What to do if you and your husband are
drifting apart?
It's a great question. My name is Paul
Friedman.
Many years ago, I founded The Marriage
Foundation. We like to help people
through these tough spots
and when you're drifting apart it's
something to
really pay attention to.
It's a step in the wrong direction
when you're drifting apart. You should be
moving closer together
but let's understand something that
no one tells us as we're growing up
and that is that marriage doesn't just
happen.
It's like there's nothing in the world
that we do that we don't recognize
requires maintenance, requires
certain kind of effort to
enjoy what it is we're doing, everything,
even clothes. You buy clothes.
You take off the tanks. You put it on
and you have to care for it yet
when we get married,
what do we do? Nothing. It's like we
expect -- it's like
we think it's a right at Disneyland or
something
and everything should just come to us.
If you think about it that's insane
in this world nothing just comes to us.
You have to prepare your dinner. Okay,
already went through all that.
So, what do you do? It's pretty simple.
You stop everything
and you don't look back and say, "Now, this
is wrong
and that's wrong and we should be doing
better here. We should be doing better
there."
Don't pick it apart. If you go
to marriage counseling which I
totally recommend you don't that's what
they love to do
is pick things apart, looking for the
problems
but that doesn't help a marriage. What
helps a marriage
is addressing the marriage as
one of these things and you say, "Well,
what does marriage
need in order for it to
deliver?" Okay.
What does it need in order for it to
deliver? Deliver what?
Well, you got married by the way, you
should definitely subscribe to this
channel so you can learn more about
marriage
and go to our website at
themarriagefoundation.org and
even watch our podcasts. Go to our
website and you'll see it.
So why did you get married? You got
married
for basically two reasons everyone does
whether it's spoken or not.
You're probably thinking, "Okay. Why did I
get married?"
So I used to play this game with my
clients and we're talking 20 years ago
now
but it's still relevant today because
the principles
remain the same. So the game I would play
with them is I would say, why did you
why do you get married in the first
place? And I would write on my whiteboard
all of their answers and I said, "Now look,
you guys can get $300,"
because that's what my session cost,
"if you tell me why
you got married is better than the
reasons I'm about to tell you," and then I
would
tell them why. I never had to give up $300
because we don't think about it because
we're not taught this.
You get married in order to be happier.
Duh!
Yeah. Duh maybe but, why didn't you think
that?
It's not in our minds.
Why do you wear clothes? Because I want
to look good. So, what do you do
to make your clothes help you look good?
Okay. Now we're starting to get someplace.
What do you do to get the
happiness out of your marriage?
What else do you get married for because
there's two main
top line reasons? The other reason is
and you're probably trying to guess
and in this case, because I gave you
a hint many of you do guess it.
Love. We're human beings. We're souls.
We have a body. We have a mind but we're
souls that have a body and a mind and a
soul
is essentially love to chip off the old
block,
chip off of God. God is love.
We have to have love like the drop in
the ocean
has to be wet. It has to feel that
experience of itself.
Love is where it's at. In fact, I almost
said
"I'd rather feel loved than be happy" but
that's ridiculous isn't it because
and it just makes my point even better.
When you're feeling love you can't even
wipe that smile off your face. Think
about when you were dating, when you
started to fall in love, when you started
to realize,
"Wow! This is who I want to marry. This is
who I want to be with."
You're like floating. Now, you got to
bring it back
into your marriage. So, what do you do?
Some people just read my books. They're
very
succinct. It doesn't take
one little topic like the language of
love or this or that.
It lays out all of marriage so you know
what to do.
You know how the mind works which is
really important for marriage. You know
that you have to master your mind. You
know
you don't do certain things like
complain and bicker and argue. You don't
do those things anymore
and you learn all about marriage,
and you start seeing, "Well, my marriage
isn't like this. I'm not doing this. I'm
not doing that,"
and you start changing things and it
will improve.
My book saved many many many marriages
over the last 20 years or
not quite 20 years actually about 15.
however,
the courses that we have for men and for
women
if you're a woman,
you have so much power to bring
love into your marriage and overwhelm
your husband
with just love. If you're a man, you could
really overwhelm your wife with so much
love.
Individually, you can do it.
So that's why I separated the courses
because men should understand women
better, and women should understand
men better. Now, if you want to test out
what I'm saying just aside.
I'm going to infuse happiness.
I'm going to tell my husband for
instance how handsome he is.
I'm going to tell him what a great daddy
he is, what a great husband he is.
I'm going to compliment him because when
you complement
it makes the person happy. Be sincere
and smile more and just test these
things.
So these are tools, devices
to make your marriage function at a
higher level.
When it's functioning at its highest
level
marriage is expanding
and always getting better and that's the
beauty of marriage. And that's why you
subscribe to this channel so you can
learn these things
so your marriage can be amazing. It
should be amazing.
You should not have a low bar for your
marriage.
You should have an expectation that your
marriage is going to be the best
marriage that's ever existed
and then you learn how to do that. Learn
and apply. Learn and apply.
My name is Paul Friedman. I appreciate
your spending time with me and
hope that this was helpful for you! I'm
sure it was.
Like the video, leave a comment if you
would like to.
Take care and God bless! Thank you!