This page holds eleven short videos where I talk about keeping a relationship healthy: telling the truth, getting through a hard day, repairing damage you cause, treating your partner as a friend, and setting clear conditions. Each one is written out in full below, so you can read the one that fits your situation.
I recorded these between September 2015 and October 2023, and I was married the whole time. My marriage ended in divorce in December 2025. I'm a single dad of two in St. Petersburg, Florida, and in the year since the divorce I've been on about fifty dates and have no lasting relationship yet. I've left the videos exactly as I recorded them, so they speak from where I was then.
The newest is Social Media and Relationships, from October 29, 2023. I say that if you spend more time on social media than I do, you probably have an addiction. I tell you I spent only 10 or 20 minutes some days, and I describe deleting several platforms and putting my time into in person relationships. Before that, on June 13, 2021, I answered a chat question in how to talk about deal breakers and non negotiables. I give my wife's and my own: for her monogamy, for me regular intimacy and time for my sobriety meetings, and I say to keep the list as short as possible.
On June 16, 2017, I recorded Day 162. Its title promises lessons from six years together, but it is really one story. I tell it from a day at the Detroit Zoo with my wife and our daughter, who was 21 months old. I lost a camera case, our daughter had a meltdown, and I got angry and blamed my wife. I tell how I prayed and reached out and took her hand, and how we both apologized.
Five videos come from January 20, 2016. In Dating is like gambling I say you have to risk something to win, and that I failed at dating more than most of my friends combined. In Honest communication is critical I thank the hundreds of women who told me they weren't interested, and I say honesty without compassion is cruelty. In How do you know if your relationship is worth keeping I say you can't know for sure, that every relationship ends in death or neglect, and that the core of a great one is friendship.
The last two of that series are about hard days. In Some days are hard in even the best relationships I describe a day when my wife and I both felt we weren't enough at the same time, and I say the thing you fight about is almost never the real issue. In Tips for getting through hard times faster I list what we did: loving physical contact even when I didn't feel like it, keeping my habits like buying flowers, praying to be a good husband, and saying how I felt without blaming her. I say we had been together over five years and married over three.
A week earlier, on January 13, 2016, I recorded What works for me to have a happy relationship with my wife. I say a good relationship acts as a mirror, that we don't have forever, and that I'm willing to back out of my position. I also tell how a day when we were both aggravated passed without raised voices because I said so out loud.
On December 18, 2015, I recorded 159. The most precious part of any relationship is the friendship. I say you can be a friend to anyone, and that I should treat my friend the same way I treat my wife. The oldest, from September 13, 2015, is 88. Repairing the damage I cause in relationships. I tell about snapping at a friend while gaming, being rude at the post office, and apologizing to my wife without waiting for her to go first.
If you want more, I wrote How to Have a Happy Marriage: Lessons I Recorded as a Husband and Relationship Advice From Single to Happily Ever After: My Two Long Talks. I now work with people one on one as a dating coach.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- Social Media and Relationships (October 29, 2023)
- How to talk about deal breakers and non negotiables in relationships (June 13, 2021)
- Day 162! After six years in a happy relationship, what have I learned? (June 16, 2017)
- 04. Dating is like gambling. (January 20, 2016)
- 05. Honest communication is critical for successful dating and relationships. (January 20, 2016)
- 06. How do you know if your relationship is worth keeping? (January 20, 2016)
- 07. Some days are hard in even the best relationships. (January 20, 2016)
- 08. Tips for getting through hard times faster. (January 20, 2016)
- What works for me to have a happy relationship with my wife. (January 13, 2016)
- 159. The most precious part of any relationship is the friendship (December 18, 2015)
- 88. Repairing the damage I cause in relationships makes life so much easier (September 13, 2015)
Social Media and Relationships
From my video published October 29, 2023.
My friends, we're going to talk about social media and relationships today, because I want all of you to have great relationships, and I'm tired of you being lonely and depressed and sad and isolated and having all these dark, crazy thoughts. So I'm going to tell you what works for me. I use social media as someone who makes a living creating online, and I do it in a way that is supportive. I'm going to talk about balancing online and offline relationships, I'm going to talk about recognizing signs of social media addiction, and I'm going to talk about setting boundaries for personal privacy online.
Balancing online and offline relationships
The key to having your relationships balanced, in this time when so many of us have all these devices, is to make time for and prioritize offline, in person relationships. I have a wife I live with, and we generally have a great relationship. We have tough days, but we're consistently there to love each other and support each other. I have kids that I get all kinds of hugs and love from, and they get crazy sometimes. My mom is next door to me in her own house. I go to yoga almost every day, where I see people I know in almost every class, and I talk with them and hang out with them. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings five days a week, where I have lots of deep, meaningful conversations with people.
I put a lot of time into offline relationships, because what I found is that you can't have proper relationships on social media, especially on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok that use algorithms to manipulate what you see and what connections you have with people. You may have a much better experience on platforms like Discord or Telegram, where you can invite people to be part of your community and just see what everybody has to say without being manipulated and controlled by an algorithm. On Facebook and Instagram your posts get amped up and shared out there when you're having a bad day, and then when you're having a good day nobody sees anything. That is one thing that's really toxic with some of these platforms, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and it can also be true on X and on YouTube. It distorts reality severely. The reality is that lots of us are doing good and enjoying life and living in peace and helping other people most days, but that stuff doesn't generally get a lot of clicks.
This is where offline relationships will keep you straight. It is critical to balance your relationships greatly in favor of in person, offline relationships, where you can have real conversations with people without being censored, and without being afraid of having your bad day or your crazy post go viral.
Recognizing signs of social media addiction
Then you need to be able to recognize signs of social media addiction. If a lot of your relationships are on social media, where the main way you connect with someone is liking the pictures they've posted or looking at their stories or videos, that is a relationship you're having on social media, and generally it is a big waste of time. I've actually deleted Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn and a couple of others, because I have suffered from a lot of social media addiction, mindlessly scrolling. Then, because I saw someone else's baby pictures on Facebook, I wouldn't take the time to reach out to them and ask how they were doing. You want to have real friendships and focus on those real friendships, and some of these social media platforms make it too easy to get addicted and too hard to have real connections and conversations with people. That's how you get isolated, lonely and confused, and then make more bad decisions that lead to more isolation, loneliness and confusion. I told more of that story in Why I Deleted Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram.
Here are some signs you're addicted to social media. If you use social media every day, and you're not making a living primarily off of social media, then you're probably using it too much. You're probably addicted to it, and you're probably just going on there out of habit. I make a full time living off of YouTube and X. I don't actually get paid much off X, but a lot of people come to my YouTube from X, and from YouTube I do get paid very well. So I make a full time living on this stuff, and yet there are days where I don't spend more than 10 or 20 minutes total for the whole day on social media. If you're spending more time than me on social media, and I make a full time living doing this, I would say you have an addiction, and I would say you have something better to do.
I would not count YouTube the same as things like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and even potentially X. The platform you pick to spend your time on makes a big difference. I've found the energy of each platform is different. Facebook is just horrible. Instagram is a little bit better, and TikTok is horrible. X since Elon Musk bought it is a lot better, but still, even as a full time creator, only about 10 or 20 minutes a day is enough for me to get information without being addicted and without wasting my time on the platform.
YouTube is different, but I won't put lots of time into YouTube videos either. I'm watching videos to learn, and I'm watching videos to inform the videos I make. I'm watching videos to learn about new subjects, like making music. I've watched so many YouTube videos to learn how to make music. I'm using a bunch of voice audio effects that I downloaded after watching a YouTube video by a musician who has a lot more experience than me. I took his vocal effect chain, which he gave me as a free download in his video, and it works great. It works better than what I had set up. If you're using YouTube for learning, it can be a very effective way to spend time. I download videos and listen to them while I'm driving.
So if you're spending more time on social media than I am, you probably have an addiction, and you will almost certainly feel better if you delete the platforms you're addicted to. Delete your entire account and let people know where they can find you. For example, if you have real friends you want to stay connected with, Discord, Telegram, text message and WhatsApp can do really well to maintain friendships without wasting time. I went further with this idea in I Deleted 2M Followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
Setting boundaries for privacy
A big thing that helps with this is setting some clear boundaries. I have clear boundaries with what I do online and what I do offline, and I've recently gotten much more strict with them. I don't want to have a relationship with anybody outside of those who are supporting me as a content creator. For example, if I have friends I don't see, and the only way I can keep up with them is Facebook, I'm going to just let that friendship go. I'll keep them in my thoughts, and I'll make space for a new friendship to take their place. Personally, I am very willing to say just about anything online, which is problematic on some of these toxic platforms, but it actually works well on YouTube, in making music and on X.
I hope this has helped you see a big way you can improve your life. I had a guy speak in a meeting tonight, and he talked about eating junk food and wasting his time on Facebook, and how bad he feels and how much he's suffering. I'm like, man, if you cut that junk food out, and you cut that time on Facebook out and replace it with hanging out with people in person, with doing something good for yourself, you're going to feel better. So my vision, my goal and my hope for this is that you feel better. When you feel better, you can do better and make this world an amazing place. Thank you for listening to this. Much love. You can find more of my relationship videos in my Dating playlist.
How to talk about deal breakers and non negotiables in relationships
From my video published June 13, 2021.
We just had a question in the chat that said: I've got some non negotiables in my relationship, I have conditions or deal breakers in my marriage, and aren't you changing her that way? It seems conflicting with what you've been saying. I have been talking about unconditional love and acceptance, and about not trying to change the person you're with. So the question is fair, and you have a right to ask for what you need.
The non negotiables my wife and I set
Here I'll give you my wife's and my non negotiables. These changed from when we first started dating until we talked about them, and they can change again at any time. My wife and I talked about a few of these, and they are like conditions of our relationship. Maybe there are some we never talked about. Honesty is probably a non negotiable, but I don't know that we ever spoke it out loud. I think we both expect honesty. But here are the ones we specifically talked about.
She said that for her, monogamy is non negotiable. If you want to be with me, you know that I'm not interested in having any third parties in our relationship, and that is not open for discussion. I said, okay. For me, sex is a non negotiable. If she is the only person I've agreed to be intimate with, then I want that to happen frequently. She said that's fine, whenever you want, we'll figure something out. I said okay, that's great.
Especially when it comes to sex, I think you really need to set those non negotiables up, because that's where a lot of marriages seem to me to go wrong. People don't clearly set up what is allowed and what isn't allowed. My wife and I have had very clear discussions about it. Monogamy is the deal, and we've agreed to it. I don't feel like, oh, poor me, I'm missing out. I love being intimate with my wife and I want to do it, and she's worth that exclusive commitment. I'm not missing out on something. I'm getting a relationship where she and I are committed to each other. So that is a non negotiable. If you want to read more about my views on that subject, I wrote about it in Sex Education 101.
Sobriety as a condition
Then we talked about non negotiables in other areas. She said that my being sober is a non negotiable as well. When we first started dating, that was not a non negotiable. My drinking didn't seem like a big deal to her when we started dating. But as we've been together, we've both seen that my drinking is a big problem, so it came up as a condition. I said okay, I totally agree to that. I absolutely intend to stay sober for the rest of my life. My own non negotiable is that I want time to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I don't care how busy our schedule is or what else is going on, I want time to go to those meetings, because that supports me in staying sober. So I don't want to hear, oh, we're so busy. I want you to make time however you want to do it, so that I can go to Alcoholics Anonymous. She said, no problem, that's easy enough.
So we set those non negotiables up, and that also helps us, because most of the rest of the stuff in our relationship is negotiable. Those non negotiables can be renegotiated at any time. I've told my wife, for example, that if she decides at some point she would like to explore having a boyfriend, or changing the monogamy, then we could talk about that. I would prefer to keep things how they are. I like the monogamy. It keeps things simple, and I can have platonic relationships with women who are very attractive because I'm committed in this monogamous relationship.
So really we're not trying to change each other. In fact we're focusing on what is most important in our relationship, making sure we're happy and getting what we want, and making sure that is happening. To me, talking about those non negotiables is a very healthy thing to do. You want to make sure you know exactly what is and isn't okay in your relationship with somebody. I think having non negotiables discussions like that is a very positive thing. My wife and I are not changing each other, we're getting to know each other. I hope that was a useful answer for you on that question.
Keep your non negotiables as few as possible
A viewer says he thinks it's important to mention having as few non negotiables as possible. Yes. To me, non negotiables are the things you do not mess with. I don't just go out and sleep with some other woman without first talking to my wife about it. That's the idea of a non negotiable: no matter what happens, you stick to it, and there must be a discussion first. I could certainly at any time, or she could, say, look, I think it's time to change some of these. But you honor the things you've set up with each other. You don't just go out and then say, oh, sorry, I was with somebody else. Or, oh yeah, we can't be intimate anymore. What?
Having as few of those non negotiable things as possible helps you focus on what really matters in your relationship. If you try to make a bunch of things non negotiable, it gets cluttered. You notice that some things you would hope are assumed, like honesty. You would hope that is assumed and you wouldn't even have to mention it. But it might not be a non negotiable to someone, or it might not be assumed. Some people might just take it for granted that people lie, so why can't they lie in this relationship? So it's good to talk all these things out and figure out what really matters in your relationship, and then you can let everything else slide.
To me, the things that really matter in my relationship are my sobriety and our intimacy. We are free to change those, but we need to have a discussion about changing them beforehand. My wife could say, I'm tired of this, and if you want to find somebody else, that's fine. Okay, and I could say there's room for change. But you want to set those things up in your relationship so that you're on the same page. If you're on the same page, you just don't have all the problems that come into play from not being on the same page. I wrote more about what makes a marriage work in How to Have a Happy Marriage: Lessons I Recorded as a Husband.
So the main point I'm trying to communicate is this: figure out what's really important in your relationship and let all that other stuff slide. You can find more of my relationship videos in my Dating playlist.
Day 162! After six years in a happy relationship, what have I learned?
From my video published June 16, 2017.
Would you let me tell you a story that I think will be really helpful for you? It shares the best of what I've learned about having a happy relationship and getting through challenges and struggles. The story features the Detroit Zoo, and the climax of it is me taking my wife's hand yesterday. Oh, Jerry, why did you give away the very best part? You gave the whole thing away too early. Well, maybe so. What I hope to share here is my experience in getting through the normal challenges that we have in relationships, because I think the more we share stories like this, the easier we each find it to get along with each other. Ultimately, what I've found in my life is that it's not the evils outside that I need to worry about, because I have the ability to create all my own evil today out of my own heart, out of intolerance and conflict with each other.
A day at the Detroit Zoo
Yesterday I went to the Detroit Zoo with my wife and daughter, and I'm very grateful to be here. I'm filming this video while visiting my family in Michigan. Yesterday my aunt said, why don't you go to the zoo? So my wife and I packed up our daughter, who is just about two years old. I think she's about 21 months. There is a loud ambulance sound behind me right now, a whole lot of it, and I'm not editing it out. It takes so much extra work to edit something out instead of just doing it straight, and I think lots of the best parts of videos are the honest, real parts, not all the edited "look how great I am." Oh, Jerry, just get to the story. Okay, a long story, even longer.
My wife and I had a beautiful day at the Detroit Zoo yesterday. We took our daughter, who is 21 months. I said that already, and now I've said it twice. I took the camera there to try to take some pictures and maybe make a video. I took a couple of pictures and filmed the camels for just a few minutes, at which point I managed to lose my camera case. It was the second time I had tried to go out and use the camera, and I lost the case within a few minutes of walking into the zoo. Why is honesty so difficult? This story might suck. Maybe it does. Maybe it's really good, though. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between.
For me, losing the case was an immediate shame trigger. Like, wow, nice job. The money is not a big deal to me, but that stuff always gets into the principle of it: you lost your brand new seventy dollar lapel mic, you lost your case, you lost your forty dollar backup battery. If you're losing one hundred dollars, that's a big deal. Bam, as soon as I walked into the Detroit Zoo, I lost one hundred dollars right there. I thought, okay, the money is not a big deal, so why does this still bother me so much? I felt hurried and rushed, because my wife and daughter wanted to go off and see the giraffes in the back of the zoo. Bottom line, I started coming up with a lot of self pity.
My wife did really well with it. She said, oh, it's okay, I love you, it's no big deal. She wasn't minimizing it, but at the same time she was comforting me, so I felt better soon after that. I prayed about it. Normally, on a lot of days in my life, that alone would be enough to set me off for days. I'd be complaining to you about something I lost years later. We got through the rest of the zoo up until we got to see the giraffes, and we had a lot of fun with our daughter looking at different birds and animals.
The meltdown
Then it got to be about 11 a.m., and my daughter decided right then that she was sleepy and wanted to take a nap. We told her we couldn't, because we were out at the zoo and didn't have the blanket she wants to take a nap with. She just started asking for her blanket and then she lost it. She had a total breakdown, screaming and crying, "I want my blanket," thrashing and flailing around. She didn't want to be held and she didn't want to walk around. She just had a total meltdown.
This presented all kinds of opportunities for shame triggers. Oh my God, what are these other parents going to think? My child is having a tantrum, and look how bad I look. Then her tantrum becomes difficult for all of us. It's also a good way for my wife to feel vulnerable as a mother. My wife did pretty well with it, and I did not do very well with it. I wanted to help out and be useful, and sometimes with a screaming child you don't need both parents trying to help. It's too much. I don't know exactly how it went down, but my wife, my daughter and I all ended up very uncomfortable as we headed towards the exit. My wife was trying to hurry out to the exit, and I needed to go to the bathroom. I was building up a bunch of self pity and resentment, thinking, wow, I don't deserve this. Then I got mad at my wife and tried to blame her. Well, if she wasn't in such a hurry, I wouldn't have lost my camera case. And if she wasn't in such a hurry, our daughter wouldn't have gotten so upset.
Then I saw that the truth is I was miserable right then, and that I had been having a really good day just a few minutes earlier. All of a sudden I was miserable. That's the truth, and it was not my wife's fault. It wouldn't make it any better if I tried to drag my wife down by saying the things that were in my head. What I managed to get out was this: I'm feeling just like our daughter is. I'm frustrated, and I just want to sit down and cry and scream. I'm feeling the same way she is right now. My wife didn't know what to do with that, and she said something along the lines of, well, you're an adult, you should be able to deal with this and cope with this.
Now, yes, at 33 years old I have tools to deal with emotions, but the emotions are the same as they've always been. The feelings of anger, frustration and self pity are the same as they have been my whole life. I do have tools for them, and I'm grateful that today I actually use those tools as an adult to try to recover in a healthier way, instead of having a screaming argument with my wife in the middle of the Detroit Zoo. Instead of going crazy and carrying on like a lunatic, which is what I did for most of my life. My parents, when they would fight, would one up each other, and one of them would storm off, or they'd start yelling, or they'd keep it all together until they got home. At which point they'd be screaming and slamming doors, and the anger would last for days, and arguments about things like that would be used against each other for years.
Praying and reaching out
I'm grateful for what actually happened yesterday. When I honestly see that, okay, I'm insane, I really want everything to be worse, I pray. So I started praying yesterday: God, help me remember that I love my wife. Help me remember to be here and not miss out on this by being in a miserable anger, and also not make it worse. Help me not say that next nasty thing, and not one up it one more time. Thankfully, I needed to go to the bathroom, so I said, look, I'm going to the bathroom, and I think my exact words were that I didn't want it to be a big deal, because my wife was trying to hurry out with our daughter and what was I trying to do? Sabotage and drag things out as much as possible. So I went to the bathroom, and I came out still upset and still praying. I might have cried a little bit, I don't know. My wife was outwardly keeping it pretty well together, but inwardly she was pretty upset as well. By this time our daughter had started to relax and was generally okay. She was like, whatever, I'll get my blanket soon.
As my wife and I were walking out of the park, I was all upset. Now, normally my wife and I are very touchy feely. We hold hands and give hugs, and we are very expressive with our love for each other. I looked down and saw my wife's hand swinging empty, because our daughter was in the carrier and so my wife had both hands free. I had been holding her hand when we walked in and everything was good. I had held her hand when I lost my camera case and felt bad. And now her hand was just sitting there swinging. I was in the middle of this mess in my head, thinking, I can't believe she did this, it's all her fault, blah, blah, blah. And I was praying: please, God, let's just have a nice day together, and let's not do the same kind of thing I've done so many times.
It seemed like the most insane thing in the world. You might feel it's insane to jump off a bridge, or, to use a less extreme example, to ask someone out on a date. Whatever you think feels totally insane, it feels about like that to just admit you're wrong in the middle of an argument. I just reached out my hand and grabbed my wife's hand. And it was amazing. Everything instantly was better. I took that action in love. I didn't reach out to grab her hand to slow her down, or pull her, or try to control her. I reached out vulnerable in love, realizing that if she just threw my hand out of hers and said, get out of here, I would be crushed and it would hurt. It was almost like that awkward moment on a first date when you reach out and try to hold the person's hand while you're walking in the mall. That kind of vulnerability.
I reached out and grabbed my wife's hand and I just said, thank God we're here together, I'm really grateful we have this time together as a family. My wife said, all of a sudden, I'm sorry for being so hard on you and for hurrying out, or whatever it was she said, but she said I'm sorry. And I said, I'm sorry too. I made this more difficult. I didn't make this easier, I made this harder. I'm sorry. After that, we had a wonderful day together. Now, oh gee, that's a great story, I'm going to go tell that to everyone.
Why that small moment matters to me
To me, that is a miracle, because I've seen so many days like that. So many normal things like that turn into absolute meltdowns and horrible fights. I've had relationships end over things that started with just little moments like that. All of a sudden someone is cheating on the other person, or I'm leaving a crazy drunk phone call saying I don't want to see you again. That's how all this stuff starts, with just little things like that. I realize I want to be married to my wife for the rest of my life, and it's important to fix every single one of those little things completely, immediately or as fast as possible. I wrote more about that kind of giving instead of taking in The Right Person Makes You Want to Give, Not Take.
So it was amazing yesterday, and it felt like one of those slowdowns in a movie, just reaching out to take my wife's hand. I've learned that from other people. I've learned how to be a loving, grateful person, and how to be vulnerable and take a risk, a chance, from other people. If you want to keep learning how to love, I go deeper in Learn Love: How to Learn to Love and Find the Right Person, and you can find more of my relationship videos in my Dating playlist. I hope that sharing this story helps. It's an intimate, personal story, and of course I'd rather keep it to myself, and yet I realize this might help.
04. Dating is like gambling.
From my video published January 20, 2016.
Dating is like gambling. I know because I have done a lot of dating and I have done a lot of gambling, and they are very similar. If you want to win at dating, you have to try. If you want to win at gambling, you have to make a bet. Making a bet means you have to risk something. Usually if you want to win big at gambling, you need to bet bigger. If you want to win big at dating, you need to be willing to bet your entire self: everything you love, everything you care about, all parts of you. If you really want to win big at dating, you will want to be able to wager all of that.
With my wife, I have gone absolutely all in. I have never done even a quarter of this in any other relationship. I put absolutely everything I have into this relationship, and there is great peace and serenity in that. I know I do not have anything else to give that I am not already trying to give.
Sometimes you bet and lose
If you are willing to invest something in dating, you are also willing to accept that sometimes things are not going to work out, just like with gambling. Sometimes you may bet and lose and bet and lose. Other times you might bet a little bit and win right away, so you bet more and you win more. Then you bet and you lose. It is just like gambling.
Sometimes things will not make sense. You will go out with a person, you will be really excited, and all of a sudden you will never hear from them again, and you will never know why. I do not even know how many times that has happened to me. It has happened a lot. And I have been on the other side of that a lot of times, too. Women have gone out with me, been all excited, and I never called them, for one reason or another. One woman I went out with had a promise ring on, and I had a deep unconscious knowing that she was trouble and I did not want to mess around with her. Sure enough, I did not call her or talk to her anymore after that. Then a friend at work told me she had some big trouble over some other guy, and it was a good thing I stayed away from her.
All kinds of stuff like that goes on in dating, just like in gambling, where you do not understand why the guy next to you got a blackjack while you sat there and got 18 and the dealer got 19. Why did that happen? I do not know. Why did the guy next to you catch a great poker hand and clean up the whole table when you bet everything and lost? To me, the people I have seen do the worst in their relationships have also been the least willing to lose. The more willing you are to lose, the more pain you will go through, and yet you will also get a much greater reward.
You can keep putting more in
The difference between gambling and dating is that you can keep putting more in with dating. With gambling, it is a lot easier to run out of money to bet. You have a practically limitless amount of effort you can keep putting into dating. You can keep betting a little bit every single day. Instead of reloading your money like in gambling, you can try again at dating every single day. And just like gambling, it does not matter if you have failed 1,000 days in a row. You can bet again and win the jackpot one day.
If you are playing slots, you can pull that lever 10,000 times and hardly get hurt, and then you pull it the 10,001st time and win the million dollar jackpot. That is why people play slots so much. Dating is exactly the same way. I hit the jackpot with my wife, and I failed at dating more than most of my friends combined. If you added up my friends' first dates and dating failures, they would not match mine. My parents told me they would not even hear any more of my stories until I had been out with a woman a few times. They got sick of me getting excited about a woman: oh, she does this, what does she like? And then they would ask what happened to her. Well, she did not call me back, or I did not text her back. I have failed so many times at dating.
What you get depends on what you try
If you want to do well, you have to try. What you get out of dating will directly correspond to what you try. I have found, too, that you should try in terms of getting to know and meet people. Often, trying with only one person is not the best way to get a great result. When I met my wife, things were immediately better than in any of the other attempts I had made at dating, from the very beginning. If I had to date again, I would want to get to know a lot of people a little bit and screen it down, then get to know a few people a little bit more, and keep doing it that way. I wrote about my own way of going back out there in I Installed Hinge Again After Deleting 3 Times. Here's My New Dating Profile.
Also, if you keep an open mind about dating, you can often get much better results by being willing to just meet someone in person and then get to know them a little more, instead of setting a ton of criteria beforehand. When you meet someone in person, it is easy to tell whether you want to see them again or not. Online, it is often hard to tell. I wrote about why I think this matters in Dating Is the Most Worthwhile Thing You Can Possibly Do. You can also find more lessons like this in my Dating playlist.
05. Honest communication is critical for successful dating and relationships.
From my video published January 20, 2016.
Honest communication is critical for success with dating and relationships. I am so grateful to the hundreds of women who said they were not interested in me, or who went out with me and said, "I don't think this is going to work." Honest communication helps solve almost every problem you can have with dating and with relationships. If two people are really honest with each other, it eliminates all of the questions like, what does this person think, what does he think, I don't know what she thinks, I don't know what she likes. If you just straight up say, "Look, this is what I like," that is gone.
Honesty with compassion, and listening
I know I was brutal with lots of women. I went out with one woman and said, "Thanks for the date, don't call me again, I don't want to go out with you again." I erred on the side of brutal honesty, and that helped me. Now, honesty without compassion is cruelty, and yet honesty is the foundation, the foundational factor. Sometimes if you cannot do honesty well with compassion, you may need to do a little bit of cruelty. You may need to just say, "Look, I don't know how to say this nicely, I don't like you. I don't want to go out with you again."
That also requires listening. When someone says they do not want to go out with you again, forget it, do not bother them, find someone else. I know I used to get obsessed over women who ignored me. When someone ignores you, that is it. When they cut communication off, that is a clear sign. The big difference with my wife versus the other women I dated is that my wife kept communicating. She kept responding to me when we were dating and ever since. I would send her a text, and she did not necessarily answer five minutes after she got it, but every time I called her, she returned my call. Every time I sent her a text, she returned my text message. When she did not hear from me one day, she checked on me.
Lying builds something you do not want to be in
Honest communication is critical because if you are lying, you are also building something you probably do not want to be in. For example, if you are lying about how much money you make, they are going to find out someday. If you are lying about how good you are in bed, they are going to find out someday. You set up a lose scenario by lying. If your lying succeeds, they will find out someday. If your lying fails, you might have scared off someone you could have been honest with.
I had a woman on a first date tell me some absolutely unbelievable things, and it scared me off. I look back at it today and I am really thankful for her courage in telling me those things. I doubt I could have handled them if we had been in a relationship a year or two and I had found them out. Honesty will help you not waste people's time, and it will keep you feeling like you deserve to be in a relationship.
If there is something you do not want to tell the other person, like something about what you have done in the past, then telling them is always better if they ask. At the same time, you can encourage them in how they ask. My wife and I still have not talked about how many people we have been with, because I am happy to tell her as much as she wants to know. Honesty encourages discretion. It encourages respect. It encourages not prying where you do not want to know. If you know you are going to get the truth from the other person and you do not want to hear it, often it will encourage you not to go there. Maybe I do not want to find out exactly how many people the person I am dating has been with. Maybe I would just like to know if they are clean, if they have any STDs or have ever had any. Maybe that is all I really need to know, and that is a lot easier to ask. It is so much nicer if everyone is just honest in dating. Deception is one of the most destructive things you can do in dating. I wrote more about honest, open dating in Be Yourself in Dating: Why It Isn't the Whole Answer.
Honesty is tough, and worth it
Honesty is tough, especially when you are facing a situation where honesty is going to cost you. I have had women ask me things and I told them the honest answer, and they did not talk to me again. They did not want a relationship with me after that. And that got me to where I am today, in a loving, happy relationship. Yet at the time, it was hard. It was scary.
I am lucky that I saw my parents. The one thing they did was be honest with each other. They told each other the truth. I saw that it was painful and yet it was worth it. So today I practice honesty so much in my dating life, and it has helped me get to a place where I have an honest relationship. You can find more lessons like this in my Dating playlist.
06. How do you know if your relationship is worth keeping?
From my video published January 20, 2016.
How do you know if your relationship is worth keeping, or if it is going to end? How do you know whether you are with the right person? The fact is, at least from my point of view, you do not. There is horrible uncertainty when it comes to dating and relationships. In fact, the only thing I can tell you for sure is that your relationship will end. Earlier in your life, at some point, you did not even know the person you are with. You had not even met them yet. And you will return to that state again someday. Someday I will not even remember my wife. More than likely it will be after we have died and moved on to whatever comes next. Or I could get Alzheimer's and not remember her at the end of my life. Or I could have a brain injury and not remember her. My dad has passed, and whatever he is doing now, he may or may not even know or remember my mom anymore. My mom certainly remembers him.
Every relationship ends in death or neglect
In any relationship, the end is the only thing that is certain, and that is a truth that runs throughout this existence. And yet life is eternal. The love you feel for the person you are with is forever, and that love is there in every single person. It is there inside you, as well as in them and in me and in every other person on this earth. What you love most about the person you are with never dies. On the physical level, though, there is a lot of uncertainty.
I had no idea that my wife, out of all the women I dated, was going to be the one I married. I had no idea. In all the other relationships, I did not know they were not going to work out, and I did not know how they were going to end. Look at my mom and dad's relationship: the stories they tell me are that everyone around them said, "No way you two will last. No way you two will stay married." They stayed married 30 years until my dad died. No one thought that was going to work. My mom and dad were a disaster when they met. So when I look at other people's relationships today, I realize I have no idea whether they are going to make it until they die or end sometime earlier.
Every relationship ends in death or neglect. Those are the only two ways your relationship can end. Death is when someone dies and you move on to the next life. Your relationship may continue in some form there, it may not; I do not know about that. I do know that on this earth, in this physical form, your relationship ends with one person dying, as it did for my mom and dad, or with neglect. I would consider divorce, and every other form besides death where a relationship ends, to be neglect. Friendship is where you most often see neglect. People are friends and then they just stop talking to each other. That is neglect. Your relationship will end at some point; the only question is when, and maybe how.
Do you want to be there?
Do you want to be there? Do you want to be there through every miserable thing happening in the life of the person you are with? I want to be there through all the worst things happening in my wife's life, as well as the best. I am willing to do my best to go through everything with her, and yet there is still uncertainty. There are so many things I do not know. There is no relationship you can get into where you will have absolute certainty, where you possess a person to the point where you know they will be with you forever.
The only thing you can have forever is the love of the creator, that which made me and you and the person you are with and everyone and everything. That love is forever. The best I feel a person can do is remind you of the love of the creator. My wife is very good at reminding me of my love of the creator, that which made both of us and brought us together.
If you are struggling with uncertainty in your relationship, love is the most key thing. If you do not love each other enough to go through whatever you are going through today, almost certainly you have tougher things in the future. My wife and I went through some amazing things in the five years of our relationship. When we set out dating, it is funny what I looked at: oh man, she is really attractive, I would like to be physically close to her, I would like to be included in her family, I would like to go and do all these things with her. What I did not think of was, I would like to go through my dad dying with her. I would like to go through all the misery and suffering of my drinking and alcoholism with her. I would like to go through all of her struggles, her grandmother dying, and everything else happening. I would like to go through childbirth with her. I might have at least thought of that a little bit. If you are not willing to go through the things you are dealing with today, the things you go through later tend to get harder. My mom went through my dad dying, and that was very tough on both of them, and yet it was one of the most special parts of their relationship.
The core of a great relationship is friendship
To me, the core of a great romantic relationship is the friendship. I think of my wife as my best friend, and to me that is what makes a relationship worth having. If you are just a man looking for a woman, or a woman looking for a man, or a man looking for a man, or a couple of men, or a woman looking for a few women, or some men, there are all kinds of places you can get that. The thing that is special is the friendship. Having a great friend is precious. It takes time and trust and a lot of work to build, and your best friend is the one you want to go through all the bad days in life with. I wrote more about this in The Right Person Makes You Want to Give, Not Take.
So if you are comfortable with the uncertainty in your relationship, that is a good sign. I do not know the date when my wife and I's relationship will end, in death or in neglect. I do not know that. And yet I have faith that what I am doing today as a husband is worth it for all of us. I have faith that I love our relationship, and even through the hard times, I am honored to be in it.
The tricky thing is that before I met my wife, I was always frustrated, because I knew deep down I was not with the right person. But having never been with the right person, I did not know what it felt like when I should be. I had a feeling when I was with my wife, though, and it felt different from the other times. The only way you can gauge your relationships is on feelings, which are deeper than thoughts and exact rational decisions. So I do not know exactly what is right for you today. I hope sharing this has helped you take a look and get curious about what is going on inside you. You can find more in my Dating playlist.
07. Some days are hard in even the best relationships.
From my video published January 20, 2016.
Some days are hard in even the best relationships, and that is okay. That is normal. There is no relationship you are going to get into where there will not be some tough days. I just had one in the last 24 hours, and that is why I am talking about this: it is fresh. I had one of those days where you have all those awful thoughts about your relationship, where you wonder if you are even in the right place. All those destructive, horrible relationship feelings.
The issue is almost never the real issue
Whatever the issue seems to be over is almost always irrelevant. My mom and dad had a horrible fight, and my dad had chest pains and almost had a heart attack over hangers in the closet. The real issue is always down to your love and friendship. Either you are loving and feeling like a good team, you are feeling like you are enough, or you are feeling like you are not enough. And if both people feel like they are not enough at the same time, you are liable to have a very challenging day. My wife and I were both feeling like we were not enough at the same time, which does not happen that often, and we both had a hard time with it over the last 24 hours.
It helps me during the hard time to know that this is normal. All of my friends and family, my parents, my loved ones, everyone at some point in their relationship has a really hard time. In fact, they seem to happen not that infrequently. My wife and I have an incredible relationship, better than any relationship I have seen in my life in terms of the amount of peace, positivity and happiness we have compared to the amount of strain, stress, frustration and hurt. It is one of the best relationships I have seen, out of all I have been a part of or tried to be in, and all I have watched among my parents, friends and family. My wife and I still have hard times. We still have a day every week or every few weeks that is a little challenging. And every month or few months we have a day that is really hard and pushes us both to our limits.
Hard days teach you to have faith
Those days help you learn. When you get through more of them, you start to believe in the relationship. You start to have faith that the negative feelings you have while you are having them are not going to end things. My mom said the first time she got in a fight in a relationship, she was just certain it was going to be over. The more fights she had with my dad, the more faith she had that they would get through them together.
If you know that hard times in a relationship are normal, then you can see that you have a relationship full of joy and happiness, full of life. If there is nothing to fight about and there are no hard times, it is very unlikely that you have much passion, or that you are honestly putting yourself into the relationship. Even couples who are older and have been together a long time still get challenges. My parents had been married almost 30 years when they had that fight about the hangers. They had gotten through an amazing amount before that, and they were at their most peaceful, and yet hard times still came. The relationships really worth having are the ones where you can get through a hard time in a loving, peaceful manner, and especially where you can get through a hard time fast and not have them frequently. I wrote about the part that matters most in How to Have a Happy Marriage: Lessons I Recorded as a Husband.
Keep doing the things right
For me, when it is hard in a relationship, I try to keep doing the things right that I have been doing. I keep buying flowers for my wife, which I do normally. I keep saying I love her. I keep praying to be a good husband. Even sometimes when inside I am just screaming, "No, I hate this, I don't want to be a good husband," I will still pray to be a good husband. I will still try. The good times in a relationship are what you should have most of, but there is no dodging the bad times.
I hope that in sharing this honestly with you, the next time you have a hard time in your relationship, you remember this and you say, "Oh, what? That guy has a really good relationship with his wife, and he is a good guy, and he still has days where everything feels wrong and nothing feels like enough, and he gets through them somehow. If he can get through them, there is no reason I cannot get through them." I have looked at a lot of couples, and if they can get through things, there is no reason my wife and I cannot get through things too. So I share this out of love for your relationship. I have the same love for your relationship that I do for mine. I want you to have the best relationship possible, and when you are struggling in your relationship, I want you to know that it is okay. It is okay to struggle. You can find more in my Dating playlist.
08. Tips for getting through hard times faster.
From my video published January 20, 2016.
What helps a hard time in a relationship pass? A bad day, something awful that one person or the other did, and the other person did not react too well. How do you get through that quickly? These are some tips that work for me and my wife to get through our hard times quickly. We just had a rough 24 hours. Earlier in our relationship, that kind of stretch was often much longer. It lasted days, weeks, sometimes even months. Now we get through our hard times with love and forgiveness. Here are some of the things we do.
Loving physical contact, even when you do not feel like it
First, we try to have positive, loving, physical contact. We try to still hold each other. My wife did a great job cuddling with me in bed last night even when I was in a rotten mood. It was the same this morning: when I went to get up, she asked me to lie with her and cuddle with her. That is a huge help, a massive help. It does not mean smothering the other person and not giving them any space. It means that even if you do not feel like giving the other person affection, even if right that moment you cannot stand them, you try to give that loving affection. Even when it feels like you are lying, even when it feels like you are faking it, just do it and it will get better. You will go back to normal.
Keep your habits on a bad day
That goes for all the habits you have. If you usually bring your wife dinner (or husband, or partner; I say wife because that is what I am in, so translate it into whatever word you need), keep doing it. I am in the habit of bringing my wife food and going to the store. I am in the habit of buying her flowers on a regular basis. I try to have flowers around all the time because it makes me feel like a good husband. I am in the habit of listening to what my wife has to say. I am in the habit of going to bed with her most nights. I am in the habit of helping her out with our daughter. I am in the habit of taking a walk with her.
On a bad day, try to do the same things, because if buying flowers works on a good day, then it is a good thing to do on a bad day. It works better if you buy them most of the time on a good day. But like yesterday, I bought my wife some flowers because there were none in the house. There is often a little gap between one bouquet dying and being thrown out and the next one arriving. I brought my wife home dinner. I told her I loved her. I washed some of the dishes. I went to bed with her. I accepted her request to cuddle, which you might think is "wow, what a guy." But when you are in the middle of a hard time, you do not want to do anything. Everything that is good or positive or loving feels like the worst thing in the world. Everything is flipped around backwards. So all of this might sound trifling, yet the next time you are really mad, the next time you really cannot stand the person you are with, remember this and think, "Oh, all right, now I get what he's talking about. I can't even stand to look at this person, and he accepted his wife's request to cuddle. That makes sense now. When he was really aggravated, that was really hard to do."
Pray, and share how you feel without blaming
I pray to be a good husband. I do that every day, all the time, because it is one of the most important roles I play. If you pray to do a good job with whatever you are trying to be, whether husband, wife, partner, spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend or fiance, and you pray about it every day, you will do better.
I also try not to make it worse. I let the horrible, awful thoughts I get sometimes about my wife when I am aggravated give me perspective. Okay, I am having a thought about something nasty I should say to my wife. That means I am in pain. That means I am hurt. That means I am sick. That means I need help. And I try to tell my wife how I am feeling without it being her fault: "Sweetheart, I'm feeling horrible right now. I'm feeling miserable. I'm feeling emotional. I'm feeling angry. I'm feeling depressed. I'm feeling hurt." That is just a simple "hey, what's going on with me?" Sometimes she does not react to that well, and yet she always reacts better to that than if I blame it on her, because how I am feeling is not her fault. It is up to me to work on how I am feeling. If both of you work on doing your best in a relationship, then everything goes pretty well most of the time, and even when things are bad, you will get through it gracefully.
Hard times are okay
I share this with the understanding that I have seen it done wrong lots of times. My parents did it the hard way tons of times: screaming, loud fights, throwing the keys at each other, "You're never going to see me again." And somehow they made it until death did them part. I did it so wrong that none of my relationships lasted more than two years, despite a lot of effort to have relationships. Until now. My wife and I have been together over five years and married over three. Our relationship has consistently gotten better since the day we met, and it has gotten better because we have gotten through our hard times with love and understanding. We learn from them and we improve. We both accept that it is unlikely there will not be any hard times at all at any point in our relationship. Hard times are okay. If we love and understand each other and pray to do our best, we get through them faster. We cannot completely avoid them, but we can go through a hard time faster and more gracefully without damaging our relationship so much. The couples I have seen who have been married a long time are doing the same things I am doing, and they work at it every day, one day at a time. That is why I am sharing this with you now. I also covered this in How to Have a Happy Marriage: Lessons I Recorded as a Husband and The Right Person Makes You Want to Give, Not Take, and you can find more in my Dating playlist.
What works for me to have a happy relationship with my wife.
From my video published January 13, 2016.
What works for me today to have a happy relationship with my wife? I'm honored to have the chance to share this with you, because for most of my life I was frustrated and single. For most of my life I thought that if I had a relationship, if I had a wife, then that would fix all my problems in life. Well, when I found and met my wife and started dating her, it became obvious that if we were going to keep our relationship, I had to be willing to be the best version of myself every day. I had to be willing to work on being, and consistently be, a better version of me.
A good relationship acts as a mirror
A good relationship acts as a mirror, and this helps me a lot in my marriage today. If my wife is giving me something like an emotion, it's often because I've already given it. If she's giving me a negative emotion, I know very often I gave it to her first, because if I hadn't, I could be in a loving and peaceful place with however she is. If I went and was mean to her, I will often see it coming back to me. The best thing that's happened with us is that she has helped me see where I could do better. She has acted as a mirror so that I could see what I'm doing. She's given me space, and she's given me the strength to grow and be motivated to be a healthier person each day. We've had lots of fights, and yet the number of fights we've had, and their intensity, has consistently gone down in our relationship from when we started. We each consistently work to do better each day. I explored this more in The Right Person Makes You Want to Give, Not Take.
We don't have forever
We both understand marriage is not forever. One of us will have to deal with the other one dying, in the best case scenario. Unless the extremely unlikely thing happens and we both go at once, almost every marriage more than likely ends with one person dealing with the other dying. You might think, well, why would you think about that when you've been married only a few years? Because we have a finite amount of time together. We don't have forever to go on treating each other badly and hoping that someday we can get things better. We have to work on our marriage today. We have to do our best today. One day, today will be the last day we get to spend together.
Seeing my mom go through my dad dying a couple of years ago, and still dealing with it today, has really helped me to do better in my marriage. I see that if my wife and I are lucky, we might have 20, 30, 40, maybe even 50 or 60 years together. And that's it. That's all. That encourages me to work today. It encourages me not to waste time being mad at my wife, and to look and see what I can do to do a better job. It encourages me to pray at the beginning of every day and throughout each day, to pray to be willing to do anything to be a good husband.
The first thing I ask for is to take care of myself, because no one else can take care of me. If I'm not creating more pain and suffering and misery for myself, that makes everything else easier. So I pray, I ask, and I say I'll do anything to stay sober is how I phrase it in particular. Sober to me means emotionally sober, physically sober, spiritually sober and mentally sober. That means not getting crazy and aggravated. It means living a sober life, a life that is peaceful and does not create pain and suffering for everyone else. The second thing I ask for every day is that I'm willing to do anything to be a good husband. Then a good father, and then down the line a lot of other things: a good friend, a good family member, a good video maker with you here. I ask for these things, and I ask to have the willingness to do what it takes to do them well, because my wife and I don't have forever.
Every relationship ends in death or neglect. Death covers the obvious. Neglect is where the two people stop putting anything good into it. That could be a divorce, it could be just going separate ways, it could be breaking up. Every relationship ends in death or neglect. That's a certainty. My mom talks sometimes about how I should be so happy, because my wife and I have something that doesn't end, just like her and my dad. Dad's body may be gone, and yet the love in that relationship is the most precious part of it, and that never has to leave. The forms that are here do leave. So I'm motivated today to do whatever it takes to be a good husband.
Small fixes made quickly
If that means apologizing when I've said something rude, when the last thing I feel like doing is apologizing, then I do it, and I do it quickly. It's amazing to me. My wife and I used to spend days, sometimes weeks or months, mad about something. Now it's usually minutes, and it's often really minor. You might watch what we're doing and not even notice. When I went to my meeting yesterday, I was aggravated over other things that had nothing to do with my wife. I was aggravated over an email I had to send and over not having enough time. And we were both aggravated. She was aggravated because she was trying to take a nap and everyone was conspiring to wake her up. The UPS guy, the US Post Office and FedEx all came by within a 30 minute window when she was trying to nap. So both of us realized we were really aggravated. Thankfully, we both also understood that all we needed to do was not make things worse, and it would get better.
Now, when I'm aggravated, I say, I'm aggravated right now. It's like a confession, and it helps me not put any responsibility on her. I'm aggravated, I'm annoyed, I'm frustrated, I'm uncomfortable. I admit when there's some discord going on my end. So she realizes she's dealing with her husband plus the aggravation he's experiencing, and it encourages us to give each other space. Yesterday, we gave each other enough space. I asked if she could open the door for the Verizon guy when he came over. She was aggravated and didn't want to do it, and I was aggravated and wanted to go to my meeting. All she said was, yes, I'll do it, and I went to my meeting. She took a nap, not much of one, I hear. Then we came back home and talked a little more and everything was okay. Years ago that could easily have turned into a big fight, some big deal. If you had watched us, you might not even have noticed anything was wrong. We didn't raise our voices.
Today I keep this in mind with my marriage: I don't give anything I don't want to get back. If I don't want to get yelled at, then I had better not yell. If I don't want to get cussed at, I had better not cuss. I've learned these things the hard way, watching my parents do it and doing some of it myself in the beginning of our marriage. Thankfully, if we remember the things we've done wrong and use them as lessons, my wife and I are grateful that we're doing well today and not repeating our mistakes over and over. We see the mistakes we made before, we talk about them, we learn, and we grow forward with them.
Backing out of my position
I'm honored to be in a relationship that's better than anything I could have imagined was even possible for most of my life. I thought relationships had to be frustrating. I thought they had to be love hate, where you're all about them one day and the next day you just can't stand them and want them out of your way. I thought that's how they had to be. Relationships can be filled with love and only minor discomfort occasionally, and it's amazing to see that. I feel obligated to share it with you, because I want you to have the chance to experience the best you can possibly have today. A lot of people have shared with me and helped me to have what I have today, so it's my duty to tell you about what's working for me.
I'm amazed that when I consistently ask to be a good husband each day, and when I'm consistently willing to back out of any position, things work. If I've taken one position and my wife has taken the other, I'm consistently willing to back out of mine, wholeheartedly. Okay, you think we should do this, I think we should do that. I'll back out of mine and let's try your way as our way. What is our way? I seek not to have a separate position from my wife. What's amazing is that when I'm willing to back out of a position, she will back out of a position also. Often we will switch positions just to see how it feels. Okay, you want to do this? Oh, well, I want to do that now. Well, you want to do that now? Okay, so what are we going to do? What's right for us? Not what I want, not what you want, but what's right for us? It's simple, though it's not always easy. When it's not easy, I consistently pray for help with it.
When my wife and I are both having a hard time, the go to I use is: I'll do anything to be a good husband. It's a simple prayer, and it doesn't even have to be directed at anything in particular. If you like, you can aim it at a god or a specific creator or a more specific term or person. Sometimes when I'm talking to my mom, I ask my dad's spirit to guide my interaction with my mom. And I use my mom and dad's relationship: I ask them to guide my interactions with my wife, to please help me be a good husband. Often when I pray to be a good husband, I know what to do next. Often it's to be quiet and listen, because usually I've said too much by the time I'm hurting and praying. Sometimes it's to say I'm sorry. Sometimes it's to give a little space and wait, and see what happens.
I'm thankful today I have these tools, and that's why I share them with you. I pray today that I'm willing to do whatever it takes to be a good husband, because marriage is one of the biggest relationships I have in my life, and it's important to do a good job with it. I pray today that I'm willing not to make it worse whenever it's challenging, and that I'm willing to always work on making it better when everything's peaceful, to continue doing things that are good for us, and to have one view and one unified life together. For more on this, read How to Have a Happy Marriage: Lessons I Recorded as a Husband, and you can find more of my relationship videos in my Dating playlist.
I pray that in sharing this with you, you have all the same opportunities today, to have the exact same love and joy that I have today, which I offer to give freely to you. I hope you have a great day.
159. The most precious part of any relationship is the friendship
From my video published December 18, 2015.
Friendship is the most precious part
The most precious part of any relationship is the friendship you have. That goes for family members, friends, a loved one, a partner, a spouse, a coworker. The most precious part of any relationship like that is the friendship behind it.
I have noticed this in some of the most precious moments I have had with my wife. The friendship is what I have loved most. When I think about the most precious things with her, it is the friendship that is so special, the love and understanding we have for each other.
The beautiful thing is that you can have friendship with anyone. You can be a good friend with a family member. You can be a good friend with a coworker. You can be a good friend with anyone you game with online, or anyone you run into on the street. You can be a good friend anywhere, anytime. There is no limit on what you can offer in terms of being a good friend.
That is really cool, because a lot of times we think that in an intimate relationship with someone we have everything. Yet the most precious part of that relationship is the friendship, and you can have that friendship with anyone. You also cannot really have everything with any one person.
You never have everything with one person
This comes into play especially in a romantic relationship, where you feel that if you spend quality time with a person or you are intimate with a person, then you have everything with that person. You see that person at their most vulnerable, in situations that no one else gets to see them in, and that takes over the idea that you have everything with them.
Yet you do not have everything with that person. There are lots of things you go and do where the other person is not around. There are lots of parts of your life that you spend without that person. No matter how long you have been with them or what history you have with them, someday they will not be around anymore. Every relationship ends, whether in death, or divorce, or neglect. Every relationship comes to an end. So you can never have everything with any one person.
You can, though, be a good friend, and you can be a good friend to every person in your life. You can be a good friend to each person in your family. You can be a good friend to your husband, your wife, your partner, your significant other, your boyfriend or girlfriend. You can be a good family member and a friend at the same time, which is nice. With my mom, it is the same thing. The most precious part of our relationship is my friendship with her.
What does that mean? A friend pays attention to their friend. A friend calls their friend. A friend does things with their friend. A friend thinks about their friend. All of these things sound like they make relationships more complicated, whether you are a father, a husband, a brother, a wife, or whatever role you think you are playing, but it all boils down to the friendship. What kind of friend are you in that relationship? If you are a good friend, you will have a good relationship with anyone.
I am thankful that I remember this with my wife, because lots of times things get messed up when you start thinking of all these relationships as different. For example, my mom used to get mad because she felt my dad was so much nicer with his friends, that he did things with his friends that he would not do with her. What my mom was really noticing was that my dad had a life with his friends. He had friendship. He had the thing that was most precious with my mom, also with his friends, and it happened in a slightly different way than it did with her.
It is the same frustration a lot of people have in a relationship: I cannot have everything with this person. I have noticed that with my wife, the most important thing being friendship, I can have that with any person too. That means what is most essential with my wife I can also have with every other person.
Obviously, there are certain things I do with my wife that I do not do with any other person. Yet there are also things I do with some of my friends that I do not do with my other friends. For example, I have friends I play this game with here, and I do not play it with other friends. I do not play this game with my wife. In that sense my wife and I do not share this together, and I have things with my friends that I do not have with my wife, such as the time playing this game with them. You see, this three faced monster in the game just said, you got my wife beat, she only has two faces.
What is most precious is in every relationship
So it is a beautiful thing in life when you see that what is most precious with your family members and your significant other, you can have with every single human being on the planet. You can be a good friend with any human being on the planet. What is most precious in any relationship is there in all relationships. That helps me know what to do in every relationship. I do not have to be something different or act different with the friend I play this game with than I do with my wife. Fundamentally, I treat my friend the same way I treat my wife.
Now obviously, I do not do all the same things with my friend that I do with my wife, and I do not do the same things with my wife that I do with my friend. That helps me differentiate relationships in life, versus the fundamental thing that is most precious in each one.
So you might think, how is this relevant for me? Well, if you are trying to make a new friend, you want to be aware of what is most precious. If you are trying to start a new relationship, if you are looking to date and find a new boyfriend or girlfriend, or you are looking to expand your family with a new child, or you just want to be a better family member and friend to the people you already have, it helps. It helps especially when you are making a new relationship, or when there is damage to an existing relationship, to remember that the friendship is the most precious part of it.
I wrote more about where this leads in Learn Love: How to Learn to Love and Find the Right Person.
Repairing a relationship works the same way everywhere
Once you see that the friendship is the most precious part, all you have to do is work on the friendship. If you are having a hard time with a parent, a family member or a friend, remember that the friendship is the most important part, and it becomes obvious what to do. All you need to do is work on being a good friend with that family member.
Look at it as if it were your best friend. What would you need to do to repair the relationship if you had been mean to your best friend? Whatever you would need to do with your best friend to repair the relationship is the same thing you would need to do with a family member. It is the same thing you would need to do if you are mad at your wife or your girlfriend. The same thing you would do to fix that is what you would do for every family member. If I am mad at my wife over something, I understand that is not fundamentally any different than being mad at my friend over something.
If I were mad at my friend, I would understand there are certain things I could not do to make up for being mean. I would simply have to do my best to apologize and talk with my friend, because the friend I play this with, I do not actually get to see that often. I cannot go give him a hug to make up. What I can do is apologize, say something, recognize what I did that was mean to him, and then repair the damage from there. It is the same basic thing.
When you see what all your friendships and relationships have in common, everything becomes simple. You think that if you have a partner, a spouse, a girlfriend or a boyfriend, there is a whole set of different rules that go with that person in particular. You think, for example, that you can make up in a physical way with a girlfriend, a boyfriend or a spouse, and then you do not understand what to do to make up with a parent, a friend or a family member, because that option is not there. If you can see what you have in common with everything, then everything is simple.
The same thing even goes with someone you do not know. Your friendship, your love, support and understanding is what is most precious with everyone. If you have a coworker, you do not have any of the tools you might have with your family or friends, and yet you can still figure out how to repair a relationship with a coworker. If you have been mean and selfish with a coworker, you do the same basic things to repair it. Not in the details, but in why you are doing it. You apologize for whatever you think you have done wrong. You accept them and love them as they are. That will repair all the relationships you have in your life.
Friendship is not possession
When you see that friendship is the most important part of every relationship, there is motivation to take care of that friendship. Lots of times in a romantic relationship you get ideas of possessing the other person, that the other person is yours. Then the idea comes in that you do not need to fix anything because they are yours. If it is your house, you can take care of it however you want.
The nice thing is that if you can see that the friendship is the most valuable part of the equation, you realize that any friendship can be destroyed, any friendship can be ruined, and that the friendship depends on both people paying attention to it. It helps you see, if you are in a romantic relationship with someone, that you can screw it up. I screwed up a lot of relationships in the past. I had a lot of first dates and not very many second dates. I learned the hard way on so many things, and that is why I share this with you, so that if you want to learn the easy way, the option is there. If you do not want to learn the easy way, that is fine with me. You can learn the way I learned, which is the hard way.
I am okay with you learning the hard way because it is your life. You have to do it. I do not have to do it. I have learned the hard way enough to see that if someone will tell me what to do, I will appreciate that advice a lot and try my best to take it. It is a lot harder to learn the hard way all the time, and I would rather not learn the hard way on anything again, unless that is what I am supposed to do. If you are supposed to do something, you just have to do it. For a long view of what I learned as a husband, see How to Have a Happy Marriage: Lessons I Recorded as a Husband.
I appreciate you being here with me for this. I hope what I have shared is useful for you. If you want more lessons like this, you can find them in my Dating playlist. I pray today to remember that the most precious part of any relationship I have today is the friendship I have with that person. The friendship I have goes beyond any exact scenario. It goes beyond any specific place or time, or exact method for fixing it. The friendship is precious, with my wife, with my family, with my friends. I am thankful to have learned that today.
I pray that in knowing this, I can see how to take care of all the relationships in my life, and by knowing how to take care of them, I can also see how not to destroy them. How to be a good friend. How to be a good family member. How to be a good husband and father and son. I can do all of these things at once through simply being a good friend each moment to everyone in my life. I pray that you have the same opportunity today, that you can see your relationships all come down to the friendship you have with that person, and that through seeing the friendship you have with a person, you can know exactly what you need to do to take care of it.
I am honored you have spent time with me today as I am playing Shadows of Evil, Black Ops 3 Zombies on Call of Duty on Xbox One. Have a great day today.
88. Repairing the damage I cause in relationships makes life so much easier
From my video published September 13, 2015.
Repairing the damage is something you control
If you want to have great relationships in your life, one of the easiest things you can do is repair the damage you do in the relationships you have. The reason this is helpful is that you can control it. You can control the repairs you make, and it does not require anyone else to do anything.
I am honored you are watching this today. I am here with my daughter, getting some skin to skin time again, so I have no shirt on and she is here with me. I hope this is useful for you in your relationships, especially with family and friends, coworkers, associates, and anyone you are interacting with. Repairing the damage you do helps you feel good about yourself, and it helps your relationships be healthy.
Apologizing to my wife
For example, last night when my wife reacted a certain way, I got a bit sassy with her and a bit intolerant. I did not say much. At this point I am usually very peaceful, so I did not say much, but an attitude can be communicated without words, especially when you are with someone a lot, like when you are married, or in a family, or you have a friend you hang out with all the time, or coworkers. My wife could see I was not happy with her, and she apologized a couple of times for what she did. Then I said, look, I am sorry for being that way with you. I am sorry for being so intolerant of what you said.
That was an example of me repairing the damage I did. I did damage by pushing her away, by putting a wall up for a minute, well, maybe five or ten minutes, by going into my shell and getting quiet and getting resentful. Then I saw it. Sure, it was a little easier because she apologized first. That can make it easier if I let it. But you cannot condition this on the other person apologizing first, because that is not repairing the damage. Sitting there and saying the other person needs to apologize first is letting the damage go on. You want to repair damage as soon as possible. When you say something rude, the easiest time to fix it is immediately. I do not say a lot of rude things anymore, and I am grateful every time I do say something rude and I immediately see it and apologize.
The post office
It is about understanding the other person's point of view and seeing the damage you did to them, and usually it is the intent you communicated with. I walked into the post office one day irritable, and I gave that irritable attitude very well. I did not even say much, but you could see I was irritable, and the lady picked up on it. Right before I left, I looked at her and I could see what I had done. Here comes a customer who has been rude, maybe not that rude compared to everyone else, but rude enough. He walked in all aggravated, communicated that aggravation, and was short with his answers, like, ah, great, another form to fill out. Whether I actually said that or not, it was communicated. He rolled his eyes when she gave him the customs form to fill out, a form he obviously should have known he had to fill out, sending an international package.
I got the gift of seeing what I had done. You know what I said to her? I said, look, I am sorry I came in all aggravated with you and was kind of rude with you, or something like that. She said something like, oh, it is okay, no big deal, some kind of acceptance of the apology. The thing is, I walked out of there feeling better. I went in, I was rude and inconsiderate, I did my best to fix it, and then I left so I could move on.
Most of my life, I just blasted through the whole day like that and never apologized, unless I was just unbelievably crazy, all over the place. Then occasionally maybe my parents would get an apology after an hour of me complaining on the phone, an oh, I am sorry, but usually not. If you can see the damage you are doing in your relationships and then repair it, then you have the chance to not do it at all. But first usually comes the seeing of it.
Rude comments while gaming with friends
One of the hardest times is when I am gaming with my friends. I will often make rude comments, and here is the thing: it does not matter what the other person did. It does not matter at all. I game with my friends and they say various things, and how I react to them is all that is important. They want me to be the best I can at the game, they want to have fun, they want to work together. Sometimes they say things like, you ought to play this way, or you ought to do that, or why did you pick this character? Sometimes they are critical of my performance, and if I am in the right place spiritually, I can see whether they communicated out of love or out of their own pain and frustration, not with me.
When I react with something like, well, I am getting twice as much XP as you, so obviously I am contributing twice as much to the team, so why do you not try to play your own character better and stop hassling me about my character, that is damage. That is hurtful, that is rude, that is not a loving thing to say. A loving thing to say is something like, I appreciate that you care about our team, I am happy that you want us to play together. Or sometimes just not saying anything, especially when it is a negative comment like, you idiot, you should not have gone and done that. To me, it is a miracle to see when I have made those negative comments and fixed them quickly.
A friend who does all the essential functions of my business, aside from me actually filming the videos, came to visit after I had known him for eight years on Xbox, and after he had listened to me complain and get drunk and be a jerk so many times. He is the person who puts my recordings up on YouTube. While he was visiting we were playing a game together, Heroes of the Storm, and we were doing something as a team where I thought we needed everyone there. Then everyone except him died, because he was off in another spot in the level. I said something along the lines of, thanks for screwing up, you ruined the whole thing by not being with us when we needed you.
The nice thing was that it did not take me very long to see, wow, that was a really damaging comment you just laid out there. It does not matter at all what he did. He is welcome to be his own person and to exist on his own. The moment I start trying to justify it, well, he screwed us over, well, he should have, all I am doing is justifying mistreating a friend. He is a good friend who has been a friend a long time, through a lot of my crap. If he gave me crap for the rest of our lives, he would probably barely break even, because I put out a lot of crap before.
So the miracle is that I noticed I did that, and instead of justifying it, I looked at what I did from his point of view. He came a long way to visit me, he does not play the game as much as I play it, and he is very good at League of Legends, so he is also very good at Heroes of the Storm. Maybe he made a mistake, maybe he did not, that does not matter. What mattered is that I hit him with a very well aimed critical comment on his performance. He is very hard on himself, so he was probably already sitting there frustrated that he went off on his own when we needed him, that he might have miscalculated. Then I laid the hammer down right on top of him, when he had not done anything to provoke it. He was just playing the game as best he could.
I am thankful it did not take me long. I looked on and said, I am sorry, I just did that. That was really rude. You do not deserve that. He said, oh, it is fine, not that big of a deal. I felt a lot better after that, and we collectively continued getting along. When you do something like that, it is poison. You have essentially poured poison into your relationship. If you can take out as much of it as possible and trust the other person to handle whatever is theirs to deal with, that matters, especially in your family. I am grateful to see that I have the chance to fix the damage I do today, and it is especially important to notice what I have done. I wrote about this kind of giving instead of taking in The Right Person Makes You Want to Give, Not Take.
Focusing on other people is poison too
What you might notice is a tendency to focus on other people in relationships. Well, they did this and they said that, so they need to do this and they need to do that. Even talking like that, even in general terms, I start feeling this poison creeping up. I start feeling what you might call my purity slipping away. I start feeling like I am going to sleep spiritually, like I am slipping away. Even just starting to say that, the poison creeps up. The energy it takes to produce that is poisonous. When you can see where you are producing it, then you can stop. You cannot stop until you see where you are doing it.
You cannot control other people. You can try to manipulate them. You can try to put people into positions, and good people will often be open to being manipulated. I notice that as a better driver now, who is not racing around and cutting in and out of cars and treating other drivers like crap, as someone who prays now to be a good driver, I am more easily manipulated by other drivers, just the way I used to manipulate others. Someone driving fast can cut in front of me and force me to slow down some, or they can tailgate me to encourage me to speed up a little bit. Good people will allow you to manipulate them a little bit. What feels like control is really a good person making space for your poison, for your inconsideration, for your rudeness. I have had a lot of people, my family and almost any friend I have had, make a lot of space for me to be rude and to be a jerk.
And by space, I mean they did not come back in and punch me in the face. They just let me be rude, let me be a jerk, and let it go. They did not close up on me, and all that bad stuff that happens when people do not give you space to just exist. So if you focus on what you are doing and take the focus off other people, you have the chance to fix anything you do that damages relationships. You have to see you are doing the damage first to fix it, though.
What my marriage taught me
I am lucky. I have had a great relationship with my wife, and still do today, and hope to in the future, and that has really shown me this. It is so obvious right away when I do damage in my relationship with her, because we exist in this pure, happy state, and the only thing I can do anything about is when I do damage. If my wife does damage, if she says something rude to me, and I make space for it and do not react, then it is just up to her to deal with. I just try to be loving. I would not say it is okay you were rude, because calling it rude is a judgment. I would say, it is okay you said what you said. Then she will say, oh my God, that was rude, I am sorry. If I do not react at all and make space for the comment to just go, she will see the damage she has done, because she is feeling bad about it. She will say, look, I am sorry, I did not mean to be rude with you.
That happens a lot in our relationship, mostly from me. I often say something inconsiderate. I am a little selfish, and I will say something kind of inconsiderate, and she will not react to it, or she will have just a gentle reaction, just enough to let me know what I did. Then I say, all right, I am sorry, that was rude, I was selfish, what can I do to turn this around? What can I do to be more thoughtful? Or, okay, I see how that was selfish, how can I be not selfish? Or I just apologize and try to do better. You have to see where you are being selfish and where you are poisoning it first. Once you do, then you can go fix it.
Fixing it without expecting anything back
You can fix it without the expectation that the other person fixes their side. If you have a relationship that is going downhill, and you have both been a jerk to each other, you can fix what you have done. Look, I am sorry I called you this, I am sorry I said that, I am sorry I said that about your family. I think you are a great person, and thank you for all the times you put up with me. You do not have to put the expectation on them that they will respond in a way you think is appropriate. If, say, they are breaking up with you, you can at least feel better about what you did. They may not want to get back with you. They may have had enough of you, and that may be best for both of you.
I know I have had some bad breakups, and the ones that were worst for me were the ones where I acted the worst, and where I expected something of the other person, like getting back with me after I apologized. When I acted respectfully, when I said, look, this is just not right for me and I know it, and I am sorry I wasted your time, and I am sorry I made these promises I cannot live up to, the breakup was a lot better for me. Ultimately, that is all I can control, what is mine. If another person takes what you have done badly, that is up to them. I wrote about a moment like this in I Expected Her to Reject Me. Then I Made It Happen.
You have to be able to see things from your own point of view so you can look into their point of view and get some perspective. When you are walking around aggravated and dropping your aggravation on everyone else, that is something you are doing. If you are in a kind, loving place, doing your best, and someone else flips out, that is not up to you. You do not have to apologize for other people's problems as long as you came from a place of love and understanding. Usually that is a peaceful place where you are mostly listening. I am telling you all of this based on what I do. I am peacefully listening, and I am open to other people as they are.
Usually the main way I do something wrong is to say something or to get an attitude, which is communicated nonverbally. If I get an attitude, you can see it. I do not have to say anything. The more sensitive you are, the more you can read other people like a book too. If you really want to help other people, it helps to be able to see exactly what you are doing yourself.
Feeling good about what you have done
I am grateful to have the chance to share this with you today because it is useful for me. I pray that I repair the damage I do in my relationships, especially today. I pray that I see the damage I do so that I have the chance to repair it. I pray that you have the same opportunity today to see the damage you do in your relationships and do your best to fix it, so that you at least can feel good about yourself. Other people have to take care of themselves the same as you have to take care of yourself.
If you can at least feel good about what you have done, not from the point of view of being right or being better than other people, but feel good that you can say, look, I love my parents, I love my family, I love my friends, I love my child, and I am doing my best with her. I know I am not perfect, I see the ways I am not perfect, and I apologize for them. I try not to do them again. I try to see the choice I have before I go through with them. When you are in that place, you can feel pretty good. You can go to sleep at night when you lie down without worrying about all the things you said, or trying to justify the things you said, or worrying about what other people do.
You can accept that you are doing your best, you are loving, you are trying, and you can accept that other people are genuinely doing their best too. They are a person just like you and they are trying too. You can accept that some days their trying might not live up to your expectations, and that your trying might not live up to your expectations. As long as you can fix the damage along the way and see it when it is happening, you have a chance for a much better life that is free from the misery and suffering that often comes from our closest relationships. I am honored you are here. If you want more lessons like this, you can find them in my Dating playlist. I hope you have a great day today.