Most couples do not realize how subconscious limiting beliefs affect your marriage. Here are 7 things you can do to reprogram your marriage by changing the limiting beliefs that sabotage your relationship.

Ever heard of the Cocktail Party Effect?

It goes like this. You are at a cocktail party with friends. You soon find yourself engaged in a fascinating conversation with someone you meet. You are engrossed in a story about their travels. Suddenly you hear your name mentioned across the room.

You didn’t hear what they said about you, only your name. Even though you were focused on the conversation with your new friend, your unconscious mind recognized your name. Somehow your name made it through the noise of everything else in the room.

The question is: Why did you hear your name and nothing else?

Psychologists often use this to explain how our unconscious mind is always filtering events, thoughts, and interactions and only letting certain things through to our conscious mind.

It helps explain how some things influence us and we don’t even realize it. We aren’t aware we are “listening” for our name yet we hear it.

To our surprise, much of our conscious behavior is controlled by our unconscious filter.

In the late 1970s, one of the fathers of modern neuroscience, Michael Gazzaniga, interviewed hundreds of patients who had undergone surgery to sever the left brain hemisphere from the right. The medical procedure was done to stop seizures. It was largely successful.

Gazzaniga flashed hidden images from a computer screen targeting each hemisphere separately. He explains it this way:

[He would] seat the patient in front of a visual display that could present some stimuli to his right brain hemisphere and other information to his left hemisphere. 

Typically the patient was not aware of what was presented to the right side of his or her brain, only what was presented to the left side. In some studies, the researchers would present visual commands such as “walk” to the right brain hemisphere, and the patient would immediately push his chair back from the computer table and start to leave the testing room. Asked where he was going, he’d say something like “Going to my house to get a soda.” The explanations sounded reasonable but were completely wrong.

Bargh, J. (2017). Before You Know It. Simon and Schuster.

This insight tells us a lot about what motivates our behavior and how internal beliefs – even though they are undetected – shape our thoughts and actions.

More times than not we are reacting to an unconscious script (more about that later) and justify that behavior with conscious 

The Subconscious Mind and Emotions

One conclusion he drew from this test was our unconscious mind often gives us messages that lead us to do certain behaviors. Often these messages are the opposite of what we say we intend. To rectify the mixed signals our conscious mind makes us reasons for doing those actions.

This applies to marriage on a number of levels.

1. We often say we want a better marriage but do things that undermine our wishes.

How many times have you done something that went against what you really wanted? We all do it at times. While it is common, it is not normal. Or it shouldn’t be normal. Our desires should always dictate our behavior. Many times this is simply not the case as we will see.

2. We believe things that are untrue about our spouse and our relationship.

This usually comes through over-reactions and absolute statements. Absolute statements sound like this:

• You always…
• You never…
• I’m always the one who…
• You’re never the one who…

Get it? Those statements are false. Sure, your spouse might fail at times. When you entertain the lie that they always act that way, you create an atmosphere of doubt in your marriage (they sense it), and your subconscious mind looks for reasons for this thought to be true. You find what you are looking for.

3. We act (or react) out of past hurts, disappointments, and wounds.

We bring past experiences into our marriage.

Meet Sue and John

Sue was promiscuous in high school. She had a ‘bad reputation’ and guys tended to use her. In her Junior year, she got pregnant and had an abortion. It had a negative effect on her emotionally and physically. She experienced many medical complications.

After high school, she vowed to change. She wanted a new start. So she changed. She no longer let guys have their way and tried hard to focus on her studies and career.

However, she still felt guilt and shame about her past.

In her final year of college, she met John. They fell in love and married not long after college. At first, their marriage was great. They were all smiles. It was in their third year of marriage things began to fall apart. Sue became distant and withdrawn. She found reasons to not engage physically with John. Over time, her emotional and physical withdrawal was too much for John. They separated.

Sue did not want a divorce. She loved John. She even begged him to stay. He wanted their marriage to work but was clear with Sue that she had to get help. He would not stay in the marriage if she continued to pull away and close down.

During counseling, Sue realized her past was controlling her future. Although she loved John and wanted to please him, her view of physical intimacy was tainted by her past. Physical contact was dirty. It reminded her of the past she wanted to flee. So when John initiated sex, she emotionally withdrew.

Once the problem was identified, she was able to work with her counselor (and John) to break the cycle.

In light of this, how do we work on our marriage?

How To Change Your Subconscious Beliefs About Marriage

Here are 10 Steps On How To Reprogram Subconscious Beliefs

1. Identify Your Limiting Beliefs

The first step toward recovery or healing in any area of life is to identify what is wrong. Not what you feel is wrong, but what is truly wrong.

We often treat marriage issues with aspirin when they actually require surgery. Can you imagine an oncologist diagnosing a patient with cancer and prescribing cough medicine as a cure? We would question their diagnosis AND their ability to treat a patient.

In marriage, this often manifests by placing blame on your partner rather than digging deep into your heart to see why you feel the way you do about their behavior. It’s easy to place blame. But marriage freedom and health comes from the willingness and ability to identify the things that make you feel the way you do.

One way to identify limiting beliefs is to pay attention to your self-talk.

We all have a script running in our minds. That script is based on past events, personality, and other input we have programmed into our thought life.

We ‘hear’ the script when we do something new or engage with our spouse over a delicate issue. When that happens the script is triggered and our internal voice begins to recite all the negative things programmed in our minds.

Your self-talk is usually the result of your underlying beliefs. Generally speaking, we say what we believe about life.

Your self-talk is usually the result of your underlying beliefs. Generally speaking, we say what we believe about life. Share on X

This will (hopefully) become clear as we work through these steps.

Common Limiting Scripts We Run In Our Mind

Think of these limiting scripts as an MP3 player that starts every time you try to do something. It is a playlist that runs on autoplay.

Here are a few common scripts that run on autoplay.

• I’m a failure at love
• I’ll never be loved the way I desire
• Love is hard
• It’s dangerous to open your heart to someone
• Sex is dirty
• When my spouse desires sex it’s selfish
• My husband (wife) doesn’t understand me
• I never feel loved by them
• My spouse never appreciates me
• I always blow it with my husband (wife)
• I’m not good enough to be loved
• Why does this always happen to me?
• I’ll never have the marriage I want
• People always hurt me
• I always seem to hurt people

Do any of these resonate with you? The list is endless. Those negative thoughts (scripts) often run when we are trying the most to make our marriage work.

It is important to recognize those scripts. It’s the starting place for taking control of your life. If you don’t recognize the internal voice, you will not be able to conquer them. Start by identifying what goes on in your thought life – your inner voice.

My wife calls this the committee in your head. To get control of the committee, you have to know what they are saying.

2. Write Down Those Thoughts That Sabotage your Life and Marriage

The next step is simple but time-consuming. Write down all the negative things you hear from that inner committee.

Don’t skip this step. It’s one thing to identify the voice inside that sabotages your efforts, it’s another to document what is said in your head. There is something bout writing it down that helps you accomplish the next step.

You may feel your list will be too long to write everything down. I’ve found that there are a few dominant thoughts that come to the surface. These are the ones that do the most damage. Once you start writing them down, you will find that they all have a few common factors. They tend to fall into certain categories.

Keep note of that and focus on the dominant beliefs that do the most damage.

You will always move in the direction of the images you hold in your mind. Share on X

3. Call Them What They Are – Lies

Once you have your list of limiting thoughts, call them what they are: Lies.

Refuse to accept them as determining and controlling factors in your life. If you are honest, you know those scripts aren’t accurate. They may feel accurate, but they are not.

Take Sue for example.

Her ‘belief’ was that sex was dirty. It felt dirty because of her past. Yet when confronted with this lie she ‘knew’ it wasn’t but her feelings over-ruled her logic.

As she worked through her issues by identifying the false beliefs, she started calling them lies.

For example, when she felt dirty about physical intimacy she responded:

Sex is not dirty. It is a gift from God. My past behavior is forgiven and I am free to experience deep love through physical intimacy with my husband!

The more she denied the lie and accepted the truth, the more freedom she experienced.

It didn’t happen overnight. But it did happen.

4. Face The Lie

Simply identifying the negative script and calling it a lie is not enough. It is important. But there is one thing that needs to be added. To really overturn that negative mental script you must reason your way through it.

Let’s use Sue as an example:

She identified her negative belief about physical intimacy. She wrote it accepted it as the lie it was. She even verbalized it as a lie.

The next step was to logically dismantle that lie so it lost its power. The more you expose the lie for what it is, the faster your breakthrough comes.

For her, she faced the fact that she did wrong things when she was younger. She didn’t make excuses for her actions, but she did embrace forgiveness. From God and from herself.

As she thought about her relationship with John, she realized her intimacy with him should not be influenced or hindered by her past. She recognized he loved her and desired her. She was only hurting him by refusing intimacy.

In essence, she came up with every reason she could think of as to why her limiting belief was hurting her and her marriage. She wrote it all down. Journaled about it. Turned it over and over in her mind until she built a case against those lies.

The more reasons she added to the list about why those beliefs were keeping her from the life she really wanted, the easier it became to replace those thoughts with the right ones.

I call this building a case against the lies you believe.

It takes time and effort to do it. Those couples who take the time move forward much faster.

Two things that help you build a case against wrong beliefs:

1) Identify Subconscious emotional triggers

You need to know when your behavior contradicts your desire. Realize what triggers those negative scripts. When you know the trigger, you can put things in place to avoid them.

2) Deal with past baggage.

A lot of what we do is controlled by past events and situations. Understanding how baggage clutters your life and what to do about it is vital for a healthy relationship.

For more information, check out our 3 Part Series on Dealing with Past Baggage.

5. Write Down Statements That Are Opposite The Lie

Now it’s time to replace those negative scripts. We will do this the same way we identified them. We write. This time we write the opposite of those statements.

It might be helpful to create a list of the most impacting negative scripts (beliefs) then next to those items write down the opposite belief. This is what Sue did. She took her negative script about physical intimacy and wrote down the opposite.

This is your ‘replacement script.’

Most psychologists believe the best way to change a bad habit is to start a good one. The same goes with thoughts. The easiest way to think different is to think different. I know that sounds cliche. But think about it.

If you don’t want to think about a red car, start thinking about a black dog. Soon your mind is preoccupied with the dog and you no longer think about the car. Make sense? I hope so because it is a fundamental law of change. It is far easier to replace a thought than try to conquer one.

We discuss in more detail in our article on the marriage wheel.

6. When You ‘Hear’ The Lie Replace It With The Truth

Now comes the real work. Up until now, we’ve dealt with concepts and theory. You have a plan to transform your life, now comes the work. Most people stop after identifying the problem and even creating a plan. But real progress comes from executing your plan.

That means you have to confront the lies when they appear.

When you hear the negative script begin to play in your mind, hit stop and replace it with the truth you have identified. It’s not complicated. Neither is it easy. It takes practice and consistent work to retrain your brain.

Sue put this into practice like this: When the bad thought about her sexual past cropped up, she immediately stopped and said, ‘That thought about my past is a lie. I am not that girl anymore and I will not let that thought steal my intimacy with my husband.’

She did this with all the thoughts that were interfering with her marriage. One by one she canceled them by replacing them with a positive script.

Three important things to keep in mind:

1) Don’t meditate on the lie. Do not give it a place in your marriage.

2) Say the truth out loud when you feel or hear the negative accusation or fear.

3) Never compromise the truth. 

You might be tempted to re-engage fear, but don’t. The truth will set you free, but you have to trust the truth and doubt your doubt.

7. Visualizing A Happy Marriage

This final step will help you accelerate your progress. Visualize what you really want for your marriage.

I know this sounds like weird mysticism, but it’s not. At least not the way I’m presenting it. Visualization is one of the fastest ways to retrain and reframe your subconscious mind.

Think about it.

Everything we communicate is in the form of pictures. Your mind processes visually. If you think about an orange tree you SEE the orange tree. You do not think about the letters that comprise the word orange. You think in pictures.

If I ask you how many windows are on the front of your house, you would picture your house in your mind and count the windows from the mental picture.

Images play a powerful role in our unconscious mind. The secret images you have (some you are unaware of) control what you believe about your life and marriage.

Images play a powerful role in our unconscious mind. The secret images you have (some you are unaware of) control what you believe about your life and marriage. Share on X

I’ve met women who wanted a loving marriage but their inner image of themselves (and about men) sabotaged their ability to experience one.

For example:

If you secretly believe all men are cheaters you will look for proof in their behavior. When they are late coming home or don’t answer your call you see infidelity in their action.

It’s like hearing your name at a cocktail party. You didn’t even realize you were listening for it. Your unconscious mind is like that. It always seeks validation of the beliefs it holds. Those beliefs are the images, scripts, and thoughts you have about life, love and marriage.

Some people believe they can’t control what they think. That’s the first lie you need to replace. It is false. And it will keep you from the life (and marriage) you desire.

It is far better to choose the pictures you hold in your mind than letting random, negative images pull you down. It really does boil down to choice. Who will you give control of thoughts? Will you maintain control by creating and holding positive visions of your marriage? Or will you give control away?

It’s your choice. Pun intended.

It is far better to choose the pictures you hold in your mind than letting random, negative images pull you down. Share on X

Visualizing the marriage you desire creates a positive picture of what you want and allows your subconscious mind to move toward it.

Key Thought: You will always move in the direction of the images you hold in your mind.

This is why pornography is so damaging to your marriage. Images control behavior.

Want to change behavior? Change the pictures you have in your mind.

Final Thoughts on How Subconscious Limiting Beliefs Affect Your Marriage

Feelings can be deceiving. Sometimes things feel real but they are limiting beliefs that keep us from the life and marriage we desire.

In this article, we discussed how subconscious limiting beliefs affect your marriage and listed seven steps to reprogram your mind and transform your relationship.

Summary

To recap:

How To Change Your Subconscious Beliefs About Marriage

• 1. Identify Your Limiting Beliefs
• 2. Write Down Those Thoughts That Sabotage your Life and Marriage
• 3. Call Them What They Are – Lies
• 4. Face The Lie
• 5. Write Down Statements That Are Opposite The Lie
• 6. When You ‘Hear’ The Lie Replace It With The Truth
• 7. Visualizing A Happy Marriage

What’s Next?

There are a few programs we recommend if you want to work on your thought life.

Think Right Now by Mike Brescia

Born to Win Zig Ziglar

Theater of the Mind by Matt Furey (Based on the classic work of Maxwell Maltz)