 Hello, and welcome back to another episode here at Can This Marriage Be Saved? video podcast. I'm Rivka. I'm Somos Latkin. And we're founders of the Marriage Restoration Project. We work with couples all around the globe to help keep couples together and happy with our no blame, no shame communication strategies and intensive marriage retreats. Today, we'd like to talk to you about a big fat lie. And what is that big fat lie? It's actually not so funny, but we want to talk to you about the lie of temporary separation. Trial separation, yeah. Yeah. So it's a great one. A lot of people call me and they'll say, yeah, my therapist suggests that we do a trial separation. Yes, for some reason, advising couples to do a trial separation is one of the biggest myths, lies, strategies that unfortunately most therapists working with couples advise. And we do not advise it. We... I think it's just like you're magically just hoping that if you do a trial separation, you know, a few months you'll want to get back together or you'll fall in love again. And that's really, really hard. And we're going to share with you three reasons why we do not align with that recommendation at all in our approach to working with couples. And we haven't found it to be helpful. You know, maybe there's an off chance you're out there and you are in the middle of a trial separation and you are finding it to be helpful. And that's wonderful. But as a rule, it's not something that Shlomo, who is the marriage counselor, advises his couples to do, right? And we'll share with you three reasons why he really doesn't advise that as a course of action. So before we get into the meat of this, we want to ask you to please like and hit the bell notifications on our channel so that way you get notified as soon as we drop another video. And please engage in the comments and in the likes button so that way other couples can get help and get access to our content. That would be hugely appreciated because really our mission is to help more and more families out there with this very essential information. So why is nobody talking about this? Why is every therapist out there working with couples advising trial separation when it just gets too hard? I can't really answer that question. I don't know why they do it. I can tell you that a lot of couples therapists, they're not necessarily seeing things the same way that we are from the paradigm that we're coming from. And a lot of couples therapists aren't really trained in couples therapy even if they have one class from the master so they need it for their license and they're doing the best they can and I'm sure that they're really working hard but unfortunately it doesn't necessarily not effective if you don't have a specialty. But even more than that, I think there are many people out there that don't really see, they don't necessarily value marriage, that it's something that needs to be worked on or tried to be saved. If it works out, it works out. If not, you find somebody better. It's almost like a car or a computer every few years you get a new one, right? So even though it was expensive. There are disposable societies. So you don't have the value of a relationship that a lot of people, other people who are probably watching this channel do. So number one, let's start off with the premise. Number one reason why it doesn't work is that we believe that relationship issues need to be dealt with in the context of the relationship. That means that if you have a problem in your marriage going to individual therapy or doing something else and both people who work on themselves and spending time on their own it's not necessarily going to solve the problem it actually might make it worse. You mean I can't just go like on a silent meditation retreat to work on our problems? No. Or go to Cabo with a bunch of ladies? I would stop the communication problems I guess. That's true. Instantly overnight. But I would say you need to do the work as a couple. You need to do the couples work. So kind of distancing yourself further and then even in theory if you do the couples work and I've worked with couples who are already separated who are not living together and we're doing the work together and it's definitely helpful but living with your spouse on a day to day basis you're never really going to know how it works. So living with your spouse on a day to day basis dealing with the regular triggers and then being able to see that you can have a different reality not only is that it's going to give you the encouragement that your relationship can be better. So the number one reason not to do a trial separation is that you need to work on the relationship within the relationship in the circumstances of the relationship to see if the relationship could get better not separate to see if it can get better but work on it first to see can we make the relationship better? Under the similar circumstances that we're already experiencing right now. So are you saying that the same fights the same problems, the same conflict that's actually happening all the time in real time that's precisely the things that they should stick around for? Well, they need to learn better skills and ways to deal with it but if they're not living together they're not going to have those opportunities. Those experiences, right. So that's great that we can go like I remember I had a couple was working with so they went out on a date once a week and it was great and they had a nice time but what will happen when they move back in? Are they going to be able to maintain the connection? I mean, it could be that they would I mean, they did in the end, they got back together but many couples it's hard to really know is this going to work, is this not going to work? So you almost need to stay in the mud a little bit longer, right with the right strategies and the right help to be able to make it through so that a child separation isn't ultimately needed. Right, and we're not talking about months and months of therapy I'm talking about the way that we work with couples is we know that couples are in pain they want answers, they want an intervention couples that come to our two-day retreats they're already in a different place by the time they leave they have an idea of whether this relationship is going to work. It's a lot less investment of time and energy but just taking those two days see giving the marriage a chance obviously not everything is fixed you have to keep doing the work but it's a short way to, I would say it's much more affordable than spending months of rent on a second place, on a second place so that quick infusion of a new way to be together clarity and skills is what is needed yeah and that will do the job and then either you make the commitment to work on it or you just, I mean if you choose to part ways you part ways but it's much more effective than just giving each other space and I know it's probably not as exciting as going to talk about the marriage problems with a bunch of girlfriends in Mexico or going to an individual therapist to complain about our spouse and we'll go into that in the next two points about child separation but it isn't as exciting however it's what's needed to get the relationship to work one other thing that number two I would say the number two reason why child separation is just a recipe for disaster is that what I have seen in couples who have gone who have separated and then done the work even though we came really close to getting back together they got cold feet, why? Because it's one thing if your relationship is struggling and you're committed to being together and you're working through it and you're not going anywhere but once you've opened the door and once you've left and even if it's gotten better well if I go back is it gonna really be better? What if we go back to the same old situation? Once I'm back I can't leave I mean you could leave the second time too but there's almost that feeling that cold feet and I've seen that unfortunately I remember one couple where the wife really wanted the husband to come back and he almost did and he just got cold feet he was too afraid but if he would have stayed there he would have worked on it and it could have been You're saying they already had the outlet they already had the plan they already had the apartment the plans were already set and they were living it so it was easier we're a victim of circumstance Nobody wants to change so once you've made the change to leave you're not gonna wanna make the change just to get back Right It's much much harder I have seen it happen I've seen people move back but I've also seen a lot of people that could have moved back but they didn't have the courage and to be able to do it they didn't have within them Yeah that's tough and that's really unfortunate because if they'd never left in their first place they would probably still be together in a thriving relationship and now they're divorced and their child has to deal with it it's sad it's really sad so again just doing it it's the next way out and you saw that you feel like I never thought I could actually leave like I actually left and like once I feel like I've done that's a real hurdle for a lot of people that don't really think they're ever gonna leave once they have the courage to leave then it's much harder to come back Please if your therapist is advising you to have a trial separation please share this video with them and explain what we're suggesting from this totally alternative relational we call it the relational paradigm in our in a mago therapy it's a completely radical shift and perspective because we're all about the relationship the space between you as opposed to what's called the individual paradigm where the therapist has one patient that they're seeing so they have to give that patient advice we'll do another video about it And even if your therapist is working with both of you it's just not working I mean, again, if you have if a person has a life-threatening disease are they just gonna go to one doctor and they say, okay, you have two months to live okay, I'm just gonna just drop dead God forbid, no, you go to get a second opinion and a third opinion because your life is important to you but for some reason the marriage all because someone tells us our marriage marriage isn't gonna work then we just, we take that for face value and we don't make an effort to there's a second person not everybody is gonna be qualified everybody's gonna be the right fit for you not everyone's gonna be the good messenger to help you be able to repair your relationship so you're gonna wanna do whatever you can to make it work if your relationship is important not just to take one person's advice and say, okay yeah, let's just send it And we'll do another episode on how to know if your therapist is right for you and your marriage and we'll do an episode on how to find the right couples therapist for you So Shloma, what would be the third big fat lie about trial separation? I would say the third one would be self-care and the importance of taking care of yourself and focusing on yourself Look, I believe people do need I would say people do need space is people do need elements of space and there's ways to give space in the relationship and I can't say there's never any situation where one person maybe need to just like go away and like deal with their stuff and then come back and they were ready but most of the time that doesn't happen So the odds are, it's not a good idea you're kind of setting yourself up for to let's say pretty bad odds that you're gonna be able to reconcile after the trial separation So yeah, if you need time to do work on yourself you can continue doing work and still doing work on the relationship together and stay in the confines of the house So are you saying that self-care is a myth that all this business about self-care is that wrong? Well, self-care, you have to take care of yourself because you have to have a healthy self to be in a relationship with someone else if you don't have a healthy sense of self if you don't have the proper boundaries you can't be in a relationship with two people if you're not a person So you do need to take care of yourself but at the same time self-care becomes selfish meaning it becomes all about me and what's best for me and my life and my goals and what's gonna make me and you're just not helping me become the best person I'd be better off with someone else and that's kind of unfortunately a lot of people I hear from people who've gone to you know, some of these workshops or treats that are not necessarily responsible in terms of the relationship and the other facets of the person's life it has looking in a bubble and they think yeah, well this person's wrong for you because they don't support your growth and they're not supporting this and that's supporting that instead of encouraging them, number one to talk about it with their spouse to work on it with them or to understand how maybe the issues they're dealing with in the relationship is what they actually do need for self growth I find that people who if you really are a self-actualized individual you're gonna be a non-judge, you'll be non-judgmental you're not gonna look down on people you're gonna be accepting of the situation and see what you can take from it So even if you feel like your spouse is holding you back a real person who really did their self-growth is gonna be able to sit with that and have compassion for the other partner maybe they're not as developed in personal or interested in personal growth but you're not gonna judge that partner negatively because you've done your work and you're able to realize this is another person And we believe in Amago that the issues you're dealing with in the relationship that's the real work that's like I always like to call it the final frontier that the relationship work that's the hardest stuff because yeah I can go off and go on some retreat and have a great time and meditate and that's really easy, that's pleasurable but even to do my own emotional work it feels good, it's very cathartic but they have to deal with somebody who's pushing your buttons and getting you in just the way that it hurts and that you're stuck with them in your house and it's like you have to figure out how to make it work and you have kids and that's annoying that's frustrating, that's really difficult if you need to be able to, that is the real work because not only is it just you have to deal with the challenges and accept life as it is but those are the very issues if you begin to become introspective and that's what we find in this work the more you become conscious of why your spouse bothers you you start realizing, oh this is my baggage and I gotta deal with it and people think that I did all my childhood work already and individual therapy and then they get in their marriage like I didn't realize there's so much that's getting triggered in my marriage from my childhood that I haven't even dealt with so this is really where the real work if you really wanna do self growth and look, if somebody decides they know they wanna out the relationship that's a prerogative but at least they're not just running away because they think like this is just gonna be better for me they're really taking a look at the situation and they're making a conscious decision do I wanna do this work or not as opposed to blaming it on the other person and saying, you're just beneath me like you don't wanna grow, I've done all this work you're not emotionally intelligent I'm beyond you maybe 10 years ago we were good for each other but now like this is such a major, major point and I hope you guys are taking notes really because the idea of toxic positivity and self care and self growth is so prevalent in our society we have so many people that are leaving their marriages going, I'm just much more advanced and developed than my spouse and if you wanna read more about it Shlomo wrote an article for Huffington Post called a house self growth destroys destroyed my marriage I believe and get a read it really let it sink in because we have so many people that come to us saying like well, I thought I had done all this self growth work I've been in therapy for years and it's my husband's turn to go do his work but really the work needs to be done together that's the big lie guys so please comment below let us know what you think it might be hard to hear sorry, but this is our experience in 20 years working with couples what is driving couples apart and again, it's also the therapists that are advising this unfortunately so therapists watching please get some skills and training in perhaps the relational paradigm so no, you can't just go to a mountaintop and do ayahuasca or whatever it's called and fix your marriage you have to stick in the relationship paradigm for a little bit longer and we wanna help make that possible so and it doesn't look ultimately our relationship will only succeed if you have two willing partners willing to do the work it's not always a therapist's fault but there's a lot that therapists do we can talk about in the videos that that's potentially damaging giving people negative planting seeds of doubt not giving couples hope and we find that if it's a willing couple there's so much that can be done differently to make the relationship work and it's so much easier to make it work and unfortunately, we find a lot of couples that are naively going for help wanting to make it work and it just gets worse in therapy and they wind up getting divorced and it does seem like a lot of it is from that self-ish paradigm of self-growth and self-care and it's all about the self and yeah, it's a lot more exciting it's a lot more cool to do the self-work than the painful marriage the hard work the hard work it's really more in the end it's definitely more gratifying to spend your life with someone to be with someone to raise a family together with someone these are all things that are gratifying and not only that actually actualizing your full potential which is really what you are aiming to do with all the self-growth Yeah, more on that later so thank you so much for watching we're very excited to bring you another topic in couples work marriage counseling this is our most favorite thing to talk about it is our mission to help keep couples together and happy I'm an adult child of divorce lots of drama lots of pain from childhood growing up in a reactive home with divorced parents and this is really my life's work this is why we founded the marriage restoration project to help families and we really look forward to sharing more with you please let us know in the comments also what you'd like to hear more about in the future if you have any questions feel free to comment below be sure to hit like and notification buttons to find out our next video stay in touch, see you soon take care, bye