"My husband won't let me talk about my
feelings."
My name is Paul Friedman, I founded The
Marriage Foundation
and I know a lot about men and women
in their interactions and not just from
my personal point of view. I've been
doing this for
20 years plus and I used to work with
individuals and mostly women
quite honestly because I have always
found that women
are a better instrument for making their
marriages better.
And because of the training,
both bad training and the lack of
training in our society,
women have so many misconceptions
that it turns into disastrous
expectations. For instance, the
expectation
that your husband should listen to you.
It's rare for a husband to listen to his
wife
and it's an unreasonable expectation and
don't
hang up.
Hear me out because
the real reason you got married is to be
happy, happier every single day of your
life.
That's the real reason. What other reason
could there be?
Sure. You wanted all these sub reasons.
You wanted to be with your
soul mate. You want to have children. You
want to have a nice family. You want to
fit into the community -- those are all sub
reasons
but basically, you wanted to be happy.
Something else, you wanted to experience
unconditional love.
Connection -- you could call it but it's
much
deeper than just connection. You could
connect with
an animal. You could connect with a dog
or a cat or a bird
but unconditional love is different.
It's that experience that you had when
you were exchanging vows. It happens in
every single marriage
where all of a sudden there's this rush
of feeling that
envelops everybody -- that's unconditional
love.
You should be having that on an ongoing
basis
in your marriage and it's one of the
promises of marriage, and why you got
married?
One of the promises of marriage is not
that your husband will listen to you.
What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to
give you a comparison
that the goals of marriage are vital.
They're what you want. They're what you
should have
ever-increasing happiness
and unconditional love. Those
are reasonable expectations
so I'm going to ask you a question. What
do you do personally, not you
and your husband but what do you do
personally
to increase the happiness in your
marriage?
Consciously, what do you do?
What do you think?
Okay. Now, I'm going to do this and this is
going to make my husband happier
which because I love him will make me
happier.
What do you do? The answer is nothing.
What do you do to increase
consciously? Keyword here is consciously,
to consciously increase the love
in your marriage. What do you do? And the
answer is nothing.
Maybe you do things without thinking --
that doesn't count.
If you want something in life
it's common sense. It's well known.
You plan your work to achieve
that which you are seeking and then you
work
the plan. It's a universal formula.
Where does your husband listening to you
fit in? Now, I'm not
ripping you for having this desire for
your husband
to listen to you. I'm not ripping you for
that.
It's natural for you to want that
but it's not reasonable.
So it's natural for me to want to eat a
hot fudge sundae with tons of whipped
cream
every single day but it's not
reasonable because I have to watch my
weight.
It doesn't fit in to real life.
Your husband is designed in a particular
way
because he's male. You know our biology
has a lot to do
with our psyche, how we think, how we feel,
how we express ourselves.
They don't teach us this stuff in school.
And so, we miss out by having
expectations
that some blogger
has said we should have and that it's
reasonable.
I don't know if it's reasonable or not.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder
but it's not reasonable for your husband
so you want to compare
the value of pushing for this
compared to the value of pushing for
increased
happiness and increased love.
Set your priorities. It can only do so much
in a day.
So when I met with women because I
recognize
that women have this safety relief valve
and you need to let some of it out.
And our sessions were all about
education
and guidance, "Here's what you should be
thinking. Here's what you should be doing
to make more of the benefits of marriage
come to fruition but
here are two boxes of tissue. So if
you're left-handed or right-handed you
could grab
one and how much time
must I give you for you
to release some of the emotion?"
But I was counseling them, I was paid
to let them do that.
And when my wife needs to talk because
I'm trained
I know how to listen but your husband
doesn't and you shouldn't expect him to
learn
how. And especially if he's already been
very clear with you that it's not where
he wants
to go,
and don't talk to your friends about
what's going on
in your family because that's not right.
Look, you should really subscribe to this
channel and learn more about marriage.
You could get one of my books and
learn
so much about marriage. It'll blow your
mind. Check the reviews on the books.
I'm not selling you something. It's not
snake oil.
I've done a lot of work in getting down
to the core
principles of what
makes you happier because that is what
it's all about, and what increases
love because that will make you happier.
Those are what are important not whether
he listens to you, not whether he picks
up his
clothes or leaves his shampoo,
sitting over there. I don't have that
problem with shampoo
but other things. My wife
knows me and she smiles.
Why? Because she has
prioritized her expectations
so that both of us, and I've prioritized
mine
so we both get the most out of our
marriage and that's what you can do
too, but you got to learn more about
marriage.
I hope this was helpful. I hope you don't
feel like I have slammed you
for having this desire for your husband.
I don't slam you for that. I think it's
fine
but it doesn't work so you need to
find a different pathway
and keep in mind the whole idea
is to be happy. What's wrong with that?
You want to be happy. Worrying about that
he's not listening to you
is not going to make either of you happy.
Happiness is what it's all about. Love is
what it's all about.
All right. Take care! God bless!