Hi, my name is Paul Friedman. I'm the founder of The Marriage Foundation. I
didn't always used to be a marriage healer. I used to actually be a divorce
mediator so when couples would go to counseling and it didn't work out. They
were referred to me to help them with their divorce it was an easier way I was
going to open up the four centers all over the country. And then one day in
1973 might have been the end of 72. A couple came in and I asked them, "Why do
you want to get a divorce?" And they said, "We don't. We just don't know what else to
do." And they were quite teary-eyed
by the way, so I said, "Well, wait a minute. I am an expert in
communication. I've done consulting and all of that." And I said, "Let me work
through some ideas and let's meet again in a few months and let's see if we
can't save your marriage." So I got into marriage but I'm not a psychologist so I
got into it very differently. I got into it as a, why do you get married? That's
like the first question to ask, right? And here you are you want to see this
wonderful video. I hope you think it's a wonderful video on marital bliss and
this is what I discovered. I discovered that people every one of us gets married
for one simple reason. We want to be happy. And then the next question that
comes up is, well, what makes you happy? That's a tough one
that's not so easy because if you think about it most happiness as transient
Isn't it? Comes and goes, you get a brand-new car
BAM! you're happy six months later, same old same old. A lot of people get married
that way and then I thought, well, what is it that makes you happy? What makes you
happy that keeps going? Where the happiness just keeps improving all the
and the answer is love. It is and so, what we're gonna do in this video is explain
how this is not some, how would you call it, earth granola cookie kind of video that
marital bliss is a real thing and it's something that not only can you and
should you strive for it but you can achieve it. So in order to really
understand that you got to start with a basic premise. So I'm gonna work
backwards a little bit, okay. So we get married for love, right? Everybody knows
that. So what would you say love is? Well, good question you know in dictionaries I
looked it up and in dictionaries it says it's a very high degree of like. No, it
really isn't. It's much much deeper than that.
So I'll tell you what it is, it's a spiritual reality, it's a spiritual
reality. So what is spiritual mean? Spirit means you can't see it, you can't
touch it, you can't experience it through the census. That's what makes it
spiritual. So obviously, there's spiritual good, spiritual bad there's a lot of
things that you can't feel through the senses. Now, some people might say well
what about the wind? No no you know it's there because you can feel it
blowing against your skin. Love, you can't feel with your five senses but you can
feel it with your sixth sense which happens to be you. So, how do
you feel love spiritually? And the answer is you know what's cool about this
is it all comes together because everyone knows about soulmates. We use
the term loosely though but it wasn't invented by a card company. The term
soulmates actually describes two souls or more who are connected. Why and how? We
won't get into discussions of reincarnation or anything like that but
there's a connection, and we all know about soulmates, and it could be our
parents or brother or sister, a friend, all of that are soul mates. But the ideal
of love when it's felt by the soul
exclusively, you feel bliss. How do I know?
Well, every saint of every religion because there's not just Saints in the
Catholic religion you know there's Sufi Saints, there's Hindu Saints,
there's Jewish saints, there's Catholic saints and there's Saints who don't
belong to any formal religion because religion isn't what makes them a saint.
What makes them a saint is that they're connecting their soul with love without
interference. What does that mean? That means because we're human beings we have
this little thing called the mind, and the mind is tied to this other little
thing called the body, and the soul is riding
around in this mind and body, and it forgets itself it forgets it's a soul
you forgot you're soul and you think I am. In fact, I can't remember the
Philosopher's name who said "I think therefore I am"
you probably remember his name, French guy, but he was incorrect you are and
therefore you can think because you are a soul and you have a mind. And so you
can think cuz you have a mind but you're the soul, so what these Saints do? All of
them is they sit in meditation and they disconnect from their five senses of the
body. They calm the mind and saturate the mind with the souls love because the
soul is loved, and they experience bliss. In fact, the air is an expression the
blissful devotee of God. So you can have that it's a process because controlling
the mind doesn't come natural it's a process. In marriage, when you do it
correctly, and it's very cool. There are two souls and you're working together to
communicate your love to one another and as you express that love
unconditionally, in spite of everything and anything else that love that is
flowing through you to each other
creates the happiness you seek. And the more you do this, the more you will feel
it until you feel the bliss that's found in marriage. It's in a way no different
than the pathway of the saint where they're learning to express their love
through themselves, all love comes from God after all
and as that love flows through them, and this is the trick of marriage is to give
the love rather than want it back. In fact, even the slightest desire to get the
love back interferes with the process of giving love and it's the giving love
that creates the bliss. Get it? This is so cool
because when I work with couples, when I first started working with couples I
just created enough information so that they could heal the dynamics of their
marriage, see which behaviors were beneficial which behaviors were
detrimental, see how to approach their marriage and each other. But the key to
really getting what you're supposed to get out of marriage which is bliss
another word for bliss is joy. The way to do that is the secret of giving without
expectation of getting anything in return. This is the foundation of marriage
so imagine that the very foundation of marriage is mirror to bliss. How cool is
it? I love marriage; it's such a beautiful setup the way it's designed, the way it's
put together when you use it rightly there's nothing like it. When you don't
use it rightly, it reminds me of this story in World War II
these Flyers were coming back from a mission and they didn't have enough fuel
to make it back to midway where they were going. So they saw a small island
only inhabited by natives who are not very civilized, and they found the
clearing and set the plane down. And then they radioed ahead, a boat came and got
them. There was this amazing plane, this incredible hunk of machinery that could
fly in the sky and the natives used it for a house that chief got to live in
the plane. And eventually, it disintegrated. Marriage is often usually
misunderstood, not properly utilized and so people don't get what it's designed
for like a plane is designed to fly in the
sky. Marriage is designed to give you the
process to achieve bliss. A blissful marriage, marital bliss. That's it if you
like this video, share it with other people. I think
this stuff is great and I don't ever hear anyone else talking about marriage
this way, and subscribe. I'd love to share more with you
and that's it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Bye.