Get Your Wife to See the Real You

If you find that you are in a relationship that feels lonely, you're not comfortable letting your wife into your world, you're not comfortable letting her see the real you. You're guarding yourself. You're protecting yourself. And because of that, communication is not worth it. Because it's either super awkward or just turns into fights. You got to get that guard down. Here's how you get the guard down. Most people get it backwards. Most people think if I get the guard down, I'm going to be happy. It's actually the other way around. If I learn to be happy, the guard is actually going to come down. If you try to get the guard down, you start attacking the guard and whatever that guard means, whatever your defense mechanism is, whatever you're whatever you're hiding behind. If what If you take whatever you're hiding behind too seriously, you get intimidated by it and it grows. What you put into attention on life grows. But if you give attention to what is behind that guard, that you feel is actually worth sharing, so not just the part of you that you're hiding from your wife, but the part of you that you wish your wife saw, the part of you that that she could see when she's more compassionate. If you could discover that version of you, your communication is going to be different, your relationship is going to be different, intimacy is going to be is going to be cherished, it's going to be intimacy will have a certain depth to it that you may not have had otherwise. And the way you get past the guard is by learning to actually be happy. Well, where does happiness come from? Where does joy come from? Where does simcha come from? So, one of the blessings we bestow to a bride and groom when they get married, we say asher bara sason v'simcha. We praise God because God is the creator. He had created joy and gladness. The famous commentary on the siddur that Buddha Ram explains that joy is a creation. It's something God made. And if God made joy, that means you joy can be produced. It's not just something you chance upon. It's not circumstantial. Well, where does joy come from? How do you produce joy? How do you manufacture joy? In a way that's authentic, in a way that's real. I don't mean in a way where you're putting on that fake smile and now you're exhausted and now you're feeling worse and now your guard's even higher because you've been feeling like a faker. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about real authentic genuine joy. Like if you could just smile together in your relationship, if you could just laugh together. Where does that come from? The Midrash Rabbah explains that why is joy called a creation in a She Barah Sasson V'Simcha? Why is it a creation? Well, what is creation? Like how did God create the world? In contrast to construction, construction is taking existing matter, existing material. You go to Home Depot or whatever. You take material and you construct, you build, you shape things. With what did God use to create the world though? There was nothing but him. So, what is creation? And the answer is himself. God didn't use material to create the world. He used himself to create the world. Otherwise, God would have built the world, but he didn't just build the world, he created it. Where did you get that stuff from? It came from him. So, when we say Asher Barah Sasson V'Simcha, that joy and gladness is a creation, well, where's it going to come from? It's going to come from you. It's going to come from me. It's going to come from somewhere deep within. It's going to be the type of thing that I I cannot purchase. I cannot buy. It's something within myself that I have to realize. Whenever I work with couples and I ask them questions about the better parts of their relationship, the times where they communicated better, the times where they felt closer, where they felt happier, where they felt more intimate, very often they get to a place where it's like, "Okay, but that's because we had money." Or that's because we didn't have kids yet. Or we didn't have certain life stressors. Or that's because we were on vacation. It's often attributed to a circumstance. But the moment that person shifts and says it's and says to themself and realizes genuinely that it's not the circumstance that made me happy, it's me in that circumstance that was able to be happy, that's when they can start discovering what they have within themselves behind that guard that's worth sharing that can actually produce genuine joy, that feeling of I could just be myself. There was a one particular couple I once worked with and and I asked them, "Tell Tell tell a time where you felt more love, you felt more connection. They described the a vacation, a very specific vacation. It was and and the peace and the serenity, the calm that they had. And they stopped me as they were describing they said, "Well, what's the point of this? We're not on vacation. We're far from it. Like of course we could be happier on vacation." I said, "Really?" "Yeah." "You could do that?" "Yeah." Cuz I know plenty of couples that fight on vacation and don't even want to go on vacation together. So, as you're enjoying yourselves on that vacation, what do you know about yourself thinking back made that more possible? It was more calm. I was And they start describing qualities that they could literally introduce into the relationship right now that is conducive to creating an environment where you could just be you. You could be happy. You could have simcha, genuine simcha, genuine joy. Because joy is a creation and creation, true creation, doesn't come from things, but comes from a much deeper identity that is realized. There's two ways to realize this identity so that you can actually bring genuine joy into your relationship. Number one is think back. And sometimes it's hard because if you're in a lot of pain it could be hard to think back, but you could still do it. Think back to when you were happier. Think back to what you know about yourself that made that more possible. Another way to do this is to think forward. If somehow don't even think about strategizing, but if somehow that joy returned tomorrow, how would you first notice that you're feeling more comfortable with yourself, that you're happier, and that the guard that you do have doesn't matter that much because although you have skeletons you want to hide, you have something else that's worth sharing. Give it a try. Let me know how it goes.