Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome, welcome back to success with Srini. Happy Thursday morning to you on the podcast. Today I am answering a question. A very interesting one on relationships.
“Srini, I’ve been listening to your podcasts for a while now. And I heard your podcast on relationships. And I want to know, What is your thought? Thought or thoughts? Thought. What is your thought on having a great marriage?”
Okay, so I have multiple thoughts, not just one thought. But it looks like you only want to hear one thought from me. By the way, it says at the end it says, By the way, I’m married for nine years now. Okay. Are you happily married for nine years? That’s the question. Okay. So yeah, I have done multiple podcasts here talking about relationships. As I said, I have multiple thoughts about marriage specifically. So I’ll give you my best, I think you only asked for one. So I want to give you my best. Your job in the marriage is to keep on creating good memories, find an excuse and create a good memory. The idea behind creating good memories in marriage is that a good memory is going to eclipse a bad memory. Let’s set from age a bad memory. But it’s going to eclipse the bad memory. And if you’re not creating good memories in a marriage, then the chances are you’re you are creating bad memories. And you have no idea how you’re creating them, you’re just a party to it automatically happen. So your job is to create good memories.
Now, I cannot tell you what specifically you have to do to create a good memory. You go on vacation, you bring gifts. I don’t know what you have to do. But you have to do something to create good memories. There are a few other things. In fact, now that I’m dialed into this topic, there are a few other things that you have to do, or anybody has to do in order to have a great marriage. You see, nine years ago, you said, You got married. So nine years ago, you made a key decision. And nine years later, you are still with the decision. So that in itself signifies greatness. And you might have taken different turns and different twists and different setbacks, but you have stayed with that commitment. Some people, want to change the key decision. You know, many years ago, I was doing a seminar and somebody asked me the question about the relevance of having a big marriage. Like somebody made a comment, hey, you’re from India, and I’ve seen your, your marriages that are big, a lot of people come and all that. And I said the reason behind that is the bigger the marriage, the deeper the key decision, the stronger the key decision. The more people that come, the more people stand in front of you, the more people around you, the deeper your decision goes.
Now, I’m not saying that the decisions do not change, later on, they do but there is some truth to it, there is some depth to that statement. Okay. So, your job as I said is to create good memories. Now, your job is also to keep on clarifying the relationship. And clarifying the relationship has many, many elements, and the reason why you really don’t clarify the relationship, but you clarify the loyalty in the relationship, which is an interesting thing that you see play out in different cultures by the way, not necessarily in your culture, in my culture, but in some other cultures. There is, you know, you see couples trying to clarify loyalty in the relationships. Now you do the attractively like you provide the loyalty, then it’s regardless of which culture you belong to the relationship becomes stronger. Now talking about cultures, there are different rituals. And there are different dynamics, separate from culture to culture, but then the core underlying emotion is the same. So to people in a dynamic that is constantly changing, and evolving, that has other people interfering, some are visible, some are invisible. See, when you are marrying someone, you’re not only marrying their efficiencies, but you’re also marrying their deficiencies. And in a marriage, you see that each partner is trying to change the other in their own way. And they do that for 10, 20, 15 whatever number of years and they eventually give up you know At some point in time, some people change, but some do not. It’s weird how the dynamic is. But it’s a constantly evolving, changing dynamic. And you stay nine years in that relationship specifically. So that’s congratulations to you.
Now, a good marriage also comes with some strong boundaries. So every time two people come together, you establish a boundary. And when that boundary is, is placed, and as you function within those boundaries, you invisibly create a system. And that system in itself creates multiple other subsystems, like your children, they create a sub-system. And between the siblings, they create another sub-system. So it’s a child with the parent who creates a sub-system, children within themselves create a sub-system. So there are so many different sub-systems that come out of it. And the beauty of this is the system works should work on the top. Now, let’s talk about a bigger thing here, which is criticisms and relationships now that we are on the topic. So it’s very natural. When two people come together inside a system, they function together as one entity, there comes a point when IDs don’t match, and emotions don’t match. And there are flare-ups and all that. So how do you deal with criticism and relationships, which by the way, is the single biggest contributor to any failed marriage, and one partner, criticizes the other for things that genuinely need criticism, and sometimes has no basis for criticism? So how do you what to do within that situation? Well, here is what we know, if you say, I’m sorry.
Typically a sorry, and any conflict. We all know that. So if you say sorry, it’s over. Now, experts, you know, marriage therapists, marriage experts, they suggest something they say, in order to really create a great marriage, you still need to keep the criticism alive, you still need to you can’t change people. So whoever has to vent the How to vent. So what that suggests is that you have an hour of criticism session once a week, and you only get the right to criticize your partner during that one hour. And ideally, you should have that set up in a neutral location, preferably at a place where there are a lot of people around so that criticism is not hard. So I’ve suggested this to many of my coaching clients, and they say it’s impossible. Well, you have to really try in here to really do this. And some have reported success, some said, it’s very difficult to change somebody’s situation and make them criticize at a different place when they have the urge to criticize, yes, but since this is practice, and you start putting that in place, and you define that as a role in the system, then everybody has to follow the role. So let’s say you don’t criticize, then you set up a time you and when you criticize, you start, and then sooner or later, your partner will suck up will also come around and follow the same time. Until something as a closing note here, you know, there are some issues in marriages in any marriage, there are some issues that cannot be resolved. So anytime in any relationship, the excuse is to have a conversation. But if you’re trying to resolve something, then it’s not gonna work. I’ll tell you that with absolute clarity, you cannot resolve, you can have a conversation. You can deflate an emotion, but you cannot solve issues. Some you can not and you don’t feel bad because you could not solve because some are unsolvable.
Okay, you asked for one and I gave you many, hopefully, this is helpful. And I want to stop here. I don’t want to run anymore, because I have a few more. But maybe one day I’ll come back and I’ll do a whole different maybe a webinar or maybe a workshop when we have multiple episodes on this. We’ll see. Okay, that’s all for now. Have a wonderful Thursday and I will catch up with you as early as tomorrow. Thank you. Bye now.