I have heard from my clients that they don’t know what to do when their spouse has a negative opinion of them.

What are the supposed to do if their spouse thinks they are a racist, looks like a drug addict because of their tattoos or that they are untrustworthy due to their faith transition?

I suggest one initial step and then a series of questions to help explore the next steps.

A mixed faith marriage can cause some to question marriage as an institution. It can open up questions about why you got married and why you stay married. In this podcast I discuss some of those questions that may look like:

• What do we have in common without the church? 
• He only married me because I was a good mormon – does this mean he doesn’t want to be married anymore
• I ony married him because he ticked the boxes, he was what I was told to marry- now what? 
• Do I want to stay married? 
• Do I want be be married to this person – any person 
• What do I think of marriage? 
• Do I want to be married to someone who believes or doesn’t believe the gospel? 
• How do we build a new foundation? 
• What if they don’t want to build a new foundation? 

A LDS mixed faith marriage often means the loss of certain dreams. There may be many lost dreams: the dream to be senior missionaries, to attend the temple together, and to raise kids in the church together. Here I talk about the loss of dreams through the lens of codependency.

The loss of a dream will trigger the grief cycle. When you can allow the grief cycle and work through that process you can end up in acceptance.

Acceptance is the key to moving forward in your relationship when dreams are no longer viable.

 

I address a listener’s question about wanting to talk about certain issues in her marriage and wondering if she is wanting to be right versus happy or just suppressing herself.

Here I explore how I would work on this in a coaching session.