and the reports I was getting back from each of the ladies were astounding. Like, I was even surprised. So very pleasantly surprised. They were fixing their husbands with every added element. It was so exciting to watch. So, I went to work doing some extensive study on men and women in relationships. And honestly, I mostly studied men: why they do and say what they do, or why they don’t do and say what we expect them or want them to.
The result is that I’ve created a plan to share some delicious secrets with any woman who wants to hear how to F.I.X. Your Husband. Because that’s what really needs to happen, right? He needs to be fixed. He is distant, uncommunicative, spends more time at the office than at home, isn’t cooperating in the household responsibilities, isn’t stepping up as the leader in your household (spiritually, or with discipline or decisions), he acts jealous or questions you, he’s too quiet and submissive or passive, he acts childish and he misbehaves.
And because of this, you think your husband doesn’t love you or appreciate you. You react out of defensiveness or take offense at his misbehaving. You make assumptions about what he’s done and take everything he does or says personally. And this makes you lash out and accuse, or pick fights just to get him to engage with you. Or maybe you retreat and hide and cry yourself to sleep. And now you’re just exhausted, tired of always having to be the one to make the effort. It’s like you’re the only one who really cares if this relationship is going to make it or not. Clearly your husband needs to be fixed.
Well, as you can see in the title of this podcast, “fix” is in all caps as initials. It’s an acronym. F for feelings, I for intimacy, and X - well that’s the X-factor - the secret ingredient that you probably don’t know yet. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be in the pickle you’re in right now.
These are the three letters that can change everything in your relationship with your husband and I’ll go over all three on this podcast in the coming three weeks.
Today I’ll start with the letter “F” - feelings. It’s the perfect place to start, right, because your feelings are all up in a tangled mess about your husband’s behavior. There are hurt feelings from words said or words left unsaid. There’s frustration at feeling like you have to nag him just to get him to do something he should already be doing, like taking out the trash. There are feelings of rejection or abandonment because he’s not being supportive or attentive to your needs. Feelings of disappointment or grief that your relationship isn’t what you’d hoped it would be and worry that things will never be any different. There are feelings like anger and resentment and bitterness that are at a boiling point just below the surface, just waiting to explode on an uncooperative, uncaring, seemingly oblivious husband. These are all your feelings…plus a whole lot more, I’m sure. Every single day. And you’re in knots about it all. It’s all you can think about. It’s affecting your sleep. It’s all you talk about with your friends. It’s all consuming. And your feelings or emotions have got a hold of you and are throwing you around like a ragdoll. You can’t seem to get control of yourself.
Well, I want to assure you that how you are responding is perfectly natural to our human condition. The good news is, though, that your feelings don’t have to have control over you. You have the ability to have control over your feelings. The reason the “F” - feelings - is important to address first, is because many of us think it’s our husbands that are driving us crazy and making us feel all these out of control emotions. But I want to tell you that each one of us, men and women, have individual agency which allows us to choose for ourselves how we’re going to act, or dress, where we go, what we’re going to say, how we worship, or not …and we get to choose how we’re going to feel. So, it’s not your husband “making you mad.” And you obviously can’t see me, but that’s in air quotes. It’s you deciding you’re going to be mad. This is important to understand because as we work on this F.I.X. method, you’re going to come to realize that no matter how your husband behaves, you get to choose how you want to feel. And I’m here to tell you that peaceful and even happy are possible feelings to feel even when he’s misbehaving. Now, wouldn’t that be so freeing? To not be at the effect of someone else’s words or attitude or behavior? For your feelings to be completely unaffected? You might be thinking that that’s impossible. That there’s no way you could not have your feelings hurt by hurtful words. But I’m here to tell you I have evidence in my own life an in the lives of my clients that it is indeed possible.
Friend, I want you to have this kind of freedom, too. Look, marriage is not easy. I don’t know why anyone would pretend like it is. And we all could use a few more skills to help make things better. I’m offering this to you for free.
I’m going to talk a lot more in depth as to the “how” in a workshop I’m putting on in a couple of weeks. September 22nd at 7pm Central Time I’ll be walking through each of these three letters in depth to help you F.I.X. Your Husband. So, I want to invite you to come and get all the secrets. I’ll put a link in the show notes to register, or you can go straight to triciazody.com/fix. Be sure to check out some of the testimonies at the bottom of the page from the women I’ve been working with. It’s amazing what has happened in their marriages in such a short time.
I hope to see you at the workshop. And remember, you can come and learn how to Fix Your Husband without anyone knowing - not your friends, not your mother, and not even your husband. But one thing I promise is that it’ll make such a shift in your relationship that your husband will thank you.
Hey friend, I’ve created a one-page guide with prompts just so you can start exploring the “F” in the F.I.X. Your Husband method. Just click the link in the show notes to get access to it. You’ll also gain free, life-time access to all (well, almost all) of the past podcast episodes. It is a growing library, for sure.
Have a wonderful week, friends. See you next Wednesday for the next episode of Another Beautiful Life podcast.
