Calm Parenting Podcast - Stop Trying to Save Your Marriage

Episode Date: February 20, 2021

Stop Trying to Save Your Marriage You should stop trying to fix your marriage. This isn’t your traditional Valentine’s Day message, is it? But it may just change your family. Listen with an open mind and take up Kirk’s challenge for the next month—and see what happens. Valentine's Day Sale ENDS Monday at Midnight! You get 60% OFF the Calm Parenting Package-this includes 30 hours of scripts and ideas plus the Marriage Mentoring program FREE. Get the Calm Parenting Package or the Get Everything Package. Want personal mentoring with Kirk via Phone? Click here to learn about mentoring packages. Questions? Need help deciding on the best tools for your family? Email [e-mail] and Casey will help you personally!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So you know we are very purposeful about how we manage our emotions and take care of our bodies because we only have one body and one skin. That's why we love OneSkin. Their products make it easy to keep your skin healthy while looking and feeling your best. We use the face topical supplement and love that there's no complicated routine, no multiple step protocols, just simple scientifically validated solutions. The secret is OneSkin's proprietary OS1 peptide. It's the first ingredient proven to switch off the aging cells that cause lines, wrinkles, and thinning skin.

OneSkin is the world's first skin longevity company. By focusing on the cellular aspects of aging, One Skin keeps your skin looking and acting younger for longer. Get started today with 15% off using code KIRK at oneskin.co. That's 15% off at oneskin.co with code KIRK. After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them, so please support our podcast and tell them we sent you. Hey moms and dads, you know that our goal is to raise curious kids who love to learn, and IXL makes that so much easier. IXL is an online learning program that enriches your homeschool curriculum from K to 12.

IXL encourages students to be curious and empowers them to choose how to learn. No matter your child's learning style or knowledge level, IXL has video tutorials and learning games to guide your child in the way your kids learn best while meeting them at their level. On IXL, kids can explore any topic in any grade level. They're not forced into a single learning path. Kids love IXL's positive feedback, and parents love knowing specific skills that need work. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now.

Calm Parenting Podcast listeners get an exclusive 20% off an IXL membership when you sign up today at ixl.com slash kirk. Visit ixl.com slash kirk to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. I do not think that you should focus on trying to save your marriage. Stop trying to save your marriage. How's that for a Valentine's Day message? Well, I'm going to explain why on today's episode. It's a bonus episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. I'm going to try to make this very short. Welcome. My name is Kirk Martin. I'm founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. If you need any help, email our son Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. If you need any help, email our son, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. I do not think that you should focus on trying to save your marriage. And I'm going to tell you why, because I don't think it will work. Because what

ends up happening is you try to focus, well, I'm going to save my marriage. It's too nebulous a concept. It's too vague. We're going to save our marriage. It sounds really overwhelming to your spouse. And what it really sounds like is you're going, you're trying to change me. That's what ends up happening. You, you end up going through and you're like, well, this isn't good. And you try to change your spouse and it never works to try to change your children. It doesn't try to work to try to change your spouse. Instead, here's what I'd encourage you to do. Instead of trying to save your marriage, instead of working, we're going to work on our marriage. No, let's not do that for the next two weeks, the next two months. Instead, let's put all of that energy into this. I'm going to focus

on myself. I'm going to break the negative patterns, the immaturity, the insecurity that I brought into my marriage. I am going to work on that. And I am going to learn, I, not my spouse, I am going to learn new relationship skills. I'm going to learn how to handle conflict because virtually nobody knows how to handle that. On our regular parenting podcasts, we talk about all the time.

How do you handle conflict, power struggles with a defiant or melting down child? And I go through the steps. It's the same thing with your marriage. It's learning how to handle conflict. I love the love languages, but you can know and understand the love languages all day long, but it doesn't matter if you don't know how to handle conflict and the difficult parts of relationships. And we don't because the people who married us, look, I'm not blaming you or me. It's the people who married us, the pastors and priests and other people who married us,

who were not honest with us. And they should have told us when we got married, let me tell you what you're about to embark on. You are about to have a union, marriage is the union, of two imperfect, deeply flawed people who are usually very young and don't even realize all of their flaws, all of their insecurities, their fear of abandonment. You don't even realize all of their flaws, all of their insecurities, their fear of abandonment. You don't even know why you're getting married. You're driven by forces you're not even aware of yet that you won't even find out until about 15 or 20 years later that you had a fear of abandonment and being alone. So you married this first person that came along, right? Or you met this guy and you thought that you could fix and change him.

And you grew up, when you were a kid, you were the caretaker. You learned that your parents paid attention when you took care of everybody and you were overly responsible. So you became overly responsible. And now you're going to fix this guy. And guess what? You're going to have kids together and you're going to try to fix them too. And you don't even know that. And you get married. And then guess what happens? You're going to grow up and then you're going to have kids, a strong-willed child. And you're going to disagree on discipline because one's going to be too soft and coddle the child. And the other one's going to be too harsh. And then you're going to slowly drift apart, right?

And you'll try to do some things. And the wife will speak up. But the husband will dismiss her concerns. And she'll eventually say, you know, I tried, but he just won't listen. He dismisses me. And so I'm just going to focus on the kids and I neglect the spouse. And then we figure after the kids go off to college, maybe we'll work on it or maybe we'll just try someone new. Isn't that what happens? Because we don't learn how to handle conflict and we don't even know all of our own brokenness. Look, I know this because we get 100 emails a day. Guess how many are on marriage? None. Maybe

one every once in a while. It's all about fixing the kids. We have this Calm Couples Marriage Program. Look, we've extended our set. We're including it free. Back in the day, we charged $697 to $997 for the marriage mentoring program because it was worth it, because it can change everything. And it's one of the most important things you can do for parenting. But over time, people just don't focus on their marriage because they don't know where to start. And their husbands don't want to go to marriage therapy because they feel like they're teamed up on. And so we're including it free with a calm parenting package for another week because it's so important. And I promise, if you go through this program, if you already have our stuff and you have it, pull it out,

go through it. If you email me every day, I will read your email and I'll mentor you through it. You can sign up for mentoring with me, but I'd rather you just go through the marriage mentoring program and just follow the steps and email me occasionally. I will mentor you through it. You can sign up for mentoring with me, but I'd rather you just go through the marriage mentoring program and just follow the steps and email me occasionally. I will help you through it because it is really important. And if you do that, if you focus, so let me do this. Stop trying to save your marriage

and instead focus on changing yourself. Here's what will happen. Number one, and I can guarantee this will happen. You will become a better happen. You will become a better person. You will become a more content person. You will become a more emotionally whole, more mature person that you like and that you respect. You are going to spend the rest of your life with you. The rest of your life, you are with you. Your kids are going to grow up and leave the home. Your spouse may leave the house, but you will be with yourself for the rest of your life. And wouldn't it be awesome to be

with a person who you look at in the mirror and you're like, I respect this person. I respect you because you have worked so hard at this and you have changed and you have broken some of those negative patterns and you've overcome some of those things that you kind of inherited from your parents. And you, you are a new person. I can tell you as someone who has been through this process, who did it the hard way, the wrong way, and then eventually did it the right way. When I was ruthless with myself and I didn't focus on my marriage or my spouse or my kids

and I focused on myself, it changed who I am. And I like it. And it benefits me every single day of my life. I like it. You may, I can't guarantee this, but you may just attract your spouse to you even more because they may look at you and think, that's the person I thought I was marrying. Look what she has become or he has become. That is powerful. It may just spur them on to change because you changed yourself. You didn't try to change them. I know what will happen. This is true. It will take the pressure off your spouse to change because I guarantee you if you go to a husband and you say,

honey, we need to work on our marriage. We need to go to a marriage therapist. Nope, no, no, no, we don't because you know what it is? We're going to go in an office and you and the therapist are going to team up on me and I'm going to feel overwhelmed and I'm going to feel helpless to change and nothing I do is ever going to be good enough. It won't work. But when you focus on yourself, it gives your, watch, in parenting, it gives your child space to step up and control and learn to control himself. And when you focus on yourself, it gives your spouse some time and space to really look inward and to work on himself or herself. Now, if your spouse does not get on board, because I don't guarantee that. When you listen to the Calm Couples program, I am explicit. I cannot guarantee you that this will save your marriage because that is not my goal because it

doesn't work. My goal and my promise is that you will change yourself. If your spouse gets on board and begins to change, you have a shot at a brand new marriage with two emotionally whole people which is awesome and what you've wanted if your spouse does not get on board and you end up getting divorced which I do not want but if it happens or if you are a single person I can assure you that your next relationship will be the one that you want because you will not make the same mistakes. You will not marry a person for the wrong reason, right? Many of you, you married a controlling guy because your dad was controlling or he had emotional issues. And so you learned as a child, you learned how to manage his emotions. So you grow up and you started dating people and

you found out the guys that you dated a lot, the guy that you married, were very much like your dad because it was comfortable to you. See how that works? You were used to having that in a man and you ended up marrying a person who was just like that. And that's not healthy. But the next time around, then no, you're not going to grow old to be the cat lady. You will be mature and you will be a whole person. You will attract to you other mature people who've got their stuff together. And now you have a shot at creating the kind of relationship that you always wanted. Not by saving your marriage, not by trying to

change your spouse, not by putting your energy into trying to save and work on your marriage, but by working on yourself. Do it. Do it. Let's do it for the next two months. Work on that. Email me. I will encourage you. I'll help you work through the program. If we can help you, go to CelebrateCalm.com. Get the special and let's hit it hard. Let's do it. That's exciting. I don't know what will happen if I try to save my marriage, but I do know what happens when you work on yourself. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I can't wait to see the new you.

It's an awesome place to be. Love you all. Let me know if we can help you. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.