Hi, this is Paul Friedman. I'm the founder of The Marriage Foundation. Today's topic
is "What Destroys Most Marriages?" And I think the answer is going to surprise
you because most people are only getting information from sort of the... I don't
want to call it the mainstream media but the false information that has been
collected over the years and people think are statistically relevant, and in
the way they've gotten the information in the past has been by asking people
who are getting a divorce. And so, they're getting the last straw
version of what has happened in their marriage to destroy it. People
don't start out by having an affair, they don't start out by doing things that are
so gnarly that you just can't stay together. It really begins with something
that people don't notice is happening and this is what I want to share with
you today, and I want to discuss it a little bit so you can be aware of it and
so that your marriage isn't destroyed. Basically, it's called over-familiarity
and what does that mean, over-familiarity? It means that you have gotten so used to
your spouse that you treat them as if they were your brother or sister or a
casual friend without the respect, love, and devotion that really is what it
takes to make a marriage amazing. I like to tell people a
marriage is a binary choice, you have two choices. You can either be amazing which
means that you're doing the things necessary to make it so or it could go
to hell which means that it's like handing the keys over to a teenager, the
keys to a high-performance car and saying, "Go have fun."
You don't go into a marriage thinking that it works on its own; it's not a ride
at a theme park; it's not an airplane taking you to some magical destination.
It's a living breathing thing and in order for it to mature properly where it
delivers the expected results of harmony ever-increasing love. This requires
knowledge. One of the first parts of knowledge that people don't get is that
when you're together with someone on a 24/7 basis, the tendency is to stop
treating them respectfully instead of using the kind of language for instance
that you used when you were dating according which was very polite, very
considerate. Language becomes more abrupt, your attitude becomes more demanding, you
become less considerate of their feelings, more considerate of only your
own, what's happening to me. These are the things that come from over
familiarity so I'm not going to tell you. Well, it happens because you say these
things or you do these things all of those things are manifestations of
over-familiarity. Think about it like how you are with a
brother or a sister, where you basically just say whatever's on your mind. You
couldn't be married to them because those things become hurtful that
degenerates the relationship so that's literally, literally the number one thing
that destroys marriages and you will find this over-familiarity consistently
present in every single divorce. You could ask
anyone who's in marriage counseling or taking a course like what we have asked
them, "What's going on? Were you respectful? Did you maintain the
level of consideration? Did you express your attraction?" "No, it falls away." And
once that falls away that is a slippery slope that gets steeper and steeper. So
how do you avoid it? You avoid it through conscious interaction. Before you speak
you think and you don't just think how is this going to affect them. You think,
is this really what I want to say? If I'm feeling suspicious at the moment, do I
really want to say that or do I want to give them the benefit of the doubt? If
they leave something in the room that creates clutter, do you really want to
get angry over that? Do you want to lose your peace over natural mistakes that
they're going to make as a human being? And this is what happens if your
over-familiar then you say, "Hey, look what you did. You left your socks there again."
Very mean, not very attractive, not endearing. It doesn't create the marriage
that is going to exist 10 minutes from now, and your marriage has to be growing
all the time. You have to be nice so before you speak, think, and when you
think, watch those thoughts because the first place the marriage degenerates
is not in the marriage space it's in your own head where you start creating
these ideas of inadequacy or not being treated fairly so you have to nip those
thoughts in the bud or feelings. There's this big thing in
the world now. Your feelings are important, you have to relate to those
you have to embrace them. No, feelings are random until you embrace them. Once you
embrace them you become them unnecessarily because you have free will.
So take heed of this what I'm sharing with you is gospel, over-familiarity and
this is in both of my books is the number one killer of marriages. Don't let
it be the killer of your marriage too. I hope this helped you, I hope you find
this useful and you can see how you can apply this really just common sense
logic to your own marriage, and I hope you feel it's worthy of liking and
sharing. If you want to comment, if you want to interact just put something
in the comment box and other than that I wish blessings to you, blessings to your
spouse, and blessings to your family.