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Warning. The following podcast may be harmful to your marriage or relationships if used in an attempt to change anyone but yourself.
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You, dad, old buddy. Welcome to another episode of Relationship Rewire where we talk about what's right and what's wrong with relationships and marriage in our world today.
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One big reason I started the Relationship Rewire podcast was because most of what I noticed out there concerning marriage and relationship health was about what to do and practical tools, but little that addresses faulty and damaging mindsets and myths. Now I try to offer helpful tools every episode. However, tools alone can become like a sledgehammer in the hands of a window repairman. In order to have thriving relationships, we must continue to get better at loving. In order to get better at loving, we must continue to grow. And growth requires new perspectives. This is all to say that I intentionally invite guests onto this podcast who don't see things just like I do. Sometimes I strongly disagree with their perspectives. But if we put ourselves in an echo chamber, not only will not grow, we will become more and more angry and unloving as we attempt to defend what we think we already know. So put more simply, please join me in the search for deeper truth as we listen to Relationship Rewire. Hello, welcome to another episode of Relationship Rewire. I'm really excited about the guests I have on here today. I've got Dr. Peter Lynn and Todd Jacobs from all the way from Jerusalem in Israel, across the ocean. I don't know, you're about eight hours behind us or something like that.
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B
There we are, seven hours ahead. Seven hours ahead.
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I mean, seven hours ahead. You're ahead.
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B
Excuse me, eight hours ahead because you're in central time.
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Yeah, that's eight hours ahead of us. And, well, I'm going to let them tell you a little bit about who they are and what they do. So whoever wants to go first.
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Todd sure, I'll jump in here. My own background would, if you looked at it 20 years ago, would not have suggested that I would be sitting here talking to you about marriage. John My own background was in both journalism and then that sort of morphed into a job as a Wall street analyst where I spent about 15 years at some very large Wall street firms trying to analyze very complex industries and help people understand them so that they could invest in them. And then around, around 17 years ago, my wife and I decided I was around 40 at the time and my kids were pretty young. My wife and I decided maybe instead of trying to help people figure out complex industries to invest in, maybe we could help people figure out Complex areas of life to help them navigate life more successfully. And so we moved our family at that point from New Jersey to Israel, got readjusted there. I went back to study kind of classic Jewish text, Jewish Torah, for Jewish mysticism. And then we decided to open up an institute called the David Robinson Institute for Jewish Heritage, which is where my co author here, Peter and I, began working together. And for the last 15 years, we have been taking kind of best and brightest young people who come to our institute for a year or two, usually in their 20s or 30s, and they come to get a real grounding in classic Jewish education, business ethics, character building, leadership training. And along the way, we discovered that one of the areas that they most were interested in was relationships. And how does love work and how do relationships work, and how do you build a healthy, happy family and a good marriage? And so we began doing quite a bit of education in that arena, using a combination of classic Jewish sources and mysticism. And then Peter's background really lent itself to this because he has a background in positive psychology. And we put all of that together and we discovered, lo and behold, our guys were a lot more successful, about 10 times more successful, that is to say, about a 1 10th, 1 10th the divorce rate of the US divorce rate US. You can expect to get divorced about 50% of the time. About 50% of people get divorced. And we looked back and saw that the divorce rate amongst our students was about 5%. So we thought, wow, we must have hit something here that we can share with other people.
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And that really.
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That's a bit of a long answer to your question. But that brings us to why we're sitting here talking to you today.
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No, that's great. In fact, I'm pretty excited because I actually know David Robinson and I know that he started the Carver Academy here in San Antonio, but I didn't realize he started something over there as well with you.
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B
Yeah. So our David Robinson may be a different David Robinson. Our David Robinson was the grandfather of one of our donors who decided to give a lot of money to build our building. And so we. So we named it after him. They might be related, but I think
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not the same guy.
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Well, can he dunk?
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Not like the Admiral.
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So for our guests, I guess I should let them know that both of you are practicing Jews. And I don't. I can't remember the comedian's name. The tall Jewish guy talks about when his dad played in the. In the basketball league, the Jewish basketball league there. And anyway. Okay, I digress.
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I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can find it on YouTube.
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Oh, it's. It's hilarious. Okay, Peter, tell us about yourself.
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So I. I was living in Boulder, Colorado, pursuing my professional life in the world of architecture. At the same time, maybe looking into the world of professional athletics.
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Yeah. Wait, you. So you. You were the captain of the US Duathlon team at one time, is that correct?
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For the duathlon team, which is. Which is running, biking, and then running. And the real mecca of endurance sports is in Boulder, Colorado. So that led me there. But as I pursued more of a realistic life in the world of architecture, I finally realized at a certain point that instead of remodeling your kitchen or building the next highway, I wanted to focus on building people. And that took me in a certain direction in my life. And for the past 15 years, I've been working with Todd. And my role in the institution is to be the dean of students. And what I've really tried to put all of my energy in, basically, is into the idea of helping to give people the life that they want. And over the course of the past 15 years, I pursued some professional, like some secular, basically some classic areas of Jewish thought which speak about character development and about growth. And I saw those actually lined up perfectly with some of the fields in the world of psychology, especially that positive psychology. So for the past 15 years, I have pursued a real in depth kind of approach to understanding how Judaism says a person should grow and how a person should change at the same time. I also got my master's degree and my doctorate in the fields of psychology. Specifically, my master's degree is in the field of positive psychology.
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Great. I got just a ton of questions to ask you too, because. So one of the things that I want the listeners to know is the two of you got together and wrote a book for marriage called Not a Partnership.
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Correct? That is correct.
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That title just really grabbed me, and I was like, yeah, this is a great title, because so many people just the title says so much. I tell people, the couples that I'm working with, you know, the idea of a 50, 50 marriage is a losing formula. It's the math doesn't work out right, because if you're always shooting for 50%, you're probably hardly ever going to be hitting 50%. And so the two of you together are probably going to be hitting on your best days, about 70% or 60%, and that's a failing grade. But on the other hand, if you're shooting for 100%, you're probably not going to be hitting it much, but you might be hitting 70%. But even if your spouse is only hitting 30, then together you met, you got 100% going there.
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So is that kind of right?
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Is that kind of what you guys are talking about with this title?
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So maybe I'll jump in here, but. And I'll tell you a quick story as to how this title came about. I had a. Both, Peter. I have had a student who lived in New York. He had been at our institute for a couple years, and then he had gone off and get. Gotten married. He was living in New York City. Lovely girl, wonderful guy, very talented people, both working, great personalities, very well meaning. And I sat down with this student for coffee one day when I was visiting students in New York. And he told me, he said, listen, you know, we're just. We know I love her, she's fantastic, but we fight all the time, you know, and I'm finding that I resent her, and I'm seeing that she's sort of resentful of me. And. And I said to him, sort of a little bit out of nowhere, I said, you know, the problem is that you have the wrong. You have the wrong paradigm for your marriage. I said, you know, you think marriage is a partnership. I said, marriage is not a partnership. And he was sort of like, stunned. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, well, and this is kind of our version of the math, John. I said to him, you know, in the world of business, most partnerships fail. And the reason most partnerships fail is not because it's a bad product, not because people aren't talented, not because there's no financing. The reason they usually fail is because the partners look at each other, and each one looks at the other as though the other is not carrying their end of the bargain. And I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing. So I spend most of my time, instead of investing in the business, I spend most of my time thinking about how much I resent the fact that you're not doing your part. I said to the guy, I said, if you're going to look at your spouse and always be looking at, well, what are you doing for me? Here's all I'm doing for you. I said that that math is going to. Is going to ruin your marriage. I said, you got to look at marriage as though you're responsible for your whole marriage. And she's got to look at marriage as though she's responsible for it. You both got to take responsibility as much as you can to build the other, and that will give you. And in a sense, that's really what you're saying. If I give it 100 and you give it a hundred to devote to each other and to try to build something bigger than just the two of us, then we have an opportunity to really build something. And he said to me, he said to me, you got to write a book and you got to call it not a partnership. And that was the honest truth. Is that where that title came? Now, by the way, the spoiler alert is that if you do it right, marriage is the greatest partnership that exists on the face of the earth. But if you approach it like that business guy who's always looking at the other side saying you're not carrying your end of the, you know, you're into the bargain here, then, then you're doomed.
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Yes. Well, I want.
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There was a.
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In. In the very beginning of the book, there was a term that you guys used. It's a Hebrew term and I'm probably going to pronounce it wrong, so please correct me. Ezer kinneg doe.
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Yeah, yeah.
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How do you pronounce that?
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Yeah, so it's in. In the Hebrew, it would be. Azerbaijan means a helper and connecto means against him. A helper against him, which is a contradiction in terms.
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Right. So in English, in English, you paraphrase or quote as well as you can.
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That.
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That passage, that's from Genesis 1.
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Yep, yep. And that is. That is. That is the place where God basically looks at Adam, says, not good to be alone. I will create for him A. And you can fill in the blank in English, I believe.
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A. In the azer connecto.
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Yeah, exactly. So it's usually very strangely translated into English. If you look in the English Bibles, it is usually translated as a help meet. H E L P, sometimes with a dash. M E E T. A help meet. Maybe that's. That. Maybe that's old English for a help mate. I'm not sure. But whatever it is, it does not cap. It does not capture the actual meaning of the phrase. So when you delve into. With a little bit of Hebrew background, a little bit. So the first thing you notice, it's a contradiction. I'm going to give him somebody, I'm going to take someone from him, build a woman out of him, separate her from him, bring the two of them together, and she will be for him a help meet. So. So what does that mean? So azer means a helper, and connect, though, means against him.
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So.
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So the question Is the question I don't understand. Are you my helper or are you against me? You know, am I your helper or am I against you? Like it sounds like.
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So the answer is.
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Oxymoron.
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It's an oxymoron. So it's. It's. And the answer is so beautiful. The answer is that when the two of us come together and realize that we are not the same, and I have things that I love and things that I hate, and you have things that you love and things that you hate. You have things that you believe, and I have things that I believe. I have this talent, and you have this talent, this asset. This asset, this liability. This liability. By coming together, we can create something much bigger than ourselves. We can create a whole that is much bigger than the half that I bring and the half that you bring. But in that process, we have to grind against each other to some extent. And I have to learn to tolerate and live with and appreciate the way you are when it's different than I am. And you've got to learn to tolerate and deal with the way that I am when it's different than you are. And like the way that we sort of grind together against each other, we can actually come together, smooth out those rough edges, and we can create a whole out of the two of us, which is a function of that tension. And if you get it right, then they say you can become the most amazing helpers to each other in helping each other achieve peace and love and tranquility and trust in each other and intimacy and all the things a person wants. If you don't get that help part right, then all you're left with is I'm against you and you're against me. Yes. So if you get the big picture right, and you want to do the work, you get all the beauty of the helper. And if you don't, and you then you just fall apart into being against each other.
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So what I'm hearing is sort of that the conflict of being different actually creates something when we hang in there with that conflict and we work through knocks off our rough edges, and we actually have a more intimacy because of the conflict.
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That's correct.
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Working through it.
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And we become something much bigger than. What if I marry somebody who's exactly like me? We like the same things, we believe the same things, we think about things the same way. There will be no ability, first of all, for me to give to the other something they don't have. They'll have no ability to give to me. Something I don't have. And in that process, we're going to remain two halves which are very much alike, which don't create anything bigger than the two of us. Whereas if we, if we take our differences and we're able to meld them together in a powerful, positive way, we create something so much bigger than ourselves. And that's called a marriage of two people who couldn't be more different. Male, female, however you want to think about a relationship of two people coming together. The most beautiful relationships are often when they complement each other by their differences and can create a totality which is much bigger than either of them can do by themselves.
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Yeah, great. Hey there listeners, this is John Anderson. Real quick, I want to tell you about something I'm excited about and it will help you tremendously. It's my new book, the Acceptance. It's the culmination of, of many years of my work with marriages and relationships. It's subtitled what Brings and Keeps Lifelong Love. The Acceptance gets to the core of what drives us to look for a lifelong mate and how that drive continues to play out in all our relationships, especially with our spouse. The Acceptance also exposes the myths that interfere with our relationships and provides practical applications for everyday use. I think you will find it to be one of the most unique and thought provoking books you've ever read on relationships. You can get the hardback, paperback and ebook versions on Amazon. Just search for the Acceptance by John R. Anderson. Now back to the show. I have another question, and this one might sound a little controversial, but I'm just, I have, of course I look at things through my Christian lens and, and I don't know hardly any Hebrew. So one of the things that I love that's beautiful, at least in the English translation, in Genesis or in most English translations, is that God, it says, and God says, let us make all these things right, so let us make someone in our image. So male and female God created in God's image. So to me there's, that says that there's something plural about God if God says us.
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So maybe I'll jump in here. And by the way, just so you know, the more philosophical theoretical questions in the book I tended to deal with, this is Todd and Peter really led the whole, he led basically the 60% of the book, which is the second half, which is all the, all the practical implementations of how to make this all work. So if you find me, if you find me talking too much in the philosophical part, that'll, I apologize for that. But that's more or less why. So I'll tell you from a Jewish
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standpoint,
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the question of let us is kind of inherently a little bit of an issue because we believe one God.
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Yes, the Shema says the Lord is one.
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You got it. So that's kind of fundamental Jewish thinking. But there is a concept that what we call the midrashic literature, the literature that comes out of the Talmudic period, which is kind of an in depth commentary on the Bible as it goes, describes that we learn something very powerful from when God said us. Who was he speaking to? He was speaking to his, so to speak, the heavenly court, the angels, the spiritual entities that are the messengers which carry out many of his missions. In other words, if God is completely non material and the world is completely material, you need some sort of a devolution between non material and material to make those two things meet up. Otherwise they never meet. The infinite never meets the finite. Otherwise. So God had his heavenly court, so to speak, of angels, which are to say again, these kind of spiritual messengers of, of God's missions. And he said to them, let us make man. What was he trying to accomplish by saying let us make man? He Himself was going to do it, as the next verse says. And what they learned from that is that a person should always make sure to take into account the feelings, the sensitivities of those around. If I'm a leader, right this, by the way, this would be true if I'm a leader in my household. If I'm a leader, if I'm a leader in my business, I'm a leader in my community. Even if I have the authority and the power to do things myself, and I have the right to do things myself and make decisions and implement them. It's always good, It's a good character trait to teach the idea of modesty and humility that I always want to. I always want to bring everybody into a process because we don't want to live as autocrats. We want to live in a communal world. And God is teaching, God himself is teaching us. That idea of consult with everybody around you, you can make the final decision, but make people part of the process and in the sense make, you know, make the, make the visions of the angels, so to speak, part of the process. So that's how, that's how the midrash deals with that. Okay with that question.
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So my understanding of midrash is that it's like a conversation that there's so much mystery to God and so much mystery to the universe that you know, In a lot of evangelical Christian tradition, it's. We gotta. We gotta figure out the thing that this means. But what I think is beautiful from my understanding of Midrash, is that it can mean so many different things. And coming together and talking about it, we may not arrive at the thing. And even though we all agree we still. There's still room for this could mean something else, too, or can have multi layers. And is that. Am I getting that right?
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Yeah. And I'll give you. I mean, we're pretty far afield from marriage here, but I'll give you. But I'll give you one metaphor which I think explains this very beautifully. If I ask you here, I'm sitting in front of a table here. If I ask you, tell me about this table, you'll say, well, it's made of wood. It's hard. And I'll say, what if you hit your head on it? He's going to say, a perchance. So I'm going to. And if I said to you, well, what if I told you that this table is actually 99.9% empty space with a bunch of, like, a little electrons and atoms rolling around in that empty space like a fly inside of a cathedral? You would say, what are you talking about? You can't. You can't. If it's 99% empty space, why do I hit my head on it? I would say because that's a different level of magnification. If I look at it like this, it's made of wood. If I look at it as a. Under. Under a. An electron microscope, at the atomic level, this. This reality doesn't look like wood. It looks like empty space with, you know, with. With atoms floating around in it.
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Right.
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So the question is, which level of magnification are you looking at? And both levels are true at the same time. You don't want to hit your head on this table. No matter how much at the subatomic level it might be empty space, you still don't want to bang your head on it. And the answer is. And that's because we live at one level of reality, but there are other levels of reality which are just as real at the same time, which all together create those layers of reality that are the real picture of what life is. Great picture.
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Well, sorry for digressing there. That's. I just. I like to turn things over and I like to hear different perspectives. And so I want to. Okay, let me ask Peter a question then. So you did the. More of the. Now, what part of the book Correct.
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Right.
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So you talked about these four steps to developing a more mature and idealistic vision of marriage. Can you break those down briefly?
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Sure. So I'll take this. Is that the. What we try and do in the book is two fundamental things. Number one, describe what a marriage is, meaning a lot of people, you know, it's actually quite fascinating. But when you ask people what a marriage is, how do you define it? What's it built on? People can't answer that question, but yet it's something that we all pursue in life, which is actually quite interesting. So we found that it's very important for people, if they're going to spend all this time and effort in their life building something, to have a clear definition of what this thing actually is. So that's, number one, what we do. Number two, what we speak about is, okay, now that you have this thing called a marriage, what's the PDF manual for it, meaning how does a marriage actually work? How does it get built? And what we found is that the number one ingredient, and basically the only ingredient needed for a marriage to grow into change and develop is the idea of giving. And we speak that a lot in the book about why giving is so important. And the crucial ingredient and what we launch into is, okay, very nice ideas. But what we do is we set up something called the four pillars of giving, and they are four different ways of how you can bring giving into your life. And so what the whole second half of the book is, is really four different ways of how giving can come alive and practical examples of how to do that. So really, the 60% of the book is real, practical tools, real exercise research, which is from the field of positive psychology. So people can really walk away with not just, okay, nice theoretical ideas, they can really walk away with real tools that they can start implementing in their life right now. The four pillars of giving that we describe are four things. Number one is the idea of couples learning how to keep their marriages fresh and going out of their way to make an effort to keep their marriages fresh. Many marriages get old very fast, and that's a real problem. And therefore, when things get old very fast, we look for new things. Number two, we speak about the idea of expressing gratitude and how that is really a very powerful form of giving. A lot of times what we do is we express gratitude to people who are not. Who are outside of our family, because usually we have expectations of what our family members should do, and only if they really exceed those expectations do we offer gratitude. But that's a real problem. If there's any place where gratitude should really be implemented, implement it into your life. It should really be in the world of marriage. Number three, we speak about the idea of respect and how showing respect is really a very powerful means of being able to give. And number four, the last pillar that we describe as one of the most effective ways of giving are people taking responsibility for their own issues that they bring into a marriage and trying to make headway on trying to tackle those issues. And what we find a lot of times is that if people just focus on their own personal issues that they bring into the marriage, the end result is that's going to impact the marriage in a very powerful way. It's more of an indirect form of giving. But it's still. If I realize that I have a major anger problem that comes up in all areas of my life and now I say I really want to give to my wife, one of the greatest ways I can gift her is by me taking responsibility for that anger issue because for sure, it's coming alive in our marriage. So really what we do is we speak about four different pillars of how giving can be expressed in your marriage.
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A
Yeah, I like that. So that giving and especially that fourth one you're talking about, I think personal growth. What I can't grow my spouse. The only thing I can really grow as far as people is myself. Right, right. So, yeah, taking responsibility for my part. And there's plenty to do right there for the rest of my life that I don't need to be trying to fix other people. The evidence is overwhelming. Reputable and proven marriage intensives have a far higher success rate than counseling or therapy for marriages that are struggling or even failing. I myself am a counselor. I earned my master's degree in marriage and family therapy and I see multiple couples in my office on a weekly basis. But unless it's premarital counseling, I don't work with a couple until after they have been through a proven intensive. I have now led more than 126 such intensives over the past 15 years. The University of Washington found that only 17% of couples in crisis who start with counseling will still be married just two years later. However, two separate studies have shown that at least 72% of the couples who have attended an intensive that I conducted are still married.
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You.
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You can't find a better choice for turning your marriage around than our intensive love reboot. Come join the thousands who have attended a love reboot and are now experiencing a thriving, vibrant marriage. You can find us on the web@growinglovenetwork.org that's growinglovenetwork.org.
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B
Hello, this is Max Lucado. You're listening to Relationship Rewire. Right.
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C
You know, we get so caught in our marriages with saying, you know, all the things that my spouse should do differently or all the issues that we're having as a couple. And what I found something actually quite fascinating. If you look at a lot of individuals, a lot of individuals, they basically have, you know, we think we're quite complicated, but we're not that complicated. People usually have a few major core negative traits in their life that manifest everywhere. Let's say, for example, let's say a person who has an anger issue. So what you're going to find is that anger issue basically comes alive in all areas of your life. The person is in their office, they are dealing with their anger issue. In their community life, they're dealing with their anger issue with their friendships. Who knows? The anger issue comes alive everywhere. And what we have found, and this is actually really, really quite amazing, is that probably where that anger issue comes alive the most is in someone's marriage. Now, what would be awesome is if you now take this person as an anger issue and you say, okay, here's what we're going to do. Let's proactively go out of our way. As me, let's say I'll take myself as a husband, and I am going to deal with my anger issue. I'm going to take total responsibility for it. Forget my spouse, forget anything that's happened in my marriage. The way I'm going to give to my marriage right now is by focusing on my anger problem. And now you have this husband where now he says, okay, let's do it. He finds a therapist, he reads books on marriage. He finds a podcast on marriage, he goes to a seminar on marriage. And I always have this scene, this. This image that he has. This. You know, you walk into someone's bedroom, and you look at the husband's side of the table, and on his kind of side table there, he has, you know, books piled up, and he's got a folder from a seminar he went to. And what happens is that two things actually happen which are quite amazing. Number one is that you see a change in the marriage because the husband's actually working on his anger issue. And number two, a healthy wife is going to say, whoa, well, what do I actually bring to the table that might be impacting our marriage in a negative way? And she begins to work on her thing. And now a Week later, her bedside table is stacked up with all of her books and all of her folders from her seminars. And why is she working on that? Because she also wants her marriage to be better. And now you have this beautiful upward spiral of two people working on their own issues for the sake of the marriage that can lead to a tremendous amount of growth.
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A
That's a beautiful metaphor. Beautiful. Something that came to mind. And he's talking about that. So this is all about giving. Now a lot of people that are going to be listening to this are coming from the Christian perspective and have various amounts of understanding of Christian scripture, New Testament scripture, I should say. And so that was originally written in Greek. And the word love, there is
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at
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least four different words, but it always comes as love. But most of the time it's a love that would describe what you're talking about, which is giving. And so often people think of it as a feeling. But most of the time in New Testament scripture it's the word agape, which is, you know, it's a giving love.
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It's not about emotions, it's not about
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something that you're receiving. Do you have anything to comment about that from Hebrew?
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Oh, absolutely. I'll give you two beautiful ideas there. This is Todd. So the word for love in Hebrew is ahava. Ahava, four letters and the two letter root of. Hey bet. Those are the two second, the second and the third letters, which are the root letters of the word actually by themselves mean give. They mean to give. Hav means give. And therefore. So first of all, the word itself is based on giving. So is it, is that the word?
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A
I'm sorry, Todd, is that the word in the Shema, the love, Lord your God with all?
- [35:00]
B
Yes, because the first word, when it says you should love, it says which is that word with a vav in front of it, which means and. And a letter at the end which means you second person singular, you should love. And so there's a concept of giving there. The second there's another one more idea in it, which is just another look at the same thing. There's a concept of trans the Hebrew letters into numbers. Every Hebrew letter has a numerical equivalent. And if you actually take the word ahavah, it comes into a numerical equivalent that turns out that it's 13. And 13 happens to be also the numerical equivalent of the word for one echad one. And the idea is if you love someone and you give to them, you become one with them. So like in the. It's just like the sparks of these Ideas, these powerful ideas which just jump out of the words from the Hebrew is really quite extraordinary.
- [36:00]
A
That's fascinating. Oh, there. You said there was two points you were going to make.
- [36:05]
B
Yeah, no. So the first one is that it's based on giving. And the second one is that the numerical equivalent is the same as the word one, which is to say that by the process of love is truly becoming one with the other person. So if I put those two ideas together through giving to the other person, I can become one with the other person by taking from the other person. That is not the pathway to love. And then, and by the way, that one of the. There's a classic. There's just a classic Jewish lesson in what love is and how love is formed. And we always, we frequently ask our students, okay, guys, you know, you're also smart, you have great degrees, and you know, you know how to be, you know, you know how to be a good lawyer, you know how to be a good doctor, you know how to be a good social worker, you know how to be a good actor. What causes love? And we're usually met with kind of a blank stare at that point. Sure. And, you know, I mean, they know what passion is. They know what, you know sexual attraction is. They know what you know. They know all that. They know all that.
- [37:01]
A
Right.
- [37:02]
B
But what they don't know is how to. So we say to them, yeah, but okay, but how about real love? The real deal? So they usually kind of give you the blank stare and then you say, okay, well, ask you question number two. Is love a function of. The other person gives to me, so I love her or I give to her, so I love her. Like, which comes first, the giving or the receiving? So most people say, well, if the person gives to me, I love them, and if they don't give to me, I won't love them. Which leads to the following little problem. Who loves who more? Does a parent love a child more or grandchild more, or does a child love a parent more? So most of us in a healthy home would say the parent loves a kid way more than the kid loves the parent. Right. I mean, and yet, if you look at who does all the giving, the parent does all the giving. Sometimes they don't receive anything in return at all, or certainly not for many, many years. And yet they love the child way more than the child loves them. So why is that? And the answer is, because where we give, that's where we love. When I give, when I invest myself in you, I love you. When I Build a house. And I put my sweat into it and my work and my back into it. I love the house. I raise a dog, the dog might be really crazy about me, gets all excited every day that I come home, jumps all over me. But trust me, I love that dog more than that dog loves me. And that's because it's a one way relationship of giving. Okay. And the dog wags his tail and I get the, you know, the kisses on the, on my face and everything else. But, but the giving is really, you know, stacked up that the, you know, that the, that the dog owner, the dog lover usually gives to the dog much more and comes to love the dog through that process. Or I can love my plant also if I spend enough time, you know, cultivating a plant. Right?
- [38:47]
A
Yeah. When couples first start falling in love, they don't, they don't realize the years later after they've been married and try to change each other for years, and that doesn't work. And, but at the beginning, they were putting all of their extra time, energy and money into that other person. And then you look five years later and where those resources now going, they're going to all kinds of other stuff and they're wondering why,
- [39:20]
B
what happened to the love.
- [39:21]
A
Right, right. But on the other hand, we have couples that sign up for our love reboot and they're just doing really bad. But it's not a small chunk of change that it costs to come to one of those. But all of a sudden they make that big investment and they sign up a week ahead of time and then they come and tell us things have gotten a lot better in the last week.
- [39:44]
B
Amazing.
- [39:46]
A
Yeah, well, unfortunately. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, Peter.
- [39:50]
C
I'm saying, unfortunately we have this expectation and it's one of the biggest problems that we find that we deal with in couples, that people expect that if it's really the right person, well, things are just going to go smooth and things are going to be amazing. And what we always say to our students and we say wherever we speak, we always say, great marriages are built. They don't just happen. And unfortunately, that paradigm really gets in the way. So people start thinking when they hit the wall or things aren't as fresh anymore, where losing attraction, hey, that's a sign that's not the right person. And that's a real unfortunate thing because you're going to feel that no matter who you're with. And really at that point, when you start feeling that that's a choice a person makes. Where I say, I'm going to build a great marriage right now. Let's put the hard work in and make it happen.
- [40:40]
A
Yeah. I like to say thinking that if you just marry the right person, you're going to have a great marriage is like thinking if you just have the right child, it'll raise itself.
- [40:52]
B
Exactly.
- [40:55]
A
Yeah. Okay, I'm going to make this short and to the point. The podcast you're listening to, Relationship Rewire is a free service to the public provided by Growing Love Network, a nonprofit organization. That means we don't make a profit. In fact, to be able to do what we do, which is to provide top notch, innovative help for marriages, we rely on donors so that everyone can have access to the help they need, regardless of the ability to pay. Won't you take a moment? Hit the pause button and go to GrowingLoveNetwork.org, click on the Donate button and give what you can. If you're not sure about it at this moment, hit pause Anyway, just for 15 seconds. Ask yourself if this is what you should do. Go ahead. I'll wait. So you guys, in the book, you talk about that marriage can create wholeness and meaning and purpose and happiness. And I think that's what we all hope that marriage will do for us. But then a lot of us find out, well, you know, a few years in the marriage, I'm feeling less of all that. So explain, explain that a little bit.
- [42:17]
C
Sure.
- [42:18]
B
Maybe I'll jump in here for a second. So this is Todd. Yeah, that's Todd speaking. So. So first of all, there is, I'll throw you out, one more idea from Jewish mysticism, which is a very, very powerful paradigm to work with. And it's. It helps make sense of a lot of marriage. There's a concept in mysticism that everything that comes into reality comes in with two stages. It's kind of created with a stage which is almost deeply spiritual, almost above this world, almost can't fit into this world. That then creates a space that a second stage can come and then rebuild that, refill that space and make it real with a lot of hard work. The first phase comes for free. It's almost magical. And then it disappears. But it created the possibility to now recreate that and fill it with content through lots and lots of hard work. Now, that's pretty abstract. Let me give you an example. Let me give you two examples of that. One example of that is childhood versus adulthood. Childhood is like this incredible gift of a period of time where I feel I could be anything. Why do we love children so much? Why are they so adorable? One day he's an astronaut, the next day she's a ballerina, the next day she's a policewoman. The next day he's a football player. The next day, every day there's something new because they have that feeling that life can be anything. I can be anything. Now the beauty of that is that feeling that life will go on forever and I have all the choices in the world. The tragedy is that a child, as much as they could be anything, they're not really anything at all. They're really nothing. They're just like a clean slate with a lot of potential. An adult is the one who says instead of trying to be everything, I'm going to choose one thing and I'm going to try to really be that. And I have to cut away all the other possibilities, which is very painful, by the way, to decide. I'm not going to be the astronaut, I'm not going to be the football player, I'm not going to be the, you know, the duathlon champion, I'm not going to be the architect. I am going to be a world class teacher. That is a painful process, but it's the one which actually gives you a chance to be something real. But of course, it takes many, many years to get there. So that's it, that's childhood and adulthood. If you take marriage, it couldn't be more clear in marriage. Marriage has a phase called romance. As you say, we fall in love, it's a passive process. I see her across the room. We're so attracted. Oh my gosh, the bells, you know, the bells are ringing and the music's playing. We fall into each other's arms and it's all magical. There's no work involved and. And we feel that we're going to be one forever. And then, as we all know, that's when the movie ends, by the way, when they fall into each other's arms, the curtain comes down. But we all know that real marriage begins that next day when the curtain comes back up and wow. Oh, it's you. Oh, it's you again. Oh, you're not as cute as I thought you were. And he's not as funny as she thought he was. And without the music around him, it's not quite as charming. And I guess I got duped again is usually the feeling. But what we really understand is that that first phase was given for free to give you a taste of what you can have. And now you got to build it. And the way you build it is Just as we talked about that love is through giving. Now you start giving to each other and giving and giving and giving. And when we give as just pulling all the things we've said just in this last hour together, John, we give to each other. We become one. We become something bigger than we could have been by ourselves, and we find ourselves in each other. There is no greater experience that a person can have in this world than the love and the wholeness and the intimacy and the security and the fidelity and the loyalty of that relationship, which is, you got a taste of it for free. And then it's a lifetime of building it and working on it. But then the idea, of course, is to come back to that oneness and that beauty, which you can do as long as you keep. As long as you keep at it.
- [46:15]
A
Yeah, I like that. I like that. I think some people get to that place and then they get to the. Okay, I realize why I should say some. I think a lot of people, I realize that marriages work, that I've got to build something here. But then what they think is the building is I got to build my spouse. Hope my Alexa just notified me. They think I've got to start building my spouse to be the thing that's going to bring me all that. And I think, you know, the building is your. Is giving that fourth piece you talked about. Todd is building myself to bring more to this marriage.
- [46:59]
C
Right, right.
- [47:01]
B
And, you know, as. And again, in Peter's, you know, 60% of the book over there, you know, this concept that I can take full responsibility and start giving to the other, to really help the other become the person they want to become and have the life they want to have. The reaction to that is generally speaking. And again, I don't. Nobody should enter this cynically and like, trying to get a deal out of it. But the reality is, if I devote myself to making my wife happy and giving her the life and security and the, you know, the love and the feelings that she needs from me, the general response is tenfold that I get back from her. So as long as a person doesn't stop investing, then it's just the most. It's. You know, again, I said I did spend part of my career as an investor, and like, you know, the greatest investment in the world is when you invest and you keep getting a great return on the investment. I think the world of love and marriage is that is exactly that place where the invest. Where the investment returns are the highest. As long as you keep investing and keep going with it. But the minute you try to control. The minute I decide I want to control her and I want her to be this. Because I just. What I want from her. And that is not the. That's not the methodology that works. Right.
- [48:18]
A
We get our interest from what we invest in.
- [48:22]
B
You got it.
- [48:22]
A
If our spouse is not interesting to us, that means we're probably not investing in him or her.
- [48:29]
B
That's right.
- [48:30]
A
Now, I've used up more of your time than we talked agreed upon, so. But I don't have anything to be at for a while. I just wanted to make sure I give you the chance before you wind up here. If there's something that you think needs to be included in this discussion that I have not brought up.
- [48:52]
C
Not from my end. I think, you know, I think we've covered a lot of the topics and, you know, I think that maybe just one thing I'll just say is people have asked us many times, you know, why is there a need for another marriage book? There are a lot of great marriage books out there.
- [49:05]
A
Yeah.
- [49:06]
C
And, you know, I have many of them, my shelf that I've read and given to my students. And I think that for us, really, the reason why we feel like the book is quite unique is because we feel the book is almost a prerequisite to other marriage books. Because what we try and describe is, like I mentioned before, number one, what is the definition of this thing called marriage? And number two, what's the instruction manual for it? That what we want to do is really give you, if you have a clear understanding and you know the directions of how it works. Now I can begin to use all these other books as helpful tools to get there. But, you know, I studied the world of architecture and everything is built on your having a strong foundation. So we really feel that our book is almost. If we have we're teaching in a college class, it would be a prerequisite for all the other great classes that are out there. So that's kind of. I think that for people who are listening, that's really the goal of the book more than anything else. And we find that when people are empowered with this knowledge, with, you know, like I just described, it really does a lot to help motivate people to start working on their marriages. Yes.
- [50:20]
A
Yeah, I think that's. So many of the books, marriage books out there have a lot of good information in them, but it's more the how to. And if you don't have that foundation of the core, what. What it's really all about in the first place, then the how to just seems to fall on its face and. Yeah, and another thing is there is no one size fits all when it comes to marriage books. There's, there's right. People are missing this piece or that piece and. Yeah, great. What would you want to say, Todd?
- [50:52]
B
I'm sorry? No, I was just going to add in that we, you know, you can find a lot of, a lot of great techniques out there. You can find a lot of, as you said, a lot of good how to. You can find some interesting theories. What we felt was that, what we felt was kind of, you know, as Peter said was missing was really to pull it all together into one piece place which is, you know, if I don't, if I don't, if I don't set my GPS for a destination that I'm trying to get to, that's clear to me, my GPS might be able to function theoretically quite well. It might actually be hooked up to, you know, it's got a good source of power, got an ability to read the terrain around me, but I don't really know where my destination is. It's really, really hard to get there. So we kind of felt that, you know, if you don't have a clear. And again, we just saw this over and over again in highly educated people. They may be highly educated. Listen, if you ask, you know, somebody who wants to be, take any business you want, somebody who wants to be in advertising, they've got a picture of what it means to be a successful executive in advertising. They know which classes you got to take. They know they're going to work hard. They know they got to control themselves. They know that they have to work, you know, they know they're going to get reviewed. They know what the, what the goal looks like and they know what the pathway to get to that goal is. And there's a constant review process to make sure that they're going along the
- [52:13]
C
right method along that pathway.
- [52:16]
B
Comes to marriage. Comes to marriage. We're missing almost all of that. There are many people that have never seen a healthy marriage. And so if divorce rates are 50%, I may never have seen. And even if my parents stayed married, they might not have had a good marriage. So what the heck is it? How do I do it? So we felt, let's give people as broad a perspective on the clear paradigms of what a marriage is, what a relationship is, how love works, what you can achieve, and then let's try and implement it with some really user friendly stuff. And by the way, the Way we wrote this book and the way we aim this book, you don't have to be religious. You could be from any religion. You can have no religion. You can have any kind of relationship if what you want is intimacy, security, and a way to sustain a relationship and you're willing to give it a try in the world of giving and you have a picture of what you're going for. We think people, whether they are just entering marriage, whether they're trying to reboot a stale marriage, or whether they're on the verge of divorce and want to find one more attempt to try to make this happen and take responsibility. We just felt that this was kind of a tool that everybody could use.
- [53:30]
A
Yeah. And I've read the book. Well, most of it, I ran out of time to finish it before I had this time with you guys. But I did find some. Some really helpful things in there. I think it's. It's a good book. And you can find that. It's called the part. Excuse me. Not a partnership, correct?
- [53:49]
B
That's correct.
- [53:50]
A
And it's available on Amazon.
- [53:53]
B
Yep, 100%. And our website is not a partnership dot com. One word. Not a partnership dot com. And the book is available, as you said, on Amazon in all kinds of versions.
- [54:05]
A
All right. So if someone wants to get in touch with either of you, they go to not apartnership.com.
- [54:11]
B
100% is there. And they can get access to the Facebook group that Peter runs, and we're accessible through that.
- [54:20]
A
Okay, great. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on. This is been some good meaty stuff, I think, and I thank you for your time. I haven't been to Jerusalem in about 20 years, but we really want to come again and take our kids this time. So I know enough of the Torah to know that if we come, you have to welcome us into your home. So I'm looking forward to that.
- [54:48]
B
You got it. Looking forward. Looking forward.
- [54:53]
A
All right. I see I got some bunk beds there behind you.
- [54:56]
B
So you got my grand. My grandchildren's room here.
- [54:59]
A
Exactly. We'll have to come when your grandkids aren't there. Well, thanks a lot. Todd Jacobs and Peter Lind in Jerusalem at the David Robinson Institute. Thanks for your time here, and I wish you well. Shalom.
- [55:16]
B
Thank you so much.
- [55:17]
C
Thank you, John. Thank you.
- [55:28]
B
Relationship Rewire is produced by Growing Love Network. Growing Love Network exists to revolutionize relationships for lifelong love. You can find us on the web@growinglovenetwork.org we welcome your feedback on this or any of our episodes send us an email to relationshiprewiremail.com.
- [56:08]
C
Sam. He sent his word and it did heal us from our rebellion and afflicted wound.
- [57:13]
A
He called us home
- [57:17]
B
through the wilderness far beyond
- [57:26]
C
of. Sam.