How to handle an arrogant husband? Did my wife slip that in? My name is Paul
Friedman, I founded The Marriage Foundation and let's get into this topic
in a kind of an interesting way because you can't change anybody. It's hard
enough to change yourself. How many times have you had a new year's
resolution or any time of year where you said, from now on bla bla bla bla.
How long does that last? Now, it is possible for you to change yourself. In
fact, in our courses it's the very first place we start is in how you change
yourself and I've developed techniques and systems that work but it's not easy.
Now, it's not easy for you to change yourself. Do you think you're going to be
able to say to your husband, "You know you're pretty arrogant, could you please
be more humble?" How do you think he's going to respond to that. He's going to
be mad. He's going to be reactive, defensive, not me I'm not arrogant. Whoa, I am
actually so here's the thing. There's an old saying that, very old saying even
before my time that he or she got my goat. Well, get your goat out of the way.
You know, the thing of it is that we react to things based on our own stuff
because not everybody reacts to the same things, right. It's basically we have our
own weaknesses, we should be calm, cool and collected regardless of what we
encounter. It's tougher in a marriage because we're living with someone in
close quarters. I call it the sacred space of marriage but how often do
soulmates turn into cellmates. You have two choices when you're
married, you can fight until you're divorced or you can change yourself. Yes
and you can change yourself and this is the art of marriage you might say is
learning how to love unconditionally which means you ignore the flaws that
your spouse has. Who doesn't have flaws? You don't have no flaws, you have flaws
your husband has flaws, everyone has flaws. Your children have flaws, everybody
but what happens is you become sensitive. There's other things that are going on
and I'll tell you what's primarily going on. Primarily what's going on is you have
not, and I'm sorry to be accusatory about this but you have not learned how to get
the most out of your marriage. And so you're allowing this amazing man you're
married to upset you based on a couple of this flaws, arrogance is not that big
a deal. It really isn't. So what you need to do is you need to step back, you need
to take a look and say," You know what,
he has some arrogance going", and again I know I do too but he has all these other
amazing qualities. I call these workarounds. Every time your mind comes
up with a blame, which is what that is, respond internally to that by going, yeah
maybe however, and heal yourself. Bring yourself to a place of loving in spite
of flaws because that's what it's all about. Soul to soul not ego to ego. I hope
this is helpful, I hope your marriage is not sliding into the rocks over this.
It would seem so trite if that were the case. If you're having more difficulty go
write into one of our counselors, it's free. They'll guide you either to one of
our books or one of the courses, other than that
blessings to you, blessings to your arrogant husbands and blessing to your
family. God bless, thank you!