Travel Is Cheaper Than Divorce

Travel as a Pathway to Healing and Connection

• David Packer • Season 2 • Episode 9

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What if a simple travel suggestion could save your marriage? After facing the heartache of losing two children, my wife Melanie and I found ourselves at a breaking point. It was travel that became our unexpected lifeline. Join me as I open up about how our journeys allowed us to confront old wounds, shift my mindset, and embrace a newfound commitment to our family. By sharing how travel transformed my marriage, I hope to inspire listeners to consider the profound impact that venturing into the world together can have on their own relationships.

Throughout this episode, I'll reveal how travel can act as a cost-effective alternative to traditional therapy, offering couples a chance to reconnect without the heavy emotional and financial burdens of separation. We'll explore the idea that traveling can foster unity and personal growth, serving as a catalyst for healing and transformation. As you listen, reflect on your relationships and consider the potential of travel to strengthen your family's bonds. Melanie and I invite you to discover the power of shared experiences and the unexpected paths to unity they can reveal.

Speaker 1:

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 will provide those tricks and other ways to help travel with little or no cost. So let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

We, as humans, are meant to be together. We are pack animals in a way. Be together. We're pack animals in a way. We're not really meant to be apart. We're not meant to really to be in a place where we're isolated or alone. It's important for us to really see that being together in a family is exactly what brings really lasting happiness. This is one of the lessons that my parents taught me by the actions that they took by divorcing each other, by putting us in a place where we had no father in the home, by putting us in a place where we had no father in the home. It places in a situation where, well, because of the divorce of my parents, my mom was not even in the home either. So really, we almost were raised on our own, and there are side effects of that some negative, some positive. One of the positive side effects of what I went through was that my siblings really clung together. Me and my siblings have a pretty decent relationship because of what happened. I believe it's because of what happened. What my parents taught me by what happened is that we it's so important for us as humans, especially when we make a commitment to the other person, as I did to my spouse it is so important for us to cleave to each other, to do everything you can to keep it together, because if you tear apart something so beautiful and it affects not just you and the other person but affects the people who are underneath you, if you will your children See it can be such a selfish decision. It can be such a selfish decision. It'd be such a selfish decision to say I'm gonna go off and do what I want to do everything that I have done since.

Speaker 1:

Well, let me back up when melanie and I first started our, our marriage. There was some struggle there and I had a tendency to to as I say to my wife and I'll say to you guys too, to my eternal shame, I spent most of the time pointing fingers at her. You're the problem. I said that because she had been through so much in her life and I thought that she wasn't thinking properly. But she really wasn't thinking at all. She was feeling. She was a big feeler and me as a thinker I really couldn't understand that Because logically, as it were, it didn't make any sense to me. So I pointed fingers you're the problem, you're the problem, you're the problem. So that was the beginning of our marriage, and as we progressed through we learned to love and live with each other for a while and then everything was.

Speaker 1:

Then things got really, really stressful. We lost a couple of children, and when we lost those couple of children I don't know if you've known anybody I know my wife knows she has a relative I should say and she's told me the story herself of this relative at least that when they lost a child it destroyed their marriage. We lost two children and it almost destroyed ours. But the destruction isn't because of the child being lost. It's because there's underlying issues that were never taken care of. That's what I realized in my marriage, because at the time my wife was holding down so many things that were bothering her and I thought everything was hunky-dory. I was whistling past the graveyard, if you've heard the term, and so I spent so much time pointing fingers or her at the earlier part of marriage, thinking everything was fine, towards the middle and to where we're at. I'm not hoping this is not the end, but where we're at now in the present, probably about I don't know about a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1:

Well, it really started from the time when she said we need to travel more, right? So there was all that. And then you've heard the story before and if you haven't, this is your first episode she came to me and said that we need to travel more and we didn't have the money. So I went and tried to find a way for us to travel without money, and that's where I built the TravelPoint system that I teach, where I become known as a TravelPoint dad. So I started working on some things with the traveling, but through the traveling, through the traveling, through the traveling, we realized or I realized, I should say that when I was pointing one finger at her, as the analogy goes, I was pointing three fingers back at me.

Speaker 1:

I never in all the times, to my eternal shame, as I said before, I never in all the time really looked at myself as the problem because I thought she was a problem because of what she went through. What a terrible thing to do to a person who's been through the victim excuse me, who's been a victim of so many things as she has Not realizing that I was not holding or opening my heart to her. And all this started to come to fruition because of the traveling we have done. It brought us closer together because she was able to express what she felt, and then I started to understand more as I started to open my heart to her. So my parents taught me that, no matter what we need to come together, we need to be together, that, no matter what happens, it's so important for us not to tear apart what we have built Just because there's a couple rough years. It taught me that this is so important. This is so important Not only for the kids, but even for our own selves. It is so important for us to find any way possible for us to stay together. It is so important for me to change Because, as I change, she was already trying to change.

Speaker 1:

She's always been trying to pull herself out of this mess that she was put herself through Not put herself through, but other people sorry, pardon me, put her through by the things that they did to her. She's always trying to change. I just wasn't with that because I always thought she was a problem. It's a terrible way to do a marriage, by the way, as I've realized through this process, it's a terrible way to do a marriage.

Speaker 1:

I always look at, so, what I've done because of the experiences that we have, because of this story about how she came to me and honestly, I started to look at myself. What am I doing? Because she came to me one day. I will always remember this and it's really again a very sad, a really terrible, I don't know conviction of me, I guess, or a really bad thing that I realized in the retrospect. But she had been going to a couple of counselors and other things for some things that she has been. She still has going through her because of the mess that she for, the people who raped and sexually abused her, and so she's been going through many counseling and every single one of the counselors said, well, it sounds like he's the problem. It's funny that once she told me that I woke up and said maybe I am the problem, maybe I am the problem.

Speaker 1:

So what I've done since that point forward and it really hasn't changed is that when there is some sort of a disagreement, I always look at myself first. I look at myself first and then I look at her. My wife bless, I love her so much she has a tendency to always look at herself first before any of this. She's always been that type of unselfish, beautiful person. She looks at herself first already before any of this. And now we both basically look at ourselves first before we blame the other person. Always continually trying to improve, always continually trying to improve. It's so easy. It's so so easy, not just with our spouses, but literally anybody we meet on the street. It's so easy to point fingers and say that this person is the problem Without looking at ourselves first. It's such a terrible, terrible mentality to have, terrible, terrible mentality to have. This brings me to another attribute that I believe is always also important, that brings us together, and that is the attribute of forgiveness.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I don't really know where these episodes are going to go, but I feel really compelled to talk about forgiveness because, through everything that I had put her through, by not being selfish and prideful and whatever, by not being and not stepping up, not being, not stepping up and being the man that I need to be for her. Through all of that, she continually found a way in her heart to forgive, and she's done it over and over and over again. There's a lot of I mean. You can list the attributes you need, as in a marriage, it take a long time to do, but forgiveness and love so important, so, so, so important. But, see, these things are not just about marriage though, although it's really really important to have them within the marriage, but it's so important to have it with interactions with nearly everybody. She forgave and forgave, and forgave, and I'll be eternally grateful for her, for her being able to do that.

Speaker 1:

So, to the men out there, it is so important for you to look at yourself first, because that's what I have seen to help by saying this I'm not saying that it's always your fault or that it's the majority of the time your fault. I'm not in your marriage and I'm not in your home, but what I'm saying is by my experience. By my experience, I have seen that when you look at yourself first and not look at others as the problem, as long as the other person's also willing to do that, and those two things can come together. I know it sounds like a cliche or that I'm just trying to, but it really truly did start when we started to travel. It really helped us and it did bring out a lot of these things because we were together more and we're in places where she felt comfortable to say things and say more to me. So she, these things, got brought out. But when she, when she brought these things out and we were able to bring them to light because, you know, sunlight's the best disinfectant when it comes to bringing things to light Once she brought these things to light, we were able well, I was able to work on me and then we were able to work on us, because if I never pulled out of that, if I never pulled out of that and I kept pointing fingers at her, I don't know where we'd be today.

Speaker 1:

My parents taught me that I should do everything I can to make sure we never fall apart together, fall apart as a family. I should do everything I can and for the longest time I was pointing fingers at her and saying she should do everything she could to keep our marriage together, never looking at myself Again going back to being selfish. What a selfish way to live. What a selfish way to live. We need, as men, to step up as men and take responsibility for what we are not doing. And take responsibility for what we are not doing. Take responsibility for what we are doing and love our spouses, love our children, because if we can step up and show the love that we need to love I'm sorry the love that we need to give, we need to love the I'm sorry the love that we need to give.

Speaker 1:

And just I just know, because I've seen it in the stories that I've already told you that what changes in our lives when that happens and it's so cheap to make that happen, you don't have to go to and I'm not saying not to make that clear, but I'm not saying you don't. Sometimes you don't have to go to couples therapy. We never did again. We use travel because not only do I believe that travel is cheaper than couples therapy, I also know, just for what I've heard from others and what went through with my parents, that travel is also cheaper than divorce. You have been listening to. Travel is Cheaper Than Divorce 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.