“Rose Mary, can you look at Chad and share how you feel about the priority you are in his life? And Chad, can you please listen, really listen, and try to understand what Rose Mary is saying and feeling?”, our marriage ‘coach’ Yolanda asked. “I often feel like I get Chad’s left-overs, like I’m an after-thought to most everything else that gives him purpose in life”, replied Rose Mary emotionally but calmly, as she answered Yolanda’s question.

After our session that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about Rose Mary’s comments. Overall, I thought I was a good husband — a good provider, an engaged dad, loyal and loving to the woman I married — but did I honestly give Rose Mary my best or mostly just my left-overs?

For many years, Rose Mary told me that she felt low on my priority list. But I often brushed her comments off as being somewhat selfish and overly needy, for not understanding the sacrifice I was making to better our lifestyle and the well-being of others. I had learned something called Vertical Alignment which suggested the following order of priorities: God, Spouse, Children, Business, and then Me. Truthfully, my order of priorities were often Business, Chris and my sports, school & church boards, then Rose Mary, Nick, and God. I strived to accomplish what I felt were worthwhile goals in life and having already achieved the goal of marrying a beautiful, loving, industrious wife, I felt the need to conquer other important pursuits that made me feel ‘worthy’.

Rose Mary and I attended 3 excellent weekend marriage retreats in our first 15 years together, but nothing in the following 16 years. We had developed many unhealthy habits in our relationship and after losing our son Chris and both of Rose Mary’s parents in 3 short years, we agreed some relationship coaching was needed. We were referred to Yolanda von Hockauf of the Vancouver Couple & Family Institute www.vcfi.ca in November 2018 and are so thankful for the help Yolanda has provided. Here is Rose Mary’s perspective on the benefits we have received:

“Chad has always told me that he loved me and wanted a good marriage. I know this was true by his willingness to work hard for our family, for being a good dad and taking time for family vacations. However, in our day-to-day lives I felt there was little time left for me after his business, sports and board commitments.

After Chris passed, Chad committed to taking considerable vacation time to be with me, but he will admit that he has used our vacations as a way to appease me for a lack of attention during the rest of the year. It took many months of counselling and several weeks of experiencing his devoted time for me to trust that he was sincere in his verbal promises to make me a much higher priority in our daily living.

Yolanda gave us a vision that our marriage relationship could be one of the most fulfilling areas of our lives. Thankfully, we both caught this vision and as we invest into Emotionally Focused Therapy and quality time with each other, I am learning to release the resentment I often feel towards the time Chad spends on all of his other activities.”