The Coach Ratner Podcast
Coach Ratner is not a matchmaker, but a MateMaker. With 7 books under his belt, Coach Ratner is an accomplished author and sought-after speaker on topics such as relationships, self-esteem and spirituality. His unique insights and captivating speaking style have helped countless individuals achieve their goals and transform their lives.
The Coach Ratner Podcast
Your Marriage Is Not a Business Deal—It's Two Souls Becoming One-Sunscreen Love Audiobook
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What does marriage truly mean? Forget everything you've been taught about partnerships and teams - those analogies fall dangerously short. While business partners track contributions and sports teams disband after championships, a thriving marriage operates on entirely different principles.
Ready to transform your relationship? Stop tallying contributions and measuring "fairness." When you treat your spouse as an extension of yourself - would you intentionally harm your own arm? - you create space for extraordinary intimacy. Focus on the soul rather than the score to build a marriage that truly lasts a lifetime. Share this episode with someone whose relationship could benefit from this perspective shift.
Defining marriage. While any relationship is in the research phase, both parties must have a common understanding of what marriage means to them, especially if you want to get married or want to improve a current relationship. What being married means to someone depends on their personal experience. Most of what people know about marriage comes from one source their parents. This is why, if you want your children to have a great marriage, you must show them what a great marriage is. If you are fortunate enough to come from a home in which your parents had a healthy marriage, you've had a positive experience and you will most likely try to emulate that. Conversely, if you are raised in a home with a dysfunctional or tumultuous marriage, those patterns may affect your own relationships. This doesn't mean you're destined to repeat history, but it does mean you must be mindful of the baggage and challenges you carry. Statistics show that children of divorced parents have a higher likelihood of divorcing themselves, especially for women. Although divorce may be necessary in many instances, if parents knew the harm that it will cause their children, we would see much less of it. It is fairly common to hear a couple who are getting divorced say that their children will be better off when they are separated. Although this may be true on the surface, what you won't hear them say is that their children may be internally damaged. Research shows that children are deeply affected by divorce and the trauma can carry into their own adult relationships. Before entering marriage, or if you're working on improving one, both partners should clarify their own definition of marriage. It's a mistake to assume that everyone shares the same understanding. At the very least, if you don't agree with what I consider to be the feeling and definition of marriage, it's essential for the couple to define their own terms of the meaning. The feeling of marriage, the feeling of being married is when you feel complete as a person. It's when your primary purpose in life becomes giving to your spouse with no lingering doubts that you may have done better with someone else. You know fully well that there are more attractive, wealthier or emotionally healthier people out there, but none of that matters, because you wouldn't trade your spouse for anyone else. Reaching this feeling doesn't happen overnight. It takes years of nurturing, learning and growing together. The definition of marriage the definition of marriage is the merging of two souls.
Speaker 1:While many people use the analogy of marriage as a team or partnership, I believe this analogy falls short. A team has a shared purpose typically to win a game. But after winning a championship, a team often disbands or struggles to maintain the same success year after year. Unless you're someone like Tom Brady or Michael Jordan, leading a team to multiple championships is incredibly rare. Since you're not the LeBron James or Serena Williams in your marriage, you will have to work harder to make your relationship into a dynasty. You want your marriage to win the championship every year.
Speaker 1:A partnership is often when two people come together because each has something the other needs, usually resources or contacts. Once those goals are met, the partnership may lose its purpose and the two might feel they no longer need each other. For example, in business, a partnership might be formed because one person lacks certain skills but the other one provides. But once those skills are acquired, the need for the partnership fades. In a similar way, many marriages phase straight or even end after children are born, as the initial goal starting a family has been fulfilled. If the focus of the marriage was solely on that goal, the connection between the spouses may weaken once it's achieved.
Speaker 1:The danger in viewing marriage as a partnership is that it often leads to scorekeeping. Partners start to question whether the other is contributing equally. And how to define equal in a marriage? Is it about who brings in the most money? Who takes care of the kids more? It's impossible to quantify these contributions, and when couples fall into this mindset, resentment builds, leading to breakdowns in a relationship. And when couples fall into this mindset, resentment builds, leading to breakdowns in a relationship. Once someone's goals are achieved, one business partner may buy the other business partner out or, as often happens, end up suing each other in court. Partnerships can fall apart if one person feels that the other isn't contributing their fair share.
Speaker 1:Viewing marriage as the merging of two souls means embracing unity where you and your spouse are not separate, but truly one. Think about who you naturally love the most. Likely it's yourself. So when you give deeply to your spouse, they become an extension of yourself. There's an even more profound reason to see marriage this way. Would you intentionally hurt yourself? While some may struggle with self-destructive tendencies, most people would never knowingly cause physical pain or hurl insults to themselves. In the same way, when you hurt your spouse, you're ultimately harming yourself. Your wife is complaining that her arm is hurting. She has tried, with no success, to ease the pain. You go with her to the orthopedist to get some help. When you walk into the doctor's office, you say to the doctor our arm hurts. There's a powerful lesson from the Bible that speaks to this. God put Adam to sleep and created a woman from one of his ribs, symbolizing that a spouse is meant to be the missing piece that completes us.
Speaker 1:The essence of marriage is not about two separate people, but about the union of two halves of a soul. It is through this merger that you become whole, emotionally and spiritually. I believe that the person you choose to marry in your early 20s won't be the same person, nor will you by the time you're 30, 40, or 50. As emotionally healthy individuals grow and evolve, I also believe there are many people you could potentially fall in love with and build an incredible marriage. This is why comparing your spouse to someone else is always a losing game.
Speaker 1:Relationships thrive when we focus on what we have, not on what we don't have or what we might have been. I often tell my wife that I wish I had met her 10 years earlier. She always responds you weren't ready then, and she's probably right. I would have passed her by because I was not mature enough to recognize how amazing she truly is. Imagine ripping a heart-shaped piece of paper in half. One half represents you at birth and the other half is out there waiting to join with you. Together, these halves form one complete heart. That's the goal of marriage to unite two souls into one heart and one life. Ultimately, this is the key to a lasting, fulfilling marriage. It's not about being equal partners in a business transaction or striving to win a championship together. It's about becoming one with your spouse, loving them as an extension of yourself and working together with a single mission and purpose in life. By focusing on the soul rather than the score, we can form one heart, one life together that truly lasts a lifetime.