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HOW TO GET YOUR SPOUSE TO HEAR YOU

Recently I had a series of private phone sessions with a person who was very frustrated. Listen to how this person described their situation. I bet you’ll be able to relate to it.

This person said they felt trapped in their basement trying to communicate with their spouse via Morse Code. They said they were banging on the pipes trying desperately to be heard. They would bang on the pipes and wait for a response. Bang and wait…bang and wait…bang and wait. But each time they finished banging, there was silence. No matter how hard they banged and no matter how long they waited; their spouse never heard them.

Hi. My name is Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

Are you trying to get heard? Do you feel ignored? Is your spouse not responding to your communication?

We live in an interesting time. With one click, you can communicate with anyone in the world. It’s easy, quick, and free. You even have options. If you don’t want to click, you could dial, beep, page, instant-message, or Fed Ex. It’s true. Your ability to communicate with the outside world has become increasingly easy. But my guess is that your ability to communicate with your spouse has become increasingly difficult.

The reason for this is that most people confuse INFORMATION communication with PERSONAL communication. Technological advancements give us all sorts of options to communicate information. But how do you feel the pulse of someone’s soul? How do you communicate the subtleties in your heart? You can’t text message that. You can have the latest and greatest in communication gadgets, but it won’t matter. PERSONAL communication is a whole different ball game. And it’s PERSONAL communication that determines the success or failure of your marriage.

I’m reminded of a scene from a Broadway play. A man and woman happen to meet on a train and engage in polite conversation. They were both headed home to New York after a day in New Haven, CT. After further discussion, they learned that they were going to the same building on Fifth Avenue. Lo and behold they discovered that they had the same daughter and lived in the same apartment. They finally discovered that they were husband and wife.

You know what’s killing marriages these days? EMAIL! More and more I’m seeing husbands and wives resort to email to communicate with each other. You want to do something tangible TODAY to improve your marriage? STOP EMAILING YOUR SPOUSE! Email is for INFORMATION. But in a marriage you’ve got to HEAR each other. And I don’t mean hear the sounds of each other’s words. You’ve got to be able to hear the silence between the sounds and interpret the unspoken meaning of a pressed lips or teary eyes. You’ve got to be able to hear the shapes and sounds in each other’s heart. You can NOT accomplish this via email.

And let me be clear about something; you can’t do it with communication techniques either. There’s no clinical communication therapy that can help you and your spouse think each other’s thoughts, feel each other joy, and cringe from each other’s pain. My 1-on-1 phone session schedule and the Marriage Fitness Tele Boot Camp are filled with casualties from traditional communication strategies and the usual marriage counseling approach. If you’re like most people with marriage trouble, you’ve been down that path and you know that it does NOT work.

Today my 4-year-old son came to me with a bruise on his leg. He was crying and I could see that it was black and blue. He said, “Daddy, I need a band-aide.”

I responded, “But it’s not bleeding.”

He said again, “Daddy, can you put a band-aide on it?”

I realized that my son’s perspective was that when something hurts a band-aide makes it better…even if it’s a bruise and not a cut.

So what does this have to do with communication in a marriage? Because most people think that if spouses aren’t hearing each other that communication techniques will solve the problem. But that’s like putting a band-aide on a bruise. It’s the wrong solution.

Communication techniques can help colleagues transmit INFORMATION clearly. Communication techniques belong in seminars that teach negotiation and sales. But you’re not trying to complete a transaction with your spouse; you’re trying to renew a relationship. I can almost guarantee you that your problem is not clarity; it’s concern. Ironically, communication techniques sometimes give people clarity that they don’t care what their spouse thinks or feels. They “got it,” but “it” doesn’t matter to them anymore.

How do you get back to the place where you and your spouse care again?

This is one of the things that’s unique about the Marriage Fitness approach to repairing a relationship versus traditional counseling. Most approaches to marriage success preach communication skills. But communicating effectively will NOT create love in your marriage. In fact, the correlation is the opposite. Creating love in your marriage paves the way for effective communication. I’ll prove it to you.

Think about when you fell in love. How was your communication? Good, right? In fact, when you’re in love, you communicate with the wink of an eye and you can finish each other’s sentences. And yet you haven’t known each other that long and you haven’t learned any communication techniques.

Then, years later, after getting to know each other inside and out, employing psychologically tested and proven communication strategies, and taking into account all the differences between Mars and Venus, you can’t get through to each other.

Listen carefully: Communication has very little to do with techniques or knowledge of each other. It has everything to do with the depth of connection between the communicators.

The question you should be asking is NOT, “How do I communicate effectively with my spouse.” The question you should be asking is, “How do I connect with my spouse again?” Once you reconnect, you won’t be sitting in silence in the basement. You’ll hear the sound of the pipes from above. It’ll be your spouse. You were heard. 

If you want to learn how to connect with your spouse again, subscribe to my FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and get my FREE marriage assessment. CLICK HERE to subscribe. It’s FREE.

Warm regards,

Mort Fertel

Author of Marriage Fitness

Marriage Coach

Malachi 2:16 - “The person who hates and divorces their spouse,” says the LORD God of Israel, “does violence to the one they should protect, love and honor,” says the LORD Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to your mate.

"FIREPROOF" Your Marriage (Full Movie)

About a marriage on the rocks, that nearly ended in divorce. but happily this marriage is rescued. 

I LOVE YOU BUT I’M NOT “IN LOVE” WITH YOU

Did your spouse tell you, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you?”

What does that statement mean?

Hi. I’m Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

A person who says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you,” is making a distinction between 2 different feelings. But NEITHER of those feelings are love!

When a person says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you,” they’re saying that I CARE about you but I’m not EXCITED about you.

CARING about someone is a good thing. It’s reflective of CONCERN. But it’s different than love. I care about the starving children in Africa, but I don’t love them.

Being EXCITED about someone is also a good thing. But it’s different than love. I might be excited to have a relationship with the President of the United States or a Hollywood star, but that doesn’t mean I love them.

While someone who says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you” seems to be making a distinction between “different loves;” in fact, they are expressing their confusion about what love really is. And that’s why they’re having marital problems and maybe even an affair (because who are they IN LOVE with?).

Love is something we articulate in the vocabulary of ACTION. Love is a verb. It’s not a feeling you get from another PERSON; it’s an experience you receive as a result of DEEDS YOU DO for another person.

And those deeds are not a secret. In other words, love is NOT a mystery! There are specific things you can do with your spouse to solve your problems and build love in your marriage.

Just as there are physical laws of the universe (such as gravity), there are also laws for relationships. Just as the right diet and exercise program makes you physically stronger, certain habits in your relationship WILL make your marriage stronger. It's a direct cause and effect. If you know and apply the laws, the results are predictable—you can “make” love.

This is exactly why I created the Marriage Fitness program. I wanted to offer people a step-by-step system to make and maintain love in their marriage. And the program works for any marriage, even if only one spouse does it.

Very often in my private coaching sessions, someone will say to me, “I love my spouse, but I’m not IN LOVE with my spouse.”

My immediate response is to ask, “Can you list for me 5 ways in the last week that you’ve DEMONSTRATED your love for your spouse?”

I usually hear noise on the other end of the phone; grunts, partial statements, and gasps for breath, but none of what I hear ever passes for an answer to my question.

“I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you” is a cop out. It basically means that I have no clue how to make a relationship last LONG-TERM so I’m exiting to get high from another short-term romance. But whoever they’re IN LOVE with now will also eventually hear, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you.”

Of course, this is all fine and good, but it’s really your spouse who needs to hear this, right?

Do NOT print this email out and give it to them. And do NOT tell them what I said.

Getting your spouse from “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you” to “Okay, let’s give this another chance” is a tricky task. If this is your situation, it’s crucial you handle it strategically. One false step and your marriage could be over. If you take the right steps, you can draw your spouse back in and begin to restore your marriage TOGETHER. How do you do that?

Learn more about the Marriage Fitness system of relationship renewal by subscribing to my FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and getting a FREE marriage assessment. Click here to subscribe. It’s FREE.

Warm regards,

Mort Fertel

Author of Marriage Fitness

Marriage Coach

HOW COULD EVERYTHING CHANGE SO DRAMATICALLY

I came across this quote today and wanted to share it with you. You may find that it relates to your marital situation. 

“The difficultly with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but we must live with a character.”

-         Peter Devries

Hi. My name is Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

We can only appreciate the profundity of this statement if we understand what is meant by CHARACTER.

“Personality” is easy to understand. Your “personality” is how people experience you. It’s your public persona.

But what is “character?” And why is “character” so crucial in your marriage?

Character is who you are when no one is watching.

Let me say that again so you can read it slowly and really digest it this time.

Character is who you are when no one is watching.

You see, when you and your spouse met, you met each other’s PERSONALITIES. You showed your spouse and you were shown by your spouse your public personas. I’m not saying you tricked each other. It’s just your personality…how you display yourself to others.

But marriage lasts too long in too close quarters for anyone to sustain a public persona. Personalities eventually give way to an INNER SELF that gets revealed for the first time. And there you each stand, naked as if no one is watching. But someone is watching. And that’s when you meet for the first time…again!

You and your spouse don’t meet the person who charmed each other’s friends, bought gifts for each other’s parents, and always smiled from ear to ear. No, this time it’s a meeting of your CHARACTERS.

In many cases, it’s not only that you’re meeting each other for the first time, but it’s that you’re meeting YOURSELVES for the first time.

Most people wouldn’t be caught dead treating anyone the way they treat their spouse. Most people don’t recognize their own behavior. “I’m just not myself with him/her.” Well then who is that person? That’s YOU…it’s your character. (And your spouse meets their character.)

The reason so many people fail at marriage and an attempt at marriage renewal is NOT that they don’t like their spouse. It’s that they don’t like THEMSELVES. And while everyone else in their life is like a mirror reflecting their personality; their spouse is a mirror reflecting their character. And most people don’t like what they see.

Many people would rather choose to be with someone else than remain with their spouse and have to continue to be with themselves. (Did you get that?)

Balthasar Gracian wrote in his 17th century manual on success, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, as follows: “You are as much a real person as you are deep. As with the depths of a diamond, the interior is twice as important as the surface. There are people who are all facade, like a house left unfinished when the funds run out. They have the entrance of a palace but the inner rooms of a cottage.”

Marriage renewal and individual character development go hand-in-hand.

Many people who apply the Marriage Fitness system of relationship renewal tell me that it not only restored their marriage, but it was a personal fixing for them too. If you’d like to explore that risk-free, then subscribe to my FREE breakthrough report "7 Secrets to a Stronger Marriage" and get a FREE marriage assessment too. To subscribe, CLICK HERE. It’s FREE.

Warm regards,

Mort Fertel

Author of Marriage Fitness

Marriage Coach

HOW TO FORGIVE AND BE FORGIVEN

The closer you are to someone, the more likely you are to step on their toes. And being married to someone certainly puts you in close quarters. So the chances are good that you and your spouse have sore feet.

Okay, enough of the smelly metaphor. The point is that it'sNORMAL for you and your spouse to err and for those "misses" to cause hurt…sometimes serious hurt.

Did your spouse hurt you? Have you made mistakes that hurt your spouse?

Hi. I’m Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

Except in the case of physical abuse, you can "move on" from anything. In fact, your marriage can end up even BETTER!

I know…you're probably thinking, “Better? How could it be better than before we screwed up?”

It CAN be better, but you have to do one thing first. You have to forgive.

What does it REALLY mean to forgive?

Many people will say, “I forgive you,” but continue to harbor anger in their heart. Some people say the words, but it's obvious from their actions that things are still different.

Other people will say “I forgive you” but what they really mean is, “I don't want to talk about this. I can't deal with this. I'm turning you off.” And so the 3 magic words come out and form a wall that shuts out their spouse. True, they're not angry, but that's because they've shut down all emotion and refuse to reconnect.

Saying “I forgive you” is an entirely different ball game than truly forgiving.

Look carefully at the word “forgive.” It tells you what it means. “For-Give”…in other words, to GIVE as you did beFORE.

That's true forgiveness. When you GIVE of yourself like you did beFORE you were hurt, then you know you’ve forgiven. When you stand as close to your spouse as you stood the day your feet got stepped on—that's forgiveness.

That's not easy to do. But it is possible. You can forgive each other and move on. And once you forgive, you'll see that your marriage will be BETTER than it was before. You'll be happy that the mistake was made (in a strange way) because you'll realize that you would never have achieved the love you finally did without that mistake as your catalyst.

Did you know that when a broken bone heals, it's stronger than it was before it was broken? You too can be STRONGER than before things broke down between you and your spouse.

Did you ever make love after a big fight? Did you ever think after you made-up, “Hey, this is great? We should fight more often.” (Ha Ha) Sometimes the highest-highs follow the lowest-lows.

But you have to know how to reconcile. You have to know how to get to a place of sincere forgiveness. If you want to achieve that and if you want to learn how to renew your marriage, then subscribe to my FREE breakthrough report "7 Secrets to a Stronger Marriage" and get a FREE marriage assessment too. To subscribe, CLICK HERE.

Mort Fertel

Author of Marriage Fitness

Marriage Coach

THEBOOK OF GOD'S PROMISES

The Biblical View of Marriage

ByJ. Stephen Lang

The wise-cracking Mae West was quoted as saying, "Marriage is a greatinstitution, but I'm not ready for an institution." Sometimes it appears thatmost people share Mae's cynical view of marriage. Divorce is so common that hardlyanyone thinks of it as a tragedy anymore -- except, perhaps, the ones experiencingit. Somewhere along the line the idea of permanence was thrown aside. "Tilldeath do us part" is still part of most wedding ceremonies, but we wonder if thetwo people take the words seriously.

The Bible has a high view of marriage.It is to be a lifetime plan, not a convenience that can be disposed of in a lawyer'soffice. The love of husband and wife is, at its best, a hint of the deeper lovebetween a human being and God.

Give honor to marriage, and remain faithfulto one another in marriage. God will surely judge people who are immoral and thosewho commit adultery.

Hebrews 13:4

Drink water from your own well -- shareyour love only with your wife. Why spill the water of your springs in public,having sex with just anyone? You should reserve it for yourselves. Don't shareit with strangers.

Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoicein the wife of your youth. May you always be captivated by her love.

Proverbs5:15-19

The man who finds a wife finds a treasure and receives favor from theLORD .

Proverbs 18:22

The apostle Paul, who was single, recommended thesingle life for people like himself, dedicated to God's service. But Paul wasrealistic enough to know that most people, no matter how deep their faith, werebetter off married than facing the temptations of the single life:

Becausethere is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and eachwoman should have her own husband.

The husband should not deprive his wifeof sexual intimacy, which is her right as a married woman, nor should the wifedeprive her husband. . . I wish everyone could get along without marrying, justas I do. But we are not all the same. God gives some the gift of marriage, andto others he gives the gift of singleness.

Now I say to those who aren't marriedand to widows -- it's better to stay unmarried, just as I am. But if they can'tcontrol themselves, they should go ahead and marry. It's better to marry thanto burn with lust.

1 Corinthians 7:2-3, 7-9

Paul also addressed a ticklishsituation: What if a Christian's spouse is not a Christian?

Now, I will speakto the rest of you, though I do not have a direct command from the Lord. If aChristian man has a wife who is an unbeliever and she is willing to continue livingwith him, he must not leave her. And if a Christian woman has a husband who isan unbeliever, and he is willing to continue living with her, she must not leavehim. For the Christian wife brings holiness to her marriage, and the Christianhusband brings holiness to his marriage. Otherwise, your children would not havea godly influence, but now they are set apart for him. (But if the husband orwife who isn't a Christian insists on leaving, let them go. In such cases theChristian husband or wife is not required to stay with them, for God wants hischildren to live in peace.) You wives must remember that your husbands might beconverted because of you. And you husbands must remember that your wives mightbe converted because of you.

1 Corinthians 7:12-16

Paul had much to sayon the subject of marriage. He has been accused of being "anti-woman" becauseof his discussion of a wife's "submission." The passage here will show that hedid not have in mind an abusive or dominating relationship, but one basedon mutual love.

You will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. For a husband isthe head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave hislife to be her Savior. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submitto your husbands in everything.

And you husbands must love your wives withthe same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her to make herholy and clean, washed by baptism and God's word. He did this to present her tohimself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead,she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love theirwives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself whenhe loves his wife. No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just asChrist cares for his body, which is the church. And we are his body.

As theScriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife,and the two are united into one." This is a great mystery, but it is an illustrationof the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love hiswife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Ephesians5:21-33

The Book of God's Promises -- Copyright, 1999 by J. Stephen Lang. All rights reserved, used with permission.

1 Corinthians 13 ~ LOVE, The Greatest Gift

 1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

2 And though I have the gift ofprophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though Ihave all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, Iam nothing.

3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,^[a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.

4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;

5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part.

10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.