I may be a Marriage and Family Therapist, but I find it difficult at times to live up to the type of husband and father my wife and children need. I know they probably don’t think that, but it’s at least my perspective. When I think about some of the emotional struggles I’m dealing with, I feel overwhelmed by how much I need to change and grow as a person.

If you’ve been trying to do better in your marriage and it feels like you’re not getting anywhere, maybe you know that feeling. You look at the distance between who you are and who you want to be, and it seems too far to cover. Some days it feels easier to just stop trying.

I get it. I’m right there with you, and I want to share a few things I’m learning.

Where I’ve struggled

In the past, my behavior at times has ranged from avoidance to withdrawal, to irritability and snapping, to angry-toned rants. I don’t desire to be this way toward anyone. I believe I have improved, but not to where I would like to be. I want to be loving and create deep emotional connection with my family.

As much as I want to blame others for the struggles that pop up in my life, I keep coming back to the fact that I control me. No one else can take responsibility for my actions.

I’m starting to realize what that means. It means I need to stop pointing the finger at others and take responsibility for the negative and hurtful choices I’ve made in my life. Maybe you do too.

The more I think about this, the more I ask myself, “How do I change for the better?” When I’m working with couples and individuals in my counseling practice, I seem to find the words to say. But it’s coming slowly for me personally.

An object at rest stays at rest

Every year around the holidays, I try to take a break and slow down to spend time enjoying my children and my beautiful wife. It can be refreshing. But the more I think about it, the more frustrated I get, because there have been holidays when I lost motivation and became apathetic.

I’m starting to believe more and more in the idea that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion. That’s true of change in a marriage too. When we stop moving, it gets harder to start again.

Keep it simple

Fortunately, I think I’m learning some things. One of them is that the phrase “Keep it simple, stupid” has more clout than just being a cliché.

Changing behavior is not easy, but behavior CAN change. Sometimes the road seems too tough, too overwhelming, and too long. Sometimes it feels so long that we start believing we’re failures, and we want to give up and stop trying. Yet change can take place.

I find that keeping things simple and focusing on only two or three areas can help. When you find simple, creative ways to work on those areas, the negative, defeating feelings start to ease.

What The Love Dare gets right

An example of this is learning to love others. A book I read years ago, The Love Dare by Stephen and Alex Kendrick, demonstrates the idea of keeping things simple by focusing on one simple dare each day.

If you’ve read it, you may remember something interesting. The first three dares ask you to keep repeating the first dare: say nothing negative to your spouse at all. I always thought it was interesting that this is the one dare they ask you to repeat.

Think about that. If all you focused on was saying nothing negative at all, and you were successful, wouldn’t your marriage and your household be much better off?

When anxiety erases your progress

Here’s the tricky part. Even when we’re doing the simple things, one bad day or one bad week can make it feel like none of it counted.

I have many clients come in saying they didn’t keep doing their homework. They stopped checking in with their thoughts. They didn’t slow themselves down with some deep breathing, a walk, journaling, or talking to a friend who will listen. And they let their thoughts get carried away with their emotions.

When that happens, anxiety starts telling the story. It says you’re right back where you started, and it wipes out everything you did before the bad week.

So in session, I slow them down. I ask them if there was one moment or one thing they did that helped. If they can’t think of anything, I give them some examples:

• Did you die?
• What was the worst thing about it?
• Did you survive?
• Did you learn something?
• Did you change anything?
• Did you recognize afterward that you’d slipped again, and start thinking about how you could change it?

That last one matters. If you noticed you fell back into an old pattern and started thinking about how to do it differently, that counts. You didn’t just fail. You caught it.

Name the win, then celebrate it

Sometimes clients don’t spot the win on their own. But as they’re talking, I’ll hear it. When I do, I slow them down to help them recognize it, and I’ll repeat it out loud several times.

Then I usually have them write it down and say what it means. I’ll ask them to read it every day for a while. Anxiety is loud, and a win you’ve written down and read every day is a lot harder for it to erase.

You can do this at home. When you catch yourself doing the thing you’ve been working on, even once, write it down. Then write what it means to you. Maybe it means you’re not the same person you were a year ago. Maybe it means change really is possible for you.

With couples, I may have them do a check-in each day where each person says one thing the other did well that day, or something they like about the other person. It doesn’t have to be big. “You didn’t snap at me when I was running late” is a win worth saying out loud.

Your dare for the next week or two

What if we made our goal for the next week or two to not say anything negative and to watch our tone when we’re speaking to others? Don’t worry if you mess up. What matters when you trip and fall is that you get back up and keep moving forward.

And when you do get back up, count that as a win and write it down too.

My guess is that you’ll feel less overwhelmed and will likely be able to focus better by keeping things simple. If you want to try this simple exercise with me, let me know how it turns out by emailing me from the contact page. And if you’re feeling stuck and would like someone in your corner while you work on it, I offer online coaching for couples and individuals.

Keep working on your marriage, one simple step at a time.