today's a very special day for for me and for Chris we are celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary and we don't want a gift we want to give you a gift the gift of sharing with you what has helped us during this 20 years to consolidate our relationship to solidify the marriage and overcome many problems we've made other videos before where we've discussed the mistakes we've made early on in our marriage things we did like a list of the problems that we had and then we started tackling that list and overcome one by one with recorded
videos before if you haven't seen them go to this address on our channel and you can find the other videos about our marriage mistakes and and the things we did to have a blessed marriage today but today we want to talk about one thing that each of us has done to bless the marriage to last 20 years and keep going and we are at the best period in our marriage ever and we know that as time goes by it will only get better so let's share what happened with with us and what we did all
that Chris start with the one thing that she did that has really changed and blessed me this was actually the main thing okay and I'm not sure if I mentioned it in the other videos but I remember that we used to tackle each problem every time and it was like a pattern you know for a couple of months everything was fine and then something else something else happened some problem I know came up in the marriage so it was always like you know up and down not every week you know but it was like there
were periods in the year for out of the year that something would be just making it hard you know the marriage is a relationship so one day I realized and this was the one thing that really really changed for me one day I realized that I needed to shift the focus because I was always focusing on what my husband wasn't doing for me what he wasn't like you know I was always focused on him on our marriage on you know what's going on here what's missing here and in it and I will always find something
I always find something that's why it was like up and down so one day I realized now I have to stop focusing on my husband and I need to start focusing on myself all right what I can do you know what I can achieve I'm gonna work on my faith I'm going to achieve things I'm going to start you know stop looking taking so much of my time and energy and looking at my husband's fault my husband's flaws and I'm gonna look at what I can do to be a better wife a better mother a
better woman altogether mm-hmm and that's when things started changing because I start investing myself and I wasn't having so much time to see things that were not working right so you know things that you weren't doing I wasn't noticing them so much because I was notes I was looking on myself so before just to make it clear before this you used to focus on what I was doing that that annoyed you or that upset you or on what I was not doing for you and that frustrated you that made you feel like unhappy right that
I wasn't giving you what you wanted to but then you started changing the focus or you change the focus onto yourself and started working on improving and bettering your own self and getting busy making yourself a more valuable person or more virtuous woman in every way possible yeah not not to say that I was I wasn't giving you attention I wasn't you know being a wife or housewife not that you know in fact I was working on being a better wife a better housewife you know better in every way in other words you did not
start ignoring me or no you did not check out of the relationship like sometimes we hear wife saying well I'm tired you know now I'm gonna focus on me and that means they forget the spouse that's not what you did gratefully but you started you know continuing giving looking at my good side and and being there for me doing more and better for me but you are you were you made a decision not to look at my mistakes and not make demands on me to change yeah I that attitude was also some somewhat like a
self-righteous attitude because I used to it's like you're never satisfied there's always something you know maybe we would improving something but then something else you weren't as good at in that you know and so I always wanted more you know I always compared my life my marriage with other people's marriage and I thought you know we need to be better we need to change you know you need to change you're not being the husband or you're not like my father you know many times I would compare you to my father and so when I stopped
doing that and I started doing investing myself and seeing what I could do and change and doing it for me you know not doing it because I wanted to show off because I wanted you to respect me or anything like that I was doing it for me mm-hmm because I said you know enough I've been only focusing on my marriage on this part of my life what about the other areas of my life why can't I just develop you know because I felt like I was stuck for for many years I was stuck just looking
at you just looking at what you doing it how our marriage could be better you know so when I stopped doing that that's when I changed and you and I notice that with that you started respecting me and supporting me and believing in me which was something that before you wouldn't do but probably because every time I demand I was demanding so much from from you that you felt you know that I was too insecure or I was just not I didn't have what it takes to get to look at other things to be better
in other ways you know because that was so self-righteous about myself so when I stopped I noticed that everything changed you started respecting me admiring me supporting me I know even just like I don't have the word submit encouraging okay to go home or right and it felt good because I you know you were you believed in me he would not to see me which before it was something I had to ask you for right so I started giving you naturally out of my own will what you used to pressure me to give you so
it was a much more match for a much more precious gift that I was geared more genuine and sincere gift because I would I would sometimes give in to your pressure before and do what you asked me for but do it with a long face and and like out of a task you know you have oh you know as a husband I have to do this but not because you wanted to right so then when she changed you know I became like a healthy competition she was doing better for me she was improving as a
wife for me so I felt the need to improve as a husband for her and we also need to say here that because we counsel couples as a part of our work we notice this is one of the main problems that couples face when we are sitting in the counseling room with with a couple and we ask them so what's the situation what's happening you're mayor so normally you know 99.9% of time couples will begin by tearing each other down they will the wife will say well my husband doesn't do this these days or he
does this this this and that and lists all the problems that she sees with her husband and the husband in his defense will begin to list all the things it was wife does that are wrong so and it's so unproductive because while you are each focusing on the other's mistakes you can never get anywhere because number one you are attacking your spouse when somebody gets attacked guess what happened that person gets defensive nothing changes you only create friction between the two of you and then you are wasting that time and energy focusing on someone that
you cannot change so instead of focusing on yourself who is the only person you can't change so this mistake we see happening and that's why a lot of counseling marital counseling fails because it just focuses on listing the other person's mistakes and this is not the way as long as you are focusing on your partner's mistakes you will be frustrated you will become a bore you will become a boil in your husband's side or in your wife's side or back side should I say that have you ever had a boy on your back side you
know what I mean so as long as you do that you will always create unhappiness but when you start saying okay you know what I'm gonna focus on me on myself while not neglecting my spouse I will work to become a better person in everything and then you take that pressure off you lower your expectations from your spouse and you you increase the expectations for yourself then you begin to set a new and a new trend in the marriage a healthy competition in the marriage and also not the person needs to really really believe this
because the person sometimes you know the wife may say yeah I'm working on myself I'm changing you know I can't change him but I'm working on myself but then two minutes later she's talking about what he's not doing but it could do you know how tired she is of what so basically you're saying with your mouth one thing but in reality that's not what you're doing because you're still focusing what happened to me it was I stopped for I stopped I completely stopped looking mm-hmm you know and I wasn't I didn't invest in myself and
and and keep looking at you and saying you know what is it doing you know I'm here I'm changing so much what what he has has he done is it changing anything you know I stopped I didn't do that because that doesn't work you still focusing on the spouse right mm-hmm so you need to focus on yourself for real focus like 100% mm-hmm and that's when the the spouse will also come you know like come meet you halfway right brilliant without the pressure without because he's gonna do that only if he sees that you're not
you know expecting from him that's right they when you do that you inspire the other person to change you don't force or pressure you inspire the other person change there is a very big difference there you may be pressuring your spouse to change but you're not inspiring your response to change because you don't set the example so what you did was you inspired me to change because of the changes that she made you became more attractive to me you became sexier to me because you know let me tell you something ladies a secret about men
all right don't tell anybody okay don't let your men know that I told you this men are hunters it's in our blood right from the beginning of time men used to go out and hunt men like a challenge and this is also transferred into our relationships when a man sees a woman only considers difficult he's attracted to her a woman who is confident a woman who doesn't make herself easy for him he's attracted to her because she becomes a challenge to him so he wants to work to conquer her but when a woman becomes too
easy to you know on top of him like a flying soup you know like gumming in the hair that you know have you ever had gun stuck in your hair you want to get it off get it out when a woman is like that the man gets sick of her he doesn't want to be close to her because she's too easy I mean imagine if I'm a hunter right if I'm going to the forest to hunt ducks and you know you've seen movies where people go hunting ducks they put all those clothes and they and
go and they hiding themselves in the foliage and they are trying to find imagine if that hunter you know got there and then all the ducks came out and light up in front of him and said shoot me shoot shoot us come here come here they all came to him and asked him to shoot them what what fun would that be but then a hunter would go home bore this out the Ducks were all there dancing in front of us for us to shoot him so it would spoil all the fun and a part of
the fun in the marriage is to is for the the wife to make herself a little bit difficult for her husband other was not to be on him all the time and I know that sometimes women do that because they want the attention they crave the attention of the man but they achieve the opposite they make the man get sick of only and not only wives do that sometimes the husband - that it can go both ways yeah yes most of the time is the wife but there are husbands who do that and the same
thing goes even though the woman is not so much of a hunter but when demand the husband is so into you know that meaty mode that always wants her praise and mm-hmm no rotation it just makes the woman feel sick because we don't expect that from a man we expect the manatees to be strong for them he doesn't need that extra it's a sad sight sometimes we see men who are they are I don't know what the word is fixing fated or they are obsessed with a woman and they will basically drag themselves at that
woman's feet and that's a sad sight because a woman if if a woman is evil and has a man like that after her she can turn him any way she wants because he is weak he has given his strength the Bible says that a man should not give his strength to the woman it's there so in other words work on yourself develop in your confidence and remember that love is not bugging the other person is not bugging or begging the other person for anything love is about giving you give and you are confident about who
you are you have a sense of self-worth and that sense of self-worth is what makes you attractive and makes you look like a successful person who will in turn attract the other person to want to be with you so that's what you did that really changed our marriage and I want to share my part what I did that also one thing I did that has helped us to to be here 20 years on and looking forward to many more years but we'll have to leave that for the next video so tune in again alright part
two of this video god bless you bye bye you