Travel Is Cheaper Than Divorce
"Travel is cheaper than divorce, I should know. My wife and I were at the door to it." - David Packer
In this podcast I share some of the places, experiences and moments that changed the dynamics of not only my marriage but also the relationship with my kids. Travel was a big key of growing together, becoming stronger as a family and truly saving my marriage with my wife.
I share with you, how you can gain and travel using points and other rewards programs to see and explore some of the most amazing places in the world. In this podcast I share some of the lessons both good and bad, that have guided me and my family as we have navigated the growth and expansion of a family unit.
TRAVEL IS POSSIBLE... when you do it smart. In this podcast I give the tips and tricks I have used and the secrets I teach others of using rewards & point programs to maximize the dollars you are already spending to create some unforgettable memories with your family.
Travel Is Cheaper Than Divorce
Embracing Journey and Family for Emotional Healing
What if the key to mending broken family ties and overcoming the fear of rejection lies in the simple act of packing a suitcase? On this episode of "Travel is Cheaper than Divorce," I open up about how my parents' divorce left me grappling with an intense fear of rejection, which seeped into my own marriage as controlling behaviors. Through heartfelt storytelling, I explore the transformative power of travel as a tool for healing and connection—even when financial limitations loom. Hear how embracing risk and rejection, much like successful individuals do, can lead to a more fulfilling life.
Together, we unpack the vital role of open communication in mending marital relationships. If fear of rejection has you closing off emotionally, join me in a journey of self-reflection and candid dialogue with your partner. Learn how vulnerability, while daunting, can open the doors to gratitude and happiness, strengthening your bond in unexpected ways. Whether it's a simple date night or an adventurous trip, discover how travel can reignite love, offering new perspectives and opportunities to connect deeply with those you cherish most.
You are listening to. Travel is Cheaper than Divorce. This podcast for all those who may be struggling with their spouse or their children and the relationship with them. We help give you tips and tricks by using travel as the means to be able to help your relationships with your family. I'll provide those tricks and other ways to help travel with little or no cost. So let's get into it.
Speaker 1:I love rejection. You may find that to be strange If you're one that has dealt with a fear of rejection, like I have. You get to the point where you either die inside with that fear, not ever progressing, not ever living the life that you want to live, or you embrace it. So when I say I love rejection, I only love it to the fact of what it has done for me. Some of you out there are and probably a lot of you, it seems lately may be children of a divorce, and if you really look back at that time, you'll realize that when there is a divorce in the family, the child feels rejected. I mean, a lot of people say that children have a tendency to say that oh, maybe it's my fault. Where does that come from? It comes from rejection.
Speaker 1:I remember the very day that my parents told me that they were quote getting separated. They wouldn't even tell us that they were getting divorced. They were, you know, working around it. Essentially, they didn't really want to tell us they were getting divorced, so they told us they were getting separated. It took me years later to realize that that was a rejection and it led to a complete fear of that very thing. Now that worked into my marriage quite a bit actually. Now that worked into my marriage quite a bit actually. Because of my fear of rejection, I was doing the very thing that would cause I would do things that would cause a divorce Controlling, controlling. Because if I controlled how she felt, if I controlled what she was feeling, then somehow, someway, I'll never be rejected.
Speaker 1:If you live your life because of the divorce or any other reason, frankly, maybe you got rejected for a job sometime. That's another thing. If you have a fear of rejection, you're never going to take risks in life, or you'll take the littlest amount of risk as possible. And now you look at the big people who have played in this world, the ones who are huge in this world, who you may look at as successful I won't even name any because you may have a different definition of success than I do, but think of the people you think are successful, and what do you see? Do you see people who have a fear of rejection? I don't. I see people who take risk. I see people who are rejected over and over and over again. Look at Steve Jobs. He was literally kicked out of his company, his own company. Could that be more of a rejection? And he came back with a vengeance.
Speaker 1:You have a life that you want to live. You have an ideal life, an ideal family that you want to have together, and you're struggling. You're struggling right now. You're struggling because your family's falling apart around you. The job is not keeping up with success that you feel like you deserve. Are you fearing rejection? Is that the thing that's preventing you from winning? I know it's a cliche, but it's true that ones who fall down and get back up over and over again are the ones who win the race. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about here, because this was from the very time that my parents got divorced until even just a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1:I had that same fear of rejection. It affected me literally everywhere, everywhere in my life, but more it didn't show up. See, it may show up at work, here or there, it may show up professionally, but where it shows up the most is in your family. Because in your family, because when you're at work, you may not have to show a lot of emotions. It really depends on what you do for a living, I suppose, but most don't have to. Really most men, I will say, don't have to show a lot of emotion in their career, but when you get home your heart has to be there, and if you fear rejection, then your heart won't open. It won't open Because if you feel like somebody is going to hit you, then you won't open your heart and so you reject it. You reject, but see, your fear of rejection rejects everybody else around you. Because if you can't open your heart, if you can't take that risk to open your heart, you're rejecting everybody around you, because your spouse and your children need you. They need you. They don't need the scruffy CEO in their home, they don't. They need you. They need you. They don't need the scruffy CEO in their home, they don't. They need you. And if you don't open your heart, they're not getting you.
Speaker 1:So this worked into a lot of the things that I worked on in my family. I mean, you've heard my story. If you've been listening to this podcast for any kind of length of time, you know that my family was struggling, my marriage was struggling, so my wife this is very brief because if you've, I don't want to repeat a story that you may have heard, but those who are just listening who haven't heard this story my wife came to me and talked about travel and I thought that was crazy. We didn't have any money at the time but I just made it happen. You know, you look at people around you and you see these people who have all the quote unquote luck in the world. I don't believe in luck anyways, but if I did, I can see where people see that these people tend to always get the nicer things. They get upgraded all the time I'm talking about travel in this case, because that's that's kind of my thing but they get upgraded to first class all the time. They get the nicer hotel room, so on, so forth, so on, so forth. Do you look at those type of people and say those are the people who have a fear of rejection, those are the type of people who who don't take any risk. No, I don't. I don't know what you see. I don't see that those are the type of people. And so you can't force things on yourself though you can't force yourself not to have a fear of rejection but you can certainly recognize that you do and then turn it.
Speaker 1:Now I use travel. I know it seems like all my solution is that, but it really has made a huge difference in my life. I use travel because I learned the ways to travel in luxury for little or no cost, and because I was traveling in luxury, I felt good. I felt good, I felt like I could open up more. I felt like I was getting what I, I guess, deserved I don't know if that's really the right word.
Speaker 1:And so when you travel in first class, lay flat seats in business class, when you're in a suite at a hotel and other things like that, how do you feel? Well, david, I can't afford that. Well, you know I will reject that wholeheartedly, because you can. Right, I use points, I use miles, I use that kind of thing. I earn them quickly, I spend them right. That's a different thing. Maybe that's not your cup of tea. Do you know how much confidence you gain? This is just by my experience. Do you know how much confidence you gain by being in a hotel suite, knowing that you paid regular rates for it? A second part is what I really love, and you can live like that person, you see, and then that just helps you gain more and more confidence. Traveling and learning the way that I have learned by traveling, by getting these awesome seats, these awesome hotel rooms, has really gained my confidence up.
Speaker 1:When that happens, your fear of rejection starts melting. Now maybe travel is not the solution for you. I love it, I just love it. It's almost become a hobby of mine. Maybe the solution is literally therapy I use travel as my therapy, but maybe it's therapy to go through your fear of rejection. What's the basis of that? But any therapist or anybody will tell you that a fear, any kind of problem that you may have inside you can be solved by simply recognizing it, bringing it out into the light, seeing it, looking at it, because things like that like to be buried inside of a person.
Speaker 1:I know, in fact I know I can tell you right now I know there's somebody within the sound of my voice is feeling this way. I just know there is. I've met a lot of people in my life, a lot of people in my life, and these people I don't know. I just feel like a lot of people walk around and this may be not for this episode about fear of rejection, but it is part of it. People just walk around like zombies, and why? Because they shut off their heart.
Speaker 1:You know, you've heard me say in other episodes I truly believe that love is everything. Well, how are you going to give or receive love if your heart's closed Because you're too afraid of what's going to happen to you? You know, in a way and I don't want to say this to be mean, but I'm going to, I'm just going to frigging say it You're being selfish. You're being selfish. Your fear of rejection is taking you to a place where you can't live the life that you want to live and that affects everybody around you. So you're protecting your heart and you're not giving out to other people. That's selfish. That's selfish to its very core. You need to live the life that you are meant to live and not walk around like a zombie. Go into your heart. Is it a fear of rejection? Is it a fear of rejection that is causing all of this?
Speaker 1:So my spouse and I have worked on a lot of things together. As I told you, we were on the verge of what I call parallel marriage. I don't know if we'd ever get divorced, at least not on paper, but a parallel marriage, as you've heard in other episodes, is just like a divorce. It's just that we live together as roommates, which is actually, I feel, worse than a divorce. But some would disagree with that. But it's when I stopped.
Speaker 1:I mean and I don't want to get too graphic, but I mean you get a fear of rejection. It goes right into your, even your, sexual relationship, where you cannot, you cannot perform the way you need to perform because you're too afraid of not doing what she needs, giving her what she needs, or he, and so then that affects everything else too. It can affect everything else, right? She doesn't feel loved, he doesn't feel loved, whatever, literally, that fear of rejection, I think it eats away at so many people and they don't even realize it. Clearly, that fear of rejection, I think it eats away at so many people and they don't even realize it. So, anyways, we were on the verge of of of a parallel marriage.
Speaker 1:Well, I call a divorce a non paper, and I really had to look deep into myself and I was worried. I mean, can you can, by the way, can you not feel like that's the ultimate rejection, even from your spouse, even if it's your idea? I want a divorce and you want a divorce. Why, why, why do you want a divorce? Is she rejecting you or is your fear of rejection making that turn that direction? Now I speak mostly in this podcast to the men out there, but you don't think this is the same for women.
Speaker 1:Your fear of things. There was something called a shadow effect, and the shadow effect is the thing that you fear the most. Actually is something that you actually internalize so much that it actually becomes a part of you. You actually become the thing that you fear. So I fear divorce, I feared rejection, and that's exactly what happened to me on the verge of divorce and rejecting and having that fear of rejection closing off my heart. So my spouse and I, we had several conversations and when I say conversations, they weren't always conversations in the sense that they weren't quiet. Okay, well, we can call them arguments, I suppose.
Speaker 1:And then you end up on the couch, you end up in a hotel room, and then what? Then sometimes the worst thing happens, then you're like well, if she's going to reject me, I'm going to reject her by turning on my phone and going to Pornhub or whatever pornography site. If she's going to reject me, I'm going to mentally reject her by getting what I need through this, that or the other. What are you doing? You know, sometimes this may not be very popular, but that's a lot of things I'm saying aren't. But this may not be popular, but you need to man up. You know you look at the heroes that people may have in the world again and these people don't fear. They go and they do. They have courage.
Speaker 1:And if you're fearing rejection, is that courage? Are you running away? Stop running away. Stop running away from your children, stop running away from your spouse because you fear something. Embrace them, take them somewhere, get out of your house. Get out of your house, go travel somewhere together, be together when you're out of the environment of your home and out of the environment of your work. I know I keep saying this, but it really does change things.
Speaker 1:So if I were to tell you anything at the end of this episode like a takeaway, something for you to do is have this conversation with your spouse.
Speaker 1:Look at first.
Speaker 1:You got to look inside yourself.
Speaker 1:Am I fearing rejection? Am I closing my heart off because I have a fear of rejection and then have a conversation with your spouse about that Almost guaranteed I'm not in everybody's marriage, but almost guaranteed she is going to be, or he is going to be grateful and be happy that you're having that conversation, because now you're opening your heart up. And that's hard to do because when you open your heart you bet you could be rejected and it's like a punch to the throat, a punch to the heart and that's hard to deal with. But have that conversation, heal that conversation and, my heck, get out of your house, go on a date. When you do this, I prefer for you to go travel somewhere and learn to love again. Learn to open your heart. You have been listening to Travel is Cheaper Than Divorced with David Packer. Please let us know what you think about this episode or any other comments you might have, by visiting our website at wwwtravelpointdadcom. Please join us for our next episode, where we continue to explore how travel can help bring your family together.