How do we become beautiful partners? What works to be a great husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, or fiancé? Let met tell you a bit about what works for me after finding nearly every way to do it wrong!
How to have a Happy Marriage + How to be a Good Wife and Husband
This is a really good exercise that works for me and that helps me to not be mad at my wife 
I'm sharing this with you because I want you to have the best chance right now to be the best husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, or fiancé you can be!
How do we perceive relationships in life?
Relationships are the biggest part of happiness in life. Relationships are crucial!
It's really hard for me to do anything else if my relationship is not happy. I want you to have that happiness. I want you to feel the love, happiness and joy I feel every day, and to know that you can have a marriage and a relationship that's just amazing.
Here's the one exercise that's fantastically helpful for me, that I do whenever I find myself being mad at my wife, or not being a good husband.
All of this is based on the idea that you can only be your best self. You can't change or control anything about that other person. If you want to be a good husband, wife, fiancé, boyfriend, girlfriend, all you have to do is focus on you and trust the other person to be the best version of themselves, or trust the other person that they won't want to be around you anymore if they're not right for you.
Here's the exercise I use that works fantastically well.
Whenever I'm not grateful that I'm with my wife, whenever I'm not happy, whenever I’m out of sorts, this is what I do, and the key to a happy marriage is to maximizing the good and having some exercise or technique that reminds you when you're not doing well.
Here's what I do.
First, I have to notice that I'm not being a good husband. This happens whenever I'm angry, resentful, upset, not loving and caring, or not listening. Therefore, it happens often enough. All I have to do is recognize that I'm not being a good husband, because if I don't know I'm being a bad husband, if I'm not even aware of it, then I'm completely powerless to actually change it.
If I'm just angry and I'm not even realizing I'm being a bad husband, if I'm just ignoring my wife for being really rude and inconsiderate, then I am powerless to change that. That often will look from my point of view as if she's doing something wrong. If I ever think my wife is doing something wrong, the fact is I'm doing something wrong. If I can't be loving and understanding with my wife no matter how she acts, then I'm not being a good husband.
So no matter what she does, if I'm loving and understanding of that, then I'm being a good husband. Here's what I use when I'm out of being a good husband, when I'm judging her, when I'm not being nice to her, when I'm being inconsiderate of her, or any time I'm not in a place where I feel peaceful. When I'm being a loving husband, I feel peaceful. I feel like everything's okay. I know that you know what this feeling is.
The key is to have some exercise you use when you realize you're not feeling loving and peaceful, when you're feeling violent, hatred, anger, resentment and hurt. When you're feeling hurt as if the other person did something wrong, you are the one doing something wrong.
When I'm feeling hurt, it has nothing to do with my wife. It has to do with me, "Oh, poor me." When I'm feeling hurt, it's because I'm not being loving and understanding of her behavior. If I love and understand what she is acting, nothing she does hurts me. It is okay. Whatever she does is okay. That's what love is.
If you have parents, which I would guess you do, you probably can see love and understanding there, as you went through your life acting however you wanted.
I know I have experienced this with my parents. They were loving and understanding with me, and they still are, regardless of how I behaved.
That's the key.
If you're hurt, if you're angry, it's always your fault.
It is always your fault!
In other words, if I'm angry, if I'm hurt, if anything I'm thinking my wife did wrong, I'm always in a place where I'm not being a good husband. Ultimately, how I'm feeling is completely up to me. How I'm behaving is completely up to me. It doesn't depend on what she has done, or what she's doing. That victim mindset I used for a lot of my life, led to a lot of unhappiness. If you want to be happy in your marriage, you've got to take absolute responsibility for your feelings and your behavior. This one exercise helps me get out of being hurt, self-pity, or anger.
Eckhart Tolle mentions this in one of his recent readings I listened to. I got this from my mom. My mom and I lost my dad last year. He passed away.
She often said, "I would do anything to have another day with your dad, even a bad day."
I thought about that and I saw that it has the secret to a happy marriage in it right there.
"I would give anything to have another day with your dad, even a bad day."
Mom had to go through and get that the hard way, after being married 30 years, and after often struggling to have a happy marriage, I'm grateful they somehow made it through all of the challenges to the point where they did till death do us part. That's incredible to me.
All of their sacrifice, all of their suffering, is there to help me have it a little easier. I don't have to wait until my wife dies to get the same knowledge my mom has right now. My mom already knows the secret to a happy marriage.
"I would give anything to have just another day with your dad, even a bad day."
That's it.
That's all you have to focus on and think about to be a great husband, great wife, and any other relationship.
Here's how I run that through in my head.
If I'm angry with my wife, I pull that thought up:
"I give anything to have this moment with my wife. My wife is here, I'm grateful for that. I have this moment already with her, the same as my mom wishing for another moment with my dad. I have that moment right now. That's a miracle."
That means whatever day I might call it, all I need to remember is that I'd give anything to have this moment.
Past, present and future self
Sometimes, the necessary thing to do is fast forward a little bit. Maybe we think that time travel is going from now to another moment. Time travel is real if you do it the opposite way, if you go from the past into now, or the future into now.
I remember all the times that I would've given anything just to be with the girl of my dreams. From about the first memories I have, when I thought Minnie Mouse was the best thing in the world, up until right before I met my wife.
I would've given anything so many times just to be in a great relationship. That helps me whenever I'm a little bit off, whenever I'm a little bit angry, whenever I'm not being a good husband.
I remember that.
"Oh, remember how miserable you were when you were 15 and you never thought you'd find a wife."
"Hey, you got a wife right now. Isn't that awesome? Yes, it is. Does it matter what she just said? No, it doesn't."
Remember when you were 15, you said, "Man, I'd put up with anything a hot girl did to me."
This includes anything, whatever your wife just said, that's anything.
"Oh, okay! I'm sorry."
That's how you get back. That's how you get out of being in a bad place. I always have to start with "I'm sorry," because I always did something wrong, if I'm feeling angry with my wife, if I'm feeling hurt, if I'm feeling anything negative, I always did something wrong.
That's how I get back to it. I go into the past and I go in the future.
In the past, “Oh okay. I'm in my dreams right now, this is what I wanted for my whole life.”
Now, "Okay, I'm sorry I'm not appreciating it."
It works even better going to the future. I usually go to the future first because this is very certain. That wonderful woman who is my wife along with me, if I fast forward far enough in the future, I'd turn into an old corpse and then a rotten dead burned up corpse.
I'm dead, my wife's dead too and it's not certain who will go first, but if I go far enough into the future, one or both of us is dead.
Seeing into someone else’s future perspective
Now, it's easier to do, looking at my mom. My dad is already gone and her present right now, Dad already died. So, I can see into my own future, I'm not sure whether it's from my point of view or my wife's point of view, but I can see very clearly into my own future where one of us has died. That is a place most married people don't want to go, I see a lot of couples, they’re just unhappy, but they don't want to think in the future either.
I had a guy yesterday I talked to who I shared this with, and he just got uncomfortable with the idea of thinking into death like that.
Do you want to be miserable right now?
Do you want to have a hard time in your marriage right now?
Do you want to waste the beautiful moment you have together being pissed off, hurt or in some pain?
Think far enough into the future and you'll find the miracle of right now. You'll find the miracle in that your wife or husband is not dead right now, that's a miracle. That certainty in the future that one of you will leave the other, one way or another, hopefully not divorce, but you will leave each other at some point. At least in the physical form, ultimately as Eckhart Tolle shares, and I love “We're all one,” so in that sense you're not ever really leaving each other, but your form will leave each other at some point. One of you will die or you will get a divorce.
Isn’t right now a miracle by comparison to that?
That helps me the most whenever I’m mad at my wife.
About a week or two ago, I was really mad at her one morning. She hadn't done anything wrong, I just was mad at her and I laid on the couch for two hours being mad.
Finally, I kept trying to do this, but my mind kept resisting, so I kept doing it again and again, and finally my mind gave up, screamed in surrender and said, "Oh I'm sorry, I am utterly totally miserable now. Please help, I'll do anything to not feel like this."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was angry at my wife. I'm sorry I was angry at my wife.”
If you don't want to be angry anymore, that's all you have to do, "I'm sorry" from the core of your being, surrender. Then, this worked great for me, I let it all out, I cried, I let all that emotion out.
Do the opposite of what we were programed to do!
Now men we’re programmed: "Don't cry!"
If you watch movies and things and if you see people interacting in real life, anytime someone cried it's like, “Oh my God, what's wrong?”
Crying is like throwing up for the emotions. You just throw all of that negative emotion out and it's purged, then I can be pure again.
I got mad, I thought of all these things I'm telling you, and then I felt utterly miserable, then I surrendered.
I said, "Okay I don't want to be mad anymore, I'm sorry I did this all wrong."
Again I cried, I called my wife and she was still mad, she didn't answer. She let it go to voicemail and I left a very heartfelt loving voice message, “I'm sorry I was mad at you, I'm sorry I gave you a hard time this morning before you went to work, I love you, I hope you're doing good.”
That's it!
She listened to voicemail, it took her some time to do the same thing, she called me back and it was fixed. We spent a couple hours being mad at each other instead of days, weeks, months, or years.
That's the miracle of doing this.
Conclusion
If you want to be a good wife, a good husband, if you want to have happy marriage, you've got to be grateful for what you have through the understanding you haven't had this all your life and you're not going to have it necessarily, one of you is not at least going to have it the rest of your life.
Right now is a miracle, right now is a time that at some point in the past you would have given anything to be right here, and at some point in the future you would give anything to be right back here.
You've got to see that at all times if you want to be happy, you must never lose that, as soon as that slips from my consciousness, I slide into unhappiness. As I said earlier all I have to do is notice that I let it slip and then I can get it back.
What I've shared with the past and the future is a helpful exercise to get it back.
Now if you aren't comfortable going to these places in your mind, you can try something different. However, if you're not comfortable thinking about what you wanted before or what you want in the future, you probably shouldn't be comfortable thinking about why you're mad at something your spouse just said or why you might be afraid of what will happen in the future.
If you want to go into the past and the future in your mind, go where it helps to go, go into that point where your spouse has died and you're sitting there saying, "I'd give anything to have them back."
Then come back, "Oh okay, I'm back right now. Everything is fine. Everything is just fine."
Go in that point in the past when you thought you were hopeless, miserable and never would find the right person, and come back, "Okay this isn't so bad, this isn’t nearly that bad, all right, I'm sorry, I'm not appreciating this."
Absolute, complete, utter responsibility for yourself. You can't do anything more to change me, than you can to change your spouse.
I'm grateful people come to me now and ask me things, after most of my life I asked other people for help and no one wanted my opinion.
When you have a wonderful happy marriage people want to know about it. I've just shared with you exactly how I have a happy marriage and it's been work getting there, mainly work on me.
I've had to get myself to the place I'm sharing from now and I want you to be able to go there.
I'm grateful that I'm in a place to share this with you.
I share this with you to help myself. I don't want to ever forget these things I'm sharing with you. I do this to help be a better husband myself.
Thank you for reading this.
I hope this has been helpful for you because I think you have the chance to have an exceptional relationship where you are loved, and that starts with having an exceptional relationship where you are loved inside yourself.
I appreciate each minute you spent reading this and I hope this has been helpful.
I would love to hear what you think of this. Please share with me what you think, if you want me to make more like this let me know that I should.
Thank you very much for reading this post which was originally filmed as the video below!
The feedback on the video was so positive that I spent about $100 to get this post created for you here out of the video, and then edited it prior to publishing! I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day today.
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Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk
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