Does this sound like you: lonely, embarrassed, ashamed, confused, lost, unsure, ready to throw in the towel?
If that sounds like you and your marriage at all, I understand. I’ve been there. For years. I was there. And today I want to talk to you about how to rebuild your marriage.
My name is Gina Alagata and I am a life and business coach for women. And through the years I have watched not only myself, but many other women that I’ve put everything and everyone else in front of their marriage at their own peril. And some of them have gotten divorced, some of them haven’t.
But today I want to talk to you about if you’re serious about rebuilding your marriage, what it’s going to take. And let me just preface this first by saying I’m not a licensed therapist or counselor. Matter of fact, I’m going to talk to you about that on this video today that you need to get one.
But I am going to also share with you the tips and things that I did for myself personally, that have helped in rebuilding my own marriage. All right, let’s get started. This is not going to be an easy journey, but it’s one, if you’re watching this video that I think you want and you need right now in your life.
Evaluate Where You Are and Where You Want to Be
So number one evaluate where you are right now in your marriage and where you want to be. My guess is that if you’re watching this video, you’re not happy with where your marriage is. You’re not, maybe you’re not happy with yourself. You’re not happy with your spouse, your life situation, but I want you to evaluate where you’re at right now and where you want to be. That’s very, very important.
Make a List of Your Next Steps
Number two, make a list of steps to get there and the people that can help you now, if you’re anything like I was, when I started this journey of rebuilding my marriage, I didn’t know what that looked like.
Matter of fact, I had reached out to multiple people throughout the years, desperate for help, because I was just so lonely and unhappy in my marriage. And I didn’t know what to do. I was grasping it at people and things and didn’t know what to do. And no one was helping me.
It wasn’t their job to help me though. It was my own. So make a list of people that can help you. For instance, a counselor, you need to get a good counselor, maybe maybe you have friends or family that can help you out on this journey. One thing I do want to preface that is just be careful what you share and how much you share, because I can come back to bite you in the butt.
Also you can do online courses. There’s a lot of online marital courses out there. Matter of fact, there’s one that my husband I are going through right now, that’s a really good one called Marriage365. I definitely recommend that.
But getting back to you being careful, what you share with your friends and family if you share certain things that later on, they could use against you or your spouse that might be something that you want to share with a trusted counselor or a therapist instead. So just be careful what you share with them.
Have a Heart to Heart with Your Spouse
Number three, have a serious heart to heart talk with your spouse. Hopefully if your spouse is in a place that they want to rebuild the marriage, also, they will be willing to sit down with you and have a heart to heart. Talk again about where you’re at and where you want to be. Make it in a non-threatening environment.
Talk in a non-threatening way. We’re not going to be pointing fingers and accusing. At this point, we are going to be just sitting down and have a serious heart to heart talk. “Listen, I’m not happy. I don’t like where things are going right now. I want a better marriage. What do you want out of this?”
And you might have to have it in a public setting. You might have to have it where you both drive there separately and talk it over. That’s something that you’ll need to talk about yourself, but the number one thing in this, when you sit down with your spouse is to make sure that you’re not pointing fingers and accusing. Those are things, you know, you’re going to work through this. It’s going to take some time.
Be Open to Change
Number four, be open to change. This is a big one for me.
And this is what I finally realized about myself is that you need to be open to change and not changing your spouse, changing you. It all starts with you.
The only person you can change in life is you.
So you didn’t get in the spot overnight in your marriage. You’re not going to get out of it overnight, but start the process of change with yourself.
Get Started Today
Number five, get started today on you. You don’t have to wait, right? Reach out to a trusted friend a counselor, whatever you need to do to get started today. Because if you’ve been going through this, like I was for years and years and years where you’re unhappy and you want a better marriage and you want, you, you know, you want your spouse to change because you know, it’s not, you it’s them, which it might be.
But again, it all starts with you. So get started today.L
et me just say this, take it a day at a time. Don’t get overwhelmed with, “Oh my gosh. There’s so much work to do. I don’t know if we’ll ever be there.” Take it a day at a time. Do what you can just today. Tomorrow’s a new day.
You’re going to have setbacks. That’s that’s normal, but just take it a day at a time.
Extend Yourself Grace & Forgiveness
The next one is to extend grace and forgiveness to yourself. I remember when I had I had a counselor at a therapist and she asked me if I had forgiven myself and I kind of laughed. I was like, “Forgive myself? I don’t know what I need to forgive myself for.” And she just kind of sat there for a minute.
And I said, “I don’t understand the question. Why, what do I need to forgive myself for?” And as we work through it, I realized I needed to forgive myself for allowing the things that I had allowed in my marriage or allowing it to get where it was. And that was a really, really hard pill for me to swallow.
I didn’t know that I needed to forgive myself. I didn’t know that I was just as much at fault as he was. We both were right. I was like, it’s you it’s, you it’s you, you need to change. But when I started focusing on myself and my own change, it’s amazing how things in my marriage show it, turn around.
Don’t Compare Your Marriage to Others
Next one is, don’t compare other marriages to your marriage. You might be looking at, especially on social media, you think, “oh my gosh, she’s she has a perfect spouse. Perfect husband, perfect family, perfect kids.”
I will tell you right now, not even I have the perfect spouse or perfect kids. We have a lot of junk in our trunk. We have got a lot of stuff that we’ve had to work through and we’re still working through and the same with my kids. So don’t look at other people in their marriages and their children and think, oh, they’ve got it. They’ve got it so much better. It’s perfect. And it’s not.
I can tell you that it’s not matter of fact, nine times out of 10, the stuff that people are putting on social media, they’re putting on there, the good stuff. They’re not sharing all the other stuff that’s going on at home. Right. I know I wasn’t. I didn’t want to, you know, cause it was embarrassing. So just be careful that you don’t compare yourself to other people.
Invite God Into Your Marriage
The next one is to make sure and invite God into your marriage. Now I realize that some women that are watching this maybe don’t have a relationship with the Lord. They don’t believe in God. But I’m going to tell you right now for me personally, that was the number one thing that has gotten me through so many challenges in life and inviting God into your marriage and praying specifically for you and your spouse and that God would heal your marriage every single day. That’s what I got into the habit of doing is every single day I didn’t.
There were times when I first started this journey. I didn’t want to pray for my spouse at all. Matter of fact, if anything, I wanted to pray the opposite of our marriage working and you know, health and wealth and all this stuff for him. I didn’t want to pray anything good for him because I did not like him. I didn’t want to be in the same room with him.
I am I hitting a button for some of you right now, but let me tell you, as you start to pray for that person, God tells us to pray for our enemies. And I will tell you at a time in my life, my husband was my enemy.
And some people say, “you know, that’s, that’s sad.” Well, yeah, it is sad, but that’s where I was. But as I started to pray for him and for myself, God started to soften my heart to peel away the layers.
So pray for your spouse, invite God into your marriage. That is super, super important. That should be there from the beginning. Anyways, that’s another topic when I get into coaching women that I talk about in more detail.
Separate for a Time if You Need to
Last but not least is to make sure and separate for a time if you need to. Now, I will tell you that there are a lot of people, especially if you go to church, a lot of Christians that will not discourage this They’ll tell you, “No, you need to stick it out. You need to stay.”
I’m here to tell you from personal experience, there are times when you need to separate, especially if there’s any kind of abuse going on, physical, mental, emotional or financial abuse.
If you’re planning on rebuilding your marriage and getting back together, your separation is not to go out and meet other people and hookup and you know, find other people. Your whole goal by separating is to eventually come back together. So everything you should be doing on that journey when you’re separated, is working towards getting back together and reconciling that marriage. A lot of the things I listed here is going to help you with that. But even more than that again, this is one of the things I coach women through.
Again, I’m not a therapist, I’m not a counselor, but I will tell you from my own personal experiences, the things that I’ve worked for me, and I hope that this was helpful for you. I love you ladies.
Listen, life is challenging sometimes, right? And it can affect a lot of areas of our life. And our marriage, I think is the number one thing that really gets hit hard when we don’t focus and be intentional on what we want is our marriage. So I want to just say, bless you. I’m praying for you and your marriage.
I would love to come alongside you in your journey and help you in that. And I hope you have a wonderful day and I can’t wait to hear from you.
