Marriage Expert: "I Can't Stay Silent About This Any Longer..."

every relationship can be repaired and one of the most contributing factors to marital success especially when there's issues is Hope because with hope comes the drive to want to make things work and my job as a rabbi my job as a marriage counselor is to inspire people with hope even more than giving people tools more than just giving people skills and helping people uh sort through Challen es the biggest thing I can give people is Hope because if people have hope they have the ability to move forward and I believe firmly that every marriage can be saved that doesn't mean it will be and it doesn't mean it necessarily should be but that's not going to be my decision that should never be a therapist's decision a counselor's decision a rabbi's decision that has to be your decision but that decision has to come from a place of clarity and with hope comes Clarity the best thing I can give you is Clarity hope and a feeling of I believe in you I believe in your autonomy to be able to make good and sane decisions and that's why I never suggest to couples uh why don't you get a divorce the the amount of people that have told me that they therapist had suggested why don't you get a divorce that is not the therapist's role and that's it's not necessarily good advice you barely know this couple why why would you give that advice you barely know them oh yeah but they told me about their life you heard 45 minutes an hour once a week you you know them you're qualified to give such advice that That's Heavy shoulders uh I'm that that I I would say that a rabbi should faster give that advice than a therapist because at least a rabbi is there to share values and maybe that's a value that's important whatever separate discussion for a separate time but I'm here to tell you that every marriage can be saved it doesn't I mean it will be but it can be with hope now how do I give couples hope it's by going back to the root of the marriage um I had a mentor who used to who would ask couples instead of when they come in so what's the problem instead of highlighting issues he would say how did you guys meet because he didn't want them to focus on the problem he wanted to focus on why they got into this marriage in the first place and when you go back to the source when you go back to the rude it's much easier to to repair things when you go back to what you really want and how this worked in the past you can you can kind of rebuild from there in the future there's a there's a a mid sh The Book Song of Songs by King Salomon is a love poem a marriage uh description between the Jewish people and God and in the mid there it says commenting on the biblical verse God says I'm coming back to my garden I want to come back to my garden and the mid says that God was originally in this world of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve kind of messed things up but God says I'm going to be coming back I want to come back I want to come back home and it's like how can we bring God back to this world how could we bring the Garden of Eden State this state of blissfulness back to this world this world looks crazy sometimes and the answer is because we're not introducing anything new we're going to back to what already was instead of trying to introduce something new to the marriage going back to what already was going back to the ultimate core of the marriage inspiring and and asking yourself why I got into this in the first place not skeptically but with hope is incredibly eye-opening incredibly revelatory there's a Jewish Tradition at a wedding that the bride and the groom under the HOA the wedding canopy breaks a glass this is an old tradition dating back to the talmud and there's different reasons for this tradition the classic reason given is because we want to remember the destruction of Jerusalem and even in our joyest moments there's other people who are still in pain and there's historical pain and we can't forget that that's the classic reason but there's another reason commentaries explain because this couple needs to go into the marriage with hope at although this is their most joyous uh moment at this point in their lives it should only get get better and be more joyous there may be times where it feels like the glass is broken it feels like just things aren't working and they have to realize that what they broke was a glass not clay not earth and wear not wood glass can be repaired you just need heat you need fire you need passion you need love and with that heat you can melt the glass together and you can become one and the reason why you can become one again is because you already were one can a marriage be fixed can any marriage be fixed the answer is yes will it that's going to be your decision with the right empowerment and if I could help in any way you let me know that's my story and I'm sticking to it