From Chaos to Clarity: 40 Years of Marriage Insights: Larry Bilotta

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining us is— I started to say your last name first, Larry Bilotta. And I didn't ask if that's how you pronounce it. So I hope I did it correct.

So it's Bilotta.

Yeah, Bilotta. My apologies, Larry. Larry, welcome.

Thank you.

So you have a business. I don't know if it's called You Can Save Your Marriage, or if that's— if there's some other name. But tell us a little bit about that and how it got started.

So people ask me, are you a psychologist? And I say, no, no, no. My training is being married to the roughest, toughest woman in the world for 40 years. And, uh, and so what does the roughest, toughest woman for 40 years qualify me for? It qualifies me for learning about everything when you're in pain. So when you have two opposite people, a person who shuts down because they're literally brought up that way, the person who fights, person who's brought up that way, you've got the makings of a really bad relationship. Now, what kept us together, everybody asks. They ask that question because they think that when you are in pain, you should run away. That's what they all believe in. And so they ask that question. And so the answer is we were programmed from the very beginning to stay married and miserable by both sets of parents. Stay married and miserable, okay? So that's what they agreed on. What they didn't agree on is everything else because my parents and her parents never even met. They never even asked about each other. So they had no interest in each other. So that's a sign that something is going to go wrong. Yes. Okay. So now that we've got this brewing story of she's trained to fight and I'm trained to shut down, what did she always do? She always fought. What did I always do? I always shut down. So what I saw was shutting down. What she saw was fighting. So since that's the beginning, Uh, so I, I say the story is I had 27 years of a marriage made in hell, but in the 28th year I fell in love with my wife. But what I really don't say is I fell in love with myself, and that's really what happened to me. I fell in love with myself because I didn't like myself very much, right? So, uh, so I have this scale that I talk about all the time called the Chaos to Purpose scale. So it goes from 10 to 0. 10 is purpose, 0 is chaos. So what it goes is 10, 9, 8 is where purpose is. That's where your parents actually raise you for purpose and give you great values. 7, 6, 5 is they don't really raise you. That's the twilight zone. That's in the middle. And then in the end, 5 to 0, that's the chaos world. And that's where you had abandonment, abuse, and neglect. So if you have any form of that, that takes you lower and lower down to 0. So with that scale, for 15 years, I've been interviewing people about that scale. And the reason I've been doing it is because I've been wanting I'm wanting to know, who am I talking to? Who's this person? Like, I can't just think you're in a marriage, quote unquote, because I have no idea what a marriage is. But when I put them on the scale, now I know. So now if I'm talking to a guy and he's raised at a 10, and now he's got great values, and he's married to a girl who's a 2 on the scale, right? Now I know something. I know that his values are up here and her values are down here. And so when I talk about values, what I'm really talking about is when you're raised at a 10, a 9, or an 8, you get values like commitment, loyalty. You know what those are, they're built in. You have confidence, you have humility, you have acceptance, you have all these great things. But when you're raised in the bottom, 2, 3, 1, 0, you're easily raising values like selfishness, and demands and gossip and lying and survival. And it's all of those values become your values, right? So now we have those values. In the case of Marsha and I, Marsha was raised at the lower parts of the scale, but she had a kind of like a stable foundation of parents who stayed married, right? But they stayed married to stay married and miserable. I had the same thing, stay married, stay miserable. So now that we had this message inside, we couldn't leave. We had to stay. I had to continue to shut down. She had to continue to fight. So what did I do? I had to decide what I was going to do. What was I going to do? I was going to become the learner. The learner stays and learns. And typically, if you're married to a leaver, a leaver leaves, right? Because they saw the parents leave. And so just Like you said with the Chris Project, right? Right. What did he see? He saw what he saw in the beginning. So that beginning story is everything for everyone. So everybody, I always ask about the beginning because everybody tells me stories. And when they tell the story, they don't even know that this is the story of why you're going to live this way. You're going to live the way you were shown. It's all this very simple idea. You're going to live the way you were shown. And so people don't know that that's what they do. They just, they don't have a conscious awareness. That's why I do these podcasts, because I'm trying to spread the word that your childhood decides what you're going to be in life. And so, you know, we have the beginning, we have the middle, and we have the end. And so the beginning is the first 10 years, and that's when we get what we get. And then we have our teen years, which are testing years. Then we have our 20s, which is the indestructible years. We think we're going to live forever. And then since we're going to live forever, we don't learn much. So I have a program where I teach people called The Environment Changer, and The Environment Changer is about changing the environment of your mind. Well, I've got nobody in their 20s— nobody in their 20s wants to learn this stuff, right? Why? Because you're going to live forever. Why would you need to learn this, right? Right, right. But in their 30s and 40s, that's the place where the midlife crisis comes. That's where they want to hear this. And why do they want to hear it? Because now all the, the the stuff of childhood is coming. And so when it comes, now that's where the midlife crisis is. And what is the midlife crisis? That's where your childhood's abandonment or your abuse or your neglect is going to show up in your life. And so what happens is if a woman's married to a man and the man's rate is at the bottom of the scale, the midlife crisis comes to him. If the man is married to a woman and she's at the bottom of the scale, the midlife crisis comes to her. Right? And this is what nobody knows. They don't know because this is such a long-term lifetime thing. Like, but why does this come for me? Why is this happening? Right? So who do I talk to? I talk to stayers, people who stay in the marriage. I do not talk to leavers because leavers do not want to talk to me. Right? Right. Why? Because they're busy leaving. And so the stayer still stays and tells me the story of the leaver. That's where I've heard it for 15 years. These, what kinds of stories I've heard? Well, these are scientists, these are politicians, these are teachers, these are construction workers, these are analysts, these are all kinds of people that have lived these very productive lives. And so what's happening in these productive lives that looks so good? And the spouse who I'm talking to, the sayer, They're going, 'I can't believe it. I can't believe it,' right? Why can't they believe it? Because this person lives a life where they've been shutting down inside the messages of childhood. And so it's a 3-step process. Step number 1, 'No, I'm not doing that.' That's what happens. 'No, I'm not doing that.' Step number 2, 'I'm going to do this instead.' Step number 3, 'I'm going to act it out.' Those are the 3 steps, 1, 2, 3. And it could happen over days, weeks, months, years, over and over and over again. 30 years, 20 years, 15 years. What's happening? That person I'm talking to is married to a bucker. A bucker, like the bucking bronco. Right. The bucking bronco bucks off the rider. And that's really what these people are. They're from chaos childhoods, but they're bucking and fighting it over and over and over again. What they're doing is they're fighting their mind. They can't fight their mind. They're going to lose, right? Why? Because the mind can outlast their willpower. Willpower can't last with the mind. So since this is the way it works, and I've been listening to this over and over and over again for 15 years, so since people don't know this, what is the simple idea? The simple idea is if you're raised at the bottom of the chaos to purpose scale, you're going to be carrying pain sometimes a lot of pain. I've heard some horrendous stories of what people carry with no therapy, no help, no intervention of any kind, right? They're living this way in marriages that seem to be functional. They seem to be, you know, they've got the white picket fence and everything. They've got the kids and the mortgage and cutting the lawn, but that pain is down there. And because that pain is down there, it's gonna come out between 30s and 40s, they're gonna— it's gonna come out. Some people, they're late people. Some people, it's very early. But the, the bulk of the people between 35 and 45, that's really when it helps them. So the, the idea that I'm talking about is called changing the environment of your mind. And when you change the environment of your mind, what you're doing is you're leaving the place of fear and you're moving to the place of love. And that's the basic core idea. I leave the world of fear and I go to the world of love. So what is the world of fear? The world of fear is about 1,000 words that we have in the English language that are all horrible, horrible words like anxiety, fear, doubt, worry, frustration, hate. All those words, there's 1,000 of them. Okay, that's the world of fear, the world that we know. We all know that world and it feels bad to us. We don't like it, but we keep visiting often. Then we have the world of love. The world of love is also very different. A thousand words that we have in the English language, we can look them up. It's like joy, kindness, thankfulness, gratitude, loyalty, beauty, right? All the words, a thousand of them. Okay, so a thousand love words, which is the language of the world of love. And the world of love is a very great place to be. We love it. We want to be there, but why, why are we struggling so much? Well, it's because we're bouncing between the world of fear and the world of love. World of fear, love, fear, love, fear, love, fear, love. We don't stay anywhere very long. We keep on moving. And why do our lives look so chaotic? Because we're bouncing between fear and love all the time, and we can't stop. We can't turn it off. We don't even know we're doing it. We don't know we're leaving we don't know we're leaving love and going to fear. We don't know it. And because we don't know it, we don't know what to do. And so that's really why I teach the Environment Changer Course, because the Environment Changer Course is a course on changing where you live. Are you going to live in the world of fear and keep on visiting it back and forth, back and forth? Or are you going to finally make a commitment that I'm going to live in the world of love and this is the way I'm going to live? So, and by the way, I'll practice what I preach. There's my list right there. All right, there's my two lists, 25 words and 25 words. And so that's what I'm teaching. I'm teaching the idea that when you finally get 25 words of fear, you get them from the 1,000. And how do you do that? You go on the internet and look them up. You look up like all the, all the, the word, the, the, the struggling negative words. From that list, you handpick each word. So I have words like fail, rotten, scared. I have all the words that have visited me in my lifetime and I can relate to, right? So that's what's on that list. On the love list, I have words that I like and I admire and I want and I've experienced. Words like creative and inspiration and belief and divine and friends and hug Right? All those kinds of words. So I've got 25 on the left and 25 on the right. And so what I do is I take the list and every once in a while, every day, I will glance between the list on the left and the list on the right. And what happens every time? Like, I don't want this list down here. I want to be here. I don't want this here. I want this there. What is that forcing? It's forcing you to make a choice in your mind about how you're going to live. Right? Just a little simple glance back and forth and suddenly I'm making a choice. Right? So now when you make that choice, you don't transform. What you do is you're starting to move where you really want to live. And by living in this new place, in this list, because 25 words represents 1,000 words. And now you realize that 25 represents 1,000. I think I really want to be in this love list. I want to be— I like it, I feel good about it, it feels good to me, I like it, captures my imagination, I think I want to be here. And so you don't have to talk that through, you just have to glance left and left and right, left and right, left and right. And so now that you have it, now it's a place where you want to move, and when you want to move, you're probably going to go.

So I— there's a lot to unpack in, in what you just said, and I, and I agree with what you said. I think the interesting point for me is the point where I realized, and it was with the help of my executive coach, my business coach, and it's strange that it took me 50-some years to understand this, but that in the end, you can't change another person. You can only change yourself. Like this idea that if I could fix this about my wife, things would be better, right?

That's our first thought.

Yes, right. And I think part of it was, as an entrepreneur, we see problems and we fix them. That's what our job is. And And we can see the problem, you know, and it's clear, like, if you would just do this, recognize this, understand this, you know, it would all be different. But the reality is that not only was it the only person that I could affect was myself, but it was the only path through. Like, at the end of the day, there wasn't anything that I could do besides leave than to work on myself. And I think that's a sticking point for a lot of people because looking inside of you and saying, I don't want to be the way that I am, or saying things like, I don't like the person that I am, that's a That's a hard thing to do. It's easier to project your feelings on someone else.

That's exactly what— so that's what happens. That's why leavers leave. Leavers leave because of that same conclusion. You're a problem. I'm going to go where there isn't a problem. That's what a leaver does. What does a stayer do? A stayer says, I got to learn something from this. That's why a stayer stays, right? A stayer also stays because they have a value system of commitment. They have a value system of loyalty. Now, do they understand it? Nah, they theoretically understand it, but they don't really understand that they're staying because they're programmed to stay. That's what they got in the original time, right? The first 10 years, it all installs in the mind, and now it's here, and now I'm living on it. Because I'm living on it, I don't know I really have it, right? So it's difficult to learn when you're happy. So what I'm talking about is I'm talking about What happens to stayers? This is their time to learn. And so when they get in the learning place, they have a person who's a leaving person who creates pain. And so they don't just leave, they leave and they cause trouble while they're leaving, right? And because leavers leave by making trouble, they create the— that Peanuts character who creates all the dust, right?

Right?

Yes. Pigpen, right? Pigpen makes a lot of messes, right? Well, that's how leavers leave. They make a lot of, they make financial messes, they make emotional messes, they make children messes, they make all these messes, but that's where your environment of learning is. When you have a person who's creating that much pain, you're going to learn. But now the question is, while you're learning, you need a support system. And so that's really what I built. I built a community of people a separate course for men, a separate course for women. And so the men go into the men's course and they've got men to support them. Women have women support them. All right, so in that environment of being supported by positive people, that's a great place to learn because that's a place where you can actually get people caring for you instead of just lamenting over your losses, right?

And so, yeah, and you're right, you you don't learn anything unless there's friction. And I think for our marriage, we had 3 children right after we got married. I mean, we were done having children by 30. And we were very busy, like, you know, and so there wasn't time for reflection. There wasn't, you know, we were engaged 100%. But then when the kids leave, then the problems come back. And I think that's a recurring thing too, is that when there's that empty nest syndrome, you know, that these problems that you didn't deal with show back up. And a lot of people at that point decide that it's, you know, let's just move on and go find someplace else. But to your point, the only place you can learn is when— I hate to say it this way, but when there is pain, like you don't learn anything from comfort. And we are programmed, like you said, to avoid pain. Like, that's the way our brain, you know, it's a very reasonable thing to avoid pain. Have you— are you familiar with the book Secure Love? I don't remember the author's name. No. Okay. Um, she's, she's a, a psychologist, but it was a book that I read, uh, about a year ago, and, uh, and I, I found it very insightful because she used a completely different paradigm to describe what you're, you're talking about. But the way she described it is, uh, as emotional, uh, detachment, and, and those people that either are anxious about it and want to engage the other person and resolve it, or the people that avoid it, which it sounds like you are. So you shut down and you don't, and how your behaviors actually exacerbate the problem of the other person, right? Like, so I'm the anxious one, my wife's the avoider. And so when we would have a conflict, I would want to get it resolved. And I literally would follow her from room to room to try and resolve this.

I can picture that.

Yeah. And she's like, avoiding it. And so like, I'm chasing her, and she's trying to get away. And you can imagine that that is not conducive to constructive conversation. And the whole book is about identifying that and understanding it, but then creating these secure places to have the communication. It was interesting. There's an exercise in there where it was like 10 questions. And it was, in order for— not questions, they were statements. In order for me to feel secure, I need to know that, right? And then there was something after that. And like, I need to feel valued, I need to feel heard, you know, those types of things. And my wife and I sat down, and I remember this very vividly because it was one of the most intimate conversations we've ever had. And we didn't get through the list. I think we got through like 4 or 5. But it was each of us saying that to each other. But what was, what was interesting is her reaction when she read, like, in order for me to feel secure, I need to know that I am valued, right? Okay. When she said that, she immediately was thinking of it in terms of me. Because her response was, well, yeah, I think I value you. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not the statement. The statement is, you say it about yourself. Right? And, and that's, that's what resonates with me about what you're saying is that it's, it's, it's, it is marriage work, but it's really self-work. It's, you know, in working on yourself. Yeah, there might be some things that you need to work on in the marriage, but you have to work on yourself first.

Yeah, so that's what happened to me. I didn't know I was making a mature conclusion. But it was a mature conclusion to actually know that the problem is in myself. And so I did not ever say the statement, you know, the problem is I don't love myself. I didn't ever say that. I never concluded that. I just would— what I would have is I would have her explosions and I would have my pain, right? And between her explosions and my pain, in the middle was my learning. And so what I would do is I would get yellow pads of paper and sit by myself, and I start writing out what's happening and started to start writing out what I was feeling. And I was starting to write out what I thought she was feeling. Right. So as I started to talk about my feelings and her feelings and what was happening in terms of behavior, I was starting to learn all kinds of things and drawing all kinds of brand new conclusions. And so that's really what I was doing. I was studying myself in the context of a relationship.

Well, you know, that doesn't seem to be a normal response. Okay. I'm just going to be— I'm just going to be honest with you. I mean, most people when they're in their emotions, don't gravitate to a cognitive exercise like that. Right. So why, why is it that you did that? What allowed you to be able to do that?

It was the combination of the trapped phenomenon. I was trapped between the programming I had and the programming she had— stay married, stay miserable. And that's a very powerful thing. We don't even understand how powerful the message of, in our mind is, but it controls everything. And so now that I'm being held, literally held in place, I couldn't escape. So what am I going to do now that I have this can't escape place? I have to decide what I'm going to do. I got to do something about it, right? Because I was an entrepreneur. What do entrepreneurs do? They fix things. Well, what am I going to fix? I can't fix her. There's no reaching her. She was literally programmed to fight. I can't fix her, so I've got to do something about finding out about myself. And so in, in the, in working through the, the ideas of myself, I started to make conclusions and draw conclusions about who, who am I, why do I think this way, and I started to go back and look at my childhood and start to to realize I have beliefs of my parents. I started to slowly, slowly realize that. And so oddly enough, Marsha, in all her anger, you know, in between those angers, she would have revelations. And one of the things she, she invented was a thing I called the invisible lifestyle. It was called the invisible lifestyle because lifestyle is a word you look up and it says a way of life. 'a style of living that reflects the values of a person or group.' So that's lifestyle. Lifestyle is the values of your parents. So she started to say the invisible lifestyle. It's an invisible thing. You can't see the lifestyle of your parents and you don't like it. You don't like the lifestyle of your parents, but yet there it is. It's there. And that's why it was invisible. So she would teach me things like that in between her rages. So, uh, as a shutter downer, I really hated living in the environment of an angry woman, right? Really hard, right? So I couldn't even think straight. So I had to escape to a shut-off room to start to write out all these ideas. Why was I writing on these legal pads? Because I was writing and writing because I was exploring thought is what I was doing. I was exploring thought. Well, nobody explores thought. You only explore thought if you're in pain. Pain drives the need to explore thought. But if you don't do it, you won't find anything because you won't explore.

Yeah, I almost— as you were describing that, I almost envisioned someone in prison. Like, you know, like you, you, you can't physically do anything about your circumstances, and, and so what do you do? You have to go inward. Because there's, there's nowhere else to go. But to, I kind of want to dig in there. So you perceived that there was no option, that you were trapped. But a lot of people choose other avenues rather than thought and self-reflection, such as succumbing to depression, you know, addiction. How did you avoid that?

So this revolves around the idea of discovering the rat on the ship. Okay, so the analogy is you're a ship, and as a ship, you don't know it, but you have a rat. Now, a rat on a cruise ship is very bad for business. So you don't ever want to discover the rat. So when you realize that you have a rat, now you go and find the rat to get it off the ship. And so that's what I was doing. I was finding that I had a rat and that I was a ship. The ship is good. The rat is not. We have to get rid of the rat. So then I realized that she has a ship. She also has a rat. So I had two cruise ships and two rats. And so then I realized the rats can communicate. They can communicate an energy called against energy that goes back and forth between the ships. And it's so fierce, so strong, that the ships separate. Now, when you don't know, when you're the ship and you don't know why you're separating, you don't know that you have a rat. And so my analogy of the cruise ship is separating. A cruise ship is good, a rat is not good. Right? So what we have to do is get rid of the rat. But now how do you get rid of a rat that doesn't want to leave? How do you do that, right? So that's what I teach in the course. I teach about the idea of what the rat is, that it actually exists, that it thinks, that it can do all kinds of things, it knows you, and all those things. Once you realize there is a rat, you've got to understand what it is, so how to do the work of getting rid of it. And so that's a part of the course, getting rid of your rat.

So you, you were able to understand that there was a separate element from, uh, separate from you. Yes. And separate from your wife, and even separate from the marriage in a way. That was, uh, the, the actual problem. Yes, not the symptom.

That's right. The rat was the problem. So when I realized that the rat was the problem, then it became a job of finding the rat internally and removing get. Because what the rat does is generate a thing called against energy. And what against energy is, is I'm mad as hell, I'm not going to take it anymore. That's just being against, against everything. I don't like this thing, I don't like that thing. And there's all these things in the world that you pick, and there's thousands of things in the world to pick. And when you apply against energy to the things in the world that you're mad at, uh, you're really now in the world of fear and you can't get out.

Yes.

And because you're so firmly in the world of fear, you can't see the world of love because it's invisible to you. And that's what happened to me. I couldn't see there was a world of love, and I couldn't— like, how do I get to love myself? Well, I've got to see that there's a world of love. I've got to see that there's a possibility that I can even get there. Oh, but by the way, I got to get out of this rat world of fear. And so that's what I found out. I found out I had a rat, and that the rat lives in the world of fear, makes the world of fear, and actually creates a ship full of fear, right? So that's what I was. I was a cruise ship full of fear. So that's what I had to— I had to find out. So what was the, the story was I lived 27 years of a marriage made in hell. So what is 27 years? Well, then when they impeached Richard Nixon, that was the beginning of my, my, my life in hell with the—

so it was—

it was—

your marriage was never good from the beginning?

I mean, like, no, no, not from the very first day. Well, because we brought the two fight and shut down systems with us. Right. And that's what started immediately.

What brought you together?

The need for strength. See, the need for strength brought me together with her. Her need to control something brought her to me so she could control me. I'm soft-hearted. She's hard-natured. It was a combination that that initially drew us together. So looks, personality, conversation, none of that mattered. All that mattered was the driving forces of, of I can control him, her drive, and my need for strength. So my parents were not strong. That's why I needed strength.

At what point would you say in the marriage did you guys have that understanding of that dynamic, both of you together?

There was no both of us together.

Okay.

It was a very slow— because remember, we're talking about 27 years in a 40-year marriage. That 27 years was a very slow, sloppy discovery of idea after idea after idea. Now remember, it's happening to me. Now, I don't know what's happening to her internally. I know what's happening to me internally. So that's a slow, sloppy process. And because it was so slow and sloppy, I can't really pick days when anything started to gel. But I know that in 27 years, when I finally realized I do love who I am, she started to lose her fight. She started to take her edge off because her edge was like always on guard, always defensive, always attacking. Is always a setup that she had to live under because she had to live that way. She had to live that way because she considered me a threat. And so now when I stop becoming a threat, because the more I live in the world of love, the less threatening I become. But the more I live in fear, I don't.

Did she arrive at that same self-understanding at 27 years, or did it take her longer?

No, no, she did not. And then this is not even something that she and I could talk about. We couldn't even talk about it because remember, the part of her programming was we have no conversation. There is no talking in this marriage. So she grew up as a non-talking person in a non-talking home. And so there's no discovery. There's no— all there is is anger. And that's how you show everything. So because she had no ability to talk, we couldn't actually talk through anything. Everything was just self-discovery. Right. Right? Pain, self-discovery. Pain, self-discovery. That became the way of life. And so, and then it just naturally happened that she started to lose her fight. Not because I said anything, not because I did anything with my body or say anything with my mouth. She started to lose her edge because she started living in a safer environment. And so I was creating that safer environment for her.

Has she— has she come to that self-understanding now?

Not— well, she died in 2000— in 2019.

Oh, okay. I'm sorry, I didn't—

I missed that part. Oh, okay. I forgot. I forgot. That's why it was a 40-year marriage, right? So she died in 2019, and I don't actually know about her discovery.

Okay.

She took it to the grave with her, so I don't know. But I do know she was my teacher. And so when you call the most painful thing your teacher, now you're ready to start learning something that starts to matter, something you can actually do something with.

Were you, were you able to love her at the end?

So when you love yourself, you can love another person. Yes. When you don't love yourself, you can't love another person. And so that's a very simple idea that's so deep and so far-reaching that we can't even comprehend any of it, right? When you love yourself, you love another person, right? So knowing is like, look at how long it took me, 27 years, to love myself and start to feel so good enough about myself that I could love a person who is difficult. And took a long, long time, right? Why did it take so long? Because it was a slow, sloppy process.

And you, you personally never went to therapy?

No.

Interesting.

No, but I did seek out all kinds of therapy in terms of advice and books and reading and study of all kinds. So I did look for that. And so I was getting all kinds of outward input from teachers. Actually, when you, when you think about the Amazon self-help book list, specifically the Amazon self-help book list, There may be like 1,000 titles in there, 900 titles, right? And who's writing? Well, all the authors who want to teach themselves something, right? Or want to share what they learned with somebody, right? So all the great dead authors are there, all right? All the great living authors are there, right? And so all these people, they know all these They teach all these things with all kinds of examples and illustrations. What a great learning resource that is, right? Sure. But you can't, you can't read all those books. So how do you get to those books? Well, somebody tells you, "This book helped me." That's the only way you can know, right? Yeah. So, so, uh, so I wrote a book because I wanted to take all these ideas about the people that I talked to, the stayers, and I wrote a book called This Is Not the Woman I Married. And so, uh, This Is Not the Woman I Married. Why is the title that? Because that's what the people who come to me say. This is not the woman I married. This is not the man I married, right? So, so I have one book called This Is Not the Woman I Married. Now I have to work on the second book, This Is Not the Man I Married, right? Because we have to separate gender worlds for people because they need to actually see it's something that applies to them. So I put all these ideas that I have from this long 40-year discovery system. And I put it into the book and I feel good about it.

Right.

I finally have something that I believe in.

Right.

So this is what I believe in. Right. So, so that's what's there.

Are you going to have to have someone help you co-author it to get the female perspective?

So when I think about co-authoring, when I talk to women, specifically to women, Women tell me their whole female perspective.

Yes.

And because I have their whole female perspective, I have their whole female perspective, and I have it literally every week, right? Because every week I'm talking to the women. I'm, I'm talking about, right, this is not the man I married. That's what they, they've said. So I learned from them, and then I learned from men. And so that I have this male-female perspective, and I've had it for 15 20 years. So, uh, so that's where I'm learning. I'm learning from this laboratory of real life.

I— you were saying— you said something that, that, uh, I wanted to go back to. You said that you can't love others if, if you don't love yourself. And I, I'm thinking about the Old Testament and New Testament statements of loving others, or loving your neighbor as yourself. And I think how profound that is, because we, we are limited in our capacity to love others based upon how much we love ourselves. Right? And, you know, if you don't really like yourself, and you're just holding everybody else to that same standard, you can feel righteous to say, well, I'm not treating them any worse than I would treat myself. But it still falls short.

Well, when you're talking about falling short, and you're talking about the Bible, Uh, the Bible says love you, love, love your neighbor as yourself, uh, with that simple idea. Uh, but this now brings us to self-discovery. Do you love yourself, right? Well, what's— what do the Greeks say? Know thyself, right? Well, I don't know myself because I never really had to stop and know myself. So people who are— I've had people on 3, 3 divorces. They have 3 divorces in their history. And with 3 divorces, they've left 3 times, right? Or they've been dumped 3 times, right? But they're not learning anything, right? And that's really the key. The key is I'm not learning anything, so I can't know if I love myself. I can't even know who myself is, right? Know thyself is the, is the, is the, uh, the ancient, uh, wisdom. Uh, but how am I going to know myself? So I go back to the Amazon book list. What's in the Amazon book list? All kinds of ancient and modern-day knowledge, right? All kinds of— it's all there. Yes, right now it's just that it's so buried in such like thousands and thousands of pages, we consider it to be overwhelming. Yes. So we have to, we have to start somewhere. So we have to start with very simple books. And one of the simple books is not The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, right? That is not a simple book, right? Right. But there's people people who gravitate to that book because they're ready for it. And so now what you really got to ask is, well, where's my book? Where's the book I'm supposed to learn from? Well, you don't really know. You don't know what book you're supposed to learn from, but the answers are there because there's books by Marcus Aurelius, right, in Amazon, right? So there's ancient wisdom and there's modern, right? So there's Freud and all that, right? So all of it's there. The question is, where is your your book. And so I, I talk about this, uh, in my course, that when you need something, you call out to the universe and say, where is my book? Right? When you ask the question, where is my book, you're asking the universe to bring the book to you. And so something will happen. Some person will say something. Something, a little scrap of an article will be read by you. Something will happen to find your book. And so that's how you find your book. And so what does that lead to? Well, that leads to the next book, right? So now you're on a path. You're on a path of learning. And why are you on a path of learning? Because you decided that you're going to learn. And once you decide you're going to be the learner, the things you need to learn are going to come to you because you ask the universe. The universe is going to tell you. The universe is guided by love. How do we know that? Uh, we, we know that by all the people who have died and come back. That's how we know. We know it because those people have had this, this, uh, this like out-of-world experience, and they come back to say that the universe is literally governed by love. And that's what we know. And we know it from all kinds of authors like Eben Alexander, the guy who wrote Proof of Heaven, right? So we know Uh, Dolores Cannon, who wrote all these books on interviewing people who died and had between-lives memories, right? So that we know it from all kinds of sources, right? So we know the universe is guided by love. And that's why you can say, just in the privacy of your own life, where is my book? You're now asking the universe, where is my book?

It reminds me of the Chinese proverb of when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

Yes, that's exactly how it happens. When you say, where is my book? The universe answers. And that's why you're ready. And so when you're ready for those things, they do show up. And that's how you sort through a book with 1,000 titles in it. Right. How do you do that? Right. Say, where's my book?

Larry, I very much appreciate your time and your insight. How do people find your book and learn more about You Can Save This Marriage?

Okay, so the book is This Is Not the Woman I Married. And so under that title, you can use— right now it's on Kindle, but it's going to be released in January on everything. So that is all the things I believe in. Uh, but also ways to, to get, uh, you know, I have a lot of videos on my channel on YouTube. Uh, you can search Larry Bellotta on YouTube, you'll find the channel, and then you can go to the specific programs on YouCanSaveThisMarriage.com or LarryBellotta.com. And so that's going to be a broad brush of all the stuff that I've done. Perfect.

Uh, listeners, uh, check it out, uh, if you want to learn more about Larry. If you like the program. Please share the podcast, rate the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. And until then, know that you are not alone.