Social media is causing tension, jealousy in our relationship.
My name is Paul Friedman. I founded The Marriage Foundation
and I'd like to talk to you about this and see if maybe we can
open things up a little bit. So first of all, we need to have
context for what social media is because what
happens is -- it's sort of a low-level pornography. Forgive me if
that's insulting. But what I mean by that is
the friends that you have in social media and I'm not
talking about your real friends that you meet up with
on social media. I'm talking about social media friends.
They're not real friends. They use the term
so loosely and it's true that people complement each other and they develop
relationships, and they start feeling comfortable but
think about it. You're not comfortable with how they
smell and look. You're comfortable and your spouse is
comfortable with a few words of agreement
or a like, or a heart, or a smile. It's just not real. In other words, you
don't have to worry about it. It's sort of like going to the movies
and let's say you're the wife and your husband goes,
"Oh my God," because he sees a starlet on the screen.
You don't have to worry about her. It's silly to be
jealous of her and that's the way it is in social media and that brings me to
the other side of the coin. Jealousy. Now, I'm not
big on the old testament style God of anger and wrath.
For me, God loves us. God wants us to be happy.
God does everything in his power, her power
to bring us closer, a loving parent. Think of God as the ultimate loving
parent. So the term sin
has these connotations of evil and you're going to spend time in hell
for saying the wrong thing, for swearing, for
making a mistake and telling and untruth. We create our own hell. There are karmic
laws. You just can't get away from that. Everyone
today knows about it. What goes around comes around. We call it karma. Everyone
knows karma is real and the study of it, lets us realize that
it's a very mechanical thing. But jealousy is one of those
things that is like a demon. It gets inside of our mind
and we feel threatened and this is its source.
This is the door in which it comes into our mind
is the fear of whatever. It's a drive to survive and
jealousy is manifesting going I'm in danger
because my spouse blah blah blah or someone's interested in my spouse.
Jealousy isn't cool. Now as soon as you find that jealousy is in your mind.
It's your duty to control your mind to mitigate the effects of the triggers
in your mind that are caused by the drive to survive.
Did you know that? They don't teach us this in school.
Everyone has a mind. Everyone has free will
but we don't put together that we are
obligated to use our free will to control ourselves. Ourselves meaning
the mind in this case to make sure that it doesn't work
against us that we recognize the biological drive
to cause jealousy -- it's biologically driven.
And so, we don't allow that to ruin our day
and especially ruin our spouses day. So those are the two sides, one side
is the side of social media. Come on, it's nothing. It's not real. It's
entertainment. It's like playing jigsaw puzzles or
pre-sale in my case. It's just a time consumer but the other part is
much more important. Jealousy -- if you're experiencing jealousy
if you're experiencing resentment, whatever,
any of these things that we feel that upsets us
it's our obligation to control that. It is
and to rid ourselves of these so that we feel the joy within because
that's the natural you. We're souls. The nature of soul is love. You don't
feel love and anger at the same time.
If you're feeling anger it's blocking the love. The love is coming from within.
You don't want jealousy. You don't want anger, suspicion all these things. You
don't want them so you get rid of them. Your life will be
much happier. Take a look at the stuff that we
have. It's very interesting. I believe that marriage, the
experience of marriage, the exercise of marriage should all be based
on deep universal principles, and I lay them out, spell them out and
you can do the same. Blessings to you! Blessings to your
spouse and blessings to your family, and blessings to your marriage!
Remember marriage is there to make you happier
and to feel love. If it's not doing that, you need to learn how. Okay.
God bless and take care!