So the topic is, what to do when your
spouse
takes you for granted? This is
interesting and I'll tell you why.
First of all, I'm Paul Friedman. I founded
The Marriage Foundation.
I used to be a divorce mediator.
We're going back over 20 years now
and when I got into the idea of helping
people save their marriages it was
because I saw
so much failure. All of my clients came
from marriage counseling and the
marriage counselors
would give up on their marriage and send
them to me
so that they could get a divorce. And I
was seeing so many people who really
shouldn't be getting a divorce but they
were.
And so I shifted my practice and
I'll be honest with you, I lost a lot of
money doing that. I was making
very good money. The divorce industry
is very lucrative
and one of my fellow mediators said, "Paul,
the stuff you've come up with is amazing.
Here's a thousand bucks. Start a
foundation,"
and I did, and the rest
is history but it's an uphill battle
because
we're going against a lot of what's out
there
as normal which is terrible stuff.
So this topic is ironic
because what I did in the beginning
was I reduced down
what I call the three killers of
marriage.
I broke it down and guess what one of
them is,
taking your spouse for granted. Now I
called it something else
because there is something else that
gets you there.
I call it over-familiarity. It's the
number one
killer. Every marriage that ends
suffers from over-familiarity
and if you've got a brother or sister
then you know what I'm talking about
because it's the same thing where you
know each other so well. You can say
anything you want
and it's not hurtful only because you
grew up that way.
And sometimes it is hurtful but when you
get married, you don't get married
to a sibling. You get married
to somebody who your expectation is that
you're going to be happy with for the
rest of your lives
that you're going to experience
unconditional love with them.
But what typically happens because we
truly do not have
proper marital education,
almost right off the bat. We start
making fun of each other.
We have expectations of each other.
We speak poorly to each other.
We take each other for granted. It isn't
just your spouse that's taking you for
granted. You're taking them for granted
too.
Just the idea that you may argue with
them
rather than force yourself to calm down
and to listen, and
hear not just listen but hear
and then respond
with concern and understanding. Have you
done that?
You see this is one of the first
solutions
is being aware of them
as important to you. Now you might say,
"Wait a minute,
I picked up this video here..." And by the
way,
you should definitely subscribe to this
channel just go down and do that
now because what I'm sharing with you is
very important in all the videos that I
produce are important to you.
So you can't change them
by saying, "Look, you're really taking me
for granted. I feel
used. I feel like a doormat. I feel abused
I feel unappreciated,
underappreciated." They don't care
because we live our lives until we learn
how to
master our life. We live our lives
reacting, don't you? When someone says
something to you
you barely think about it. You already
have a pat
response. You see what happens is our
mind
collects all of these habits.
We take all of these experiences and we
come up with automatic
reactions, responses.
It's a feature in our computer called
the mind
that saves us a lot of time but it
doesn't save
us a lot of trouble. We really should
take
every experience and think it through
and make sure that our response
in our marriage is producing
happiness and love. Again, you're not
going to change your spouse
but you could lead the way to inspiring
them
to want to change themselves
and that's what it's all about. I have
books out there
and you could check out Breaking the
Cycle at Amazon and see
how people talk about it. I have courses
if you
really want to take your marriage to the
level that I
push on people which is ever
increasing. Think about this. Didn't you
get married thinking you would have ever
increasing happiness? I did.
Didn't you get married thinking that you
would feel love
to the degree where you can't even
contain it?
I'm experiencing that and thousands of
people who have taken our course whether
for men
or for women, they're experiencing it too,
and this is what it's all about. It's not
about fixing this
particular problem. I guarantee you that
this is not the only problem in your
marriage.
I guarantee it. Now maybe the one staring
at you in your face
or the one that you're able to
articulate because your inner reactions
are feeling really pushed
but there is an army of
bad things right behind them.
And you could fix all of them without
fixing
any of them by really working on
developing
your marriage. My books are great.
Check the reviews but also check the
reviews for the courses
and see how we've really helped people
transform their marriage. Your marriage
is the most
important thing in your life. There's
nothing that comes close
and it is an interesting thing because
we get married in order to experience
these
very tangible but non-material
experiences, love. I mean it's as
metaphysical as it gets, right.
Spiritual, metaphysical, what's the
difference? It's not
sensory. When was the last time
that you felt love? Think about it.
It overwhelms the mind which is a
material processing unit.
Western psychology has it all
wrong. They go,
they think that love is in the mind
which is stupid.
Honestly, it's not in the mind. The mind
if it were in the mind then you could
produce it
because you have control over your mind
but all you can do for love
is give it so it comes into you
from the ultimate source of all things.
So listen, I can only go so deep
in a particular video. Subscribe to the
channel
get one of the books. Go to our website
themarriagefoundation.org. It's so worth
your while
and you can heal this while you heal
everything else and it's so worth it.
Thanks for spending time with me! Again
I'm Paul Friedman, I founded The Marriage
Foundation
and we're here for you. Take care! I hope
to see you again.
Thanks!