458: How I Transformed My Marriage

[INTERVIEW]

 

Hal Elrod: Hello, my friend, goal achievers, members of the Miracle Morning Community, welcome to the podcast today. We are going to talk about– I’m going to share how I transformed my marriage and I hope it’s impactful for you in your marriage or any relationship that you have because this really is a universal approach to really transforming, not just a marriage or a relationship. I mean, I think that you can really take we’re going to talk about today and apply it to any area of your life. But specifically, it is the story and the strategy that I use to transform my marriage back, and I should say ongoing. I was going to say back in 2016. But it’s really been an ongoing strategy and ongoing approach to creating the best possible marriage that I can.

 

And I was sharing this with a friend the other day, and we were catching up. We haven’t talked in years. We just recently started catching up. He read the Miracle Morning two months ago. And so, my friend Teddy, he’s been texting me every few days going, “Hey, what do you do when your spouse wakes up? Hey, what do you do for your meditation?” He’s been texting me questions.

 

And so, we jumped on a call the other day and I was sharing how well my marriage is. It’s just that we’re at the best point we’ve arguably ever been and it keeps evolving and getting to a higher and higher and higher level of consciousness, if you will. And I described it to him. This gives you kind of a visual, I said, it’s kind of like the stock market. If you’re looking at a graph of the stock market, and let’s say it’s trending upward, upward, upward, it hits a peak, and then it goes down a little bit, which are those times in your marriage where you’re getting on each other’s nerves, you’re arguing over stupid stuff more often than not. That’s the dips in the stock market here of the marriage.

 

 And then, you make up and you learn and grow and evolve, and then it starts to go up. And the hope is that the up is that you continue to excel the previous peak, exceed the previous peak. And so, that’s how I described to him the marriage, as I said, because he said, has it always been this great? Has it always been awesome? I’m like, are you kidding now? We’ve had our ups and downs like anybody. We’ve been so far down that it’s like, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know if I can make this work anymore. I said, we’ve been in those places, but I said, it reminds me of like that stock market where it goes up, it goes down a little bit, but then every time it goes up, it exceeds the previous peak.

 

And then sometimes, when it goes down, it actually exceeds the previous low. Maybe you’ve experienced that, where you might be seven years into your marriage, but you hit the lowest point in your marriage where you are just at ends with each other. And then it goes back up. And so, my point to him was that I feel like every time we get through a difficult period in our marriage, we elevate our level of consciousness as a couple, and we are even stronger than we were before.

 

Now, granted, a lot of people, when they hit that, their next low or their lowest point, that ends up turning into the last, and they call it quits and they get a divorce. And my wife and I, we made an agreement that that’s not an option for us. Divorce is not an option. So, we’re committed to each other. We’re going to make this thing work. And I think that unwavering commitment makes a big difference because if you have a way out, then when it gets difficult, like anything in life, if you’re not fully committed, when it gets difficult, you’re very likely to call it quits and change course and give up and whatever else. So, we’re fully committed.

 

But I’m going to take you back to 2016. It was summer of 2016, I believe. We had just moved from California to Texas. And there’s often stress when you’re in the midst of a move. Actually, I’ll tell you a funny part of the story. I flew out to Texas. My wife and I flew out. We looked at houses, went back to California, didn’t find anything. And then we had another trip planned and she couldn’t come. And so, I ended up going out on my own.

 

I found a house that I thought was perfect for us, sent her some pictures, and looked great online. It always does, right? If you look on Zillow, the pictures are always amazing, and then sometimes you get to the house, you’re like, this is not at all like what was represented on Zillow. But anyways, I sent her the pictures. She likes, the guy looks good. So, I bought the house, sight unseen for her. She never saw it.

 

And then, in a few months, we fly back home, we sell our house, pack up, move out here. And I had turned in my car, my lease in California. And then I bought a car in Texas. They’re waiting for me. So, I flew out, and for whatever reason, I thought a few hours before my wife and kids, I went to the dealership to get the car, and then my wife and kids flew out. They Ubered to our new house, and I’m in the dealership and I’m talking to the salesperson. We signed an agreement, contracts, and such. And I get a call from my wife on my phone. I go, oh, hold on. My wife’s calling. She just saw our house for the first time. I want to hear what she thinks.

 

I picked up the phone and I said, “Hey, sweetie, what do you think of the house?” And she’s like. “I don’t like it.” And I said, “Yeah, right. No, seriously, isn’t it amazing?” And she said, “I’m serious. I don’t like it. It’s so dark. It’s so this. It’s so that.” And she was genuinely, totally unhappy with the house that I bought for us. And so, that was hard for her to move into a home, move away from her family in California, and into a home that she did not like, that she didn’t feel good waking up in every day. It was very hard, as you might imagine, on our marriage as well.

 

So, summer of 2016, I was painting the picture of what life was like or what our relationship was like at that time. We were getting on each other’s nerves a lot. I was working like crazy. I was a workaholic. I’ve talked about this before where it wasn’t till I got cancer a few months later that I really realized, oh, wow, I say family is my number one priority, but if you look at my schedule, it doesn’t reflect that. I give up a lot of weekends to work on my next book. I’m out of town giving speeches quite a bit, missing a lot of my kids’ functions because I’m out there changing the world or whatever my justification was.

 

But so that summer, we’re fighting a lot and really not feeling connected, not feeling love toward each other, really in a tough spot. And if you’ve ever been there before, it kind of spirals where it seems to just you get in a funk and you’re driving each other crazy and everything, each other does or says triggers the other person. So, we’re in that place, that really tough spot.

 

And we’re supposed to go camping and we have a blowout fight, I don’t know, a few days or week before we’re going to go camping. And one of us, I don’t know, I think I end up deciding, you know what? I’m not going camping. I don’t want to go on this trip anyway. And she says fine. I’ll take the kids. You stay home.

 

And so, she decides to take the kids camping without me. And again, at that time in my life, I was so diluted as a workaholic that I was like, oh, that’s actually great. I’m going to get a week to myself. I can just work every day, morning till night. It’s going to be awesome, missing the perspective that I’m missing out on my children’s childhood, missing out on this camping trip, which now I would not miss that. I haven’t missed a camping trip since. But at that time, I was like, whatever. And plus, I’m angry at her. So, it’s like, oh, good. I don’t want to be around you.

 

So, my wife and kids go on this camping trip with my mother-in-law, and I stay home. And while I was home, I read an article, I think it was called Choose Her Every Day. I should look this up, but I’m blanking on the author of the article but Choose Her Every Day. And it was this man who talked about that he was with this woman who was awesome. And I don’t know if they were engaged or not, but he was always looking at greener grass. He was always thinking there might be somebody better so he wasn’t willing to commit.

 

And then she ended up finding a guy that was willing to commit and she left him. And then he always realized that she was the one for him. And he screwed it up because he was looking for something better. And he said, if you’re with a woman, whether you’re married to her or she’s a good woman and she treats you right. And of course, this applies if you’re with a man, vice versa. But he said, choose her every day. He said, meaning wake up every morning and make a conscious decision that you choose her with 100% of your being, no one foot out the door, no one eye looking for that greener grass. Is there somebody better? Is there something better? Did I make the right– he said, choose her fully every single day. Be all in. And this is so true. This is a principle for anything in life.

 

If you’re at a job that you don’t love, that doesn’t mean you don’t give your best every single day. And it also doesn’t mean that you can’t be paying attention to what your next career is going to be or whatever. And I guess that’s not the perfect analogy for the marriage because you don’t want to have one eye out looking out for your next wife or your next husband, your next spouse.  So, it’s not the perfect analogy, but the analogy being that, like, whatever you’re doing, choose it every day and be fully present, be all in.

 

And so, I decided, I just was like, you know what? She’s an amazing partner. I’m so blessed to have her. All the stuff we fight over is so insignificant in the scheme of life. We’re wasting so much of our energy fighting over stupid stuff. And so, I had this epiphany, I thought, well, first, I realize that one of the problems, and I think you can probably relate to this if you’ve ever been in a relationship because I think this is true for most of us. I realized that I was in a reciprocal relationship, that my relationship with my wife was reciprocal, meaning I mirrored my wife’s energy, I mirrored her mood. I reciprocated her energy. Whatever she put out toward me, I reciprocated it back to her. And this is very normal. I think we do this in our relationships, meaning, if my wife was sweet to me, I naturally felt inclined to reciprocate that sweetness and be sweet to her. But if she was rude to me, I felt she was mean to me, well, then naturally, I felt compelled to be rude back to her. How dare you treat me like that?

 

And I realized I was in this reciprocal relationship. And then I thought, that’s not optimal. That just means that I am leaving the quality of our connection– how do I put this? Not that I’m leaving it up to her, but I just realized I was at the mercy of my wife’s moods, maybe that makes a good way to put it. I was at the mercy of her moods. I wasn’t in control of how I showed up as a husband. And this was the breakthrough. The breakthrough was that I realized that I needed to commit, I needed to define who I was committed to being as a husband, in terms of how I was committed to showing up, meaning the qualities that I was committed to embodying.

 

And I realized that I needed to make an unwavering commitment, meaning that I’m going to define who I’m committed to being as a husband and I’m going to write that in the form of an affirmation. I’m going to read it every single morning, and I’m going to include in that affirmation that I’m committed to being this type of husband to embodying these characteristics, to showing up in this way no matter what, as in no matter how my wife treats me, no matter what her mood is. In fact, I looked at it this way that if my wife’s behavior bothered me, that was a weakness of mine.

 

So, if I go, God, she bothers me so much when she questions me or when she nags me. That bothers me so much. In the past, I would have pointed the finger at her. She bothers me. When she does that, it bothers me. And I want you to internalize this right now, you think about your partner or people in your life. You can apply this to your colleagues. You can apply this to any human being in your life, in your relationship, that if they bother you, is that about them and what they’re doing? Or is that a weakness of yours? And I say weakness, not as an insult, this is an area of growth for you to get to a place, a level of consciousness where nothing they can say or do bothers you.

 

And I use that word bothers. I mean, sure, it might bother you, but to what degree? Is it going to bother you so much that it disrupts your emotional state, your mental and emotional wellbeing? Do you allow other people to determine your mental and emotional wellbeing? Or have you clarified the mental and emotional wellbeing that you’re committed to and decided that nothing anyone else does or says can deter, let alone determine your mental and emotional wellbeing?

 

So, this applies again to every area of life where the only thing we can control is what characteristics and qualities are we going to embody and how are we going to show up to our relationships, to our work, you name it, any area of life. You deciding how you’re going to show up, you taking full responsibility.

 

So, anyway, back to the story. I decided, wow, this is a game changer. I’m going to define the husband that I’m committed to being and I’m going to start affirming it every day. And a very important part of that is I’m going to commit to it regardless of how my wife shows up for me.

 

And here’s a distinction, in fact, if she is in a bad mood, if she is struggling mentally and emotionally, I’m actually going to take that on as a sign, a challenge, an invitation that I need to be even better for her, not I need to reciprocate the energy, not, oh, if you’re rude, I’m rude. No. Oh, you’re in a bad mood, you’re having a tough day, you’re upset over something. Obviously, you’re struggling. As your husband who loves you, I’m going to work even harder to be even more loving and more accommodating and more patient and serve you and your needs at an even higher level. So, think about that, rather than a reciprocal relationship where you mirror your partner’s energy, this is about you taking 100% responsibility for the type of partner you’re committed to being, the optimal partner that you’re committed to being.

 

And think about this. How is that going to impact your relationship? If you have a reciprocal relationship where you mirror your partner’s energy and let’s particularly say their negative energy, that doesn’t help anything. It’s like two wrongs don’t make a right kind of thing. If we go back to what we learned as children, two wrongs don’t make a right. Two people angry at each other don’t improve a relationship. One person that’s angry and upset and the other person remaining calm, patient, and loving, is it possible that that might diffuse the situation quicker? Does it seem likely just using common sense that if one person’s upset and the other person remains calm and peaceful and loving and encouraging and supportive, might that get the two of you to a place of harmony and connection much faster? And my assessment at that time, theoretically, was I think it will. I think this is the key to transforming my marriage, is that I define who I’m committed to being, and then I affirm it every morning and I practice it during the day with my wife, and I actually be the husband that she deserves and the husband that I deserve to be.

 

And again, you apply this as a parent, so on and so forth. And so, I wanted to make this monumental, like– that’s not the right way to put it. I wanted to do something out of the ordinary as a sign to her that I was committed to changing. But I didn’t want to tell her that I was going to do this. I thought that would kind of defeat the purpose and she would notice it and be like– it might have worked that way, but I thought I just want to be this person for her, this husband, and see how it works. I don’t want to tell her that, “Hey, I’m going to be better for you.”

 

And I know from the past when I’ve told her and then I’ve failed in the past to make certain changes. I set her up for disappointment. I tell her I’m going to start doing this, and then it lasts for a week, and then I forget. And then I don’t do it. Maybe you’ve been there before. So, I thought, I don’t want to do that again. I almost feel like if I tell her that I’m going to do this and I’m going to make these changes, I’m going to be this husband, I thought it actually might have a negative impact because I have disappointed her in the past. And so, just me telling her that, might start with an eye roll and like, oh, great, here we go again. And then it actually makes her receive it in a negative context. So, it’s like, oh, how long is this going to last? Or, oh, he’s just doing it to do it. It’s not going to– I just wanted to show her. But I also wanted to do something because, again, she left when she went on the camping trip, we were fighting like crazy. I wanted her to come back to some kind of sign that, hey, I love you so much. I am in it for the long haul. I am fully committed to this relationship.

 

So, I decided to write something that I called– I ended up calling it the Forever Pledge. It was called My Forever Pledge, I think. And it was basically, almost like an affirmation, but it was my pledge to her. And I also asked myself, as I wrote it, like I put myself in her shoes. I thought, what does she told me that she’s afraid of in our relationship? Afraid of me leaving her, afraid of divorce. Knowing what I know about her, what language can I use that’ll resonate with her? Not with me, but with her. And so, I wrote this Forever Pledge, and then I was going to print it off my computer and hand it to her. And I thought, no, I want this to be bigger and I want her to see it every day. So, I went to Shutterfly, I think is the website. I think it was Shutterfly.

 

I turned this into a PDF document using Microsoft Word. I put a border of hearts around the outside. I used a really pretty font, not cursive, but kind of cursive-y font. I put flowers around the border. I wanted it to be visually stimulating. I signed it With Love Hal, whatever. And then I printed it on a 14-inch wide by 18-inch tall. It was a large document. It was on white paper with that heart border, and then I put a white frame around it. So, it was really large, like 11×18 or 11×14, something like that. It was big. And then I ordered that and I had it sent two-day shipping or whatever. So, it would be here when she got here. And then I hung that, I mean, it had a glass facing and really nice frame. And I hung that next to her bed.

 

And the idea was that when she sat down on the edge of her bed to go to bed every night, that she would see that and be reminded of my unwavering commitment to our marriage because, to be honest, I think over those last few weeks or months, as we were in that really difficult place, I’m sure I said things that I didn’t mean or I meant at the time or whatever, but I’m sure there may have been threats. I don’t remember specifically, but I’m just sure that she was not feeling really secure in our marriage and some of her deep-seated fears that a lot of us have of abandonment or whatever. I’m sure those have been coming up for her. So, I wanted her to have this unwavering commitment. I signed it. It was in writing. I want her to see it every morning when she woke up and every night before she went to bed. So, I hung that by the bed.

 

So, that was like my– didn’t tell her, hey, I’m going to be a different husband for you. None of that. It was just I am fully committed to this marriage, even if we have difficult– and I wrote in there like, hey, I know we’re going to have conflict. And in the past, I would be like, I don’t want conflict in my marriage. I have this utopian vision or I used to have a utopian vision of a marriage. I don’t want conflict. I want harmony. And you’re fighting with me. You’re creating conflict. And I blamed her for the conflict.

 

And so, I put that in the– Forever Pledge, I addressed that, I know we’re going to have conflict and I’m okay with that. And I know that when we get through the conflict, we can learn and grow and become better on the other side of it. And our relationship will get stronger every time we get through a conflict. So, it really addressed all of her concerns, fears, etc.

 

And when she came back, I gave that to her and flowers, of course. So, this one, I made up. I apologize for how I had been over the last few weeks, months, whatever. And so, that, obviously, she still had a lot of hurt feelings and we had been fighting for months. You couldn’t just change it with the Forever Pledge, but that was the start of it. And that was an ongoing reminder to her, kind of the same way that we read our own affirmations every day to focus us on what’s most important to us and remind us of what’s possible for us and remind us of what we’re committed to. So, that Forever Pledge was an affirmation for her that reminded her what I was committed to, what was possible for us.

 

And then every day, I did my own inner work, meaning I read my affirmations every day that articulated the type of husband that I was committed to being, loving and patient, and that even if she was triggered or upset or angry or in a bad mood or said something that I felt was rude or mean or uncalled for or whatever, that my commitment to the husband I was articulating that I was going to be for her, that it was unwavering. And again, like I said, that if she was upset, instead of mirroring that, I was committed to up leveling my selfless service to her as a wife. And I remember, one of the things I wrote down is I’m committed to doing everything in my power every day to make my wife’s life amazing, Ursula, my wife Ursula’s life amazing.

 

And here’s the other thing that I wrote in my affirmations, I need to maintain patience to see this take effect, meaning I don’t imagine that I’m going to show up on day one as this amazing, perfect husband and that all the trauma that her and I have co-created over the last few years, really, I mean, we’ve got trauma since the beginning or early on in our relationships. And the longer we’ve been together, arguably, the more trauma we’ve accumulated. And that’s very real for couples. And so, I wrote in my affirmation that it was going to take time for the way that I was showing up to make a significant impact in the quality of our connection, our relationship, our marriage, and that I was willing to be patient for as long as it took.

 

And at that time, it was right around May or June, it was summer. And so, I remember that I did something, wrote down like at the end of the affirmation, it was I’m committed to being this husband for her. And then at the end of the year, so in six months, I will reevaluate, like reassess how has this gone. And not I’m going to reassess whether or not I want to stay married, meaning I just want to see like I’m going to look back and see with how our marriage is now and how fragile or how temperamental it is and how stressful it is and how much conflict we have. I’m going to reassess that in six months. And that was just kind of like it gave me a window of I’m committed for six months and I think I was honest. Like, if I see no changes, I’ve got to change my approach. That was the thing. Not that I’m going to get a divorce, but if nothing changes and she’s still upset at me and angry at me, we’re fighting. It just meant like I got to change my approach. I got to change the strategy. Something is not working.

 

However, this is how it played out. I committed to those qualities and characteristics of being patient and loving and supportive and going out of my way every day to selflessly add value to her life, to do something to make her life better, amazing, make her dreams come true. I mean, all of those things were my affirmations. And I started to see an impact in the quality of our marriage relatively quickly. I mean, immediately, obviously, by me not allowing myself to get triggered over her getting triggered, that had an impact where we didn’t have fights that escalated. We had fights that de-escalated. And they really weren’t even fights because if she was upset, I took a deep breath and I really tried to listen and ask questions and ask what I might have done that upset her or what I could do better.

 

And here’s the thing, even if in my mind, I’m like, no, she’s wrong. I didn’t do that, or I should be allowed to do that, I kind of kept that to myself. And not that I didn’t communicate, but I should say I kept it to myself if I was feeling triggered about it at all. And then I brought it up only if and when I could bring it up in a very conscious, thoughtful, calm, non-judgmental, non-aggressive, non-attacking way and bring it up, again, by really setting the context, the stage that, hey, maybe I’m off, but from my perspective, I’m just not sure. It was the calm, and then if she came back and was triggered or whatever, just staying calm.

 

And so, I don’t know if you know this, but there is a book in the Miracle Morning Series called The Miracle Morning for Transforming Your Relationship. And my coauthors of that book, Paul and Stacey Martino, kind of the premise of their book is it only takes one person to transform a relationship. And interestingly enough, we hadn’t written that book together until after this time, but I want you to think about that. It only takes one person to transform our relationship.

 

And if that’s true, well, what does that look like? And it looks like exactly what we’re talking about. You are that one person. And a lot of us go, well, I don’t have to change. Why should I have to change? Well, because you can only control whether or not you change. You can’t change your spouse. So, that’s number one. And number two, if you realize that you have so much power in your relationship, so (a) it’s the only thing you can control, and (b) you can transform your relationship by transforming how you show up to your relationship. First and foremost, that just transforms how you experience your relationship.

 

Think about that. If you commit to show up with patience and empathy rather than being triggered, well, that transforms how you experience your interactions with your spouse. If they’re triggered and they are upset with you and you get upset with them, well, now you’re both upset, and your experience in your marriage is being upset. If, on the other hand, you’ve articulated and defined who you’re committed to being and upset is not one of those qualities, I’m hoping, I’m guessing that the qualities you would articulate in an affirmation are not I’m committed to being upset and angry and triggered. Probably not. I would hope and imagine not.

 

So, if you’ve committed to being empathetic and calm and peaceful and non-judgmental, then now, when your spouse gets triggered and they’re upset at you and they’re angry instead of you mirroring that, reciprocating that energy, and now you’re both upset in your marriage, now, you’re calm and you’re peaceful and you’re empathetic and you’re loving and you’re supportive. So, think about that. By transforming how you show up to the marriage, you’ve transformed how you experience your marriage. And then you can give your partner time to respond, to reciprocate your positive energy. And that’s what I started to notice happened.

 

At the beginning, it was mostly the same old, same old because we were used to fighting. My spouse was used to getting upset and annoyed with me, and fairly so. And so, she would reciprocate, and she had before, she’d get upset with me. But as I continued to respond consistently with patience and empathy and love and understanding, her any negative energy that she felt dissipated. It dissipated, it dissipated. And she got calmer quicker and calmer and calmer. And then, within a matter of weeks, our relationship had completely transformed.

 

And thank God, it did because just a couple of months later, I was diagnosed with cancer. And I don’t know if our marriage would have survived, eight months of me in a hospital and three years of me on chemo and dealing with depression and anxiety and no sex life. I mean, it was a really difficult time in our marriage. But thankfully, I had this realization and this awareness and this commitment to transform how I showed up to the marriage before I was diagnosed with cancer.

 

And so, we went into that most difficult period in our lives, the strongest that we had ever been as a couple. And that was just two months after we were the weakest we had ever been as a couple. So, that’s my story, and I hope it’s helpful for you. Just to realize that in life, there’s only one thing that ultimately that you can control, and it is you. It’s how you think and it’s what you do. In other words, it’s how you show up to me that encompasses both. You show up thinking a certain thing, thinking a certain way with a certain mindset and then behaving a certain way. That’s how you choose to show up, and that’s the only thing that you can control. At the end of the day, in every area of your life, you get to choose how you show up.

 

When the pandemic hit 2020, that’s where I really became present to that. I asked myself, man, everybody’s so stressed out right now and it’s this collective fear and stress. And I said, “What should I be focusing on in my own life right now?” Because my focus is being pulled in so many directions, and I realize I should only focus on what I can control because when I focus on that which is out of my control, I feel out of control. And the only thing I can control is me.

 

And so, I doubled down my Miracle Morning, I doubled down on articulating affirmations that reminded me of who I was committed to being and how I was committed to showing up in each and every area of my life. And in the same way with your marriage, if you focus on the other person and what they’re doing or what they’re not doing, they are not in your control. And so, if you want to feel out of your control and out of control in your marriage, yeah, focus on your partner. Focus on what they’re doing and saying and not doing. Focus on their faults and how they’re treating you. That’s a recipe for feeling out of control.

 

And when we feel out of control, we get depressed and hopeless and anxious and fearful and so on and so forth. So, if you want to feel empowered. And if you want to transform your marriage, decide that you are committed to being the spouse that your spouse deserves, regardless of how they treat you at any given moment, at any given time. And if they’re having a bad day, if they’re struggling, if they’re treating you poorly, don’t reciprocate that energy. Rise up, rise above it, and rise above it to be the spouse that you’re committed to being.

 

And again, you can apply this to every area of your life by creating an affirmation that articulates who you’re committed to being, the qualities that you’ll embody, and how you’ll show up every day in each and every area of your life. All right, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning Community, I love you so much. I hope you got value out of today’s episode.

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