 Hi there everybody, we hope you can see us and hear us. Let us know that you can hear us in the chat. You can be anonymous when you post. We'll get started in just a minute, but we want it to say hi on this gorgeous summer day. You can see our cluttered office. It's worth it. It's a cluttered office. That's another topic. I'm very self-conscious of our clutter, but no, this is where all the magic happens. At our desk, in our office. I'm gonna check the chat, make sure you all can hear us, okay? Great. Where are you all calling in from? I'd love to see if we're, what kind of time zones we tortured you with by having it in the middle of the day. Hopefully everybody this time is a good one for you. That's why we picked it. Yeah, I guess for the Europeans it was probably easier in the evening after work. Ohio, South Carolina. Lots of United States. Well, great. We're so glad that you're here. It is 1.30 sharp. So we'll just let the few last minute. Straglers. Straglers, come on in. And I'm hoping someone can tell them to refresh their screen if they don't see us. Oh, I guess we could do that in the chat. Another lens. Another lens. Bar. And did you all get the handouts okay? Were you able to open them and see them and print them out, I hope? I know that there was an issue with one of the handouts. So I just wanna make sure that you have both of them. Just let me know in the chat. Oh, good. Okay. Wonderful. So hopefully you all have your handouts. You were able to open them and print them. Great. There were two of them. And we'll be showing them on the screen as well. But there's a lot to do. So we're gonna roll up our sleeves. Oh, so some people don't have. What we'll do is we're gonna put the handouts on the screen and you can kind of take notes and that will still be helpful. Actually, you know what I'll do is let me quickly put the link to the handouts for you in the chat in case anybody wasn't able to see them. See them. I'm gonna turn off my video real quick. Okay, so this is handout two and this is handout one. So if you didn't get the handouts, please open them. If you can print them real fast, that would be great. Otherwise, no worries. Just take some notes on a blank sheet of paper and you'll still get the same benefit. Wonderful. Okay. Do we need to show the video anymore, Shlomo? Our beautiful faces. No, we're gonna show our slides now and we're excited for you to come. We appreciate all of you taking time out of your busy schedules, either in the middle of the day or those of you who are coming from Europe or Israel in the evening. Maybe it's bedtime now. So this could be busy also. Just to really dedicate yourself to your relationship. But it shows a lot that you're here and you're willing to learn and willing to be open to seeing a different approach and we're excited to share with you today. Wonderful. Not together. Thank you, Shlomo. Can you all see our slides now on the screen? It's just a picture. Okay. So there we go. Wonderful. So let us get started. Let me just check the chat again. Wonderful. Okay. So we're gonna get started. So you might be thinking, there's so many of you from all different kinds of backgrounds. Everybody has their unique marriage situation. Some of you are here, your marriage is fine, you wanna make things better. Some of you are seriously, this is a last ditch effort for you. So you might be wondering, how in the world can they plan a webinar that is gonna meet my needs? There's over 700 of you signed up for the webinar. How can we possibly speak to all of you? If you came here from a Facebook ad, you saw the copy where we challenged you to win your spouse back without groveling and begging and pleading. So some of you are dealing with a spouse that has already left. Some of you, your spouse lives at home but is completely disinterested. No two marriages are the same. So how can we make claims that we're gonna help you when we don't even know you and we don't know anything about you or your spouse? So why should you even listen to this with that premise? And what I wanna let you know is that, well, actually Shlomo, you really special, like what I appreciate you, I wanna just give you a quick appreciation. Shlomo is one thing you do for me is a lot of times you take some very, like when I'm feeling very stressed and there's just something that looks insurmountable, you are able to take it and extrapolate from it what it is you get right to the core of it and you simplify it for me and then I don't feel as overwhelmed anymore. And I really appreciate that about you. And that is, you all are very lucky because that is what you are going to have today because this is what we do thanks to my husband who's just a wonderful, amazing gifted marriage professional. But this is exactly what we're gonna do for you. What we're gonna do is, we're gonna talk this big picture, this kind of mess that feels maybe like you can't even get it out of it, but we're gonna talk about it like from a bird's eye view, right? And it's about seeing, when you see the big picture instead of getting stuck in the details and getting stuck in the incessant relationship discord and trying to troubleshoot a solution, you see the bigger picture in the dynamic, it opens up everything, it gives you hope that things can be different and it shows you exactly what's going on and that's what we're excited about sharing with you today so that you can see your relationship from a whole new perspective. And that's what you're gonna start to feel. You're gonna start to feel as we go along that all of a sudden this big messy reality that you're living in, if you're in a marriage in Christus or a marriage of one, you're suddenly gonna start to notice that you're feeling some clarity and some hope and like a way to get out of it. So that is what you're going to feel and you're here, all of you are here for so many different reasons but many of you are hoping you can get your spouse back whether he's physically or she's physically apart from you or living close. We told you to stop begging and pleading. We asked you to stop acting like a superhero where you're doing everything yourself. You know the drill, caring for the kids, everything, the only one that seems to be interested in your marriage. So you already know what it's like. By the time you're done, we really want you to walk away and not just thinking about everyone wants to think about how can I fix my spouse but you're gonna learn so much about yourself and how you can be the best spouse, you can be the best person you can be. Definitely. And then also kind of how you got here in the first place, what contributed to the relationship conflict and I brought you here because there's a good reason why you're in the place that you are and these reasons apply on a general level to couples will show the patterns that happen. And also how you can get out of this because that's one of the, that's the thing that we're most struggling with the most is now that we're here, how can we get to a better place? And a lot of times I just want to check the chat real quick and make sure everybody is seeing us okay. A lot of times people will tell us that they feel like we're actually speaking directly to them, which feels good to us, but it just underscores the fact that even when it's so many of you coming from so many different situations, it'll just apply to you because we're dealing with the root of what is underneath all of the discord, not just specifically your issues, but what's underneath all of the actual issues. So we're not playing whack-a-mole, troubleshooting every fight that you're having. And what we find is that when people call me sometimes they say, I listened to your webinar, I listened to your program and I felt you were speaking directly to me. And as much as we think marriage is complicated, I mean, I don't want to say invalidate the pain and say it's just very simple, but the patterns and the core issues are I'm gonna say we can simplify it to understand that there's some general patterns that all couples experience to some degree. And once we become more aware of that, many of us, and you can think like my friend, their marriage is good or not as bad as mine, but really most people are going through the same type of struggles. The details might be different. Some people have more serious situations, but some of the general underlying issues are quite the same. So we wanna share a little bit about who we are. So because some of you know us, some of you are our Facebook followers are on our email list of read our special reports, books, listened to our other webinars. And some of you just came off of Facebook, this might be the first, or some other modem and modicum and it's the first time you ever encountered us. So we'd like to tell you who we are and why we're qualified to teach you why you should believe us that we have some valuable information. So we're really just a regular couple like you that was struggling in our own relationship. Yes, we are the founders of this amazing marriage restoration project, but we sure did not start off like that. We got married 16 years ago. We dated, it felt like an absolute fairytale. We couldn't stop looking to each other's eyes. We knew we were destined for each other and we thought we were gonna be better than everybody else. When people told us, so you're gonna start, you're gonna fight. We're like, no, we know how to communicate. We're a better couple than that. We're more connected, but the truth was that we were wrong and we started experiencing our own troubles until the point where we got help and we found in a model of therapists and that made all the difference. Even though I was in school for counseling psychology, they don't really teach you how to work on your own marriage in this psychology school. So basically we had to learn it the hard way and because of that, we became devoted to helping other couples as well. And it's interesting because we say we got, we had some trouble in the beginning. What we didn't share is that we actually had different periods in our marriage that became like a crisis. So in the beginning that was a crisis and then about seven years later, it reared its ugly head again. We've gone through different stages in our relationship where it felt like it was in reality a true crisis. And it happens to even marriage counselors like us. So we're really just like you. We didn't have any more special skills. You know, than anybody else. And I came from a divorced home and I just couldn't seem to escape that legacy. It just kept, you know, I would think that I processed one part of it and I got through another part of it. And then sure enough, years later, another trigger would come up and threaten to overthrow our marriage. So it's interesting. And every time we had one of those crises, it's almost like we, thank God we got out of it. We used the tools that we know how to use to get through it. And then it's almost like we created something for everybody else to benefit out of our own pain that we experienced. So the marriage restoration project was, I guess, you know. You'll learn about the marriage school we'll talk about later that that was really came out of the aftermath of that set we call the seven year itch. Yeah. Based on what we learned. Yeah, and marriage school is actually opening for enrollment today. So it's very exciting. It's like our baby. But yeah, I mean, marriage school almost, we almost gave birth to it out of a huge hiccup in our story. So really, we know that it can help you. So thank you. But what got us through it, and we'll talk more about it, but one of the things is having this knowledge that we're gonna share with you about what's really going on. It helped us see the big picture because when things are painful, you get stuck and it's very easy to get stuck in the details and get stuck in the pain and not be able to see the farths for the trees. So we're hoping that you'll have a similar feeling when you learn this. Yeah. So moving on, oh, right. We said we're married 16 years. Okay. Not yet, I mean, a few weeks. So this is the problem. This is where we're feeling agitated. You've been married for a while, you wanna work on your marriage, your partner's not interested, not taking any responsibility, doesn't care, or your spouse already left. And we made some crazy claims in our Facebook ads that we can help you win your spouse back. And how can we really say that? Right? How do we know that we can help you do that? And the way we're gonna do that is help you understand one main principle to understand why your partner is acting the way he or she is. And we're gonna have to ask you to do a mindset shift. This is gonna require that you put away your thinking that your partner is stubborn or selfish or lazy. We need to ask you to put all of that aside and just take a mindset shift for now. And instead of thinking- I think you believe till now, just put it on pause and be open to something else for now. Right, so the histrionic woman you're married to, put that aside. The narcissistic husband that you have, the selfish spouse, instead of thinking of them in those terms, just take your bag, put it out, look outside your window, put it under a tree or at a rock, just set it aside, you can get it when we're done, you can go back and pick it up when we're done, but we want you to just put it aside for now just so you can be completely open to the webinar or the work in our and get your handouts ready so we can also fill in some of the blanks. So we're gonna teach you a secret formula and before the solution I was, right, we want you to understand the one main principle why your partner is acting the way he or she is and we want you to shift your mindset, take away the judgments. So here's the prerequisite. This is what you need to know before the secret formula that we go into. So there are three, are you wondering what it is yet? I hope we got you on the edge of your seats. So there are three unconscious reasons why you picked your spouse and fell in love and we are only going to, we are going to share with you what they are. Some of them you may have heard before, the main one we're gonna focus on today is one that we really have, I don't think we've ever really talked about it on a webinar. We do talk about it with our couples in our private retreats or in our group retreats but in a webinar and we haven't really written much about it but we think it's very valuable. But two of the things we have talked about and we also will not be able to expand upon today because of the time but we do talk about in the marriage school and our other programs. This is number one, you pick the person who reminds you of your parents. So this is the Imago for those of you who are familiar already with Imago therapy which is what we practice that you're picking somebody who's going to be very familiar who's gonna remind you of your childhood and some people think this sounds a little bit corny I don't really believe this. I can tell you, not only do we experience this in our own relationship but I see it time and time again with couples they come in with issues, very heated issues and they almost always go back to the childhood. There's always something that's being triggered that's reminding them and we're actually looking for someone to be able to do that. Those of us who read some of our material will be familiar with this. We're not gonna spend more time on this today but just to let you know about this is one reason. Another reason is you're wounded in the same way but you both responded differently. So what we find with couples is that even though it seems so complicated the core wound that they have from going up is very often the same exact wound but it's expressed in a different way and that's why they're triggering each other. So maybe they both wanna feel validated but they have a different way of expressing that and they trigger each other and they just, you know, you have what's like, you know, a distant server as a pursuer or a clinger versus an avoider. You have this dynamic which really doesn't serve each other well. So that's how they reacted growing up to that wound. And again, we're not gonna explain more about that today but what we do wanna talk about is the third unconscious reason why you picked your spouse and fell in love is that you picked the person who has your lost parts. So today we're gonna talk about what that means, what the lost parts are. And again, there are a lot of reasons why you picked your spouse but there was a deeper unconscious agenda motivating you. So you weren't aware of any of this but the truth is that your spouse holds the key to your personal growth and healing. So there are things that you lost growing up that you're able to reclaim again by marrying them. So there's a certain sense of wholeness you felt when you first fell in love because it's almost like you were looking for, the Talmud talks about that when Adam was looking for, Adam was looking for, Adam was looking for his lost half, the sense that because they were created together from the same body and he was looking to find his other half. So this idea when someone's looking to get married they're looking to find their other half. So it's not just in that sense in the sense of the physical body but also in the spiritual sense or the psychological sense that you're looking for someone who holds the key to your wholeness and they're holding parts of you. So what does it mean? And so again, so you fell in love with that because you see, oh wow, this is a potential. I finally have reclaimed myself, I've returned to my roots, I'm one again, I have that future potential. But what happens is we start getting annoyed by our spouse, we start getting in that power struggle, we start fighting, we start feeling separate and disconnected and then we start getting annoyed with those things. So what are those things? What are those lost parts? Why are they annoying you? And why did you lose them in the first place? So we have a, we're gonna show you here, it's on the slide. Yeah, I'm gonna show you the handout that will go over. We're gonna show you a diagram. This one? No, the one with all the other one. We're gonna show you the diagram that explains what your lost parts are. So I'll just introduce it a little bit and that basically there's certain parts of ourselves that we were told we got messages growing up that they were not acceptable. So what we call this repressive socialization, it could be either society says that these things are not acceptable or perhaps in the culture of your home, these things were not acceptable. So, and this may vary for some of you who are not in the US or even different cultures within the US, you may have, there may be different messages that you received. I don't know why the handout is not looting or not the handout of the picture. Okay, so I was just gonna keep explaining while we're looking to see the picture. And then they can actually draw on their circle and we can tell them where to draw. Yeah, I mean, you have the circle, we have, you have your circle which shares with you the different quadrants. Basically, there are four quadrants. There is the thinking, there's the feeling and there's sensing and acting. So there are a lot of different messages that we get growing up. So for example, thinking, it's not okay to think or you have no voice, you have no opinion, I don't wanna hear what you have to say. Or don't be smart, don't act smart, don't express your thoughts. Right, children are better seen than not heard. So there's some household cultures that have this attitude, society may have had this attitude depending on what gender you are, they may have had some types of messages about that. And if it helps you, you can copy some of the statements that we're making and just put it up on top, like where we're talking about the thinking piece, just the phrases that we just said, like don't act smart, just jot that down right on top of the thinking quadrant. Okay, then the feeling, that's, you're not allowed, don't cry, don't feel certain things, don't express your feelings, don't laugh, then we have acting, don't move, don't show off, don't play, don't move your arms, don't yell or sing, don't talk back, sensing, don't experience your body, don't touch yourself, don't look at that, don't smell bad, don't put that in your mouth. And some of these things, obviously you don't want your toddler to put in, put something in their mouth that they might choke on, God forbid, but the point is that if you have these, if these messages are given in such a negative way, time and time again, you start learning that these things are not acceptable and we need to cut these parts out. So, society, boys aren't supposed to cry or boys aren't supposed to have emotions. So a lot of men in society don't emote because of that or it could be that maybe not these days as much, but in the olden days, girls are just supposed to look pretty and they could be done and look pretty. They don't have to be smart, don't try hard, don't care if you do well in school, just be pretty. So these kind of messages that we get really cripple us and they cut parts of ourselves out because we believe that we're born whole, that we have access to all parts of ourselves. We're not born wounded, but what happens is that with these messages, we start cutting off certain parts of ourselves. So what happens is we find somebody who has these parts and that's really what attracts us. And we want to share a little bit about our story and how these parts were able to, how we were attracted to, found our lost parts in our spouse. So I know that when I met Shlomo, I, you know, our first date, we walked for seven hours in DC. I listened to everything he was sharing. I was so excited, which is so unusual for me because I actually really don't enjoy talking for so long. But I remember just being so completely enamored. Oh, here's the diagram, there we go. Just in case this helps you and you didn't already do this, I'll keep it up for a moment. But anyway, when we were dating, it was just, I remember being so, I guess, I felt so interested in everything Shlomo had to share. And he was kind of like a researcher. He was researching his genealogy and he was sharing with me, you know, all the background. And anyway, it was very interesting, but over the years, I started to actually get annoyed at that. Like I said, I don't, you know, I don't wanna listen to all the details. I'm not a detailed person. So it started to kind of get on my nerves. The very thing that I liked about him in the beginning started to kind of get on me. The thoroughness and the thoughtfulness became slow and annoying to you. Right. And then what I, one of the things I liked about Rivka, she was very expressive. She just had this personality that I was really drawn to. And, you know, it was great, especially when we were feeling really connected in the beginning, but then when we started fighting and then we started expressing those strong feelings in a negative way towards me, you know, that really was not attractive to me and it was actually scary for me. So these things that we liked were now annoying us. So the very things, and that's what happens in relationship. The things that you really liked about each other, now the things that you start complaining about. So why is it that they annoyed us so much? Why did it, you know, why did it annoy you, Rivka, that I was so, you know, slow and thoughtful? And why did it annoy me that you were seemed to be, like when you expressed your emotions, I was like scared and it was like it was loud. And it's because that these are the things that we told ourselves that were unacceptable. We cut them off and we want to share a little bit about how we cut them off. So in terms of the feelings dimension, which I felt like I caught off growing up, so I always picked on a lot in school. Now, when I was a little kid and it wasn't that long ago, I guess, but it seems like it, you know, nowadays like physical pushing around is called bullying. And but, I mean, back in those days, so that's why I thought a bully is someone who, you know, hits you. I got a little bit of that, but it was more of the teasing, which nowadays we know how serious it is and you can get in big trouble for bullying. But for me, it was really painful. And I was a sense of little boy and I used to come home and I used to complain and, you know, every day and as a parent, you want your kids to be happy and it's really hard to hear your kids upset and you want to try to fix and help them make them feel better. So, you know, my parents said they're best to, they wanted me to feel better. So they would give me some ideas. They would say, maybe don't, don't let it bother you. Don't take it personally. They thought they were trying to help me, but I needed to really feel validated. I didn't realize it at the time, but that it was okay that I felt hurt. So I guess I told myself that, you know, feelings just get you in trouble. Nobody wants to hear your feelings. Nobody wants to hear your upset. Just cut it off. And on an unconscious level, that's what I did. Well, I guess I have a similar story and the way I cut off my thinking, you know, part of myself, was that I grew up in a very authoritarian household. My father was a scientist. He was the thinker for the family. But also because my home was so dysfunctional, I constantly needed to take action. So there was no time to think. I had to take care of my sisters. I had to take myself to school. I had to feed myself and pay for things. And so I was constantly in a doing mode. I had no time to think. So I completely cut off the thinking part of myself. And I just pretty much glided into life with the other ones and I overcompensated by just doing, not even needing to think about it. Right, so what happens is, so I'm here with my feeling, repressed my feelings and you repressed your thinking. And we started realizing that these things are starting to annoy, the things that we repress are starting to annoy the other person. Right, once we understood it, well, before we understood it. Right, and we get locked in this power struggle because I'm thinking like, why can't you remember where your keys are? Come on, it's not so difficult and getting really annoyed about it. And so we started realizing that there's something else going on. There's a greater picture that's going on. And then we started having compassion for each other and we started realizing that what our spouse needed from us was exactly what we needed to grow and help them heal. So it wasn't just this annoyance, but there was an opportunity for growth that was here and it helped kind of take all the negativity and the conflict out of it so that we could actually move forward and work towards healing. So are you starting to see how there's more of a big picture here? It's not just this never ending petty conflict that just keeps going on and just pairs your relationship apart, but that there's something else going on here. And some of you might have seen the Facebook Live video that we did where we talked about selfish relationship advice and we talked about all those people out there that advise you, you know, oh, if it doesn't make you feel good, just cut it off and just, you know, leave it behind including your spouse. Well, really you can see from this that to reclaim your lost part, you need your partner. So there's only so much self growth that you can accomplish without your partner because you need it for your own self to grow and to reclaim those lost parts. And if you didn't have that tension and conflict, you wouldn't have been confronted with it. And that's really the gift of the conflict in the relationship is that it's an opportunity for us to grow and it's a wake up call and if we didn't have that conflict, you wouldn't necessarily been aware of it. So what happens when we complain about each other? We start just thinking, think about what you're complaining about. I want you to think right now, just what are the things that bother you so much about your marriage? If you start thinking about that, you'll start noticing that it's probably the loss, your partner's lost part because you're holding your partner's lost part. You have the key to your partner's growth. So if I'm complaining about the fact that you're not thinking, it's because I know that you can think, I have that part, I'm claiming that for you and basically what I'm doing is I'm doing double duty for you. So instead of allowing you to reclaim the part, I wind up just taking over and doing all the thinking for the relationship. And that's what we meant when we said marriage of one, stop being a selfless superhero because the chances are the lost part that you cut off, right, your, sorry, your spouse's lost part that he or she cut off, you're overcompensating for it because you're seeing that it's not there for you in your partner, but really when you do that, you're robbing your spouse the opportunity for him or her to reclaim that lost part. Sounds a little complicated, but let's reiterate it. So just to give you an example, like if I get annoyed with you, Rivka, when I feel like you're not really thinking, it's because I know that you're capable of doing it and can reclaim that. So instead of me getting annoyed and just trying to do all the thinking and taking over, if I could let you do that, and have compassion for you and realizing that you're not just trying to be insensitive or uncaring, but you really just have a heart, you're challenging that area because you cut that off or for me, like- I remember actually a time that you were looking for internships and I came home one day and I'm like, I made a call for you to five places where you could potentially intern and I have an interview set up and I remember you were so aggravated by me and you were annoyed. And I was like, I didn't even understand because I did what I always do. I took action, I made it happen and you hadn't. But by me doing that and not allowing you to get to the place where you wanted to take the action, I was robbing you of the opportunity to reclaim your lost part, which could have been taking action. So- And you kind of like almost, I don't want to say it, this doesn't have to be for male or female, either one, but it masquerade the other person because you're by taking, by taking, by kind of over imposing your own reach, you're not giving them the chance to step up. And even though it's coming from a good place and you're trying to help, you're not allowing them, you're not empowering them. And sometimes taking a step back allows them to step up and actually do what you want to do. So are you starting to see how looking at what's going on underneath is the solution to making it all go away? Moving from a marriage of one where you're doing it all to a marriage of one where your two halves of one whole is the goal. Instead of a marriage of one where you're doing everything, we want you to become two halves of a whole where you reclaim your lost parts. So is this clear? Are you figuring out which part you cut off of the four quadrants? And we have the handout that we gave you where you can actually fill out, you can shade the areas where you feel like you repressed and you can put your, you see the instructions there, but you'll put your spouse, there's two circles. One you can put your name, one you can put your spouses. And basically you can shade the ones where you think you repressed. Usually your spouse is gonna be the complimentary one. So like for example, you may have cut off thinking and sensing and your spouse cut off feeling and acting. So together you make a whole complete circle. So if you start looking at that and start noticing that, it can really open up your eyes to what's going on and why you're getting so annoyed in your relationship. Let's take a minute and just fill in the blanks in the worksheet so everybody can really get it. So we said there were three reasons you picked your spouse. So one is that your spouse is reminding you of your primary caretakers, of your parents, of your childhood. The second is that you're wounded in the same way as your spouse, you just react differently, respond differently to that. And then the third is that your partner holds your lost parts. And we focused on number three in this webinar. Your spouse has your lost parts. How did you initially lose your lost parts? So we talked about repressive socialization. How do you reclaim them? First of all, by being aware and by being aware of what they are and also realizing that you're probably doing double duty in the relationship. So sometimes it's letting go of those things. But now we wanna talk to you a little bit more about five other ways that you can actually reclaim your lost parts and allow your spouse to reclaim their lost parts. So you can move from this marriage of one where you're doing everything to a marriage of one where you're really two halves of one whole. Now, we wanna prove to you that this is actually possible, that you really can reclaim your part. And we're gonna prove it to you by going through our own story again briefly. We hinted before that, you know, when we got married, it was a fairytale. And in the beginning, you know, we experienced some conflict and then everything was great for a long time. And then seven year, let's say the seven year itch, we had another crisis in our marriage that threatened to overhaul it. And here's what happened. We really haven't shared this publicly, but we're going to free you all today. So you're lucky to hear our private business. I don't know what she's gonna say, I'm a little nervous. So I guess about, right, around the time, you know, seven years into our marriage, I decided I want to start a business. It was one of those MLMs. I was at a party and someone recruited me. And I just jumped in, right? Cause I'm mis-action taker, not thinker. And I didn't even ask Shlomo. Like I didn't even think about asking him. It was just like, yeah, of course, I wanna join your team. I don't know how many of you have ever been solicited by a network marketing. We're not supposed to call them pyramid schemes. That's what I learned back in the days. Maybe now we don't, we're not a big fan. So I signed right on and I was out basically every night doing parties and growing the business. And, you know, they teach networking and they teach you, you know, you can do this from home. So you can be home with your children. Well, I was out every night and Shlomo was with the kids getting them, you know, put to bed and baths and dinner. And when we were out, remember we would go out on our Tuesday night date and we'd go to the mall and we were prospecting or on the phone with your sponsor. Yeah, it was not a good thing, but I didn't realize it at the time because again, I wasn't the thinker. So I almost prefer doing the business than being at home. I found it easier than sometimes dealing with, you know, the mess of the kids and just, you know, the whining and the fighting, sibling rivalry and all that. So, but that almost led to our marriage falling apart for a second time. And what I didn't realize at the time was Shlomo was actually doing some things. It was very painful for him, even though we laugh about it now, thank goodness. But Shlomo was doing some things that actually led me home, back home, where I didn't, he wasn't doing it consciously. But I didn't have the five step action plan but in marriage school, but I wound up creating it from it. Right, right. So he was doing some things just, I don't know, he just managed to figure some things out. And I don't know what I was doing, but anyhow, at some point, I realized this was not good for us and this wasn't good for the family and I just stopped. And now I am home. I have no desire to go out like at night. When someone invites me out now, I'm just like, oh, do I really have to get in clothes? I'm like, oh, but I need to make dinner and there's laundry to do. And I was the person that hated being a homemaker. And now it's like, I don't even think about it. I just make dinner, I have it on the table, the laundry gets done eventually. It's the complete opposite of how I used to be, seriously. I think I reclaimed a part of myself that I had completely disowned and found unacceptable. And I did that because of Shlomo. And I think when we crystallized it later and going back over like, how did we survive this? We realized that there was a formula. Well, what came out of it was our five step action plan formula, which we're about to share with you, which is the foundation of marriage school. And it basically saved our marriage again. So I reclaimed my lost parts and he also grew and we both healed and came closer together. So we're about to share with you what he did. So that you can use it and also use it step by step, just like he did and get the result you want, which is for you to be a marriage of one again, for you to be a more complete person and also for your spouse to become a more complete person. And you can see that I was the unwilling spouse. I didn't want to be talked out of doing this business. I didn't want to be at home. And somehow I came back. And this is how I came back. So this is really important. I just want to check the chat real quick, make sure everybody's with us. Type in that you're still with us in the chat. So I know that you're there and you're eagerly- It's a special screen if it's not working. Awaiting this information. Let us know that you're with us. Okay, great. So everybody is sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear how Shlomo snagged me back home. Even when I didn't want to be there, which is so sad to me now looking back and thinking about it, but I'm almost glad in a way that we went through this pain so we could be here for all of you. Because really if we can sacrifice our own private business for you all to be helped, I don't care. So it's all worth it. So anyway, so here is how Shlomo got me to come back home. This is the solution. This is what we want you to get. Number one, I will let you do this Shlomo since you're the one that actually did it. Well, the number one step, the first step is commitment. And I mean, again, this is what, and I noticed this with my successful couples also that most important thing is being committed. Now you're probably thinking like, what am I, why am I telling you this? You're here on this webinar. You're the probably the committed one in the relationship more than anyone else. But the truth is how committed are you really? You feel doomed. You feel like, I mean, if you've spouses, you know, trying to win your spouse back, you probably don't really feel like this relationship is going to work because your spouse is surely not committed. But I found that this information and seeing the big picture and seeing what's really going on can give you a whole new sense of commitment to your relationship because it gives you a really a why of what's going on. So it's not just this random conflict. I'm in a bad situation, but I know and I believe that this conflict is tailor made for me. And I think that that's what helped me get through that really painful time because I understood this concept that conflict was really growth trying to happen, that there was these issues here that needed to be worked out. There's these lost parts, there was this unconscious agenda to our relationship that if we would only be able to work through it, we would be able to achieve what we wanted to. So I needed to hang in there to let go a little bit and be patient and allow Rivka to be able to reclaim to allow your spouse to reclaim the other part, still being committed, but giving some of that, giving some space. So it's almost like you gave me some space. You didn't overreact and be like, you never asked me to do this business. You're never home. Like you didn't overreact. You kind of let me do my thing. And I knew- If I would have confronted you and tried to stop you, at least at one point, I think you would have just ran the other way. And it's hard because this is a delicate balance, especially in the case, let's say of an affair or whatever. It's like, do you just let your partner do anything they want? Well, no. Right, but one of the things we'll talk a little bit later is about learning how to be able to communicate and have a safe conversation. And when you do that, you should be able to have those conversations so you can talk about these issues and work through things together. But if you're in a place where the other person is not able to do that, and sometimes the only thing you can do is just hang tight and commit and be the strong one for the both of you. Exactly. But not overstepping your bounds, as we said, letting the other person reclaim that part. Whoops. The second step is seal your exits. Now, it's very common, especially if you're, there's two, this works in two ways. For the non-committed person, the exit is really what they're doing to check out of the relationship, work, another relationship, exercise, the gym, TV, Facebook. These are all ways to avoid being in a relationship looking outward. But even for the one who is committed, it's very easy to just start going elsewhere to deal with the relationship. Instead of being devoted to your relationship and trying to heal by understanding what's really going on and becoming a safer person for your spouse, we started getting advice, we started talking to people and of course you need support. At the same time, if you're going everywhere, but your relationship to try to deal with it, then the energy kind of dissipates and goes out of the relationship. I remember actually, like once we got recommitted and I got out of the business and everything, I remember asking you at one point, like, didn't you call your parents and tell them I was kind of on the run? Like you never told them, like almost like how did you support yourself emotionally? But you didn't. You didn't start talking to friends and family about what I was doing and I could even come home to you and complain when I didn't have a good night at a networking event or whatever, you were there and you were committed to me and you were focused towards me. So I remember that after the fact and kind of marveling at that. Because if you start talking to other people, then they start giving you, well, why don't you just leave her already? Or like whatever, you can get a lot of negative advice that can make the situation worse. So we just want to share with you the feedback from a couple who sealed their exits. We were at a crossroads in our relationship. We were recovering from infidelity, separated and hoping to get some clarity as to whether there was a future for us and our young family. We walked away with hope that our communication could be different and that we could be more transparent with each other. We knew it would take time to decide our future, but we were definitely open to the possibility that relationship could last. Six weeks later, we were still experiencing positive results. We're spending more time with each other, having fun again and are able to communicate without the constant reactivity and defensiveness that was plaguing our relationship. While it will take time to rebuild the trust that was broken, we were hopeful that as we continued to implement and integrate the work we did with you that we will build a more solid future for our family. We can't thank you enough for your help. There's an example of a couple that sealed those exits. At least the person who was cheating sealed his exit and the woman who wasn't was able to focus more on the relationship and seal anything that was keeping her from being fully devoted to the marriage and including the thoughts of leaving. So we wanna go to the next step was to be mindful of the time. This is one of the most important steps in marriage school and we wanna tell you, especially if you're going at it alone, it's something that you can really implement right away and I wanna share with you a story of a wife who began to implement the step detox your marriage. I've been married for seven years and most of the time I disrespected my husband, blamed him mostly for everything and saw myself superior to him. Yesterday the camel's back broke and I found myself hitting rock bottom. Yesterday night I think I had the first true conversation with my husband since before our marriage. Thank you again. This is someone who read the step, learned about the step that detox your marriage and one of the things that you can do, especially if and it's hard because you're upset, especially if your husband is not interested or your wife is not interested, stop criticizing your partner for everything they're doing that's wrong. Because when we criticize, we just discourage the other and we make them wanna shut down. So if we're only focusing on the negative, there's no real impetus for them to even to stay and work on the relationship. As we realize it's a delicate situation to see like how can you express your feelings and upset in the relationship when they're not really there for you without pushing them away. So we wanna think about how can we talk about things in a safe and connected way instead of a critical way because that's gonna actually get you the, you push your spouse away and give you the opposite of what you want. Now I think this is the most transformative step in marriage school, which I think is unlike any other, anything else that you can find in any other type of program. And that is acknowledge the other, that it really changes the way that you relate to your spouse. And I just wanna share two stories about what that means and we'll tell you about how it works in the actual marriage school. But you have acknowledging the other first, it really means having compassion for your spouse. So don't react to your spouse, but have compassion for them. You can also make space for them and instead of doing it all yourself, allowing them, as we said before, allowing them to step up and to reclaim those parts in themselves. Like instead of me like doing all of the thinking, allowing, I'll give you an example even. Like if you would go grocery shopping and like perhaps back then I did most of the grocery shopping and when you would go, if I would just pick on like, well, why don't you get the apples? Or it's like, well, is that gonna encourage her to go grocery shopping again when I just noticed what she didn't do right when it was hard enough for her to even do it, even though I can think about everything we need and have it all organized. If I start harping on what's wrong, so it doesn't help. So we need to just acknowledge that and just make space and just make it okay for your spouse to fail and acknowledge that they have, that we all have our challenges in relationships. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and allow our spouse to really step up instead of shut them down. So giving them a space and acknowledging them and having compassion for them and realizing that there's a deeper story. And one of the things, just a testimonial from a couple, I had little hope for our marriage surviving and wondered how we could possibly deal with two decades of hurt and dysfunction in a relatively short time. In fact, just like the books say, having the experience of being hurt for the first time was profoundly and instantly and transformative. I can hardly think of a marriage that would not benefit from working with him and thinking of all the people that I've known who have been divorced. I think that at least half of the marriages could have been saved by two days with the rabbi slashing. This is a couple I worked with for a marriage retreat. Another couple, I'm feeling very hurt from our painful history in our nine years of marriage. My husband's anger and quick temper made me very doubtful that he'd be able to handle the mirroring process. But he really worked to keep him from lashing back when I shared my hurt. This is the first time I felt like he was able, starting to hear me again. So this step in marriage really teaches you how to actually talk to each other and communicate in a way that will bring you closer together rather than farther. Right, and especially how to listen to your spouse that you're not gonna be reacting to them. You can really understand where they're coming from and they will feel safe and heard. And that will be, that's one of the most powerful things to change the dynamic of the relationship to actually re-engage them. So this one, the last step is probably one of the most enjoyable steps in marriage school. Though it could be challenging depending on where. Yeah, some people actually this can be hard for but love infusions, it's doing the positive in the relationship. And you have a lot of rituals that you can do to bring more love into the relationship and reawaken the relationship. And we still did these things even when we were in a difficult time. We still made a priority to go out together on a weekly date night. And to notice, I guess to notice a bit, I felt appreciative and notice what Riftal was doing and do caring behaviors for her. But one of the things that you can do even now without even reading all this is just start noticing what your spouse is doing right. So they'll do more of it. It's called positive reinforcement. If your spouse is not emotionally expressive but they do make it a comment, then focus on a emotional comment or they say, I missed you. Focus on that and express your appreciation for that. So that's really the converse of the detox your marriage instead of focusing on what they're doing wrong catch them doing something right. When you do that and focus on the positive it makes a huge difference. Who just want to share with you. What's nice about this is the more that you share this is a summary of a couple who sent in their story after doing step five in marriage school is this woman was saying how she noticed that not only was their marriage benefiting from the power of appreciations being shared in a deep way like on a regular basis. She said that she became a more appreciative person which really helped them build a more stable life together. She was very grateful for love infusions and for step five because not only did it help their marriage but it actually helped her personally become a more positive and appreciative person. And everything that you learn is these are all tools for any relationship and helpful for any relationship. Right, you could use this with your kids you could use it with everyone but really like this is your insurance policy for your marriage, nobody wants to buy insurance but this is what you need this is your insurance policy these five steps to make sure that you have a lifelong marriage. So we want to summarize everything we spoke about today to you if you're going out alone or you feel like you're in a marriage of one you're doing it all but now you can have a marriage well now you can have a marriage of one where you're two halfs of one rather than being by yourself and we showed you how to do that. We showed you how to do that with reclaiming your lost part and helping your spouse reclaim his or her lost parts instead of being the one that's been carrying the weight for both of you up till now. Now it's time to let your spouse reclaim their lost parts and you reclaim yours and we taught you how to do that through the five steps that we put together for you in a clear logical and concise manner and I hope you wrote them down on your worksheet and the five steps what they do is they take the chaos out of the whole big mess and it gives you clarity and a plan to help you move forward so that you can really master the art of being married. It's not rocket science, it's not some dense psychological mumbo jumbo this is really directed for the common man just everyday person just like you and me the simple actionable things that you can do that can have a big impact. And hopefully you saw that when we taught you the five steps. Oh, so, well, we wanna say that you probably weren't like here because you were looking for a marriage course. You know who is out there actually looking for a marriage course. It's something you bumped into but it's great that you did because you happened to come here however fate led you to us. You heard us bypass all of the relationship conflict that you're experiencing and you saw us tackle the root of your unique issue so that you can actually think, oh yeah, like this could actually help me. This could be my insurance policy for when the going gets tough. Like I could actually have these tools at home at my disposal so I can use them when the going gets tough and it's the action plan that we put together for you which is the basis of, it's the syllabus basically of marriage school. So if you guys liked what we spoke about today you are absolutely going to love marriage school which is world-class training and mentorship for couples just like you from Shlomo and myself. Shlomo, we didn't really give all of your educational credentials but Shlomo is a marriage counselor that's been in practice for over 10 years. He is the author of several books and he's also written a book with the founder of Emago Relationship Therapy Dr. Harvohendrix who wrote Getting the Love You Want which is the basis for Emago Therapy. He is a very prolific author and speaker and he specializes in couples in crisis and only in couples in crisis. He doesn't work with kids or individuals because it's like when you need to go to a specialist, a doctor, you don't just go to your general doctor or if you're going to a big court case you don't bring your tax attorney with you. You need a real specialist. What we did was Shlomo couldn't be everywhere. He works all the time with privately with couples that are in crisis but I wanted to distill his knowledge and his help for people all over so they wouldn't have to be worried about coming into Baltimore or having to get a babysitter or even researching to find the right, does it take insurance? Does he not? Without all of that, this is the best alternative to marriage counseling out there and no other program does it quite this way where it goes right to the root of the issue rather than giving you a lot of great relationship advice where there's tons out there but this really circumvents all of the noise and goes right to the root and tackles it. We're not giving you like a million things to do and a 500 page binder to make it, we simplify it and give you the main important things to work on. Right, and it does exactly what we did today but we basically take everything further that we did today through audio, visual, workbook. It's kind of like going back to school for your marriage and it's, you know, everybody goes for a marriage license but nobody had to actually go to a marriage school and now is your chance. So marriage school is built upon the system that we taught you today, the five step action plan that's broken down into five modules. You know, we said commitment and seal your exits, detox your marriage, acknowledge the other, love infusions and each module contains a lesson in a video with the transcript and with slides and even with live support. So the two options for enrolling in marriage school is to do it yourself, kind of like today where you watched a presentation with slides and an audio, video and then there's also the live support option which includes six live teleclasses on the phone with Shlomo. All of the calls will be recorded if you cannot make them live. They will, the live component will start the second week in September. So you have some time to start taking the, you know, start enrolling in marriage school, learning the information and then when you come to the table on the second week of September on the phone with Shlomo you'll be that much more equipped to ask questions that, you know, are even on a more advanced level because you've already gone through the school. So there will be a recording after each call if you can't make them live and we will send you plenty of reminders via email. The only caveat is that marriage school live only has room for a hundred people. That is what the teleconference line allowed us to have. So that is the max. So we only have a hundred spots for the live marriage school option. So we do need to let you know about that. Marriage school also comes with two additional bonus trainings. Shlomo, you wanna tell them about these awesome bonuses that we felt were important to include? Yeah. One is the couples in recovery with an addiction specialist. And this is for couples dealing with addiction, active addiction or in recovery exploring why addictions aren't necessarily a liability for your relationship but actually an opportunity to make your relationship get stronger. So that's one of the things that we have in covering the different areas of addiction. And then the organized couples boot camp. So this is where we work with a professional organizer where we talk about some of the common issues that couples have with organizing, how to deal with them. And we also give some practical organizing tools to show you how you can actually get yourself organized in time and space and that can help avoid a lot of conflict. So you're really getting a lot of great benefits on the side. The organizing training and the addiction training really we included because we felt that so many fights come up in a marriage related to household management and also of course to addiction. So we really wanted to include those two trainings for you. We have an additional bonus for people that choose the live component to marriage school live. And we need to make this time bound since this event is coming up soon. So you will receive $200 off the next in-person group live retreat, which is this coming September 10th and 11th, if you register for marriage school live by this Friday at noon, Eastern Standard Time. We will send you a coupon that you can put in and get that. And normally the retreat is $795, $795 per couple. So you get $200 off if you sign up for marriage school live by this Friday at noon. And the retreat is an amazing experience with can I present it together with other couples. It's very healing and it's beautiful to be able to watch couples walk in the room in the beginning of the weekend, tense and nervous about their state of their relationship, disconnected and walk away feeling connected and in love again. It's really just, it makes it, every time after we do it we're just like we have to do this again. It's just so amazing to watch. So we hope that you can join us. Somebody was saying I came into this workshop knowing I was getting divorced within a year. Boy was I wrong. This workshop gave me the hope I never knew existed. It's really a fabulous retreat. It's really, it's so fulfilling for me. I'm not a marriage counselor. You get to work with couples around the year. This is the time I get to see some of our readers out there and some of our followers. And it's so, it's just, I cry almost every time. So the link to go take a look at marriage school and enroll either in the DIY option or the live option is soulmatesnotrumates.com. And that's roommates with two M's, soulmatesnotrumates.com. Please let us know if you have any questions. There is a payment plan if you need it. PayPal Credit allows us to do some financing for six months. So you have six months interest free when you apply for paypal.com slash credit. If you try the program for 30 days and you absolutely achieve zero results, learn nothing new, we will refund your money for 30 days. And the dates of the live training call is, okay, the top line is actually incorrect. It's not, it doesn't start September 5th. It starts September 12th. And then the sixth class is October 31st. So that's incorrect on the slides. But so we will start Tuesday, September 12th. And by all means, you can dive right into marriage school. When you get it, you can have access to all of it except for the live calls until they're live. Exactly. And what's the difference Lamo with marriage school live and DIY marriage school? Well, if you're probably gonna have specific questions about your situation. So the live call is an opportunity to be able to answer those calls and to be able to tailor the material to your situation. It is a group call, there are other people on the call but you can send in your, if you wanna send in your questions anonymously in advance, you're welcome to do that as well. And then the final thing is that we will explain more of the steps in the marriage school in more in-depth and talk more about some of the concepts. So you'll get more information, more reinforcement of what you already learned. Yeah, there was a lot we couldn't cover today just because there's so much in an hour. Like even the two parts, the prerequisites we talked about before, attracting somebody like your parents and how you met and fell in love and all of that. But, and I'm sorry, if this slide is blurry, there's a lot of information on it but all of the information that we're telling you is over at soulmatesnotroomates.com. Are there any questions that you guys would like us to answer really quick? I have a special gift for you all for staying on till the very end. So if you wanna send us one or two quick questions, we'd be happy to answer them for you. Let me take a look at the chat real fast and see what you all have to ask. Okay, what I'll do is I'll just go right into the link to give you guys your free gift and in the meantime, if you have any questions, please put them. Oh, here we go. How do the five steps work when your spouse won't speak to you? Well, do they live in the same house or that would be a question if they live with you. There are definitely things that you can do and the question is whether they won't say a word or they won't have a conversation with you because there will be things that you'll learn in terms of working on your own reactivity, working on giving more, working on your own reactivity, figuring out why you're getting triggered, learning about yourself. These five steps can help you learn about yourself and how your relationship and how you might be triggering your spouse so that you can be different and then often what happens is when we change, the other person changes as well. If your spouse has moved out, it does definitely become a lot more difficult but you still can gain a lot of value from it in the sense that you're working on yourself and that if you do re-engage with them and talk to them, instead of getting reactive, you can learn more positive ways to interact with them. And I mean, it also helps you, for the future it helps you work on yourself and be able to be a better person in relationship. Right, but I think, I like what you said that the more positive interactions you have with them, the more the other might think, okay, she's not so bad or he's not so bad. Oh, she's not yelling at me or reacting now when I say something. That's not normal, like this isn't normal or she's sending me nice little love notes or... Right, or there's just more safety between us. I think that is huge, even if it's baby, very baby steps. Let me just look real quick. We'll take maybe one more question. So what do you do if you chose your spouse for a different reason other than the three listed? Are you referring to maybe an arranged marriage? We believe that people are, it's important that there's a lot of depth to this concept and this idea that you married someone who's familiar. You might not think of it, yeah, of course, why would I marry my parents? But if you start learning about the things that bother you the most about your spouse, you are more than likely to see that some of these things are very familiar. So we find that there's usually some reason that will resonate for you if you dig deep enough. It might not be on the surface level. And of course you weren't consciously choosing your spouse because you think you were, I wasn't choosing you, Rifka, because I think you reminded me of my childhood. I just liked you a lot. It was a chemical, right. It's a chemical attraction. There is a chemical bond and there's books and books that have been written about it. And we do go into it a little bit more in marriage school. But I mean, there are people that literally have met their spouse maybe a couple of times. Okay, that's a little bit more information. My father manipulated me into choosing my boyfriend. So I went and got his choice. Right, so we also talk about this elsewhere just about we recreate it even if we don't fall in love with that person and we recreate it, we project or provoke. So again, just think about some of the issues that you have and think about whether they're familiar to you. It's almost always gonna come back to these concepts even if you don't think it well. So many people are blown away when they do the worksheets and they realize, oh my gosh, like look at my old relationship patterns. Look at my previous boyfriends. Look at all the people that I went out with. Look at the types of people that I'm attracting. You can really, you'll have so much insight when you go through those worksheets. And even if you're not, some of you are saying that they're not necessarily married now or they wanna know how to do it right the next time. This is also just, it's very helpful. Just it helps you gain so much information about yourself. And we say this at the weekend workshop that don't think about how you're gonna change your spouse. Think about how you're gonna focus on yourself and growing and the marriage school gives you an opportunity to learn about yourself and learn about how you're reacting in relationships. And it gives you the freedom to be able to really have a choice in the future in terms of how you're going to be because of the consciousness that you have of how you have been. Great. So if we do have to wrap up now for the sake of time, but if please be in touch with us if you have any further questions. And here is the link for all you all for we appreciate you for staying until the very end. We have an outline of the presentation so you can review it and it's at this link www.themeridrestorationproject.com forward slash marriage of one outline. And I hope that will help you go back and really understand everything we were saying. So we appreciate you so much for being with us. And if you have any questions you can contact us or reply to any of the emails that we sent you reminding you about the webinar presentation. We can be reached at info at themarriagerestorationproject.com that's info at themarriagerestorationproject.com. And thank you very much for joining us. Take care best wishes.