Jewish marriage advice.
My name is Paul Friedman, get it, Friedman?
I founded The Marriage Foundation so who
doesn't found a charity,
and I want to help you and I want to let
you know that I've got
quite a history in Judaism, a little bit
different than most.
I was raised in an orthodox home. My
father was
a concentration camp survivor
but my mother came to this country
before
World War II. She was here after World
War I.
And so I was raised in a home
where it was normal to yell at each
other.
It was normal for my parents
to argue, not discuss
but to argue, ups and downs.
And a lot of my friends, they had the
same type of environment.
And back in that day,
divorce was like drinking, other people
did it
but it became much more popular.
Became much more accepted as
things in our society evolved
and I got into the whole marriage
healing business in a very
odd sort of way. I had a business helping
people get a divorce. I was a divorce
mediator and it was striking to me
that my clients who came for a divorce
were good people, and they appeared like,
"Wow, these people really get along." They
should,
they're so similar. They have children
together,
why isn't this working?
And so, one couple asked
"Look, why don't you help us? I said, "All
right.
Why not?" And so
I said Abraja, not really.
But I started looking at marriage
with a little bit of a different
perspective because
all of my clients except for the ones
that were recommended by other clients
were referred by therapists, marriage
counselors,
and why are they failing here?
And so, I asked a few, "Okay. How do you
work with couples? What do you do?"
And mostly the answers that I got
were about keeping their clients for a
long time
and then working with one of the clients
through the divorce and after the
divorce. They were all about money
and I'm thinking, "Wow, these children..."
because I started looking into the
statistics and the kids are really
affected by divorce. I mean it just
cannot be argued anymore.
The statistics have been tracked for so
many years now
that we know for sure that they just
don't do as well.
And in some cases, it's terrible.
Drug use, alcohol dependency,
girls are flirtatious,
I wish that was all and promiscuous,
boys are mistreating the girls. It's not
good for the kids so I got into this.
And so, my approach was really different
so let's step out of Judaism
and let's look at marriage. And let's go,
why do you get married
in the first place?
And I asked my therapist friends,
"Why do people get married?" They all gave
me the same answers that my clients
later gave me.
They want friendship, they don't want to
be alone,
they want to fit into society.
It shows you I was in California
so many years,
but it didn't work for me
so I kept searching for the answer. And I
came upon
a very spiritual answer
that I tested out and it turned out to
be
the answer. Why do you think people get
married?
They get married so they're happier
and not just happier the day of the
wedding but happier every single day of
their lives.
Most of us don't think, "Well, I'm going to
get married to be happier,"
but when it's presented to you this way
you go, "Well, yeah."
Okay. What have you done
to make your spouse happier? What have
you done to make yourself happier
in the context of your marriage? Nothing,
you're winging it. There's a second
reason why everyone gets married. This
one is very deep.
You get married in order to feel
unconditional love. It's that love that
you feel when you see your kid
sleeping. Your heart just opens up
and you go, "Wow." Now, you've also
experienced it with your spouse
but there's guards within your mind
that prevent you from just going with
that feeling
when it comes to your spouse.
So I looked at that, I looked at how the
mind comes into play
because it's amazing. When you look at
how the mind comes into play, you cannot
use
western psychology. I'm sorry. I know your
sister-in-law is probably a psychologist
and your brother-in-law is an
acupuncturist and all that
but western psychology has it wrong,
wrong, wrong. They don't understand the
mind.
They know how to label diseases of the
mind but they don't understand how the
mind works.
I did my research and it's amazing
how much the body
controls the mind. It influences the mind.
And what about the body influences the
mind?
I mean you took a biology course. What is
the number one thing that tells you
something is alive
is the drive to survive. The drive to
survive
says life. Well,
depending on your gender
the drive to survive affects the mind
differently
and I started breaking all this down and
I started to develop
certain principles and some were more
important than others.
And I would meet with people and I
became very good at helping people
heal their marriage quickly.
Why quickly? Because I wasn't doing it
for the money.
I tend to be an esoteric guy. I was doing
it because I was on a mission to save
marriages
and I realized that if you don't do it
quickly dragging it out
starts creating all kinds of
discouragement. You don't want
discouragement
when you're trying to achieve happiness.
When you're trying to achieve
love, it's like building a wall
and coming back with a sledgehammer and
knocking it down.
Why would you do that?
So my advice
for my landsman is the same
as for my Christian brethren, my Muslim
brethren,
my Iain brethren and my
friends who are Atheists. Work on your
marriage.
Work on your marriage. It transcends
religion. It transcends
it because it's dealing with you at a
level
where religion may give you guidance but
it's not
the end-all.
Marriage is about love. Marriage
is about happiness
and that's my advice to you.
See marriage for what it is. For sure
subscribe to this channel
that way you're going to learn more
about marriage. The more you learn, you
start to get it. You start to see where
I'm coming from because where I'm coming
from
is a very practical place. I'm a very
practical person
and you'll start to get a sense for it.
If you need more help
or you want to dive deeper, you could get
one of my books but
if your marriage is sliding towards
divorce, you need to take either the
course for men or the course for women.
It's imperative because once you start
gaining momentum in the wrong direction,
you got to shift gears fast
because that momentum will kill you.
But here's the good news, the good news
is that
everybody who's married
has more than just potential
for unbelievable happiness. You have all
the
equipment. You have all the tools. You
just need the guidance
and that's true, that's a true story.
Thank you! Thank you for spending time
with me!
God bless you
and I appreciate you!
God bless!