Moshe Zev Lamm, LCSW: Between a Good and a Bad Marriage

[Music] some of you were here last year when i did this and uh first of all it's it's really a cisco's to be able to talk about sean and bias just every time i talk about shoulder biases whatever is going on in our life life is tough and what holds everything what holds that toughness is our bias if the shoulder bias is there there's a container for everything else sean bice is not there it's just things are leaking all over the place so it's really supposed to be able to talk about sean bias um what i'm gonna do today is split up this really three different components to today's class one is sort of a recap of last of uh what what i did last year but a very brief one i'm looking at about 10 or 15 to 15 minutes where i'm just going to pull out some of the highlights of some of what i felt were the main points and just go go over them if you've heard it before it doesn't make a difference if if you heard it a year ago and you've been married for a year since then you're gonna hear something totally different you should um then parts two but then part that's part one part and i'm gonna include some other things along the same concepts the good marriage bad marriage piece that that you you might be familiar with um the second part is more conceptual i wanted there's two different ideas that i want to put out there that i think are so fundamental to marriage uh just more in the line of the first part is what's a good marriage look like what does a bad marriage look like but the second part what's a marriage how do we define marriage and that's that's going to be more of a conceptual piece and that'll be the second the second and second part of the second and third part because there's two components to that but let's get started uh i'm going to do some screen sharing just uh so you can see what i'm talking about and one of one of the things the first three slides are slides that i put on i i just want to start every marital class a marriage liberal seminar with these three slides because they're they're really fundamental to marriage um and here is hold on okay if the screen shares is the switcher working it is okay so the first thing we need to know about marriage i think it's the first thing i put it the first on my list is marriage is inherently unstable and a couple's natural tendency is to drift apart this makes it dif that makes it different than almost any other relationship and therefore every single every single moment counts every every interaction between a husband and wife counts what does that mean what does that mean in marriage is inherently unstable what that means is that it's unlike every other relationship if you have a friend that you haven't seen in six months and you meet him today you'll probably pick up exactly where you left off if i haven't spoken to my brother in three weeks and i talked him tonight i'll pick up exactly where i left off if i haven't spoken to my wife in an hour the relationship drifted apart every the every other relationship sort of stays like this and slowly if i get into a fight with my friend it might drift a little bit like this when we make up it drifts a little bit back marriage sort of works like this and we can go from one moment to the next so if you find your marriage like this and like this you're normal that's a normal marriage it's it just shifts all over the place it's a very unstable relationship we have to keep that in mind uh the second thing that and what that means is just in terms of the another aspect of the meaning is that as every single moment counts if marriage is so unstable and there are reasons for that which i'm not going to go into but if marriage is so unstable that means we have to keep on putting it back together when i walk into the kitchen and i see my wife there and i go to the fridge and i take something out and i don't say hello i don't smile i blew it there was an opportunity there there was an opportunity to to bring it back together so that's that's number one here's his point number two in terms of marriage marriage is a commitment friendships are not commitment by definition commitment means that we assume the relationship will be challenged although otherwise otherwise why commit commitment means that something is going to happen here the reason why this i find this so important is like it's it's it it's fascinating how many people come into couples therapy and are bewildered by the fact that really is there are so many people that come into couples therapy even sometimes even after 10 15 20 years of marriage that are like really this is supposed it's supposed to be hard work like this is with with friendships and i've heard i've heard so many people say this is a line i've heard a lot everybody all my friends love me all my friends think i'm the greatest guy in the world just my wife has an issue with me and the reason i mean if you think about it like that's like like the they're your friends that's why they're your friends the ones that don't like you are not your friends of the seven billion people on the planet the 20 30 guys who really like you those are your friends you with your wife you don't get when you get into a fight with your friends that's it it's over and and you know you'll say the chambers to him with your wife after a fight you have to be the friendship has to be just as strong that's what commitment means and that's work um and i'm going to get into at the end in the conceptual part i want to touch on like why why did the revenge of them do this to us what is this all about what what is marriage um the the the next thing is sort of a sort of this is an important disclaimer um just an important piece to everything i'm gonna say here everything that i'm that i'm expressing here assumes that there is no mental illness no personality disorders and no severe trauma um if you suspect that there is then you may you may need outside help you may need and i really want to stress the word immediately is there people wait when someone once asked me well you know what's what's the success rate of couples therapy and one of the first things i respond to that is that depends how long they're married a couple comes in after one two three years of marriage four years of marriage even five years of marriage there's so much that can be done and almost always even when there's mental illness even when there are personalities so even when there's severe trauma there's something that can be done as couple comes in 15-20 years later and it's there's just problems piled up on problems upon problems so so if there's something there that you suspect goes beyond some of the things that we're talking about in this presentation i just want to encourage you to seek outside help because we're not in this presentation i'm not going to be discussing those situations where there's mental illness or personality disorders this is this presentation assumes two healthy people who are just very different like like most marriages okay so if you were excuse me if you were here last year these slides are going to look familiar i'm going to show you a few slides and last year was like 25 or 30 now it's like i think three or four is what i did four or five and what we're gonna do is problematic marriage happy marriage what does it look like what does a problematic marriage look like what does the same thing look like in a happy marriage and a lot of this stuff came out of research where they actually looked at couples and happy marriages couples in problematic marriage doesn't compare them they actually john gottman actually put couples in a room for a week with a camera and watch them um and i've seen this i've seen this with couples that i work with it's fascinating to see a couple come in to therapy in a problematic marriage and hopefully if i'm doing my work three months six months sometimes a year later they're they're in a happy marriage and i watch these dynamics shift i just it just it just sits you just see the couple interacting with each other in these ways that are very different so this is very counter-intuitive but really fundamental in a problematic marriage i know exactly who you are and in a happy marriage i always remain curious about who you are so hold on one second all right so problematic marriage i know exactly who you are in a happy marriage i always remain curious about who you are and the question i've got to this you know sometimes i'll get pushback from this you know i'm married for 40 years i'm married for 50 years does that you know does that still apply and the answer is yes it applies as much after 50 years as it does after two years as soon as i know my spouse as soon as i know exactly who you are we're in big trouble in a happy marriage you'll find the couples are always there there's a just a constant curiosity one way to understand this and if so and and this is a line that i've got you know i know my wife 50 years so what like one woman yelled at me i'm married for 30 years i'll tell you who he is you don't tell me that's think of the following imagine i told you that i was a nuclear physicist and i'm a nuclear physicist for the last 50 years and i know nuclear physics so well that there's nothing more to know i just know everything i know everything there is to know about nuclear physics and i don't i don't even bother to learn anymore because i just know it you you turn around and walk away i'm not learning nuclear physics from this guy now now take that into into the realm of human beings human beings are probably much more complex than the universe of nuclear physics imagine i told you that you know i'm a therapist and let's say i told you i know everything there is to know about therapy there's nothing more for me to learn i just know it again you probably laugh and walk away uh this guy's arrogant what if i told you i know everything there's about myself i know myself so well i've been with myself for over 50 years i know myself so well i have nothing more to learn about myself i'm good i'm not even going to try to learn anything more again you just laugh so why in the world would i think i know my wife or i know my husband and there's nothing more to learn there are so many layers and always always keeping that in mind there's something here it looks so obvious i've seen this behavior a thousand times yeah you've seen it a thousand times and you thought about it the same way a thousand times maybe you're missing something maybe you've missed something the last thousand times having a conversation of curiosity is one of the fundamental pieces of a marriage and and where that plays out is in things like you know why did you do that in a problematic marriage why did you do that in a in a happy marriage it would be more like why did you do that it's a question i really i really want to know i really want to understand what happened okay so so this is more on the same and say on the same concept in a problematic marriage you should know what i need without me telling you in a happy marriage i need to tell you what i need or or you won't know the slides i picked out are the slides that show up in my therapy office the most um you should know what i need without me telling you i think that line has caused more more problems in marriage than any other line your spouse does not know what you need and if if if there are wives here or husbands here go this goes both ways um my if you know how how in the world could you not know this how is it how could you not this is basic this is fundamental this is obvious so the answer is it's not we're all extremely extremely different and there are there are things that i will that i will do for my that i won't do for my wife because if she did them for me it would bug me let me just give you an example this is actually from from a couple that i work with they're sitting in a room with a bunch of people and the wife doesn't have a chair everybody else is sitting but there's a few people standing the wife doesn't have a chair and she notices her friend's husband brings over the chair but for his wife but her husband doesn't bring over the chair for her and her husband is standing there and he sees that she's standing sees it is good for the wives to hear but this goes both ways like he sees me standing he sees me standing he just doesn't care with that particular couple and with many situations like this with this particular couple when they pulled it apart the husband in this case was a person who if he's standing and someone brings over a chair he'll get annoyed like if i want to chill go get my own chair the the mind is just working in different ways you don't it's so important to be able to express this is what i need to be able to tell each other what you need and to hear it if it's something that it's not and to be able to hear it the next the next piece is in a problematic marriage dating is the thing of the past i saw there was some questions on that last piece i'm going to go back to it i just want i want to go through certain pieces and i'll come back to the questions i know i'm leaving some things a little bit open over here but in a problematic marriage dating is a thing of the past in a happy marriage we never stop dating what does that mean it's interesting dating has certain there are certain things that take place in the context of dating dating is a process of curiosity dating is a process of of certain kind of conversations it's interesting that we date the way we get married is we date somebody and on that date we might go out seven times eight times ten times and in that dating process we we learn about each other we get to know each other we start to like each other and we make we make a decision to get married based on the dating now i've i've seen couples in my office i had one couple that were married was married for over a year i'm sorry they were dating for over a year they were there this is not you know this is not the shivers five six dates they they dated for over a year and they were in my office three months afterwards it was a disaster it's it's very sad that when we get the very thing that we do to decide if this spouse is right for me is the very thing we stop doing once we get married what are we doing when we're dating we're sitting around schmoozing about stupidities we're sitting around schmoozing about nothing we could sit up for three four hours five hours six hours walk around play games do absolutely nothing have meaningless conversations look into each other's eyes and smile and and just just have these meaningless things you know play games sit to sit in their lounge over a drink from that place we made a decision to get married and then we get married and we stop doing that we just stop doing that wait a second we the whole relationship was formed in a certain way now we're doing something completely different the very thing that that created this relationship no longer exists dating having real friendships come about in a with meaningless conversations sitting around doing nothing all of a sudden we get married and we're serious all of a sudden we get married and there's an agenda there's finances there's laundry then there's kids then there's this there's so much serious stuff going on but the very thing that created the relationship no longer exists how do you expect the relationship to be happy how do you expect this relationship to work in a happy marriage we never stop dating we're gonna make sure we date and this doesn't mean you know date night although it does mean that but it doesn't just mean that it means can we sit down for 10 minutes and just lose about nothing very often i'll ask you a couple when was the last time a couple that's married to 20 years when was the last time you just sat around for two three hours and talked about nothing important and they look at me like so what are we supposed to talk about you knew each other for two months before you got married and you were talking about nothing can you get back to that and i've watched relationships change just on that just on being able to go back and reignite that part of the relationship there's another thing that happens in dating and that is that dating is a process of curiosity and being nice when a couple on a date have a serious conversation it's it's the the whole process is about curiosity and being nice what's really what's what's the outcome it's not as important as we have to be nice and we have to be curious then we get married and the serious conversations are all about outcome whose house should we go to for shabbos on a date we can look into each other's eyes and giggle and laugh about whose house we should go to for shabbos should we go to your parents house more in my parents house more and it's a funny conversation and then we and we could actually in that conversation we could learn a lot about each other because we're talking about serious issues but but wait a second we have to be nice we have to be curious and then we get married and curiosity and niceness is out the window it's about where are we going this shabbos so when i say dating in a happy marriage we never stop dating that's also a date where are we going for shabbos i don't know let's go on a date let's talk about this for 20 minutes the way we would talk about it on a date and and you'll if you watch couples and happy marriages they do this they really they they're able to do this they're able to step back and say let me be curious and let me hold on to the niceness part it's really important to keep in mind in any conversation that a husband and wife have any conversation a husband and wife have there's what's this what's the single most important outcome of that conversation so let's say let's say they're arguing about where we're going for chavez the single most important outcome of that conversation is not where we're going for shabbos the single most important outcome of that conversation is what is our marriage going to look like for the next 50 60 years where are we going for shabbos as secondary something something to keep in mind no matter how intense the the conversation gets um and that is for the most part that's the recap that's that's last that's last year's presentation in uh i said 15 minutes but we went a little bit over that the next slide is something that's also really important this was not there last year but it's a lo it's along the same lines in a problematic marriage i'm not able to say i'm not able to say that's not what i meant and in a happy marriage i'm able to say that's not what i meant those words that's not what i meant uh i i can't even begin to express how important those words are there are marriages where the couple gets into a fight 20 times a day and they have a really happy marriage and they get angry at each other 20 times a day and they have a really happy marriage and then there are marriages that they get into one fight a year one fighter not twenty day one a year and they have a horrible marriage because in the first marriage all the spouse has to say is oh i'm sorry that's not what i meant we're good to go we we move on and in the other marriage what do you mean that's not what you meant what do you mean how could that not be what you meant we all know that trust is a key ingredient in a marriage everybody knows marriage is built on trust right we hear that law and marriage is built on trust trust trust trust what is trust so on a very simple level trust means you know if you say you're in the office till 10 o'clock at night because you have a lot of work to do i trust you that you're there because you have a lot of work to do and you're not uh hanging out with friends there's a trust i i know you're not cheating on me i know you're not you know you're doing things behind my back that's one level of trust but that's a very very basic level of trust trust goes a lot deeper than trust is more subtle than that real trust means and and when we say marriage is built on trust it means this real trust means i just said something that really hurt your feelings and it seems like you know i made a comment about your family and you heard you heard that comment and you you took it as an insult to yourself and to your parent and and now you're just all upset about what i just said or i did something let's say let's say i did something i was i was at your parents and i ignored you for 10 minutes because i was schmoozing with my sister and i just totally ignored you and now you're angry at me why did you do that what was that all about and then i say i'm really really sorry it's not i i didn't realize sorry i hurt your feelings i i didn't really when i said that that's not what i meant can i tell you what i really meant but when i was talking to my sister let me just explain to you where my mind was i was wrong i shouldn't have done but let me just explain to you where i was it wasn't because i didn't care about you it was it was because and let me let me explain to you why you trust me you believe me do you believe what i said when i explain why i'm doing things if you don't our marriage is in a lot of trouble if you do we can get through anything and this peace in a marriage is something to keep in mind and there are times there are marriages there are times when one spouse will say to me i don't trust him or i don't trust her okay okay now we got to talk about that now we got now we have to really think about that but but think about this in the context of your own marriage we're different people are different and being able to trust your spouse being being able to trust your spouse is is a key component to to to being able to we also it's so important to be able to do this it's really important to understand that we are very very very different husbands and wives are different we're just different than each other and a lot of these trust issues come about because i see certain behavior and it doesn't make sense but i'm interpreting those behaviors through my own mind through my own through my own lens um okay let me go into this is this is a slide that i put together there are about there are about 10 more of these things let me show you this slide men and women are different men and women are so completely different and very often the lack of curiosity and the lack of trust comes about by not fully understanding these differences so let me just show you just a list of four differences but there are many more that are that are basically and any time any time we talk about differences between men and women i just want to put a disclaimer out there i've seen it both ways this is most men most women um but i've seen it actually flipped around i've seen some of the things that most men do sometimes i've seen in women and sometimes most women do i've seen in men but this is generally for the most part and some of these things are written about talked about and you know you get them from books and some of these things i've just i've just seen in my office um most men the first one is most men think with their minds most women think with their speech i never saw this written anywhere i just it's something i've noticed something i've noticed over and over and over again what does that mean most men think with their minds most women think with their speech what that means is and if if your marriage doesn't work this way it's okay but i would say 9 out of 10 times when i when i make this statement to a couple you know both heads just go like this when a man wants to think something through like okay i really need to think this through he needs quiet i i i i need my mind needs to go through this process his mind goes through a process back and forth and back and forth and back and forth in his mind and then he comes out with with the bottom with the end result and then and then he says it but he doesn't speak until he went through that entire process and then he says it so the words that come out of his mouth are the the end of a long process a woman wants to go through that back and forth process she does it best when she speaks it through there's let's talk it over so here's what happens all the time in a marriage the guys the guy the woman says you know what i i think we should i think it would be nice if we put the couch over there and and you know and put the amar over there and the guy says okay that's that's that's that's great let's do that and then we'll say well maybe it might be a better idea if we move this over here and and like he he thought the conversation was over he thought the conversation that was it comes we said this and this goes over here no no she's just starting the thought process this is this is the three he already went through it he looked around the room here doesn't work he works this doesn't work this works he got it all figured out he went through 5000 different computations in mind this goes here this goes there she's just getting started and in order for her to think it through she needs to verbalize it this is not this is i see some of you laughing this is it's funny but it's really certain you have to and it has to go both ways the woman needs to understand this also when the guy says something she thinks that he's this is his opening serve like okay he's he's saying something and this is open he said no no he that was the end that was his last serve when you read this and there's no solution to this this is this is how it is you're different um i'm not going to go through all the other ones but i just want to do that as can you see that you know when a man is depressed he wants to be left alone when a woman is depressed she wants you to be there with her for i'm not again i'm not going to go into these in any detail but but if anybody has questions on these you know please feel free to ask most men generally think in the linear fashion most women generally think in holistic circular fashion and i'm not going to go into what that means but sit down with your wife or your husband and you'll you'll see it it's this it works this way the reason why you're pointing out these things is just just to be able to show that we are so different and that has to be the starting point okay that's the end of part one now i'm gonna go into something completely different now we're going into a more conceptual piece um there's some interesting questions that i'm gonna i'm really controlling myself because i really want to jump into questions but i really want to cover some materials so i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna get to the questions um i'm gonna ask a question okay what we're gonna do now is more conceptual and we're going to move away from the practical side of marriage into the more conceptual side of marriage what's a marriage like why why are we why are we doing this what are what does the russian want from us here um so i'm obviously not going to answer that question but i want to put out some ideas that really cut to the core and begin to give us an understanding of what marriages and and what we're after over here so let me put out a question for you here's the question i'm going to ask you what are the two most fundamental human emotional drives or human emotional needs think about that question now when i through something i want to just divert for a second one question that i always get always when i when i do a presentation like this is the word needs comes up a lot you notice i've used the word needs about a hundred times our needs my wants expressing my needs understanding each other's needs and the question that always comes up when i especially when i'm giving it to a from for for myelum is what's going on here needs needs needs needs needs what what about you know what what about bittel what about being avatar what about like why is this all about needs and i just want to address that before somebody asked it um we have needs and maybe we shouldn't maybe maybe we should be on a hari madrega maybe our spouse should be on a harem andrea maybe there are too many needs over here i'm not going to get into discussion of what should be because what should be uh this is what i this this is my answer is pretty much like this yes you're a hundred percent right i should be mavata brahmavatar i should be mavato my i should have take all my needs and and sacrifice them and the author of of of avoid this hashem and and just just but those are all things that should be what does it mean when i say something should be imagine i'm i'm i'm going on a road and i and i reach a cliff and there's a canyon that's the other side of the canyon does is a thousand feet ahead there's a there's a and there's a thousand foot drop into a raging river below now i was told that there was going to be a bridge over here going across the canyon there should be a bridge here there should i'm looking at the map there should be a bridge here everyone said this is supposed to be a bridge here there's no bridge but because there should be a bridge i'm going to keep going we all know what's going to happen to me i cannot walk across that canyon in thin air because there should be a bridge here and in the same way i cannot engage in a marriage based on what should be because i'm going to fall off the cliff i'm talking about what is i'm not talking about what should be to work on our meters to build the bridge yeah spend spend a lifetime building a bridge but the marriage has to be built on what's there so let's go back to the conversation of these the question i asked was what are the two most fundamental human emotional drives human emotional needs um so i'm gonna i'm gonna give you the answer and tell me if this resonates and see if this resonates with you the first one is the need to be connected we all desperately need connection we don't like to be alone and aloneness there there are people who like to be alone but we refer to it as a pathology we you know the the problem we even have names for them we have diagnoses for them um we don't like to be alone we we crave human connection anybody want to guess what the second thing is second thing is besides connection just as desperately i crave i i want to be me i want to be me somebody said contentment um i i want to be me what what what makes me content when i'm connected and on me think about that and the these two if you if you think about that i want to be me i want to be an authentic expression of who i am i don't want to be you i don't want to be fake i don't want to be something that i want to be me my wants my desires my needs yes my needs self-actualization yes somebody asked if that means self-actualization yes that's self-actualization um the need for meaning again i'm just looking at the comments somebody said food that's that's why i put the word emotional drives and needs i stuck the word emotional in there because the first the first version of this slide did not have the word emotions um so you're not the first one that came up with that and afterwards i put a motion in there i want to be me i want to be i want to be an expression of myself i'm going to use the word authenticity now whenever to express that um so i'm gonna use these two words i'm gonna use the word connection and the word authenticity um there's a lot of humor coming up in the chat i see it but i'm gonna i'm gonna try to stay focused um and and i appreciate it but i'm still going to try to stay focused now now think about this for a moment i'm so again i'm going to use the word authenticity when i say authenticity i mean my deep desire to be me when i use the word connection i mean my desire for attachment to other people if you think about this there's a huge problem here because in order to be connected i may have to give up some of my authenticity in order to be authentic truly authentic i may have to give up my connections i i they they very often fight against each other so for example i'm wearing a i have a white shirt a beard uh you don't see it but i have black pants i with this uniform i can get my kids into any achievement muncie right i could i belong i'm connected what if real me what if a real true authentic expression of self for me would be a pink flowered shirt with yellow shorts and open-toe sandals and a ponytail and earrings right that was me so i could do that i could be a deep authentic expression of myself but i would probably lose 99 of the connections that i have in my life i'd have to move somewhere else and find other connections so and there are people who have to dress a certain way conform to certain codes because their connection is very important to them and then but then if i if i give up all my authenticity for my connections i'll i'll so i there's this battle that goes back and forth i want to be connected but i want to be authentic i want to be authentic but i want to be connected now this this relationship between these two things plays itself out let me let me go this i was going to go to marriage but before we even get to marriage there's something there's something very very fundamental there's a fundamental idea here that comes out of attachment theory about authenticity and connection and that is that authenticity and connection don't just compete with each other they need each other i cannot be at the same time that authenticity competes with connection i cannot be truly authentic unless i'm connected and i cannot be truly connected unless unless i'm authentic they meet each other the the classic example that's given an attachment theory is you see a if you see a little bit a two-year-old is running away from mommy and the two-year-old will stop and look back and if mommy's looking the two-year-old will keep running because you know he'll look back and his eyes meet with mommy's eyes they see each other and the two-year-old will slap and run if mommy's not looking if mommy's talking to her friend he'll go running back to mommy and the second mommy looks at him and goes hi they connect he turns around and he runs away what's happening there and what attachment theory says is what's happening there is he's seeing he but the second he feels connected there's a sense of security and he could run out and explore the world he could be authentic he can be himself the second he feels disconnected he has to run back and get the connection we cannot be authentic without a feeling of connection and this this is with two-year-olds and it's with 20 year olds and it's with 80 year olds we need a sense of connection a sense of belonging in order to really be able to express our authentic self that's one of the reasons why we so desperately crave marriage and family and and all kinds of connection when somebody is not connected connection is a is a very very important part of our of our authenticity and without connection we we have a really really hard time it's almost impossible to be authentic when it goes the other way if i'm not authentic and i am connecting to you from a place of lack of authenticity then i'm not really connecting to you connection means there's an authentic part of me that's connecting if i have to be fake to connect then there's something that's not there's something that's that's not happening over here so think about this what we just said i'm just going to summarize what i just said authenticity and connection compete with each other they pull and they pull against each other but authenticity and connection need each other desperately they feed off each other now let's go to marriage because marriage is that place where this dance between authenticity and connection plays out more than anywhere else authenticity if marriage is the place where we we're supposed to find our deepest connection right that's where we find the deepest love the deepest connection hopefully but think about this if marriage is that place that we find that deepest connection then it's also that place that challenges our authenticity like no other place on the planet right and it has to and if marriage is that place that challenges our authenticity that's number one if marriage is the place of my deepest connection then marriage is the place that challenges my authenticity like no other place but the second part of that is if marriage is the place of my deepest connection then marriage is the place where i find my authenticity like no other place that's if you want to really really understand the dance of marriage and what's going on in in almost every single marital fight in almost every single what's what's happening is my authenticity is being challenged and i'm desperately looking for authenticity and i know i can i need this marriage i need this marriage to be able to find my authenticity because without the connection i'm all alone i can't find mysticism but the marriages at the same time i need this marriage to find my authenticity to find me i need this marriage but the marriage is challenging me at every step of the way do you hear the mess this this is a mess but but when you really really fully understand this and and then you you could make this work for you people look at this as a problem it's not a problem it's marriage marriage does both it challenge my challenges my authenticity it has to but at the same time that is challenging my authenticity it's where i'm going to find myself what does this mean in practical terms what would like so what if what does that mean to be able to express my authenticity means i'm going to say things to you i'm going to say things to my spouse that don't work with my spouse's world they work for my world because i'm unique and you're unique you remember the whole first part of this presentation was that we're different and we acknowledge that we're different i'm not you you're not me we will forever be different but if i'm really curious about you and you start telling me something that makes no sense at all now you're expressing your authentic self the things that i express to you if i'm expressing something to you and it makes perfect sense to you that's great but now i'm expressing something to you that makes no sense to you i'm not even sure if it's i'm not even sure if it makes sense to me but i'm expressing it i'm going into very dangerous territory because i'm going into territory now where i'm expressing my authentic self and it's different than you can you make room for that could marriage if marriage is a place where i can safely say things that make no sense literally um what what am i just practical examples of what i'm talking about i i had once crying to me literally crying that he wanted to go to the marines and that was his childhood dream since he's 10 years old he he wasn't going through the marines he wasn't it just wasn't uh this was he had a wife kids he it just wasn't happening in his world imagine him saying to his wife i had this dream since i'm a little boy to go to the marines and crying to her about it and what do you think his wife's reaction would be so he didn't know what his wife's reaction would be but it it wasn't going to come out with this but he wasn't even gonna share it with his wife he had to go to a therapist and pay money to share something that anybody else would have laughed at and his wife would have laughed that his wife would have said that you're crazy what do you mean marines so you have to come to be authentic but and it made no sense that piece that made no sense was was an expression of authentic self now i'm picking some i'm picking this example but you can plug a thousand things into this can the marriage be a place where it's safe to express my authenticity and if it is i can reform the deepest connections in that authenticity the goal of marriage what you're trying to do think is create an environment where i can be excuse me where i can be as authentic as i possibly can and at the same time as connected as i possibly can can i can i be authentic and connected and not be afraid can i express my authenticity and not be afraid that it's going to destroy the connection can i be fully connected to you and not be afraid that it's going to destroy my authentic my authenticity can we make this place so if we do that if we do that what's hap what's going to happen here is i'm going to find the deepest connection because i'm going to take my my fullest my fullest somebody just asked how do you do that you do that by creating a safe environment for your spouse by each spouse creating a safer it's safe you can say whatever you want whatever you want it's okay it sounds crazy in my world it makes no sense but it's safe this is a safe place you can be two years old if you want let your three-year-old self come out if i can be fully authentic in the marriage then i can be fully connected to you and if i can be fully connected to you then i can be fully authentic and the more authentic i could be the more connected i could be and the more connected i could be the more authentic i could be and round and round we go so marriage is not true we think of marriage as this place of deep connection it is marriage is a place of self-discovery marriage is that place where we find ourselves more than any other place it's a place of understanding ourselves of becoming an authentic self it's the connection in marriage creates the authenticity the authenticity that i can do and i have in marriage creates creates the connection one more concept and then i'm going to turn to the questions this is a totally different concept we're totally going to switch gears and i'm bringing this in because this is something that i again a lot of this these presentations that i do come out of what i see in my office and where the problems lie in marriage um this is a problem that i've seen coming up over and over again it may it may raise this this particular one may resonate with some of you it may not resonate with some of you but i found this to be a problem especially in this generation um here's the question i'm going to ask you another question what is romantic love how do we define romantic love what role does it play in marriage how important is it to a successful marriage and is it a necessary component of an intimate loving relationship now i i googled romantic love just what's the definition i once just googled it and see what google told me nobody knows what this means romantic love is something that you ask somebody could you define it it's kind of this feeling it's this thing it's it's but but i know it's there and i know it's important but but what it's so here is romantic love has taken a hold it's taken a real hold on our generation to a very powerful extent i'm going to quote you something from an article that i saw the following are quotes from an article that was written i saw this a few years ago this was written by a couple that decided mutually to break up and it was a very nice article how they had this beautiful marriage but they decided that the marriage wasn't wasn't going to really work for them because they weren't romantically attached and and here are quotes from the article the couple decided that romantic attachment they each found somebody that they were romantically attached to they found somebody with that that created amazing feelings in them and the marriage didn't do that and it said romantic attachment is essential to a functioning marriage and i read that line and i was like whoa it's here's another line from that article it's what human beings need to be healthy all of us romantic attachment that's one of the main purposes of life now are these statements universally true so i'm going to quote something i'm going to i i i'm going to go to the secular world now i'm not going to go to slurm i'm going to go to i'm going to quote now from two two different books um that talk about romantic love one is was written in the 80s one was written more recently the first one was written by a guy robert johnson again these are books that were written by psychologists these are secular books this is not i'm purposely not quoting anything from a terry rashkoff over here um here's the quote this is robert johnson in a book called we understanding the psychology of romantic love romantic love is the single greatest energy system in the western psyche in our culture it has supplanted religion as the arena in which men and women seek meaning transcendence wholeness and ecstasy as a mass phenomenon romantic love is peculiar to the west that just stop and pause and read that line again as a mass phenomenon romantic love is peculiar to the west with typical western self-righteousness we assume that our notion of love romantic love must be the best we assume that any other kind of love between couples would be cold and insignificant by compare by comparison that's robert johnson the next quote is from esther perel that's the peril is a contemporary johnson was in the 80s this is this is a from a recent book this book was written a couple of years ago uh this was a book that was written by esther perel on a fears um she says in our quest for the soulmate we have conflated the spiritual and the relational as if they are one and the same that is a really powerful line we have we have conflated the spiritual and the relational as if they are one when we're looking at relationships as if they're supposed to there's supposed to be some kind of spirituality there now this is coming from a secular psychologist one second the perfection we long to experience in earthly love used to be sought only in the sanctuary of the divine we've brought heaven down to earth and now happiness is no longer just a pursuit but a mandate we expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide um in terms of what is marriage there is this and the idea that this is a western phenomenon is very important if you go back a hundred years this i'm not talking about the zeitgeist and the bubba's in the shettle i'm talking about the world romantic love was not a major major factor in marriage it was there sometimes you have it sometimes you don't but it wasn't considered a necessity what when i so what what is romantic love nobody really knows but it's a feeling something that should be there it's something that's i'm not being swept away i'm not being there's some high that we're looking for in a marriage and it it's a distraction that is unique to the west according to these these two psychologists um so so so wait a second so so what is marriage so what do we so if it's not this feeling if it's not this so i i just made a list of what is marriage because that's the next question is okay so what are we looking for and i want you to look at this list and i'm gonna read through it i'm gonna you could read it but i'm gonna read it and just read along with me and i want you to imagine a couple that has everything on this list but they don't have this experiential high that we call romantic love and try to imagine the marriage that sits inside of that so here's the list so what else is there to marriage safety stability companionship friendship caring and being cared for emotional support being able to emotionally support someone else sense of belonging sense of being understood sense of having a place in the world sense of being special and unique to another human being and none of these are feelings none of these nothing that i'm reading is expressing itself as this emotional high these are just things knowing that i'm the priority and priority in somebody else's life knowing someone is thinking about me having someone to share the challenges of life with someone to raise a family with someone to work together with in order to pursue the values and convictions we both share someone to cry to someone to laugh with someone to play with etc etc etc when you have all those things and more what emerges from that is something so much deeper than what we call romantic love than this experiential high of romantic love marriage is something is a relationship about caring for each other it's a relationship of authentic the whole thing that i talked about authenticity and connection has nothing to do with romantic love it has nothing to do with this experiential high it's about caring for somebody creating safety for another person helping each other become ourselves helping each other in self-discovery and everything else that was on that list if you have everything that's on that list and you will have something that is way way deeper than romantic love the the work in the marriage we wanted to find what is marriage the work of marriage is not a feeling it's not about chasing a certain feeling it's not about chasing a certain experience it's not about i don't feel it inside of me it's about creating a relationship that's really meaningful in terms of caring about each other and being partners with each other and helping us each other with authenticity and connection what emerges from that is something that's so way deeper than anything romantic love can offer [Music]