When Family Doesn't Like Your Spouse Or You | Paul Friedman

How should you handle the situation when your family doesn't like your spouse, or your spouse's family doesn't like you? It's an unfortunate dilemma and an age-old problem. Paul Friedman offers a different look at the situation and how you should respond.

This is not an easy topic because I know what you want is for everyone to get along and that's what we all want, and I'm not going to give you methods for getting someone to like you or for teaching you how to like another. So, what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to remind you of something that is of the highest importance and that is that marriage is a very unique venue. It is what I refer to as the sacred space of marriage, and I try to encourage people to see your marriage as a blue bubble.

Blue is a healing color but that doesn't matter. It is a bubble that the two of you live in, even your children don't live in this innermost sanctum of your family. This is just you and your spouse. No one should ever come in, you should not allow their ideas to come in, you should not allow their words to come in their influences. You can take advice from someone else outside of the bubble and you can bring it in but it's you bringing it in. You don't allow anyone in. Why? Because this way it's just the two of you and when there's two of you in society because that's what you have this tiny society, you can make up the rules that work for both of you. More importantly, you could focus on the one thing that will bring happiness into your marriage.

Why did you get married?

You got married to be happier than you would have been otherwise so happiness is what it's all about. And what makes you happy universally is unconditional love, you literally got married to learn how to love unconditionally so that you can enjoy those benefits which are unbelievable benefits. There are spiritual benefits, there are benefits to having a prosperous marriage financially but they don't come close to the spiritual benefits of increasing love. That's why you got married for richer or poorer, it's serious. You got married where love is everything.

Unconditional love is everything and all of the other stuff is not even a close second. Well, your own family is and when I say your own family I don't mean mothers, fathers, in-laws I mean your children so it's you and your spouse in this shielded environment. And so, the key is keeping those shields up. You remain friendly whether you're despised or not. You don't criticize anyone, you should never criticize your spouse. You certainly shouldn't criticize your spouse's relations. You just keep a very loving distance when it comes to those topics.

If there's a discussion going on you learn how to work around the feelings that your spouse may have about the whole thing. Your job is to take care of your spouse, not their family and if your family is not liking your spouse criticizing them about it isn't going to work. They have their reasons but don't allow those thoughts to come into your family into your relationship with your spouse. Protect your spouse from those ideas. Let them know that they're loved but there's some confusion if it's that apparent or says nothing.

The most important part of this video is not about what you can do about someone else, it's about what you can do in your marriage. You want to keep it a sacred space, you want to keep the doors to everyone else closed, you want to keep your marriage firing on the fluid nitrogen of love. Make your marital space the most amazing place on earth and you won't have to worry.

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