My wife wants an open marriage, I don't and my name is Paul Friedman.
I am the founder of The Marriage Foundation and I'm going to address this
without passing any judgment because we live in a society now where
it's amazing to me because I understand marriage
but so many people have no problem with an open marriage.
And the reason why is because they don't understand
the complexity, the depth, and the benefits of marriage.
So they have an idea of marriage that's rather mundane and it may
include loyalty and an open marriage certainly
isn't. But the idea of marriage to many people in
our society is a sort of,
I use the term mundane. Let's use the word material
so it's almost like a business arrangement
and it's a friends with benefits but you're married
and there's something about that that is appealing to people
only because they don't know about marriage. Let's
first talk about marriage and then maybe you will understand
why there's something lacking in your marriage
that is big enough so that your wife would even
have these thoughts. We can easily imagine a mundane material
marriage but let's talk about what marriage is supposed to be.
You get married with two ideals that
are either subconsciously there or consciously there.
One is that you want to be happier and you want that happiness to increase
every single day of your life. So in contrast that's not happening in
your marriage clearly. The second
and it is really the foundation of marriage
is you get married in order to experience
unconditional love. Obviously, none of us are capable of absolutely
giving unconditional love that's sort of God's domain
but by striving to do so. We are moving in the right direction and
love becomes an ever expanding part
of your marriage so that's a healthy marriage.
It's a spiritual marriage. It's spiritual because we are souls.
We have a body and we have a mind and because the focus
is on a tangible intangible.
The psychologists refer to love as an abstract
but we all know that it's much more than an abstract
because we've all experienced love and it's tangible. No, you can't touch it.
You can't see it but it's like the wind you know it's there
and the thing is the reason why there's so much resistance
to identifying love commonly is because it's truly spiritual and
people don't like to acknowledge God. The
only people who do are those who are spiritual or religious
but a lot of people they don't like the idea of God
but that doesn't mean that you're not a soul.
You're a soul. Tour wife is a soul. I'm a soul. We're all souls
and so we experience the nature of the soul
which is love and it gives us much more satisfaction than anything
else there is. Many people taste
this love in the form of family relations
where they're touching the surface when they get married.
But you know it's interesting because almost everyone experiences
love at a wedding. There's that moment when you feel that
overwhelming feeling of love. Everyone has that experience
so that's why you get married. So knowing that what is missing
in your marriage that your wife would seek to have relations
with other people and maybe you have children
and that's why she doesn't want to end the marriage
because she knows your children need your marriage.
But, what can you do about this? You can
study up on marriage -- that's one way. Using one of my books
because it covers marriage really well. Typically, for other problems that are
not as big as this one because this is a big problem
that would be fine. But your marriage when she's asking for an
open marriage, she's asking for a divorce whether it's
in the form of papers and legal. it's only a step
out the door so you have to recognize that your marriage
is sliding towards its end. So the question is not so much about
how do I learn how to be married. You're sliding.
You're heading down and it's going to get steeper and steeper and the momentum
is going to build so you need something that will
radically pull you as an individual
in the right direction of fulfilling her needs in the marriage. And that
doesn't include things like taking her on
vacation or giving her better sex or anything like
that, those are material. But remember what I said is the most
important is the feeling of unconditional love.
The feeling of happiness. So think about marriage
as a container, there's just two of you in it and I call
it the sacred space of marriage. And so, it's you and her.
Obviously, you don't know her very well. Do you?
But you don't know yourself very well either
and you don't understand marriage so we have to start. And so
I'm trying to get you to hear that there is a course for men that we have
that literally begins with understanding yourself as a man
but in a very deep way. Because one of the principles
that I've discovered is essential for marriage
is that you have to be able to control your mind
which means you have to understand how your mind works.
I'm not talking about like a car where you get in and you turn the key.
I'm talking about when a mechanic gets in the car and he
turns the key and he immediately hears everything is okay.
You have to understand your mind, yourself biologically, you're a male
so you have to understand what's happening
in your mind that's being motivated by your male biology.
So you have to understand yourself and that's where the course begins
with teaching you about your mind which is critical, critical.
I've been doing this for many many years and I'm telling you this is the place to
start and you also have to understand her mind
and how it works which we cover in the courses.
So that is very important for you to begin there and frankly, I don't know
anyone else who does it this way. And so, you get that and then you start
getting into the marriage and how to redefine it but first you
have to redefine yourself. And we have free counselors and
counselors who come with the course so as you get into it
you're able to start first learning. I teach you -- it's
called the SEW technique which helps you control your mind as a
tool and then after that becomes habitual. You
could start interacting with the counselors and you
ask them, what should I do? Here's the situation
and like that. So your marriage is sliding -- here's the
bottom line. Your marriage is sliding towards divorce and
I don't know what's going on in your wife's head.
I could tell you that most women do not really want an
open marriage so there's something else going on likely
but it's being used as a step towards the end of your marriage. So, it's up to
you to pull that marriage back together.
Don't do guilt trips on her just say, I want to think about it.
Let her know that you love her and the thought of you or
her giving that love to other people seems
to contradict the whole idea of being married
but you'll think about it because you love her and you want to please her but
you never want to go there. That's for sure.
I hope this is useful for you. I hope it's helpful
for you to have this perspective. Learn more about marriage. Subscribe to
the videos.
I strongly recommend you get the course for men
and other than that, blessings to you. Blessings to your wife!
Like the video of course and share it,
all that stuff and I hope this was useful. Thank you for
spending time with me. I hope the time was helpful for you. God bless!