So today's topic has to do
with creating your own wedding vows
and this is an important topic, and
believe it or not, it's much deeper than
you may think.
Now I'm Paul Friedman I founded The
Marriage Foundation
and my hope is that you're not going to
have to use our services
for marriage repair. It wouldn't be a bad
idea to go to our sister organization
which is premaritalacademy.org.
Usually when someone sits down to do
their vows
they have in their mind that what
they're doing is
they're preparing a contract where
they're saying, "Here's what I'm going to
do for you,
honey, and here's what you're saying
you're going to do for me."
And it's ironic because it doesn't even
really
touch on the real stuff
that happens in marriage so let's
kind of take it from the top and let's
ask a very important question that you
may or may not have thought about before.
That question is, why do you as an
individual
not because you found your soulmate but
why do you as an individual get married?
Because we don't learn the answer to
that question
almost ever and it's not really the
fault of those who are quasi-responsible
for teaching us because they don't
really know the answer.
It's kind of muddled up. We know we hear
about the term soul mates.
We hear about and we feel love,
and then we hear about taking the next
step
to get married. Well, it's quite a leap
actually to go from dating even courting
to being married because marriage is
lifetime. You're talking about the rest
of your lives
so let's talk about expectations.
Let's start there because you should
have
this expectation as your mutual goals.
This should be the for your marriage
and the mutual goals of your marriage
should be the foundation of your
marriage,
and it should then identify a process
that you go through
while you're married. So skipping all the
other stuff,
you get married basically for two solid
top line reasons. One
is you want to be happier for the rest
of your life
and you don't want to just be happier
on your wedding day. I don't know who
came up with this idea that the wedding
day
should be the brides, meaning the woman's
happiest day of her life. What and it's
all downhill from there?
I hope not. You should want to be happier
every single day than the day before.
Have you thought about that? Because if
you have you need to think about
how do you make that happen? This is not
a ride at Disneyland. You're not just
getting on the Matterhorn ride and
you go on it and you get off it. You
don't do anything. You just sit there.
In marriage, you got to do a lot more
than just sit there. In fact,
we are active beings. We will be doing
things,
shouldn't they be pre-designed? Shouldn't
your vows
be totally tied to that? So, maybe one of
your vows could be something like that
something that ties to that for instance.
You both want to be happy for the rest
of your life
and if you're sitting together watching
this, and I know people are busy, they
never
watch these together. You both be going,
"Uh yeah."
Well, then maybe one of your
vows. What you're expressing to your
soulmate is
"I'm going to do my very best to make you
happy every single day,"
further, "I'm not going to do anything
that's going to undermine
that happiness." So vows don't
all have to be
positive, "I'm going to do this. I'm going
to do that. I promise to love you forever."
Boy,
is that a pie crust? Promise, if I ever
heard one, "I promise to love you forever."
You literally can make that
promise
but then, why do people fall out of love?
It goes back to another topic we're going
to talk about that's a
very important topic but let's stick
with this. So, "I promise to make you
happier every single day."
When you're saying that to your spouse,
you are defining a
love that's unconditional. You're putting
your future spouse ahead of yourself
because sometimes what will make them
happy isn't going to make you happy at
the moment
or later. Sometimes you're just doing it
because you want them to be happy and
that's not
"normal"
because we are driven by our drive to
survive.
The self-preservation component that's
in our bodies
affect our mind and our mind is going,
"What's in it for me?" Because the body's
going, "Hey, I got to survive.
Me first," and then everyone else
next. So in marriage,
you go into what I call the sacred space
of marriage where there's just two of
you
and those two of you can be
soul mates or you can become
cellmates. You want to be cellmates, I
don't think so.
You want to be soul mates, what is a soul?
You might say, "I have a soul," and you
don't know what it means
and it's not even speaking correctly
because the truth is you
are a soul. What you do have is you have
a body and a mind
so I
bow to you. I coming from the place
of my soul coming from a place of
unconditional
love and that's the second thing that
you want in your marriage,
unconditional love. And again, if you
don't do anything
to make that happen, it won't.
Things don't just happen by themselves.
We know that in our world yet there's an
expectation
that in marriage everything's going to
just fall into place, it doesn't.
So another potential vow is
"I promise to put you ahead of myself"
i.e. as an expression of my
unconditional love for you. "I promise
never to put myself ahead of you."
"I promise to always put your needs,
your desire for happiness, your desire to
experience
only love coming from me,"
that's my vow. What else?
Well, what about when you're
mad?
Western psychology says
never stuff it and I say western
psychology
is full of beans. Your
soulmate is not your
garbage dump. The negativity that is in
your mind from time to time,
first of all, it shouldn't be there. You
have full control over your mind because
you have free will
so you should be dealing with that stuff
in your head learning to control your
thoughts,
learning to control your feelings and
promising to never
dump your stuff on your spouse.
Literally, we are taught by western
psychology which has no idea about
marriage at all.
Please do not go to a western
psychologist for premarital education.
They say you should talk about your
feelings,
say how you're feeling. Well, let's think
about that.
Put yourself in the position of the
listener.
What does it do for you when someone is
basically
complaining? Your mind is going
"I got my own problems," and you do
and those are yours. Those are the ones
you're supposed to work on.
Well, what should you be talking about?
You should be talking about how much you
love your spouse, that's the vow.
You should be talking about how much you
want them to be happy, that's the vow.
Should you be dumping your garbage on
them? No, you should not
ever, ever. You should never argue with
your spouse,
another vow. "I promise to never start
an argument with you and if you start
one
with me I promise to deflect,
change the subject, agree with you until
we can
calm down. I'll be there for you but I
promise to never
argue with you. I promise to never
criticize you.
I promise to never condemn you.
I love you. I promise to do everything
and say everything. and be everything
that demonstrates my love for you."
That's what vows are all about. I truly
urge you to go over to the
premaritalacademy.org
and learn about
marriage because you're just starting
out.
And there's an expectation
that is unspoken for happiness and love
but you need to learn how
so that's it. You should be
and could be learning a lot about
marriage by watching these videos so
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heard
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with me in the comments section so I
could explain it to you
more fully if you don't understand it
that's why we're here
at The Marriage Foundation. Our approach
to marriage
is a hundred percent positive.
We know, we don't hope because we've
helped
many thousands of people achieve the
ultimate marriage.
We know that your marriage is supposed
to be
like cloud nine like the most amazing
marriage
ever. It's supposed to be the happiest
place
in your life and we can show you how to
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