"My husband is turning into a grumpy old
man."
This is an email that someone sent to
our counselors at The Marriage
Foundation. I'm Paul Friedman, I founded
The Marriage Foundation and we like to
take some of these topics.
You could send yours in and
respond to them in videos and
hopefully, you've already subscribed to
this channel because there's so much to
learn.
Our approach is very different from the
normal
psychological approach that's out there.
There's hundreds of thousands of
psychologists and they don't have
our approach. They don't see marriage the
way we see marriage
which is as the most
positive wonderful thing that you can
enjoy in your life and
it gets that way as a result
of your efforts. It doesn't just happen.
Let's just put it this way. Your marriage
is a setup for incredible success,
incredible happiness and love,
very fulfilling but like an automobile
that is a setup to go somewhere.
You don't just get in it and go. You
have to work it and it's that way
with a marriage. And if your husband now
is turning into a grumpy old man,
well, let's take a look instead of his
being a grumpy old man.
Let's take a look at
the marriage as a whole. Let's back
away from labeling him
and let's take a look and go,
"He's grumpy." What does that mean?
That means that he's not happy.
Now we're not going to diagnose your
husband
any further than that but that's not a
really difficult diagnosis, is it?
If he were happy he wouldn't be grumpy.
Grumpiness is what you are and you are
too from time to time.
When you're not feeling good, you're
grumpy cranky.
And so the complaint here
may be a little bit off target in terms
of
wanting to resolve it
because
you have so much power as his wife
to be the cause for his
unbelievable happiness. I'm not
suggesting you can
fix him. No, I'm not talking about that
but I'm talking about putting into his
environment
which is what you are. Besides
his own mind,
you are his environment.
Of course he has other environments too
where
he works or he goes to the store but
that's nothing.
You're his environment.
So as an environment, we know that
environment is even stronger
than willpower. Our environment has
so much influence on us.
Look at this now, you're his environment.
Are you being sweet with him
all the time, loving towards him
or do you complain to him? And I'm not
just shooting in the dark,
there is a
a common thread among people who don't
understand marriage to behave
in their marriage with expectations
galore. And when those expectations are
not
met, out comes the complaints,
the criticism, the common condemnation,
the three C's,
the stern looks, the expressions
of suffering
even your reaction to his grumpiness.
What you're describing is
part of a cycle that you are part of.
So if you want to break a cycle,
what do you do? The cycle is downwards.
It's getting worse and worse for both of
you.
You have the power to change everything.
You do. Now
what happens typically
is that we work with people
who really don't know anything about
marriage they think they do.
They think they do. A friend of
mine
called me up, this was a couple of years
ago. He said,
"Paul, my sister gave advice to
my nephew and he's going to commit
suicide."
Whoa! "Yeah, I don't know
what to tell you. He broke up with his
girlfriend. He's miserable
she gave him advice and now he's even
worse.
I'll pay you to meet with him," and I say,
"You don't pay me.
I'm your friend." "No, no this is different."
So I met with him
and within 20 minutes or so he was
laughing, he was happy because I
understand
relationships, marriage. I understand men
and I understand women. I've done
research, we've tested, we've been around
for over 20 years
so we know what we're doing. So
you may be hearing what I'm saying, okay.
I have to change. Okay, now I'm going to
tell you something
about changing that you may not have
thought about. Everything by the way that
we do is
purely common sense, it's really simple.
So you're going to understand this, this
isn't over your head. I'm not like some
wizard or something. This won't be over
your head.
We behave
based on our thoughts.
Our thoughts are generated
from our experiences, our memories
and how we react
to outside influence
which is also habitual. There's a lot of
habits rolling around
in that mind of yours and those
habits define who you are.
And who you are defines
what you're going to do next. So when you
go, "Okay, I'm going to change,"
usually, you can't
because a habit, a single habit up here
which causes a reaction to a current
situation
underneath that are 15 habits.
And underneath those, each one has
another 15 and so on, I'm just throwing
out a number.
The point is that until we learn
how to change ourselves,
making an effort to change our behavior
is typically a set up for failure.
Now, I discovered this way early on.
Well over 20 years ago when one of my
first
clients said, "Paul, your stuff is amazing.
It's great,"
because I had it based on very simple
behave well, expect a positive
reaction, change how you behave.
And he said, "But I can't do it, I keep
reverting back to my old
stuff," and it caused me to do deeper
research and learn about the mind
and not like psychologists. They don't
understand the mind
and I gave you a taste of that. So this
is in my books,
it's also in our courses.
You want to take it at your own speed
and in your own way. One of the books
will be great.
You want to really put the pedal to the
metal, use the courses
and bam! We get right into it take you
step by step
but the point is, now the other way
which is going to be very difficult for
you if you're having this
issue because what you have is a
descending kind of issue.
Things keep unraveling
but just signing up for this channel
and learning things, one video at a time
that's going to help you too.
You have free will. You have free choice.
You do what you think is best
but definitely, peruse our website at The
Marriage Foundation
and have a sense of how you want to do
this
and we're always here to help you. You
can write into our counselors, it's a
free service
and they'll help you. Now let's go back
to this issue that you have.
"My husband is turning into a grumpy old
man,"
and I'm going to recap for you because
this is important.
His strongest influence in his life
is you
and he is becoming a grumpy old man
basically, because he's unhappy. Becoming
grumpy
is the result of unhappiness and
frustration
which means I'm putting this in a
positive context. Don't take it in the
negative.
The positive context is therefore
you have tremendous power
to help him stop becoming grumpy
which will help you become happier
yourself.
And now we've turned the cycle from
negative to positive.
You see. We don't ever do anything
negative. We don't ever blame
anybody for anything except stubbornness,
joking you. So hopefully, this was
beneficial for you.
You've got something out of it. You can
leave a comment. It could be a question
to me
that's the easiest way to work with me
is through the comment box
and also leave a like. We love those.
Blessings to you and I hope you like
where we're coming from at The Marriage
Foundation,