I don't feel loved by my husband. My name is Paul Friedman. I founded The
Marriage Foundation and we hear that a lot and
women write into us and they're very discouraged and they don't understand
what happened. And part of the reason for that
is that they're living their marriage the way they
see it on TV. You live your marriage really without having learned how to
have an amazing marriage, how to have a marriage that makes you
happier every single day and now it's gotten to this
where you're not even feeling loved by your husband.
But you did, when you were dating, when you were engaged at least until you
were planning the wedding and things started getting shaky which
happens to half the people who get married.
Literally, half the people who get married
are unsure by their wedding day and they cover it up.
And the reason why is because in our society, we don't understand
marriage. We have become so intellectual that we cast aside in the name of
intellectuality our very core values. We talk about
love but you know Western psychology has a tremendous
influence on us and in Western psychology
they consider love to be an abstract idea,
an abstract thought. We miss on the most important
aspect. Now you're not feeling loved. Is it really love that you're not
feeling because you could still be loving your husband
and you would still feel that same love if you were loving him? But what we've
done is we've taken these things and we've turned them
upside down and miss it, and we call it
spiritual materialism. So love is a spiritual thing, you can't touch it.
You can't contain it. You can't measure -- it's spiritual.
Real love is spiritual. You can't quantify it
and then we go, "Well, I don't feel the love."
Well, here's a secret about love. This is a secret that I want you to
think about in this context. You've seen your children asleep when
it's late or it's early and the drama of the day
isn't crowding in and you feel your heart open,
and you just feel so much love for your sleeping child. Isn't it true?
Now, your child sometimes will say, "Oh, I love
you mommy." Just out of the blue and your heart will
open up. Well, you're not feeling that love
from your child. Your mind is picking up the indicator that your child
loves you and your heart opens to them.
It's really quite fascinating. We even have turned
around this saying, "The only way to get love is to give love."
We've messed it up because that's true but it's more simple than what it
implies. You don't get love as a reciprocation.
You may get more politeness. So if now you're complaining to your
husband and you stop, he'll probably stop complaining to you.
That reciprocation is important in a marriage. That positive
reciprocation but it's not what we're talking about.
The love that you want to feel for your husband
you will feel when you move the debris from your mind and only give him love
then you will feel all the love because the love is already within you. Now this
topic gets very deep and I don't think that's appropriate for
a video but at least I'm giving you a sense of
how we approach things. So to deal with what you're
dealing with now, maybe you discovered that
he's spending more time with other people.
Maybe you even suspect he's in an emotional affair
or a full-fledged affair, maybe he's just not giving you the time of day
and those are different topics but they're important topics.
But here's the main point that you're looking
to receive more love for your husband what it's saying
and this is the bottom line and the top line. What you're saying is
my marriage is not working
because you can't just fix that one aspect.
Your whole marriage -- it's a holistic thing just two people
in a space I call the sacred space of marriage. It's just two of you
but you don't know how to make it come together.
You don't know how to make it work and so you're feeling
this tug away like you're parting, like you don't have
that special connection you used to have.
And I'm here to tell you, you can make it come back.
I have a couple of books. Hopefully, your marriage is not
slipping towards a divorce and either of the books will work for you.
Look at the reviews on them it's for Breaking the Cycle
or Lessons for a Happy Marriage and I'm Paul Friedman, I'm the author.
But if your marriage is slipping towards divorce or you're afraid that it is,
let's change it. Get either the course for
women or talk to your husband and say, "Are you
open to an alternative to marriage counseling that I found?" And
here you could listen to this or show him other videos that I've put
together but do something. Do something.
Don't think for a moment that if you do what's right it won't improve.
You were given free will, free choice for a reason so you could change your
destiny. You just need to rely on accurate
universal principles and do the work correctly and it'll all
come together for you. I do hope this was useful for you.
Blessings to you! Blessings to your husband and your family and I
want you to have joy and happiness for the rest of your life
as you were hoping for when you got married. Isn't that why you got married
in the first place? It's possible, it's probable
if you follow our guidance. We're here at The Marriage Foundation.
You can reach out to us. We have a free service. Our counselors will respond to
you. God bless you! Take care!