Tod Jacobs and Peter Lynn, NOT A PARTNERSHIP
[0:00]You can sign up on my website zibbyowens.com
[0:02]under the virtual book club section
[0:04]or even on Instagram under the link in my bio.
[0:08]I hope you'll find me in all these different channels
[0:10]and enjoy this podcast.
[0:11]Hi listeners, I am so excited
[0:13]because Farity is back as a sponsor this week.
[0:18]As you may know from listening to previous episodes,
[0:20]I am obsessed with Farity and they're clothing.
[0:24]I discovered this little store in the Pacific Palisades
[0:27]village mall in LA
[0:30]and my husband Kyle and I just went crazy.
[0:32]They have amazing men's clothes and women's clothes
[0:35]that are so soft and great fabrics and colors and everything else.
[0:39]And I have been a fan for so long
[0:42]so when they approached me to be a sponsor,
[0:46]I was like over the moon.
[0:48]They even did a little website for me on
[0:50]Faritybrand.com slash zibby.
[0:53]So go to Farity spelled F-A-H-E-R-T-Y,
[0:57]brand.com slash zibby
[1:00]and you get 25% off all their clothes
[1:03]which I have definitely used
[1:05]and I have to stop at this point
[1:07]but I keep buying their cozy sweaters
[1:09]and dresses that go with leggings
[1:11]and I have this turtleneck light sort of brownish
[1:16]Heather Gray, I'm not describing it very well
[1:18]but anyway, dress-ish thing that I've been wearing
[1:20]almost every day, Kyle wears these jackets
[1:25]slash polo, I'm not polo buttoned down shirts
[1:29]sort of indoor, outdoor, I mean we're stuck in the house
[1:32]anyway right now but anyway, you have to go get 25% off
[1:35]with code zibby, Faritybrand.com,
[1:38]go check out their clothes, you'll see why I'm obsessed.
[1:41]I'm kind of sad to be revealing this little secret brand
[1:44]that I thought that we had only just discovered
[1:46]but turns out a lot of people know about
[1:48]and now you do too so go check it out
[1:50]and thanks Farity for being a sponsor.
[1:52]Todd Jacobs and Peter Lynn are the co-authors
[1:55]of not a partnership
[1:56]why we keep getting marriage wrong
[1:58]and how we can get it right.
[1:59]Todd is director of the David Robinson Institute
[2:02]for Jewish Heritage in Jerusalem
[2:04]which he co-founded in 2005.
[2:06]Prior to his current teaching role,
[2:08]he counseled students and alumni
[2:10]and enjoyed a distinguished career on Wall Street
[2:13]as a leading authority on the telecom industry.
[2:15]As a managing director of JP Morgan
[2:17]and before that a partner at Sanford Bernstein
[2:19]and company, Todd acted as a frequent commentator
[2:21]to leading newspapers, magazines, and TV networks
[2:24]and testified several times before the US Congress
[2:26]as an expert on telecom and media policy.
[2:28]His credits in journalism where he worked prior to Wall Street
[2:31]include nominations for both the Pulitzer Prize
[2:34]for investigative journalism and the Emmy Award.
[2:36]Todd lives in Jerusalem with his family.
[2:38]Peter Lynn, the co-author, has served as dean of students
[2:41]at the David Robinson Institute for Jewish Heritage
[2:43]since its inception.
[2:45]He holds an MA in applied a positive psychology
[2:47]from the University of Pennsylvania
[2:49]and is founder and director of the greatest within seminars
[2:52]where he empowers individuals and organizations
[2:55]through the application of positive psychology
[2:57]and accomplished athlete and Iron Man finisher,
[2:59]Peter was captain of the US world duathlon team.
[3:02]He lives in Jerusalem with his family.
[3:05]Welcome, Todd and Peter to Moms.
[3:07]Don't have time to read books.
[3:09]Thanks for coming on my show.
[3:10]Thank you so much for having us.
[3:12]Thank you so much.
[3:13]And thank you also for your contribution
[3:16]to married couples everywhere with your book,
[3:19]not a partnership, why we keep getting marriage wrong
[3:22]and how we can get it right.
[3:24]Tell me about how the two of you teamed up
[3:27]to write this book to help everyone else.
[3:30]Sure, maybe I'll jump in here.
[3:32]So Peter and I have been working together,
[3:35]teaching, counseling, and an institute in Jerusalem
[3:38]that I co-founded back in 2005.
[3:41]And it was not our intention when we opened up this institute
[3:47]to primarily deal with issues of marriage and relationships.
[3:51]What the institute really is based in
[3:53]is kind of best and brightest young man in there.
[3:58]Let's call it the 20s and 30s primarily,
[4:00]you know, average age around close to 30.
[4:02]These are guys who want to take about a year off,
[4:04]minimum two years maximum and they want to come
[4:06]and they want to delve into classical,
[4:10]Jewish, text, philosophy, Jewish law,
[4:13]Hebrew language, character building,
[4:16]leadership training, ethics, things like that.
[4:18]And one of the things we found over the years was that,
[4:21]you know, these guys were kind of amazingly well-prepared
[4:24]for pretty much everything in life.
[4:27]They had many times Ivy League backgrounds,
[4:29]they had, you know, incredible academic backgrounds,
[4:32]incredible professional backgrounds,
[4:34]you know, in a whole host of professions.
[4:36]And yet there was kind of a common theme
[4:38]that everybody seemed woefully unprepared for something
[4:42]that they all claimed was the most important thing
[4:44]that they were looking forward to
[4:45]and that was their, their married life someday.
[4:48]And yet they didn't really have a clue
[4:50]like how to do that successfully.
[4:53]And I think that's a common theme that we see in our society,
[4:56]almost no matter how well-educated you are
[4:58]and what kind of professional background you have,
[5:00]you know, 50% of marriages end in divorce.
[5:03]And then of the other 50% that remain married,
[5:06]how many of them are really sparkling,
[5:08]perfect role models kind of marriages for people to grow up
[5:12]and say, aha, you know, that's what a great marriage looks like.
[5:15]People are marrying later.
[5:16]So even, you know, it's a bit of a mess for many, many people.
[5:21]We just started delving into a combination of things.
[5:24]One was Peter has an incredible background in positive psychology.
[5:29]And I started delving into a lot of the kind of classic
[5:33]mystical works and later what's called,
[5:35]a messar, works of character building
[5:38]that are kind of classic Jewish ways of preparing people for marriage,
[5:42]young men, young women.
[5:43]And we found that by pulling those two things together,
[5:46]we started doing marriage education.
[5:48]And after doing that for a decade and a half,
[5:51]we looked back and we saw, wow, you know,
[5:54]are the couples that were formed out of kind of the training
[5:58]that we were involved with have a divorce rate
[6:00]that is one-tenth of the national average.
[6:03]It was, you know, it's me and some people get divorced,
[6:05]but still it's a 5% divorce rate instead of a 50% rate.
[6:09]We thought, well, this is, you know,
[6:11]this is maybe something that we should be sharing more broadly.
[6:13]And that was really the decision to think about doing a book
[6:17]in which we subsequently did.
[6:19]To the people who came to the counseling opt-in,
[6:22]like is it a representative sample or is it people
[6:24]who are particularly already invested in making their marriage work?
[6:28]This is mostly an opt-in group.
[6:30]In other words, this was 95% of the students
[6:32]who come to us are unmarried when they come.
[6:34]As again, whether they're 20s or in their 30s,
[6:36]very few of them are already married or have been married.
[6:39]So it's kind of like, you know,
[6:41]it's like it's almost like a clean slate of, you know,
[6:44]clean piece of paper, clean piece of parchment
[6:46]to start kind of like writing some of the, you know,
[6:49]foundational ideas of marriage on.
[6:52]And obviously they have to unlearn lots and lots
[6:55]of bad paradigms we all grow up with
[6:57]and get used to from whether it's from Hollywood movies
[7:00]or social media or all the kind of influences
[7:03]that have an influence on the way we think about relationships.
[7:06]We just found that, you know, A, they got more interested
[7:09]in having a real relationship as they became less fearful of it.
[7:12]And B, we found that by having some level of preparation
[7:15]for what a great relationship looks like
[7:18]and what the role of a spouse is,
[7:20]we just found that people were way more ready for it.
[7:22]And then when issues came up, much more prepared to deal
[7:26]with the issues as well.
[7:27]And by the way, you know, we've been kind of holding the hands
[7:30]of those who invited us to be, you know,
[7:33]remain part of the kind of counseling
[7:35]in their relationships as time went on.
[7:37]And so we've seen the ideas not only play out
[7:40]in terms of preparing for marriage,
[7:41]we've also seen the play out in fixing problems
[7:44]that have come up and dealing with problems that, you know,
[7:47]that have been difficult, you know, in the early years
[7:49]or even in some cases, the middle years of marriage
[7:51]by this point.
[7:52]About how many people do you think you've canceled
[7:54]in person at this point?
[7:55]Probably upwards of 150, something like that,
[7:58]different couples.
[7:59]That's great.
[8:00]The part that I that spoke to me like right away
[8:03]that I just loved, you give so much advice, obviously,
[8:06]in the book.
[8:07]But we were talking about how in order to invest in a marriage,
[8:11]you have to give more and how people have just the wrong framework
[8:16]to think about marriage and how the way you love a dog,
[8:19]the more you take care of something, the more you love it
[8:22]or him or her or whatever.
[8:24]He said, there was a great rabbi who pointed out
[8:26]that people have the concept of love exactly backwards.
[8:28]We go through life with the assumption that if someone will do
[8:31]for me, we'll care for me, we'll give to me properly,
[8:34]then of course I will love them in response.
[8:35]But the truth of the matter is that it's exactly the opposite.
[8:38]We love where we give.
[8:40]Why do parents love kids?
[8:41]More than kids love parents because they give more.
[8:44]And you keep going and you say you have to flip your whole paradigm.
[8:47]Well, this is the rabbi, but you have to give the whole paradigm
[8:50]and start giving and giving and giving to her.
[8:51]And then you'll love her, then you'll have a real marriage.
[8:54]And then you actually had said this to a group
[8:56]and someone responds by saying, whoa.
[8:59]And this is like a highly educated group.
[9:01]You were like on a road show, right?
[9:03]You were in finance.
[9:04]Yeah, we were on a road show.
[9:06]I was three or four of us from J.P. Morgan.
[9:08]And my background was as a Wall Street analyst
[9:12]and a few senior consultants from McKinsey and company.
[9:15]So again, high power, highly educated group of people.
[9:19]And I think everybody on the plane was married at some stage.
[9:23]And there were the oldest person on the plane
[9:25]was probably in his late 50s and it went down to this young guy
[9:27]who I was talking to in that story who was there.
[9:30]And the beginning of the story was we're 30,000 feet
[9:34]in this private jet.
[9:35]And this young analyst starts complaining about his wife
[9:39]that she just, she's just not doing it for him anymore.
[9:41]Like she used to, she doesn't take care of him.
[9:43]And she doesn't, she doesn't.
[9:45]She's not as kind to him.
[9:46]She's not as sweet to him.
[9:49]And he's falling out of love.
[9:51]So he's just like kind of tired of it.
[9:53]And that's when I told him, you got to flip your paradigm.
[9:56]Like this rabbi taught us that you love where you give.
[9:59]So I said, if you want to.
[10:00]start loving your wife. Instead of waiting for her to give to you so that you'll love her
[10:04]in return, try giving to her and see what happens. And the beautiful ending of the story
[10:09]was that two months later he comes up to me in the office and he says, you won't believe it.
[10:14]He said, I'm like, madly in love with my wife again. You know, I fall in love with her again
[10:18]because I decided I had nothing to lose by taking your advice and I started, you know, giving and
[10:23]giving and doing things for her and buying your things and taking care of her and taking your
[10:28]out and you know, whatever it was and he said, and suddenly I find myself like really,
[10:32]you know, that I'm totally in love with her again. So, you know, we've seen this play out,
[10:36]I mean, just countless times that, you know, you want to love start giving.
[10:41]Well, it seems so simple and so obvious and yet it's just not how any of us think about it
[10:47]and how crazy that you can literally turn love back on in a snap just by shifting something.
[10:54]Right. I feel like love is so elusive. Like, oh, I had it, but now it's gone or I fell out of love.
[10:59]Right. You know, it seems like it's such a whimsical thing, but in fact, it's very, can be very
[11:04]intentional. And that's one of the things that we speak about so often the book is that,
[11:09]you know, great marriages are built. And when people make proactive efforts to build their
[11:14]marriage and especially via this, you know, we always say that the book speaks about the ultimate
[11:20]PDF manual of how to make your marriage function a full capacity. And that's basically one word
[11:25]which is giving. So when people proactively engage in their marriage by giving, it's unbelievable
[11:32]to see. And, you know, it's fascinating is that the person who benefits the most is the person
[11:36]who's doing the giving, just all of the great feelings that it brings. And you see this,
[11:41]you know, it's in my background in the field of pos psychology. There's a whole world called
[11:46]positive interventions. Meaning, what can you do in order to bring more positivity into your
[11:52]life? Some of some practical things. So the according to the research, the fastest and quickest
[11:58]intervention for you to get out of your bad state or being, whatever that is, you're having a bad
[12:03]day, a rough week is the fastest thing you can do is start giving to someone and you'll see the
[12:10]quickest result as far as a change in your mood. So it's like it's really quite amazing to see,
[12:15]you see the cross the board. Although I would say, I mean, I'm thinking of moms in particular
[12:21]who might argue with us and who have given so much that they get, that they almost have nothing left.
[12:28]Like you could, you can overdo it, right? I feel like if you're always caring for other people and
[12:32]never even so much is taking care of yourself, that's also not good. Well, listen, when people
[12:37]don't take care of themselves, so then a lot of times the giving comes from an unhealthy place.
[12:42]And of course, there's a healthy degree of, you know, this is giving in a normal capacity,
[12:48]this is giving in a healthy manner. And we've all seen it manifest in unhealthy ways. So you're
[12:52]right, when it happens in unhealthy way, when people don't take care of themselves, then the whole
[12:56]system falls apart very fast. So what else do I need to know? So now I've decided I want to quickly
[13:04]change my mood. I'm going to start giving immediately, perhaps in a new way, right? Or to people
[13:08]I don't normally give to or to find fulfillment and my own happiness. And maybe that will enable
[13:14]me to just pretending theoretical me. Obviously, I already do everything perfectly. Now I can turn
[13:21]around and give back to my husband. What else do I need to know? 100% that you have found is like
[13:28]the gold undiscovered gold of marital happiness? Well, you know, the way we constructed the book,
[13:34]the book has kind of big picture paradigms, conceptual frameworks that we feel are, you know,
[13:42]critical to having a healthy marriage and to thinking about it properly. And then the second half
[13:47]of the book is all practical implementation of how do you get there? We think that if you really
[13:54]boil down the big picture of concepts, they boil down to three paradigms. One of them we just spoke
[13:59]which is that you love where you give. A second is to, and maybe it's really the first, is to get
[14:05]a definition that's a little deeper than we normally think of in terms of what marriage is.
[14:10]You know, when we started looking at the book, we started, you know, we said like, how should we
[14:15]define marriage? Well, you can define it. You can define it legally. You can define it the way
[14:20]Webster's defines it. You can go on, you know, HuffPost and see what they call marriage. But
[14:25]really what we found was that there's a much, much deeper picture you can start out with.
[14:32]And then you begin to act in accordance with it. And the picture that, as we've defined it,
[14:36]is that marriage is two people coming together, completely committed to acting in the capacity as a
[14:44]spouse that my beloved needs me to act in. And committing that through thick and thin,
[14:52]I will help try to give that person the life that they want and deserve.
[14:57]Now, obviously an unhealthy version of that would be a little bit what you were describing a
[15:01]moment ago, which is that if somebody is like the one way giver and the other side is dysfunctional,
[15:07]doesn't notice it as no gratitude, it could be very, very problematic. But if two people
[15:13]walk into a marriage, not with the idea of what can I get out of this, but what can I put
[15:18]into this to build that person? Then what happens is that two people can really build something much
[15:24]much bigger than the two of them, not lose themselves in that process, but really find themselves
[15:29]in that process and become bigger in that process by building the other. It's really,
[15:34]it's almost a cosmically, you know, unbelievable dynamic. The two people can build something
[15:40]so special, but it is focused on the other. But as Peter pointed out, the biggest beneficiary,
[15:45]ironically, wants to being yourself. So it's not that you kind of manipulate and it's a
[15:51]calculated thing. I really want a great life, so I'm going to try and give this person, so I really
[15:55]become that. No, it really is focused on the other, but it turns out that the consequence of that
[16:01]is that you yourself wanted to becoming bigger and the bigger you become and the bigger you see
[16:06]yourself and the more you're able to give and the less selfish you are, a person can really have
[16:10]an incredibly happy experience. So that's kind of, you know, paradigm one is define marriage as a
[16:16]vehicle forgiving and for building the other person and for building something much bigger than
[16:20]the two of us. But that just, sorry, just to jump in. That implies you're both able to do that
[16:26]and that you both want to give to the other person and that you possess those traits and skills.
[16:32]And so often, I know you just could mention this that, you know, obviously it can become very
[16:36]problematic, but you have like abusive spouses and you have people who cheat on their spouses
[16:42]or narcissists or all sorts of people who are not upholding their end. And then it doesn't matter
[16:50]how much the other person wants to put in. You can't do anything about it, right? So then it's
[16:55]almost a lost cause. So I think it's like you have to choose. It's almost like it starts before
[17:00]all of this, which is you have to choose someone who's on the same page with you about the giving
[17:05]itself, right? So it's almost, it almost starts before the practice. It starts in the choice
[17:11]essentially, right? That's, and that's what we speak about so much is that, you know, like,
[17:16]like Todd was describing, we find that these, you know, especially the students we're dealing with
[17:20]and many places we've spoke, you know, by the place we've kind of lectured at is that we find
[17:25]that people spend so much time preparing for so many things in their lives, especially the professional
[17:30]getting ready for it and this degree and that degree and you name it. And then we saw as people are
[17:36]walking into the most important thing in their life. You know, you ask them, what's their number
[17:40]on priority? They're going to say their marriage and they're totally unprepared. And what we feel
[17:44]is so important is if people have these ideas clear before they go into a marriage, they're going to
[17:51]make a much healthier choice. Now, let's be very clear. Things do come up. People have
[17:59]psychological issues that come up. People have, these things need to be dealt with 100%,
[18:05]but imagine if you have two people who get married and they're on the same page as far as what
[18:10]they're getting themselves into, that's already so far ahead of the game, which can really be a
[18:16]game changer, especially as things could become rocky later on. What if people really change,
[18:21]because that's another thing. Like you can, you can feel like that and say that at the beginning
[18:26]and yet as life progresses and things happen, someone kind of deviates from the sort of emotional
[18:32]contract, if you will. You're 100% right. And look, there's kind of many stages at which we think
[18:40]this information, this education can be helpful. Obviously, in a perfect world, we educate our
[18:46]children, our students to kind of be ready for marriage. By the way, most people that stand
[18:52]and face each other to take those vows or whatever marital ceremony that they're going to have,
[18:56]whatever that looks like. Generally speaking, if you ask those two people, what's on your mind right
[19:01]now? They will tell you, I just want to make the other one happy. I mean, when people enter into
[19:06]that relationship, sort of what we're talking about is top of mind. The problem is they don't
[19:13]realize that a lot of things are going to happen in the early stage of marriage. First of all,
[19:18]the freshness is going to wear off. There's a natural kind of explosive energy in the beginning
[19:24]of a relationship, which people think mistakenly is what's called love. And as soon as that begins
[19:31]to fade, and by the way, that's not called love. That's a free gift called inspiration getting
[19:36]the involved with this person, helping me see the greatness of this person and downplay some of
[19:41]the, by the way, nobody's perfect, right? So we need some way of seeing something in a person
[19:48]that just really draws us to who that person is. But when that fades, what you're left with
[19:54]is a choice, which is, okay, am I going to now decide that I am coming?
[20:00]it to, by the way, rebuilding and getting back through a process of work and toil and sweat
[20:08]and energy, by the way, which is pleasurable, if you do it correctly, that shouldn't
[20:11]sound so negative.
[20:12]I know it does, but it shouldn't, but that thing that you got for free in the beginning,
[20:17]you can actually earn through the process of building your marriage over a period of time.
[20:22]So really, the ultimate goal is that the two of you are as in love, but in a much more
[20:28]meaningful way that you've earned as you were in that, in that beginning stage.
[20:33]So if you do, there's a kind of, let's go part one is let's hope that you think about
[20:38]this before you get married so that you can face this.
[20:40]Now, obviously, probably lots of your listeners and certainly lots of our readers or people
[20:45]who are now in a marriage.
[20:47]And as you're describing, financial problems came up, the health problem came up.
[20:51]This issue came up, things like infidelity, by the way, are very, very hard to, that's
[20:56]very, very hard to put back trust into a relationship, that, and that's a little bit
[21:01]sort of outside of that, often these professional help, and many times that's going to wind
[21:05]up in a, in a broken marriage.
[21:07]I mean, there are also dysfunctional people, no question about it.
[21:10]There are people who absolutely cannot function in a marriage because of their narcissism,
[21:16]selfishness, dysfunctionality, et cetera.
[21:19]But that's not the vast majority of people, and it doesn't need to be.
[21:22]So what we found is somebody may be married, and the marriage is not so fresh, has not
[21:29]going so well, and they're getting a little tired of each other, and this one's kind of
[21:32]ignoring in their own space, and this one's kind of ignoring in their own space.
[21:36]And they just kind of, you know, the old habits begin to resurface about being kind of
[21:41]a selfish person, and like they were before they got married.
[21:44]What we have found is by refocusing on the idea of giving and making it fresh and beginning
[21:51]to build respect again, you know, we have, I'll give you a classic example.
[21:56]You know, when two people are meat and they're going out, you know, they do everything possible
[22:01]to impress each other, right?
[22:03]Like you think about when I was dating my wife to be, you know, when you were dating
[22:08]your spouse to be, how did we dress, how did we speak, how did we smell, how did we look,
[22:14]how did our hair look, you know, how courteous were we, you know, people like, so you say
[22:21]to somebody, well, okay, now try to build that snapshot in your mind of what you were
[22:25]like when you were dating.
[22:27]Now take a little snapshot of yourself on the average evening at home.
[22:32]I mean, I mean, I mean, it's a, that's a cringe worthy moment for most of us.
[22:39]And that's an embarrassment because if you think about it, why am I not still doing that
[22:43]for the most important person in my world?
[22:46]I mean, by the way, when I go to work on a look like that, when I go to work on a sound
[22:50]like that, when I go to work, by the way, I'm wearing nice clothing and I'm, I'm made
[22:54]up and I look good and I smell good and I watch what it, well, I mean, but well, it,
[22:59]unfortunately, I was supposed to wear my sweatpants, no, I, well, no, but you, but you can
[23:05]wear your sweatpants, you know, you're not meant to be formal at home, but you are meant
[23:10]to, we, I say, you, we, we are meant to remember that the person across the table, across
[23:16]the room in the other room is the person that is the most important person in my entire
[23:21]universe.
[23:22]That's the person who deserves the best I've got.
[23:26]That's the person who deserves the most respect for me.
[23:29]Unfortunately, what we do is we let our guard down because everybody, we know we want some
[23:33]place we can be ourselves, so to speak.
[23:35]And then, and by the way, one of the arguments I sometimes, we, you know, we've, we've
[23:38]talked to couples about this and the pushback is usually, hey, come on, that was, I was
[23:42]acting when I was going out, you know, I got to be myself when I'm at home.
[23:47]And the response to that is no, sometimes you need to act at home as well.
[23:51]And by the way, the, the classic example there is when you come home and you're in a
[23:54]rotten mood and your three year old runs up to you and says, mommy, daddy, you know,
[23:59]come sit with me on the floor.
[24:00]I want to show you my finger paintings, you know, I have 400 finger paintings.
[24:03]I want you to see every single one of them and you're tired and you're in a horrible mood
[24:08]and you're bossy old at you and you've lost a deal and whatever it is.
[24:13]So aren't you going to act, aren't you going to put on a huge smile and say, nothing
[24:17]I'd love to do more that sit down with you on the floor right now for the next hour
[24:21]and look at bad finger paintings?
[24:22]I mean, it's all that.
[24:25]Now it's acting, but it's not acting in a negative way.
[24:28]It's becoming really what I want to become if I have control of myself.
[24:32]I want to be a good father.
[24:33]You want to be a good mother.
[24:35]We want to be good spouses.
[24:36]So it's just really rising to the occasion and not letting our lower self drag us down
[24:43]in ways that affect others and very, very negative ways which they don't deserve.
[24:46]Wow.
[24:47]This is like amazing.
[24:49]You guys have to like, I mean, you should get, first of all, you need to give this to
[24:54]every rabbi.
[24:55]I don't know if you already do this, but I don't know what your marketing plan is or
[24:59]was or whatever, but any rabbi who's marrying people should be giving this to their
[25:06]congregants, like at least, right?
[25:07]So already then that's like, you know, I have a bunch of cousins who are about to get married
[25:11]and now I'm like, oh, perfect, you know, obviously I can give this to married friends,
[25:15]but that's a little bit insulting like, you guys need some help.
[25:20]Here's my Facebook, but as a gift, like, this should be the go-to gift and not just
[25:26]for Jewish people at all.
[25:27]I mean, I happen to be Jewish, but this is just lessons sort of cold from Judaism that apply
[25:31]to any relationship.
[25:32]So it should really.
[25:34]We tried to make it universal and you don't have to be religious, you don't have to
[25:38]be spiritual.
[25:39]You just have to want a real relationship for this material to speak to.
[25:43]That's what we, that's certainly what we believe.
[25:45]I mean, it's common sense if you think you're not, you're not hawking anything totally,
[25:51]you know, out there.
[25:52]This is like, this all makes perfect sense as you laid out so nicely and neatly in the
[25:57]book, what interspersed with lots of personal stories and work, but you know, it's
[26:03]something that everybody really needs to hear.
[26:06]So it's great that and you should do clap, do you do like personal sessions?
[26:09]I feel like I want to give you like I want to have the two of you like talk to all these
[26:15]people I love before they get married and just be like, okay, like you should take
[26:19]couples.
[26:20]You should like charge a fortune and have a bunch of people come and like get the download
[26:24]if they, you know, I don't know.
[26:26]I feel like it's in Shemarital insurance, you could call it, you know, right.
[26:32]I just want to push back a little bit is that what we do find is that, you know, even
[26:36]people are married, you're married 10 years, you're married 15 years, even more than that,
[26:42]is I find that if you take a couple, we tend to think, okay, you know, this is the way
[26:46]it's going to be and this is what it is.
[26:48]And what we have found is that when you take couples who are married for a period of time
[26:53]and they kind of make the switch to, hey, let's put some work into this.
[26:58]Let's try and change the patterns a bit.
[27:01]You can take an okay marriage or even a good marriage and with a little bit of effort
[27:05]and some marriage education, it's awesome what can happen.
[27:10]And you can now take a couple that's been married, you know, who are in their 40s and
[27:14]their 50s and their 60s and they find that spark again.
[27:18]And so, you know, it's almost funny.
[27:21]For me, I'm almost more excited about reaching out to those couples than I am about
[27:26]the ones before they get married.
[27:27]I agree with you.
[27:28]Before they get married, it's crucial.
[27:30]But I think that's important that so many couples out there in some way give up when
[27:35]they've gotten to a certain place in their marriage and they have a certain amount of
[27:38]kids and they say, okay, this is what it is.
[27:41]And the answer is it doesn't have to be that way.
[27:43]And with a little bit of effort and some tools out there and we do not lack access to tools.
[27:51]You know, there are 10 trillion social media, you know, platforms that are discussing
[27:56]marriage and relationships and this, there's so much out there with just making a small
[28:01]amount of effort to say, let's change things up a little bit.
[28:04]Let's learn some new things.
[28:06]It can take a marriage which could really use a bit of freshness and it can take it
[28:10]to that next level.
[28:12]And it's really amazing what can happen.
[28:14]Wait.
[28:15]And I think I cut you off before because you said that there were three things that divided
[28:18]up the book.
[28:19]One, you know, the second one was where we had started, then you introduced the first
[28:22]one.
[28:24]Yeah, absolutely.
[28:27]The third paradigm is that marriages don't happen.
[28:31]They're made.
[28:33]And this I think as much as that sounds like sort of obvious.
[28:38]If you actually take a look and think about how we grew up thinking about love, it's
[28:45]all passive.
[28:46]I fell in love.
[28:48]I was swept off my feet.
[28:50]I was, you know, it's all kind of like, and especially by the way now where we're in
[28:57]a world where things don't last very long and we crave newness.
[29:01]You combined kind of the, let's call it the social media experience where I'm always seeing
[29:06]that everybody, everybody, everything and everybody else's lives, which always fantastic
[29:10]and fresh and wonderful.
[29:12]And then I've got this vision that love is passive.
[29:15]And I just fall in love.
[29:16]And if I could just meet the right soulmate, by the way, they say in Corona, you don't
[29:21]need a soulmate.
[29:22]You need a soulmate.
[29:23]I see a CEO, but at any rate, but at any rate, this idea that that it's kind of passive
[29:30]and I find my soulmate and then everything's just supposed to be fine as long as I find
[29:33]the right person.
[29:34]And we think that that's almost completely wrong.
[29:37]Obviously, you need to try to find the right person.
[29:39]You need to find a person whose values you share, who you're attracted to, who you respect,
[29:43]who respects you, you get that person, they get you.
[29:46]That's kind of the fundamental, let's call it the gating factor for committing to
[29:53]somebody.
[29:54]But the point is, is that once that commitment happens, you have to realize that it will
[30:00]choir giving work thinking about it, prioritizing it. And without that backdrop, without that kind
[30:08]of big picture that paints everything I do in marriage, I will fall naturally back into the
[30:15]Hollywood romance, you know, vision, which is they meet, they sweep each other off their feet,
[30:21]usually something bad happens. It separates them and at the end of the movie they fall into
[30:25]each other's arms again, the curtain goes down and that's the end of the movie. But of course,
[30:29]we all know that the next day the curtain comes back up and it's, you know, and that is now,
[30:35]you know, act two scene one where the choice is going to be made. Oh, wow, that person is not quite
[30:41]as exciting as I thought they were. Not quite as funny, not quite as attractive. I've been duped
[30:47]again by life or I can say, wait a minute. I got into this and now I'm going to start actually
[30:54]prioritizing it, working on it, building it. So, you know, A is get your marriage,
[31:01]vision, right? B is realize that you love where you give and the more you give, the more you
[31:05]will love. And C, realize that this will be a process of making this work and investing in it.
[31:11]And by the way, it's a high, my background as investments I will tell you, I never found a higher
[31:14]return investment in marriage because because the well-being and the intimacy and the trust
[31:22]and the whole, you know, that almost everything a person wants and needs to have a meaningful,
[31:28]happy life can lie in a powerfully good relationship. And we just believe that it's not something just
[31:34]happens that lucky few. We really believe that anybody, almost at any stage, as long as it's not
[31:39]totally been destroyed by dysfunctionality and abuse and things like that, can really,
[31:45]can really restart their marriage and get it and get it moving again.
[31:48]Well, thank you guys so much. See, you gave, now I'm just taking, but it's still improved my mood.
[31:54]So, you know, now I'm going to go give this back to the people who in my life who I think
[31:58]really use it, including everybody listening, but fantastic, but fantastic advice, love the whole
[32:04]framework. And I am like sad to not be on Zoom with you guys for the rest of the day, so you can
[32:10]help me through all my inevitable stumbles. And it's just a good reminder to just step up for your
[32:16]marriage, you know, just step it up and do little nice things and like maybe, you know, leave a
[32:21]little note somewhere and doesn't have to be such a big thing, just like little things make such a
[32:27]big difference. So thank you for this reminder. And thank you for all your time.
[32:31]Thank you so much for having us. We really, really appreciate it. Okay, keep it all the great work.
[32:35]Thank you. You too. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye. Thank you.
[32:42]Thanks again to Farrity for being a sponsor today. Go to Farritybrand.com-Zivi and get 25% off.
[32:52]Enter code Zivi for 25% off. These amazing, comfy winter clothes and summer, but for now winter,
[32:58]and we will thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[33:03]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zivi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[33:09]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zivi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[33:13]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the
[33:18]sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[33:23]now trim music.