Hi, I'm Paul Friedman. I founded The Marriage Foundation and today's topic is
"When Family Doesn't Like Your Spouse or You" so this is for when your family
doesn't like your spouse or your spouse's family doesn't like you. This is
not an easy topic because I know what you want is for everyone to get along
and that's what we all want, and I'm not going to give you methods for getting
someone to like you or for teaching you how to like another. So, what I'm going to
do instead is I'm going to remind you of something that is of the highest
importance and that is that marriage is a very unique venue. It is what I refer
to as the sacred space of marriage, and I try to encourage people to see your
marriage as a blue bubble. Blue is a healing color but that doesn't matter. It
is a bubble that the two of you live in, even your children don't live in this
innermost sanctum of your family. This is just you and your spouse. No one
should ever come in, you should not allow their ideas to come in, you should not
allow their words to come in their influences. You can take advice from
someone else outside of the bubble and you can bring it in but it's you
bringing it in. You don't allow anyone in. Why? Because this way it's just the two
of you and when there's two of you in a society because that's what you have
this tiny society, you can make up the rules that work for both of you. More
importantly, you could focus on the one thing that
will bring happiness into your marriage. So, why did you get married? You got
married to be happier than you would have been otherwise
so happiness is what it's all about. And what makes you happy
universally is unconditional love, you literally got married to learn how to
love unconditionally so that you can enjoy those benefits which are
unbelievable benefits. There are spiritual benefits, there is benefits to
having a prosperous marriage financially but they don't come close to the
spiritual benefits of increasing the love. That's why you got married for
richer or poorer, it's serious. You got married where love is everything.
Unconditional love is everything and all of the other stuff is not even a close
second. Well, your own family is and when I say your own family I don't mean
mothers, fathers, in-laws I mean your children so it's you and your spouse in
this shielded environment. And so, the key is keeping those shields up.
You remain friendly whether you're despised or not. You don't criticize
anyone, you should never criticize your spouse. You certainly shouldn't criticize
your spouse's relations. You just keep a very loving distance when it comes to
those topics. If there's a discussion going on
you learn how to work around the feelings that your spouse may have about
the whole thing. Your job is to take care of your spouse, not their family and if
your family is not liking your spouse criticizing them about it isn't going to
work. They have their reasons but don't allow those thoughts to come into your
family into your relationship with your spouse. Protect your spouse from those
ideas. Let them know that they're loved but there's some confusion if it's that
apparent or say nothing. Look, the most important part of this video is not
about what you can do about someone else, it's about what you can do in your
marriage. You want to keep it a sacred space, you want to keep the doors to
everyone else closed, you want to keep your marriage firing on the fluid
nitrogen of love.
Make your marital space the most amazing place on earth and you won't have to
worry. So that's it, blessings to you, blessings to your spouse, and blessings
to your family. Please like this video and share it. Let other people get the
benefits that you have. God bless!