What To Do When Your Spouse Just Isn’t Being Supportive Right Now

I got a question today about “what to do when your spouse isn’t supportive and you have plans to go big”. So just to clarify plans to go big doesn’t mean you’re kind of tiptoeing into this and you’re thinking about you know – that you might want to do this.

You want to be all in and you want to get a certain result but your spouse isn’t supportive. So what do you do in that situation? I will share with you guys that my husband; I’m gonna be very kind to him here and say he’s great. He’s very very supportive; but there have been times when he totally hasn’t been.

There have been times when he totally doubted whether I’d be able to do something. There were times where he just thought I was plain crazy, there were times where he’d be super frustrated because I would say that I was gonna do something and then it didn’t look to him like I was!

So I want you to know I totally get what it’s like when you have a spouse who isn’t backing you. And for you – maybe in order to go big you need to get some kind of support, maybe you need to do a program or get a coach?

That’s usually the case, right? When we want to go big and we’re getting outside of our comfort zone, we’re getting outside of what we do right now, because if we’re already doing that we would already have the results that we wanted (make sense). So because we are going into a new area and getting uncomfortable, usually the smartest thing to do is to get support from someone who’s already done it right.

And so if for you – going big requires having an uncomfortable conversation around money I want to talk about what to do there, but I also wanted to talk about just the conversation outside of money, the conversation of like asking for support. So let me just say I kind of look at it from kind of two angles.

Either your spouse is not being supportive because he doesn’t quite understand or maybe he just really doesn’t understand at all. And maybe he’s being protective or he’s got a different approach from you and he just wants to make sure that you’ve crossed your T’s and and dotted your I’s and that everything’s in place!

And a lot of the time as coaches we’re just going for it and we have this sense of trusting ourselves, and our spouses has a completely different approach, that’s totally normal okay…

So I take the approach of either ONE; he wants to be supportive or maybe he doesn’t want to be supportive yet, but he just needs to see that it makes sense to you, that you trust yourself and that you can see how it’s gonna actually help you get the results you want right?

Or; he’s not supportive, just because he’s being a bit of a turd right now right and that could sound like any one of our spouses or ourselves at any given time, but what I may need to clarify is even if it totally made sense to him, even if you cross the T’s and dotted your I’s and all that kind of stuff he still just wasn’t being supportive because maybe there’s some other issues going on in your relationship, well I’m gonna say I have a different approach for that then I do with if I’ve got a good guy and he just needs to have a really good chat.

Okay so here’s my approach:

ONE: If he’s kind of erring to the side of being a turd right now and he’s just not being supportive. Period. (And I’m not actually judging him for that, like I said I feel like my spouse has been every kind of spouse and so you know that’s the stage he’s in right now, whether it’s been a short time or a long time it is what it is right).

But if that’s how he’s showing up for you right now … well if you are looking to someone who is being unsupportive and they’re being untrusting of you no matter how much due diligence you give, and he’s gonna be non supportive well then that’s not someone who I would go to for advice or even to get some kind of co-permission kind of thing in order to move forward and do what it whatever it is you want to do right!

I think in any case running our own businesses is our own responsibility we’ve got to take the risk we’ve gotta show we’re fully responsible so if that’s the case I would be respectful I would hear what he has to say but then I would just make the decision on my own and fully back myself.

That’s my personal opinion that’s what’s really worked well for me and I will tell you that at times when I’ve done that – now looking back my husbands grateful for that, but if I were to say, “was he grateful at the time?”. No, he wasn’t but that was fine by me because I knew that I needed to make the decision for myself because he wasn’t being that great, didn’t matter what at the time right so I just made the decision myself and I’ve had some of my clients do that as well so that’s one way of handling it.

TWO: The other way is if you’ve got someone who’s currently being a great person and he wants to be supportive but he wants you to make sure that you are really looking at this with eyes wide open kind of thing, I’m just gonna say usually the best thing you can do is have a conversation …

so let’s just say you wanted to invest and work with someone and join a program right and you’re fearful because you’re thinking “I’ve joined programs before and I didn’t do the work” or “I’ve joined programs before and it like they didn’t teach me what I thought I was gonna learn” and and there’s a risk right?!

Your husband and yourself have got to know that there’s always gonna be risk when it comes to growing a business, not just in the investing side of things but in the strategy side of things.

Sometimes things work really well for someone else but they don’t work as well for you, at least not at first and so you’ve got to keep tweaking and tweaking and tweaking and sometimes things take longer for you then they might for one or two or a whole group of other people, there’s a risk of that happening right so I like to think of it, “will this investment pay off if I keep going until I get the result” right and it’s that simple.

Ask yourself - "Will I keep going until I get the result and if I do keep going until I get the result will it pay off?"

That’s what investments are like – we can’t usually anticipate exactly when they’ll pay off and how big a reward it will be but we can have like a long-term vision, we can look at patterns and we can say:

“well I can see that most people who use this strategy and keep going and they tweak it and tweak it till it works, well for them and the way that they run their business, well they get results. They ten times their income, or they go over six figures or they go over seven figures or whatever it is that going big is for you right, they’re able to travel with their family and they’re able to buy their own home, cash…

… whatever your idea of a big result is, you’ve gotta ask yourself, “if I keep going until I make this work for me will I get the result that I want and will this investment be worth it”, and if it’s a yes right, and you can see that this investments going to support you on that journey to get you there, well then you’ve got a responsibility to show up and be fully confident with your spouse.

What I will tell you is the more confident you are energetically, not fake confidence, but genuinely confident, then the easier it is for your spouse to relax and just trust you. The way that I say that is, “do you have your own back, do you really feel like you trust yourself”, because if you don’t feel like you trust yourself, I would say, like more than anyone else, your spouse is gonna pick up on it whether he knows it or not, and they’re going to have a massive amount of doubt.

And yes, sometimes no matter how much you back yourself they may still have their their doubts and that’s where you just go and you just say thanks for loving me anyway while I go for this, and you just go and you keep going until you get the result that you want.

So in my opinion what works really well when you’re not currently being supported by a spouse, is number one; have a look, where are they right now, are they going to support you if you can show up confidently and if you can – you know have a real responsible adult chat with them about business and the risks and and the payback that will come; or are they going to be unsupportive no matter what right now okay.

If they’re unsupportive no matter what right now then you can let them know what you’ve decided and then obviously be responsible and make the decision that you think is best for you, and if you think that they will be supportive of you, that you just need to have a chat, but have it with confidence and you will find that they are far more likely to support you and back you as well or at least do it a lot faster than if you were to show up nervous, then they’re more likely to be checking, “in is it working yet”. or or any of that kind of stuff right…

…so I want you to enjoy your journey being an entrepreneur. It is hard enough as it is sometime.

It’s the journey that I think demands so much self growth, it demands that we not just learn strategies and take risks but man it demands that we develop better habits, develop more self confidence, start to really believe in ourselves and see what’s possible …

and when you have people around you that aren’t that supportive it may not feel easy at first but I promise you, if you will become your own biggest cheerleader first, other people won’t be able to help but get on board with you and see that in time you’ve got this!

There will always be people who will be standing on the sidelines saying negative things, pulling you down, it may not be your spouse – it might be someone else, it might be a parent or a sibling or a peer or anyone maybe just someone on Facebook.

There will always be people who want to be negative or who want to pull you down but if you will have your own back then it really doesn’t matter who is unsupportive of you, because the main person that needs to support you and believe in you is yourself, because you’ll be the only person in the end who will determine the success or the failure of your business.

So, the faster you get on board with supporting yourself the faster you’ll get to wherever it is you want to go.

Hope this helps lots of love and sunshine I’ll see you later

What To Do When Your Spouse Just…