Episode 156 - Men from Mars, Women from Venus

Are you ready to face the toughest challenge of your life? 💪 

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Marriage isn’t just a piece of paper; it’s a profound journey filled with tests that shape us. We often think love alone is enough, but the truth is, a successful marriage requires relentless effort and commitment.  

In a world where relationships can feel disposable, it’s crucial to remember that the greatest rewards come from perseverance. Just like learning to walk, we must get back up after every fall.  

The pressure to succeed in marriage has never been higher, but it’s also never been more vital. Let’s learn from the past and appreciate the value of hard work in our relationships.  

What have you learned from your own relationships? 🤔  

Let’s keep the conversation going.  

#marriagegoals #relationshipadvice  #commitment #LoveAndGrowth #lifelessons #thetrustfactorpodcast#jewishpodcasts

Transcript

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Women are programmed differently than men. If you hadn't figured that out by now, welcome to the party. Women are from Venus, men are from Mars. But that's the reason that we need to get together in the first place. Because we have to be able to pick up where they leave off, and they have to do the same for us. Wherever our strengths are, we have to be able to encourage that person to continue to be strong in that department. But we also need to identify our weaknesses and do our best to not demand from our spouse that they can also fix their weaknesses if they can. Wonderful. But our job is to be able to be the strength in their weakness and vice versa. The trust factor is the ticket to a better life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the life. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Trust Factor Podcast. It seems like we've hit a hot button subject. We're talking about divorce. And it makes sense because we're living in a generation where that number of people getting divorced record highs. It seems like every generation that we get farther and farther away from the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai 3,500 years ago, we seem to get lower and lower in our ability to be able to hack it, in our ability to be able to do the right thing. It's not easy. I get it. Life is not a picnic. It wasn't designed to be a picnic. If you're going to be rewarded, then the harder the test, the greater the reward. It's in the Gemara, Lafunzaara Agra. And there is arguably no test more difficult than that of marriage. That's the number one reason we were commanded to get married in the first place. Because God understands in his divine wisdom that man has to improve and man can't do it on his own. Physically and spiritually, he needs assistance. And so in the physical world, God gives us a wife to be able to be our mirror, to be able to help us to move in the right direction, to find out, to identify what our deficiencies are and to constantly work on them. We all have them. Every single one of us, some more and some less. And that spouse is a custom pick partner that God created and brought into your life to be able to assist you to get by in this physical world, to reach the height of your abilities in this world. But you have to have eyes to see it, and it comes with work. On the spiritual side, he's obviously your assistance. You need help, we've talked about it. Reach out to your creator, pray, have a conversation, ask for whatever it is that you need. He lacks nothing. He can give you everything you want. So he is your spiritual guide, and your wife is supposed to be your physical guide. But if you don't have that relationship because you think that you're the be-all end all, you think you're coming into this marriage, I'm the perfect one. Everybody just needs to follow my lead. I've got no need to grow on my own, and I'm going to run around telling everybody what they need to do, then you're setting yourself up for obvious failure. One of the recent comments on this yesterday's episode talking about divorce was that somebody said, I saw that coming. I knew that this was inevitable, that I was going to face these challenges and this constant threat of divorce, and I didn't want to end up there. And that's why I never got married in the first place. Come on now. That's the exact opposite of what we're supposed to be doing in this life. We're supposed to step up and face challenges head on. And if you fail, you pick up and you try again. And if you fail, you pick up and you try again and again and again as many times as it takes. You would not accept failure from a child who's having a hard time learning how to walk. Every time they step up as a toddler and they fall on their butts and they're crying in pain and there's tears, you're not going to say it's okay. Don't worry, don't ever try again. I'll carry you for the rest of your life. No, get back up and try again. It's important because if you don't learn how to walk, my friends, this life is going to be very difficult for you. Same applies when it comes to your relationship in marriage, your most important relationship, especially if you have children. It's your mother of your child. So if you're ever going to make that extra effort to step up and try again, it's going to be in this relationship with your spouse. Let's keep reading. We just started off this section of divorce, and he gave over a small idea about this wise person who was saying that the reason that we suffer from this plague of divorce in our generation is because we have a weak, pampered generation. Guys, if you're my age and if you have children that are in their teens or in their early 20s and they're just getting started in life, you know that you want to pull your hair out of your head sometimes because they're not the same generation. They're not made of the same stuff that we are. And I have news for you it's the same thing, by and large, between us and our parents' generation or our grandparents' generation. It's a different work ethic, it's a different society, it's a different culture, it's a different time in history. We face different challenges. And so we can't always compare, but there has to be a baseline expectation that somebody is going to be motivated. And we're living in a generation where it's all disposable. Today, everything is disposable. Think about it. When we were kids, when we were growing up, our parents stitched our clothing. My mother used to put patches on the elbows and on the jeans, on the front of the jeans. I hated going to school with patches on my jeans, but my mother patched them. Why? Because she understood the hard work that went in to be able to buy that pair of jeans or whatever it was. She took all of our shoes to the shoemaker. I don't know many people who take shoes to a shoemaker today. What do you spend on a pair of shoes? 150 bucks. Most people, as soon as they see wear and tear on them, throw them in the garbage, go buy a new pair. Appliance breaks down, get rid of it. It's out of warranty, throw it in the garbage, get a new one. Nobody wants to repair, nobody wants to fix, nobody wants to put effort into something that they've already used. It's so much easier to just get a new one and get rid of the old one. That's the world we live in, a disposable society. In the Torah, we were learning about Yaakov, our forefather, who was leaving his father-in-law's house, running away to get away from his father-in-law, who was a criminal. And while everybody's on the way, he realizes that he forgot his little utensils, his pots, his pottery. He forgot them behind a few pieces. And because of that, he went back to go get them. He sent his family ahead and he went back. And that, if you remember, is when he had the fight with the angel and he got hit in his thigh. But that was the idea that he understood he had value for the precious items that he acquired that served him and his family. We had a sensitivity to that. An inanimate object. I bought a pot, I bought a pen, I bought a table, I bought a chair. It's not that it's a table. It's not that it's a chair, it's not that it's a pot. It's that this table and chair and this pot and pan served me and served my family consistently, every single day. We cooked, we warmed up our food, we sat at the table, we ate, we enjoyed time together. It's not about the inanimate object. It's about appreciating the value, the innate value that's in that item because it served us. And he went back to be able to get those pots and pans. Foolish people might think, well, if you're so cheap, just make some new ones. It's not about that. It's not about the money. It's about sensitivity and attributing value to items. How much more so are we going to attribute value to the person in our life who is most responsible, who's my other half, who takes care of all the things that I don't have to take care of on a day-to-day basis? But we're living in an entitled world. I just had a conversation with a friend of mine, also in business, who's complaining to me about the same complaints that I have or similar. That being that he built this wonderful business, a wonderful business that took him decades to build. Blood, sweat, and tears went into building this business into what it is today. But he's older. He's up there in age and he wants to settle down and he wants to retire. He wants to give it to his daughter and his son-in-law, but there's no motivation. They won't even schedule a meeting with a lawyer. It keeps getting switched every five minutes. Why? Because it needs to revolve around their plans. The little baby and the trips that they need to take and the date trips and the summertime schedule. You're barely making it by. You're barely getting by in life. Here comes a gift on a silver platter. Somebody spent a lifetime building it, wants to give it to you to help you out in life, and you can't even show up for a meeting. That's the generation we're living in. Entitled, spoiled, and lazy generations. So what do you want them to do with marriage? If marriage is so difficult because it requires constant work and sacrifice, you can't put up. You're going to end up just another statistic. That's where we are today. That's why we have to learn from the Torah the values and the precious learning that we can get from our forefathers and the value that they had for inanimate objects, never mind human beings and what they do for us. So let's keep reading about what this wise man said. He says, we also had our share of difficulties. He's talking about a previous generation. We had misunderstandings and quarrels, but we never considered the option of breaking up our marriage. That's why I said yesterday that word divorce is not in your lexicon. It doesn't exist in your mind. That's this generation. Our goal was to build a successful relationship. We were therefore prepared to invest the efforts needed to reach our goals. Thank God we succeeded in weathering everything. And as a result, we raised our children and married them off. Seeing grandchildren and great-grandchildren, do you have any idea the blessing that comes from children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all of whom are a source of joy for us? Had we lacked the patience and perseverance required in dealing with the difficulties in our marriage, we wouldn't have reaped all of these wonderful fruits. They cut off their noses despite their face. They don't have the wherewithal to see forward into the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, the opportunity to bring life into this world and to have a legacy to leave behind and to raise good people who are going to contribute to this world in a positive way that you can look to and then you can get what we call nakat, nachis, right? We can get pleasure, we can get a sense of joy in looking at what we've brought into this world and be proud of who they are. You don't have that. If you haven't been able to weather the storm, or if you're like this person who posted on my comment that that's why they never got married in the first place, what an opportunity missed. What an and never mind the kids and the grandkids and the great-grandkids, what an opportunity missed when you have a solid relationship with another individual who you can see eye to eye with, who's got your back and whose back you have. You're now a tag team. You now have power in numbers. You have the ability to take on so much more as a married couple than you do as a single individual. As long as that married couple is solid and is working well together. If not, you have the opposite problem. You'll do better as a single person because now you're constantly at each other's throat and constantly bringing each other down. It says from here we learn to correct the misconception that a good marriage is automatic. If you've ever looked at somebody, if you ever looked at a couple, your parents, your grandparents, your neighbors, and thought to yourself, wow, that's unbelievable. What a marriage. I wish I had that. I don't know what they did, but they found each other and they found the perfect mate for each other. I have a couple like that in my family that I look to and I often think, wow, could God have ever put two more amazing people together? The love that they have between them, the passion that you see in their eyes, and they're no spring chickens, they've been around, they've been married for probably 30 years, but you look at them and you see like they were newlyweds, the way that they respect and honor each other. And I think to myself, it must have just been a click, you know, like a puzzle. They just fit together perfectly. You're diluting yourself, my friend. If you ever thought that was the case, you don't know how wrong you are. The reason that they're so successful in their marriage is because they were willing to do the hard work, the heavy lifting. They were willing to be able to negate themselves. Never mind being entitled. I deserve X, I deserve Y, I deserve it all. They negated themselves. They took their will out of the picture, canceled. You know, we're living in a cancel culture, right? Where you say the wrong thing and they cancel you. Don't wait for somebody to cancel you. You cancel yourself. I don't exist. I don't have an opinion. When it comes to my wife, I don't have an opinion. If it makes her happy, then she can have her way all day long. Because at the end of the day, that's going to make me happy. If you're living like that, then you have that relationship of these two people that you see on a regular basis and think, what a wonderful relationship they have. You better believe that they've worked on it for many, many years. They've had their ups and downs. There are no relationships that aren't without problems. Listen to what he says. Couple with problems look at happy couples as if they've been enjoying a happy marriage from day one. Like I just said, it's not true. It's not true. That's far from the truth, he says. Even a marriage between two righteous people of impeccable character is plagued with its share of tension and disagreements. We're human beings. Women are programmed differently than men. If you hadn't figured that out by now, welcome to the party. Women are programmed differently. Women are from Venus, men are from Mars. There's truth in that statement and that we are so radically different. But that's the reason that we need to get together in the first place, because we have to be able to pick up where they leave off, and they have to do the same for us. We have to be able to fill the gap of each other's weaknesses. Wherever our strengths are, we have to be able to encourage that person to continue to be strong in that department, and they should continue to encourage us in our strengths. But we also need to identify our weaknesses and do our best to not demand from our spouse that they can also fix their weaknesses if they can. Wonderful. But our job is to be able to be the strengths in their weakness and vice versa. And the same applies for children. Our job as parents is to identify our child's weaknesses and strengths and to be able to help them bolster their strengths and fix their weaknesses. That's when it comes to the kids, because we're molding them, we're disciplining, we're guiding them. When it comes to our spouse, we can't necessarily help them fix their weaknesses, their grown adults. If we can, wonderful, if it's done in a kosher way, if it's done in a way that agrees with this idea of canceling ourselves and it's completely altruistic, it's for our spouse's benefit. Maybe if it's under the supervision of an orthodox rabbi, maybe, but that's not your job. They have to fix themselves. And if they're growing in Torah and they're learning the things that we're learning, then you better believe they're going to want to fix themselves. And if they see you growing and becoming the best version of you, then you better believe they're going to want to do the same thing. Nobody wants to get left in the dust when they see their spouse doing something that's making them a better spouse, a better parent, a better individual. They want to hitch the wagon. They want to do the same thing. So they jump on board and they start changing. But it has to be at their pace and their desire, not yours. Any human being must learn to compromise and sacrifice in order to make peace and create a happy environment with a second human being. Forget husband and wife, forget male and female. We're all so different. We all have different faces in order to remind us that we have different characters. We have different souls, different ashammas. We've lived different lifetimes and different experiences, and we all have different things to fix. So just to get along between two different people from two different backgrounds, very difficult to spend an extended period of time with somebody that you don't know, different character, completely than you, different desires, different likes, different dislikes, very, very challenging. Now you've got to live with the person, you have to share a bed with them, you have to make life-changing decisions with these people, you have to learn to see eye to eye with somebody who's programmed exactly the opposite of you. If you push away and run from that, like the other person did with the comment, then you're going to remain who you are for the rest of your life. And if you want to take on that challenge, it will come with growth opportunities that can only come from that type of a challenge that we find in this institution of marriage. And my friends, it's so worth it. That's why the creator and his loving divine wisdom made it a commandment. And it was the first to be able to find a mate, to be able to get married, and to start having children, because that, my friends, is when life starts. Make the investment. It's well, well worth it. We'll speak again tomorrow. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts. Drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.