Why Trying Harder Is Hurting Your Marriage

There's one word that a lot of people think would help their marriage, but it's actually hurting your marriage. You know what that one word is? Discipline. Because people keep expecting discipline to create something it was never designed to create. People think that if they are more disciplined in their relationship or if their spouse is more disciplined in their relationship, they're going to feel more closeness, connection, intimacy. And by the end of this video, you're going to understand why some couples work incredibly hard on the relationship and still feel disconnected. What's missing? What can you do instead? If you ever thought that I need to be more patient or my spouse needs to be more patient, we need to work harder. We need to be pushing harder and putting in more effort. and you find that not working, this video is for you because I want to offer you a different way of looking at relationships that will change how you approach them entirely. So you could position yourself to actually feel more connected to be the kind of person who becomes a source of connection rather than a source of frustration. Most people assume that happy couples are simply more disciplined. they show up and do things more often for each other in a very disciplined way. It's just not true, man. And once you see why, you'll understand why there's so many couples who are trying to work harder rather than work smarter in the relationships and it just doesn't work. They don't feel connected. My name is Josh Zerman and I work with individuals and couples who want to feel closer, more connected, and more hopeful in their relationships. And one thing I've noticed is that people often confuse the outcome with the cause. Think about the person who loses 50 pounds. It was really hard for them to take that weight off and they they finally did it. You see them making intentional food choices. You see them exercising. You see them walking more. You see the consistency. And most people will call that discipline. You're not actually seeing discipline. What you're seeing is the result of something much deeper. You're seeing motivation. You're seeing a meaningful reason to be disciplined to keep that weight off. You might not know what that meaningful reason is by looking at them. But what is compelling them to actually be disciplined is something much deeper. Maybe they want to feel healthier. Maybe they want more confidence or energy. Maybe they're tired of feeling uncomfortable. in their own body. What creates the consistency is the desire. And what you see is the discipline. And we do the exact same thing in relationships, guys. We see a happy couple. We see patience. We see kindness, affection. We see them making time for each other. Oh, you guys are disciplined, aren't you? But that's not what's happening. Discipline helps you like control yourself. It helps you bite your tongue when you shouldn't be saying something. That could be good sometimes. Maybe that will prevent things from getting worse. Sometimes discipline alone will not create intimacy. Discipline has a context. And if you have discipline without the meaningful context, which is the meaningful reason, the meaningful motivation, it's going to be very dry, very fake. It's going to crumble very quickly. It's actually going to make you feel further rather than closer. If every conversation with your spouse requires you to be disciplined and edit yourself, if you're constantly monitoring every word, forcing yourself to be patient, you should be patient, but if you're forcing it, you might prevent some arguments. What you'll probably be preventing is a relationship. There's going to be nobody to talk to. That might keep things civil on the outside. That is not closest. That's management. Nobody wants to be in a relationship where they feel managed even by themselves. Management does have its place. But that is not intimacy. That is not closeness. That is not depth. If you want to have intimacy, if you want depth in your relationship, you need to show up in a way that is authentic. You have to have authentic interest. You have to present a version of yourself that your spouse is genuinely interested in seeing. And very often people don't just think they need more discipline. They also think their spouse needs more discipline. My spouse needs to make more time for me. My spouse needs to be a better listener. My spouse needs to show more affection. That might be true, but you're not looking for discipline. That's not what you want. Do you actually want your spouse forcing themselves to spend time with you when when they're not interested? Do you want them forcing themselves to ask how your day was as if they're reading off a script? Do you want them acting interested because there's this obligation and what's going to happen to you if they don't do it? Or do you want them to genuinely care? What you actually want is not a more disciplined spouse. You want a spouse who's interested. And the way you attract a spouse who is interested, one of the ways is presenting a version of yourself that your spouse is interested in. By the way, if you're listening to this and realizing that you've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get your spouse to change or how to get yourself to change, you feel like your relationship is not going where you need to go. Reach out to me. Look in the show notes. There'll be a link to schedule a 30-inut consultation and I'll walk you through exactly how I help couples that are in your situation. The goal isn't becoming more disciplined. The goal is becoming more interested. Interested in understanding your spouse, interested in creating a relationship you enjoy being in, interested in becoming the kind of person that your spouse actually wants to be around. the kind of person that attracts a version of your spouse that's interested in you, like when you first got married. Because when something becomes meaningful enough, many of the behaviors people call discipline, actually happen naturally. Discipline is the outcome of a meaningful reason, not the cause that creates meaning. I want you to imagine you come home from work one day and instead of sitting in the car on your driveway scrolling through your phone because you're afraid to walk through the door because you're just exhausted from your relationship and it feels like work to go home and it feels like home when you're at work. Instead of doing that, somehow you decided to walk through the door as a version of yourself that you were proud of for your spouse to see. a version of yourself that you know your spouse takes more interest in. What would be the first thing your spouse would notice? What would he or she see in you? What would make you smile if they noticed that quality in you? And if you saw the positive impacts of displaying that quality and you somehow began to do it more often, what would you hope to notice starts changing in your relationship and in your interactions with your spouse? By the way, if you think communication is the biggest problem in your relationship, watch this next video because most couples spend years trying to improve communication and never get the closeness they're looking for. Communication is where the problem shows up. It's not the problem itself. And in this video, I'm going to show you what's exactly driving this connection underneath the communication struggles. And once you see it, you won't be able to unsee it. And I'm excited to see what that might do for your relationship.