By Sherrie Rice Smith, EFT TRN 1-2
Marriage is that psychosocial arrangement we all enter into with happiness and bliss, isn’t it?
Normally, it all works great, until we learn way too much about our spouse, leaving us with feelings of what in the world did I get myself into. I suspect there are few people in a married or committed relationship that don’t at one time or another wonder what happened to make it all go so very wrong.
Well, I’m here to tell you from firsthand experience there is hope!
I’m going to make this story personal, with permission from my husband, Brad. I opened up, making myself a bit vulnerable, while in NYC helping with EFTU Level 1 and 2 classes. I’m going to do the same here.
Both Brad and I came from nasty childhoods, dealing with episodes and incidences no child should ever have to endure. It was this early abuse that actually brought us together. I know, for me, I figured it would draw us together, as we both would surely understand instinctively where the other had come from.
This was all pre-EFT and I have since seen and well understood how very wrong we both were!
As the years progressed, the relationship became more embattled. I now see what exactly went on. I married a man just like my parents. Oh, he didn’t resemble anything they actually did, nor were the external behaviors even remotely similar, but his style of dealing with life’s ups and downs surely was.
Denial was his best defense. If one ignores it all, it all will go away. No matter how many ways I explained to him what I needed in the relationship, nothing changed. And then I caught myself nitpicking just like Mom did to me. Nothing Brad did was good enough.
The downhill slide had begun in earnest.
We raised his two sons from a first marriage in our house. The boys’ mother was still involved. The tension from that was on. Then about 10 years ago Brad was laid off permanently from his engineering job; the company closed. Now, we had 24/7 together. The problems really started. It was too much time spent in each other’s company.
I had plenty to nitpick about now.
It wasn’t too long until we were fighting every day. It soon led to nothing but fighting. I had no idea how to stop it. I was a depressed, embittered, angry, crying, lashing-out woman. My dad’s words, “No man will ever put up with you for long,” rang hourly in my ears. I was going to lose my marriage and Dad would be right.
What was I going to do? I’m sure Brad felt the same way. Were two women going to walk out on him?
At the eleventh hour, God provided. Emotional Freedom Techniques walked into our lives! I hired, without Brad’s permission, an EFT practitioner to work through his hatred for his parents. He never believed me when I told him he hated his parents; he does believe me now.
Hatred eats us up. It burns holes in everything and everyone around us. It supersedes and melts any love that existed. Nothing survives in its wake. It’s impossible. I hired my own EFT coach, too. I took EFT Universe’s Level 1 and 2 classes.
What I want now to tell all of you readers is this: Please don’t give up on your marriage. Divorce costs big money, discounting the emotional pain involved, too. My best advice, based on personal experience, is: Convince your spouse to take EFTU Levels 1 and 2 classes with you. Seriously, work on your own issues.
Your spouse is not the problem. The problem is you.
You aren’t a bad person! Your background and cognitive childhood learning has led you to the specific person who triggers you. You have attracted what you know. But there is hope!
Work through all those childhood personal issues. Free yourself to be the person you know you can be and in that process watch your marriage heal. It can work unilaterally, but it works even better when both of you are willing to use EFT on your own stuff!
Today, I stand amazed to say our marriage is mostly healed. Yes, it worked that well. It’s taken a few years of a lot of tapping on both our parts, but we are stronger and healthier than I ever imagined. My dad is NOT going to be right this time around!
Oh, we have our moments. But now, we stop and tap before either of us says something stupid that we will regret later. It usually tends to be one of us starts tapping right in front of the other. We’ve made a commitment not to get angry about that, but to take it as an act of love for the other.
And it is. Hurtful things don’t tend to come out of the mouth of someone tapping.
We then both go to our respective tapping places in the house, tap away what is going on inside each of us, not the other person, and come back sometimes to talk about it, but many times all the tension simply dissolves, and we go on our merry way finishing up the day’s activities.
These fights and arguments have nothing to do with us. The triggering mechanisms behind them are those perceptions and ideas all of us picked up from our parents, grandparents, neighbors, aunts, and uncles. Those run our lives and our marriages.
Tap them away; save your marriage. Give your children the greatest gift on earth–parents who love each and act like they do!
The cost of EFTU classes with a certified trained instructor is cheaper than any attorney on planet Earth, or marriage counselor, for that matter. Oh, we tried all the conventional marriage counselor routes, with no improvement in our relationship. I highly recommend trying EFT.
Go the EFTU “EFT Training” page and sign up for classes today and watch your marriage heal before your eyes. Hire a certified EFTU practitioner, if your issues are difficult or heavy. You can find them under “EFT Resources” tab. Or try Dawson Church’s Tapping Deep Intimacy course by clicking here.
You’ll be surprised how well EFT works for relationships. I know Brad and I were!
