#069: Want a Great (Future) Marriage? Do This | Part 1
After his parents’ divorced, Joey feared repeating the same mistakes in his own marriage. He wanted to know, “How do I not repeat my parents’ mistakes?” He wanted authentic love but had no idea how to build it. It set him on a quest for answers and a roadmap for love.
In this episode, you’ll hear a talk that offers a roadmap to build love based on research, time-tested couples, and the wisdom of Christianity. You’ll also learn:
An ingredient that research shows is essential to build a healthy relationship and great marriage
Answers to the questions:
Can love actually last?
When feelings fade in your relationship, does that mean the end is near?
Is love worth the risk and possible hurt?
A challenge to build love that lasts
If you want a build a healthy relationship and great marriage, this episode is for you.
Listen to the whole talk: 7 Tips to Build a Thriving & Divorce-Proof Marriage
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Transcript
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
After my parents separated and later divorce, I feared repeating the same cycle in my own relationship and marriage one day. And so I became obsessed with the questions. How do I avoid that? How do I not repeat my parents' mistakes? Because I wanted authentic love, but had no clue how to build it. I think that's true for so many of us, we all want.
But if we're honest, we're not quite sure how to go about building a healthy relationship and great marriage. I think that's even more true for those of us who come from broken families. Nobody's showed us how to build love and a marriage. And that leaves us feeling discouraged and even hopeless to the point where we give up on love.
We give up a marriage, we give up on commitment and we even settle for the. In this episode, I'm going to share a talk that offers a simple roadmap to build authentic love. And so you're going to hear a snippet of that talk, which touches on a few things. First, it touches on an essential ingredient that research shows is necessary to build a healthy relationship and great.
The talk answers. The questions can love actually less. So many of us doubt that when feelings fade in your relationship, does that mean the end is near and is love even worth the risk and the possible hurt. And then finally the talk offers a challenge for you. And so if you want a healthy relationship in great marriage one day, whether or not you come from a broken family, keep listening.
welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pontarelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 69 and it's part one of a small. Series. And what you're about to hear is a talk I gave to the college students of Ave Maria university in Florida.
The talk is titled seven tips to build a thriving and divorce proof, marriage, actionable advice from research, the church and time tested. And so the content of the talk is not just my opinion or my limited experience within marriage, but it's really based on psychological research advice from really beautiful married couples who have built amazing marriages and finally wisdom from Christianity on marriage.
By the way, if that's not what you believe, you're not a Christian, you're still gonna get a lot out of this. Talk, my challenge to you is just go into it with an open mind. There's a lot of human wisdom overall in this. I've given the sock primarily to college students and young adults. I think it's perfect for that audience, but older audiences have found it helpful as well.
But some of the feedback we've gotten from the young people, one woman who happened to be a newlywed, she was just married in the last six, seven months. When she heard the talk, she listened to it three times in a row. Because she found it so helpful that the host of one of the events where I gave the talk said this, she said a girl I just talked to on the phone, said she was watching over zoom and thought it was so good.
Another young woman said it was probably the best talk that she's ever heard. So lots of good feedback. I don't say that to boast, but just to assure you, this is worth your time. And so here's a snippet of that talk.
Find a virtuous bouts or help your spouse build virtue. Tip number three, purify your idea of love. So marriage research shows that one of the essential ingredients to a great marriage is a realistic concept of love. In other words, knowing the truth about love it's Catholics. We kind of have an advantage here, but even for us, there's so many lies in the world when it.
To love. And so one of the lies that I fell into, and perhaps you can relate to this is thinking that love didn't actually last, like eventually it would crash and burn. It would fall apart and seeing my parents for a marriage fall apart, seeing them get divorced. This was ingrained deep inside of me. I really believe that love didn't last.
And even if it could last for some people, I didn't think it could last forever. But the truth is that love can last marriage can last, I've seen it. I've seen really beautiful couples. There's two in particular that I always think of that have been such an inspiration and even mentors to me, they've proved to me that love can not only last, but it can be really good and really beautiful.
I want my marriage to be like theirs. I hope you guys have couples like that in your life who can prove to you that love can last, especially. If you're doubting it because of what you've seen growing up, what you've seen around you and love can also last because we can choose to make it last love is a choice.
Another lie that I fell into was believing that feelings equal love, like intellectually. I knew this wasn't true, but for a long time on a subconscious emotional level, I definitely believe that feelings were the measure of love. More feeling more, love, less feeling, less love. And so in my relationships, when feelings would begin to fade, as they naturally do over time or change, I would freak out.
I become really anxious, like, wow, like is love ending. Am I going to lose this person? And so what I needed is, was to purify my idea of love. And John Paul, the second who really showed me the truth, when it came to love, says that love is not merely a feeling. It is an act of the will that consists of choosing in a constant manner.
The good of the blue. To the good of oneself and so feelings, they're a part of love, but they're only a part and there's certainly not the measure of authentic love. And so in your relationships, like all of you, like in your relationships, wherever you go in life in your marriages, when you're feeling start to fade, your love is not doomed.
It's actually just an invitation to love on a deeper, more mature level. And it's actually a good thing if you think about it, because you're forced to choose. What do I love more the feeling or the person? And so in our dating relationship, I would say it's problematic. If you've never had a romance like romantic feelings for a person, I think you should have romantic feelings for someone at least initially.
Um, but it's really important that we don't make decisions based on emotion alone. Like when in life is a good to make a decision on emotion alone and the real danger, if we just trust our emotions with these. So we'll end up walking away from a good relationship or even a marriage because we just don't feel it.
There was a study that asked divorce people. Why did you get divorced? And one woman, one woman said that. She said, I realized it was the lack of commitment on my part because I really didn't feel romantic toward him. I always felt like he was more of a friend to me how tragic, like obviously their romance needed a spark, but how sad to walk away?
From your relationship because you didn't feel romantic. Another lie that I believed was that love is too risky. It's not worth the risk. And it's true. Like if you love someone, if you put your heart out there, you're probably going to be hurt. It's going to happen. Any of you have been through breakups, you already know this.
I don't need to tell you this, but you know, it's more dangerous, you know, what's worse than being hurt. Never loving. CS Lewis. He said it the best CS Lewis said that she said to love it all to be vulnerable, love anything in your heart will be rung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal rapid, carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries of what all entanglements lock it up, safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket, safe, dark motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreaking. Impenetrable irredeemable to love is to be vulnerable. So that's the danger that if we don't love, we don't risk. If you don't be vulnerable, our hearts will become hard. And the truth that I've learned is that love is worth the risk.
Sure. There's pain involved, but if you work at it, the good far outweighs the bad and your life won't become easier. When you got married, when you choose to love. But your life will get better. And if you struggle here, if you struggle with this fear of being hurt, fear of intimacy, love marriage, all that.
I totally get this. That was me in high school. And even in college, I was terrified of love, relationships, dating, all that stuff. And it was primarily rooted in the fact that my parents' marriage fell apart. And I just didn't want that to eventually happen to me too. And so to overcome that fear, what I had to do is slowly begin to be vulnerable, especially in my relationships.
Relationships and by relationships, I mean my friendships. And so I did that in little ways and helped so much eventually to the point where I was able to pursue and date women one at a time. But, but slowly I was able to continue to overcome it and where it didn't control me, it didn't control me. And so I felt free.
I felt free to the point where, when I met my wife, I was able to pursue her, to ask her, to marry me. And now we're married and we're building our family. We have a baby girl she's seven months old. She's the. Thing ever. We're completely obsessed with her. Like
I was a guy. I would show you guys a picture if I could, but I don't think we have that all set up, but, but I I'm just, I'm just in awe that like, by God's grace, I don't say credit for this, but by God's grace, I am where I am, because I just kept taking little steps, relying on his grace to overcome this fear.
If I can do it, you can do it too. If that's. Do it scared do it gradually. Don't wait for your fear to disappear. Don't wait for that. It's not going to happen. Do it scared. Do it gradually act in spite of your fear, which is really the definition of courage. And it's okay for those of you, especially who come from broken families and you're really scared.
Um, it's okay. If you have to go a little bit. So my challenge for you guys here is to purify your idea of love. One exercise that you can go through with this is make a list of what you believe about love. Like on a subconscious level, it takes some time, take some work to identify those lies that you believe in are like acting on.
But once you know them, you can seek the truth. You can set up. Those lies with the truth. And so the question that you can think about pray with make lists, journal, all that good stuff is what lies do you subconsciously believe about love? So tip number three, purify your idea of love. Tip number four, set healthy expectations for your marriage.
Another central ingredient.
If you want to listen to this. Talk, you can go to restored ministry, ministry, singular.com/marriage. Talk again. Restored ministry.com/marriage talk. Marriage talk is just one word, or you can just click on the link in the show notes. And in case you're not aware, one of the things that we offer as a nonprofit is coming into your school university, church, or event to give talks like the one you just heard.
And we have talks specifically. People come from broken families and then more general talks as well. And so I've given talks for the archdiocese of Denver, the diocese of San Diego focus, the fellowship of Catholic university students, Franciscan university of Steubenville, avid Marine university, and the archdiocese of San Francisco.
And so if you're interested in booking a speaking engagement, we'd love to speak with you. You can email us@eventsatrestorativeministry.com. Again, events at restorative ministry. Dot com we'd love to speak with you about possibly serving you. The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 69.
Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful, feel free to subscribe. And if you know, someone is really struggling because of their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them. Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.
