You don’t. You don’t get your spouse to do or feel or believe or want…anything. Not if you actually want them to change.

Why? The 2nd Law of Relationship Thermodynamics. It states: You cannot cause someone else’s change.

In other words, you cannot get someone to do what you wish they would do on their own.

See, if you could, you would always:

-doubt whether they really wanted to change
-wish you hadn’t had to ask, manipulate, cajole, persuade them in the first place
-lose some respect for them, even as they do what you want, because we don’t respect people who are easily manipulated
-trick yourself into believing you are more powerful than you actually are (they aren’t changing because of you; they’re changing in the hopes it’ll make you easier to live with)

Peace begins with pause,