How to win my wife back after hurting her? My name is Paul
Friedman. I founded The Marriage Foundation and
I'd like to help you with this and I think I can.
But let's go back, let's not just deal with
how you may have hurt her now or whether you
have been and chances are great -- you've been hurting her
right along. Let's go all the way back to before you got married and how you
treated your wife to be your girlfriend.
The girl you were trying to make your girlfriend.
How did you treat her? Because there's a spectrum,
there is things to do and things to not do, and the things that you
are doing. Your mindset way back when you were winning her.
There was nothing that you would have intentionally done
and you were very careful to not unintentionally do that would have hurt
her back then. What happened?
I want to open up marriage to you a little bit. I want you to see
what you're missing because I don't want you to just
make her feel better. I don't want you to win her back. I want you to have what you
should have had from the beginning. Why did you get
married? You got married to be happier
for the rest of your life and selfish/selflessly
you are going to accomplish that by making
your wife to be so happy like she'd never been before.
You probably used to stay in touch with her all the time.
Say wonderful things to her. You used to smile at her,
listen to her, praise her. You would never have even imagined
yourself yelling at her or criticizing her
or doing anything that you can imagine that would have come close to hurting
her feelings. And now, God knows what you've done
maybe it's infidelity. I don't know, it doesn't make any difference
how you hurt her. Probably, that's what it is if you're coming
to this video and looking for help. So let's be realistic
marriage is not a kind of thing where you're looking to balance out the
wrongs with a few rights. You're not trying to manipulate your
wife into loving you and caring for you but
maybe that's missing in your marriage.
It's likely because it's ironic and I'm digressing a little
bit but not really. Everything that we do in life
we know automatically that whatever we're taking on
requires some kind of maintenance. Even if you buy a pair of pants
you know you got to clean it. You know you got to make sure you don't
get a stain on it. That's maintenance but when you get married you don't know
that because you don't know anything about
marriage -- nobody in the western world or even the eastern
world. I could tell you that for sure. We've been doing this
for 20 years. People don't understand marriage
neither do you. So let's open this up to the reason why you got married in
the first place and the reason why she got married in the first place was
to be happier, and how do you achieve happiness
ever expanding happiness every single day
because even if you got a brand new car it's going to make you happy for a while
but not every single day for the rest of your life.
And yet that's what you want out of marriage and there is
a secret sauce here that's called unconditional love.
You know we don't really understand love. We don't and I know why
it's because the world rejects the idea of spiritual love.
We don't like to hear anything that's spiritual or may be
religious which is kind of weird when you think about it in the context of
marriage because marriage is all about love, soul
mates. What do you think that's just
a term made up by a greeting card company? No, you are
essentially a soul. You have a body and you have a mind. I
know this is very esoteric. I'm not going to preach a religion to
you but it is the reality. You are a soul. You can discover that on
your own. There's many spiritual paths where you
get to separate yourself, you might say from
your mind and your body in stillness and realize, what do you
realize? You realize love -- that's who you are.
That's your soul. So the soulmate deal is connecting your
soul to her soul using your mind, using your body to
achieve that and experiencing ever greater love
which means ever greater happiness every single day of your life.
You didn't know that and here I'm telling you this.
I'm not talking theoretically, I should say
I'm not talking theoretically. This is reality. This is how you do it
but we live in a western world filled with western psychology
where they say that love is an abstract thought and yet, it's the
only reality that is pertinent to marriage.
Well, how do you reconcile this? You don't -- they're wrong. You got to learn about
marriage from the bottom up.
When I used to work directly with couples or individuals
which is what it's really about because and I'm going to tell you this.
You've never heard this before either. Marriage is an individual spiritual path
you do with another person. That's right. You don't hear that.
When I met with individuals I would guide them
by teaching them about themselves, about their wife or their husband
because genders do make a difference. I would talk about how to achieve
this happiness through love
and I reduce it down into a couple of books.
If your marriage is really bad, there's a course for men you could take
but it's all about education. It's all about learning what isn't out
there already. All the other books, I hear about all the other books
they're cute. They're interesting, you know the language of love.
The men are from pluto. All of this stuff doesn't deal with the heart of marriage.
It doesn't lay it all out. My books do. I'm not trying to pitch you
in the book. I'm trying to let you know that there's more
to your question than meets the eye.
You don't want to just try to tip the scales
and get your wife to recognize you're sorry, you didn't mean or hurt her
blah blah blah. Because then you're right back
where you were. You really want to learn how to turn your marriage into the
dynamic institution of love where you're really
experiencing it and of course, she is also. That's what it's all about.
That's the unspoken possibility and for many, the now
reality and you should have that too. Don't try to find a
"simple solution" for this particular problem
because at best, it's like painting over rust if you do come up with something.
You really want to get your marriage working
completely bottom-up knowing where all the parts are,
knowing how they all fit together and why.
It's a lot easier than just fixing one problem after another,
lots easier. So hopefully, this was helpful to
you. My blessings to you, your wife, and your family.
I produce a lot of videos, subscribe to the channel.
Leave a comment if you want, share it if you want
but get busy. Don't look for the simplistic.
All you need to do is this answer because it won't serve you well. Marriage
is phenomenal when you're doing it right so you might
as well learn about it and do it right. Okay. God bless
and take care!