I will share the easiest, the fastest, and the best ways to fix your marriage in terms that are informative yet so very different from what you will hear from “mainstream experts”.
Most “marriage experts,” ( I use the term loosely) say the best ways to fix your marriage will depend on a “number of things.”
Then they get to the ‘let’s talk about it’ pitch. That should immediately warn you that they don’t have an answer.
Marriage counselors understandably want you to sign up for marriage counseling, it is their business, how they make their living. But, marriage counseling is not what you should do, unless you want a shortcut to divorce.
During my over 20 years of in-the-trenches experience, my observations say that couples counseling leads to divorce (they have been at this for 100 years and the rate of divorce steadily climbs).
In 2003, I heard an NPR report that dug for the truth and found that psychologists use misleading language to explain their advertised “results”. But found it helps less than 5% of couples save their marriage.
We see it on our intake forms at TMF when people sign up for our courses so I think it is less than that. The word is out.
Fixing your marriage is a logical, and doable process. Best of all, very few fail when they know what to do.
Before I detail the easiest, the fastest, and the best ways to fix your marriage, I should tell you that what I know is irrefutably correct.
As cocky as that may sound, (even to me) it is because all my conclusions are based in
1. Scientific knowledge and
2. Over 20 years of experience saving marriages.
The Marriage Foundation, founded in 2009 (after 8 years of testing), has been successfully helping individuals and couples with their marriages for a long time.
I wasn’t always on the right side of marriage.
Over 20 years ago
I was one of
“them”
I was part of the dreaded divorce industry as a very successful divorce mediator in San Diego. At the time I believed that if you wanted a divorce then you should get one, as quickly as you can. Then you can move on with your life.
Then I realized it is an expensive way to move on,
financially, for the kids, and for yourself psychologically.
Because of mainstream wrong information saturating our lives it took me a while to see how bad that thinking is. Wives, husbands, and children all suffer from broken homes no matter how amicable.
My sweet clients came primarily from the best (most expensive) marriage counselors in San Diego, who failed to save the marriages I would help dissolve. Bad karma, all the way around!
Then, everything changed in 2001 when a young couple came to me who did not want to get a divorce.
They told me, as they wept, “we don’t know what else to do.”
I was moved to help them. I asked them to take a time-out with no arguing so I could figure out how to help their marriage. I assumed communication was at the heart of their problems. Don’t judge me for that but I was wrong.
At the time I had no idea what a deep subject marriage is. Like most people I thought that all I needed to do was teach them better communication skills.
Was that naive? Yes, it was.
Stupid? I admit that, in retrospect.
Yes, but most people are just like me. You think marriages pretty much run themselves. We imagine we just need a way to fix the “problems” or “issues” as they arise. Boy, was I wrong!
Ultimately, and we will dive into what I learned in more depth, the conclusions, and the subsequent system I created to help my first couple not only saved their marriage but they turned their marriage into a marriage we all crave.
What my very first couple ended up with is much better than anything they desired or imagined. They told me it was actually far better than the marriage they hoped for when they first got married.
The work we did dramatically changed their lives, my life, and the lives of many thousands.
Since 2003 The Marriage Foundation which is what we founded after years of trial, is changing the world (reviews). But, I am getting ahead of myself.
I think that backstory is important, now
You are about to learn the truth about marriage and it is very good news
You will see the obvious logic, and hopefully, you will do what you need to do. I’m sure you will.
Let’s start with the following necessary components that create a VERY happy marriage because if you are going to fix your marriage don’t settle for anything but the best.
For me, and our TMF counselors marriage is our life passion. Bringing your marriage around to sheer joy is our joy and seeing love bloom in your marriage is our love.
It’s not such a huge undertaking for the average Jane or Joe as some would have you think. But, even if it were it would be worth it because
When you know how marriage works, it is awesome!
#1 – Correctly Understand Marriage
Everything created by either man or God was created to serve a purpose
Marriage, too, has purposes, two main purposes to be exact.
Forget those fanatic atheists who hate that we love God who created us, and everything else. Let them think whatever they want. Bless them, ignore them.
The more I dug into marriage the more I saw its beauty and elegance and how incredible it is in design and operation. When you study marriage as I did you can see it’s beyond an “accident” that marriage exists. Marriage is Divine.
Why would God create marriage?
Studying marriage, seeing how much it is geared towards specific ends I know that God wants us to be happy.
Some people complain about the state of the world but that is a lame thing to blame God for. He gave us free will! We get to choose!
God didn’t create wars, we did. He didn’t tell us to desire or steal, we do that. He gave us clean air, clean water, abundant everything but it is our selfishness that causes all the problems. He gives us rules for happiness to follow but we break them. We also screw up marriage!
Never forget that as souls, we are endowed with joy and love.
Love and joy are our core. Happiness is supposed to be our state of consciousness and our primary mission in life should be love. It is on us that we don’t do what we should. It is not His fault! It is ours.
Seriously, when was the last time you closed your eyes, took a breath, and said thank you Lord for the air I breathe?
This is not a religious talk or anything of the like. I think marriage can be your religion if you wish because marriage is the promise for undreamed-of possibilities.
That you are not getting out of marriage what you thought you would is the result of, certain
Inactions
Wrong actions
Wrong thinking
and other things we will address.
The primary, foundational understanding of marriage can be summed up this way,
God wants us to be happy and created marriage to add to our happiness
So, when your marriage is not producing ever-increasing happiness you must be doing something that is inconsistent with how marriage works.
Otherwise, happy is what you would be and love is what you would be feeling ALL THE TIME.
Following this logic, you will see that it is as simple as that. The rest is, as they say, academic.
When we understand marriage and the proper thinking and behaviors that go with it, voila, we have a happy and love-filled marriage. Simple!
An illustrative example is a car. Cars are designed to get you from point A to point B. To use one safely you must learn about cars, the rules of the road, and don’t drive drunk.
But, if you don’t understand cars, and don’t learn the rules of the road, and then have a few too many, you will probably wrap that sucker around a tree…or worse.
Nobody teaches us marriage.
At least with driving, we have mostly safe drivers cruising around who we learn from, vicariously. We pay attention to how others drive so we learn from them, their mistakes usually.
But with marriage? Not so much! So, how do, did we, learn about marriage?
Sadly, we learned about marriage from the worst examples possible; Hollywood screenwriters!
We learn about marriage from the sitcoms and movies they write.
How long did it take for you to study for your driver’s license?
Really? Well,
How long did you study for your marriage license?
I am telling you definitely that you can get up to speed fast when you use the right resources, which I already put together.
For those of you with short attention spans
If your marriage isn’t on the brink of divorce or quickly sliding toward the end then you can fix your marriage by reading and applying what I share in my books.
Lessons For a Happy Marriage, and here are reviews or
Breaking The Cycle and here are reviews for BTC
BUT! And I urge you do not lie to yourself. Be honest. If your marriage is on the brink you need either the course for women, if you are a woman, or the course for men if you are a man.
How does one begin to correctly understand marriage? You begin with the right questions. I will list some that I asked back in ’01 so you get the idea.
1st question is – What are the reasons to get married at all?
This is the most important question of all because you cannot get where you are going if you do not know where you are going (I love saying that).
Articulating, why you wanted to get married, may sound like a fairly easy question to answer. But it isn’t. We are not used to that question.
I did my own study when I met with live couples. I asked them just that and told them if their answer was better than mine they did not have to pay for our session.
Out of over 200 individuals, only 2 answered with what turns out is the universally correct answer.
Most people had good, but not universally applicable answers. Most people answered
I didn’t want to be alone
I wanted to have a family
Everyone gets married, and of course
I wanted to have sex, morally
The universal reasons for marriage, as God intended is to
Achieve ever-increasing happiness and learn how to love as God loves us, unconditionally
One of the reasons therapists, who are generally good and decent people miss the mark is that if they ask questions like the one above they themselves don’t know what the “right” answer is or are afraid to include God in their thinking.
To achieve something requires knowing what that something is.
When you know why you want to be married you can do the things that achieve them.
I asked my first couple for a time-out so I could create a protocol for them and this HUGE question was where I began. I admit that it took months before discovering that overriding question and many more weeks to discover the answer.
When I hit on the answer I laughed out loud (LOL) because it was ridiculously simple and perfect.
All of us get married for two reasons.
1. We get married to be happier, and
2. We get married to experience marital love.
The next obvious question is
How do you achieve love and happiness?
My process is not just for your marriage because love and happiness are human pursuits. What is useful knowledge for marriage is just as useful for your life in general.
My solutions are simple and still stands.
We can choose our actions of thought, speech, and physical actions by virtue of free will so we should always choose that which is beneficial and always avoid that which is detrimental.
Pretty simple, isn’t it? So, what’s the catch?
The catch is what we were never taught
1. We were never taught what is beneficial in marriage and
2. We were never taught how to master our minds.
Can you see how this marriage thing can spiral into a lot of necessary education?
Admittedly, if my first couple were not so communicative, motivated, and trusting of me, I would never have gone past that first level, and even though I nailed it, and so many other programs use that “right and wrong” as the basis of their work… it is not enough.
The above is actually a launching pad for what I had to learn and learn how to teach so let’s get into the other components so you will see how everything proves itself. The next component is a doozy.
#2 – Correctly Understand Love
All you need to understand why people do not understand what love is, is Google it. The top explanation is
“Love is a set of emotions and behaviors characterized by intimacy, passion, and commitment” That definition is completely inaccurate.
But that answer is usual because western psychology cannot admit that there is a spiritual answer because they do not believe in God (obviously some do), so they dodge anything that might allude to a reality they cannot see, touch, taste, or explain away with some physical phenomena.
Love is NOT an emotion. Emotions are merely software programs in the mind that help us in certain ways. But I will not get into all that now because we want to stick with the fastest and best way to fix your marriage.
Love “is”, and you know it but I will illustrate that love is the tangible reality of ever-new joy which is your essence as a soul, a part of God.
Spirit cannot be measured because it is above the mind’s capacity to know spirit.
We know love is real because we experience it. That is the only “test” that matters.
When you are at a wedding and out of nowhere, bam! You feel that upwelling of love. Or, when you see your kids asleep, the little angels (while they sleep), and your heart bursts open.
Thank God for those experiences or you would not know that there is such a thing as love. Experience is far beyond the psycho-explanations that just don’t cut it.
When you learn what you need about marriage and methods for bringing you up to the higher realm of marriage you cannot fail. Only “fixing” isn’t enough. You deserve to have love and happiness in endless measure.
The problem that everyone encounters is the same. The problem is the mind.
#3 – Understand The Mind (correctly)
I am not against therapists, only therapy. They were the kids in school who wanted deeper understanding and there are only a few places to search.
Some got into Western psychology whose “father” was an addict to drugs atheist who would have been a great ad-man 100 years later. I read some of his stuff and he is smart, but at the same time stupid. His theories are horse-poop. They avoid God rather than disprove Him. But, he managed to convince people that his ideas are “science”. Its not.
Freud’s ideas are those of a druggy. What he leaves out he does so intentionally because it undermines his basic premises. Freud is a fraud.
The biggest Freudian omission is the truth about free will.
Free will trumps every idea Freud has because no matter your past you are in charge of your every thought, spoken word, and action… period.
Your past experiences don’t force you no matter how much they influenced you. When you choose to be free of your past you will be (some traumas are harder to overcome but ultimately it is your willpower and the grace of God that sets you free from them).
In TMF’s courses, the very first thing we guide you to do is begin the process of mastering your mind. Why? Because the mind is what causes all the trouble.
It is not your wife, your husband, your boss, your father, or anything else. It is always, 100% of the time, your inability to control your emotions, instincts habits, and anger.
If not for my first couple I never would have hit on this and TMF would not exist. We show you how to master your mind, how to tap into your heart, how to tap into your wisdom, so you can drive your part of your marriage like a pro (a TMF pro).
What happened was John came back to me and said, “Paul, this is great but I can’t control my mind.” I knew what he meant and I got on it. I created the SEW technique.
The SEW technique is amazing. It gives you the power to change everything. Like everything we do at TMF, the SEW is efficient and effective. It is the tool that gives you power over your mind.
Using SEW you change yourself by changing the inner triggers, those are what precedes all your actions. They are automatic but need to be monitored and effectively changed to bring you and your spouse love and happiness.
Now, let’s get down to business.
The fastest way to fix your marriage is by following basic common sense rules of behavior. BUT it will not be permanent!
I call that the dogma method. You follow the rules of marital behavior and due to the law of cause and effect your positive actions create positive reactions.
Unfortunately, the mind, unless you learn how to control it, is as stubborn as a mule and you will not be successful long term.
That’s why the SEW technique is so valuable. In many ways, I borrowed what I learned from when I learned to fly an airplane. Regardless, it works.
If you want to do all this on your own I suppose it is possible. Many people watch my videos on youtube like this one
I know that isn’t very long but you can peruse the channel and even subscribe if you wish. There is so much useful information.
I know many people use youtube the way I do when something is broken, and that is fine. And, some people really can fix their marriage just by watching my videos, I get those comments all the time and it makes me happy.
But, if you are not one of those, for whatever reasons, and you need more, come to our website and see what we have to offer.
To sum things up.
There are 3 things that will fix your marriage easily, fast, and in ways that are the best
- Correctly understand marriage.
When you know that love and happiness are the very purposes for you in your marriage you will keep that in mind before you do something that undermines those. - Understand Love
You are entitled to real love, as God loves you, and your marriage is all about experiencing that high state of human consciousness, all the time! - Understand the mind
This is what distinguishes us from virtually every other marriage help organization. We know that without this you cannot sustain the efforts or positive results.
Marriage is amazing. But, like anything else, whether it’s a vehicle, a tool, or whatever, you need to understand it and learn how to use it.
Blessings to you.