Ep. 75 - Happily Ever After
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Episode 75 Overview
Today I want to challenge you to step away from any frustrations or resentments that might be currently taking place in your marriage.
Today I want to speak to your higher brain, the part of you that can describe your relationship fairly and objectively.
The side that isn’t preoccupied with getting her needs met or getting him to see her way.
The side that sees nuance, grey areas, and at least two sides to every story.
The side that knows that at the end of the day, he’s a catch.
The side that knows that you have just as much work to do on yourself as he has to do on himself.
And that it’s usually easier to focus on his potential than our own.
Ok, have I got you, higher brain?
I want us to get crystal clear on what our goals and dreams are today.
I want to put Happily Ever After back in the lexicon, with room for personalization.
Because if we don’t even know what we’re shooting for, how can we ever expect to achieve our goal?
So here’s my question:
What do you truly want from your marriage?
What do you want more than for him to make you feel good? For him to love you and cherish you and think you’re wonderful? Do you see how -- dare I say it -- that’s totally self serving?
I think we can aim so much higher.
I think we want authenticity, above all.
We want openness, and honestness, and self-awareness and other-awareness and curiosity and a space to just be without being judged.
We want true connection.
There aren’t a lot of relationships that can achieve such a thing in our life. I believe that marriage is the best one.
And sometimes it can be the hardest one.
I want to caution you about ever thinking that the material I teach, or any material you learn, will make your life better because you’ll change HIM.
The goal isn’t to change him. It’s to discover him.
And that’s why I’m not going to give you tricks and strategies about what to do to get him to treat you or see you differently.
For the same reason I’m not going to teach you hypnosis techniques to get him to treat you differently.
It must come from you.
It must come from an openness and a curiosity and a humility that he has a world view you can’t possibly know. It must come from an overwhelming desire to know and love him, that you become temporarily detached from your own opinions and needs. Just to experience that, for moments of time, from time to time.
Why is this SO hard??
There’s a challenge to authenticity when you have skin in the game. And with our spouses, where we are more entwined than any other relationship in terms of our future and our decisions and what will be…
It’s hard to maintain a level of detachment that allows for empathy and curiosity.
Let’s say your husband is struggling in your shared religion.
A firestorm goes off in your mind about the dangers and the problems and the idiocy of his thought process.
If only he’d GET IT, you’d be fine.
And in that moment, your identity swallows him up.
And him STAYING the way you want him to feels like that’s the best path to safety and love and connection.
But in that moment, you have none of those things. You feel no safety, you express no love, and there is no connection.
But if, for just a few minutes, or an hour, you can step into your curiosity…
Into enough humility to realize you don’t--you can’t possibly see the whole picture…
Into enough faith that your own opinions and values cannot be swept away from you, even if you step away from defending them for a time...
You start to wonder how he got to where he is. How he experiences what he does. What that feels like for him to be as he is.
And in that moment, you begin to see him.
You’ve discovered him.
And in that level of clarity, of connection, you can find whole new parts to yourself.
A whole new way of relating to him, and problem solving your differences, and being together.
And your opinions and your needs and your wants will still be there.
And you might be interested in sharing them with him.
So he can know you.
You’ll be in an entirely different place.
I think we have a tendency to aim too low because we have no idea what’s available.
We don’t realize that this shift is possible without needing him to do anything differently.
We don’t know yet how much we will fall in love all over again when we learn about him this way.
We have no idea how this one relationship affects every aspect of our lives until we begin to work on it and see it change.
So, my friends, aim high.
Let’s show the world that we don’t play small in marriage.
Let’s discover our own Happily Ever After.
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