Transforming Marriages Through Personal Growth and Creative Empowerment - Larry

Can one partner truly turn a challenging marriage around on their own? Discover the transformative journey of Larry, who, after 27 turbulent years, found a way to shift from being a mere reactor to a creator in his relationship. Join us as Larry shares the profound impact of embracing personal growth and creativity to foster meaningful connections. His story is a testament to the power of moving from fear to love, and how this shift can alter perceptions, behaviors, and ultimately, the dynamics of a marriage. Learn how personal transformation is not only achievable but can begin with just one person, offering hope and resilience in the face of adversity.

In an era where quick divorces are often the norm, Larry's insights provide a refreshing perspective on the importance of resilience and positivity in relationships. Explore the dynamic interplay between personal growth and relationship transformation, as we discuss the impact of a single partner's journey from negativity to positivity. We'll reflect on the challenges of staying in a difficult relationship and the lessons learned along the way. This episode challenges you to consider your own capacity for change, emphasizing the need for conscious decisions and mindful transformation in today's fast-paced world. Tune in to uncover the tools and mindset shifts that can bring about significant positive changes in your relationships.

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Chapters

• 0:01 Transforming Relationships Through Personal Growth
• 8:10 Navigating Relationships in a Changing World

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey everyone, welcome to the Pleasure Principles, the podcast where we dive deep into the art of connection, intimacy and building meaningful relationships. I'm your host, Avik, and today we have a story that redefines the word resilience in relationships. So, after enduring 27 years in a loveless marriage, Larry didn't just walk away. He uncovered a breakthrough that transformed his relationship and his life. So he has since dedicated over two decades to helping tens of thousands of people regain control of their marriages, their sanity and their sense of self. So his story is the proof that sometimes it only takes one partner to heal a relationship. So get ready to hear about the tools, the mindset shifts and the emotional breakthroughs that can help you turn your relationship around even when it seems like all hope is lost.

Speaker 1: 1:11

So let's get started. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Thank you, eric, good to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:17

I like it Lovely, great, great. So, larry, like the turning point. I mean, after 27 years of struggle, what was the aha moment that made you believe that your marriage could change?

Speaker 2: 1:33

So this is a bad marriage we're talking about. We're talking about a bad marriage. So why is it a bad marriage? It's a bad marriage because she's programmed from childhood to fight. I'm programmed from childhood to shut down, and so her parents fought, my parents shut down. So there's the picture. And so she would do what she had to do. I did what I had to do, and then we had a thing in common Both our sets of parents created something called stay married, stay miserable, and that's the message that was in our subconscious minds that we had to stick with, because it was there.

Speaker 2: 2:07

We couldn't get away, and so we had to stay. We had to stay and raise kids. We had to stay and make a life. We had to stay and do all the things everyone does, and what was different about this was that she was a fighter. She was a born fighter, and as a born fighter, she was ready to fight to the death.

Speaker 2: 2:27

I was not ready to fight at all, and so what I had to do is I had to decide that I was going to become what I called a learner. A learner is a person who is willing to learn from everything around them, right? So a person who wants to be the learner is a person who doesn't want to be the non-learner, the person who doesn't want to learn, the person who doesn't want to discover anything new. And so that was her way. Her way was to not learn and be believing that she really knew everything she needed, and that's what she always believed. And so I was a person who did not know anything, and that's what she always believed, and so I was a person who did not know anything. Like, for instance, she would always talk to me about you need to be responsible and you need to be disciplined and you need to be accountable, right, and so that's kind of like what the marriage was. It was a very critical, blaming, fault finding kind of place.

Speaker 2: 3:18

And so I had to learn, and so what I was doing is I was writing on yellow legal pads, writing all kinds of ideas down about what was happening in my world, what was happening to me and what did it mean. And so I was learning about a thing called meaning, and I didn't realize. But all of life starts with meaning. Until you have meaning, you don't have anything in life. You're going to try out for football. What is the meaning of that? You're going to learn to be a race car driver. What is the meaning of that? You have a meaning all the time, and even if your meaning is just instinctual, you always have a meaning, because the meaning begins everything. It begins the chain of events that end up in what we call behavior.

Speaker 2: 4:08

So, in this very miserable place, I was creating meaning. I didn't know it at the time that I was creating meaning, but later I found out that that's what all these notes were. I had piles and piles of notes, and so the piles and piles of notes end up becoming a course that I now teach. Now, why did I make that course? I made it not for the course, I made it for myself. I made it for what I was learning, and so that's what I was becoming. I was becoming a person who was going to become a creator of ideas, and I was not going to be a reactor, which is what I was when I got married.

Speaker 1: 4:43

Yeah, I understand, not going to be a reactor, which is what I was when I got married. Yeah, I understood. And then also, you often say that it only takes one person to heal a marriage. So how does that actually work in practice?

Speaker 2: 4:55

So why would it take one to do anything? Ultimately, there's two people in a relationship and with the two people in the relationship, if one person is a reactor and the second person is a reactor, they're both reactors. They're both bouncing off of each other's stimulation. They're both bouncing off what each person is feeling. They're both bouncing off people's moods, their attitudes, all kinds of things they're bouncing off and reacting to. So that is two reactors being married, and that's where everybody starts. They begin as two reactors, and so what I'm proposing and what I've done is I became a creator, not a reactor.

Speaker 2: 5:36

Now why do I call it a creator? I call it a creator because everybody loves creators Music poets, writers, musicians everybody loves creators and so we love creators, but we don't always think of ourselves as one. But when you become a creator in your mind, you are now leaving the world of doubt and moving into the world of love the world of doubt and moving into the world of love, and leaving the world of fear and moving into the world of love. And as you move from the fear world into the love world, you start making changes. Some of them are very small, some of them much larger, and you're starting to change how you see everything in the world, and that means the relationship you're in. And so my wife. I started as a reactor and I saw her as an angry woman, as a demanding woman, as a selfish woman, as a self-centered woman, as all these terrible things. So I was thinking that way. I was talking that way and because that made me a reactor myself. I was a reactor married to a reactor, and as I started to learn that I could become a creator, a person who creates ideas, a person who creates what they think as a new idea, that's a creator. And when you become a creator, you're going to start to create different energies. You're going to start to create different feelings. You're going to start to be more positive. So, as you move from being in the world of fear, a place of great, great negative, into the world of love, a place of great, great positive, you're going to make a transfer. You're going to make a change. You're going to make a move that's very, very big, but it's going to be slow. So it's a big move, but it's a slow move. And so that's really what I started to realize.

Speaker 2: 7:21

If I started to become a creator and she remains a reactor, what is she reacting to everything? She's reacting to everything. I am everything, I do everything, I give off everything. Every food, every mood, every feeling, every, every, everything that's coming out of me is going to be felt by a reactor, and that's actually a really good thing, because I deal with a lot of troubled marriages, and so the idea of somebody becoming a creator is not something they actually think about unless they're really creative people already.

Speaker 2: 7:50

But being a creator is a person who starts to move into a very positive world and as you become a creator, that reactor is going to stay back there and keep on reacting and as you get better and better and further and further and more and more positive with the way you think and the way you feel and your energy and your attitude, it's all becoming more positive. Then the reactor is doing what Reacting? And what are they reacting to? They're reacting to a very different person. It's a very different person now, and because they're very, very different, what are they going to do?

Speaker 2: 8:23

Well, the reactors typically are pretty negative, and why? Because they were reacting to you, who was a pretty negative person. So, a negative person reacting to a negative person, what are we going to get? A lot of negative. So what if we have a negative person reacting to a very positive person?

Speaker 2: 8:39

Now something's going to change. Not in the positive person, because the positive person is moving to this very much better place, but this person who's still back in this place of negativity, is going to make a decision. What am I going to do now? This new person is feeling a lot better to be around. This person's feeling a lot more forgiving, a lot more easy, a lot more friendly. And now what am I going to do? Well, the reactor's got to make a decision, or several decisions, and what they tend to do historically is the reactors tend to move towards the positivity they're following. They're following a very positive person. So how does it take one to heal a marriage? One person becomes positive and then another person follows them, and that's a very simple statement for a very complex thing.

Speaker 1: 9:35

That's a very great thing you have mentioned. That's really great. That's a very great thing you have mentioned, that's really great. And so, um, some people or some listeners might argue that staying in a loveless marriage for so long is settling. So what do you say to that?

Speaker 2: 9:51

okay, so let's let's talk about staying in a loveless marriage, because that's a that's an idea we talk about in general, about the population. He stayed in a loveless marriage. Well, my question is what did you do while you stayed? What did you do while you stayed? Did you see anything? Did you learn anything? Did you discover anything? Did you realize anything? Did anything come into your mind that was different?

Speaker 2: 10:16

Because you're staying in a loveless marriage. What are you? Just staying and waiting, waiting for somebody to rescue you? Are you a victim stuck in a hopeless situation and you need somebody to save you? Because if you are in that thinking, then you can't become a creator, because creators are not victims. Victims can't create anything because they're stuck back in the world of fear and they can't create anything.

Speaker 2: 10:40

And so the first job you have is looking at the two worlds of the world of fear and the world of love. If I look at the world of fear in my left hand, I look at the world of love in my right hand. I've got to move from the left to the right and I've got to move there on my own. I got to choose to move there, and sometimes I don't have really the necessary mental resources and emotional resources to make the move. So I have to start deciding to.

Speaker 2: 11:05

And it really starts with what did Lao Tzu say? The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So what is that? It's a decision. A decision is I'm going to move from fear to love. I'm going to move from fear to love. So what I just did I spoke slowly, and what I did that for is because I was illustrating to the people listening that when you make your decision, you make a decision clearly and slowly.

Speaker 2: 11:35

And you stated this is what I'm doing I'm moving from fear to love. Now, where am I going? I don't really know, because I don't know what love is. I don't know what love feels like. I don't know anything about love. But that doesn't mean you can't learn. You can learn anything. You need to make a decision to move from fear to love. And really, you're making a decision to commit. I'm going to learn. I don't know how. You don't have to know how it's going to come to you, but you've got to decide that you're going to. So that's really the most important part. Most important part is make the decision.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Yeah, that's really lovely, and so, like in today's world of quick divorces, do you think that this kind of transformation is too practical? No, um.

Speaker 2: 12:32

So when you think about the, the change, are you talking about the change from fear to love? Is that? Is that what?

Speaker 1: 12:38

you're asking about, no, no, I'm saying, I'm saying about the changes. Uh, I mean because currently, where we are living right now, in this era, uh, it's very fast, uhpaced world, so here divorces are very common and, uh, like here in today's world of quick divorces, do you think that this kind of transformation, like, um, like you mentioning about it, so is it? Is it practical currently? Or, oh, you want to?

Speaker 2: 13:13

mention so. So we you're you're actually bringing up an important point. You're saying this world is very fast moving. Yeah, and why is it fast moving? It's fast moving because of social media. Why did it go? Why did it become fast? Well, if we go back, even 40 years or 50 years, there was no internet. And because there was no internet, everything moved slow. It moved slow because there were newspapers, there were radio, right, and those are, those are slow media and because everything's moving so slow, the whole world's slow. People are moving slow, as you know, cars move slow, everything moves slower, and so when everything became faster, when speed limits came up, and when internet speed limits came up and the phone, the smartphone came, everything started to happen faster. So now I could text a thought to anybody about anything, for any reason, and so I could text a thought to somebody that I kind of know but don't like, or I can send a text, or or I could send a Facebook message or a TikTok to all kinds of people. All of a sudden, and because it became all of a sudden, all these relationships started to move into the flow of that speed.

Speaker 2: 14:29

So, for instance, let's talk about a phenomenon I'm very familiar with, because of all the people I work with. What happens is that women are on social media and they're getting information about boyfriends that they had in high school, and so there's a real appeal to get back to the age of high school, especially if you're feeling old. And so when people are drawn into that appeal, which actually social media increases, because without social media there is no appeal to high school, there's just a memory, there's just a yearbook, that's all that's there, right? So there's no social media actively stirring up the energies of. I really like to get started again with this girl from high school, this boy from high school, right? But that's what actually breaks up families, because what we have is we have established families that are 10 years long, 15 years long, 20 years long, and somebody ends up on social media and they start getting an invitation to go see an old boyfriend, old girlfriend, and so that's really what families get destroyed with, and that's because of the fast moving pace of social media.

Speaker 2: 15:41

So the whole divorce idea a lot of people don't bring this up very often, but I bring it up all the time because I'm in the world of childhood, I'm talking about childhood all the time, and because I'm talking about childhood. What's in childhood? What happened to mom and dad? Well, if we look at what happened to mom and dad, we had a girl marries a guy and they both had come from homes that divorced. Well, when that divorce happens and they're between you know, birth and 10 years old, especially when that happens they now have an imprint.

Speaker 2: 16:17

And what's the imprint? What's the message in the imprint? The message is well, if you've got a problem in a relationship, you've got to divorce that person and go find another person. You've got to find a person that makes you feel happy, and so that's a real easy idea. And now you go check in your past and what's there? Divorcing parents. Well, that was God to you. Your parents were the final authority, they knew everything, and so that imprint is still there. Like what is it that they did again? Oh, they divorced to find happiness. Oh, yeah. And so now I'm now committed.

Speaker 2: 16:55

So if I've got a man who got divorced parents and a woman who got divorced parents, I've got two people coming together in a marriage for five, 10, 15, whatever years, and they're carrying two imprints, what are those? Divorce Divorce when you're not happy. And so that's what they do. They do what they were shown, and doesn't that make sense? So that's why, when I talk about becoming a creator, a person who is a creator is not going to live on what they were given in the past. They're going to make what they want. In the future, they're going to focus on what they want, and that's what makes them very different people. I can't find people like that as I look for them. I look for people who are willing to become creators, and most people are not willing to become creators. They would like to be, but it's kind of too much work. Too much work.

Speaker 1: 17:53

I'm sure that's something great. Thank you so much for sharing this and also, like um, after after saving the marriage, uh, what has been the most rewarding part of your journey, like both personally and uh, in helping others oh.

Speaker 2: 18:12

So when I'm doing what I'm doing, what am I trying to do? I'm trying to keep families together, because what we have is we have a person, one person, who leaves the family, and, let's say, a man. A man leaves the family and he leaves his children, he leaves his wife, he leaves the routines that they built, the schools they've made, and he goes off with another woman. Now, this another woman is a not a legitimate relationship. So, because she's not a legitimate relationship, the person who stays behind I call the stayer, and the person who leaves I call the leaver, and so the people I work with are stayers, and so what I'm trying to do is find a way for the stayer to become a person who can become that creator, that person who creates in their mind, and everything that they create is going to ultimately come back to them in a really good way.

Speaker 2: 19:10

So I've seen people who've had this happen and they've become creators, really, really successfully. And because they become creators, they're really, they're very different people, much more positive people than they ever were in their past life. And the person who left knows, they know deep down inside that this person they chased was a temporary happiness, and they start to realize the family is the only legitimacy they have, and so that's really what I'm counting on. I'm counting on that creator is going to create an energy that calls that person back to the family, through all kinds of trials and all kinds of difficulties. And that's a very inspiring story for me to watch, and I love it. When I see it, I never get tired of it.

Speaker 1: 20:04

That's really lovely, I would say. I was just listening to you and that's also that's some great discussions we had today and I'd say it's an incredible conversation. And, dear listeners, larry's journey reminds us that all that, even in the most difficult of circumstances, hope and change are quite possible. So in today's episode, if today's episode has resonated with you all or inspired you to take the action in your own relationship, then do not forget to share it with someone who might need to hear this. So thank you, liddy, for sharing your wisdom and your story, and thank you, listeners, for tuning into Pleasure Principles, for tuning into pleasure principles. So until next time, remember that the foundation of every great relationship starts with understanding, connection and the courage to grow so, together or alone. So see you next time. Thank you so much. Bye.