HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO CALL IT QUITS?

One of the questions I’m most frequently asked is, “How do you know when it’s time to quit?”

Hi. I’m Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness, and in terms of when to give up on your marriage, here’s what I recommend.

If divorcing is a consideration for you from a moral perspective, then before you go that route, try first for at least one year.

Did you hear that?

Try for at least one year!

And I mean REALLY try. You can always call it quits. You always have that option. But once you pull that trigger, it’s over. No more chances. Your life will never be the same. Do you have kids? If you do, their life will never be the same.

If you end your marriage, you don’t want there to be a shred of doubt in your mind. You don’t ever want to look back and wonder if things could have been different. You don’t want to ask yourself, “What if this…and what if that…what if I tried this…what if I did that?”

If you have to end your marriage, you want to know DEEP IN YOUR HEART that you did everything you could to make it work.

If you have to end it, you want to be able to move on with your life and into another relationship with a clear head. You want to come to a place of healthy “completion.” THIS IS CRUCIAL! And to accomplish this, in my experience, it takes at least one year. I know it probably seems like a long time, but it’s an investment in the rest of your life.

Here’s the key point. Listen carefully. It’s a good investment for the rest of your life WHETHER YOUR MARRIAGE SUCCEEDS OR NOT. Obviously, it’s a good investment if you turn your marriage around. But if you don’t, it will NOT have been a wasted year. It will have been the most important thing you could have done with that year because of how your effort will impact the rest of your life AND YOUR NEXT RELATIONSHIP.

I have seen too many cases of spouses ending their marriage prematurely, and as result of not reaching “completion” in one relationship, they find themselves in the same situation a few years later with someone else.

The work I do with marriage coaching clients sometimes turns out to be more beneficial for them in their next relationship than in their current one.

I remember once when the marriage of someone who registered for the Lone Ranger track of the Marriage Fitness Tele-Boot Camp ended in the middle of the program. This man asked me if he should continue with the final 3 weeks of the program. I said, “Absolutely.”

He responded, “Why? What’s the point? My marriage is over.”

“You’re not doing it for this marriage,” I explained. “You’re doing it for the benefit of your next one.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that your intention while you’re working on your marriage should be for the benefit of your life after your marriage. Your intention needs to be to restore your CURRENT relationship. But if you fail, your effort will NOT have been for naught.

Bottom line is this. If you’re asking, “When is it time to call it quits?” The answer is: one year after you think you’re done. If after one year of trying everything in your power to make your marriage work you’re still miserable, then you should consider moving on. Until then, hang in there and don’t give up.

This topic reminds me of my situation many years ago. I remember learning late one night that my wife had an appointment with a divorce attorney the next morning. We were hours from “done.” Who would have ever thought that we could turn things around at that point?

It’s NEVER too late! In fact (and here’s real food for thought), very often the turning point in a marriage is when a couple hits rock bottom. Sometimes it’s not until things couldn’t get worse that they can get better.

I wish you and your spouse the best. If you’d like further information to help with your marriage, then subscribe to my FREE breakthrough report “7 Secrets to a Stronger Marriage” and get a FREE marriage assessment too. To subscribe, CLICK HERE. It’s FREE.

Mort Fertel

Author of Marriage Fitness

Marriage Coach

HOW TO GET YOUR SPOUSE TO HEAR YOU

Recently I had a series of private phone sessions with a person who was very frustrated. Listen to how this person described their situation. I bet you’ll be able to relate to it.

This person said they felt trapped in their basement trying to communicate with their spouse via Morse Code. They said they were banging on the pipes trying desperately to be heard. They would bang on the pipes and wait for a response. Bang and wait…bang and wait…bang and wait. But each time they finished banging, there was silence. No matter how hard they banged and no matter how long they waited; their spouse never heard them.

Hi. My name is Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

Are you trying to get heard? Do you feel ignored? Is your spouse not responding to your communication?

We live in an interesting time. With one click, you can communicate with anyone in the world. It’s easy, quick, and free. You even have options. If you don’t want to click, you could dial, beep, page, instant-message, or Fed Ex. It’s true. Your ability to communicate with the outside world has become increasingly easy. But my guess is that your ability to communicate with your spouse has become increasingly difficult.

The reason for this is that most people confuse INFORMATION communication with PERSONAL communication. Technological advancements give us all sorts of options to communicate information. But how do you feel the pulse of someone’s soul? How do you communicate the subtleties in your heart? You can’t text message that. You can have the latest and greatest in communication gadgets, but it won’t matter. PERSONAL communication is a whole different ball game. And it’s PERSONAL communication that determines the success or failure of your marriage.

I’m reminded of a scene from a Broadway play. A man and woman happen to meet on a train and engage in polite conversation. They were both headed home to New York after a day in New Haven, CT. After further discussion, they learned that they were going to the same building on Fifth Avenue. Lo and behold they discovered that they had the same daughter and lived in the same apartment. They finally discovered that they were husband and wife.

You know what’s killing marriages these days? EMAIL! More and more I’m seeing husbands and wives resort to email to communicate with each other. You want to do something tangible TODAY to improve your marriage? STOP EMAILING YOUR SPOUSE! Email is for INFORMATION. But in a marriage you’ve got to HEAR each other. And I don’t mean hear the sounds of each other’s words. You’ve got to be able to hear the silence between the sounds and interpret the unspoken meaning of a pressed lips or teary eyes. You’ve got to be able to hear the shapes and sounds in each other’s heart. You can NOT accomplish this via email.

And let me be clear about something; you can’t do it with communication techniques either. There’s no clinical communication therapy that can help you and your spouse think each other’s thoughts, feel each other joy, and cringe from each other’s pain. My 1-on-1 phone session schedule and the Marriage Fitness Tele Boot Camp are filled with casualties from traditional communication strategies and the usual marriage counseling approach. If you’re like most people with marriage trouble, you’ve been down that path and you know that it does NOT work.

Today my 4-year-old son came to me with a bruise on his leg. He was crying and I could see that it was black and blue. He said, “Daddy, I need a band-aide.”

I responded, “But it’s not bleeding.”

He said again, “Daddy, can you put a band-aide on it?”

I realized that my son’s perspective was that when something hurts a band-aide makes it better…even if it’s a bruise and not a cut.

So what does this have to do with communication in a marriage? Because most people think that if spouses aren’t hearing each other that communication techniques will solve the problem. But that’s like putting a band-aide on a bruise. It’s the wrong solution.

Communication techniques can help colleagues transmit INFORMATION clearly. Communication techniques belong in seminars that teach negotiation and sales. But you’re not trying to complete a transaction with your spouse; you’re trying to renew a relationship. I can almost guarantee you that your problem is not clarity; it’s concern. Ironically, communication techniques sometimes give people clarity that they don’t care what their spouse thinks or feels. They “got it,” but “it” doesn’t matter to them anymore.

How do you get back to the place where you and your spouse care again?

This is one of the things that’s unique about the Marriage Fitness approach to repairing a relationship versus traditional counseling. Most approaches to marriage success preach communication skills. But communicating effectively will NOT create love in your marriage. In fact, the correlation is the opposite. Creating love in your marriage paves the way for effective communication. I’ll prove it to you.

Think about when you fell in love. How was your communication? Good, right? In fact, when you’re in love, you communicate with the wink of an eye and you can finish each other’s sentences. And yet you haven’t known each other that long and you haven’t learned any communication techniques.

Then, years later, after getting to know each other inside and out, employing psychologically tested and proven communication strategies, and taking into account all the differences between Mars and Venus, you can’t get through to each other.

Listen carefully: Communication has very little to do with techniques or knowledge of each other. It has everything to do with the depth of connection between the communicators.

The question you should be asking is NOT, “How do I communicate effectively with my spouse.” The question you should be asking is, “How do I connect with my spouse again?” Once you reconnect, you won’t be sitting in silence in the basement. You’ll hear the sound of the pipes from above. It’ll be your spouse. You were heard.

If you want to learn how to connect with your spouse again, subscribe to my FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and get my FREE marriage assessment. CLICK HERE to subscribe. It’s FREE.

Warm regards,

Mort Fertel

Author of Marriage Fitness

Marriage Coach

I LOVE YOU BUT I’M NOT “IN LOVE” WITH YOU

Did your spouse tell you, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you?”

What does that statement mean?

Hi. I’m Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness.

A person who says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you,” is making a distinction between 2 different feelings. But NEITHER of those feelings are love!

When a person says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you,” they’re saying that I CARE about you but I’m not EXCITED about you.

CARING about someone is a good thing. It’s reflective of CONCERN. But it’s different than love. I care about the starving children in Africa, but I don’t love them.

Being EXCITED about someone is also a good thing. But it’s different than love. I might be excited to have a relationship with the President of the United States or a Hollywood star, but that doesn’t mean I love them.

While someone who says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you” seems to be making a distinction between “different loves;” in fact, they are expressing their confusion about what love really is. And that’s why they’re having marital problems and maybe even an affair (because who are they IN LOVE with?).

Love is something we articulate in the vocabulary of ACTION. Love is a verb. It’s not a feeling you get from another PERSON; it’s an experience you receive as a result of DEEDS YOU DO for another person.

And those deeds are not a secret. In other words, love is NOT a mystery! There are specific things you can do with your spouse to solve your problems and build love in your marriage.

Just as there are physical laws of the universe (such as gravity), there are also laws for relationships. Just as the right diet and exercise program makes you physically stronger, certain habits in your relationship WILL make your marriage stronger. It’s a direct cause and effect. If you know and apply the laws, the results are predictable—you can “make” love.

This is exactly why I created the Marriage Fitness program. I wanted to offer people a step-by-step system to make and maintain love in their marriage. And the program works for any marriage, even if only one spouse does it.

Very often in my private coaching sessions, someone will say to me, “I love my spouse, but I’m not IN LOVE with my spouse.”

My immediate response is to ask, “Can you list for me 5 ways in the last week that you’ve DEMONSTRATED your love for your spouse?”

I usually hear noise on the other end of the phone; grunts, partial statements, and gasps for breath, but none of what I hear ever passes for an answer to my question.

“I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you” is a cop out. It basically means that I have no clue how to make a relationship last LONG-TERM so I’m exiting to get high from another short-term romance. But whoever they’re IN LOVE with now will also eventually hear, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you.”

Of course, this is all fine and good, but it’s really your spouse who needs to hear this, right?

Do NOT print this email out and give it to them. And do NOT tell them what I said.

Getting your spouse from “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you” to “Okay,

let’s give this another chance” is a tricky task. If this is your situation, it’s crucial you handle it strategically. One false step and your marriage could be over. If you take the right steps, you can draw your spouse back in and begin to restore your marriage TOGETHER. How do you do that?

Learn more about the Marriage Fitness system of relationship renewal by subscribing to my FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and getting a FREE marriage assessment. Click here to subscribe. It’s FREE.

Warm regards,

Mort Fertel

Author of Marriage Fitness

Marriage Coach