Episode 148 - Acknowledge Your Role in Relationship Struggles

Have you ever felt like your family life is falling apart? 😩 You're not alone.  

Tag someone who needs to hear this!  

When relationships unravel, it can feel overwhelming. But remember, it’s never too late to start rebuilding.  

Here’s the truth: every family has its ups and downs, and it’s our responsibility to acknowledge where we can improve.  

Have you noticed those subtle hints before things escalate? They’re there, guiding you to reconnect and grow.  

Let’s take a step back and reflect: What can you do to strengthen your family ties today?  

It all starts with a conversation. 💬  

Let’s talk about how to nurture those precious relationships.  

Full episode - link in bio!

---  
 
#familyfirst  
#thetrustfactorpodcast  
#relationshipgoalss  
#EmotionalGrowth   
#familymatters
#jewishpodcasts

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The whole concept of marriage is challenging, and that's why we were put in it in the first place. Her happiness is his responsibility. A lot of the times the language is about the man's responsibility towards the woman. Women are much more emotional beings than men are. Scientifically, studies of the human brain have been done. When it comes to emotions, women use much more of their brain, their mental capacity is allocated to the emotional response. So one of our jobs as men is to be able to provide emotional support for our wives, which can be very challenging. The trust factor is a ticket to a better life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the life. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Trust Factor Podcast. We're talking about some very important subjects. We're talking about the family unit. Really, there's nothing that trumps that. If you have a family, a wife, and children, and it's falling apart at the seams, unfortunately, then there is nothing that you're able to focus on. It impacts your life at every single turn. Whether you're at the office, in business, traveling, you're constantly thinking about what's going on at home. And so it's important that we discuss this. And it's important that we get our heads straight when it comes to how one should operate within the family unit. Critically important, not just for the husband, guys. I don't want to single out the men. It's for everybody. The woman has equal responsibility, and the children can also do their part. Obviously, it depends on the age of the children. So having said all that, we've just finished talking about how somebody rectifies. You find yourself having a challenging life at home with your spouse, with your family. And you got to the point where you were thrown out of the house. I mean, the next step from there is that you don't come back. So that's obviously a very bad point to get to. What do you do if you get there? You've now been given time. You've now been given the opportunity to be able to do some introspection. And the only thing that you should be doing is going back and remembering the three levels of Amuna. Number one, there's a God that exists and that loves me. Number two, everything he does is perfect and for my best, including kicking me out of the house because he did it. And number three, what does he want me to do? What should I be doing in line with his expectations to be able to get me back into the house and to fix things so that we could move this ship forward? That's what we just finished discussing. We're going to talk a little bit more about that and see where it moves on to. We're still in the topic of marriage and family. So it says, listen to the hints. We get hints all the time. We get love taps. Remember again, it takes us back to season one. God gives us love taps. Just like we operate with our children. When our children are young and growing and learning, we have zero expectations of them. Zero. Why? Because they're learning. They don't know anything by definition. They're just starting out in life. So we give them truckloads of rope, all the rope in the world, and we've got all the patients in the world that will even laugh at their mistakes. It's cute. But eventually it gets to a point where it's no longer cute. When is that point? When they should have known better. When they have matured enough, when they have been around long enough, and everybody has a responsibility to learn, to educate and to grow. And if you haven't done that, you're now going to be held responsible. There's obviously the standard ages that we know by a girl it's 12 years old, but mitzvah, by a boy, it's 13, where they become emotionally mature enough to be able to be held responsible for their own actions, which means they should have been learning throughout, and their parents had an obligation to teach them. And then as they grow, they become more and more responsible. Every situation you get yourself into comes with additional responsibility. And if you're failing, like this individual was at home, then you get love taps. It starts off as mild conversations with your spouse. It starts off as I'm not happy with this. Maybe we could change that. Let's try to do something to align our values or whatever the conversation is about. And if nothing changes, if there's no growth, then it escalates. It gets louder and louder. Let's read. Usually it's difficult for an evicted husband to accept his lot with Amuna. But the fact that he reached the point of eviction is a sign that he is far away from having the amuna that he's supposed to have. Clearly, he wasn't listening to the subtle hints that the creator was sending him all along the way. It happens, not just in your relationships, with everything. The way that he operates is love taps first. Those love taps don't have to escalate. They don't have to get worse. They can disappear entirely if you're doing the right thing. But if you're not, then he has to get your attention before it's too late, before you've done irreparable damage. He wants to save you, he wants to help you. That's called being intimately involved in your life. That's called divine providence. And that's what he wants, and that's what you should want also. So you have to be looking for it. If you know he wants to be involved in your life, if you know that he's sending you messages, you've got to be tuned in. The husband failed to acknowledge his mistakes and work on his shortcomings. We all have them. You have to first acknowledge them. If you don't acknowledge them, then you're never going to fix them. If you've ever been to AA, I haven't, but I've heard that in AA, one of the first things, Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the first things you need to do in order to be able to fix yourself is to acknowledge that you have a problem. Right? That's what got you there in the first place. It's not everybody else that has a problem. It's you. If you don't acknowledge it, you will never fix it. You're living in a fantasy world, and everybody around you is going to suffer, including you. Therefore, he cannot handle the disparagement of being thrown out of his house because he can't acknowledge the truth. We're living in a world where that is a pandemic, my friends, where people simply don't want to or cannot acknowledge the truth, especially if it is demeaning, especially if it holds them accountable. Today we live in a world where nobody wants to be held accountable. Nobody wants responsibility. They want the benefits that come from having all of the things that require responsibility and accountability, but they don't want to do the hard work that's associated. God always starts off with subtle hints. It's never overnight. You don't go from the chupa from the wedding canopy to getting kicked out of the house overnight. That doesn't happen. This is a work in progress. This is something that you have to work towards either actively or passively, by aggressively moving forward with what you want and ignoring your partner, or by ignoring your partner and just not caring enough to be able to do the things that are required of you. Either way, it's taken a while to get to where you are. And when you've gotten kicked out of the house, you know you've reached a pinnacle of where that relationship is not potentially going to come to an end. If we don't pay attention, the hints get louder. Eventually, the hint is they show you the door. If we're still not aroused, we get a slap. A man who got to the stage of being evicted has already had many slaps. You understand? Whether you acknowledge it or not is a different story. But you've been getting slapped all the way through on a daily basis, and you've been ignoring it and you've been pushing through anyways, and you've been blaming everybody else but yourself until you end up in the doghouse. Someone who has a Muna would have stopped many times along the way when the wife was upset, when things weren't working out, when there's ongoing battles and fights and disagreements. That individual with a Muna stops and says, Wait a second, he doesn't want this for me. I don't want this for me. Nobody wants this. Why are we here? Why are we suffering when we don't have to be? That's the key, is that you don't have to be. You weren't put in this life to suffer. You were put in this life to enjoy and to thrive and to have amazing relationships. But it depends on you. You have to step up and do the right thing. So when things are out of control, when things are going the wrong way, it is incumbent upon you to stop and say, wait, why is it going this way? And what can I do to change it? Obviously, I'm doing something wrong. Again, we don't look at our partners, we look at ourselves. We need to be the change that we want to see. When you change, others will follow. Sometimes the husband feels that he's doing fine and he's behaving his best. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm putting up my 100%. Therefore, what is the only other alternative? It must be somebody else. It must be my spouse. My spouse must be the problem. My grown children must be the problem. He therefore dismisses all of their complaints. He doesn't listen to his wife's complaints. He doesn't listen to his children's complaints. I'm already doing the things that I know how to do. And so I must be okay. Who says? Who says that what you're doing is right? And that the way that you're behaving is the way that you should behave. Who's the arbiter? Who's making the decision? Who's the judge? If it's you, you're biased. And so clearly it's not working out. You have to acknowledge that. And so you have to reset. You need to go back, regroup, rethink, and come back with a new approach. Accept the fact that what you've been bringing to the table, although you may think that is wonderful and necessary, it's clearly not solving your problems. Now, let me put a little caveat in here, which I said yesterday, and I'm going to repeat again. There are situations where somebody is simply never going to be made whole or happy. Unfortunately, there is mental illness. There are people who are just genetically predisposed to being miserable. They grew up in a miserable environment. Now, you were put with that person, which means that that's part of your test. You need to now manage that relationship, and it's going to be that much more difficult. But you clearly should have the tools for it. However, if you find that you're dealing with somebody who has real severe mental illness, somebody who is not emotionally stable, and as a result of that is tearing apart the family despite your best efforts, despite the fact that you've gotten the rabbis involved and that you've had canceling and that you've tried so many different things. This person is simply not somebody who is going to be satisfied. Their only default is to complain about everything. I'm not talking about that. That's not what the book is talking about. Those are exceptions, and there are always exceptions in life to every single rule, even in Torah. Just like it says there's Shabbat, which is the most important day of the week, and there are all kinds of rules about keeping Shabbat. It is very, very challenging to keep Shabbat properly because it is so complicated. But you can put it all on hold. Saturday becomes Tuesday. When? When somebody, God forbid, is sick enough that it causes them a potential life risk. If somebody could end up, God forbid, dead or dying, then Saturday becomes Tuesday or Wednesday. Shabbat ceases to exist. There are always exceptions to every single rule, even in Torah. So we're not talking about those. We're talking about the standard. The person that you married is still the same person. Or they've grown, they've become better and stronger, and you're lagging behind. That's the situation we're talking about. If you're not dialed in and that relationship is starting to fall apart at the seams, then you have to do that analysis. Her happiness is his responsibility. That's the key over here. You have to understand a lot of the times the language is about the man's responsibility towards the woman. And that's just a reality. Women are much more emotional beings than men are. We know this. This isn't an idea that I've come up with. Scientifically, studies of the human brain have been done. And we understand that when it comes to the idea of emotions, women use much more of their brain, of their capacity, their mental capacity is allocated to the emotional response than men are. So one of our jobs as men is to be able to provide emotional support for our wives, which can be very challenging. The whole concept of marriage is challenging, and that's why we were put in it in the first place. Do you know that the mitzvah of marriage is only applicable to the male? Did you know that? That the woman does not have an obligation to get married and to have children? A man does. And it's for very good reason. In fact, it's the same reason that all of the other mitzvas exist as they do. There's a reason why men have so many more mitzvahs than women do, obligations. Why? Because the mitzvas are designed to perfect an individual. If you pay attention, you will notice that the mitzvah that was allocated to the men is designed to overcome the evil inclinations that many men have. And those that apply to women equally address their natural, innate evil inclinations. So a man, if left to his own devices, would be very happy having casual relations with everybody they meet, never having to walk himself down, never having to bring children into the world and taking on that responsibility. And therefore, he's commanded to do those things. A woman naturally wants to get married. A woman naturally wants to have a partner. A woman naturally wants to bring children into the world. There's obviously exceptions, but by and large, that's the rule. And so they're not commanded. We're commanded to do the things that combat our evil inclinations. So recognize that. Recognize that God is telling you you need to get into this relationship because it's going to help you become the best version of you. It's going to teach you how to compromise. It's going to teach you how to care about other people on a level that you would otherwise not care about. And you will only start to realize that after you get married. And even more so when children come into the world, when suddenly you're given a precious new life that is fragile and delicate. And you are charged with bringing that child up, raising them and taking care of them and securing them and making sure that they have all of the things that they need to grow and to thrive and to become the best version of the self. You're responsible. Suddenly you're charged with amazing responsibilities that you didn't have the day before. And life changes. That's why I keep saying to new couples, welcome to the world because now your life begins. We'll continue tomorrow, my friends. Have an amazing day. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts. Drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.