Journey Through Divorce

By Mort Fertel

Are you depressed? Is your spouse depressed? Do one of you THINK the other is depressed?

I recently had a series of phone sessions with a woman named Regina (name changed) who lives in Canada. I asked Regina what her husband thinks is the problem with their marriage. She explained, “Ted says that the problem with our marriage is that I’m depressed. He thinks if I wasn’t depressed, we’d be fine. And so it’s up to me.”

It IS common for depression to accompany marital strife. But what causes one spouse to be depressed?

We usually think of depression as an affliction caused by an INDIVIDUAL’S mental state. But, as is often the case, the problem is the way we see the problem.

In marriage, although depression is something that may afflect only one spouse; it’s usually caused by BOTH spouses. In order to understand what I mean, let’s consider whta it REALLY means to be depressed.

The dictionary definition of “depressed” is: “to press down” or “cause to sink.”

And, in fact, a depressed person feels that someone or something is PRESSING DOWN on them and not allowing for the relief they seek.

Regina’s husband had good reason to think that Regina was depressed. She threatened suicide, had the habit of breaking $200 china against the $5000 breakfront, sometimes cut the laundry with scissors rather than folding it neatly, and would break down in tears for no apparant reason. The interesting thing is (are you ready?): Regina ONLY did these things in front of her husband!

No one other than her husband ever heard Regina threaten suicide or see her break down in tears. Her husband never came home to find china pieces or shredded laundry on the floor. It ALL happened in front of him! And (listen carefully and try to put the pieces together), it always happened after they talked.

There’s much more to Regina’s circumstances, but here’s the bottom line. Regina was desperate for her husband’s attention. She wanted to make an EMOTIONAL connection. She wanted him to be part of her inner life. But Ted couldn’t connect with Regina. He didn’t know how to make her feel understood. He didn’t know how to treat her special, different than everyone else in his life. Ted wasn’t a bad person. He didn’t do anything wrong. He rarely got upset. But he was very controlled and detached. And so Regina had all this emotion PRESSED DOWN inside her but no one to share it with. Ted was there, but emotionally unavailable.

Regina’s outbursts were her way of trying to get Ted’s attention. She just wanted him to care about her and what she did. So she did things he simply couldn’t ignore. Of course, this is not really the kind of attention Regina really wanted. But she was frustrated and was trying to release what was PRESSED inside her.

When one person in a marriage is depressed, it’s usually caused by a marital dynamic between BOTH spouses. And the solution i susually a MARITAL solution not an individual one.

If oyu or your spouse feels depressed, you should explore how your relationship might be causing the depression. As much as one of you might want the other to get INDIVIDUAL help, it could be that it’s your MARRIAGE that needs attention.

Mort Fertel can show you how to release what’s PRESSED inside you and/or your spouse in a way that works for your relationship. Learn more about the Marriage Fitness system of relationship renewal by subscribing to Mort Fertel’s FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and getting a FREE marriage assesment. Click here to subscribe. It’s FREE.

Have you ever been to a winery?

Hi. My name is Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be one of those grapes? Really… play along with me here for a moment.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be plucked, pushed, crushed, pressed, skinned, and fermented? OUCH! The pain! What’s the point of it all?

A lot of people feel that way about the pain they experience in their marriage. “Why am I doing this? Where is this relationship going?”

But just as a grape goes through a difficult process before it becomes a fine wine, sometimes our marriage has to go through a painful process before it matures.

The people who have the best marriages are NOT people who grew up well-adjusted, have healthy adult lives, and normal parents. People like that usually have OKAY marriages.

The BEST marriages are with couples who were curshed, who went through a painful process, and who built their relationship from the ruins of broken hearts.

There’s an ancient song by King David, “Those who sow in tears will reap harvest in glad song.”

And so it is that pain is often the preview to pleasure. Any woman who has experienced child birth can testify to this truth.

In my work doing marriage coaching, I have noticed that very often the turning point in a marriage is when the couple hits rock bottom. It’s not until they’ve been through the worst that things start to get better.

But the turnaround marriage is NOT automatic. Just because you hit bottom, does NOT mean you’ll bounce back. If you don’t make it happen, you’ll just crash. In order to turn your marriage around, you have to take RESPONSIBILITY.

What does it REALLY mean to be responsible? A person who is responsible has the ABILITY to RESPOND. In other words, if you take response-ability for your marriage, then your marriage is not determined solely by what happens; it’s also determined by how you RESPOND to what happens.

A responsible person is not a victim to their circumstances. They are the master of their fate. How you respond to your marital circumstances today WILL determine your martial circumstances tomorrow. YOUR actions create your marriage. You can turn sour grapes into a fine wine.

If you know how to do this, then do it now. If you need help, then USE ME. I can help you. Years ago my marriage was hours from “done.” I turned it around and I can show you how too. I’ve helped thousands of marriages. Have you seen the miracle stories on my web site?

Making a relationship work is not mystical. Love is NOT a mystery. You don’t have to be “lucky in love.” You can “make love.” You just have to know the recipe.

If you want to learn more about how I can help you, subscribe to my FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and get my FREE marriage assessment. CLICK HERE to subscribe. It’s FREE.

Warm regards,
Mort Fertel
Author of Marriage Fitness
Marriage Coach

Recently I had a series of private phone sessions with a person who was very frustrated. Listen to how this person described their situation. I bet you’ll be able to relate to it.

This person said they felt trapped in their basement trying to communicate with their spouse via Morse Code. They said they were banging on the pipes trying desperately to be heard. They would bang on the pipes and wait for a response. Bang and wait… bang and wait… bang and wait. But each time they finished banging, there was silence. No matter how hard they banged and no matter how long they waited; their spouse never heard them.

Hi. My name is Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

Are you trying to get heard? Do you feel ignored? Is your spouse not responding to your communication?

We live in an interesting time. With one click, you can communicate with anyone in the world. It’s easy, quick, and free. You even have options. If you don’t want to click, you could dial, beep, page, instant-message, or Fed Ex. It’s true. Your ability to communicate with the outside world has become increasingly easy. But my guess is that your ability to communicate with your spouse has become increasingly difficult.

The reason for this is that most people confuse INFORMATION communication with PERSONAL communication. Technological advancements give us all sorts of options to communicate information. But how do you feel the pulse of someone’s soul? How do you communicate the subtleties in your heart? You can’t text message that. You can have the latest and greatest in communication gadgets, but it won’t matter. PERSONAL communication is a whole different ball game. And it’s PERSONAL communication that determines the success or failure of your marriage.

I’m reminded of a scene from a Broadway play. A man and woman happen to meet on a train and engage in polite conversation. They were both headed home to New York after a day in New Haven, CT. After further discussion, they learned that they were going to the same building on Fifth Avenue. Lo and behold they discovered that they had the same daughter and lived in the same apartment. They finally discovered that they were husband and wife.

You know what’s killing marriages these days? EMAIL! More and more I’m seeing husbands and wives resort to email to communicate to each other. You want to do something tangible TODAY to improve your marriage? STOP EMAILING YOUR SPOUSE! Email is for INFORMATION. But in a marriage you’ve got to HEAR each other. And I don’t mean hear the sounds of each other’s words. You’ve got to be able to hear the silence between the sounds and interpret the unspoken meaning of a pressed lips or teary eyes. You’ve got to be able to hear the shapens and sounds in each other’s heart. You can NOT accomplish this via email.

And let me be clear about something; you can’t do it with communication techniques either. There’s no clinical communication therapy that can help you and your spouse think each other’s thoughts, feel each other joy, and cringe from each other’s pain. My 1-on-1 phone session schedule and the Marriage Fitness Tele Boot Camp are filled with casualties from traditional communication strategies and the usual marriage counseling approach. If you’re like most people with marriage trouble, you’ve been down that path and you know that it does NOT work.

Today my 4-year-old son came to me with a bruise on his leg. He was crying and I could see that it was black and blue. He said, “Daddy, I need a band-aide.”

I responded, “But it’s not bleeding.”

He said again, “Daddy, can you put a band-aide on it?”

I realized that my son’s perspective was that when something hurts a band-aide makes it better… even if it’s a bruise and not a cut.

So what does this have to do with communication in a marriage? Because most people think that if spouses aren’t hearing each other that communication techniques will solve the problem. But that’s like putting a band-aide on a bruise. It’s the wrong solution.

Communication techniques can help colleagues transmit INFORMATION clearly. Communication techniques belong in seminars that teach negotiation and sales. But you’re not trying to complete a transaction with your spouse; you’re trying to renew a relationship. I can almost guarantee that your problem is not clarity; it’s concern. Ironically, communication techniques sometimes give people clarity that they don’t care what their spouse thinks or feels. They “got it,” but “it” doesn’t matter to them anymore.

How do you get back to the place where you and your spouse care again?

This is one of the things that’s unique about Marriage Fitness approach to repairing a relationship versus traditional counseling. Most approaches to marriage success preach communication skills. But communicating effectively will NOT create love in your marriage. In fact, the correlation is the opposite. Creating love in your marriage paves the way for effective communication. I’ll prove it to you.

Think about when you fell in love. How was your communication? Good, right? In fact, when you’re in love, you communicate with the wink of an eye and you can finish each other’s sentences. And yet you haven’t known each other that long and you haven’t learned any communication techniques.

Then, years later, after getting to know each other inside and out, employing psychologically tested and proven communication strategies, and taking into account all the differences between Mars and Venus, you can’t get through to each other.

Listen carefully: Communication has very little to do with techniques or knowledge of each other. It has everything to do with the depth of connection between the communicators.

The question you should be asking is NOT, “How do I communicate effectively with my spouse.” The question you should be asking is, “How do I connect with my spouse again?” Once you reconnect, you won’t be sitting in silence in the basement. You’ll hear the sound of the pipes from above. It’ll be your spouse. You were heard.

If you want to learn how to connect with your spouse again, subscribe to my FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and get a FREE marriage assessment. CLICK HERE to subscribe. It’s FREE.

Warm regards,
Mort Fertel
Author of Marriage Fitness
Marriage Coach

Did your spouse tell you, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you?”

What does that statement mean?

Hi. I’m Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

A person who says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you,” is making a distinction between 2 different feelings. But NEITHER of those feelings are love!

When a person says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you,” they’re saying that I CARE about you but I’m not EXCITED about you.

CARING about someone is a good thing. It’s reflective of CONCERN. But it’s different then love. I care about the starving children in Africa, but I don’t love them.

Being EXCITED about someone is also a good thing. But it’s different than love. I might be excited to have a relationship with the President of the United States or a Hollywood star, but that doesn’t mean I love them.

While someone who says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you” seems to be making a distinction between “different loves;” in fact, they are expressing their confusion about what love really is. And that’s why they’re having marital problems and maybe even an affair (because who are they IN LOVE with?).

Love is something we articular in the vocabulary of ACTION. Love is a verb. It’s not a feeling you get from another PERSON; it’s an experience you receive as a result of DEEDS YOU DO for another person.

And those deeds are not a secret. In other words, love is NOT a mystery! There are specific things you can do with your spouse to solve your problems and build love in your marriage.

Just as there are physical laws of the universe (such as gravity), there are also laws for relationships. Just as the right diet and excercise program makes you physically stronger, certain habits in your relationship WILL make your marriage stronger. It’s a direct cause and effect. If you know and apply the laws, the results are predictable—you can “make” love.

This is exactly why I created the Marriage Fitness program. I wanted to offer people a step-by-step system to make and maintain love in their marriage. And the program works for any marriage, even if only one spouse does it.

Very often in my private coaching sessions, someone will say to me, “I love my spouse, but I’m not IN LOVE with my spouse.”

My immediate response is to ask, “Can you list for me 5 ways in the last week that you’ve DEMONSTRATED your love for your spouse?”

I usually hear noise on the other end of the phone; grunts, partial statements, and gasps for breath, but none of what I hear ever passes for an answer to my question.

“I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you” is a cop out. It basically means that I have no clue how to make a relationship last LONG-TERM so I’m exiting to get high from another short-term romance. But whoever they’re IN LOVE with now will also eventually hear, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you.”

Of course, this is all fine and good, but it’s really your spouse who needs to hear this, right?

Do NOT print this email out and give it to them. And do NOT tell them what I said.

Getting your spouse from “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you” to “Okay, let’s give this another chance” is a tricky task. If this is your situation, it’s crucial you handle it strategically. One false step and your marriage could be over. If you take the right steps, you can draw your spouse back in and begin to restore your marriage TOGETHER. How do you do that?

Learn more about the Marriage Fitness system of relationship renewal by subscribing to my FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and getting a FREE marriage assesment. Click here to subscribe. It’s FREE.

Warm regards,
Mort Fertel
Author of Marriage Fitness
Marriage Coach