So a husband writes, "My wife constantly
blames me for things I haven't done, for
everything,"
and that's telling me a lot.
My name is Paul Friedman, I founded The
Marriage Foundation
and we're here to serve you and to help you.
And I'd like to help you first by
letting
you know that you're just a man,
just kidding, just kidding really.
I'm not gender prejudiced,
I'm really not. Men and women
have different flaws, different positive
attributes but by learning what
our own flaws are,
what holds us back as a man
in our case and learning about
our wives flaws and attributes
gives us an amazing opportunity
to gain what we want from marriage which
is
ever-increasing happiness, ever
increasing love
where it just gets better and better
every single day. And when these kind of
things come up
basically, what it's saying
is we haven't been taught about marriage.
We have no idea what we're doing.
Way back in the day when I used
to meet with individuals,
every single man that I met with
after they would get to know me for a
while, and when I say for a while I mean
in the first session because I didn't
like to drag sessions out.
I'm into like fix it now, fix it now. Make
some progress.
Every single man would say to me,
"I just got to tell you,
my wife is crazy." Every single one
and I had no idea
that I was the only one who thought that
about my wife.
From our point of view as men
it's like, "How do they come up with this
stuff? How are they thinking like that?"
And so I came up with a little metaphor,
I think that
if you were to open up or look
into a woman's head,
you ever see a pot of boiling spaghetti
where the spaghetti is all moving around
and everything and it's
just you can't tell which spaghetti is
connected to what,
and where the ends are -- that's what it
looks like in a woman's head
and you know what she'll even tell you
that.
Where man inside our minds
things have to be categorized its lines,
its circles, even the creative men.
It's a designation by gender.
It's a biologically driven thing.
So when you see, when you hear and feel
that your wife
is blaming you for everything
you gotta step back and you gotta
go number one.
So what?
Really? So what, not
so what but I didn't do it. So what,
that is her momentary
perception even if it's voiced all the
time.
How do I handle that?
That's really what you want to know, what
do I do? But let's start
with the so what -- it's not an attack on
you.
It sounds like an attack on you
and any normal human being except for me,
Paul Friedman, would say it's an attack
on you, but I say it's not an attack on
you.
It's how she perceives what you're doing
and not considering that by telling you
that she's attacking you.
If you asked her, "Why are you attacking
me?" She'll say, "I'm not attacking you."
Guaranteed, don't test it. There's no need
to.
The main thing you should take away from
that
is don't take it personally. Don't take
it personally.
So when something comes up that she's
blaming you for
there's this old metaphor. I learned it
from a psychologist
30 years ago. It's called the bowling
ball and feather.
The bowling ball is coming out of
feather full speed ahead.
Does the feather get hit? Impossible,
because the force of the bowling ball
just pushes the feather out of the way.
The feather doesn't care, don't care.
Don't be affected. Control yourself,
control your mind
and challenge yourself and say, "Well, why
should I be affected?
I'm not guilty of anything. Why should I
be affected?" So
turn it around and listen to your wife,
listen to what she's saying
and instead of listening to the blame
part
because that's the attack part, right?
Instead of listening to the attack, the
blame,
listen to what she would like to see
happen
and start talking about that.
And ask her, "Would you like me to fix the
da-da-da?"
Or go a step further and say, "Wow, you
know what? You're right.
Let me fix the da da..."
It'll change everything so it's two
steps
and they work. Number one, don't
take it on very important that you don't
take it on.
Because if you're taking it on then your
mind is going to get into defensive mode,
it's not going to work out. Listen, you
need to subscribe to this channel
because there's a lot you can learn
about marriage. Learn and apply,
learn and apply so go ahead and do that.
So step one - don't take it on.
Step two - find the underlying
grain of sand that is irritating her and
see if you can help her with it.
She's your wife, why shouldn't you?
Why shouldn't you? You love her. You want
to be there for her.
Reconstruct your attitude towards your
wife.
Be the guy who asked her to marry her.
The guy who thinks she's the queen,
thinks she's amazing.
Okay, that's it.
Get one of my two books if you want but
definitely
learn and apply. Okay.
Thanks for spending time with me! God
bless and take care!