149: Remarriage Rehab Part 1 - Disconnecting From Your Past

The Remarried Life

Brian Mayer welcomes you to this 3 part series on renovating your remarriage. In part 1, we discuss how to be more aware of past issues that might be driving our reactions. In part 2, we discuss how our thought processes, distortions, and biases play a role in our connection. In part 3 we will discuss implementing new behaviors to complete the renovation. We hope you are inspired by today’s message. For more information and additional resources please visit our website at http://www.theremarriedlife.com

Today's Goodies

• Getting married again is not easy. In fact I would say it is probably much more difficult to sustain a good marriage the next time around than it was the first time. We often think we have learned from our mistakes and will do better the next time, but that is more often not the case.
• You may be even in another marriage that feels like it is heading in the wrong direction or even getting close to divorce. Again you are not alone and this is an extremely common place to be.
• In this 3 part series, that we are calling Remarriage Rehab we are going to talk through steps to help get your remarriage not only back on track but pushed to a much healthier place than you ever thought it could go.
• Now a couple of thoughts before we jump in today’s session. It was be highly beneficial if both you and your partner listened to these episodes together because you will get to your destination if you both are paddling together. Of course marriages and relationship can change with just one person paddling, but it can be a bit of a slower process.
• Secondly, if you are dealing any kind of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse then your safety of course trumps any of what we are going to talk about in this series. So if that is the case, I want you to address any safety issues first but getting help from the appropriate authorities first.
• All this being said, if your safety is assured then hopefully what we discuss over the next 3 sessions will be simple yet extremely powerful in moving you remarriage to a more healthy place.
• In Remarriage Rehab Part 1, we will talk today about disconnecting from our past.
• You may have heard the phrase that, “if you are hysterical, then it may be historical.” This means that if you or your partner have a very inflated response to an issue, it quite possibly means that something from your past if playing a role.
• The past can come from probably 3 different areas and is something to consider.
• • Your childhood could be an area that is bringing something up. Sometimes differences in parenting can rear up in how you were parented versus how your spouse was parented as an example. Or maybe something traumatic happened that causes your fight or flight mechanism to kick in.
  • Past relationships can also cause issues for us. If you went through a very difficult past marriage that was fraught with infidelity, then it cause manifest insecurities and trust issues. So if your spouse gets home from work late one day and doesn’t let you know beforehand, it could trigger a past feeling of upset if this was a norm in your past relationship.
  • Past events in your current relationship can also cause issues. Maybe you have had a similar argument several times before. But this time it blows up completely. It could be happening, because the issue has so mounded up that it contributes to what is happening in the here and now.
• All of this is great, so what to do we do about this.
• • First, we need to do an honest evaluation to understand the root of our extreme upset. So when something like this comes up, you should go back through your history to understand if something has set up shop in your brain as a trigger.
  • Second, we should voice our past triggers to our partner. This can do several things. It can help you by discussing and processing which is generally always a good thing for our brain. It can also help your partner know and understand which issues and topics may be landmines.
  • Change our view that it is not entirely that you are a bad person or that your spouse is a bad person, but that there is a third element at play that could be wreaking havoc.
• We all have a past and completely denying what that past might be doing can be a foolish endeavor.
• It should be stressed that we should not use our past as a weapon toward each other either. I hear one person in a couple often will make very cutting comments that their partner acts a certain way solely because of the past.

Resources:

• Free Shared Parenting Checklist
• The Remarried Life Facebook Group

Thanks For Listening!

• With so many things that take time in our lives, I more grateful than you know that you took time to listen to this podcast episode.
• If you liked this episode and believe that it would be beneficial to a friend, family member, or colleague, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.
• The Remarried Life Facebook Group is a community of people just like you who get and give support. Please join today! ​

As always remember that marriage is not something you have, it is something you do. Talk to you next week unless you are binge listening in the future in which case I will talk to you in about a minute! Take care.