Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Coming up on the Warrior Kings podcast and you might ask, like, how do I level up every aspect of my life? What does that mean? How do I become the guy? How do I start leading? Like, basically everything that I just said, you might be completely lost on how to make that happen. You might not know where to begin. You might not even know what you might need to change because this is the first time that you've ever looked within and said, maybe I'm the problem. This is exactly what you need to do to fix your situation. Happy, thriving marriages do exist. The key is learning how to make that happen, happen, which we've never been taught before. And a big question to ask. And you might be asking this question yourself. Is it really broken? You might have found this episode because you asked the question that many men ask, which is, is marriage supposed to be this hard? And the short answer to that question is, no, it's not. And it's possible that it's difficult because you are making it difficult and you probably need some reframing. One of the most critical things that we're never taught when we're growing up is how to navigate marriage, relationships and communication with women paired with everything the world tells us about marriage. Many men get married and realize that they have no idea what they're doing. If it's your first time here, my name is Michael Riggs. I'm a full time author, entrepreneur, men's personal development and marriage mentor, husband and father of six. And I teach men all over the world how to live fully optimized, leveled up lives and how to have happy, thriving marriages. So if that's something you're into, definitely stick around. Subscribe to this podcast, subscribe to this channel, wherever you're getting this, because this is what we do here every week. And today I'm going to teach you why marriage isn't hard and what you can do about it. Stick around. Hello and welcome to the Warrior Kings podcast. I'm your host, Michael Riggs, here to assist you on your journey to living a fully optimized, leveled up life as a man. So again, welcome and welcome back to the Warrior Kings podcast. It's great to be here today. It's great to talk to you today. And yeah, it's a little bit different being on a solo episode again. The last episode I sat down with my wife and we talked about goals, dreams, and going after an unconventional life. And yeah, pretty much just doing, doing something extraordinary with your life and actually going for it. So if you missed that episode, it was awesome. Definitely after this one, go check that one out. And if you enjoyed that episode, you're definitely gonna see more of Carly on the Warrior Kings podcast because we really enjoyed doing that episode, so look forward to that as well. And with all that being said, let's dive right into the topic of the day. I'm sure you've heard, like all of us do, many times in your life that marriage is hard. You're really gonna have to work at it. You know, you hear this from older people who have been married for a, have heard it when you were moving towards getting married or when you got engaged. In times like that, people are like, oh, marriage is hard. You're really going to have to work at it. It's not easy. You know all those things that people say, we hear that all the time as we're growing up. And this is what I call a life ruining fictitious mental construct, or as many people call it, a limiting belief. These are beliefs that you're taught as you're growing up and they live in your subconscious and they shape kind of how you see the world. For example, a life ruining fictitious mental construct could be that all people who are R and have money are evil. And so anytime someone is successful, you automatically associate them with being a bad person or with evil, or maybe you even sabotage your own success or your pursuit of success because subconsciously you think if I get rich, if I get successful, then I am going to be associated with evil people. That's a life ruining fictitious mental construct. And these beliefs hold us back in our lives from reaching our full potential. Another example of these false beliefs could be something like, women don't like guys who X, Y and Z. And so you hide those parts of yourself from the world because you think that those are undesirable traits or undesirable things about yourself and you're never able to truly be yourself. And I call them life ruining fictitious mental constructs because one, they ruin your life, two, they're fictional and three, they're mental constructs. They hold no base in reality. And one of those life ruining fictitious mental constructs is that marriage is hard. Marriage is supposed to be hard and you're really going to have to work at it. And the older generations kind of primed us for misery in marriage. I mean, you see this with popular culture in movies and entertainment that marriage is like the death of freedom, especially for men. Like once you get married, you have no freedom and things like that. And you know, like we're talking about older people saying that marriage is difficult and priming us for preparing us for a marriage that's going to be miserable and difficult. I mean, I'm sure you've seen in movies and entertainment the miserable husband who can't stand being married and talks about all the time how he has no freedom and can't wait to get away from the house for a little while. You know, that whole trope of the miserable husband who can't stand his life. And these things shape our view of the world. And then we end up going into marriage with all these expectations that have been primed into us of having a miserable, difficult marriage. Another problem for many of us is that we've never had an example of a successful marriage. We've never actually seen a marriage work out or a couple who's just been together forever and is still just wildly in love. I know for me, pretty much everybody I've ever known who was married or got married ended up getting a divorce. And divorce has been very normalized by the older generation, like my parents generation, who are now like in their 50s and 60s. Divorce was just a totally normal thing. Many of them have been married multiple times. Four, five, six times. And that was the example that was given to us is just divorce is a totally normal thing. And it's not. Divorce is very strange if you think about it in concept, because marriage is a lifelong commitment. You have committed to spending the rest of your life with someone. That's why the marriage vows say what they say. You know, that classic marriage vow, in sickness and in health. And no matter how bad it gets, it's a lifelong commitment. And then to just flippantly break that off and decide to live two totally separate lives, that's just a strange concept. But it's been normalized to us. And many people these days get married almost with the expectation that that's going to happen someday. When really it shouldn't even be an option to consider it. It shouldn't even be a thing. If you're committing to spend rest of your life with someone, expecting that to end at some point doesn't make any sense. You understand what I'm saying? And what this comes down to, this false belief that marriage is going to be hard. You might have entered your marriage with all of these false beliefs living in your subconscious, your view of the world. But what if you entered marriage not expecting it to be hard? What if you weren't fed all of these preconceived notions about marriage is difficult? You're really going to have to work at it. Your freedom is gone. And you're going to be miserable. What if you didn't have those preconceived notions? What if you viewed your marriage as set apart from the world, different from the world? Like, what if you started looking at other people's conventional marriages and modern marriages and the way that they view marriage? And when people say, marriage is difficult and you're really going to have to work at it, you started viewing your marriage as just totally different than that, totally different than the world. Marriage is going to be hard. You're really going to have to work at it. Well, no, that's for, like, regular people. Your marriage is different. And then clear these false beliefs from your mind and say, these don't apply to me. Go into your marriage with the expectation for it to be happy and thriving and for your wife to be your best friend. The most important thing in the world to you. Expect it to be good. Expect it to be the best thing that's ever happened to you. Something that just brings you fulfillment and joy every single day. Marriage is very widely viewed these days as sort of a business partnership rather than a sacred commitment, a lifelong bond, a lifelong covenant between two people. People view their marriage like a business partnership, like just checking a box, something they think they're supposed to be. When in reality, marriage is much, much more important than that, much more sacred than that. It is two people, two souls uniting in love, committing to spending the rest of their life together. And it should be taken much more seriously than people take it these days. And if it was taken that seriously, if people started viewing marriage as a sacred covenant again, then we wouldn't have so many divorces. We wouldn't have marriages that are difficult and hard and that people are really having to work and strive just to make it work and get by. There would be way more happy marriages because probably wouldn't get married until they knew for sure that that person was the one. Because divorce isn't even an option. Divorce is weird. What if that was the viewpoint? What if the older generations primed you for marriage being the best thing in your life? Like when you said, I'm engaged now, instead of saying, marriage is hard, you're really going to have to work on it. If they said, yes, dude, this is the best thing that is ever going to happen to you. Marriage is so great. It's the best thing that ever happened to me. What if the guy in the movies who was married was the happy one and everybody else in the friend group was like, dang, you got it. So. But I'm So envious man, then we wouldn't go into marriage with the preconceived notions that it's going to be miserable and suck. And as a result of that, it would probably be pretty great. And so ask yourself, did you expect your marriage to be difficult? If you're asking the question, should marriage be this hard? If you're having marriage problems, is at least some percentage of that due to the fact that you expect it to be hard and you're kind of looking forward to it sucking. And so what can you do about it? Well, there are two main reframes that you need here. The first reframe is that you need to start looking within. Many men, when they start having problems in life, when they start having marriage problems, when they face any adversity in life, they start pointing fingers at everyone and everything except for themselves. They never look within and evaluate, like, what am I doing wrong here? If everything is falling apart, what can I do better? What can I adjust? What have I done wrong? And how can I change that moving forward? Many men never look within. It takes a wise man to do that. And honestly, it can be difficult to face yourself like that. To say, maybe I messed this up, or maybe I'm currently messing this up. That's a scary place for a lot of people to be in to like, look in the mirror and say, maybe everything's falling apart because of me. But that brings me to the second reframe that you need, which is control what you can. And what you can control is yourself. If things are bad, if you want things to get better, if you're wondering how to fix things and make things work, it's all up to you. You can't control your wife, how she feels about you, how she feels about your life. You can't control what you can't control, but you can control yourself. How can you be better? Can you change? How can you start leading the marriage in the right direction instead of just wondering how to make it work? Maybe you just make a firm decision that you are going to level up every aspect of your life, and that's what you can control. And as a result of that, everything gets better. And you might ask, like, how do I level up every aspect of my life? What does that mean? How do I become the guy? How do I start leading? Like, basically everything that I just said, you might be completely lost on how to make that happen. You might not know where to begin. You might not even know what you might need to. To change. Because this is the first time that you've ever looked within and said, maybe I'm the problem. Well, if that's you, if you don't know where to start, if you've never really considered these things before, I just put together a marriage reality check self assessment, and it's based on that concept of looking within and then controlling what you can, which is yourself. And you can go through that assessment. And this will kind of give you clarity on the direction that you need to move in to better your marriage, to better yourself in order to better your marriage. And at the end of the assessment, you get a score. And this will tell you exactly what you need to do to become the guy that your wife deserves. And there's a link to that assessment in the description of this podcast episode. So definitely check that out. This is a super powerful resource. Another thing is you need to get to the source of why it's not working. And this is different for every relationship, every marriage, every individual. So it's a little bit difficult talking to a broad audience on here to be like, this is exactly what you need to do to fix your situation. But you do need to be a bit more introspective, you know, now that you are looking within, adjusting things about yourself, controlling what you can get to that main source of where things went wrong and get clarity on what you need to do moving forward and a big question to ask. And you might be asking this question yourself. Is it really broken or do you just need to make some adjustments? I am a firm believer in happy, thriving marriages. I know a lot of people these days, especially young men, don't believe in marriage anymore. Because what we talked about before, we've never had a good example of marriage working out. But as someone who is in a happy, thriving marriage with the love of my life, I can tell you happy, thriving marriages do exist. The key is learning how to make that happen, which we've never been taught before. And one of the ways that you can begin leveling up your marriage immediately is to get back to the why, to remember why you got married in the first place. Because there was a time when you decided that it was a good idea to spend the rest of your life with this woman. And there was a time when she thought that it was a really great idea to spend the rest of her life with you. And maybe things have been chaotic and life is distracting and stressful, and, you know, times in general are just crazy right now. So maybe you've gotten distracted from the why, but get back to the why. Why did you fall in love with her. Why did you decide to spend the rest of your life with her? Get some deep clarity on that. Journal about it if you have to. Journaling is super powerful as well. I have a couple of episodes about journaling if you want to dive deeper on that. But you know, our minds are constantly racing all the time with the complexities of life and journaling. Actually putting stuff down on paper brings clarity. It allows you to be more introspective about things, examin yourself, get to the source of things and kind of dissect and break it apart. Definitely recommend journaling if you're trying to figure this stuff out. But critically, critically important to get back to the why, because like I said, you might have lost sight of that now that everything is sort of bad or falling apart or whatever the situation is for you. And another thing is making a firm decision to take ownership of the direction of your marriage. It is up to you. And this goes back to controlling what you can. And what you can control is yourself. Decide today that you are going to start leading your marriage in the right direction. If you're having marriage problems, just say, not anymore. That's not happening anymore. It really is that simple. As the man, the direction of your marriage is your responsibility and you need to take ownership of it. Stop letting life just happen to you. Stop letting the world just happen to your marriage and take control and begin leading your marriage. Marriage is only hard when you're living it wrong for the wrong reasons, with the wrong mindset as the wrong version of yourself. And it really does start with you looking within. Get rid of the false belief that marriage is hard, marriage is difficult, and that you're really gonna have to work at it. Trust me, marriage can be the best thing that has ever happened to you. It can be the best thing in your life. It's just a matter of deciding that that is so and then learning how to be the best husband that you can be and begin leading your marriage like a man. And like I said, we aren't taught how to be husbands as we're growing up. We're not taught how to be good men at all. We didn't take a how to be a good husband class in high school. They don't provide that. And if you're feeling lost, if you're feeling confused about how even make this happen, how to be the best husband that you can be. Good news is I put out a book last year called Warrior Husband how to be a better husband and save your marriage. And I put everything that I know about marriage, relationships, and communication with women into that one book. There's a link to that book in the description of this podcast episode as well. So definitely grab a copy of that if you need some guidance, if you need some direction, if you're completely lost on what to do, how to be the man that your wife deserves. It's already been read by thousands of men all over the world. And I get messages all the time from men thanking me for writing the book. Because before the book, they had no direction on what to even do to begin repairing their marriage or be the best husband that they can be. So definitely grab a copy of Warrior Husband. So your question is, should marriage be this difficult? And the answer to that is no. It should be happy, it should be thriving. And if you want it to be happy and thriving, that is up to you. So take control and start leading your life in that direction. Control what you can, and what you can control is yourself. You can't force your wife to fall back in love with you or to fall deeper in love with you, but you know what you can do. Become the best that you can be. And her falling madly in love with you might just be a result of that. And this is a mind blowing epiphany that many men never have. And they just watch their life fall apart all around them. They don't realize that they can take control of themselves, take control of their lives, and forge their own path to victory. So make the decision. No more difficult marriage, only happy, thriving marriage. That is a decision that you make right now, today. It's real. Really? That simple. And that's what I got for you guys today. I hope you got something out of this episode. I hope this inspired you in some way. Definitely. Let me know in the comments if this opened your eyes and gave you some motivation to level up your marriage. I love hearing from you guys. It's always fulfilling to get those comments, to get those messages, to get those emails. So definitely never feel weird about that. Like, should I reach out? Should I ask a question? Should I leave this comment? Or is that that weird? Please don't feel like that because I love hearing from you guys. That's why I do what I do to help as many men as possible all over the world live fully optimized lives and have happy, thriving marriages. So when you reach out to me, that lets me know that I am accomplishing that mission. Links to all my stuff in the description of this podcast episode. There's a link tree on there with everything that I do, all my books my social medias, all that is on there. If you want to get more plugged into this thing that we're doing here, definitely grab that marriage reality check self assessment and work through that super powerful resource. And yeah, thanks for watching and listening. Today there is a great calling and a purpose for your life. You listening to this right now? A life of overflowing abundance awaits you. On the other side of you deciding to make the switch, make the change and level up every aspect of your life, a life of overflowing abundance awaits you. I love you. I'm proud of you. Get out there. Kill it. Have a good week and I will see you guys next Sunday evening right here on the Warrior Kings podcast. Thanks guys. Bye.
