So we got in a message from someone
who said, "I'm married to a passive
aggressive
man." We get these messages at
themarriagefoundation.org and you can
leave a message
also, ask a question and counselors will
get back to you.
It's the "Ask a Counselor" tab
surprisingly.
My name is Paul Friedman, I founded The
Marriage Foundation
with an idea that is very different from
what
western psych has for marriages. My idea
is very simple and it's your idea too.
You got married in order to be happier
every single day of your life.
You got married to experience
unconditional love
and you could learn a lot
about this by subscribing to this
channel. Subscribe
now so you don't have to do it later and
learn about what I'm talking about. I
mean
before you got married whether you
articulated it out loud or not, isn't
this what you wanted to be happier every
day of your life?
I mean that's just reasonable. Why
shouldn't you expect that?
And don't you want to be floating in
that love and I'm not talking about the
shallow love, I'm talking about the real
thing that spiritual love that just
completely
overwhelms each of us.
And most of us frankly, can't handle that
love.
Why? It's not us that can't handle it but
we have these minds
and we haven't learned this growing up
that we're actually souls who
have a mind. So we think
and we think, I am thinking this rather
than
my mind is thinking this.
And so, we miss it. We should recognize
the relationship between body, mind, and
soul
and that really does come into play with
this passive
aggressive stuff because what
this lady said basically is,
and I'm not trying to minimize
I'm trying to contextualize.
She's saying, "My husband has a flaw.
He's passive aggressive." I don't know
whether he's super passive aggressive
constantly passive aggressive once in a
while so it doesn't make any
difference.
I personally have not met
any normal people who don't have
flaws. Yeah. They're saints
but how many of us are married to a
saint? So he's got this flaw
where he's passive-aggressive,
it's not pleasant
but it's not overwhelming either if you
know what to do.
So I'm going to give you the big what to
do,
the big what to do is to remember that
you married him
in order to experience love and
happiness.
And when you have that constant
in your mind, when you're watching
this passive aggressiveness play out
then what you do is you reduce that
flaw on the white
tablet of everything else.
When I'd work with people in my office I
had a whiteboard because I'm not a
therapist. I don't go, "How does that make
you feel?" Oh my God!
I don't care. Feelings are overblown.
I go, what's really happening here
this whole whiteboard is all white and I
would take
my marker and I put some dots on it.
And I go, "These are your spouse's
flaws. If we add them all up
and stick them in a corner, you won't
even notice them
because they're too small in
relationship to the love
and the happiness that you're
experiencing
on a higher level," and that's what it's
all about.
Now practically, what do you do about it?
You tell your mind,
"Don't get sucked in. Don't judge him.
Don't condemn this. Stay above it.
Be aware of it but don't get sucked in,"
and you'll be okay.
Subscribe, join us again.
Thank you for your time!