Who Is The Villain in Your Story?

I am an avid reader. Have been since I was a kid. I remember growing up, one of my favorite ways to spend a Saturday was just sitting in the chair I had in my bedroom and getting lost in a good book. I would barely come up for air. 

As a coach, I have found such relevance in our earthly experience and those stories that I used to devour as a kid. 

Every story has to have opposition, or it gets really boring, really fast. No one gets lost in a story where everything is happy all the time. There are always challenges that the hero of the story has to overcome. It’s just part of the deal. 

And every story has to have a good villain, right? The cause of all the commotion. The Evil Queen giving Snow White the poisoned apple. Voldemort killing Harry Potter’s parents. Darth Vader destroying the Republic.  

In fairy tales, the villain is always pure evil, no redeeming qualities. Black and white. Easy to spot. In fact, we kind of want to yell at the hero sometimes for not seeing the villain for who they are and the danger they are in.

In the end, the hero is always changed. They defeat the villain and good conquers evil, but the hero is a very different person than the one who started the quest. They have learned and grown.

We are all living out our own stories. We all have difficulties and opposition along the way. We learn and grow as we face the opposition placed before us. 

We also create villains for our story. But unlike the fairy tales, it is never black and white. No one in your story (including you) is all good or all evil. In fact, chances are that you are the villain in someone else’s story too. 

So who is the villain in your story today?

For a long time, I made my husband the villain in my story. I thought that he was keeping me from being the kind of mom or wife or person that I wanted to be. I had a vision for the way I wanted my life to be, the fairy tale, and he was not playing the game. He wasn’t interested in being the Prince Charming, so all too many times, I turned him into the villain. 

This created so many problems for me and our marriage. 

First of all, I saw myself as the victim in the story. This wasn’t what I had signed up for. This isn’t the way he should be treating me. He is keeping me from my happily ever after. 

When I was playing the victim, I couldn’t see any other solution besides him needing to change. I felt like I had no control. 

It also made it impossible for us to be a unified partnership. I forced him to carry the entire load of my dreams and expectations. And when he couldn’t carry it all, BAM. Villain status confirmed. 

Maybe the villain of your story is your job, or motherhood, or your mother-in-law. 

The thing is, unlike the stories, it is never clearly black and white. All of those circumstances are both good and evil, right and wrong. 

So the beauty here, is that it is your story, and you get to decide if your husband, job, motherhood, mother-in-law are actually the villain. 

Ask yourself what purpose does it serve to have them as the villain? Is it really helping you to become the hero that you want to be in the end? Or would it work more in your favor to have them be an ally who sometimes isn’t perfect?

I finally learned with my marriage that when I was playing the victim, I wasn’t taking responsibility for my own dreams. My own happy ending. And that created a lot of resentment in my own mind. I had created my own opposition and become my own villain.

So I made a conscious choice one day that I never wanted my husband to be the villain in my story. If he didn’t show up in the way I wanted him to (which he does), I would choose to see him as my friend and partner who is always on my team. 

This mindset helps me maintain curiosity rather than judgement. I get to assume that he is trying to work in the best interest of our team, even if I don’t totally see it clearly. It helps me trust him.

It helps us create a new story together where we are the dynamite duo tackling all the challenges that come our way. It all came down to a decision I made. His actions didn’t have to change at all. 

If you aren’t satisfied with the story you are creating in your life, join me on a free coaching call, and we can make the shift together. Just click the button below to get started.