Is it even possible to do this? How do
you save a marriage after infidelity and lies? Do you ever get up in the morning
and think, "Huh, I wonder if gravity's on today. Honey can you check the gravity
report?" No. Gravity is always on. And gravity always works on you. What if you
jump from the top of a tall building? What's going to happen? Yeah, for sure or maybe? Hmm.. Sometimes or every time? Yep. What if you're standing
at the top of that tall building and you're thinking, "Gravity. Whatever. I don't
believe in that. I'm not down with gravity." And then you jump. Same splat as the believers. Yeah, gravity doesn't care if you believe in it or not. It always
pulls on you. I emphasize this right up front because principles determine all
of life's outcomes. Principles. Not luck. Not magic. Principles determine all of
life's outcomes. So, what if we've had a relationship that's characterized by
infidelity and lies. That's a problem. What are we going to do with that? We got to get back to the principles. Principles determine all of life's outcomes. And
this is true no matter what. No matter what has happened. I have been a
psychologist for 25 years. You can't shock me. I have heard some of
the darndest stuff you can imagine. And for about 13 of those years, I did child
custody evaluations for the court. Believe me. I've seen some messed up
relationships. But I have never seen anything that couldn't be resolved with
the proper application of the correct relationship principles. There are 9
of them. And I'm happy to share those with you
here on this video. We won't get into a lot of detail about them. But consider
how each of these principles might put you in a position to improve this
relationship even if you're doing it on your own.
Number 1, positivity. Yeah, big surprise, right? That you're getting positivity
from Dr. Paul. Your mindset matters and how you think is going to determine a
lot of the outcomes here. Positivity is such an important starting place. And if
you need some help with that, go to some of the other videos that we've put up
here and check out the models that help you to understand how to operate the
equipment. Positivity, it's huge. Number 2, values. This is the why behind
a relationship. Having a shared set of values and purpose for the relationship
in the first place. Why did you get married in the first place? Why did you
get together with this person? Well, that's tapping into the values so
we're talking about. Sometimes life beats us up a little bit and we forget why we
started this thing in the first place. Renew your familiarity with the values.
The next one is humility. Humility. Meaning, the willingness and openness to
change. We all know that we're right. Now, check this out. It's not that we think
we're right. No. We know we're right and because we know we're right, we treat
each other terribly. Most of the conflicts in a relationship come down to
what? My friend Brent Williams calls the right fight. Brett wrote a book. You're
going to love the title. The book is called "You can be right or you can be married."
That's kind of funny. But it's also really painfully true. Because we know
we're right, we get into fights about who's right instead of getting focused
on what's right. And what's right are these
principles that I'm sharing with you right now. Let's move on to the next one.
Forgiveness. Big surprise, right? Stuff happens. We hurt each other.
Forgiveness is the healing gift that we can give ourselves that allows us to
move past the hurt and continue to apply the principles that are going to improve
this thing in the first place. I had a colleague once share with me that
forgiveness is giving up your demand for a better past. I like that.
Let's stop digging up the history and beating each other up with it. Maybe we
can move forward with the spirit of forgiveness that will empower our
relationship. The next principle is respect. Respect has everything to do
with you. Your personality and your character and your integrity. I was
running a group of juvenile delinquents once. These are kids who were referred
through the court. None of them wanted to be there. And we were talking about
respect. This kid over in the corner, he's got his hat on backwards. He's got a bolt
through his nose. You know, all kinds of attitude coming out of this guy. And he
says to me, "Dr. Paul, I respect people who respect me." I'm like, "Oh, wow. That's
impressive." Right? How hard is that to respect people
who respect you? No, here's the challenge. You respect people who don't
respect you. Why? Because you're a respectful person. Has nothing to do with them. This is on you. Choose respect. The next principle is
maybe the most obvious one. Love and I'm not talking about the romantic, fluffy
feeling kind of love. I'm talking about the choice of love. And every interaction
that you have with another person has to fall on one side or the other. There is
no neutral option. I'm convinced of this. After 25 years of clinical practice,
there's not a neutral option. Our interactions have to be either on
the love side or on the hate side. And I use the word hate because people hate.
The word hate but think about it. What's the opposite of love? It's hate. Everything what we say, everything that we do. Every interaction we have with
another human being will fall on one side or the other. Choose love. That's
what we're talking about with that principle. Let's move to the next one.
The next principle is compassion. Compassion is kind of like love probably.
But it has something to do also with kindness and being willing to have
empathy and feel what other people are feeling. Putting yourself in their
position, treating them as genuine, authentic human beings. Instead of
objectifying them or treating them poorly because we know that we're right.
Compassion. That leads us into number 8. Principle number 8 is work.
Good old-fashioned hard work. Elevation requires effort,
okay? Default is down. You know this if you take your car and park it on a hill.
Leave the brake off which direction does it roll? Yeah, down. Because default is
down. Remember we were talking about gravity. It's always on. This is true in a
relationship too. If you don't put in the work, which direction is this
relationship going to go? Down. Yeah, now there's already been some damage because of the infidelity, because of the lies. So it's going to take a lot of work to lift
this thing from the place that it is to the place where you want it to be. And
get some help if you need some help. There's coaches, there's counsellors,
there's therapists that can help you with this. You don't have to do it on
your own. And it's going to be a lot of work. No apologies. It's one of the
principles. Let's wrap it up with principle number 9. Wholesome
recreational activities. Yes. We need to be having fun. If we're not having fun,
we're doing it wrong. This life is intended to be a joyful experience. Let's
find ways to have fun with each other in wholesome, productive ways that is a
solid relationship principle. Now, one final word about these principles before
we wrap up and that is that these principles are powerful. I promise.
These are powerful, guaranteed principles. For saving a relationship no matter what
has happened. But there's a caution. These are for personal use only. I guarantee
you, if you go out there and start telling somebody else how they could be
doing principles better, they're going to get all defensive on you, they're going
to counter-attack with some contempt. These are for you, okay? You get busy
applying these personally. In fact, I give couples that I coach a challenge to
think about this as a 95/5 proposition. You've heard that marriage is a 50/50
thing. I have never seen that work well. 95/5 means that you personally take 95%
of the responsibility for the improvement of this relationship and
you're going to expect about 5% from your spouse. Anybody with a pulse can do 5%.
Which means that your spouse is already doing enough. And if this is going to get
any better, it's up to... Yeah. You got it? That's the hardest thing I'm going to ask
you to do. But it's also a powerful thing. So, there you have it. that's the best I
know about how to save a marriage after infidelity and lies or anything else
that could go wrong. And things will. If you need some help, get
some help. We've got resources available. If you're not sure where to look, I've
got some coaches that are trained in this particular paradigm. And you can
find them at liveonpurpose.coach. Go take a look.
