So the top five
important things in a marriage,
this is not an unusual question. It's not
an unusual topic
but it can get very deep and I would
rather it gets
deep, and be useful and helpful for you
than to keep it shallow. My name is Paul
Friedman, I founded The Marriage
Foundation
and this particular topic is definitely
going to require
more than one, excuse me for a second I
have to
load that up, it's going to require more
than just
one video so this is a multiple video.
Be sure you go, this is part one, be sure
you go to part
two so you can get the usefulness.
And we're going to begin with
learning the basics about marriage,
that's number one. Now you may have been
married
for 20 years but I guarantee you
that you do not know even the basics of
marriage.
And so, we're going to get into that. By
the way,
everything that you pick up from this
channel is going to be valuable to you
personally
and to your marriage, and to your
happiness. So subscribe
to the channel so you can learn and then
apply
what you learn. Now getting back into
this topic
of the most important things about
marriage,
everyone thinks they know how to be
married
even when their marriage is falling
apart.
Isn't that an interesting thing? I know
people who give marital advice who have
the most
terrible marriage imaginable yet they
think
somehow they can help other people.
And you know what, this includes
western psychologists. This includes
any virtually any marriage counselor
that you go to.
Proof of that is that
they as a group have a higher divorce
rate, substantially higher divorce rate
than the average and the average
is about 51%.
Think about that. Now I knew about this
personally directly because I was a
divorce mediator.
We're talking about over 20 years ago
but you know where all of my clients
came from, was from marriage counselors
who failed their couples, that's it. They
don't understand marriage.
Why? And this is what we're getting into
about the basics of marriage.
They didn't understand even the basic
reason, reasons
why people get married. Why did you get
married?
When I used to meet with people,
I used to ask them, "Why did you get
married?"
I would look at each of the couple.
In the beginning, I worked with couples
then I only worked with individuals
and I would say, "Why did you get married?"
And then I would say to them,
"Listen, after you tell me your reasons,
which are going to be good reasons,
I'm going to tell you the real reason
why you got married.
And if your reason is better than my
reason
and you're the one who's going to decide,
you don't have to pay for this session."
And my sessions were not
cheap, we're talking about in the 90s, $300
a session.
So I'm going to offer you that same
challenge.
If your reason is better than mine then
you don't have to pay for this video.
Yes, that's a joke. Of course you don't
have to pay for this video.
The reason why we get married
that are above the sub reasons which
include, "I want companionship.
I found the ideal person who I wanted to
spend my life with. I wanted to fit in
the community.
I want to have more of a social part,"
and all of those are good reasons
but didn't you actually get married
so that you would be happier?
Didn't you actually expect in the
background of your mind
that once you get married you're going
to be happy.
And every day, you're going to be happier
than the day before.
You should have because if you
understand
marriage that basic
expectation of marriage
is realistic. There's a second part to
this.
It is actually, why
you knew that you would be happier?
It's because in marriage,
you can experience something
that you cannot really experience
anywhere else in the world,
unconditional love. We know about
real unconditional love only from saints.
People like Dr. Martin Luther King,
Mahatma Gandhi,
Jesus, Moses. I mean
look at the story about Abraham
where he was ready to sacrifice his son
to please God, unconditional love.
It's uncommon in our world yet
when you get married you're creating a
whole
new world that just you and your spouse
are in
where you can practice learning how to
love
unconditionally. So this is
at the center, this is at the core of
marriage.
This is the foundation of marriage and
this is what if you know this
then you can plan around it because from
this, think of a bulb. If you plant a bulb
it sprouts leaves. it sprouts eventually
a beautiful flower.
This is what you're supposed to focus
everything upon. Everything that you do
in a marriage
should be based on this foundational
principle
of happiness/unconditional love.
You could call it marital love if you'd
like.
This is another area where the
therapists get it completely
wrong, literally wrong, literally they
feed us
disinformation in this area by
describing love as an emotion.
It's not just an emotion.
Sure. You can call it that but it's a
misnomer.
Love is the one thing
that all of us are seeking to experience.
We gravitate towards it. We
yearn for it. We swim in it when we have
it and you should have that in your
marriage
so that's the basic of the basics of
marriage. But like I told you I was going
to go deeper,
but you have to have this. This is your
guiding principle
you might say, where everything comes
from it
and it guides all of your actions.
And here's where we get into another
part
of marriage basics that's so
important.
When you got your license,
the first thing that you had to do
was learn all about
how to drive, the rules of the road,
how an engine works a little bit,
what does what in a car that you're
going to drive.
You had to learn enough about it
more than just get in the car and drive
safely.
Sure, get in the car and drive safely
but, what does that mean? It's so
high level. Get in the car and drive
safely
that without an understanding
of things like, what alcohol
does to impair your judgment to what
ice will do to a road to screw up
every technique you've ever learned
to what all the signs mean. I mean it's
second nature to you now, who doesn't
know that a
light turning red means to stop. We all
know that
and we know why. But in marriage
we don't know enough about marriage.
We never learned it. Now I'm not blaming
the people who were supposed to teach us
about marriage
because they don't know either. We live
in an evolving society
and unfortunately, the ideals of marriage
are not even understood. What I talked
about
before the
bottom line driving principles of love
and happiness
are not noted by anyone.
They don't know. If they were
noted, if these were seen as the driving
principles
then you can extrapolate the rules of
the road you might say.
Those are also the second level
of the basics of marriage.
There's one more level
which is very important especially in
this day and age where there's confusion
around
identities as genders and
in a drive somehow this insane
drive to neutralize the differences
between genders. It's insane
because the gender is reflective
of biology. The biology
of your body which is uniquely male
or uniquely female.
It's different if you're a male.
It's different if you're a female
and this is imperative
that you understand that these
differences
have so much to do with your behavior
because we have a mind.
You're not the mind. You have a mind
and you're supposed to use your mind. You
are a soul.
You have a mind. You have a body
and you use the mind to protect
your body. You use the mind to protect
your mind
but because you have said,
"I have free will. It's up to me what I do."
Doesn't mean you're controlling your
mind
and when you don't control your mind,
your mind is controlled by your habits,
habits of thought, habits of reactions,
but you know what's hidden, which is
hidden in
clear sight, is your
body's impact on your mind.
And your body impacts your mind
based on its gender.
Typically, a woman's body is not as
powerful as a man's body.
So where a man's body is telling the
mind of a man,
"Defend, protect,
destroy, kill.
Let's use this anger to push through."
A woman's body is not as strong.
I'm just giving you an example. So a
woman's body
is telling her mind, danger,
same thing that's triggering the male's
mind
but it's saying, "Talk,
negotiate. See if you could work through
it.
See if you could win them over." It's a
different
impact based on the gender.
And so, you need to learn
all of this not just a little bit.
You don't want to talk about the
differences
between men and women.
You want to learn about how it
impacts so
this is number two,
So you have number one
which is to learn the basics about
marriage
and two, which you could wrap
in this is you need to learn
about men and you need to learn
about women. And if you're a woman, you
still need to learn about women
so you understand what's going on. The
current trend now
is interesting. I don't want to be
negative.
Respect your emotions.
I laugh because I know you're not
supposed to respect
your emotions any more than you respect
your
sweat after you have been jogging for 30
minutes.
Why? It's merely an emotion
but these psychotherapists have no idea.
They don't understand how the mind works
and so they come up with these crazy
ideas.
Learn how it works. Learn
these things. So going back,
learn the basics about marriage is
number
one of the five important
things. Number two
is learn about men and learn
about women
because you need to understand the mind.
You have to understand it. You have to
put it under your control,
so that's it for the first part.
Now we're going to get into the second
part in another video.
So follow the link below
and subscribe to this channel, and like
this video,
and leave a comment if you will.
My name is Paul Friedman, again. Thank you
for joining me!
I truly hope that your marriage will
be off the charts. If you follow
what I have discovered, there's no chance
it
won't be. Take care and blessings!