My Success Story and Personal Journey Through Marriage Fitness

It was actually kind of funny because I mistook her for another friend of mine when I saw her from a distance and started yelling at her. Fortunately though for us my friend I was with knew Amber & I guess you could say that we pretty much hit it off instantly.

We hung out that night, which led to us meeting up again everyday for the next 6 days, me missing my bus to move back with my Dad 2000 km away and then me deciding heck why not ask her if she wanted to date.

A couple of months later I decided that it was a good time to move out of Mom’s house and move in with Amber and her family. Within a couple more months we decided that we wanted to rent a place of our own. We moved along very quickly in our relationship but everything just seemed so right. We were the perfect couple and nothing in the world was going to change our minds or stand in our way!

Over the next couple of years Amber and I had to do a ton of growing up due to everything that life decided throw at us. Let’s face it we were still kids. But that did not stop us from partying a little and having a good time.

When we were 18 years old we found out that Amber was pregnant and we were going to have a baby!

Like any good mother/mother to be would do, Amber decided that it was time to take this whole growing up thing to another level. It was time to calm down and get prepared to raise a family.

Unfortunately I was very selfish at the time and growing up was not part of my agenda. I was still enjoying being irresponsible and partying with my friends. And I continuously let Amber down throughout her pregnancy because of my partying.

As the partying progressed over the next little while so did the way I was partying. Originally I was going out drinking and smoking a little pot. But that led to eventually getting into cocaine. 

Iknew how much Amber was against cocaine so I actually hid the fact that I was doing it from her for many years. As far as she was concerned I was just drinking, fishing and 4x4ing for extended periods of time. I spent quite a few years lying to her and sneaking around behind her back.

I would come up with stories like “I’m sorry honey, we we’re trying to get into this really good fishing hole and got stuck. So we had to wait for someone to come pull us out” or “I’m sorry I was just having such a great time and I lost track of what time it was” and the list goes on and on.

But after dealing with my crap for so long she finally did what anybody else would have done a long time ago. She packed my stuff for me one day and told me that it is time that I leave. She did not want to be treated like this anymore, and I do not blame her one little bit.

I can’t remeber exactly how long we were separated for but I did end up sitting down with her one day and telling her the truth. That all these years I had been lying to her, sneaking around behind her back and using cocaine.

It wasn’t too long after telling her the truth she decided to let me move back in with her and our two boys and we would work through this. My wife is a very strong woman and she was willing to fight for our relationship.

But even after coming out and telling her what was going on and her giving me a second chance… I carried on doing the same things. Believe me I did not want to and I felt like a total ass everytime that did but I was addicted. The cocaine had ahold of me and was slowly ruining mine and most importantly my families lives.

As the years went on she stayed by my side and was fighting for our relationship and our family that we had built. She was a one woman army, it did not matter how many times she got beat down in the fight she kept getting back up and fighting for us. She was left home on a regular basis in tears and wondering when I would be home or if I would even come home at all.

We were driving home one day and I don’t even remember how it came up but she was driving and she looked over at me and told me that she does not love me anymore. Fortunately for myself our car doors stayed locked while your driving because that hit me so hard that I tried to jump out of our car.

And originally she said that she didn’t know how she got to the point of not loving me anymore but she was willing to try to put in the work and figure it out.

So we did a little research and decided that we would try to see if marriage counselling would help us at all. But after seeing the counsellor we found that we were just wasting our money because we felt that nothing was actually getting resolved. We were only bringing our problems to the surface and paying someone to watch us have disagreements.

By this point Amber was so checked out, emotionally beat down and did not want to fight for us anymore. And who could blame her?

At this point I had two options, I could either grow the fuck up (excuse my language) and become the man that my family needed or I could just leave and move on with my life… Probably end up over dosing on drugs and be dead in a ditch somewhere.

I remember I was walking down the hall from our bedroom one day and as I approached our boy’s room I could hear our oldest son explaing to the youngest what divorce is. We had told them that we were getting a divorce but they obviously did not understand exactly what was going on. My oldest son explained to my youngest that “Divorce is when Moms and Dads don’t love each other anymore“

Just hearing them have this conversation really struck a cord with me. I grew up with a father that was very rarely ever there for us when we were young and when he was there he was very abusive. Then he eventually left us when I was about 8 or 9 years old. Leaving my Mom to raise and support us 3 kids on her own.

It was at this moment that I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had to step up and do something. I needed to be the father and the husband that my father was not. I could not let my kids experience what I went through growing up so I went on the quest to find  a way to fix what I had broken.

In my quest to find a marriage counselling style that I thought would resonate with us and help us out I stumbled across Marriage Fitness and at that time doing marriage counseling over the phone or listening to audios seemed a little far fetched but I am the type of person who is willing to try that weird stuff out.

I asked Amber if she wanted to do the Marriage Fitness program with me but she honestly wanted nothing to do with it. In fact she told me just to move on because there will never be another chance at “US” again. I had truly hurt her to the point that I believe she actually hated me.

But moving on was not what I felt was best for my family. I could not imagine my boys growing up without me and Amber both in their lives full-time. I did not want that for my boys.

I really had no other option at this point because Amber was not willing to participate in the program. She had other avenues that she was going to that were helping her to be able to move on from an abusive relationship. She was even having an emotional affair where a co-worker of hers was there for her to listen to her problems and be the shoulder that she needed to cry on.

So I started on the quest of saving our marriage with the Marriage Fitness Program. And I’m not going to lie… It was very hard as I went through the program to keep believing in it because of how much Amber was checked out. I did not go a day without doubting that what Mort Fertel was teaching would work.

Mort teaches that no matter what happens you need to keep pushing through and implementing everything taught in the program. No matter what happens!

Essentially you have to keep doing what you know you need to do… because you know you need to do it. And no matter what might happen when everything is said and done you will come out of the program a far better man or woman.

And for me I knew that If I did not put in the fight for us that there would be no chance what so ever at saving our marriage. 

After about a month of going through Marriage Fitness and having so many doubts it added insult to injury when Amber decided that it was time to take the kids and move to their new place. 

As you can imagine, by this time I was really doubting this Mort Fertel guy and I was moving closer and closer to throwing in the towel. But one thing that he talks about is, often times people going through his program will actually go as far as finalizing their divorce before they actually reconcile.

I just had to keep reminding myself of that. It is not over until I say it is over, she fought for years for us and now it was my turn to fight.  

Once Amber moved out I could not afford to keep the place we were renting so I ended up pretty much homeless. I was staying at friewnds houses and Amber would let me stay there once in a while to help me out until I got on my feet.

One day I was on a road trip helping Ambers Mom out and I was talking to the boys on the phone. When we were finishing up the call she told them “Tell Dad you love him”. After I was done on the phone with them Amber got on the phone and told me that she loved me as well. 

After Amber told me that she loves me as well I felt a real sense of accomplishment. Even though all that time and hard work I was putting in didn’t seem to be paying off, it really was.

Amber told me that she was noticing everything that I was doing and all the changes that I was making… But she was trying her hardest not to put her guard down because she did not want end up getting hurt again. And I don’t blame her because of all the hurt I had put her through in the past.

From then we started working together and building the strong marriage that we have today. About a year later we had a baby girl, which we always wanted. And it was like having a fresh start at us!

Since we rekindled our marriage and started working together it has not been all sunshine and rainbows. There have been tough times and there have times where it has been really easy. But with the help of Marriage Fitness and the principles taught in the program we have been able to perservere and stay strong together.

One of the biggest things that we have learned is that marriage is a ton of work and have to decide, is marriage what I want or not. Because if it is… you better be willing to work for it!

Love is an action word and does not come naturally. You don’t simply fall in love and just stay there. You need to be consistent and put in the work to “stay in love” once you have got there.

Cheers,
Chris Barmby

PS If you have not taken the time to have a look at Marriage Fitness then I would highly recommend that you do. The program saved my marriage and I believe that if it could save mine then it could certainly save anyones who is willing to put in the work. If anything, sign up fir the free 7 secrets to fixing your marriage Find It Here