Episode 152 - The Decline Of Gentlemanly Values In Modern Society

💭 "Ever felt like you’re stuck in a cycle of blame? Here’s a wake-up call: it’s time to take responsibility!"  

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In relationships, especially during tough times, it’s easy to point fingers. But the truth? Real growth starts when we own our part. 🛠️  

If you’re single, focus on personal growth. You have the time to invest in yourself! And for those in relationships, remember: your actions shape your family.  

The world is a narrow bridge, and you’re either moving forward or backward. There’s no neutral. Choose to improve every day!  

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Transcript

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The well-intended women who tried to inject into the world this concept of equality between the genders have gone to an extreme and they have corrupted our society. And that's why today we find ourselves in the situation where we don't have responsible gentlemen anymore. People don't even know what it means to be a responsible gentleman. If all the things, the stuff that I just read to you, don't resonate with you. It doesn't make sense to you. You find yourself making excuses as to why that doesn't apply today, you have to do this more than anybody else. This is what's going to fix the world. This is the stuff that's going to end divorces. This is the stuff that's going to build the family unit because this is what our children learn from. The trust factor is a ticket to a better life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the life. Thank you for joining us. We're into a pretty serious and heavy discussion. If this is resonating with you, then it's important that you listen to the whole thing because there's a lot more to come on this discussion around marriage and family. Now, just as an aside, I had a good friend of mine who happens to be single. He's been single his whole life. He reached out to me and he said he listens to the podcast on a regular basis. But his question was, what do you do if you're single? You know, you're talking about all these wonderful things with regards to people who are married, but what do you do if you're not married? And the answer to that is that you should be constantly working on yourself. Why? Because you don't have the pressures, you don't have the demands that are being put on people who are married. Somebody who's married, myself, for example, I have a wife that demands. I have a daughter, two daughters, and a son that demand. I have in-laws. I have all these people pulling on me on a regular basis, on a daily basis, that I have to take care of, not just physically, financially, but also emotionally. I need to be there. I need to be present and available. That takes time. It takes energy. It takes resources. If you don't have that, this individual is not a spring chicken. This is somebody who's been around the block many times. He's later on in age. And it's not something that's going to happen for him. So he has to now recognize that he has been given all of this time and all of these additional resources that he doesn't have to dilute by spreading them amongst his family members because he doesn't have them. So that means he can take his resources, his time and his money and his energy and invest them in himself, his own personal growth, and his community. That's it. Because he has all this extra time and resources, that means he should be holding on a much higher level than the rest of us. In other words, he doesn't have the excuse that the rest of us do. That's the bottom line. If you find yourself not having ever been married and no children, that means you should have more resources, including time available to you to be able to deploy and making your life better and the lives of those around you. But let's get back into this because most of the world is married and most have children. And you don't have to have eight kids in order for this to apply to you. You don't even need to have kids at all. You just need to have a spouse. Now I want to remind you guys if you find yourself in a situation where you are locked out of the house, you have been kicked out, you have no longer access to your wife, to your children, to your home, the things that you're responsible for and that you helped to build, that didn't happen overnight. That was a work in progress. That took a long time. Just like many of the other character traits that we often find ourselves have been corrupted, the negative character traits, they're not something that becomes ingrained in us immediately. They are something that we have to develop that gets worse with time. If you're not actively trying to fix your character to refine who you are, then you're actively getting worse. It's not that you can stay in neutral. Neutral is not an option. The thing that pops to my mind is the song. There's a song in Judaism that the world is a very narrow bridge. And the important thing is not to be afraid. It's a very common song, actually. It's from the Brezlev movement, the book which we're reading from Kola Olam Kulog Gesher Tsar Maud, Veikar, Lole Fachetla. The world is a very narrow bridge, and we're not supposed to be afraid. The obvious question is why is it a bridge? Why isn't it a narrow road? Why isn't it a narrow sidewalk? Why is it a narrow bridge? And the answer is because when you're on a very, very narrow bridge where there's only one person going back and forth, there is no stopping. There's no pulling over. There's no allowing other people to pass. You can do that on the road or on a sidewalk. You can't do that on a very narrow bridge. You're either moving forward or you're moving backwards. There's no neutral. That's the idea with Judaism. You're either moving forward or you're moving backwards. You're either refining yourself and building yourself and becoming better and stronger as an individual, as a father and as a spouse, or you're doing the exact opposite by default. So we have to constantly be working on ourselves. Let's see what it says. He's about to lay out a five-step recovery plan. Just like by all types of addictions, where you have an actual recovery plan, he's about to give it to you. But let's first start off with the preamble. He says that before this all starts, the husband needs to immediately alter any negative behavior towards his wife. Listen to this. Now, the more I say these words, if they resonate with you in a way where you go, yeah, right, talking to the guys here. If you're listening to what I'm saying and you're like, yeah, right, that's ridiculous, or that's a bit far-fetched, the more you're thinking that way, the more you have to do this, because this is the exact opposite of the way that the world is that we find ourselves in. Listen to this. If until now he has been stingy, hanging on to his money really tight, tight-fisted and cruel, from now on, he must give to his wife with an open hand. He should give her more than she needs and even send her presents. You understand? It's exactly the theory we said by Maimonides, by Rambam, that if you find yourself on one extreme where you're too stingy, in order to repair, you need to go to the opposite extreme. It's exactly the example that he's bringing over here. He says, if you can speak to her, if you still have access to having a conversation with her, he should assure her that he takes full responsibility for the situation and is doing everything that he can to remedy it. Yeah, but if your mother only, yeah, but if you just stop talking to this person, yeah, but if you just stop doing that or do it, none of that. Absolutely none of that. It's all me. I've got this. You have nothing to do with this. I apologize. It's my bad. I'm gonna fix it. If that's the approach, everything changes. The walls come down, you now have an opportunity to repair what needs to be fixed. If he can speak to the children, access to them, then he should reassure them that he has not abandoned them and that he will never abandon them, and explain to them that he's only left the home for a little while to be able to sort things out. He should tell them that he has every intention of returning home and that in the interim they should listen to their mother and help her. In short, he should act like a responsible gentleman. In Yiddish, there's a word for that. It's called a mensch. When you hear somebody say the guy's a mensch, that's what he's talking about. A responsible gentleman. Guys, this concept has gone the way of the dinosaurs. We're living in a day and age where people are so confused they don't even know what gender they are. They don't know how to behave even when they figured out what gender they are. That's the problem. And you can blame it on a million different things, and there are certain things that you can blame it on that are legit, but that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that you stop it, you nip it in the bud, you recognize that you have become a part of that problem and you don't have clarity on what it is to be a man and to be a father. And if this offends people who are on the left, who are concerned only about women's liberation and all of the nonsense and the destruction that that has brought to the world, then you're going to continue to suffer with this and it's going to continue to get exponentially worse. Exponentially. The well-intended women who tried to inject into the world this concept of equality between the genders have gone to an extreme and they have corrupted our society. And that's why today we find ourselves in the situation where we don't have responsible gentlemen anymore. People don't even know what it means to be a responsible gentleman. And if all the things, the stuff that I just read to you, don't resonate with you, it doesn't make sense to you, you find yourself making excuses as to why that doesn't apply today, you have to do this more than anybody else. That's the reality. This is what's going to fix the world. This is the stuff that's going to end divorces. This is the stuff that's going to build the family unit because this is what our children learn from. They see the father and how he interacts and his role in the family, being foundational, being somebody who is solid and committed and whose word is like a rock. I just want you to understand that it also goes with child rearing. It's the same theory applies that when you say something, you stand behind it. That when you commit to something, you follow through. Your children see that and they will emulate, they will mimic you. If you want your children to be happy and have successful relationships with their spouses, even if it's in the future, far in the future, especially if it is, because they're still learning from you as a child, then you have to be the representative. You have to mirror that behavior. That's it. If you don't, the odds are greatly stacked against them that they're going to have a corrupted marriage if you don't. Let's get into it. Five steps. Step one of the process, emuna. Shouldn't surprise you. Before we go anywhere, before you take any other step, the first thing you need to do are the three steps we talked about before. Number one, you need to work on your amuna, and there are three levels of amuna. So let's just remind you that you have to turn to your creator. Wait. There is a God. He runs the world. Everything he does for me is for my best. And he's the one who put me in this situation where I'm now out of the house. He's not the one that brought you to the level of having to get out of the house. That was you. Those were the decisions that you made. What he did was he allowed your wife the clarity of removing you from that toxic relationship so that you can work on yourself. That's the first thing you need to acknowledge. So now you need to go back and have a conversation with him and say, what did I do wrong? I need to fix it. It's not easy. It's very, very difficult. It's difficult to number one acknowledge, but it's also equally difficult, if not more, to actually impact that real change. Very difficult. The further you are along in your life, the longer you've been practicing these negative behaviors, the longer it's going to take for you to reverse them and the harder it's going to be. What's number two? Learn the rules of peace at home by carefully studying the book, The Garden of Peace. I should mention. Rabbi Shalom Arush, whose book we're reading from, has written many books. And he specializes in this department. Rabbis in general, like doctors, can be specialists in certain areas. Rabbi Shalom Arush is a specialist in the family unit in marriages. People have come to him, thousands and thousands of couples over the years, to help get their marriage back on track. He is a specialist in this. That's why he dedicates a lot of time in this book to this concept. But he has other books that are specifically designed to discuss marriage and family. One of them is The Garden of Peace. He has two books. One is for the husband and one is for the wife. The wife is not allowed to read the husband's book, and the husband is not allowed to read the wife's book. Why? Because it gives you ammunition with which to potentially, if you have a corrupted mind, to be able to use against your spouse. So you're not allowed to read their copy or their version of the book. You have to grab the man's version and the woman has to have the woman's version. If you read that book and you integrate even 25% of what's in that book into your life, you will have a marriage that is unmatched in its success. I guarantee you that because I know Ravshalomarush and The Garden of Peace, equally a powerful, powerful book that everybody should read, especially if you're in a relationship. He also has lectures online, all kinds of information that you can go and learn from. Look up Brazlov, Google it, and find all of the classes that he puts. A lot of them are in Hebrew, but some of them are translated as well. You should focus on learning. Learn the mistakes that you made. If you don't know what the mistakes are that you made, how can you fix them? If you don't know where you went wrong, then you will never be able to get on the right track. It is very difficult to get out of the delusions that you find yourself in when you live in a fantasy world. So you need to bring yourself back down to earth and remind yourself that you're a human being and that you can make mistakes. And in fact, clearly you have made mistakes. So now you go back to the source. Let me understand what I've done wrong, specifically. What certain things have I done wrong? Let me give you a little hint. That first paragraph in the beginning that talks about how you should interact with your wife now that you're out of the house, giving her everything that she needs and calming her mind and taking responsibility and owning everything, that in and of itself encapsulates the entire approach. If you've got that down, you're well on your way to success. But he says that you need to spend as much time as possible learning, learn what you did wrong so that you could learn to reverse it and start to behave in a proper manner. Tomorrow, we're into three and four, and after that, we'll get into number five. Have an amazing day, my friends. We'll chat tomorrow. 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.