"My husband doesn't listen to my feelings."
My name is Paul Friedman, I founded The
Marriage Foundation.
I'd like to give you some insight into
this
as well as some practical advice.
Number one -- there is a big
almost a movement in Western society
that our feelings
are so important that we should listen
to our feelings. We should honor
our feelings and this is incorrect
thinking. So there's two
kinds of feelings. One you
definitely should listen to
but not the kind that when you're
looking up this kind of information, not
that kind.
So understand
that you are a soul.
You have a body. You have a mind
but you're a soul. You don't have a soul,
you are a soul and the soul
has a mind, and the mind is sort of
in between the physical body
that we reside in and
us being a soul.
It's like a battleground but the mind is
a battleground
because the physical body
has innate drives
primarily the drive to survive.
We always know if something is alive
because it has a drive to survive.
That life is in
every single living cell
and every single collection of cells.
So our human body has trillions of cells.
Each one is intelligent
and it's driven by a drive to survive
and they work collectively,
and they influence the mind for survival.
What does survival mean?
You could almost boil it down to two
actions that survival brings about
in most cases. Those two actions
are based on fearful reactions
to outer danger,
fight or fly. We hear about this
and it applies to us as well. More
sophisticated
but it still applies to us so those
feelings
that you feel are
mechanical almost, influencers
on the mind. They're software programs
in the mind which set up filters
and barriers, walls that allows us to get
through
a dangerous world.
So these feelings are almost always
based in fear
or regret, or
unease, disease.
The good feelings that we feel
you don't want to talk about those with
your husband necessarily
but those are really the same thing.
When there is no danger you have
these feelings of safety primarily
and you feel comfort.
Both men and women have feelings.
Now there's another feeling
which there's actually a word for it
in Eastern philosophy, it's called chit.
And it's the feeling
of the heart, it is so different.
It is so completely separated from the
feelings in the mind
that you literally can feel it in the
heart
when it's there. Interestingly,
chit is always there. It represents
the feeling of the soul of yourself.
It's the true self. It encompasses
intuition. Intuition
is never tied to fear. Now intuition may
give you a warning about
some danger or something that's
happening
but it there's no fear around that. When
we
fear something, when we have a
premonition of something that's going to
happen
that's actually in the subconscious mind
where the subconscious mind has been
gathering data
silently behind the scenes, collecting
data
and it churns the data, calculates and
lets the mind know there's danger.
You can't trust that person. You can't
trust this situation
but it's all happening up here.
Unfortunately because of this trend of
talking about your feelings,
it has become a common
theme especially for women
to say, "Well, I need to talk about how I
feel."
So when you do that
with your husband,
he is under the same influences
of his body's messaging to his mind.
And he by design,
biological design is more in the mode of
protecting
so his radar is up way more than yours.
A man's primary defensive
mechanism in life is simplicity
so he doesn't have to sort through
everything
to figure out what's dangerous and
what's not.
Your husband is probably pretty simple.
He doesn't talk about a lot of things
not just about your feelings.
So, what do you do now? This is what's
happening,
so what do you do.
The thing you do
is you only talk about
heart things when you want to express
your feelings so you'll be training
yourself
to put aside those
other feelings. You make too much of
those
feelings. They don't have a positive
influence in your life
anyway. Put him aside especially when
you're with your husband.
And instead, look at him and instead of
unloading which he has to sort, it's a
huge burden for a man
you just look at them, you smile,
"Honey, I love you," and have it come from
your heart.
Because that's you, the soul. It's why he
married you.
He didn't marry you so he could listen
to you
go on and on about how you felt about
this,
how you feel about that. He married you
because you have a connection to your
heart that he doesn't have to his.
You are like his connection to the big
heart to love
so you don't want to abuse
that and take advantage of your
situation with him because he's a
captive audience.
No, you want to adore him,
love him. Don't be dependent
on him for things that
are only going to push him away
and this is how you solve it, and watch
how he opens up.
And he will then, if you first come
through
with your love,
he will be receptive to hearing all the
other things
but don't take advantage of that.
Use your communication with your husband
to express love, appreciation,
trust, support. All these verbal actions
that express love will enhance your
marriage
and then you'll feel that feeling of
connection which is really what you want,
isn't it?
And don't take advantage of that, don't
take him for granted and then just
move into these other things because
that's very manipulative.
Instead maintain your focus
in your marriage on love
and happiness.
Wow! That was an earful, wasn't it? I hope
you were able to follow
all this. What we do is
everything is based on principles
in The Marriage Foundation, universal
principles
with an understanding of ourselves by
our gender,
very important. So I hope this was useful
to you
and if you like this kind of information,
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and if you have a comment, if you want to
engage in some discussion around this or
some other topic
use the comment section. If you have a
really difficult
situation, you might want to reach out to
one of our counselors -- it's a free
service
and you can get very educated by reading
one of our books
or taking the course for women.
Regardless, we are here to serve you
and I appreciate your taking your time.
Blessings to you! Blessings to your
husband and blessings to your family!
Take care!