The Living in Clarity Podcast, w/Coach Ratner

The 10 Commandments of Marriage: #9 Do Not Devalue Your Word

• By Coach Daniel Ratner

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What if a simple promise could be the bedrock of your most passionate relationship? Join me, Coach Ratner, on the Living in Clarity podcast as we unpack the ninth commandment of marriage: "Do not devalue your word." This episode delves into the essence of honesty and integrity, illustrating how small acts of trustworthiness, like consistently taking out the trash when you say you are going to do it, can fortify a marriage. I draw parallels between broken promises and pulling threads from a sweater, emphasizing how minor breaches of trust can eventually unravel an entire relationship.

Throughout the episode, I share personal experiences from my early career to highlight the importance of a trustworthy reputation. Learn how consistently speaking the truth and avoiding empty words fosters a peaceful and passionate home environment. We discuss the significance of avoiding the temptation to say things just to please others, ensuring that every word holds weight. It’s a heartfelt episode aimed at helping you build a lifelong bond with your partner. If this resonates, remember to like, share, save, or reach out via email.

Speaker 1:

This is Coach Radner on the Living in Clarity podcast. It's great to be with you today Continuing our series on the Ten Commandments of Marriage. We are now on number nine. Number nine in the Torah from the Ten Commandments is do not bear false witness. And number nine for the Ten Commandments of Marriage is do not devalue your word. You know, when I was coming up with this concept of the Ten Commandments of Marriage, this one was a little tough for me, because do not bear a false witness has to deal with in Torah law. When you have someone who's accused of something, you have to have two witnesses that are kosher witnesses and they can't, you know, contradict each other. And so I thought about what does that do with marriage? You know, contradicting, not telling the truth. And I thought about that and I said you know what's really important in a relationship. Because when I give these classes on marriage, I'm not here for you to have a good marriage. I'm not here for you to have a great marriage. I want you to have an awesome, passionate marriage with one person the rest of your life, and in order to do that, your word has to be gold. So when your spouse is listening to you, they know it's the truth, they know it's MS. They know what you say. You really mean not like you know I love you. Well, what does that mean? Like you know you?

Speaker 1:

I know people who are dating and in the secular world, in the non-religious world, and like to be dating and you know they want to get physical together. And the woman will say to the guy well, do you love me? And he's gonna like. It's really funny because that is like almost like putting a gun to some guy's head. You know, 99% of times you're gonna say yeah, I love you, because he's now his hormones are going and he wants to get physical with her, and so he's gonna say what she wants to hear. And, of course, is that really true? No, it's not really. He's just making her happy because she probably has low self-esteem and she wants to feel like she's, you know, accepted by someone. She wants to feel loved. And that's a whole different talk today than what we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 1:

But devaluing your word, your word is so valuable in a relationship and what I mean by that is I'm going to give you a simple example. Let's say your wife says to you take out the trash, or can you take out the trash? You know, can you take out the trash now? It really smells. It's three o'clock in the afternoon and the trash man comes in the morning to take it out. He said, yeah, I'll do it right now. And you don't do it right now, you do it six o'clock or seven o'clock.

Speaker 1:

You know, even though you did it and even though you're taking it out before the trash men come to take it in the morning from your street, it puts a little tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny doubt in your wife's head or your husband's head, Because you said you're going to do something and even though you didn't, you didn't quite do it when you said you're going to do it. Of course that's not a big deal. When a when you have a solid relationship 11 relationship it's not a big deal. You do it once, twice, not a big deal. But the more that someone does something, when they say and they don't do exactly what they say, it puts doubts in people's heads and it doesn't really foster a passionate relationship. Because one of the most important things if you have a passionate relationship is to have a bond, a trust that you know that person does what they say.

Speaker 1:

It's kind of like if you take a sweater and you pull a thread out. I wear a jacket. Sometimes you see a thread and you have to pull it out, or you cut it. You take one thread out, nothing's going to happen to the jacket or sweater. You pull another thread out, nothing's going to happen to the jacket or sweater. But every day if you pull a thread out of that jacket, what's going to happen in three, four years? It's tattered, you have a tattered jacket. And the same thing in a relationship it's it's tattered, you have a tattered jacket. And the same thing in relationship You're gonna have a tattered marriage. Because someone doesn't make their word solid gold, the other person starts to lose trust in them and then when something big comes along that could damage the marriage, they completely don't give you any benefit of the doubt because they've never believed your words. It's not that they never believed them, it's like you know your word's not that solid. So I look at my word in my relationship.

Speaker 1:

You know it was funny when I was in my early 20s and I was buying and selling a lot of rare coins. I was traveling America, United States of America, going to trade shows and all over the place, and it's very easy to like lie. It's very easy to do. I was buying, selling coins. It's very easy to say someone oh yeah, You're the first person to see this coin or you know this, I just price, or it's a fresh coin, no one knows about it. And it's very easy to lie and people do it all the time.

Speaker 1:

And I quickly discovered that if I want to build relationships in my business, that I want to have people that trust me and want to do business with me, even though I might not be the highest buyer. They want to do business with people that they trust. They want to do business with people that they trust. They want to do business with people that are solid, that write good checks, that don't make you know. At some of these conventions that I go to, people will buy coins and they'll get an invoice and they'll say I'll bring you to buy a check.

Speaker 1:

People still pay by checks at these trade shows and when I used to be at the trade shows, usually they're like Wednesdays, Thursdayss and fridays and you sell a coin on wednesday and like you want to go home thursday night and like you don't have a check, you still like run around the convention center looking for this person to get a check from them, and it's kind of a pain. I mean, I don't like it, I don't have to, you know. So when I buy coins at these trade shows, I immediately go back to my table, I write a check and I hand deliver it. Here's your check, and people love that.

Speaker 1:

Am I the highest buyer? Are there guys that might pay more money than me? There could be. I'm pretty solid though. I'm very solid. I mean I'm a pretty strong buyer. But they like it because they know what comes out of my mouth is truth. They know when I made a counter offer on a coin.

Speaker 1:

Some guys make counteroffers on coins all the time because they figure if they counteroffer the coin more often than not they'll get a better deal. And it's true, they will probably buy coins overall cheaper. But again, that affects people that do business with them. If someone has a deal, a collection to sell, and they have a choice of quoting me or quoting someone else, they know counter offers all the time. They're going to go to me Because I know that I'm very fair, honest and if I counter offer it's because I really need to pay less. So I make sure my words go.

Speaker 1:

I don't lie at the coin shows. I don't say this is a fresh coin, but it's not. And I do this in my marriage. That's one of the reasons why I've been successful in my business. I do the same thing in my marriage. If I say I'm going to do something, I do it to a T. And there are times I can't do it.

Speaker 1:

I don't say things to make my wife happy, For example. Don't say things to make my wife happy. For example, something breaks in the house. Let's say, for example, you know chair breaks and she wants me to fix it and I have to. You know, call a guy in the fix it. Well, a bit better. A example be like a window. I tell her okay, I don't know who to call, I'm gonna do it, but it's not gonna to be today. I'll have it fixed by the end of the month, Because she might even want to hear. She might want to hear I wanted to fix it today, but I'm not going to do it today because it's not a priority in my life and I don't pretend to make it a priority, just to make her happy.

Speaker 1:

And people do it all the time in life, in business, in life, in business. They say things to make someone else happy, and I don't do that because I value my word. Everything that comes out of my mouth is the truth. And if you want to have a passionate relationship, if you want to have strong what's called shalom bias in your home, which is peace in the house you have to make your word solid gold and when you start to say things that you don't hold by, you start to devalue your word. Just like a witness in a court case, If he's known to lie before or he contradicts the other witness, it's no good. His word's meaningless. And you want that same value in your marriage. When you do that, you'll be building up your marriage, that passion and, God willing, you're with one person the rest of your life. This is the Living in Clarity podcast. I'm Coach Radner. If you have to enjoy this, please like, share, save or send me an email at thelivinginclaritypodcast at gmailcom. Again, thelivinginclaritypodcast at gmailcom. Thank you so much for listening.