You Can Make Real Changes On Your Own

“In four months, Harry and I should be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary - if he doesn’t leave me before then,” says Ruth, 47, in a voice barely above a whisper.

“He actually told me that 24 years was long enough to be married.” How do you respond to that? We’ve lived our life exactly the way he’s always wanted. How can he say after all this time that he’s never been happy?

As a child, Ruth never gave her parents any trouble and was always eager to please - traits she carried into her marriage. “I’ve never been one to complain. I don’t even confide my problems to friends because I never wanted to burden one,” Ruth explains.

While their four boys were growing up, she clipped coupons faithfully, sewed clothes for her children and made do with furniture from her mother or the thrift shop.

“When the kids finally moved out, I found a civil service job and saved enough money to buy some nice new furniture for the living room,” Ruth recalls. “I was so excited - until Harry announced that he was tired of the 30-minute commute to his real estate office, hated doing yardwork, and intended to move to a little apartment downtown.

Grudgingly, Ruth agreed, but she’s been miserable ever since.Ruth feels like a ship drifting without an anchor and with no destination in sight. She wants to change, but she feels hopeless and doubtful that anything she can do can really make a difference at this point.

Harry doesn’t have much hope, either. “Ruth is a fine woman,” says Harry, 47, an attractive man wearing cowboy boots and a leather jacket. “But she’s become completely dependent on me for all her emotional and social needs. She has no friends, no interests of her own. I feel stifled in this marriage and can’t see any way to go but out.

“Here I am, almost 50 years old, and what have I done with my life? I haven’t made any real contribution in any area except of course raising four young men who, I must say, I’m damn proud of.”

But even though Harry feels confused and torn, he doesn’t want to lose Ruth or his family but still doesn’t know how to be happy with her. He refuses to see a counselor for more than one visit. “Ruth is the one who has to change, if she can,” he insists, “not me.”

Can One Person Make A Marriage Better?

“In most troubled marriages, couples reach a stalemate,” notes Michelle Weiner-Davis, M.S.W. “She waits for him to change. He waits for her to change. Pessimism and hopelessness set in as, day after day, problems never get resolved.” The result: One or both partners seethe with resentment or surrender to compromised or loveless relationships in which their own needs, ambitions and beliefs are sacrificed.

Though it may seem unfair that one person has to do the marital work of two, experts contend that you can make some real changes in your marriage on your own - without bribery, begging or donning the mantle of Joan of Arc. But first, think small. The following advice helped Ruth rethink many of the things she was unwittingly doing to push Harry away:

Pinpoint what you want. The very act of defining your goals and taking a more organized look at your life makes those goals more attainable.

Stop blaming your partner. Most people want to think that they’re right and their spouse is wrong. Break the “if only” syndrome - the belief that if only a partner were more available, more dependable, less angry or less sarcastic, then the relationship would be so much better.

Do something - anything - different. Add some novel approach to your standard problem-solving repertoire, no matter how crazy it might seem. Doing something different breaks the sequence of events that automatically leads to the same old problems.

Act ‘As if ‘. When you anticipate a negative outcome, you transmit subtle messages that often bring about the very results you want to change. Most likely, your gestures, tone of voice, the way you stand there, hands on hips or folded tightly across your chest, convey the message that you expect a battle.

When Ruth thought about this point, she realized that she always depended on her husband to suggest plans or activities. Once she began to take the initiative, setting up things they both used to enjoy doing together - like hiking in the mountains - he was more eager to spend time with her.