Positive changes, leading toward individual growth and becoming what God means for you to be, are made to enhance your own emotional and spiritual growth. When you choose to undertake these aspects, they are designed to be a positive benefit for you and are not done for (or because of) other people. However, the changes, you make will affect others, and help change their former ways of relating to you.
In addition, when you make these necessary changes within yourself, (those of you who have direct contact) these will help to trigger and/or cause change within the mid-life spouse. This effort on your part, coupled with a lot of patient waiting, can serve to bring them forward, even if very slowly. Change is very painful regardless of who is going through it. It is much easier to stay in one’s comfort zone than to step out into the unknown future.
The Lord would walk me through an aspect designed to bring about change. Because change on the other person’s part did not happen right then, I would think I had not done something right. However, the Lord would instruct me to continue forward as I was, and watch, because it took time for my change to trigger their change. Sure enough, given time, they would challenge me hard. As more time passed, I held my ground firmly, standing on the boundaries I had learned to set, then, I would usually see the positive change in response to what I had done first.
Now, not everyone will respond in the way described. There were people who were unable (or unwilling) to accept the changes I made, and some of them chose to walk away. This was their choice, and I learned to have the grace to simply let them go to choose for themselves.
I learned that I could not change on a temporary basis, just to draw a person back into relationship with me. The permanent changes I made were for me because I needed them to happen within me. Otherwise, all of the work I had done would have been nothing but wasted effort. I came to know and understand that there were no guarantees that my relationship would survive the crisis intact, and I came to know that the only guarantee would be in the work I did in myself. There came a time when I stopped focusing on my marriage and began focusing solely on me because I was the one factor I had control over–not other people.
To have a new marriage in the future requires change within both people, but the honest effort of only one person is necessary to create and start the process of positive change in order to hopefully assist and/or trigger change in the other. The road toward changing another will only come about when you choose to begin positive change within you.
Someone has to begin this process of change, growth, and becoming, and it might as well be you.
I saw many people change long enough to convince their midlife spouses to move back home, then their changes would cease, and in a short time, they would return to the person they had been. Of course, the midlife spouse, seeing these changes were not real, would usually turn right around and move back out.
Acting in this way was lying in action to the midlife spouse, and worse, they viewed it as a controlling and a manipulating behavior on the part of their spouses. Midlife spouses hate the perception of being controlled and manipulated, and regardless of the way they are acting, they are not stupid. They know the difference between real and fake behaviors. Since one cannot control what they do in the first place, the instant they detect their spouse is not keeping it real and honest, they will run that much farther away.
Change within the left-behind spouse has to be real, not fake, and above all, it has to be permanent. Different ones that I was counseling years ago, found this out the hard way when the midlife spouse figured out their spouse was not being real or honest with the changes they had made.
I told them that if their changes were not real, their midlife spouses would discover this, and run away again, but they did not listen. However, when this did happen, they came back wanting more advice and received the same advice again. Give the midlife spouse space, give them time, and remember that change is for you, and this change in you must be real, and permanent.
The difference in that second time was it took a lot longer for the midlife spouse to respond positively and longer to return a second time. This was because they were gun-shy, considering what happened the first time. When the left-behind spouse changed for real that second time, and then made it permanent, most of the time, the midlife spouse decided to stay.
Of course, you had a few “hardcore” midlife spouses who were so rebellious, it did not matter what their spouse did, and these tried to use their homes as “revolving doors.” In those cases, firm boundaries were used to stop that kind of behavior, as it was causing a lot of stress on the spouses who were doing their best to deal with all of the ‘coming and going’ their midlife spouses were doing.
However, the midlife spouses were only doing what they were allowed to do by the left-behind spouse. The fear of losing someone who was already lost had to be overcome on the part of the left-behind spouse in order to effectively deal with this kind of continued disrespectful behavior on the part of the midlife spouse.
One has to look at what you would allow other people to do, vs. the midlife spouse. In this case, you would not allow other people to treat you in this way, why is the spouse in crisis so different, or special? They will push every limit you set, every boundary you lay, and unless you put a stop to bad behavior, they will continue to walk on you.
Therefore, you decide to put a stop to it, by setting hard limits in certain areas of conduct. You deserve just as much respect as anyone else, therefore, respect yourself, and learn to set boundaries in areas you know are affecting you directly. The ‘coming and going,’ if this is happening, is one such example. It is disruptive to your household when you have someone using your home as a swinging door, so set a boundary on it.
Nothing is ever that simple, it all takes time, and the willingness to not only look honestly within oneself, but also the courage to target the areas that need improvement, and take the time to make the permanent changes that lead to growth. These aspects will lead to what God would have us to become for ourselves.
One aspect of change has to do with reclaiming your personal identity–the person you were before you “lost” yourself within the bonds of your marriage. Then, we learn to go further into the deeper aspects of changing, then learning to outgrow the immature emotional qualities that are connected with our own past issues.
From there we begin learning to set firm but loving behavioral boundaries, learning to love, and live with, ourselves, becoming more peaceful within. While all this growth is occurring, we learn to detach completely, because anger does nothing but cloud one’s thinking, and this same anger will drive the spouse in crisis away.
When you were dating, you did not attract your spouse to you by being angry, controlling nor manipulating, did you? No. You drew them through being nice, being gentle, being a loving person. Somewhere along the way, through the years, all of you have lost that person, but they are still there within you. You would need to find that person they once fell in love with, and take the time to become reacquainted with yourself.
The left-behind spouses I was working with years ago, had held on for a while to the idea that the midlife spouse had to change, but they did not have to. They all discovered this was not true. They were so shortsighted in thinking they were above reproach and did not need to grow for themselves. They had allowed their resentment and deep-seated anger at the midlife spouse to color their perceptions to the point they lost sight of themselves. They became so focused on the various wrongs the midlife spouse had committed against them, they had a hard time listening to what anyone had to say about learning to focus on themselves first.
Do not let anger blind you to this necessary inner work. When you are perpetually angry, you are not really hurting anyone but yourself. Let go of the anger, so you can get your focus off your midlife spouse, and get this same focus onto yourself.
It takes time to understand why one must look within themselves for change that is necessary, although it is the midlife spouse who has done so many things that are wrong. However, once this aspect is overcome, the journey is begun. Once finished, another kind of journey begins that builds upon the aspects the initial journey was designed to target.
Those who have walked this entire path of the journey to wholeness and healing never really leave the grip of continuous change, growth, and becoming.
Ongoing change that leads to growth that further leads into the becoming of what God would have us to be, becomes a way of life, once a person understands what is required of them. Life is filled with many such changes, challenges, and there are many aspects that are faced and overcome, one day at a time, one step at a time.
The first step of a rewarding emotional journey to begin finding oneself is the hardest one to make, but after that, it does become easier. Learn to overcome your fears; you have nothing to fear but fear itself. I know change is scary, but learn to trust God with your whole life, and know that He is not going to bring you into a place that He will not also bring you through.
Trust Him in all things, as He helps you bring forth change, growth and becoming within your deepest selves.
((((HUGS))))
