How do you know when your marriage is over? My name is Paul Friedman, I founded
The Marriage Foundation and I'm going to try to help you with this
not so much to tell you when your marriage is over
but to tell you what you really should be doing now that you're afraid -- it might
be. First of all, your marriage is over when you have said, "I'm done." When you say
that there's nothing else you can do. When you've given up, there's nothing
else you could do then your marriage is done. Now also, we get requests from both
men and women obviously, and I'm going to be very clear. The current ideas of men
and women being the same are ridiculous so what I share with you is not just
based on opinion but it's based on our experiences and the logic that comes
around gender differences. So, men write in and they will say, "My wife left six
weeks ago for instance and I want her back. What can I do?" The truth is I've
never seen a case like that where there's actually something you can do.
Another example of that is, "My wife left me for a boyfriend.
Can I win her back?" No, probably not. I mean there's always a possibility. I hate
to give an absolute but we haven't seen it. On the other hand, when women write in
and they say, "My husband left and I think he's going to file for divorce. Is there
anything I can do?" The answer is yeah, you can easily win
him back. Well, I rolled my eyes at the easily
because there's part of it that is not easy but it's simple and you can. The
thing of it is sometimes the marriage is over even if you're the woman but
you can start a new one with your husband. Because let's be honest,
the old one wasn't all that good or it wouldn't have ended and maybe he's the
one who walked out on you but that doesn't mean you were loving your
marriage and it was a great marriage. It just means that he made the first move.
People have a tolerance point when they are in a marriage that's no good because
marriages that are no good are never just sort of stagnantly no good. They're
getting worse day by day which is ironic when you think about it because when you
first got marriage the whole idea was to have happiness growing every single day.
It didn't for very clear reasons. You didn't make it so there were just two of
you. What possible excuse could you pass off to anyone explaining why just two of
you whose intention was to be happy ended up in a marriage where neither of
you are happy? There's no excuse but I'm going to provide
one for you. The excuse is that you had no idea how to be married and if you go
"Of course, we knew how to be married." Then this video is not for you. This video is
for people who are humble enough to recognize that if they did know what
they were doing their marriage would be kept getting progressively better every
single day. You didn't go to school and learn how to balance a checkbook. You
didn't go to school and learn how to sew although we used to. You didn't go to
school and learn hardly anything that is practical in terms of its application.
When was the last time somebody said, "Who was the first president of the United
States, and what is he most famous for?" Well, you might know the answer to that
but, is that practical knowledge? We don't learn practical things in school. They
say you should be learning that at home but half the homes are broken homes so
people don't learn. They don't learn about basic things like
relationships, how to know who to marry, how to choose a mate. We're not taught.
We're not taught about the differences between the marriage venue in every
other venue because marriage is a very unique venue. We don't learn these things.
You can't say you learned it by watching on TV or watching movies and seeing how
people are married that's fairytale stuff so that's your excuse. You don't
know how to be married so you got married and what most people do when
they get married is they work really hard towards, what? The wedding day.
They're planning the cake, the tuxedos, the bridesmaids, what they will wear, who
will sit at what seat, who's going to perform the ceremony, where
the ceremony -- I mean wow, it's an unbelievable amount of work and no one's
ever thinking. "Well, once we get married maybe you did this. I don't think so."
"Once we get married, what do we do?" "Oh, we'll get along everything's fine."
Well, that's crazy. You get a car and you have to do maintenance on it. You have to
keep it clean. You have to check the liquid levels, the oil, the water. You got
to make sure things are running right and if they're not, you got to do
something about it. And in marriage, people think, "Well, you
get married." Then what? "Well, then you have kids."
It's not like that. Marriage is a living thing.
Marriage is alive and it's purposeful. It's supposed to help you, evolve as a
human being. What do I mean by that? You have to learn how to love each other
unconditionally and then just by getting on that path of learning how to love
each other unconditionally the rewards are unbelievable but no one told you so
your marriage started going downhill. Now what? Now what?
Well, a lot of people might say, "Well, it's tried-and-true, didn't work. Sorry." I say
"Let's take this plant and let's revive it. Let's learn how, let's do the things
we need to do and let's get our acts together." And if you're the only one, get
your act together. There's this mythological idea of it takes two
to have a happy harmonious marriage and it's nonsense. Think of a marriage in one
small way as a bridge between two souls. Now of course, there's the practical side
of marriage too. Marriage after all is spiritual and practical that's
intertwined because you are a soul and your marriage is based on love
but there's also the practical side too of making sure the home is beautiful and
making sure you have jobs and you can sustain yourselves and you're working
together towards material goals and you're also working towards spiritual
goals. And spiritually speaking though, if you're building the bridge between
two souls -- well, let's say you're building a bridge between two banks of a river.
One of you is on one side and you're on the other and if just one of you is
building and the other is taking a rest, the bridge is still being built.
You're still going to meet. You don't have to meet halfway. You can meet nine-tenths
of the way. A bridge between the souls is a bridge between the souls, who builds
that bridge doesn't matter. You don't get points for being the one to build the
bridge but you get a bridge much more important. So the thing to do is not
think in terms of your marriage coming to an end.
The thing to do is to consider what's going on now, a wake up call that
it's time to pay attention to get an education, a practical education and if
you need extra guidance get the guidance to recreate your marriage starting from
scratch if you must -- it doesn't matter.
Both of you are amazing people, neither of you are throwaway people you just
didn't know what you were doing. Marriage is in a way are simple but
also there's a lot of moving parts. Think of it like an airplane, you go in an
airplane. If you don't know what you're doing you're going to crash and that's all
that's happening in a marriage where you don't know what you're doing. And when
you just have to take a look at the statistics to see that over 50% of all
marriages end in divorce, over 50% -- it's insane. There's no statistic
about of the 50 that remain, how many are happy and they're supposed to be happy.
They're supposed to be producing happiness every single day. People don't
know how. I do, I know how. I've discovered how. I know about marriage the way an
auto mechanic knows about automobiles the way a pilot knows about airplanes. I
ain't really understand marriage. I just want to impart what I know to you
so that you can get what you should be getting from your marriage. Do not give
up. Once you give up, it's over, it's done but if you don't give up
if you work hard at finding the right path and I think the one I have is the
right path then you could end up going from a marriage that is dilapidated and
terrible and on the verge of divorce and turning it into the most amazing
fruit-bearing marriage ever. And what are the fruits? Happiness, love, joy,
contentment, security, all the good stuff. That's it. It's that simple.
You can subscribe to this channel of course. You can like this, share it. You
could call in, write into our counselors -- it's a free service. Tell them what's
going on. Get some professional opinion from someone who's not negative, from
someone who understands marriage and let's see if we can help you out.
In the meantime, God bless you, God bless your spouse and God bless your family.