So we're doing a top 10 countdown today. The 10 things that can destroy a
marriage. Some of these might surprise you.
Okay, folks by popular demand, the top
10 things that can destroy a marriage. Coming in at number 10, leaving the
toilet seat up. Now I'm joking about that a little bit but what I'm getting at
here is an insensitivity to requests and preferences that your spouse has. These
are important you can pay attention to. Coming in at number 9, being a fun
sucker. Being a fun sucker, what does that mean? It means you suck the fun out of
everything. Sometimes we take ourselves way too
seriously and that's not good for your marriage, we need to be having some fun.
You know what, this is going to shock some people but sometimes we get so
caught up on all of the should's, it's like we're shooting all over ourselves
like we focused so much on what we should do or what we must do. Sometimes I
call that one muster baiting, that's the shocking part of this whole video but
really, can we lighten up a little bit and get away from all of the should's and
the must's and just have some fun? That brings us to number 8, laziness. Just
not being willing to step up and do your part, it tends to kill a relationship and
I want to include in this, a lack of appreciation because laziness sometimes
comes coupled with disconnect from what other people are doing to take care of
all of the tasks and the work that needs to be done in a relationship.
Number seven being mean. You know, I used to do child custody evaluations for the
court and I interviewed and tested a whole lot of kids and there was this
little sentence completion assessment that I
would do with these kids where I'd say the first part of a sentence and then
they would fill it in and one of these questions was to make friends you have
to..? Now what came to your mind? 90 plus percent of these kids all answered
that question exactly the same. You have to be nice. Being mean destroys
relationships, tune in to that. Next in our countdown number six. Choose hate. You
got a choice. I've talked about this in some other
videos, it's going to be either a love choice or a hate choice and I don't
think that there's a neutral option. Choose hate, it destroys a relationship
quicker than anything you can imagine and to get clear about that there are
some steps for choosing hate. Step number one, assume the worst about that perso.
You don't know what their intentions are but to choose hate, you have to really
focus on what's going wrong and assume the worst about that person. Step number
two, practice pride. You know that you're right digging your heels and keep that
position and don't yield from it, you know that you're right. Step number three,
choose hate. Use that creative mind of yours to come up with ways to retaliate
and hurt and punish and destroy because your mind has the ability to do that,
it's a great way to destroy a relationship. As we continue our
countdown, number five, disrespect. This is where you treat people like possessions
and you use things to manipulate people. You got it?
Disrespect is one of those top ten things that can destroy a marriage. That
leads us to the next one. Number four, form and hold grievances.
This is where you dig up the past, okay. Go back to all of those things
that happened way back when and pull them back into the future so that you
can use them to beat up and diminish this relationship. How's that sounding?
And if you're not sure how to hold a grievance, there's four steps to that too.
Number one, you get hurt. That's going to happen because every relationship
implies some level of hurt. Have you noticed? Step number two, you over
personalize the offense. Step number three, you blame someone or something
else for how you feel and step number four, you create and retell a victim
story about how you got hurt and you spread it around social media
and you just revel in that. We're down to the top three. This is getting really
good now. Number three, being right. Now check in with this for a minute
because we know that we're right. We don't think we're right, we know we're
right and that position has us treating each other terribly. We can practice this
right now because as you're listening to this video, as you're checking in with
the top 10 ways to destroy a marriage, notice how many of the things on this
list your spouse is doing, right? And you know you're right about this, you know
that they're the problem, you know that they've already done 10 through 4 and
we're on number 3 now, you know you're right about this. I'm not going to argue
with you about that because you probably are right about this and it's tempting
to think you know what, if my spouse would just shape up, things would go a
whole lot better for us in this relationship and you're right, things
would be better, that's a problem. Dr. John Gottman shared some research about
how roughly 70% of the problems in a relationship are unresolvable but he
found that this was true of happy well-adjusted stable satisfied couples
as well as the miserable highly conflicted headed for divorce
couples, there was no difference in the number of unresolvable problems. What's
the difference? It's in the way that they handle or approach those problems and I
can tell you that being right is one of the main problems that we encounter in a
relationship because of the position that it puts us in relative to our
spouse. When you think that your spouse is the problem, that's the problem, it's
you're thinking about it and you know that you're right. That's why it's number
three. Moving up on our list to number two. I'm going to summarize number two as
being profanity and you might wonder what, no, what do you mean? Swearing? Well
yeah, that might be part of it. Profanity is where we take something
that should be sacred and we make it profane so this includes a lot of
different things and it includes our thoughts and our behaviors. What about
addiction, criminal behavior, swearing, infidelity? The list goes on. I'm
talking profanity in a very general sense to include all of those things
that diminish or profane the relationship. This also includes a
detachment from morals and values that should be at the foundation of that
marriage and if they're not, well that's why it made the list. That brings us to
number one. Number one on our list negativity. It's taking a position by
choice that this marriage is bad, thinking that your marriage is bad is
one of the leading causes of creating that very outcome. We get to choose how
we evaluate and judge and this is going to sound like a paradox, okay. I actually
learned this at the bank. I took my son there
to get a loan for his first car, he had no work history, he had no credit at this
point, okay. He's just a young guy who wants a car so I take him down to get
him signed up for a loan, three thousand dollars for an old used car, we sit down
with the loan officer, she looks over his stuff, she's entering his information on
the computer and she gets this dark look on her face as she looks at my son and
says, I'm really sorry, you don't qualify for this loan. Well big surprise, right? We
knew that he wasn't going to qualify so I throw my hat in the ring, I'm like, hey,
how about if I sign on that that note and I'll just be the cosigner and you
can lend it to both of us? She's like, oh, yeah, that'd be awesome and so she starts
entering my information, she gets an even darker look on her face, she looks back
at me and she says, sir, that makes it worse.
Okay, didn't surprise me because I had been through a bankruptcy sometime
before that and I knew that I didn't qualify either. That's a whole other
story but I was kind of playing with her
because at that point I produced from my own pocket $3,000 the amount of the loan
we were asking for, I put it on the desk and slide it over to her and I say how
about I lend you the three grand, you give the loan to my son, let me co-sign
on the loan, how's that sound to you? That way we both get to build our credit, my
son gets the car, everybody's happy, right? She lights up, she's like, oh yeah, that
would be awesome, we can give you good rates on that. Oh,
thank you for the good rates on my own money, right, but this is how banks think,
here's what I learned, you can get the loan when you prove you don't need the
money, that's a paradox and it's true in the world of finance.Here's how it shows
up in a relationship.. You can have the upgrade because we all know that this
marriage could be better, right? Honestly when is that going to stop being true
because I don't care how well you're doing, it can always be better, right? It
could always be worse too. Number one on our list is negativity because when you
take a position about where your relationship is right
now, if you say this is bad, you are more likely to create that bad. Can you get an
improvement? Yes and you're more likely to get that improvement when you realize
that you don't need it, that your marriage is good. Think about how this is
going to impact your spouse for you to take that position. Are they more likely
to work with you or against you when you think that this is good? You see there's
a lot of psychology in that. Though we've talked about in some of the other videos
here, there you have it, the top 10 things that can destroy your marriage. It's good
to know about all those things that can destroy a marriage, we're doing some
other videos that help you to really enhance that marriage so stay tuned.