What is a wife's role in marriage? My name is Paul Friedman. I'm the founder of
The Marriage Foundation and this may seem almost like a
religious question like the kind of question that
would be dealt with from a religious point of view.
But it's not just religious it is spiritual though because I'm not
going to talk about so much, the mundane, a wife should be
driving the children and the husband should be doing
this and I'm not going to go there. Rather we're going to come to
the basis of marriage and we're going to understand it
from that point of view. Because frankly, that's what's important
so, why do you get married? Why do people want to get married in the
first place? And I'm not talking about, "Oh, well. I
found the ideal man. I have found the ideal woman,"
in case whatever. I'm going to talk about why people want to get married.
It's really simple if you think about it and yet it's never discussed in society.
The number one reason why people want to get married.
Are you ready? Is so they could be happier
but not just happier but happier every single day of your
life. You're not signing up for this general
blase, "Oh yeah. Well, I'm happier now that I got
married." No, you want to be
happier that's what you want in life. That's what you want
from life, isn't it? No one ever thinks about these things.
We go through life like automatons. One day at a time, get up in the morning
have a routine, have a little entertainment sometimes,
have a great meal other times, get some loving in,
get some whatever every day -- it's not enough.
A living person
is an evolutionary person. Evolutionary to what?
More education, more knowledge, more intelligence?
Maybe but who needs that. What you really want is you want to be
happier and we get married for the exact same reason.
We want to be happier. So, your role in a marriage
is to make yourself happier
by ever increasing love. That's the second
reason for getting married. We want to feel love. Why?
Because love is the one thing that is intangibly
tangible. You can't touch it, smell it, feel it whatever with your five senses
but it's tangible. It's real. You experience
love and you know it's real because you're a soul.
Souls experience love. They don't just experience
sort of the things that come from love but they experience love itself.
We're the only creatures that can say, we do
and that love we also know intuitively that love has no end,
has no boundary. Now our mind tells us that can't be
real but it is real.
Love has infinite attached to it nothing else does
even outer space is not infinite. There's an end somewhere but there is no
end to love. There's no end to love and that's what we want because we know
that that love makes us happy. So there's your two things,
you want to be happier every single day of your life
and you want ever increasing love, very simple. So now
what's the role of a wife? The role of a wife is to contribute
to that happiness so there's two parts to that.
Do you like how I dissect things, how I break it down?
There's two parts to that. One part is don't do anything that's going
to cause stress, worry, drama,
negativity. Don't do any of those things. We have free will.
We always have a choice because of that free will
that we can behave, act in a way that is beneficial
or detrimental. Some people say, what about neutral? There is no such thing
because we're alive. We're always moving. So those
are your two options, it doesn't matter what it is. You could
always act either beneficially, contributing to the love
and happiness of your marriage which is unique.
Or you could behave detrimentally and bring down your marriage,
poison it, destroy it. Take away all the fun from it. Those are
your two options. So let's say you're a religious
person and you're asking this question, and you're asking because you have heard
that we should follow scripture.
And scripture tells us how to behave and I'm telling you that all of God's
commandments are based on the principle
of love and behaving in a way that is beneficial, that's positive,
all of them. The thou shalt nots are all about what I just said before.
Avoiding -- determiningly avoiding, making it a point
to avoid, being negative, being critical, being
nasty, being spoiled, being a brat,
all those things you have to avoid them. How do you do that? Well, as soon as an
idea comes up in your mood or a feeling. I'm sorry, it comes up in your mood. I
meant comes up in your mind or a feeling of moodiness comes up in
your mind. It's your obligation as a person who has
free will to put those aside and replace them with positive thoughts
and positive feelings so that's what you do when the negative
stuff comes up in your head. That's your role as a wife.
And when you have a good feeling which you have control
over or a good thought, which you're allowed to and obligated to implant
in your mind because it's your mind, you're the soul.
Then you roll with those and that's what you feed into your marriage.
Think of your marriage as a container, I call it the sacred space of marriage.
There's only two of you in there and I always strongly
strongly tell people do not let anyone into your marriage. It's just two of you
so don't tell people about what's going on in your marriage.
Don't share, keep it private. There's only two of you when you keep it
private so you have a lot of control
over what's coming into your marriage, over what you put in. So think of this
container, think of a jar and it starts out empty.
It began only when you get married and you put in sweetness, the honey
of encouragement uplifting ideas, flattery, positive flattery,
loving ideas, love itself --
that's all you want in there. You don't want to allow anything to come
into your marriage caused by you that's going to be toxic.
Only honey, sugar, chocolate cake and whipped cream. Do not let
in anything bitter that doesn't taste good. Do you get it? Don't let your mind
which has been victimized by the biological body and I don't want to get
into all that. Don't let it fool you.
And if your husband happens to say something that's negative,
well, if you own what he says when it's negative
it's going to collect in your sacred space of marriage.
But if you dodge it, ignore it, don't relate to it, don't connect with it
no matter how much it appears to be directed at you.
Then your sacred space of marriage will remain
so and that's your job. That's your role is to remain positive. Yes, it's your
husband's job and role too but we're only talking to you now.
You have the power as a woman. You have greater power than your husband
or husband to be. You have greater power to infuse love
into your marriage because women are more connected to their heart
than our men.
Use that power. Love, love and more love.
In my life, my motto is God alone.
Love alone, that's it. Love. God first
God alone. Love first love alone in your marriage.
That's what's going to bring you that which is what you sign up for.
You sign up for happiness and love, and you have the power to make it so.
That's your role. I don't care who takes out the trash.
I don't care who's staying home with the kids
that's up to you guys. Scripture doesn't cover that
but the love and the happiness is under your control.
So no matter how you behave regarding the particular situation,
infuse it with love and positivity.
Got it? If you do this, you'll find what our clients find
that love is the most amazing thing to infuse into your marriage and it makes
your marriage the most amazing place of happiness
in your life -- never ending. It's almost scary sometimes how positive
it is because your mind doesn't want you to
enjoy it. But you put your mind under control -- it's
your mind.
I hope you enjoyed this talk. You can subscribe and get lots of videos
about marriage. You could like this. You could share it.
You could comment on it and I don't care if you comment
negatively sometimes I enjoy those. It makes no difference to me.
I'm here to serve and I want you to be happy. I want you to
have the most amazing marriage. I can't even talk about my marriage.
It's like my wife and I were talking about it today.
It's like there's no chart. It's literally off the charts, off the
charts because love is off the charts. You can't
measure love and that's what you should have.
Happiness can't be measured and that's what you
should have but happiness from love. Happiness from
things like cars and houses and dogs and all that
no matter how cool it is -- it's fleeting. But love it's there, it's there.
All right. Blessings to you! Blessings to your spouse, your family
your friends! God bless you! Thank you for taking the time to be with me!
I appreciate that and I hope I've been of benefit to you.
God bless!