Summary
Joe shares four fundamental practices for saving a relationship, framed by the essential prerequisite: believing it’s actually possible. He notes that many high-powered people who’ve built billion-dollar companies somehow believe they can’t have a great marriage — and that belief becomes self-fulfilling.
The four keys are: (1) Turn blame into wants — every urge to blame is an unowned want; expressing what you want re-empowers you. (2) Say the difficult things — when people stop sharing hard truths, they trade being loved for who they are for being liked for who they’re pretending to be. (3) Don’t take responsibility for the other person’s emotions — trying to make your partner happy communicates they can’t do it themselves, breeding resentment. (4) Make it all about you — not selfishly, but by treating every relationship friction as a growth opportunity for yourself rather than trying to fix your partner.
Joe concludes with the insight that the relationship you have with another is a reflection of the relationship you have with yourself. A loving self-relationship produces a loving marriage.
Key Concepts
- Blame is an unowned want
- Not sharing hard truths prevents real love
- Taking responsibility for your partner’s emotions breeds resentment
- Never compromise — find solutions that work for both
- Your relationship with another reflects your relationship with yourself
Key Quotes
“If you’re giving effort and at the same time feeling like it’s impossible, you’re really not going to succeed.”
“If you’re blaming someone else you’ve started the journey. If you’re blaming yourself you’re halfway through the journey. If there’s nobody to blame you’re done with the journey.”
“Shame is the locks that hold the chains of bad habits in place.”
“It’s like this crazy trade that we make when we say I can be liked for who I’m not rather than be liked for who I am.”
“Nobody can make you happy but you.”
“We decided early on that we’re just never going to compromise… we’re smart enough to find a solution that works for both of us.”
Transcript
I remember when I first got married there was all these oldtimers in our marriage and I went around and I said basically hey anybody who’s been married for 35 years I’m going to ask them what’s the secret of marriage and I swear 50% of the people had the exact same answer it was yeser that was the answer I can tell you something in retrospect they were all miserable in this video we’re going to talk about the four basic ways to save your relationship my name is Joe Hudson I’m a former venture capitalist and I coach some of the most notable names in Silicon Valley and before we talk about the ways to save your relationship I think it’s really important to talk about a perspective that’s required in saving your relationship so I work with some incredibly high-powered people people who have built billion-dollar companies in like the space of 5 years and yet somehow they have this belief system that says I can build a successful company I can make billions of dollars in inside of a decade but I can’t do it and have a great marriage or I can be happy with somebody else but I can’t be happy in my marriage or I can’t be free in my marriage I have to be somebody else to be married these belief systems are really important because if you are giving effort and at the same time feeling like it’s impossible you’re really not going to succeed imagine you are a a champion swimmer and you’re thinking to yourself I’m going to fail I’m going to fail I’m going to fail and there somebody else who’s a champion swimmer who is just as good in all ways but they’re thinking to themselves I’m going to win I’m going to win I’m going to win who are you going to put your money on so that perspective upfront that you can actually do it that it’s possible is critical if you’re going to save your relationship so let’s get into the four basic things you can do to save your relationship the first one is turn the blame into wants the second one is say the difficult things to say the third one is don’t take responsibility for the other person’s emotion and the fourth one is as illogical as it sounds make it all about you let’s start with the first one let’s talk talk about blame to wants so I love this story there was this time where one of my clients was going to the restroom it was like 2:00 in the morning you know the time when you stub your toe and go into the bathroom and started to pee and missed the toilet and he noticed a thought that he had and the thought was ah she moved the toilet and immediately he realized oh I am blaming my wife for all sorts of things it’s it doesn’t even make sense what i’m blaming her for when we blame each other when we try to figure out who’s to blame it just tears a relationship apart so there’s a great saying that I heard recently if you’re blaming someone else you’ve started the journey if you’re blaming yourself you’re halfway through the Journey if there’s nobody to blame you’re dumb with the journey I think that’s just a lovely saying because placing blame onto another person or onto yourself it doesn’t actually help you get better it just creates shame and shame stagnates the emotions that we’re having having and stagnates the reality we are having there’s this great saying that I love and it says shame is the locks that hold the chains of bad habits in place and when you’re blaming you’re putting shame on each other and when you do that it’s just holding those bad habits in place so instead of blaming somebody every time you feel that urge to blame just own what you want say oh I would want this I want that the reason for this is because often when you’re blaming you feel disempowered you feel like I can’t have the life that I want which means asking for what you want is a way to feel empowered again sometimes people don’t do it because it’s a little scary to ask for what they want but at least your partner knows where you are knows where you stand instead of you just being resentful in the background and going like who the hell wants to be with that who wants to be married to that so first thing you do is move all of your blame into wants the second thing is learning to share the difficult stuff so often times when a relationship deteriorates people stop saying the difficult stuff and they stop saying it for a couple of reasons one of the reasons is that if I share it they’re going to get upset or they’re going to fall apart or they’re going to get angry so I call that walking on eggshells so I’m not going to do it because I don’t like the consequence of their behavior and the other reason is because we’re trying to manage each other often in a relationship like oh like how do I get them to be X Y and Z because because once they X Y and Z then I can be happy and none of that really allows for the deeper conversation and therefore you don’t really know each other you don’t really know the things that are underneath the service and then how can you actually love each other if you don’t know each other it’s like this crazy trade that we make when we say oh I can be liked for who I’m not rather than be liked for who I am and if you’re not sharing that deep stuff you can’t actually be liked for who you are you can only be liked for who you’re pretending to be here’s a couple Cool Tools to help make those deeper conversations easier first one is listen don’t listen with judgment don’t listen with trying to fix the other person don’t listen trying to save the other person you just listen just be with whatever emotions you have and listen listen with unconditional acceptance and the other one is to draw boundaries is just simply to be able to say to somebody hey I just want to share I don’t want input right now I just want to be heard or I don’t want to solve the problem I just want to be heard or nothing needs to change I’m just exploring some thoughts I just want to be heard and so drawing that boundary so that you can get the space to be heard is critical and often times when we get heard what we want what happens what we’re going to do next changes because we actually get to process it and find out our deeper truth so number three is don’t take responsibility for another person’s emotions so this one is like one of the most challenging ones that there are so often times we think as a partner to somebody in a relationship we’re responsible for making them happy or they’re responsible for making us happy so that is an incredible dilemma because nobody can make you happy but you and nobody can make me happy but me and So eventually we’re going to fail even more than that if I start trying to make you happy what I’m actually communicating to you is that you’re not capable of making yourself happy which is disempowering which means you’re going to be resentful of me or if you’re saying to me oh my job is to make you happy then I’m disempowered and I feel like I have to be resentful to just even maintain any sense of self so taking responsibility for each other’s happiness really creates a tremendous amount of resentment now I’m not saying don’t be kind to each other I’m not saying don’t show care to one another but there’s this moment that you’ll have in a relationship where you’re leaning in trying to make sure that they feel good that’s what you don’t do you just simply allow a person to have their emotions and instead of trying to fix it you just be with it you’re just like oh look you’re having that emotion and that’s fine that’s great it passes there’s nothing that has to be done you don’t have to be fixed we’re good think about it this way you say to somebody hey don’t be sad as compared to oh I see that you’re sad yeah right here maybe you can even say what if anything can I do maybe they don’t want you to do anything but it’s not your job to take care of them they’re a full grown adult and if you start taking care of them they start acting like a kid it’s a horrible thing so it’s really important to not take responsibility for the other person’s happiness so the last one is making it all about you I remember when I first got married there was all these oldtimers in our marriage and I went around and I said basically hey anybody who’s been married for 35 years I’m going to ask them what’s the secret of marriage and I swear 50% of the people had the exact same answer it was yeser that was the answer I can tell you something in retrospect they were all miserable they were married but it wasn’t a happy marriage and so the way that this works is people have a disagreement and they say hey we’re going to compromise and compromising means we’re going to just carve a little piece of myself off going leave that on the side so that you can be happy and then you’re going to carve a little piece of yourself off and leave that behind and then I’m going to be happy and then we just keep on carving away we keep on saying yes dear and then all of a sudden there’s nothing left in the marriage our entire personhood is outside of the marriage and there’s just this like shell of a skeleton of a person inside of the marriage and so with Tara and I we decided early on that we’re just never going to compromise and what I mean by that is that we are going to think to ourselves we’re smart enough to find a solution that works for both of us we can find a way that we can both be happy that we can both support each other in the growth and that every every place where we can’t find a way to be happy with one another means that there’s something in us to work on and that’s where the real key of it’s all about you means it means when you are working on the relationship you don’t work on the other person ever you always work on yourself not with blame you’re not blaming yourself you’re not blaming the other person but you’re taking the relationship as a path of growth every place where there’s that little uh where you want to compromise or you want to give up is a place for you to look at yourself and see yourself more clearly and when you both are making it all about yourselves and about your growth then the relationship just thrives there’s something really critical that I want to end with which is the relationship you have with another is really best reflected in the relationship you have with yourself if you have a loving relationship with yourself you’re going to have a loving marriage you’re going to have a loving relationship with your lover with your girlfriend with your boyfriend if you have a relationship with yourself where you’re at War you’re going to be at War with your wife or your partner so the main thing about keeping that focus on yourself is really working on the relationship that you have with yourself because that is what reflects in the world in your company in the people you work with and with the people you love if you got a lot out of the video please subscribe tell us what else you want to hear about and feel free to watch the next video