The Secret to a Passionate Marriage for Life - Coach Ratner

Everyone can be in a passionate, loving relationship [music] with one person the rest of your life, but you just have to have the wisdom. Hi, this is Coach Rner [music] and today we're going to talk about the ten commandments of marriage. You know, it's interesting. When Moshe comes down from the mountain, he comes with two tablets. Why didn't he come with one? Well, one of the reasons is because it would show that there's an order to each of the commandments, but as we know, they're all important. The first five deal with between man, between man and God. But the second five are between man and man. It's not just between man and man, though. It's the first three of the second five, do not kill, do not do adultery, and do not steal, are all about actions, things we do with our hands. The ninth commandment, do not bear false witness, has to do with your speech. The tenth commandment has to do, do not covet, has to do with your thought. So we have action, we have speech and we have thought. Now just like the ten commandments is about relationship with man and God, we also have relationships with our spouses. And so what I did is I decided to take each of the ten commandments and relate them to marriage. And that's what this class is about. The first commandment of the ten commandments is Hashem. I am God. I don't know about you, but does that sound like a commandment? No. It's a statement. So how do we translate that statement? I am God. Most of the time it's translated is that we are to know God. Why is it to know God? Because you know I can sit here and say I'm coach Rner, but you really know me. Unless you've been to a lot of my classes, been to my Shabas table, met my my wife and my kids, see us interact together. You don't really know me. There's no reason for you not to believe it. But you don't know me. And of course, we can't invite God to Starbucks know to know him, right? So, you have to learn his Torah. But think about this. You're going to get married. You're walking down the aisle and you're in love. And really, how do you know what speaks to your spouse? How do you know what drives them? How do do you really know them? Obviously, if you dated only a few times, you barely know them. You did a long time, you know better, but you still don't know them. You haven't lived together. And it's unlikely that a man is about to walk down the aisle to Hopa and his wife hands him a note. Honey, these are my needs. I need you to rub my back every day. Please tell me you love me every day. Buy me a 5,000 sh $5,000 shadel and make sure you lease me a BMW. No, she's not telling you her needs. So, how do you know what they are? You know, we know God because we learn his Torah. It's the only way for us to know God. You can almost say that you know a relationship is even tougher with a with a spouse because you're having you know Venus Venus and Mars can come together. So how do you know it speaks to each other? Well, this is what I'm going to teach you. And the reason why I started teaching about this is because when I think about marriages I grew up in the secular world. I did not become religious until I was observant until I was about 45. And most relationships fail. I had to say it. Most marriages fail. And just because you're married for 50 years doesn't mean it's successful. As we know in in especially in the secular world that half marriages are divorced, the other half, how many of them are in passionate marriages? Not many. You're walking down the aisle today and you think you're going to be in love forever and it doesn't last that way. Because one of the reasons we don't know what speaks to our spouse. And this is I decided I have to put this down into a class. I have to write books about it and have to teach you what it means. And the only reason why I'm doing this is because for some unknown reason, God gave me a skill that I even knew back as a teenager that is the ability to understand relationships. I remember going to weddings of friends of mine my 20s again not religious. And I'm like, "Oh man, that has no shot to work." And unfortunately, I was right. I don't I don't know why. I don't want to be right. I don't want marriages to fail. But I understand what drives each person and it's different for a man and a woman. And since she's not going to give us that list, he's not going to give us this is what I need for you, honey. No, because a lot of times you get married really young. You don't know what you need. But really what you need, I'm telling you, for the woman, I really, this is my thought is that they need what I call the four A's in a relationship. It's attention, affection, appreciation, and awareness of their needs. And I think the reason why these are so important because when a man shows her the four A's, when he gives her proper attention, when he gives her affection, not just physical affection, but affectionate words out of his mouth, when he shows her appreciation, not just thank you, but actually the act of showing I you I feel appreciative for who you are as a person. And awareness, I think, is like one of the most important things. Awareness of their needs. And I I'm I'm I'm I hold by this now. I'm tell I jokingly say to my students, I say, "If you want to have a great marriage, write a book on marriage." It's a gamecher. Just this past week when I I woke up, actually, I got back from domining and my wife had on the counter uh a note and it said green apples. And I had to go to the store for something else. So, of course, I'd get green apples. I I don't like, oh, I'll do it another time. No, I do it right then. If I get a text from my wife, yeast, I know she wants to make hala and I know she wants to make it now. I immediately go home. I get her the way home. I do it. I don't stop. I'm doing on the way home. I make sure I get I have to go out of my way. I will do it because I'm awareness of her needs. I want her to know that I have her back. I want her to know that I'm here for her, that I'm I'm going to I'm going to be there when she needs me. And that's what creates a passionate relationship. Again, you can be married 50, 60 years and maybe it's not so passionate. And I want to create I want to create passionate, loving relationships that last a lifetime. I I put my marriage on a pedestal and I do everything to protect it because when I'm when I'm building my family, I'm not just creating my marriage with my wife. I'm creating a marriage for my children and I'm creating a marriage for their children and their grandchildren because there's a lot of dysfunction in the world today and we don't get rid of that. You can't figure out what the exunction is coming from. It's going to go from generation to generation to generation as we see in many families. I'm trying to stop this. Now the needs for a woman are different than a man. You know I have a topic which we get to is that the three questions you must ask before you get married. And the third question the man has that a woman has to ask before she marries a man is do I respect him? Men don't know this in their early 20s. They have no idea. They think they want to be loved. They don't be loved. They want to be respected. Women need to respect it also. But women feel respected when a man shows her the attention, the affection, the appreciation, and the awareness. That's going to come across as respect. Men a little bit different. I would say women are a little more complicated. One of the key key things I teach my class is, you know, uh I believe that everyone thinks they have the knowledge of what it means to be in a fantastic relationship. Knowledge. We want to know God. We want to know what our spouse needs. But knowledge is not enough because you can know, oh yeah, I I have to do this with my wife. I have to clean the kitchen. I got to do. But if you don't put that knowledge into practice, if you don't turn it from knowledge to wisdom, you're going to struggle. And I teach the wisdom wisdom. We're going to learn one trick today tonight that's going to be a game changer relationships. And not everyone's going to agree with you. Not going to agree with what I'm doing. That's okay. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit cake. If you don't go into relationship with the proper wisdom, you're the fruitcake. Don't be a fruitcake. Men need to be respected. When I when I coach young ladies who are dating a guy and I ask them, they're not sure if they want to marry him or not. They've been on, you know, 5 10 days dates, should I marry this guy? I don't know. I'll ask, do you respect them? If they hesitate, they look away. There is an issue. It's interesting. Most people walking down the aisle, most women are going to respect their husbands. What happens between I do and I can't. What happens there? What's happen? They stop respecting them. Probably because it's it's it's a mutual thing where he stopped showing her attention. She stopped respecting and that relationship falls apart. So here's a trick for the woman. Again, not everyone agrees with me. It's okay. This is works for me and it might work for you. And the reason why it works for men, because if you think about the other way around, it would seem it seemed kind of weird. When a man walks in from learning, walks in from work, and he hasn't seen his wife all day, she has different needs. She needs to connect to her husband on an emotional level. This is the thing that men need to learn. Women need an emotional connection. The first commandment is to know God. You have to know your spouse. I'm telling you men, your wife wants emotional connection. How you do that is when you come home, you put your phone down and you ask her three questions. But before that, for her to show respect to you is so important because a woman, before a woman knows this, her husband walks in, "Hi honey, whatever." She doesn't say anything or she's in the kitchen, she's talked to her friend on the phone or she's playing with the kids and doesn't recognize her husband. He wants to walk in feeling like he's king of the jungle. So, she should pretend to be on the phone or actually be on the phone loud enough for her husband to hear. Sarah, I have to go. My husband just walked in. Click. Hi, honey. Game changer. What's happening is he's recognizing that his wife is stopping what she's doing to recognize that her husband is walking into the house. And that is more important than running up to him and giving a hug and a kiss, which never lasts more than a week after marriage anyway. Men need respect. Now, as we talked about women needing attention, here's another trick. When a man comes home from work, after his wife recognizes that she's walked into the house, he goes up to her and he asks her three questions. And the reason why this is so important, because most men rather go grab a I remember when I was early married, I wasn't religious. I wanted to come home. I wanted to grab a beer, sit on the couch, and watch highlights of ESPN NFL football. I didn't want I didn't need to talk to my wife. I had things on the phone. I had, you know, deals on the phone in my head. I'm like, I don't I I don't want to talk to my wife, but I have to understand she has different needs than me and she needs to connect to me. She's been all home all day with the kids. She's been working whatever whatever wherever the wife's going to be. [clears throat] Three questions. Number one, what did you do today? If you know something specific that she did, ask her about it. Shows you care about her life. Number two, what are you thinking about or what's in your mind? And number three, how do you feel? These three questions, what did you do today? What are you thinking about or what's in your mind? How do you feel? Connect through three of the four parts relationship. And those four parts are called pies. It's an acronym. It stands for physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. What did you do today? Physical. Her hands. What are you thinking about? What's on your mind? Intellect. And how do you feel? Emotional. And this is the most important thing. As a man, you got to sit there and listen for at least 15 seconds. I'm kidding, obviously. But we have to do a better job of connecting to our spouses because when we come home and ask those three questions, I'm telling you, it's a game changer in relationship. Now, on the other hand, women have to realize that men only have so much bandwidth. We don't have this need to connect as much. You know, I can go to a Knicks game or a Giants game, your Giants football game with a buddy of mine. We say 10 words to each other, have a few beers, have some peanuts, right? We had a great time. You ever watched an NBA game, center court, like like a like a finals game, center court, three rows up, like killer seats, and you see two women sitting there. What are they doing the whole time? They're talking. It makes me crazy. And they're not breaking down defenses either because that's how they connect. And as men, we have to understand how they connect. when we do a better job of connecting to them, they'll do a better job of respecting us. So, I was coaching in Chicago recently and a woman comes up to me and she says, "My husband walks out on me. I'm speaking to him." I said, "Well," I go, "I've done the same thing." She goes, "Really?" I said, "Yeah, I came home from teaching. I was at Asia teaching. I walked into my wife's room and it was Hanukkah." and she started telling me some sort of story and I thought to myself, you know what? I have chocolate glazed donuts in the kitchen. I left the room. My wife goes, "Daniel," I'm like, "What?" She goes, "Where are you going?" I'm like, "Donuts?" Like, I'm sorry. Just like women have to understand. Just like we have to do a better job of connecting to our wives, women have to understand we only have so much bandwidth. We can only sometimes handle so much talking. It's like, you know, if I go to the mall and buy a shirt, my wife goes, "Oh, where'd you do it?" I bought a shirt and my wife goes to the mall and buys a shirt. Oh, where'd you go? Well, I met my friend Sarah. We had couldn't find a parking spot and we had to use a bathroom. Then we met our other friend. We had a cup of coffee. Like, I wish I could just plug her talk into a computer. I go, we bought a shirt. Like, I know it's different, but we have different needs. And as a man and a woman, we have to understand those needs. So, again, the first commandment is to know God. So, we learned his Torah. Our first command, it's funny because our first commandment is to know our spouse. What speaks to them? Again, the younger you are, the less likely you can answer this question. As you a as you get older, you kind of realize what you need in a relationship. But you're going to be pretty solid ground if you understand for a woman, if a man understands that a woman needs attention, affection, appreciation, and awareness of her needs. And for a man, he's going to understand that his wife respects him, he's going to be pretty darn happy. If a man runs a Fortune 500 company where he's the boss and everyone bows down to him and he comes home from work and his wife doesn't respect him, that relationship is going to fail. Relationships are not complicated, but people make them complicated. Men need three things. They need food, need physical relations, and respect. Everything else is a bonus. I hate to say it's that easy. I was on a podcast recently, the PhD in psychology. He goes, "Coach Rner, you make it sound so easy." I go, "I'm sorry, honey. You've been divorced two times. Don't make it complicated." The husband doesn't show the proper attention, affection, appreciation, awareness with his wife, she'll stop showing respect. And it's if he if he has a hard time or she has a hard time, right? This is marriage is like a what I call a flywheel. It's almost like a fidget spinner. You know, fidget spinner where you you spin it and like when when it starts to roll, it just keeps going, keep going, keep going. like a relationship is based on all aspects between the husband and the wife and so when one place is lacking the other one doesn't do very well is also lacking so how the way the answer I'm going to give for a husband that is self really it comes from immaturity right it comes from a lot of immaturity and this is why when people ask me oh when do I know if I'm ready to get married I get this question all the time I always say it depends on the person I have students who are 30 years old not ready to get married and I have kids who are 17 years old ready to get married not going to, but they're ready to because of their maturity level. This is my answer. The six days of creation, God creates animals and he creates man. What is the difference between an animal and a man? An animal lives on instinct. Animals have a kind of a soul, not quite like our soul. Obviously, they have some sort of speech, not like our speech, which is very in-depth. So, they have similar things, but the instinct is the big difference. Animals live on instinct. The example I'm going to use, if you feed your dog dinner and let's say you feed him at 5:00 and he has a meat dinner, you come home with a pizza at 7 o'clock in the evening and you put a slice of pizza on the floor and you call your your dog's not going to think to himself, you know what? I'm Fleh Shakes. I shouldn't eat it. I'm a little chubby. I can't see through the doggy door. I can't jump my owner's bed. No, you're that dog is going to eat that pizza without even thinking about it. Why? Because little instinct. We're human beings. We have instinct, but we can control it. We're able to sit down at the dinner table and use a knife and a fork. A husband that is selfish uses a knife and a fork. He's not using his fingers. So, he can certainly train himself to become a better person. This is our goal in life. This is our is to complete ourselves. Our goal as humans is to make us into increase our our the quality of our mido, become better people. Yeah. When they're 22, they may be a little selfish, but if they have a good coach, a good rabbi, someone they confide in, they can say, you know, I can work on myself. I'm not an animal. I can become a better person. Can you imagine a husband coming home from work and his wife finds out that he slept with the secretary and she says to him, "It's okay, honey. It's just your instincts. That's ridiculous, right? Men can improve themselves. The level of patience that I have now after 24 years of marriage does not compare to 24 years ago. The level of attention I pay to my wife does not compare to 24 years ago. The level of awareness I have for her niece does not compare to 24 years ago. Do you know why? Because I've been working on myself. I am trying to become a better listener. I was very impatient. I'm trying to become more appreciative of who she is as a person. I focus on why I fell in love in the first place because anyone you're going to marry is going to have faults. It's just a fact of life. And this is ultimately what that why when we get to the point in a relationship after 5, 10, 15 years of marriage, if you're working on yourself, you're going to come to the conclusion that your spouse isn't perfect. There's someone better in every category. But someone opens up more emotionally, someone who's funnier, someone's a better cook, someone who's skinnier, whatever you want in a relationship, there's someone better in every single category. But you come to the conclusion that your spouse isn't perfect, but they're perfect for you. Do you know why? Because you focus on why you fell in love with them in the first place. Everyone's got different shtick. Everyone's got different skill levels. Everyone understand your person is not perfect. If you're looking for if you if you if someone says, "Oh, yeah, that person's perfect for me." They're an infatuation, not love. Love as a ver as a noun [clears throat] does not last very long. Telling your spouse, "I love you," without backing it up with action means absolutely nothing. You change the word love from a noun to a verb. I am in the constant act of loving you. And this is what speaks to a woman and a man. I am the constant act of loving you. I do that by showing either respect to a man or appreciation, attention, affection or awareness to a woman. And that is the first commandment of a marriage to know your spouse. Just like we have to know