Every Fight Is Pushing Her Closer To Leaving

Hello everybody, how's it going? How we doing? Let's take those out for a second. We made it, here we are. Thank you everybody for showing up to Reboot Your Marriage 5-day retreat. We are going to learn a ton of stuff this week. You're gonna— we are going to turn the lights on in your marriage. You are going to know by the end of this week what is going on in your marriage right now, why it's going wrong, how to fix that, how to make it better, and how to make sure it doesn't happen in anymore. So first off, I want to say a big thank you to people that are here right now. You could have been anywhere, you could have been doing anything, yet you decided to be here today with me. God bless you. I love you for that. Thank you, and you get 5 stars for the commitment to your marriage. They say 90% of success is showing up, and you guys have done it. You've shown up, you're here, and you're listening. So give yourself a round of applause for doing that. Thank you very much. Now also, let's talk about how this week's going to work, right? You want to show up every day this week because everything is going to build on everything else. We put the, we put this program together in order for a reason. Today we're going to talk about how to stop the fighting in your relationship. Tomorrow we're going to talk about toxic, toxic habits, and then Wednesday we're going to talk about what to do if you've got a difficult partner, what to do if your partner's not cooperative. They've checked out on you, they're stonewalling, they're not involved in the process, all that kind of stuff. We're going to talk about that Wednesday. Now we're doing that in that order for a reason because if we just start talking about what's going on with a difficult partner and how to work with a difficult partner, it's not going to make sense because you haven't got the foundation, you haven't got the groundwork, right? You've got to understand what we're going to talk about today, which is what's going wrong in the relationship. We're going to talk about stopping the fighting. Well, why are you fighting? That's the question, right? Things are going wrong. That's what you're fighting about. We've got to sort that out. We've got to get that out of the equation. And when we do that, the rest of the week is going to make a lot more sense. So if you haven't got your workbook yet, make sure you get your workbook and work through that. It's going to be a ton of good stuff in there. Now let's also talk about how this is going to work, right? How are you going to get the result? Because I'm here to get you the result. I'm here to get you transformation. I'm here to get you genuine change in your relationship. So What's the best way to do that? Well, here's the thing, right? You're going to have to do things differently. What's got you to where you are is habits, rituals, and routines. It's habits, rituals, and routines. We live our life on autopilot, and this is why I've put toxic habits tomorrow in the, in the curriculum, right? Tomorrow in the agenda, because we need to understand some things first, and it's that we are running our lives by habits, rituals, and routines. Routines. If we're fighting, a lot of us are fighting and we don't even know why we're fighting, right? It's like we have a fight. I call it the stupid button. I call it hitting the stupid button. Why do we keep hitting that stupid? Why do we keep hitting that stupid button? Why, why, why, why do we do the things we don't want to do? Why do we do the things that we know we shouldn't do? Why do we do the things that we say in our mind, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, and then we do it anyway? We hit that stupid button every single time. But I can tell you, it's habits, rituals, and routines. Your life right now, every aspect of your life is defined by your habits, rituals, and routines. And let me give you an example of this to really make this absolutely concrete. Think about when you drive your car. How conscious is driving a car for you right now? How conscious is it? If you're anything like me, it's about 95 to 98% unconscious. We get in the car, we're messing with the radio, we're messing with this, we're messing with that, we're talking to the kids, we're talking to the wife, we're thinking about what's going on at work, we're thinking about what's going on at home. And driving that car is a completely unconscious experience. The only time it becomes conscious is if something goes wrong and we have to override the autopilot and take over. We are literally driving the car on autopilot. We are literally driving that car unconsciously, and that is how you are progressing through life right now. And that can be a good thing and that can be a bad thing, right? Because if habits, rituals, and routines are defining our lives, If you've got good driving habits, then you're going to do well, right? You're going to be safe. If your driving habits are safe, if your driving habits, rituals, and routines are good, then you're going to be fine. But if you've got bad habits, then you're going to be putting your life in danger every time you get in that car, right? So it's the same with your marriage. Now, it's your habits, rituals, and routines in your marriage. Like, why do we fight when we don't want to? It's a habit, it's a ritual, and it's a routine. Why do we say the things we say? Why do we do the things we do? It's habits, rituals, and routines. We've got to understand first off what destructive elements are going on in the relationship that those habits are leading into. And then that way, that way tomorrow when we start talking about destructive habits, rituals, and routines, we're going to really understand where those habits are hitting and the damage that they're doing. So that's going to be really, really important. So the next thing is, I say that because you're going to have to do things differently, right? I'm going to ask you to do some stuff, some homework and stuff like that, and you're probably going to go, ah, I don't need to do that. But that's the old habit, ritual, and routine, right? If you want to change marriage, you've got to change your habits, rituals, and routines. And here's, here's something to take away. Write this down, right? How I do anything is how I do everything. How I do anything is how I do everything. If you are given something that's outside of your traditional habits, rituals, and routines, or outside of something that you would ordinarily do, like maybe doing some homework or something like that, then because you don't want to do it, it means you have to do it, right? Because that's going to start to instill a new habit, ritual, and routine. And ultimately, that is going to be what what is going to cause the success in your marriage. You're going to have to bring about new habits, rituals, and routines, and it doesn't matter where you are right now. Let's talk about who this is for. That brings us nicely into that, right? Doesn't matter if you're a couple here looking for marriage enrichment, you're looking to get more out of your marriage. It doesn't matter if you're a couple who's here and you're really, really struggling right now. Your marriage is in crisis, your marriage is on the brink of divorce, and you're looking to recover that. You can be an individual who's separated. You're no longer with your partner at this point. You're living in separate, uh, separate accommodations, separate places, and you want to restore, and your partner's not communicating with you or they're not cooperative with you. It doesn't matter, this is for you as well. Or you could be in a relationship where you're still in the same house, you're still living together, but there's stonewalling going on. There's, uh, there's the partner's withdrawn, they're stonewalling you, they're shutting you down. So you're still in the same house but there's just no real communication going on. This is going to be for you as well because ultimately it's the same process for everybody. Relationships thrive in environments. They thrive in a certain environment, and depending on where you are in your relationship, it's how badly that environment has been damaged, right? If you, if you have separated at this point, it's because that environment that a marriage thrives in has been really badly damaged and that person can no longer stay in that environment. And you're going to understand why that is by the end of this class today. We're going to go about an hour a day roughly. But by the end of today's session, you're going to understand why they've separated from you, and once you understand why they've separated, then you can start to rebuild that, right? If you, if your partner's stonewalling you right now, there's a reason for that, and you're going to understand why that is. If you're having difficulty with your partner at any level right now, it's because certain things have happened in the relationship, damage has taken place in the relationship, and you're going to understand, you're going to know exactly what that is by the end of this session today, and you're going to know what to do about that. You're going to know the action that you can start to take, right? So I want to give you hope here. I'm telling you, there is hope. We're Christ-based, we're God-centered organization. We believe in miracles. I'm going to tell you my story in just a minute, just so you know where I've come from and what I'm going through, or what I've been through in, in my relationship with my wife and relationships previous to that. Just— and the reason I'm going to tell you that is so you can see that I'm coming from a place here. If I, I get you because I was you, I understand you because I am you, right? I'm not sitting here saying I'm a marriage coach because I've read a few books and I get what's going on. You know, I've read the books, I'm just going to recite that. I'm going to teach you some love languages and I'm going to teach, you know, the whatever, yada yada yada, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's not where I'm coming from. I'm coming from a place where my marriage was utterly broken. I was utterly broken. The things we're going to talk about today, I had absolutely utterly destroyed in my relationship out of ignorance, self-sabotage, stupidity, whatever you want to call it. And I was in absolute dire straits. My marriage was in dire straits, and I want to share that with you so you can see that no matter where you are, there's hope for you. You can come back. And I want to share with you how quickly my marriage was restored, and you're going to understand it too. I don't just want to tell you, hey, my marriage was restored like this. I'm going to show you why it was restored, and I'm going to show you why it's scientific law that that happened and why the same thing can happen to you. And you're going to understand that. You're going to have a foundational understanding of why my marriage was restored And that's going to be good because you're going to be able to see that and you're going to be able to apply that to your marriage. This is not chance, this is not luck, this is not favoritism, right? This is scientific principles, and if you apply them, you will get the results. Now, there's a few things that before we get going, I want to give you the best chance of success for this week. So there's a couple of things I want you to do differently. Now, I know during this week A lot of times you're going to say things like, "I know that," or, "I get that," or, "I've heard that before." I want you just to put that aside, okay? Because right now things are not working or you wouldn't be here, right? Let's just be honest. Things are not working for you, so what you think you know might not be what you actually know, or what you know might not actually be effective or true, right? Can we kind of agree on that? So whenever you hear this voice in your head that says, I know that, I get that, I've heard that before. Just share with that voice and just say, thank you for sharing, and keep an open mind about what it is going on, because that's a habit, that's a ritual, and that's a routine. When you hear something in your head and you go, I know that, I've done that, I've tried that, that's a habit, ritual, or routine, and you've got to change that. So the way we're going to start to do that is to say, thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing with me. And just continue on because we've got to change our story, right? Right now it's your story that's keeping you where you are. If you want to change your life, if you want to change your marriage, you've got to change your story about your marriage. Now I work with a lot of people, I've worked with thousands of people over the year now, years now, and it's their stories that keep them where they are. It's their stories that keep them stuck. So I'll talk to people and they say, we've tried everything, we've tried absolutely everything and nothing works. It's like, well, that's a story, right? We've tried everything and nothing works. That's a story. But let's just unpack that very, very quickly and see how untrue and how damaging that is to your relationship. So have you tried everything? Have you tried Gestalt therapy? Have you tried NLP? Have you tried cognitive behavioral therapy? Have you tried traditional talk therapy? Have you read every book on the subject? Have you tried Dialectic behavioral therapy? Have you, uh, have you, have you gone to counseling? Have you— yada yada, you know, you get what I'm saying, right? Have you tried all of these things? The answer is no, you haven't. You absolutely haven't. You haven't read every book, you haven't taken every class, you haven't tried every therapy, you haven't gone to every coach or counselor, you haven't tried everything. That's a story. You're saying, I tried everything and nothing worked. That's just a story right now. Let's change that story so it empowers us, so it supports us. If you are If you're telling yourself the story, "I've tried everything and nothing works," well, do you think your mind is looking for a solution right now? Do you think your brain is believing that there's a solution right now? Do you feel positive about the fact that there's a solution? No, absolutely not. You're just going to feel like nothing works and it's your story that's keeping you stuck there. So let's change that story from, "I've tried everything and nothing works," to, "In my limited experience, everything we've tried has not succeeded so far." Now that's true. The first statement is not true at all. I've tried everything and nothing works. Simply not true. Simply not true and disempowering. The second statement, everything we've tried in my limited experience has not yet worked, but I'm still hopeful. That is also true. That is true and that is empowering. So let's, let's change our stories, right? So the fact that I've tried everything, nothing worked. We tried therapy, it didn't work. We did this, it didn't work. I've tried blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it didn't work. Thank you for sharing, right? Thank you for sharing, and let's move on from that. Because I'm telling you, there is hope. You can save your marriage, but you've got to change your story. You've got to change the story that you're telling yourself. You've got to change it from, "I've tried everything and it didn't work," to, "I have not found the solution yet. I know the solution exists, but I just haven't found it yet." That is going to empower you. That is going to create an atmosphere in your mind that makes you move forward. So if it's alright with you, having shared some of those principles there about what's going to— what really needs to happen to give you the best chance, let me share my story with you if that's okay right now. So when me and my wife— she's from— I'm in Australia right now and we live in Australia. My wife's from Australia, but she's of Middle Eastern origin. She was born and raised in Lebanon in the Middle East. Her parents are Middle Eastern. They speak, you know, they're full-on Middle Eastern. They moved here in 1989. After spending their whole lives in Lebanon. They're a Middle Eastern family, right? And she was born and raised in the Middle East. And although she, in appearance and speech and accent and stuff like that, would appear to be Western, her psychology is very Middle Eastern. And that's a very different culture to the West. So that, that's one thing, right? She's Middle Eastern, I'm Western. Now I met her in the UK, in England. I'm English, she's from Australia, and she was on a work visa at the time. And we fell in love, we came together on common ground, and we had this dream we were going to live together. But unfortunately, there was this visa issue, right? And the visa expired and she had to go back to Australia. And we had to apply for a wedding, a marriage visa, and we got turned down for that marriage visa. Now, we didn't have any money at the time. We were musicians, right? If you listen to the songs at the beginning of this in the intro, that's me and my wife playing that music. We're musicians. That's how we met. And of course, the poor musician, it's a stereotype for a reason, right? Musicians don't have any money, and I had no money and she had no money, and we got declined for a marriage visa. And that was like $3,000 or $4,000 to apply for a marriage visa, and we got declined, and then we got declined on the appeal, so we had to reapply again at a later date, and that's $4,000 we didn't have, and then another $4,000 we didn't have. So that was putting a lot of stress on the relationship. Now remember, she's Middle Eastern, I'm Western, and She— everything was different, right, about her. She was upper middle class, her family accountants, doctors, lawyers, professors. I'm working class, you know, it's like if you get through the 10th grade in my family, you get a certificate, right, because we did good. We're an uneducated working-class family. She's an educated middle-class family. And not only were we separated during that time, which actually ended up being a year, but she was getting an awful lot of pressure from her family to end the relationship. And of course, I had no idea when we were going to come back together. And the way I dealt with that was drinking. Now, I had a habit of drinking. You know, remember habits, rituals, and routines. My way of dealing with stress was through drinking. That was my habit, ritual, and routine. Of course, now I'm in a very, very stressful situation, so I started drinking and over— or increased my drinking. I was always drinking, but I increased my drinking. And over a period of a year or so, that drinking got really, really, really bad. Now, finally we got the visa. We got together and she'd had a lot of pressure applied to her at this point from her family to really— they didn't really want her marrying me. But we finally got together again and we were getting married. We had the wedding ceremony stuff planned. But I was bringing a lot of baggage at this point. I was bringing a lot of alcohol use, even addiction at this point into the relationship, which was really changing me for the worst. And then we finally get back together and a lot of the pressure that her family's put on her about me is now getting applied back on me, and then the alcohol abuse is getting applied back on her. So we started out— when we got married, we were in trouble, right? From day one, really, we were in trouble. There was friction and there was tension there. And to cut the long story short, because you don't want to hear all of this, right? Over the next couple of years, the drinking increased and actually turned into really, really hardcore drug addiction for me. I mean, it was really serious. I'm not talking about having a few beers and smoking a joint. At the end of the night. I'm talking about hardcore addictive drug use and, and, and really serious alcohol use that was absolutely utterly destroying the relationship. And we're going to talk about some of the things here in a minute about what has to be present in a relationship for it to succeed, and you will see that I was not just destroying that, I was actively going after destroying that. I was actively going after destroying the relationship, and you're going to see that here in a few minutes. And it got to the point, you where the relationship was— I never, I never hit my wife. I never abused my wife in that way, but I really was abusive. And this is really, it's quite, this is really like, I don't even like to think about this stuff at this point. I mean, for me, it really got to the point I want, I just want to convey to you how bad it was so you can understand that wherever you are right now, there's hope for you, right? And for me, to be honest with you, it's really difficult for me to even think about this stuff and acknowledge who I was and how I behaved in that time period because it's painful for me. I would rather just forget it. I'd rather just suppress it and just write that off and never think about that again. But that doesn't help anybody, right? It's like, I have to speak about this stuff with you and be honest with you. And I don't even want to be honest with myself about this stuff a lot of the time, let alone speak on a class like this to people about what's going on. It's like, I was literally— I became psychologically abusive to my wife. I was not a nice person. The alcohol and the drugs literally had changed my personality and turned me into someone that I didn't recognize, that I didn't want to be, that was physically very unpleasant to be around and psychologically very abusive to my wife. I was— that's just the way it is, right? I don't want to sugarcoat it and I don't want to play it down. I have to be honest about what I was and what was going on. And it was an abusive situation. And it's only by the grace of God that my wife actually stayed with me. It was only her obligation to her marriage vows, for better or for worse, you know, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish for better or for worse. It was only her integrity to herself and her integrity to her marriage vows that kept her in the relationship at that point. It wasn't about me, it wasn't about any of that stuff. It was her integrity to herself and her vows, and I've got to respect her for that. That's the only thing that kept us together. So I just wanted to keep drinking at this point, right? I just wanted to keep drinking. So anything that would buy me time, anything that would allow me to drink more and stay married was fine. So she wanted me to go to counseling, she wanted to get— wanted me to go to therapy and stuff like that. So I agreed to that, and I went to therapy for a year, and it was an absolute joke. It was an absolute joke. I'd sit there and I'd literally make fun of the therapist, and, you know, I'd be making fun of him in, in the nicest way possible so he didn't know it, but I was mocking what was going on, and it really didn't work, and nothing was going on, and my wife didn't see any improvement whatsoever in me over that period of a year. And the God knows how many tens of thousands of dollars we spent on therapy at that point, and there was absolutely no improvement in the relationship whatsoever. My drinking was continuing to deteriorate, my drug use was increasing. I would literally go up in the roof. I had a loft in my house, and during the day I'd go buy a bottle of whiskey, and I'd have my little, little crack pipe up there as well. And I'd just go up in the roof, and I just, I just smoke my drugs, and I drink my alcohol, and then I come back down and just, just be just, just be wrecked. And you can imagine what was going on in the house while that was going on, right? It was, it was absolutely appalling, absolutely disgusting behavior from me. But I got to own that. And that's the start, right? We got to own, we got to own our behavior. We got to face it. We got to, we've got to acknowledge what's going on. Because as Jesus said, know the truth and the truth will set you free. Light— darkness cannot withstand light. When you turn the light on in a room, the darkness leaves 100 times out of 100. 100 times out of 100. And I remember I came down from that roof one time and I was high, I was lit, my eyes must have been all bloodshot. I mean, I'd just been smoking my crack pipe and I'd been drinking my whiskey up in the roof and I came down and my wife was in the shower and I just went into the shower, into the bathroom where she was, and I just told her, I said, "Hey, I was just up in the roof and I just drank half a bottle of whiskey and I just smoked a crack pipe and I've been doing that for a long time." that's what I do when I go up in the roof. I tell her I had like some model planes or something, I don't remember what it was. I had some hobby stuff up in the roof and I go up there to play with my toys. That's what she thought I was doing. And I told her, I just came down and I said, hey, look, I'm up there smoking crack and drinking whiskey. That's what's going on. That's what's causing all the problems in the relationship. I just came down, I just told her, and I was absolutely amazed at her response. She goes, "Thank you for telling me that, and we're going to get through this. Thank you for telling me that, and we're going to get through this." It was amazing, and you're going to see in a minute why that is so, so important, why that is so important that she said that, and why that will work for you as well. And the second I turned the lights on and shone the light into the darkness that I was in— I mean, I was in the pits of hell, man. This stuff had a hold on me that I could not break. I could not break it. There was no way out of it for me. I was a slave. I was enslaved, and those chains were strong. I had no way out of it. And shone the light on that. That when I went into that bathroom and said, hey, I just need to tell you something, what I've just been doing up in the roof, that turned the lights on, that shone the light on the darkness, and the darkness dispersed, and my marriage healed. I can say literally, like, the transformation started in that bathroom at that time. With a short period of time, the transformation was absolutely miraculous. Now, because what happened was at that point We agreed to see a second, or I agreed to see a second, a person, a mentor, I would say. And I went to this mentor just a few days, just a few days later. When they, as they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, right? And I was ready. I was finally ready. I'd faced, I'd shone light into the darkness. I'd confessed to my wife what was doing. I confessed what was going on. And all of a sudden, the teacher shows up, and I meet with this guy, and I'm talking to him for like 5 minutes, and he just goes, I'm just going to stop you, Cody. I'm just going to stop you because I can't work with you. This is hopeless. Your marriage is hopeless. Your marriage is hopeless, and I can't take your money, and I'm not going to waste my time. I'm like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? I'm like, hopeless? That's not exactly what you want to hear from a counselor, right? From a therapist. And he goes, well, how long have you been doing this for? And I'm like, "Um, I don't know, 3, 4 years." And he's like, "And have you known that this is destructive to your relationship?" I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I have." And he's like, "And you've done nothing about it. What action have you taken?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm, you know—" "You just told me you talked to another therapist for a year and all you did was sat and make fun of him. You got people here trying to help you and all you're doing is making fun of them and playing games with them." He goes, "You tell me where the hope is, Cody. You've known this for 3 or 4 years now." You've done nothing about it for 3 or 4 years. No telling the damage that you've done to the relationship. There's no hope for you. And I was like, in that split second, I lost her. In that split second, I lost her. Like, for a second there, I was like, she's gone. I can't, I can't. I understood what it felt like to lose her. And he gave me the gift. What he did, he gave me the gift of losing her without actually losing her. And I knew what it felt like to lose her, which was something that I'd never faced before in my delusion and my stupidity. It's like, through all of my behavior, I thought, well, she'll stay, she'll never leave, she'll never leave me, she'll put up with me, I'll deal with this at some point, some indefinite point off into the future. And I'd never actually faced the possibility or understand or experience the emotion of her leaving. And he gave me that gift of losing her, and I was like, no, you can't, you can't leave me here, it's not over, I promise, I'm ready, I'm ready to change. And he's like, are you? Are you ready to change? And I'm like, I'll do anything. He's like, will you? Will you do anything? I said, I'll just— whatever it takes, whatever. Don't leave me here. Don't. Please help me. And he goes, okay, we'll see. We'll see. We'll give it a go and we'll see. But he's like, you got to be committed, man. He's like, as soon as I see you going back to your old ways, we're done. As soon as I see you giving up, as soon as I see you taking convenience over commitment, we're done. He's like, I'm working with you and you're on very, very thin ice right now. So we started to work together and over a very short period of time, the marriage was, it was transformed to from, from being absolutely, I mean, you can imagine, right? I mean, this is, this is an emotionally abusive situation. There's serious drug and alcohol use and yada yada yada. It's like you can imagine how bad this is. I was able to turn that around. I want that. And what he shared with me over the upcoming weeks and months and period of time is what I want to share with you over the next week. He gave me a new perspective, he gave me a new story, he gave me a new way of seeing marriage, of understanding marriage and understanding what it is that builds a marriage and what it is that destroys a marriage. And I'm telling you, I'm here to tell you through my own experience that it works and it works very quickly. So that's what I want to share with you over the next 5 days, to give you some of the insight that my mentor shared with me and give you some of the results that my mentor gave me, right? And to give you the hope because it is there. So let me grab a drink here. That, that's kind of the story. We'll talk a little bit about that because it's really important. You can see how these principles are going to work through my story, and hopefully you can see your own story through my story as well, right? Have my tea quickly. So there are 3 pillars to saving a marriage, or there are 3 pillars to a great great marriage, right? And we've got to understand the first thing here is a great marriage is a process, it's not a product. It's not a product. You can't just go after a great marriage. You've got to understand the process in which a great marriage shows up. And I've said this before, but I liken it to the process of making ice, right? If you want ice, you have to understand the process in which ice is made. You need water, you need a sub-zero or freezing environment, right? That's what you need. You can't just go, I want ice. You've got to understand the process and then you've got to provide the elements in which ice shows up, and if you're faithful to the process, the product will show up. And that is what we're doing here. You've got to understand that saving your marriage or a great marriage is a process. It's not a product. We can't look at it as a product. So there are 3 things in the process. There are 3 things in the environment that needs to be present for a marriage to succeed. Now, the first thing that we need is emotional safety and security. Absolutely 100% critical. Second thing is there needs to be mutual respect and admiration. And the third thing is that there needs to be a shared vision, okay? There needs to be emotional security, there needs to be mutual admiration, and there needs to be a shared vision. Now, the reason I told you my story first, because let me show you what happened here, right? We go back to the bathroom where I come down from from the roof and I'm high as a kite and I go and tell my wife, I've just been up in the roof and I've been smoking crack and drinking whiskey. And her response was, I really appreciate you telling me that. Thank you for sharing that with me. We're going to get through this together, right? We're going to get through this together. So what was the first thing that she created there in that situation when she said— she could have lost her rag, right? She could have lost her mind. She could have gone like, are you serious? Like, all this time you've been putting me through this and you've been doing that. And so every time you've been up in the roof, that's what you've been doing. And how long you've been doing that for? And you've been spending our money on this. She could have really lost it, right? She could have, she could have really lost it. In which case, what do you think I would have done? I would have gone, right, see if I ever tell you anything ever again. See if I ever share anything with you ever again. And that probably would have been the end of the, end of the marriage, right? Emotionally, if she hadn't provided emotional safety and security at that point, That could have been the end of the marriage because I would have gone back into darkness and I would have taken my habit back undercover is what would have happened. But no, she said, I appreciate you telling me this and we're going to get through this together. So we're going to get through this together. What is that? What's a shared vision and a shared goal? We had no shared vision and goals in our relationship at that point. We were 3 or 4 years into the disaster at this point, and there was really all of the shared visions we had at the beginning of the relationship were gone. They were destroyed. They were no longer there. We had no shared goals. We had no shared vision. Up until this point, I had provided no emotional safety and security for her whatsoever. In fact, I'd actively destroyed it. I'd actively gone after destroying her emotional safety and security because I wanted to keep drinking. I wanted to keep taking the drugs. And if she asked too many questions and we had to talk about this, then I'd be busted, right? I'd have to talk about it. So every time she'd start asking me questions about What's going on with you, Cody? How come you're acting this way? How come this is happening? I would actively try to destroy that emotional security that she had, that emotional safety, because that would shut down the conversation. She'd ask me a question, you know, how come you're acting this way right now? Can we talk about this? And I'd be aggressive and I'd be rude and I'd start shouting or I'd throw a cup across the room or I'd smash a plate or something like that. I'd do something that would make her go, I'm never asking him a question again, because I did not want light shone into the darkness. I wanted to keep my habit, so I utterly destroyed her emotional safety, utterly destroyed her emotional security. And this is important, right? Because I'm saying it doesn't matter what you've done. I never hit my wife. I was never abusive in that way, but I was not a good man. I was not a good husband to her. And it's like I actively went out of my way to destroy that emotional safety. Yet there was still a way back. There was still restoration. From that. And it's way back for you as well. So back to the emotional safety. When I went, when she said, "Thank you for sharing that, I appreciate it," it's like she gave me, she gave me the opportunity to share more because I knew I wasn't going to be judged. I knew I wasn't going to be hit with a hammer. I knew I wasn't going to, it wasn't going to be painful. And then when she said, "We're going to get through this together, we're going to find a solution, we're going to get through this together," because that produced the shared goal, right, the shared vision. And my admiration for her, like, and her admiration for me. We developed mutual admiration instantaneously at that point. She admired me for coming clean, saying, "Hey, this is what's going on. This is the real problem within the relationship. This is the real problem within the relationship." She had admiration, a mutual, and respect for me for saying that, and when she said the way she handled the whole situation, I just had to respect her for that as well. So we got That emotional security was restored in a second in the bathroom. The mutual admiration and respect was restored and built in a second in that bathroom. And the common vision and the shared goal was built in a second in the bathroom, right? We built all 3 of those pillars simultaneously in one go. So let's look at, let's look at those individually, right? So hopefully you can see how when you can genuinely bring these elements together, things can change very very quickly. They can change very quickly. So let's look at each of these elements individually and see how they're applying to your relationship, because right now if you're fighting, these elements are not there, right? If you're fighting with your partner all the time, is there mutual respect? Now, what a great question to ask yourself is, what would I have to believe in order to engage in this behavior, right? If, if you're fighting with your partner all the time, what would I have to believe to fight with my partner all the time? Would there be mutual respect there? If I'm fighting with my partner, would there be mutual respect there? If I'm fighting with my partner all the time, do we have a shared goal, right? These are canaries in the coal mine. These are the dials in your relationship that are telling you if you're overheating, if you've got no oil. These are the things that are telling you if you've got problems in your relationship, right? So let's look at emotional security. What is it and why is it so important? Well, emotional security is the ability for your partner to be themselves with you completely, totally, and 100%, and that their ability to share with you whatever it is without judgment, without anything, right? It's just the ability to share who they are with you and to be completely open and to be completely honest with you. And as I said, the reason we're doing the toxic habits tomorrow is because you're going to see how these toxic habits destroy emotional security. You're going to see how these toxic habits destroy emotional emotional safety and how they destroyed the shared vision, all that kind of stuff. You're going to see how they actually apply instead of just going, hey, yeah, obviously that's a toxic habit. I can see that's going to be bad. But it's like now you're going to start to see what they're actually attacking in the relationship and why it's damaging and why it's dangerous. You're going to actually get to see that, right? So if you, if you've destroyed emotional— if your partner doesn't feel like they can openly communicate with you and be themselves with you openly and honestly, then they're just going to shut down, right? So I had a guy, not very long ago come to me and say, "My wife of 25 years has left me and she doesn't even know why." She doesn't even know why. She's asked her why she's left and she goes, "Oh, I just don't know. I just don't want to be married anymore." It's like, I can tell you straight away that he has created zero emotional security for his wife. You think seriously after 25 years of marriage and 3 kids and 25 years of life together, probably 30 years if you include dating or whatever, that she's just going to leave and she's got absolutely no idea why? No, she knows exactly why she's leaving. She just doesn't have the emotional security to tell you because it's going to be too much drama. If she says to her husband, "The reason I'm leaving is because of this and that," that man is going to go, "Bla bla bla bla bla, no it isn't, that's not true, that's rubbish, well you do this and you do that," and she's just tired of that. She doesn't have the emotional security or safety to communicate why she's leaving the relationship So therefore she just goes, I don't know why I'm leaving. That's the canary in the coal mine, right? That is telling you that you have no emotional security in your marriage. That should tell you exactly what the problem is. When your wife or your husband says, I just don't know, like, I just don't know why I feel this way, or I just don't know why I want to leave the relationship, or I just need some space and I don't— it's like, and I don't know why. What they're saying is, it would be too painful for me to tell you why. It would be too much drama. It will cause a fight. It will cause a fuss. I've tried so many times to tell you what's wrong. I've tried so many times to tell you what the problem is, and every time you just attack me. You just beat me. You just hit me in the head, and I can't tell you how I feel because you won't allow that. You won't give me the space. You won't give me the security just to tell you how I feel about something without needing to defend yourself or needing to attack me in return. That's what emotional security is. Anybody that's saying, "My wife or my husband doesn't know why they're leaving. My husband or my wife doesn't know what the problem is." They simply don't have the emotional security to tell you what the problem is, right? They simply don't have the emotional security. It's going to be too painful to tell you what the problem is, so they simply don't do it. Now, we're going to go into how to deal with a difficult spouse, right? How to deal with an absent spouse, how to deal with separation. On Wednesday, so I don't want to go into all of this stuff right now about how do you rebuild that emotional connection, how do you rebuild that emotional safety and stuff like that. We're going to talk about that because if you're, if you're estranged right now, if you're separated, that is your number one goal. That is your number one goal, is to re-establish emotional safety and emotional security. And I'm telling you that it's your habits, rituals, and routines that have destroyed that. You're not a bad person, right? You're not a bad person. Like even in my deepest, darkest hour, I did not really— I wasn't vicious and malicious. It's like I started drinking and taking the drugs because I was in pain. My wife was— my fiancée at the time was 20-some thousand miles away. And there was no, there was no end in sight, right? There was no end in sight. There was no date to look forward to. It's kind of like COVID. It's like we're in this and it's just go until it's done, right? Who knows? Could be a year, could be 5 years, might never go back to normal. It was kind of like that. I started drinking and taking those drugs because I was in pain. That was it. It wasn't because I'm like some crackhead or some alcoholic. I was in pain and I needed some pain relief. That was it. And then that pain relief turned into a big problem. And it was literally like demonic possession, right? They possessed my body and made me behave a certain way. And out of that, habits, rituals, and routines were formed. It wasn't that I set out, "God, I want to be emotionally abusive to my wife. I want to be this and that and everything else." No, no, no. I started out just needing some relief from pain and that created habits, rituals, and routines, and that then created a massive problem in the relationship. So if you've destroyed that emotional safety or security in your relationships, don't beat yourself up over that. It might just be, and it probably just is, you're just trying to get your needs met. Everybody is just trying to get their needs met. That's, that's all it is. Everybody's trying to get their needs met. Sometimes we just do it in a way that's very unhealthy. I needed to get my need met for pain relief. I just did it in a way that was very unhealthy and very destructive. There were better ways to do it, but the consequences are real. So that's what we've got to understand. Now the second part is going to be mutual admiration, right? Mutual admiration. How can we build a relationship together if we don't have mutual admiration for each other? How can we do that? We're on the same team, right? And like, I remember I've talked to so many people and I'm like, you don't even like your wife. How can you, you know, you say, I love my wife and I want to, I love my husband and I want to restore this. And I'm like, you don't even like them. I'm like, listen to yourself. Listen to the way you're talking about them. Listen to the story that you're telling. It's like all you're doing is badmouthing and bitching about and talking down and running down and saying all kinds of horrible things about your partner. You don't even like them. And let me ask you a question. If I said the things to you, if I called you the things, you know, you're saying, you're saying your wife is narcissistic. You say she's this, you say she's a liar, you say she's dishonest. You're saying it's like if I called you those things, would you have any respect for me? If I said those things about you, would you like me? Would you want to be around me? Would you want to be in an ongoing intimate relationship with me? Would you want to share your life with me? It's like this is really easy when we think about it, right? It's like change your story about your wife. Change your story. Okay, so you want to stop the fighting immediately. I'm going to give you a tool now, okay? Because we're talking about like, okay, understand why the fighting is happening, understanding what the breakdown, why it's happening theoretically. But let me give you a tool how to get out of this, how to turn this around instantly, because I'm always going to do that. That's the kind of guy I am. I'm never going to give you a problem and then not give you a practical solution and a way to get out of it. I'm never going to explain something to you and then not give you a practical solution. So the way you stop the fighting immediately is you change your paradigm. Or to put it another way, you change your story, right? Now let me, let me put that in a practical story so you can understand. Let me grab some tea because my throat's getting a bit dry. So there's a story to illustrate this of a man on a subway and he's got 3 kids with him and the kids are very unruly. And they're being loud and they're being obnoxious, and as the journey goes on they're getting louder and they're getting more obnoxious. And the passengers around, you can see, are visibly distressed, they're irritated and they're getting more distressed, and as the journey goes on these passengers on this subway are getting more and more distressed and more and more angry at this man with the 3 unruly kids. And finally someone just cracks it and goes over to the man and says, "Sir, this is a public place, can you please get control of your children? They're behaving very inappropriately right now." And the man just looks at him and he goes, "You know what? You're right, they're not behaving well at all right now, but we've just come from the hospital and their mother just passed away a few hours ago and they don't really know how to deal with that right now. They don't really know how to process it and this is kind of how they're doing it. And to be honest with you, I don't really know how to deal with this and process this either. So yeah, you're right, these kids have behaved badly and I'm sorry. I'll see what I can do." Now, what do you think happened to those passengers when he told his story? What do you think happened? They went from being irritated, angry, pissed off, ready to fight with this guy. What do you think happened after he told them the story that they just lost their mother just a few hours earlier in the hospital? They went from being angry, aggravated, pissed off, annoyed to empathetic, helpful, sympathetic. They wanted to help. Complete, complete change, right? Those people changed completely. They changed completely. And did the situation change? No. Did the kids' behavior change? No. Did anything change? No. Did the man tell the people on the train to— or tell the kids to stop behaving badly? No. Nothing changed. What changed was the paradigm that the passengers saw the man through. The passengers changed the story that they were telling themselves about the man. Story prior to was that this man is just not controlling his children, he's a bad father, he doesn't care, he has no respect for the fact that he's in a public place. Yeah, that was the story they were telling themselves. When they changed that story to, these children have just lost their mother and this man has just lost his wife, their behavior changed, their attitude changed, the situation changed, the tension came down, the conflict came down, the aggravation came all the way down and absolutely nothing changed in the situation. So I present to you right now that your situation doesn't need to change. That is my— that's what I present to you because again, we said at the beginning, right, people are going to say, well, yeah, but what if my wife does this? But yeah, what if my husband does that? Doesn't matter. They don't need to change. What needs to change is your story. What needs to change is your paradigm. What needs to change is how you're seeing the situation. And as human beings, we're all just trying to get our needs met. We're all just trying to get our needs met. And is it possible maybe that your wife or your husband right now is behaving in a way that's disagreeable to you because they don't have emotional safety, they don't have emotional security, and they're protecting themselves? They're putting a barrier around themselves because they're vulnerable and they don't want to be vulnerable anymore. They're just simply trying to protect themselves. They're just simply trying to not get hurt, as are you, right? You're not— you're trying to protect yourself and not get hurt, and your wife or your husband is trying to protect themselves, and they're just trying to not get hurt, right? So the tool here, the tool that will take you out of the fight, is you've got to ask yourself, what else could this mean? What else could this mean, right? What else could this mean? If your partner is being difficult, What else could it mean? When I was being really, really not nice with my wife, right? She probably just thought, "Oh, he's just difficult. He's just this, he's just that." She could have asked herself the question, "What else does this mean? Well, maybe he's in pain right now. Maybe he's in trouble right now. Maybe something's going on that he doesn't have control over and he needs my help and my compassion and my empathy." That would be a different way of looking at it, right? We tend to treat ourselves, we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt quite often when we don't give our partner. So a lot of times if we, if somebody snaps at us, if we're in a grocery line, right, then, and we're checking out, and somebody's rude to us, we just go, that person's an a-hole. They're just an a-hole. That's it, right? Whereas if we snap at somebody, we're having a bad day. If somebody gets road rage with us, if they're honking that horn, and that they're, you know, getting mad at us and we go, "Oh, what an a-hole. That person's just an a-hole," right? If we do it, then we're just in a hurry. That's it. We don't, we're not mean, we're not nasty people, we're just in a hurry. We don't give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. So, or we don't give our partners the benefit of the doubt, right? So the question to ask yourself is, "What else could this mean and what story am I telling myself?" If you can change your story, and you can change what it means, then your behavior will change towards them, and if your behavior changes towards them, then their behavior will change back towards you. Because here's the beautiful thing about a relationship, here's the beautiful thing about what's going on here, your partner is not responding to you personally, this is not a personal thing. If your partner's not engaging with you, it's not because they don't like you, it's because they don't like the behavior. If your partner is not talking to you right now, it's not because they don't want to talk to you, it's because the emotional security is not there and it's too painful for them to talk to you. They're avoiding a behavior, right? They're avoiding a fight. If you can remove what it is that's causing the block, if you can remove the behavior that they don't like, then they will come back. It's not you that they're opposed to, it's the behavior. They go, "Well, I just—" it's like, "Why won't you come? My wife's left me," or "My husband's left me. Why won't you come back to me? I just can't fight anymore. I just can't—" who's heard? Put "I've heard this," right, in the comments. Write in the comment for me, "I've heard this." If you've heard, "I just can't do this anymore. I just can't do this anymore. I just can't fight like this anymore. I just can't keep doing this. I just can't—" all of that stuff, right? "I just can't keep doing it." It's not like they're not saying, I can't keep doing you. I can't keep doing you. They're saying, I can't keep doing this. I can't keep doing this situation. I can't keep doing the fighting. I can't keep doing the arguing. I can't keep doing this on a hamster wheel. We fight, we make up, we fight, we make up, we fight, we make up. I can't keep doing this. This being the behavior, this being the behavior, not you. And that is really what we're looking at this whole week and beyond, hopefully, is what are those behaviors? How can you create an environment that is going to support the growth of the marriage? And how can you eliminate or remove the behaviors that are going to stop the growth of the marriage, right? If you do that, then it's like taking a, a hose with a kink in it and just going boom, right? It opens up. It's not like trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle. It happens instantaneously, right? Because Let's talk about intimacy for a second. Like, I could have— I've got my notes I'm working off here, right, just so I don't actually forget anything. But intimacy could easily be on the 3 pillars, or it could be the 4th pillar, right, of a great marriage. Intimacy. But intimacy is just a natural outgrowth. It's like, you don't have to sit in front of your freezer at night and beg, "Give me ice, give me ice, give me ice, give me ice." If you create the right environment then ice will show up 100 times out of 100. And intimacy is like that, right? If you're lacking intimacy in your relationship right now, it's because the environment is not right. So the first 3 pillars— I've decided just to go with the 3 pillars, which is emotional safety and security, mutual admiration and respect, and a shared vision and a goal or shared goals. If you have— if you create that, if you have emotional safety within a relationship to where you can be 100% of yourself 100% of the time with your partner without fear of judgment, without fear of having your, your ego bashed, your masculinity bashed, your femininity bashed, whatever it is, without the risk of starting a fight. If you can be yourself 100% of the time, or you can be 100% of yourself 100% of the time with your partner, and your partner can be 100% of themselves, 100% of the time, and you have a mutual admiration and respect for each other, and you have a shared vision and a shared goal of moving forward within this relationship, intimacy is a given. Physical intimacy is a given. It's, it's, it's the end result. Again, it's a process, not a product. If you want intimacy, I talk to men, this is really a problem for men, right? Men want the product. They want intimacy. They want sex. And it's productized. It's like, I just want sex. How do I get sex with my wife? It's like, well, you've got to give her emotional security. You've got to have, you've got to give, you've got, there's got to be mutual admiration and respect there. And there's got to be a shared vision and a shared goal. Like, if you do that, the sex will be 100% guaranteed, 100%. And it will be more passionate than it's ever been. And it will be, it'll be the best sex you've ever had. And it'll be amazing. And it'll be abundant. That's how you do it, right? I mean, think about this. Let's flip this around. And let's just make this really obvious. Your spouse cannot talk to you, right? Because they're scared of you essentially. And it's like, again, not necessarily scared you're going to hit them or something like that, but they're scared of the consequences. They just don't want to deal with the consequences. They don't want to fight. They don't want to argue. They don't want to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They don't want to do that, whatever that is anymore. They don't want to do it. So they're not going to be themselves with you. So they feel like they can't open up emotionally. They feel like they can't be themselves with you emotionally. And then there's no mutual respect and admiration. You're badmouthing your wife or husband all over town. She's badmouthing you all over town. You talk bad about each other to whoever will listen, right? Whoever will listen. There's no mutual respect there. There's no mutual admiration there. You're critical of her behavior for leaving, or you're critical of his behavior for leaving, or whatever. It's like there's no mutual respect, there's not much understanding, and you've got no common vision in life. What's your common vision? This is why empty nest syndrome is a problem, right? Because when you've got kids in the house, there's a shared vision. It's just a mandatory shared vision. It's easy. But once the kids leave, that shared vision is gone. So now you can't talk to your partner, you don't feel comfortable talking to them, you don't have mutual respect, and you've got nothing in common. It's like, what are your guesses about this person? Are they going to want to have sex with you? What do you think about that? I mean, just stick in the comments, yes or no. Is that in that situation, are they going to want to be intimate with you? Just put— it should be pretty self-evident, right? Just stick that in the comment for me, just put yes or no. Whereas we flip that around, now it's really easy to see, like now we've seen the negative side of things, it's really easy to see how the positive is going to work when you implement that. And that is why tomorrow we're going to talk about the 4 toxic habits that destroy relationships, right? The 4 toxic habits that destroy relationships, because once you can see that, it's like, well, of course that would destroy a relationship, of course that would destroy a relationship. It's so Easy. It's so easy to see how that would destroy a relationship. Well, let's just flip that around then. If that behavior would absolutely, utterly destroy a relationship, do you think flipping it around and doing the exact opposite would build up and make the relationship work? Of course it would. Of course it would. It's really, really obvious. Like one of the habits we're going to talk about tomorrow, it's in your book, you can have a quick look. Actually, it's not in your book, actually. Sorry about that. But one of them is Escalation. The toxic habit that will destroy your marriage is escalation. Escalating situations, escalating fights. Who can see that escalating a situation is catastrophic? Who can see that a habit of escalation is going to be really, really damaging to a relationship? Every time you can take nothing and turn it into something. You can take a molehill and turn it into a mountain. Who can see that that's going to destroy a relationship? Everybody. Well, what about if we turn that around? So instead of having the habit of escalation, we have a habit of de-escalation. We become a person that de-escalates. Right now, you're probably in the habit of escalation, right? We escalate situations. We can see something that's this big and we're able to skillfully turn it into something that's huge. We can take nothing and turn it into a fight. We can take the cap that goes on the toothpaste and turn that into a marriage-ending situation, a relationship-ending situation. We can take nothing and turn it into something. Massive. Well, what about if we turn that around and became the type of person that could take something and turn it into nothing? What do you think that would do for your relationship? If you're the type of person that can take nothing and turn it— or take something and turn it into nothing, do you think that might help your situation? Do you think that might help your emotional security? Do you think that might help the mutual admiration and respect? My wife, my wife, just last week we had a situation. Where I was able to de-escalate. I was able to de-escalate a situation. There was— we had some friends over and they were being disagreeable, right? Now I just, just changed the situation. I just changed the topic. It could easily have escalated into a big fight and I just changed the topic. Said, yeah, that's fine, that's certainly a viewpoint. Um, I've got to respect— I respect that viewpoint for sure. Let's talk about the weather. Let's talk about something else. And afterwards my wife goes, I could see that She goes, I was really, I was really impressed with the way you handled that situation. She's like, and I could see that it wasn't just you handling the situation, just muscling through it and going, I'm gonna have to find a way to get through this. It's like you were a different person. I could see that like you weren't bothered by that situation. I could see that it didn't bother you. And you were just able to sidestep and de-escalate the situation. Whereas before, a year, a few years ago, man, I'd have been like, game on, guys. Let's fight. Let's fight. And of course, when my wife sees that mutual respect, right? Emotional safety. Like when she's like, because I used to be, I used to be a beast, man. We go, I'd throw, I mean, I threw plates of food across rooms in restaurants. I mean, I was a beast when I went out that, I mean, I was not, I was not good at all, right? I mean, how much emotional safety do you think my wife had when we go to a restaurant? It's like, I'm liable just to pick up the plate and throw it at the waiter. How much emotional security do you think she had there? How much emotional mutual respect do you think she had for me in that situation? You know, it was utterly, utterly, utterly destroyed. And now, just a few years later, a little bit later, she's going, "I'm really impressed with the way you handled that. I'm really impressed with the way you de-escalated that situation. I'm really impressed mostly with the fact that I could tell that it wasn't even an effort for you. You actually got to the point to where you've changed as a person. You're no longer the type of person that gets annoyed in that situation." She knows now. I mean, what has that done to our emotional security? Through the roof. What has that done to mutual respect? Through the roof, right? What has that done to shared visions and shared goals, right? How can we have a shared vision when every time I go out the house I'm liable to start a fight with somebody? I'm liable to throw a plate of food at a waiter. I'm liable to stop the car and get out the car and start waving my fist at somebody on the road. How can we have shared goals when that's the kind of person that I am? I am. Impossible, right? It's all about changing. So through all of this, through all of this, and this is what I want to leave you with today, was theft was going on in my house. Robbery was going on in my house. And I'm telling you, the cost is immense right now. The cost to you is absolutely immense. There were holidays, there was beautiful romantic vacations that were destroyed. There was experiences, there was everything was destroyed. Health was destroyed, life was destroyed, experiences were destroyed, our youth was destroyed. The theft was phenomenal that was going on in our house right beneath our noses due to our inability to get a grip of this situation, to come to terms with the situation, to get the help that was needed for this situation. The number of things that we lost, the amount of robbery that took place for years and years and years, years that we'll never get back. Now, what does it take? What have you been robbed of so far? I mean, you've got to count the cost, right? You've got to count the cost. You've got to get the motivation to move forward because what, what's actually going to be required to really genuinely get change in your relationship is going to be uncomfortable. I'm going to tell you right now, I'm laying this out to you in a way that it may sound easy, it may not sound easy, but we're talking about changing habits, we're talking about changing rituals and routines, we're talking about changing how we see the world, we're talking about changing how we do life, we're talking about fundamentally changing the DNA in our body, and ultimately We're, you know, we're talking about being born again. We've got to be born again as a new creature, as a new person. The person that I was that was wrecking our marriage, that was wrecking my body, that was wrecking my business, that was wrecking our health because of what I was doing— he's gone now. There is not an ounce of him left in me. There's not an ounce of him left. He is completely gone. The DNA has completely changed. I am not that person anymore. And ultimately, that's what's going to have to happen with you. 2, you're going to have to become a new person. And again, we're going to talk about this Wednesday when we talk about difficult partners reconciliation. How do you make that happen and stuff like that? Ultimately, your partner is going to have to look at you and see a new person. They're going to have to look at you and see a new person. That is ultimately what it's going to come down to. If they look at you and see the old person, then they're not, they're not going to buy it, right? They're not going to buy it. They're not going to look, they're going to go, okay, it's just the same crap, different day, right? You're just a day late and a dollar short, my friend. I can't go through this anymore. But they've got to look at you. If they can look at you and go, this is a different person, this is not the same person, then you've got hope. They will come back, I promise you. But you've got to do the work. That's all there is to it. You've got to go through the process. You've got to do the work. You can't just go, what have I got to do to get my wife? Or what have I got to do to get my husband back? You've got to go through the process. Who is willing to go through the process? Put me in the comments if you're willing to go through that process because we're talking about commitment over convenience here, right? If you want to save your marriage, it's not going to be convenient. I'm telling you, it's not going to be convenient. It's about commitment. The only reason my marriage survived was because my wife was committed to her vows. She was committed to making it work. Wasn't convenient for her to stay. Nobody would have blamed her for leaving. Nobody, nobody, nobody. She was committed and she took commitment over convenience. And that's what it's going to take, right? That's what it's going to take. It's going to take you committing to the process, understanding that it's probably not going to be convenient. There are going to be hiccups on this road. There are going to be hiccups on this path. There are going to be setbacks, but we're going to do whatever it takes. We're going to do whatever it takes, right? We're going to do whatever it takes. And that's the attitude you've got to come at it with. You can have the marriage you want. You can have the relationship you want, you can have the communication you want, you can have the sex you want, but you've got to be committed to doing whatever it takes. And I'm telling you right now, if you don't have what you want in your relationship, it's because you do not have— you're not the person you need to be. And I say that out of love, I say that in the nicest way, I don't want to offend anybody, but if you don't have what you want, it's because you don't have— you're not the person you need to be yet. And the way to look at this is You've got a level 7 problem in your marriage right now and you're a level 6 person. That level 7 problem is never going away. It's never going to be a level 6 problem. It's never going to be a level 5 problem. That's not a variable. That problem is fixed, right? That problem is fixed. It's level 7. What's the variable? The variable is you. You have the ability to become a level 8 person. You have the ability to become bigger, better, stronger, more capable version of yourself. You have the ability to change your stories. You have the ability to shift your paradigms. You have the ability to get rid of the old habits, rituals, and routines. You have the ability to bring in the new habits, rituals, and routines. But I'm telling you, it's going to take a little bit of time and it's going to take some work. People that say it takes 28 days to develop a habit, that's nonsense. That's nonsense. Anyone that's quit smoking knows that. Anyone that's quit drinking knows that. Like, your desire to smoke or drink doesn't go away after 28 days. It takes time. To re— to ingrain that new habits and those new rituals into you. But when you do, you will be a new person and you will be the person that is big enough, strong enough, educated enough, and ready to hold that new relationship to get your partner back. So that's it. So God bless you. I love you all. We'll see you at the same time, same place tomorrow. Bless you all.

Thanks to your calls and those group calls, I haven't had conflict or a mate or an argument for at least 3 weeks now. And thank you. It's helped. It's helped. It's helped me heal and it's helped her, you know, get out of that flight or flight type survival mode. And it's helped our home be a lot more amicable. And I'm so proud of how far I've come. And, you know, thanks a lot to, you know, your videos and your group calls and whatnot. I really appreciate it, Cody. And I feel like I'm nearly there. I feel like I am going to get there. I feel like the last The last bits are more to do with myself. Yeah, this is this entitlement thing. Um, also I've got a bit of self-esteem issues, not feeling good enough.

And I, I, I have—

I feel I have more good days than bad days now, and I feel like I'm, I'm I'm getting there and I'm understanding it. And that's a big thanks to you, mate. Thank you so much. Oh, look, you're very welcome.

And, you know, credit to you, you're not fighting me on this stuff. You know, I'm like hopefully highlighting some areas that is going wrong and you're going, yeah, absolutely right, man. You're not fighting me on it. You're doing the work yourself. You know, you're following the steps. And if you do, you're going to get the results, brother. It's guaranteed. Yeah.

Yep. Awesome. I'm so self-aware now, and even when I'm talking to her, I'll catch myself saying something like, uh-uh, forget about that, I'm going to reword that. She says, no, no, that's fine. I said, no, it's not, it's not right, I will rephrase that. So I think unconscious— well, not— I'm not doing that on purpose, I catch myself, and I'm hoping that's showing that I'm doing a lot of work on myself. I'm not saying I'm doing any work. She doesn't know, obviously she doesn't know about this. She thinks I'm just doing it with my therapist. By the way, the therapist said your group is wonderful. So, oh really? Yeah, yeah, she's got your details to pass on to other clients. Oh really? Wow, thank you. So, yes, yes you are. So she's a really good therapist actually.