How to know when to give up on a marriage
When Should You Give Up On Your Marriage | Paul Friedman
Timecodes:
This is a doozy of a question,
"When should I give up on my marriage?"
My name is Paul Friedman. I founded The
Marriage Foundation
and we are actually here to help those
who want their marriage to work.
And I started this many many years ago, I
used to be a divorce
mediator and you might say that
I earned my merit
badges
with the most difficult cases. The case
is not just
where people were thinking about getting
a divorce,
not just thinking about giving up on
their marriage
but I used to go speak at the Second
Saturday
divorce support groups for women
and then later for men. And I would
offer them my assistance
with the discoveries that I made in
marriage that are very very different
from those that are offered by, you might
say,
standard traditional marriage counseling
which as a divorce mediator that's where
I got all of my clients.
And so, I know all about giving up on
marriage because before I shifted
all of my clients had given up on their
marriage.
They were good people like you,
like your spouse but they didn't know
what to do.
They had exhausted all of the
suggestions,
all of the ideas that they had come
across
and it was just torture to remain
together.
So the way I began, and I'm going into
this
for your benefit so you can understand
that I didn't just develop like cute
little ideas,
little homework things and stuff like
that that you would normally get
at a marriage counselor. I came up with
a
step-by-step process
and it begins with, and I'm going to go
through these steps now for you.
Because I don't want you to give up
on your marriage. So briefly, I'll tell
you when you do give up on your marriage.
You give up on your marriage if your
spouse
is a pedophile, a gangster
beating you, beating your kids
really extreme cases.
Then you got to say, "You know what, this
isn't working out,"
but usually, that's not what's going on.
Those cases are very extreme so there
are steps
that I discovered work and I offer these
steps
in our courses for men and for women, and
I've written a couple of books
but I'm going to take you through these
steps because they are so
valuable. And as you could see I don't
have any notes in front of me.
I know this stuff so well
because I've been doing it for so long
and I've seen all of the successes and I
know that this is what works.
So you might even want to write down the
steps.
Now the first step is sort of
interesting
and no one would ever imagine
what it would be. The first step
is to master your mind. Why?
Because the way things are going now
is not working for your marriage and you
could say it's your wife's fault or your
husband's fault
but you're half of the marriage. And when
you make a positive
effort, it overwhelms the stagnation of
the other person
if they don't want to work on it. So
these steps are really important
because the energy that you put into it
will still turn your marriage around
even if your spouse is not into it. So
the first step is to
learn how to master your mind and you
won't master it in a week or a month or
a year,
but you start progressing. And why do you
have to
master your mind? Because
we are mostly operating based
on our habits, our habits of thinking,
our habits of reacting to things. Our
habits
control us. We don't stop
and think. When you learn how to master
your mind
and I have techniques and methods for
doing this
then you, the person,
the soul if you will. You are engaged
in your marriage and you're not just
reactive. And then they're not just being
reactive to you being reactive and we
break the cycle
that has really diminished the positives
of your marriage
right away. We start with that mastering
the mind.
Where have you ever heard that before?
As you start to master your mind and
their steps
then we start introducing you
to, you might say the rules of the road.
We talk about what is the correct
behavior in a marriage and, what do I
mean by that?
This is really important. Correct
behavior is defined by
only two things,
is it making me
and us happier that's number one.
Is my behavior, the actions that I'm
putting into my marriage,
is it making us happier? And if it's not
then it isn't good. It's really that
simple.
It's binary. The other
criteria for the right behavior in
marriage
is it pouring love into my partner
thus the marriage because we get married
really for only two real reasons.
One is we want to be happier and two is
we want to experience
unconditional love often referred to
as marital love so
those are the two big
steps. I'm not going to break it down
further although it's important
that in the process you learn about
communication.
Marital communication which is very
different from all other kinds of
communication.
Marital communication, you have to learn
how.
You learn how to prioritize things.
You learn how to break those habits
by controlling the mind and then insert
new habits into your mind so that you
become
more and more marriage friendly. Now
when you do this, you start
moving in the right direction
and your heart starts to open up
and then you're not asking the question
anymore
of, "Is it time to give up on my marriage?"
Because you are experiencing for
yourself
that the path that you're on, the one I
just described
is moving you in the right direction and
really quickly,
it's a relative term I know and it does
take longer for some
but really quickly, you start
feeling better about yourself,
about your spouse, and about your
marriage.
Most importantly, you can see clearly
that what you're doing is making a
difference.
And you know, I love telling this story.
Many many many many years ago,
I bought some land. It was during
a bad time and I bought some land.
I lived in Connecticut at the time
and so I got this land in a fire sale
you might say from a bank and I got 58
acres of land
for $52,000 or 53,000
and it was all buildable land. It was
great land and it was surrounded
on almost four sides by state forest
that's beautiful. So I took my wife
we just had a child and I said, "Let's
go look at our land, I was real
excited."
58 acres of land by the way is a lot
of land. And so, we parked the car
obviously, it was in a remote area
so there were no cars coming or going,
parked the car and started walking into
the land
and it was winter and
my wife was carrying our little baby and
it had been cleared a little bit
but now there was all this tall grass. So
before we knew it
I was lost. I didn't want to tell my wife
and in Connecticut starting about
October the sky is overcast. You can't
tell by looking up which way is East and
West
so I was lost. I didn't tell my wife
and we're wandering around and
pretending we're just looking at this
rock
and looking at that rock and
I was praying like crazy.
Finally, we got to the road
and I was so relieved.
Now I didn't even know which way the car
was parked.
My car wasn't right there but I was on
the road,
and I was relieved and I was happy
because I knew the road would take us
out of the trouble that I had gotten us
into.
You're in the same predicament. Your
marriage is in
trouble. I'm offering you
the road more than what I had at the
time.
I offer you direction with milestones
so you know exactly what to do
and how to get out of your trouble and
the
good news, the great news
is that when your marriage is working
well
you experience the two great gifts of
marriage
that you can't get anywhere else,
ongoing ever-increasing happiness
and ever-expanding love and I'm not
kidding
so that's it. So, is it time to give up on
your marriage?
Probably not, probably not.
You now have something you can do
to turn it around because your husband
or your wife, you married them for a
reason
but it's gotten lost in the chaos
of getting lost because you didn't
know how to be married.
Subscribe to this channel. There's so
much to learn
but if you're at this stage, you got to
do more than that.
One of the courses whether it's the
course for men or the course for women
and don't say anything to your spouse
about it.
We really have a high respect for free
will. We don't
want you to try to manipulate them
or blame them or make them look like
even
half of the problem. You just take it on
and see what happens. I'm Paul Friedman. I
founded The Marriage Foundation and I'm
glad you found us.
God bless and take care!
