The Living in Clarity Podcast, w/Coach Ratner

Infinite Marriage Audio Book, Introduction

• By Coach Daniel Ratner

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This week on the Living in Clarity Podcast, Coach Ratner will read to you the introduction of his latest book, Infinite Marriage: The 4 Phases of a Loving Relationship. 

Discover the four phases of love— the crush, the research, the commitment, and ultimate phase of never leaving. Coach Ratner delves into the societal shifts causing declining marriage rates and increasing divorce rates, emphasizing the critical role of emotional intelligence. We will explore the “never leaving” phase, where unwavering commitment becomes the cornerstone of lasting marital bliss. Tune in to find out how to make your spouse the central focus of your life and achieve an infinite union filled with passion and love.

Stay tuned for the rest of the audio book coming out in future weeks. The book is now available on Amazon.com, or at any Jewish Bookstore.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Living in Clarity podcast. This is Coach Ratner, and today we're going to read the introduction to my book Infinite Marriage the Four Phases of a Loving Relationship. What is the difference between complete and finished? If you marry the right person, you're complete. If you marry the wrong person, you're finished. Marry the wrong person, you're finished.

Speaker 1:

In the morning I found her sleeping on my front porch. She was stalking and harassing me non-stop. Later that day I was on the phone with the county police trying to stop an unnecessary suicide on the shoulder of the highway. This was after she called me in successfully about every 30 seconds. I had dated a lot by this time in my life, but I had never experienced a situation where a breakup turned into such a distressing situation. She used my hidden spare key to get into my house, rummaged through my home office and wrote herself a check for $20,000. She left the check sitting on my desk so I could see it. I don't think she ever intended to steal any money. After that I walked into my bedroom hesitantly, probably because I was expecting to see some unimaginable scene on my bed. The $20,000 check was just her way of telling me she was having a bit of a mental breakdown, and that was probably putting it nicely. This is what can happen when you can't define what it means to be in a real loving relationship. Who knew that the results of a breakup after two months of dating could lead to such internal trauma? I thought that I was a good catch, but not good enough to die for, Unfortunately, from previous experiences, I know what it is like to be dumped. It is a constant pain inside your gut and the only cure is time. But threatening suicide was a new one for me.

Speaker 1:

When you are dating, you need to be aware that both of you have different perspectives of how you feel about each other. Feelings don't have a universal scale of measurement for all to see. They are internal. They are internal and only you know how to get the, how great the emotional pain is. You can't transfer the feeling to someone else. This is why there is no such thing as an easy breakup, and the pain from a divorce can be exponentially worse than a few months of dating. When a relationship does not go as you had dreamed, this is when the world crumbles around you.

Speaker 1:

There is one thing that everyone is striving for, whether you know it with clarity or you are only yearning it for it, hidden deep down, to be in a loving, passionate relationship for your entire life. I truly believe that everyone reading this book has a great chance to achieve this. Unfortunately, very few people will get to this point in their lives. It requires mental training, the ability to control your emotions and the permission that you give yourself to let someone into your heart and be vulnerable. Just by picking up and reading this book, you are already headed in the right direction.

Speaker 1:

Being in a loving relationship is about two people opening up themselves and allowing the other to share their feelings and thoughts, but more importantly, it's about being there for one another emotionally, intellectually and physically. No one really thinks too much about being in, about a loving relationship when they are young, but once they reach their late teenage years, they start to think about dating. Have you ever heard of anyone taking a class on dating and love before they start to date? This is probably unheard of. Most people just go out and do it by trial and error and hope for the best. Do you want to make the most important decision of your life by just relying on hope and luck? That would seem insane.

Speaker 1:

Much of what we know about marriage comes from what we experienced growing up in our homes. If our parents had a healthy marriage, then we have something good to emulate. If not, then we may have a little more work to do to build a healthy marital relationship. Another place we get an idea of what marriage is supposed to look like is from romantic comedies and Disney movies. Unfortunately, movies give us a false sense of what marriage is about. What is usually the last scene in every romantic comedy? It is usually the wedding. Why don't they ever show the couple 20, 30, or even 40 years after the wedding? Because it would not be a romantic comedy, it would be a horror movie. Unfortunately, Prince Charming is not going to automatically turn your life around, as we are led to believe, Thinking that you will find the perfect prince or princess. You may never decide to marry because of the possibility that this person may be just around the corner. This may be a reason why people are getting married so late in life or not at all.

Speaker 1:

Has access to internet dating increased your chances of finding love? It may or may not. Because dating is so easily accessible, people may be more likely to not settle for anyone that has a few pounds of her weight or has a pimple on their nose. Because there are so many ways to find someone else to date, you may make any little excuse to keep looking, even though you found a person that you could be in a passionate relationship with. This is called the paradox of choice theory. We may believe that having multiple people to date actually makes it easier to choose one that we are happy with. This theory stipulates that, in reality, having an abundance of options actually requires more effort to make a decision, and it can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice. It's kind of like going to a restaurant with a lot of menu options. How many times have you ordered the chicken marsala and then were immediately disappointed because you didn't try the salmon picadup special? The paradox of choice was popularized by American psychologist Barry Schwartz in his book the Paradox of Choice why More is Less? Schwartz, who has long studied the ways in which economics and psychology intersect, became interested in seeing the way that choices were affecting the happiness of citizens in Western societies. He identified that the range of choices that we have available to us these days is far greater than people had in the past. However, consumer satisfaction has not increased as much as traditional economic theories might expect, Rates of marriage in the US have consistently been falling since the early 1970s.

Speaker 1:

The peak was in 1946, from a high of over 16 marriages a year per 1,000 people, and in 1973 that number was only 11 marriages per year and it is now down to under seven marriages per year. Data used to be simple If you found someone who was nice and had a job, you married them. Today's singles are less likely to sell for someone that people may have settled for in the past. This is why understanding the different stages of love will help you to have a more satisfying relationship and also make it much easier for you to find love. Is reading this book going to guarantee that you will find love? No, but it will guarantee that, as long as you are willing to learn the four phases of love, turn yourself into an open vessel that will accept someone else into your heart, you would significantly increase the odds of finding your soulmate.

Speaker 1:

It's just like anything else you do in life Don't know the steps involved, you will more likely quit. Imagine you are going to take yoga for the first time and the instructor teaches you downward dog and nothing else. Do you know how to do yoga? Yes, but your yoga will never flourish because you are not taught all the variety of poses and whatever joy you have for it will eventually fade. This is true for our relationships.

Speaker 1:

If we don't know the phases involved to acquire true love, we may find ourselves falling out of love with our partner or spouse and then becoming another failed statistic. We think that we understand what love is and can succeed with our current knowledge, but as the marriage and divorce statistics show us, it is much harder than we perceived. It is unlikely that couples who go down the aisle are thinking that they are going to be one of these statistics. Nevertheless, don't leave the chance that you will have the relationship of your dreams. The divorce rate in the Western world is somewhere between 50 and 60%, but if you take into consideration the marriages that don't end in divorce, the ones that are currently active, how many of them do you think consider themselves in a happy, passionate relationship? Let's just say it's 50%, which is probably generous. That means, if you're involved in a relationship today, whether it be marriage or not, the chance of you having a long, lasting, passionate, happy relationship is less than 25%. This book is going to attempt to destroy this trend and help improve the statistics. I realize that the divorce rate in the observant and although there are times when you should divorce, it is still not as low as it should be, which is close to zero.

Speaker 1:

We're going to break down love into four phases. Learning about each phase will help you in the development process of the ongoing relationship. Once you have decided that one phase is complete, you can then focus on getting through the next phase, and so on. This process will help you avoid the big mistake of marrying the wrong person or of being in a horrendous relationship. Most people will get through the first three phases, but this is not the reason why I'm writing this book. It is the fourth phase that will get you to the bliss that you dreamed about after watching movies about princesses and Cinderella.

Speaker 1:

Phase one is the crush phase. The crush can happen after going on the first few dates. If you do not have a crush on the person you are dating after a few tries, you should probably not be going out again. The crush may also be called infatuation. This word usually has a negative connotation because it means the relationship may be only based on short-lived physical desire. While this may be true, you still will most likely need to have this feeling of infatuation in order to get the love that you ultimately want. Infatuation, or having a crush on someone, can turn into love. It's the confusion between infatuation and love that causes many relationships to fail.

Speaker 1:

Phase two is the research phase. This happens when you decide there are enough positive aspects with this person that you consider yourself dating. It is this process of getting to know someone fondly and in the innermost way. What are their likes and dislikes, what makes them a chick, and how do you connect emotionally to each other? This is the exciting part of building a relationship, because everything is new. Your time spent with them is trying to learn everything you can. This is the part where you decide whether or not you are ready to commit to them for the long term.

Speaker 1:

Phase three is about the commitment phase of the relationship. This is where marriage happens. This is where you're willing to put the work into building the relationship to a point where you both want to spend the rest of your life together. This is the point where many couples will get to, but getting this far won't guarantee anything. Instead of looking at this point as the end game which I have a feeling most people view it this way we need to look at it as the beginning. Compare this to someone who wants to get into the professional sports league, like the National Basketball Association or the NBA. Once they sign an NBA contract, they feel they have made it in life. But that is only the start. Now they have to play at a high level every week so they don't get cut from the team while trying to win a championship. This is the same as marriage. It is just your entry into the league of legal marriage contract. It doesn't mean anything else. It doesn't mean you'll win any games and it doesn't mean you will play very well. It just means you have a shot at the championship. A championship in a marriage means being in a loving and happy relationship with the same person for your entire life. If you want the greatest chance of having the marriage of your dreams, you will need to learn and live with the last phase.

Speaker 1:

Phase four is called never leaving. It is the most pleasurable phase of your marriage. This is where you will get to the point where your spouse is the sole focus of your life. This is where you finally live with the clarity that nothing can get in the way of your marriage and every decision you make will take into account how it will affect the feelings of your spouse. This will generally occur after many years of marriage.

Speaker 1:

Even though the commitment and never leaving seem similar, there is a major difference between them. There are many things that people are committed to. Until they are not committed anymore, your commitment level to many things may be lessened or may disappear entirely. Think about how many times you have been committed to something and they were no longer committed to it. You may have stopped being committed to working out, eating healthy, following a sports team, praying in your house of worship or even being proud of your country.

Speaker 1:

Never leaving is the highest level of commitment, where nothing will ever get in the way of you being together. You will stick by one another through thick and thin, persevering through good times and bad. You'll be willing to do anything to keep the relationship as your number one focus. This is the ultimate goal of this book to get you to the point in life where you have an infinite union with your soulmate, when you have butterflies in your stomach from just the ache of missing them for just one day. This is the point in life where you finally know that you are both so committed to having a happy, passionate, loving relationship, marriage, when you finally get to the point that you are never leaving.