Keeping your marriage: Matchmaker case study

Matchmaker Case Study:

Marriage And The Power Shift

Not all women in their 30s and 40s are in the same situation. Some are searching for their Mr. Right, and some are married, trying to hang on to their Mr. Used-To-Be-Right. But all will navigate the Power Shift phenomenon in one form or another. One woman who joined my matchmaking candidate poolcame to me, lost and utterly confused. She was blindsided when her husband cheated on her and left their 17-year marriage. She tried to dissect the series of events that led up to the split, and in the process, revealed the many common mistakes married women make who don’t heed the Power Shift. If not carefully tended to, difficult issues can arise during a long-term marriage, including midlife crises, sexual apathy, excessive weight gain, and a lack of commonality. Ignoring the Power Shift in a marriage can damage or destroy the relationship beyond repair if couples don’t take precautions to prevent it.

Take Sheila for example, who was stunned when she joined my candidate pool after the loss of her marriage. She met her husband, Jeff, in college when they were both still in their early 20s. She described the first time they met and how he took her breath away with his handsome looks. “I knew the minute I laid eyes on him that he was the ‘one’,” she remembered.

In the beginning, they spent every waking hour together and were joined at the hip. Jeff was completely hot for her and made love to her anywhere and everywhere, while also waiting on and adoring her. After four years of early marital bliss, he got a job promotion and they moved to the suburbs to start their family. Sheila didn’t need to work, and she could focus on getting pregnant and raising children. That is when everything changed.

The new baby arrived, and Jeff’s attention shifted to his financial responsibilities at work. The romance began to slip as their sex life gradually became less and less important. Sheila felt more like a mother than a lover, and her physical attraction toward Jeff began to dwindle. Jeff became grumpy and impatient when he was home, escaping into his own world on the couch.

Then came baby number two. The second child only drew them deeper into the morass. Sheila missed her pre-pregnancy body and blamed her weight gain on Jeff’s lack of interest in her. She tried to lose the 30 pounds she’d gained after the first child but couldn’t bring her weight down. It was hard to feel sexy when she felt fat. To Sheila's relief, Jeff stopped asking for sex. Next came the separate bedrooms so that Jeff could sleep through the night and enjoy a fresh start in the morning for work. Sheila knew the relationship was unfulfilling for both of them, but she truly thought it would recover once the kids got older and they had more time for each other.

As the years drifted by, Jeff became more and more distant and increasingly worked later and later at night. Then one day when she was going through some bills, she noticed daily calls on Jeff’s cell phone to a number she didn’t recognize. She dialed the number that Jeff had dialed each day for many months, only to hear a woman's voice on the other end answer and confirm her worst fears. Jeff was having an affair. When confronted, Jeff didn't deny it and instead blamed it on Sheila and their unfulfilling marriage.
"You lost interest in all the things that used to make us happy," Jeff explained. "Including sex. I’ve spent time doing things with her that we used to do. I wish it could have been you. I love you. I love the children, but she is more interested in doing the things that I enjoy than you are. We’ve drifted apart.”

“Well, you will leave her immediately,” Sheila demanded.

“No.”

The message was loud and clear. Jeff wanted out. What happened to Sheila and Jeff’s marriage is not uncommon. Sheila took her man for granted once they were married, thinking she had him hooked forever. She thought he would never leave her once they had a family. But marriage is never a prison. Staying in a marriage is always an option for both. After you get your man, then you have to keep him. Sheila was now faced with the reality that, as a 40-year-old mom, she would be single and competing in a dating world where men are typically drawn to women 10 to 15 years younger.

Jeff left Sheila, but not for the other woman. The affair was a symptom of a failing marriage, not the cause. He left both the mistress and his wife and began a single life, trying to find a healthy, hot, fun relationship with someone who appreciated him and didn’t take him for granted. He was searching for someone who was young and sexual and had her own career and interests, as well as someone who respected him for the successful man he had become.

Couples who have been married for a long time like Sheila and Jeff can encounter a long list of disappointments. Partners struggle with their own loss of youth and wonder if they are missing out on life by confining themselves to one person. Men going through a mid-life crisis may respond by paying attention to other women who validate them. Wives who understand the Power Shift phenomenon can fill this role and can anticipate the crisis and, in all likelihood, avert it. Those who don’t are likely to find themselves in divorce court. Sadly, Sheila didn’t understand it and lost her husband.

Midlife Crisis

When men grow older, they may feel a desperate sense of their lives coming to an end. Mid-life crises are real for men, and women who simply ignore it, or worse yet ignore him, will lose him. As a man, his entire self-value system has been based on conquest and strength. When he hits a point in his life where he feels his youth slipping away, he thinks he is missing out and fears he may have settled for less than he could have achieved. He sees the end of his life for the first time, and it terrifies him that he may be losing his virility.

A mid-life crisis translates into many difficult behaviors, which for the wife, can prove challenging. He may secretly crave hot, sexy, women while he still can get them, or he may want fast cars and adventure before it’s too late. Many men become the “grumpy guy on the couch.” He may take the relationship and his wife for granted and stop talking, giving compliments, making romantic gestures, and offering to help. Women have to lead by example to guide their husband through this time—now is not the time to take him for granted. A marriage of 17 years has many highs and lows, stages, and challenges. Even though he is the grumpy guy on the couch, a woman needs to see him as her grumpy guy, and she is going to have to be the strong one to help him get through the crisis if she wants to keep the marriage.

Keeping It Sexual

When the marriage was young, Sheila and Jeff had sex all the time, but as soon as Sheila let the sex slip, she ran the risk of losing her man. She had no idea that her marriage had an expiration date. Withholding sex is one of the biggest mistakes many women make during a long-term marriage. Men are sexual, and by withholding sex, a wife is not only hurting herself, but also the marriage. Sex glues a relationship and should never be used as a weapon. A wife should simultaneously support her husband and call him on his bad behavior during his mid-life crisis, but she should also show him that she appreciates him and that she is trying to keep the love alive. She should let him know and show him that he needs to try, as well. Keeping it sexual is the best tool women have in their arsenal.

Jeff was a scoundrel for cheating on Sheila, but Sheila should have heeded the Power Shift in order to save her marriage. When men go through mid-life crises, they may crave hot sex with younger women, because it validates their sustained virility. But if the wife provides the sex that he is craving, she can prevent him from acting out his fantasy. Wives need to remember why men like younger women:

1. Younger women are less jaded.
2. Younger women smile more often.
3. Younger women are more fun.
4. Younger women are not stuck in their ways.
5. Younger women admire older men.
6. Younger women don’t compete with older men.
7. Younger women have younger bodies.

Sheila had all of those qualities when Jeff fell in love with her. What happened?

Women Who Gain Excessive Weight

While Sheila may not have her younger body anymore, she could have still kept her body hot. Men want hot. Men are visual and care about looks. Women are likely to fall in love with a man in spite of his looks, but men will fall in love with a woman because of her looks. Whether he likes curves or bones, he will want her to maintain the hotness that he initially fell for in the beginning. It is one thing if she was heavy when they fell in love, and quite another if she let herself go simply because she no longer cared to attract him. It is more than just a vanity issue—it is a consideration issue. In asking him to be faithful, she needs to be willing to put the effort it takes to remain desirable.

The flip side of the coin is the man who cheats on his gorgeous wife with a woman who can’t begin to compare in looks. These wives are not only shocked and hurt by his infidelity, but also confused by the woman he chose—with her?! She is a bulldog! Many men explain their actions and choice by saying that the wife was a lazy lover and became boring in bed. She was fun when they were young, but that was just because she was beautiful and he was full of lust. As he got older and began to appreciate the subtleties of great sex, he was no longer satisfied with the one-sided effort. Being passive is fine sometimes, but a man wants to surrender power on occasion, too. Sometimes, he wants to be worshiped and adored, just like he used to worship and adore her. Men often want their woman to take sexual control and show him what it is like to be completely devoured and appreciated. His “bulldog” may have understood this in ways that his wife did not, and his “bulldog” may have become his friend during his time of crisis.

Women Should Work

I’m sure we’ve all heard the other side of the story, too. The wife sacrificed her career to raise the children and support her husband emotionally as he built his career, but after she turned 45, he dumped her for a younger woman. That is a low blow. That is a rotten husband. That is not, however, the whole story. As in Sheila’s case, they could afford a nanny and a house cleaning service and Sheila could quit work completely to become a stay-at-home mom. She didn’t want to worry about bills and expenses and only wanted the task of raising their children. After spending years raising kids in the suburbs, Sheila became bored. Not only did she become bored, but she also became boring. She was depressed and felt uninspired and lazy, and as a result, she continued to gain the unwanted pounds. She felt lost and incomplete as a woman. Jeff couldn’t help her because, in all honesty, he found her boring, too. A non-working woman has been the ruin of many marriages and long-term relationships. A woman needs a career or some outside interests in order to maintain a strong sense of herself and hold the interest of not only her husband, but also herself.

Jeff and Sheila’s initial attraction was based purely on lust. In the beginning, they were both hot for each other and full of hormones. However, as the years passed and sex waned, they found they had nothing in common. They lacked an actual friendship to maintain the relationship. Their relationship was all about raising the kids however, once the kids grew older, there was nothing left to glue the bond. Jeff may have become grumpy, but Sheila had become boring and sexually apathetic—something no man finds attractive or appealing. It takes a strong, committed couple to handle midlife crises, unwanted weight gain, and boredom in the bedroom. Apparently, Sheila and Jeff didn’t have the strength to hold it together. Before marriage, make sure the bond is based on actual friendship if you want to maintain the relationship through the ebbs and flows that will naturally occur. Make sure that your Mr. Right doesn’t become your Mr. Used-to-Be-Right.