Divorce Attorney REVEALS Why 70% of Relationships DON'T LAST | Faith Jenkins

why is this spite coming out of you why do you want to cause this person pain right now just because you're walking away from a relationship sometimes you have to walk away one of the toughest things about life you have to learn is sometimes you're going to walk away from people that you love you're going to do it to protect you i think you got to have a dream the school of greatness please welcome i'm curious what has witnessing so many divorces taught you about love relationships and marriage well i would say first of all i waited until the right time the right time for me to get married for other people they may have perhaps thought it was a long time they may have perhaps thought it was too long because i would get a lot of those questions about why aren't you married mm-hmm in my 20s in my 30s i got married i was 42 years old so i was recently buried two years ago so i had to deal with that but i always said you know what when it's the right time if it's something that i really want the timing will be perfect everything comes to me in the right time space and sequence absolutely so um what has witnessing divorce taught me well my parents got divorced when i was 13 years old and i saw the early stages of of their love growing up as a child and i saw their decision to go their separate way so that was my first insight into what divorce was like and it was difficult and it was painful and as a child when you love your parents you you want to see things work out but i also knew at that age that it was the right thing for them to do at the time yeah and uh now when i have uh these cases before me and people are going their separate ways and and growing apart i pull from that experience even as a child i pull from my experience working in family court in new york very early on in my career and then working on tv and seeing the cases and you know we've we've seen some crazy ones and try to give the best advice that i can which is it's easy to treat people right when you like them and when things are going great but you really want to know the true character of a person the true measure of a person is how you treat them when things aren't going well amen when things are going bad that's the true measure i always say you learn a lot about someone after you go through a breakup that's who they really are how they treat you how they talk about you in a good way a negative way you learn a lot about the character of someone based on a breakup yep if you if i were to give you an orange right now and you were to squeeze that orange what would come out of it juice orange juice so uh and and no matter what circumstances i could put that orange out in the sun and give it to you i could put it out in the cold and give it to you and you could squeeze it repeatedly only one thing would come out of it that would be orange juice so even when you're going through difficult circumstances in the adversity of life you're going through stress someone makes you angry if anger comes out of you if bitterness comes out of you if resentment comes out of you that's what's inside of you absolutely i use this analogy of an orange and i say you know why are these things why is this hatred coming out of you why is this spite coming out of you why do you want to cause this person pain right now just because you're walking away from a relationship sometimes you have to walk away one of the toughest things about life you have to learn is sometimes you're going to walk away from people that you love you're going to do it to protect your peace absolutely you're going to do it to protect the peace of your environment take your home whatever those reasons are sometimes it happens it doesn't mean that you have to try to destroy the other person in the process absolutely why do you think people try to destroy or cause so much pain on their ex partners when they go through a breakup or divorce is it because they feel pain and so they want the other person to feel it have you seen cases of people that don't do that that actually you're like you know what i'm sad i'm hurt this this is not fun this is you know maybe horrible to to lose this relationship and go through this experience but i'm going to leave this in a loving way yes yes i have i've seen both what's it what's the difference between those two types of people the loving ending and the anger ending why what what are they how do they develop that inside of them under all the stress and pain it's an emotional maturity yeah that you that you have to have and uh some people have it they've developed it over time i will tell you when i started going through breakups at 21 and 22 years old i did some crazy things you know i i remember i talked about this in the book i went to my boyfriend's apartment in manhattan and i became csi in that moment i was investigating because i knew something was up checking drawers and under beds and looking in the trash and looking for everything i was an attorney and i'm watching the law in order to know how these things were somewhere so you know i had some moments that i wasn't proud of i wasn't mature you got the the black light you're looking on this hammer lab set up at the back but um when did you feel like how many relationships did you have from your 20s from 20 until you got married let's say how many relationships how many long-term relationships not just like dating for a few weeks or months but a committed longer-term relationship i mean just off the cuff right now i would say i was probably in 10. at least in like 22 years 20 years probably 15 20 years i would say at least 10. yeah okay when did you get to a point in your emotional maturity where you went through a breakup and you realized oh i don't need to do what i did when i was 21. when i realized that pain in life is inevitable you're going to go through painful experiences but suffering is optional and i was causing myself all of this additional stress and suffering over the end of a relationship and i started asking myself well if you if you really believe that the best is yet to come in life when a relationship ends why would you be that upset about it why would you be you would have some level of peace i wasn't at the point where you know i that takes a lot of enlightenment to be just happy when a relationship ends and most people aren't there but you can at least be at a point in your life where you can project and say okay i can separate my feelings from the facts my feelings are hurt and it's okay for me to feel this hurt i'm human but the fact is this is happening for a reason and i'm gonna get out in front of this now and i'm going to embrace the reason even if i don't see it now i know that eventually i will learn that there's a reason that this is happening in my life and you accept it radical acceptance that's when we talk about the emotional maturity when you can radically accept that this ending is happening for a reason and believe even if you don't see it that something better is coming along the way and when you believe that and when you accept that then you won't feel like you need to go and look through your boyfriend's apartment because you want to find out the missing clue and what's really going on for sure you can let it go in peace and knowing i don't need to know the why all the time i don't need to know why this is happening and i can radically accept that this is happening wow was there a point when you started to learn and see red flags clearer and realize okay like this isn't going to work so i'm going to remove myself from the situation as opposed to maybe in your 20s where you're like well i'm going to have one eye open and just like keep working to make it work even though these red flags are happening was there a moment where this kind of like all right i see the red flag so clear now and i'm not going to keep investing time and energy so hopefully it changes when i got to know myself better because i got to know when i got to know me better i got to know what i wanted what i didn't want and what i was willing to compromise on and what i wasn't really willing to compromise on because before i didn't know the flags were red hmm what were they i just thought this is life so i'm seeing i'm seeing these things happen um or the flag will be red but i wouldn't want to know well how red is the red flag yeah can i manage the red flag can i manage it can i deal with it but as i got older and more mature and i started having these relationships i started realizing and that's what that's why it's so important to get to know yourself in your 20s i say that's the you know when you're in your 20s what a great time to get to know you and who you are and what you want and what you like and what you dislike because then when you can see with clearer eyes you have a better vision for yourself and what you're like in your life and what will better fit you in your life so just growing and going through those experiences i started accepting and realizing the things that would and would not work for me and when i came across people who when i realized okay this is not something that i want just being able to pivot right and say you know what that's not what i want i need to go in another direction right it's interesting because i was watching a ted talk recently of a relationship therapist um i think he was a marriage therapist out of australia and he was mentioning you know the statistics 50 of marriages and then divorce and if you want to decrease that statistic wait longer to get married he was like wait as long as you can to get married because the older you get the more you know yourself you don't settle right you don't settle for something you don't just jump in something because of the pressure you really make a more conscious decision i'm not saying if you're young you can't get married and have a great relationship and and thrive in a long term but he's like divorce rates go down significantly if you wait until you're older to get married so you waited till you're 42 um i'm i'll be 39 in a couple months i've been married and i and i reflect back in this conversation thinking if i would have gotten married to any of the previous relationships i would have 100 been divorced there's no way they would have worked no way yeah and yet sometimes we feel the pressure that like okay well i don't like this this and this it's not exactly what i want but i'm going to move forward anyways because i've invested time or energy or because i like their family or whatever it is what do you think was the biggest lesson you learned in all these different relationships about yourself i don't think that age um is the you know end-all be-all um yardstick for success yeah in in marriage i really do think it's uh it's it's a number of things including knowing yourself and just growing and becoming a better version of yourself and bringing a healthy version of yourself into a relationship because we don't attract healthy relationships we create them by being healthy and then hopefully attracting someone else who's also working on themselves and being bringing their best version of themselves to the relationship for me i learned who i was as a person and then also what i wanted some of the core values that i wanted in my partner did you think about values before then i did but you know i think that my values changed over time as i as i live life you're going to come across a lot of people you find physically attractive but um that factor may be the initial attraction factor that gets you to talk to somebody or have an initial conversation with them but really everything after that as you dig deeper into who a person is those are the things that will speak to a relationship success and longevity if you want to do something well and you want to be great at something you're going to prepare for it your relationships should be no different yeah so while i was single i had to ask myself what am i doing to prepare myself if i want to be in a relationship because how i live my life as a single person is going to reflect when i do get into a relationship so do i know how to communicate effectively because if i don't it's going to show up in my relationships do i know how to manage conflict well because if i don't it's going to show up in my relationships do i know how to set boundaries if i don't i may choose somebody who i may become co-dependent on it's going to reflect and who i choose to associate myself with so i started preparing myself for being in the type of relationship that i really wanted to be in becoming the right person because hopefully i would have a be able to make better choices because then i know who would be a great match for the person that i'm becoming what was the biggest challenge you had to overcome was it conflict resolution was it boundaries was it not abandoning yourself was it communication skills what was the fear fear of what a fear of failure like a relationship not working relationship not working when you have been through as you date and you go through relationships and you've been through betrayal and heartbreak and hurt and pain you be you can become pretty cynical yes about love and if you're not careful that cynicism can really be a hindrance for you because you cannot be a cynic about love and expect to attract it at the same time snap that's true yeah so how did you keep your heart open after going through breakups and maybe after you know challenging things happening in relationships where that hurt you how did you stay open to love i had to reframe my thoughts and ideas and my perspective about the past what did you think about them then i had to learn to allow the past to stay in the past i didn't want someone to come into my life and i make them pay for something they had nothing to do with yeah that's tough in my past yeah that's tough and when i got married who did i want my husband to meet this bitter broken down woman who had been through the ringer in all these years and all these relationships or did i want him to meet someone who because we're all we're always in the process of healing we're always in the process of growth and our emotional health but did i want him to meet someone who was committed to that growth yes and that process and going forward being committed to the same commitment which is which is what really success in marriage boils down to being committed to the same commitment because you know when i was younger i thought it was about this involuntary feeling of love and then as i got older i realized it was a conscious decision to love it's not just oh i have this attraction this person i feel love towards them it's a conscious decision because you're not always going to feel love you're going to go through ups and downs and peaks and valleys and if it were about a feeling you'd be all over the place emotionally up and down yeah it's about a decision and so when i talk about earlier when i talked about separating your feelings from the facts that's what i mean like you're you're going to have a range of emotions but the fact is you know this is a person that i've committed my life to yeah this is a person i've committed to grow with this is so i made all of these commitments to this person and then you go forward with that in mind did you have fears around getting married i had a fear of the unknown yeah what is marriage really like you know i see other people who are married some of them happy some of them not obviously i see a lot of people getting divorced so what is it about marriage what makes it work do i know what makes it work do i have what it takes to make it work so it was it was the fear of the unknown because i hadn't done it before marriage by nature changes you it's the closest relationship you'll ever have it's very different from the parent child relationship every other relationship friends everything yeah i wondered how it would change me from being in a relationship and dating to them being married what have been the biggest differences and changes allowing someone to see me at my most vulnerable state did you allow that during the dating process i allowed it to a certain extent but i didn't i didn't live with my husband before we got married that was a choice that we made really we did not want to live together and so when we got married and we moved in together i've not lived with anyone since i was in college for 20 years wow so again it's that adjustment in life just sharing my space with another human being every day and you got married how to handle that yeah and you got married a week before the pandemic in 2020 yes march 8th 2020. you said so what was that i mean that takes a lot of guts to not live with someone beforehand in the modern world to not fully see the person who they are so i commend you on that so did you what did you learn going through a pandemic for the last two years getting married a week before and then moving in together and sharing a life during you know arguably one of the scariest uncertain times in the last 20 30 years everything changed in the blink of an eye we got married on march 8th in los angeles big wedding all of our family all of our friends hugging high-fiving kissing had no idea what was about to happen a week later and uh i do look back on that day because i thought you know when we were talking about our wedding do we want to do something small do we want to and you know we ended up just inviting our people and everyone came out and now i look back on that day and i cherish it so much yeah because people haven't been able to do that for a couple years right and uh i haven't seen a lot of those people since so it just made those memories uh even more special to us but also yes a week later the world shut down so we decided to take a mini moon we weren't we're going to do a big honeymoon over the summer so we just went to newport beach and we were there for a few days and we were in a bubble we didn't know a lot about everything that was happening in the world until we we came out of this bubble so we came back to la and i mean there was no toilet tissue on the shelves that the the grocery store i mean it was just empty everything was empty i've never seen anything like it before and i was like oh so you mean to tell me i waited all this time to get married and the world is about to end wow it was it was crazy so what what did you guys create did you guys come together and say let's build a strong foundation during this time did you do you feel like it's made the relationship stronger has it been a stressful move living with someone for the first time in 20 years have you navigated all uh we adapted really well and during that time we had every day and all that time to spend time together and the the pandemic you know it challenged all of us in different ways but it also presented us with an opportunity and for us it was noise cancellation headphones through the first few months of our marriage because we got to really sit and be together and be still and be quiet you know my husband is a r b singer he travels all over the world and uh he had he was leaving a week after we got married to start traveling again of course that that didn't happen and so we got to spend a lot of quality time together and i will tell you what i learned about him yes what i talked about earlier about when you see uh the true measure of a person and how they handle adversity and how they handle difficult circumstances and uh because all of his you know live music was impacted greatly that's how you make most of your money yeah and i never heard him complain not even once and i saw him be a source of encouragement to a lot of other of his artists and musician friends and i mean i was even shocked i was like okay we're we're all about positivity and you know wake up happy every day but really you really wake up as happy every day sure and uh it was inspiring to see and i knew in those first few months that because you always you know you every love is about taking a risk yeah you know we talk about that fear because we're it's a risk there's a fear of being hurt again there's a fear of those triggers being exposed again and in that moment i knew and i believe that i had made a right decision but in those months after the pandemic i saw it for myself very early on in my marriage who my husband was in uh in stressful times in difficult circumstances and how he was a source of inspiration and strength for a lot of people including me so were you was each day kind of a confirmation that this was a great decision and we i leaned into this and yes that's beautiful yes it's been it's been two years of just this amazing time in my life because i used to get asked a lot why i was still single for so long and i started to feel pressure from people i never put the pressure on myself and i know a lot of people perhaps do but if you're not careful when you're single and people are asking you well i don't understand why aren't you married or what's going on you can start to internalize it and feel that there's something wrong with you or that there's something off within you and it can almost be something that you become embarrassed by because people are asking you as if you've missed some mark in your life some milestone that you um should have achieved by now not asking me if it was a desire of mine by the way if i wanted to but just asking me why wasn't i and why do you think people care so much about other people being in a relationship or being single well the question i think speaks more to the who they are than it ever did to who i was because i was okay you know i there were lessons that i had to learn to get to the place where i could go into a successful marriage i needed to learn those lessons there are almost eight billion people on this planet we can't all be doing the same things at the same time and we're not supposed to be we're all supposed to be living our individual life paths in our individual life journeys there are some people who don't think that they think you need to be married by a certain age you need to have children by a certain age or you're not living your the right path it's just not true this is not a race why is it not a race because we're not all running in the same direction so i learned very early on and i think living in new york actually helped with that because i was around so many other young professionals who were you know at the top of their games in their careers and we were you know saturday night we're here wednesday night we're at a show and the live music and everything and just embracing our our full lives and accepting that being single was not a rest stop for me until i met my husband and really got to live well if i'd done that i wouldn't have lived until i was 42 years old so what would i have done with all those years in my 20s and 30s so it wasn't a rest stop and i embraced that that time of and just did so many i traveled across all around the world by myself solo went to all the restaurants that i wanted to go to watching sex in the city sometimes i'll go by myself you know i had this vibrant group of friends i was not waiting to live my life and i think that people they project their own view of what they think life should be on to you and so it's it's our job as individuals to again reframe our perspective and mindset and make a decision for ourselves that we're going to live our own life path and embrace that life path absolutely and be happy in that life path what about the you know a lot of people talk about the the big red flags like okay he's he or she is cheating lying um out of integrity uh whatever in another relationship on the side like these big red flags what about the subtle red flags that you maybe you saw over time but you didn't take action on and you realized oh that was actually a much bigger flag than but it was it was subtle like i let it kind of slip what are those subtle red flags that people should be looking out for if you tell me you're a vegan and you eat meat and i see you on snapchat some wings you may think that's a small lie right but what does it say about that person it's saying that for some reason they feel that they need to they can't be their true selves with you they're trying to project some someone who they think may impress you and it's not really who they are so when you see those subtle things that you don't understand well why didn't this person just be true and honest with me about this this was a small thing how do you think they're going to handle the big things so i actually look at those little things what kind of digital footprint are people leaving online on their social media what do they think is funny i remember once someone wanted to set me up on a blind date with an actor yeah here in l.a and i looked at him he was i'm sure he had no shortage of women like opportunities to date him and uh he'd reached out to a person who was uh he knew was a mutual friend and said you know i'd like to meet faith would you set me up with her well i went and looked on his social media and he had a joke that he put on his social media that i thought was really crude and that i didn't think was funny but he thought it was funny but in that moment i said i i'm not going to go out on a date with him yeah some people may think wow you didn't even give him a chance you didn't even again i know myself now i know myself and i know that when i date somebody even what they put out publicly on their social media that's a reflection of me that's a reflection of our relationship that's reflection of all those things you may think that joke was small but to me it represented a bigger picture of what i thought would be incompatibility how important is compatibility versus connection and chemistry of the three connection chemistry compatibility which one is most important in your mind well you need all three yeah when i think about compatibility i think about not just making a decision about where you are now in your life because over time when you get into a relationship as time goes on people are going to change when you lose a job or you get a new job you have children you don't have children you go through certain stressful situations with your family your health all of these things in life they continue to change us and shape us into who we are so when i think about compatibility i think about a person who is committed to a certain level of growth you are not just going together in the future you are growing together yes and uh so that love has to be about being committed to the same commitment and a certain level of growth when someone wants to continue growing and developing themselves when the other person doesn't want to what happens in a relationship or a marriage when when they're different there it's easy to fall in love i think yeah i think it takes work to stay there and so one example i had a couple come into divorce court and the wife said you know initially our marriage was great like most marriages but over time he started saying things to me that would really hurt my feelings i gained weight i gained 15 20 pounds over the last couple of years and he would comment on my weight and um we were initially committed to just building each other up and even when we had criticism to share with each other we were always constructive and we always thought how can i say this in the most loving way and so she said she continued to grow in that area but he didn't and i turned to him and i said so what happened he said well i'm i'm just speaking the truth i said would you ever say to a stranger the things that you're saying to your wife this is supposed to be your your best friend he worked in a restaurant i said would you ever say those things to a patron in your restaurant the things that you're saying to your wife he said i don't believe in divorce we're christians we don't get divorced i say really what does god say about love you're a christian what does god say about love love is kind no it's patient love is patient love doesn't envy love certainly certainly doesn't try to tear the other person down so the commitment to that growth you know it it really shows up in the long term in the longevity of the relationship absolutely and if someone's not committed again you have to protect your peace i would never advise staying in a relationship where you are being uh emotionally abused and disrespected because i'm gonna tell you what happens it breaks my heart to see people come in and they've been in these relationships for so long where they have been repeatedly dishonored yeah you know why because over time when people have been repeatedly disrespected and dishonored it becomes normal to them it becomes familiar and they in turn start to think they've been dishonored so much they are not indeed worthy of honor because they've been dishonored repeatedly pain will subside over in time after you leave if you do the work but it will always be there if you stay in that type of situation what would you say are the main causes of divorcing is it cheating is it disrespect is it a lack of growth is it foul play emotional abuse what what are the main causes you see people not being committed to the same commitment and that is the um the growth the love the respect finding out how your partner wants to be loved because everybody wants to be loved in a different way and it may change over time so you're constantly evolving and a part of your job as a good partner is to find out how does this person want to be loved if you stop doing all of those things it's like if you're if you maintain and you take care of your yard what are the things you do to take care of your yard you have to mow the lawn take care of the grass fertilize it pull out the weeds all of those things to keep the yard looking great to keep it growing they're going to be seasons they're going to be seasons it may be dry one season it may it may be a rainy season you're going to go through the storms but just like in life the seasons are going to change but what are you doing to maintain throughout all of those things being committed to doing the work to maintain the relationship throughout the seasons is what speaks to success and i see the opposite end of that yeah because at no point can you just think that being on autopilot is going to keep moving forward right there's a book obviously called the uh i think it's the five love language yes i love that and um i think it's such a powerful place to even just have a conversation with a partner and when you're dating and to take the love language test to see does this person do i like giving love in the way this person likes receiving love i did this test with my my girlfriend and i did at the same time i wish i would have done this in previous relationships this isn't the end-all be-all this isn't like if you have this in a perfect alignment your relationship's gonna work out but i think it's a great indicator of minimizing stress when you learn these things and i realize that we have the exact same order of how we like to receive love based on the tests we took so we both like receiving love the same way which means we both like giving love in the same way whereas in previous relationships i didn't ask them how do you really like to receive love and they didn't ask me you know we both didn't really do the test and and go through that that uh process and over time i remember feeling like oh they really like when i do certain things that i'm not comfortable doing or it's not my natural go-to it's more of a strain and it's harder for me to think of and remember to do certain things and vice versa they didn't like doing certain things that i like to be i like being touched and you know told nice things and they wanted to keep their hands themselves they didn't whatever was and i was like man just like if people couldn't get an alignment on that at least in a couple areas i think it would make it much smoother in the process there's a lot of different things out there that people can do about that but how important is that do you think figuring out the love language of your partner before you get married it's a part of the service yeah that comes with being in a relationship and being in a marriage a big part of marriage is service yes and sacrifice and a part of the service is how am i going to serve my partner i remember when my husband and i went through our pre-marital counseling and we did pre engagement counseling even so before you got engaged you did counseling yes to see is it worth getting engaged and then when you're engaged you got counseling to see like absolutely see that's how serious i was about i think that's i remember before by my current girlfriend i remember thinking to myself gosh i would love to get into a relationship and start therapy like when everything's good and see are we in alignment and like diffuse some of the things that could be challenges in the future and we've been doing that in our own way like she's got her own therapist i've got mine and we're starting to do stuff together and it's uncomfortable to have certain conversations but it's so freeing at the same time so anyways you did this because you were so serious about it and what did you learn about doing counseling pre-engagement engagement before marriage as well well i thought if i get engaged and then i go to pre-marital counseling i've already made the decision to get married yes so i wanted to know because remember you're talking about i talked about the fear of the unknown so i wanted to minimize the unknowns yes so i thought i i have all these questions and i think i'm asking the right questions but i want to know is there something that i'm not asking is there another area that we need to explore is there something else we need to talk about before we got engaged because we were talking about at that point getting married you know so often when people get engaged and they knelt it and they share with the world and the invitations are going out and then oh wait wait we need to do our pre-marital counseling and you may find out something that you don't like and are you gonna oh whoopsie right too late what are you gonna do a lot of people feel the pressure i've heard so many stories of people gotten divorced i'm sure you've heard this too where the woman or the man said i knew on my wedding day this wasn't the right fit it wasn't the right fit have you heard that before yes they knew and they still go through with it i'm like why do you put yourself through this they don't want to be embarrassed but then two five years later yeah you went through just pain and sadness and you settled for something that wasn't the right thing people think i'm not judging people here because i've made a ton of my own mistakes but it's like we've all made those mistakes we have to learn the hard way some people you know you have to learn the hard way and and all opportunities for you to grow but but you can minimize that based on it and maybe you go through all the premarital counseling and the pre-engagement and you still doesn't work out for whatever reason but at least you hopefully have your due diligence yes you need your due diligence so you can go in with a little more confidence because of your due diligence and if something would have came up one of these conversations that you're like that's completely out of alignment with what i want you could have figured out is there a solution this if not then maybe one of them got married there are two things yeah about what you just said which is which is great because some people think that by getting married it's going to change something or change a person or things will be different yeah um the only thing a wedding will change is maybe your last name right they weddings will break the bank but they will not break bad habits that's true um so you can expect when you get married you've won the pieing contest what is the prize for winning the paying contest more pie you won this person what is the prize you get more of them so you better be happy with your choice yeah and you can't change someone not because of pressure or nagging or crying or any of those things it has to be something within you each person has to want to change and i really don't think you can date or marry based on potential personally and i hear a lot of women saying well he's got so much potential he could become this man but then he never becomes it that's why i wrote this book that's why i wrote that book so you you date or marry based on potential but then you're really settling because who you're dating and who you're marrying is who they are maybe they grow into something greater based on what they want but you can't expect them to be on a timeline you want you are dating their reality you want to marry their potential those two things should be aligned right we went to pre-engage engagement counseling because i wanted to make sure that we were asking each other the right questions yeah and we were getting to know each other the best we possibly could before even making the decision to get married to get engaged and then and then you had time to ask more questions so what were the three conversations or questions that were the most challenging for you to have the courage to talk about or just navigate what were the three most uncomfortable conversations in pre-engagement counseling how have you healed from your past gosh healing is so key it's so key okay we both had past relationships yes that didn't work out for one reason or another and i think we both wanted to know uh if there were going to be triggers that would bring out something from the past in our current relationship there's always going to be residue right we're human right and we're bringing our our ex life experience with us uh but there is a difference in making somebody pay who had nothing to do for your past past yeah and so exploring that was really important okay how have you healed from your past and like my therapist says healing is a journey it's not a one-time event 100 so you've got to uh you've got to realize like okay you might have moments uh you might have a moment of realization where you start to heal but it's a continual journey until you really kind of let it go yep and so how have you healed from your from yeah and my friend stefan speaks says like step one before getting in any relationship is to heal you know or be on a healing journey yeah because otherwise you're bringing that into the new relationship and it is a journey i don't think it's realistic to say you know one day wait i've identified where i've been hurt before and now today's the day i'm just i'm healed it's over it's done it takes time it takes time if someone's entering a new relationship and they're not willing to start to heal from the past what happens you have to be really careful because you cannot make someone happy i say this to people all the time when i hear somebody say well this person makes me happy i cringe because if that person makes you happy then they can make you sad if that person makes you happy then they can make you depressed why are you giving the power to somebody else to make you happy yeah that's why it's important to be on the healing journey because you do not want someone to be codependent on you to make them happy you cannot do that that is not your job our job is to bring our happy selves into a relationship so we're not making the other person god in our lives so that's why that's important right okay so that was conversation number one how have you healed from your past what's another challenging or uncomfortable conversation you had in pre-engagement counseling well what are your real expectations for me as a wife what are your real expectations for for him as a husband what are those expectations do you expect me to cook dinner five nights a week at six pm and and and have it just right there hot on the plate if we don't fully ask and i think you gotta be so honest with yourself in these conversations right you can't say well no i don't expect that but then two years later you're like why aren't you doing this i was expecting it why is this so important to communicate expectations not only six months out but like six years out here's what i'm going to expect because when you have unmet expectations and you don't communicate them resentment bills that's okay yeah so if you well i thought that this it was going to be this way but you thought but why why didn't you why do you communicate it and the other person's mind you can't you can't be a mind reader so just communicating those expectations you know most people don't like conflict right especially men they want to avoid conflict at all costs so if they know that something that they're doing is going to cause a huge conflict most times they're not going to do it but do they know have you communicated it so communicating what those expectations are are really important so in our pre-engagement counseling we talked about what are the expectations what are you know the time that we're going to spend together the household duties children we talked about all of those things we talked about as much as we possibly could and we had a counselor there to bring up questions that we didn't even think about what were those questions or some of them he just really wanted us to think about day-to-day life and how we were going to live our day-to-day lives you know once you get uh from under this fog yeah the wedding and the wedding and all of those things what is day-to-day life going to look like for the two of you yeah what do you think is going to look like and setting these expectations yeah and what would you say is the third conversation that was really important to have we talked about have you healed the past what are your expectations what would you say is the third conversation or question to ask one another about our life goals our life path if my husband would have told me he wanted to move to a small town in texas and turn off the the cell phones and get rid of all of our worldly possessions and just live a live a real simple life i think that's beautiful that's what he would have wanted but that's not that wasn't on my life path and what i saw myself doing in terms of my career wasn't my vision so just having an idea of your life path and again you know things change as you go through life and your vision and your goals change but just being honest about where you really would see yourself yeah in the next several years in the next 10 years and how your relationship will play a factor in that right while you watch all these divorces happen and these stressful times and you you grew up with parents going to divorce then you became you know a lawyer and judge of divorce did it worry you by seeing all this constantly did it make you fearful of marriage and say like is there even hope like are people even happy in long-term marriages or did it give you an education on here's all the things that they all did you know that they could have eliminated this pain if they would have done these steps and it gave you hope about being married for the future i think that i observed a lot and and and i i took a lot of things in and i think that just you know we've all had people who we thought were in great relationships and then for one reason or another they don't work out right and you think and it shakes you and you're like if they didn't make it work how am i going to make it right and it shakes you and so again it it builds on that fear i i had to stop this this notion of you know i'm going to protect myself by not putting myself out there because then i won't get hurt again that fear wasn't really protecting me what it was really doing was poisoning my perspective and i knew that i was not going to be able to step into um my the greatest relationship that i really wanted to have with that poisonous perspective everything is an opportunity to learn and everything is an opportunity to grow so whether it was you know watching my parents and what they did a lot of times you watch certain things and you you learn what not to do and just taking all of those experiences and i was jaded at some point i did go through a period where i was cynical but i had to reframe and reshape my own perspective and decide how i wanted to live my life and what what perspective i really wanted to have and i just made a decision that i was going to go forward and believe that i could have the type of love in my life that i wanted because if i didn't believe it it wasn't going to happen right so despite seeing all of these other things around me you know i looked at other people who had been successful i looked at people who had good experiences i listened to things that would build up my faith and i learned how to navigate when i dealt with rejection or betrayal or hurt or pain six months before i met my husband i went through a breakup and i was i remember that day crying you know upset again my feelings are hurt i'm human i'm having that human moment but i also remember that day deciding okay you know what to do you've been through this yeah you're a problem and you've learned but the key was i learned every time it happened i learned and i grew the first time i remember dealing with rejection in a major way it changed my life what did you learn about it i um i was in college and i wasn't dating anyone and they had this black tie event at the school every year and i just decided i was going to ask the cutest guy i knew on campus to go to this event with me i never saw him with a date or anyone so i figured he was single and it was fine and it wasn't a big deal i wasn't asking him to be my boyfriend to sleep yeah go to this thing and so i walked up to him one day in the student union and i said hey chris this uh this event is coming up friday night it's black tie you know it's our big annual event every year would you mind going with me he looked at me and he paused and he said um can i let you know can i get back to you and i said okay and i saw him the next day and i talk about this story in the book i saw him the next day and he walked over to me and he said uh listen i appreciate the invitation thank you for inviting me to um but i can't go so i'm not going to be able to to make it but have fun so i was like wow okay and i would see him around i was a little embarrassed about it you know phil you asked and you got rejected yeah but i went to the event and i um had a good time you know i just didn't understand i was like well i don't understand it wasn't a big deal why couldn't he just go to the event with me five years later i was walking down the street in my college town and i walked into a store and he was in the store he called me over and he said hey can i talk to you for a second and i said sure he said do you remember several years ago when we were in school and you asked me to go to this event i really didn't remember i had forgotten it had been five years but as he started telling me about it i yeah i started to think and i'll say yeah i do he was like well you know i just wanted you to know i want you to know that i actually really liked you and i really wanted to go to this function with you but he said i didn't have a suit and i didn't have any money to get a suit and i had nothing to wear and i was too embarrassed now i was thinking because i thought back at this time everybody had one of those oversized steve harvey suits in their closet you know some stacy adams they can just pull out on occasion but he didn't what that moment taught me was you know i ran into him randomly five years later but how many times do we go through rejection and we take it so personal and we make it about us and we go down this rabbit hole of oh he didn't like me because i'm not cute enough i'm not smart enough i'm not funny enough and we make up all these reasons in our mind when it could really be just somebody doesn't have a suit or whatever their reason is that has nothing to do with you when i talk about going through dating experiences and going through rejections and going through those relationships i learned every step along the way and every time i would go through it it would get a little less painful and i would learn a little more and i would take what i learned and i would apply it to the next relationship so by the time i got to the point where i was going through this breakup six months before meeting my husband i said oh no i know what to do i know how to handle this and i'm gonna approach this complete in a completely different manner and you know what i said for the first time in my life i said this moment this breakup is opening up the door for me to meet my husband wow did you know you're going to meet him within six months or were you like i'm gonna take a year or two and just be single what was your mindset after the breakup i took a sheet of paper that day and i wrote down that i was going to meet my husband within the next year and i met him six months later what changed inside of you from attracting him or you know were you going on a bunch of dates with guys or were you just like clear once you met him you started having conversations and realizing this was more in alignment with what you wanted how did you know i had a conversation with god and i said you know god i've gone through a lot of lessons and i've had a lot of experiences and i'm going through this breakup right now but i'm going to pass this test and i'm going to see this breakup as for for what it is it is this this door is closing for a reason and for a bigger purpose because it's so easy to say that when you're not going through anything but i decided to have that perspective when i was in the midst of the hurt yes and i said i will pass this test for myself because i know what to do and i know what this means and you know fight for the people say you know fight for the relationship fight for what you want no i'm going to let this go because once i let go if it's happening and i let go it's going to open me up to what's really supposed to happen in my life if that means someone coming back into your life okay that's what it means but more often than not is opening up and moving you into a new direction don't fight against the current yeah so i didn't fight it i accepted it and i said this is going to open me up this this moment in my life right now i had that conversation with god and i said i'm ready i'm ready emotionally um financially yeah you know all the places that i needed to be into my life i said i'm ready and i'm at peace with this ending and i'm at peace with the new beginning that is opening for me and i just believe it was my time yeah i think sometimes a breakup can be like you said a great opening for you a breaking open of what's not working what's out of alignment and get you on at the right track of finding creating alignment within yourself and then attracting that in the next relationship and i think that's beautiful what you did but why do so many people seem to settle and why don't they end the relationship or wait until the relationship is what they want why do you think so many people settle could be loneliness fear [Music] past experiences that have made them question their self-worth you know in the end when you're making a choice and if you do want to get married because some people don't and that's totally their choice and their life path but if you do want to i want you to think about the commitment and the decision that you're making the person you're going to have 10 000 meals with the person you're going to travel perhaps all over the world with the person who will be the greatest influence on your children should you choose to have them this is the kind of choice you're making you've got to get past some of these hang-ups that we've developed just going through life so you can bring a healthy you into the equation and see with clear eyes and know that this is not a decision you can just pick a pair of shoes you can you can pick a restaurant to go to you can just pick a dress you cannot just pick a spouse you cannot just pick a partner that decision is too important for you to take it lightly yeah when you put it like that ten thousand meals you know i'm gonna have ten thousand meals with this person whether it's ten thousand or five thousand whatever the number is but you're gonna have thousands of meals with someone that's a good way to reflect and say am i enjoying the meals i'm having with them right now in the last six months or two years we've been dating whatever it is am i enjoying these meals because i'm gonna spend thousands more and so if you're not that could be a good indicator to say okay well how does the relationship need to shift and see if we can get on a different track or maybe it's not the right relationship but i think having that perspective is powerful well what you said very early on in our interview you heard her ted talk and someone talked about getting into waiting i will say this i've never had a couple in front of me uh who had said that they wish they would have moved faster a lot of them say that they wish they would have taken their time really yeah moved slower got to know the other person better and again i don't think there's a magic number of months or years when it comes to the time yeah some people you hear stories of them together for 40 years and they met and they got married six months later and they you know and it's been a beautiful journey but you're saying most of these divorces they're not saying i wish we did it sooner they're saying i wish we'd taken more time yeah because you know why because they were still learning about themselves and we're always learning but they were at a key pivotal time in their lives where they were learning what really would work for them and what they were willing to negotiate on compromise on and where they weren't the things that they weren't willing to compromise on it's okay to have some non-negotiables it's important to recognize when you're looking at a person's history we talk about red flags if a person has a history of infidelity but they meet you and they say but it's going to be different with you that's a red flag because what about their history speaks to their loyalty you know the fbi when they do an analysis and a profile and they want to put put together a profile of someone and try to track their next moves their next steps you know what they do they look at their patterns in someone's life because people lie but their patterns don't right so they look at their patterns they put together a profile of what they think this person's next moves will be based on their patterns look at people's patterns what do they tell you about their lives yeah take a look at the history yeah now what if someone's completely honest about their past and says you know what i made a bunch of mistakes i did this wrong i hurt this person or whatever i wasn't out of integrity with this but i've been rebuilding myself and i've been committing to a new future that's not who i want to be anymore is that a red flag they're brutal honesty you know they're being radically honest here's what i went through but here's my track record in the last six months year five years i've been on a different track would you trust that person more if they've kind of made these mistakes in the past but been a hundred percent honest and on the right track or should that is that a red flag and you should be worried about their history still i would ignore their words and judge them completely by their actions do their actions actually show that there has been a change if those two things don't line up if a person's words and actions don't match completely ignore what they're saying to you yeah and look at their behavior only it's fine that you're that i i think honesty is great so you've come to this person you've said you know this was my past this was my history but i'm living a different life now you should be on high alert and you should look to see if there is actually evidence of that change right what do you think makes a high value partner what are the the key things would you say like wow this person is extremely valuable and i should take this seriously about entering a relationship or you know that this could be a great partner there are a lot of things but one that i think is incredibly important is how do they treat people around them who they may perceive as weak or vulnerable they're going to see vulnerabilities in you how do they treat the people in their life who can't do anything for them right do they show everyone is there a certain level of respect they have for everyone or is it conditional on who that person is in their life if you want peace in your home they care about being a good person they know what service and sacrifice is because that's what happens that's a big part of marriage and relationships they understand that love is a conscious decision people say oh i'm just keeping it real not when you're hurting someone intentionally yeah yeah so all of those things are really important that's good and they are bringing and they want to bring they have a desire to bring their best self into the relationship and no one's perfect so i'm not talking about just a level of perfection here i'm talking about a commitment to growing i hear sometimes people say like marriage and relationships are hard work and part of me doesn't like when they say that i know i know i used to feel yeah i'm like then why get inside it's so hard yeah why should it be so hard i think it takes conscious courage to speak up when you need to speak up to have those challenging conversations which i think a lot of people don't have because they're maybe scary or you're unsure of what's gonna the other person's gonna say will they accept you or they judge you or whatever it is i think it takes you know humility all these different things but should it be a grind you know i don't i don't know i don't think it should be and i don't like when people say relationships or marriage is hard work i think it's can we reframe that so it doesn't need to feel hard it's going to take presence and patience and time and all these things and attention but doesn't need to be hard work all the time i i don't know i don't like that but what's your perspective on that i used to hear people say that as well before i got married and it also made me very uh self-conscious of the unknown because why people people would say that and then they they wouldn't explain the reasons why i think that more than anything the work is learning to love the new version of the person that you've partnered with as time goes on love and accept them love and accept them because as time goes on you are going to see change not the change as in what we talked about earlier um i'm dating your i'm dating your reality but i want to marry your potential because i i marry you but i want all these things it's not going to happen yeah it's not going to happen and i think the the work comes in in letting go of this notion that when you get married this person this is this is it and if anything happens over you know all of all of these life events that happen that are inherently going to change someone this notion that that's not going to happen i think you have to get past that and learn to embrace this journey this path that you're on and be committed to the commitment the work that that you and i talked about is the work that it takes to maintain anything that you do in your life it's the day-to-day yeah it's the day-to-day that gets people the little things that you do to keep the day-to-day running smoothly and to let your partner know that there is uh this appreciation for them as time goes on what's been the biggest lessons you've learned since being married the last couple years then that have been different than when you guys were married has anything changed or do you feel like everything we talked about beforehand before pre-engagement before marriage we've followed through on and so nothing has really drastically changed except for we live together now and we're married but it's all been you know you've both been in integrity with what you committed to and so has anything changed in your mind for anyone who gets married or you move into a close relationship like this the change is embracing another person in your life and accepting the fact that they are a different person from you yes they have different perspectives different life experiences different educational backgrounds all of these things in their life that have shaped their perspective and now you are trying to do life together yeah you're in this boat you're rowing together so it is a constant adjustment to allowing people to have the space to be who they are and have their perspectives and share those perspectives and realizing no matter what you're on the same team so the choices that you're making now it's not just about you anymore it is what is best for the team so having that teamwork mentality is uh the adjustment and hopefully when you go in you've done enough of the work to where you're not the weak link right because you don't want to be the weekly someone's always picking up your slack yeah so um but just you know realizing and embracing that teamwork mentality [Music] even when you have an argument even when you have a disagreement your goal is not to win your goal is to find a solution that is best to move the team forward yeah my friend jay shetty says in an argument or a challenging discussion it's never it shouldn't be the person against the other person it should be both people against the challenge against the problem absolutely and coming together on how do we solve the problem not here's my solution you're wrong i'm right or whatever but coming together on that and i think that's a beautiful um practice to focus on the challenge not well you did this and it makes me upset you know so both finding the solution i love this this has been really powerful you've got an amazing book cis don't settle how to stay smart in the matters of the heart i think it's really challenging to let your head make the decisions for your heart but you need your head to make sure that you're not allowing your heart to miss out on the red flags or signs that might be your heart may not be looking for so you kind of need both to be connected to really make sure you're in alignment you're using your emotions and also seeing the facts and and the data and you're using all of it to make a conscious decision about entering a relationship and then taking it to the next level you've got so many great lessons and stories in here you've got a lot of your own experience personal experience obviously from i wouldn't call them failures they're just lessons they were relationships that weren't in alignment to where you want to be there's nothing wrong with that we've all had those you had a lot of those lessons and also being a divorce court and watching all these people go through challenges and heartaches and the pains so you have so many different lessons on how to make sure we hopefully eliminate that and don't have to experience those things in relationships so very excited about the book system settle how to stay smart in the matters of a heart faith jenkins i've got a couple final questions for you can i tell you why i wrote these books yeah go ahead i did not have these huge standards of love in my life growing up and didn't really know what a true loving healthy relationship looked like yeah you didn't have a model you didn't have a good model yeah didn't have the model and i realized as i started dating and i moved to new york started dating in new york and um i realized when i started dating that i really didn't have a source to pull from to learn the do's and the don'ts and and some of these things that you know would have helped me along my journey to make some better decisions so a lot of things i learned the hard way yeah sometimes that's good in life but you know people watch your podcast or they read books because they actually they want to learn how to minimize some of the mistakes that they can make absolutely and so because i if you want love if you want a loving marriage you want to love a relationship i believe that you can have it but how do you get there how do you get to that point and so this book was really a passion project what i wanted to write you know being single in my 20s and 30s how i navigated all of the challenging experiences all of the questions the pressure from outsiders and all of those things to get to the point where i am now two years happily married with the husband that i dreamed about having for so long and um and i don't think that that story is just just just meant for me i believe it's something that that anyone who wants to have that kind of love in their life that they can have absolutely i think it's beautiful and in a modern world of online dating and swiping and hookup culture and people thinking they have more and more options available but being less fulfilled and less happy because they're unsure of how to navigate these waters i think it's really powerful for your lessons and your story and your examples to share in this book so i'm excited for people to check this out um i want to acknowledge your faith for not settling because i think it's really easy for people to settle and there's nothing you know bad or wrong about that but i think you were very clear on what you wanted you made your own mistakes but you learned every time and you got to this point and i think it's really inspiring to see specifically a woman wait until they're in their 40s to get married in this time when there is that pressure and to not settle i think takes a lot of courage there's a lot of courage but i can only imagine the amount of peace and love and joy and abundance on the other side of that courage so i really acknowledge you for leaning into that making that decision and also using your voice to share this wisdom with other people so congrats on everything there this question is called the three truths question imagine it's a hypothetical question and scenario imagine it's your last day on earth many years away and you get to live as long as you want to live and you get to create the life of your dreams everything you want to do it happens but for whatever reason in this hypothetical scenario um all of your message has been erased or it goes to some other place so your book is no longer available the content you've created online is gone so no one has access to your information anymore your content but you get to leave behind three lessons to the world this is all we would have of your information your content our three lessons i call it three truths what would you say would be these three truths what you'd share with people from the lessons you've learned in your life don't wait until you get your dream job or you meet your dream person or you graduate with that degree or you travel places you want to travel choose joy now because if not you'll run out of time if you're waiting to reach a milestone to think you're going to achieve it choose joy second one the closed doors in your life are just as important as the open doors so i would say embrace the closed doors because they're redirecting you elsewhere and take that redirection as a sign as a positive sign and the third truth you're going to hear your name spoken very early on you may graduate from kindergarten and they may call your name you may graduate from middle school or high school they may call your name i want uh i don't want that to be the last time you hear your name called for achieving something in your life so i want you to walk into rooms that are too big for you i want you to walk into rooms where you're concerned or that you may say the wrong thing you may ask am i dressed appropriately i want you to continue to walk into rooms into doors where you're not quite comfortable but you're there and you're in the room because on that's where the opportunity will lie for you that's where your success is going to be when you continue to walk into those rooms yeah oh i like this i like this a lot uh we can get your book on your website judge faith jenkins.com you're on twitter instagram instagram's kind of the main place for you right i think so instagram yeah judge faith jenkins judge faith jenkins over on instagram facebook as well um you've got this book you've got a new show you're working on lots of cool stuff for people they follow you on social media they go to your website they can learn all about everything there um how else can we be of support to you you can follow me on my social media you can read my book i think that um you know i wrote the book to as a source of inspiration and hope yeah that that was my goal um so i think that um what you do here is amazing and i am it's been an honor to be here today to be a part of this interview i appreciate it faith final question what's your definition of greatness achieving a level of inner peace no matter what is going on around you ships sink not because what's around them but because of what gets in them hey thank you so much for being here appreciate it nobody likes rejection right but the sooner you can get comfortable with rejection like you are free that that creates so much confidence when you can be rejected a ton and i feel like one of the best things that happened to me is when i was applying for a clerkship at the end of law school and i just got rejection after i mean i applied to like 90 different judges and then i also applied to a whole lot of law for

Channel: Lewis Howes

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Length: 75min 26sec (4526 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022