So this topic is
very important for you, I really hope
you listen to all of it. My name is Paul
Friedman. I founded The Marriage
Foundation
and the topic is, what do you do if your
man starts
taking you for granted? I want you to
know something. I've written a couple of
books.
I have courses for men and courses for
women
and I've identified three main killers
of marriages and there's a fourth.
But the first one, I
call it over-familiarity
which in a nutshell means that you've
gotten so
used to each other that you're starting
to,
you got it, take each other
for granted. You see he's not the only
one
taking you for granted. You're also
taking him for granted
and you may be saying, "No, I don't do that."
So I'm going to prove to you before we
go any further,
I'm going to prove to you that you do
and how do I know, how can he be so
sure? Well, I've been doing this for a
long time
so I know the cause and effect
relationships which is everything
in marriage. If you see
an effect, you can
assume the cause. It's like
gravity. If I hold a pencil up here
and I let it go, you already know it's
going to fall
until it hits the desk or the ground or
something
because not like you're
an expert on gravity but because you've
seen it happen
so many times. Me too.
I have seen so many marriages.
I didn't start out helping people save
their marriages. I was a divorce
mediator so man can I tell you about the
problems.
This is the biggest, over-familiarity
and how do I know you're guilty of it
too and I hate that word guilty,
because if you were still treating him
the way you did before you got married
he would be treating you like the queen.
Think about it. Both of you
got married basically for the same
reasons. You have the same desires
everyone does. The desire is
to have happiness, right? Who gets married
without that desire? Now, you don't talk
about it
but you want to be happy. The other thing
is you want
love not just any kind of love. You want
marital love which means unconditional
love
because you can't get that anywhere else
in the world. Yeah, your mother kind of
gave it to you
but this is different. Your mother gave
it to you just the way you give it to
your children
because it's just part of the deal being
a mother.
She's got a great heart, lovely woman
but she's compelled by biology, by
instincts to love you and protect you
unconditionally. You didn't
have this going for you when you get
married you might say.
You volunteered, your husband volunteered
to be married to each other with
the desire to have this need
for unconditional love fulfilled.
And now he's taking you for granted and
you're going, "This isn't fair,"
but what happened was after you got
married
like everyone else pretty much
you stopped doing the things
to win him to make him feel
amazing that you used to do.
In other words, you now take him for
granted because
you got him. He's your husband
and he did the same thing and he's doing
the same thing
and it becomes a descending cycle. The
name of my book, Breaking the Cycle. How
do you
get out of this?
Well, in a nutshell because I'm not going
to sell you my books. I'm not going to
sell you the course. They speak for
themselves. If you need them you'll feel
it and you'll go to our website at
themarriagefoundation.org
and you'll sign up or you'll write to
our counselors -- it's a free service.
You'll subscribe to this channel because
you could see this is
real stuff. This is real stuff. Who else
talks about over-familiarity
taking for granted? I don't go the way of
western psychology. I don't ask about
this or that or
what your childhood was like. I don't
care because you have free will.
This is an amazing thing you have this
free will.
What it means is that everything in the
past
is irrelevant because you have the
choice
about how you're going to behave right
now.
So your husband could be a total jerk
towards you
and you still have the free will to
choose to not return the favor.
You don't have to be a jerk towards him.
You can be an independent thinker
and say, "His behavior is off."
"He is being disrespectful towards me."
"He is taking me for granted." "He
is using me." "He's not appreciating me."
"He's not expressing love like he used to
but
I am in control of me. I can't control
him
so I am still going to love him. I'm
going to
single-handedly break the cycle. I don't
even need Paul's book." Yes, you do.
"I don't even need Paul's book. I don't
need his course.
I'm going to use my free will starting
right now
and I'm going to treat him the way that
I
did before we got married.
I'm going to ignore the fact that he
is taking me for granted because I
believe
Paul. He's taking me for granted because
I'm taking him for granted and I'm
taking him for granted so he's taking me
for granted. We have a cycle going. I'm
going to be the one to break it
and I'm not going to allow temptation to
interfere
with this commitment that I have
to myself to be a better person
than I have been." And
I guarantee that if you are
able to do this, if you are able to
overcome
your habits of complaining, your habits
of disrespecting him, your habits of
having expectations of him.
It'll turn your marriage around.
If you can do this. Now in our course for
women and
in our course for men too, the very first
thing we talk about is
how to overcome these negative habits.
But going back to what you should have
done, you didn't know any better so I'm
not blaming you,
but what you should have done when you
got married was you should have not
thought, "Oh boy! Now, I'm married. This is
the happiest day of my life. Yahoo!
Let's get drunk." No, you should have had a
game plan
for going forward to increase
your love to your husband, increase
the happiness in your marriage but no
one
teaches us how until now.
So you can do it. You have the power.
It's an amazing thing to learn the truth,
isn't it? So let's recap this.
He is taking you for granted
and I'm not going to say because you are
taking him for granted
but I'm going to say inequitably.
You are taking him for granted. If you
stop that
you will break the cycle and your
marriage will get better and he will
start treating you
with the love respect and kindness
that he should be treating you that way
for his own sake because those are
expressions of
love. And that's why you want to do it
with him
not for what you're going to get back
but because, Beatles had this
great song I think it was Paul McCartney,
the love
you take is equal
to the love you make. Do you remember
that?
The love you take is equal to the love
you make so you put out the love
and that is the love that you experience.
It's not a reciprocation.
You don't get love by giving love
from the person to whom you're giving
love. This is false.
It's just simply not how it works
but as you give love, you
feel that love filling
you up and that's the real experience of
love
but that's a whole another topic. We'll
save that for another day.
I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you
like this video. I hope you subscribe to
this channel.
I hope you leave a comment, share this
whatever you do share your love with me
and I share my love with you. God bless
you!
Thank you! I'm Paul Friedman
from The Marriage Foundation. Take care
and God bless!