Is it even possible to do this? How do you save a marriage after infidelity and
lies? Do you ever get up in the morning and think, "Huh, I wonder if gravity's on
today. Honey can you check the gravity report?" No. Gravity is always on. And
gravity always works on you. What if you jump from the top of a tall building?
What's going to happen? Yeah, for sure or maybe? Hmm.. Sometimes or
every time? Yep. What if you're standing at the top of that tall building and
you're thinking, "Gravity. Whatever. I don't believe in that. I'm not down with
gravity." And then you jump. Same splat as the believers. Yeah, gravity doesn't care
if you believe in it or not. It always pulls on you. I emphasize this right up
front because principles determine all of life's outcomes. Principles. Not luck.
Not magic. Principles determine all of life's outcomes. So, what if we've had a
relationship that's characterized by infidelity and lies. That's a problem.
What are we going to do with that? We got to get back to the principles. Principles
determine all of life's outcomes. And this is true no matter what. No matter
what has happened. I have been a psychologist for 25 years.
You can't shock me. I have heard some of the darndest stuff you can imagine. And
for about 13 of those years, I did child custody evaluations for the court.
Believe me. I've seen some messed up relationships. But I have never seen
anything that couldn't be resolved with the proper application of the correct
relationship principles. There are 9 of them.
And I'm happy to share those with you here on this video. We won't get into a
lot of detail about them. But consider how each of these principles might put
you in a position to improve this relationship even if you're doing it on
your own. Number 1, positivity. Yeah, big surprise,
right? That you're getting positivity from Dr. Paul. Your mindset matters and
how you think is going to determine a lot of the outcomes here. Positivity is
such an important starting place. And if you need some help with that, go to some
of the other videos that we've put up here and check out the models that help
you to understand how to operate the equipment. Positivity, it's huge.
Number 2, values. This is the why behind a relationship. Having a shared set of
values and purpose for the relationship in the first place. Why did you get
married in the first place? Why did you get together with this person?
Well, that's tapping into the values so we're talking about. Sometimes life beats
us up a little bit and we forget why we started this thing in the first place.
Renew your familiarity with the values. The next one is humility. Humility.
Meaning, the willingness and openness to change. We all know that we're right. Now,
check this out. It's not that we think we're right. No. We know we're right and
because we know we're right, we treat each other terribly. Most of the
conflicts in a relationship come down to what? My friend Brent Williams calls the
right fight. Brett wrote a book. You're going to love the title. The book is called
"You can be right or you can be married." That's kind of funny. But it's also
really painfully true. Because we know we're right, we get into fights about
who's right instead of getting focused on
what's right. And what's right are these principles that I'm sharing with you
right now. Let's move on to the next one. Forgiveness. Big surprise, right? Stuff
happens. We hurt each other. Forgiveness is the healing gift that we
can give ourselves that allows us to move past the hurt and continue to apply
the principles that are going to improve this thing in the first place. I had a
colleague once share with me that forgiveness is giving up your demand for
a better past. I like that. Let's stop digging up the history and
beating each other up with it. Maybe we can move forward with the spirit of
forgiveness that will empower our relationship. The next principle is
respect. Respect has everything to do with you. Your personality and your
character and your integrity. I was running a group of juvenile delinquents
once. These are kids who were referred through the court. None of them wanted to
be there. And we were talking about respect. This kid over in the corner, he's
got his hat on backwards. He's got a bolt through his nose. You know, all kinds of
attitude coming out of this guy. And he says to me, "Dr. Paul, I respect people who
respect me." I'm like, "Oh, wow. That's impressive."
Right? How hard is that to respect people who respect you? No, here's the
challenge. You respect people who don't respect you.
Why? Because you're a respectful person. Has nothing to do with them. This is on
you. Choose respect. The next principle is maybe the most obvious one. Love and I'm
not talking about the romantic, fluffy feeling kind of love. I'm talking about
the choice of love. And every interaction that you have with another person has to
fall on one side or the other. There is no neutral option. I'm convinced of this.
After 25 years of clinical practice, there's not a neutral option.
Our interactions have to be either on the love side or on the hate side. And I
use the word hate because people hate. The word hate but think about it. What's
the opposite of love? It's hate. Everything what we say, everything that
we do. Every interaction we have with another human being will fall on one
side or the other. Choose love. That's what we're talking about with that
principle. Let's move to the next one. The next principle is compassion.
Compassion is kind of like love probably. But it has something to do also with
kindness and being willing to have empathy and feel what other people are
feeling. Putting yourself in their position, treating them as genuine,
authentic human beings. Instead of objectifying them or treating them
poorly because we know that we're right. Compassion. That leads us into number
8. Principle number 8 is work. Good old-fashioned hard work. Elevation
requires effort, okay? Default is down. You know this if
you take your car and park it on a hill. Leave the brake off which direction does
it roll? Yeah, down. Because default is down. Remember we were talking about
gravity. It's always on. This is true in a relationship too. If you don't put in the
work, which direction is this relationship going to go? Down. Yeah, now
there's already been some damage because of the infidelity, because of the lies. So
it's going to take a lot of work to lift this thing from the place that it is to
the place where you want it to be. And get some help if you need some help.
There's coaches, there's counsellors, there's therapists that can help you
with this. You don't have to do it on your own. And it's going to be a lot of
work. No apologies. It's one of the principles. Let's wrap it up with
principle number 9. Wholesome recreational activities. Yes. We need to
be having fun. If we're not having fun, we're doing it wrong. This life is
intended to be a joyful experience. Let's find ways to have fun with each other in
wholesome, productive ways that is a solid relationship principle. Now, one
final word about these principles before we wrap up and that is that these
principles are powerful. I promise. These are powerful, guaranteed principles.
For saving a relationship no matter what has happened. But there's a caution. These
are for personal use only. I guarantee you, if you go out there and start
telling somebody else how they could be doing principles better, they're going to
get all defensive on you, they're going to counter-attack with some contempt.
These are for you, okay? You get busy applying these personally. In fact, I give
couples that I coach a challenge to think about this as a 95/5 proposition.
You've heard that marriage is a 50/50 thing. I have never seen that work well.
95/5 means that you personally take 95% of the responsibility for the
improvement of this relationship and you're going to expect about 5% from your
spouse. Anybody with a pulse can do 5%. Which means that your spouse is already
doing enough. And if this is going to get any better, it's up to... Yeah. You got it?
That's the hardest thing I'm going to ask you to do. But it's also a powerful thing.
So, there you have it. that's the best I know about how to save a marriage after
infidelity and lies or anything else that could go wrong. And
things will. If you need some help, get some help. We've got resources available.
If you're not sure where to look, I've got some coaches that are trained in
this particular paradigm. And you can find them at liveonpurpose.coach.
Go take a look.