Before you read any further, you have to promise me to do one thing first: you’ll open your mind. That’s job number one. I’ve got two more parts of this manifesto and what’s more important than anything I’ve written is the action you’re going to take between reading each part. But you won’t take action if your mind isn’t open. Back in January, I attended a challenge to grow my Instagram. I loved it because it got me to take action for five days. But the minute the challenge was over, I stopped taking action. Now, that’s the kind of risk any challenge or manifesto comes with. You release little bursts of energy to make your relationship successful. And then you stall. That’s not what we do here. We’re not looking to complete the next quarter mile. We want to go the distance. We want to run the full marathon. Hopefully, what you’re about to read will convince you enough that when you take the kind of action I’m asking you to take, you’ll start to build a marriage that makes you feel chosen and cherished. Now, let’s dive in.
A follower left me a comment: “Jonathan, you put yourself out there as if your marriage is perfect. Don’t you ever feel anger or sadness inside your marriage?” That comment prompted me to write this manifesto… Because it reveals a really big problem couples face today: The language you use inside your relationship informs how you view your relationship. And how you view your relationship informs how well your relationship works. That revelation is really my entire life’s work. So when I replied to that person and said, “I don’t have anger or sadness toward my wife inside our relationship,” I wasn’t speaking a word of a lie. Can I feel frustrated with Meredith? Absolutely. Can I be irritated? Of course. Two minutes before I started writing this manifesto, Meredith was trying to explain to me how to fix something in Canva, and I felt like she was only confusing me more. But irritation and frustration are not the same as carrying anger or sadness toward my wife. Meredith and I regularly experience moments of irritation. Let me fill you in on a little context to explain what I mean… Right now, we’re visiting family in Canada, after 5 long years. Needless to say, our family system is a little disrupted right now. There are lots of emotions and expectations hanging in the air, and consequently, our interactions are filled with a little more friction. But do Meredith and I allow that friction to become anger and sadness towards one another? We don’t. Because we don’t use those words in reference to our relationship or each other. We’ve made a conscious decision to separate the negative emotions we feel from the person we’re married to. This is one of the most important distinctions I’m going to make in this manifesto: You do not need to use anger or sadness in reference to your spouse, as in, “They’re selfish.” “They’re a disappointment.” “They’re impossible to trust.” This manifesto — and all of my work — is built around sending your spouse the opposite message – and one that’s positive: “They’re chooseable.” “They’re cherishable.” Those are the only two identity-level messages worth sending. And coincidentally the messages we all crave to hear most from the person we love.
So what happens when we don’t hear that we’re chosen and cherished? Well, we have to fill that silence with something… and in my experience, people fill it with pain, sadness, and resentment. But there’s an antidote to that emotional decay… And that antidote is consciously cultivating positive emotions towards your spouse. You see, you get to decide which emotions you attach to your spouse’s identity. Be that the positive ones, or the negative ones. Meredith and I have long decided that anger and sadness are not emotions we will hold toward each other as people. And it’s been that decision to which I credit our strong connection. Interestingly, if you’re a parent, you already understand this distinction. When your child behaves poorly, you’re careful not to tell them they are bad. You do whatever it takes to separate who they are from what they did. But when our spouse hurts us, we often lose that same vigilance. Over time, we start to let their behavior become their identity — and eventually, it becomes the only thing we can see. That’s where I want to take you in this manifesto. I want you to show up in your relationship with grace – in the same way you do for your children. Of course, I can help you begin to see your spouse differently. I can help you create the conditions in which love, desire, affection, and trust can grow again. But I need to convince you of something first.
Most of us already know how to lose weight and get in better shape. It’s not that we don’t know how to improve our health. The problem is that we often lack the desire to do it. And that’s the one thing I cannot give you. I can show you how to eliminate the anger and sadness you hold toward your spouse. But I can’t make you want to. Which brings me to the first challenge I have for you: Can you decide, right here and now, that you’re both capable and deserving of a better marriage? Are you willing to say, “I want a chosen and cherished marriage, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to have it.” If you hesitate to make that statement for yourself, then I know why. It’s because something is getting in the way. And that something is pain. Pain caused by all the hurts, unmet expectations, and missed opportunities to remind each other that you choose them. And that makes sense. Most couples become so consumed with what went wrong that they stop asking what they want to go right. After 10,000 hours of working with couples, one thing has become clear: Forgiveness will feel unattainable if your relationship keeps revolving around the hurt. At some point, you have to decide that a better future is worth the effort to create it. Now I know, this becomes infinitely harder when your spouse has betrayed you. Whether physically, emotionally, or financially. So how do you separate who someone is from what they did when what they did radically changed how you see them? How do you forgive someone without excusing their behavior? And how do they earn redemption without expecting you to stop hurting? Those are some of the biggest questions I answer in my upcoming book, Choosing Us. And I’m not going to give all the answers away here. But I will tell you this: Forgiveness does not begin by pretending the betrayal didn’t happen. It begins by deciding that your spouse is still more than the painful things they’ve done. Whether that decision ultimately saves the marriage is another question entirely…
One thing is true: The more you pour into someone — the more you love, respect, and admire them — the more you earn the right to call them to a higher standard. I like that thought because it reminds me that when you treat your spouse with kindness and grace, you can call them to treat you better. For me, the key that opens the lock is sending your spouse one beautiful, identity-level message: “There are still parts of you I like, even though I deeply dislike what you’ve done.” What you’re saying is that what they did changed how you see them, but it doesn’t have to become the only thing you see. That simple phrase gives us a new starting point from which we can begin painting a different picture of your marriage — one in which both of you can feel chosen and cherished again. We need to change how we understand forgiveness because it’s extremely difficult to forgive someone while continuing to send them the message that they’re no longer worthy of being liked, valued, or respected. To understand the power of this work, you have to abandon some long-held beliefs for a second. Let’s start with scorekeeping. You can’t build enough connection to repair a marriage if forgiveness is reduced to an equal exchange of effort. At some point, you have to move beyond what each person has done and begin asking whether emotional connection can exist despite the hurt that lives underneath each other’s behaviors. In simpler terms, you have to start with my second challenge to you: Ask yourself: “Is there anything about my spouse that I still like?” I’m asking you to answer that question because most relationship advice teaches couples to focus on the wrong things – the first being your differences. The problem with focusing on our differences is that they become the root of our dislikes. Forgiveness on the other hand requires us to recover a sense of what we still like about each other, what we have in common, and how we are the same. Sure, our differences may explain parts of us. But they rarely remind us that we belong together. So, what does it mean to be in a relationship where you feel like you’re the same? Feel like you’re chosen and cherished? For starters, it will feel like you and your spouse wake up every single day with a mission to send each other the message that you still choose them. “But how does sending that message translate into forgiveness?” I can hear you asking. Let me explain by asking you to complete my third challenge.
Ask yourself: “What happens to resentment when you send your spouse the message that you see the good person you know they are?” When they hear you asking yourself if there is still good in them, you create an opportunity for them to make a shift. Instead of believing they will forever be defined by their worst behavior, they may begin working to become the person you still believe they can be. In layman’s terms, you make it easier for them to begin sweeping their side of the street. How’s that? Because you are reminding them that they are more than their mistakes. Sure, that doesn’t erase addictions, mental-health challenges, or harmful behavior. Or sexual transgressions. Or their lying, indifference, or lack of desire for affection and intimacy. And you certainly won’t see a change in them overnight. But asking if you can still see the good in them creates one very important condition necessary for repair: the belief that their redemption in your eyes is still possible. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: my approach to pain, forgiveness and repair is different from the mainstream. Other therapists and ‘experts’ will want you to dissect the pain. Relive the event. And analyze the negative patterns of your relationship. But that often doesn’t work at the pace we want it to. That’s because no one moves when they feel bad about how they’re seen (and who they are) in the eyes of their spouse.
And now we come to the second-to-last challenge I have for you today. I want you to ask yourself, “Do I like my spouse as much today as I did when we first met?” If you can’t answer yes to that question, it’s because pain, frustration and resentment have triggered a loss of likability. And now, the hurt that comes with that loss obscures every good thing your spouse does, and every admirable quality they still possess. I see this in couples who have been married for decades. Their spouse has remained loyal, committed and present — yet those qualities disappear beneath a collection of hurts. The thing is, likability doesn’t have to disappear. Here’s a case in point. Meredith leaves her breadboard and crumbs on the counter almost every morning. I can choose to focus on the crumbs, or I can remember that this is a woman who has never lied to me, never cheated on me, and has stood beside me through thick and thin. That’s a small annoyance – I get that. But it’s poignant because it reminds me that forgiveness requires you to begin looking for the parts of your spouse you still genuinely like – and not just the small ways in which they annoy you. I’m not telling you to ignore the hurts. Or that they don’t matter. But the hurts your partner causes you cannot remain the only thing you see about them. If you let pain and resentment change how you see your spouse, it will change which parts of yourself that you give them access to. You will guard yourself. You’ll stop reaching for them. And eventually, both of you will become more invested in self-protection than reconnection. Thankfully, we have ways to fight that disconnection.
In Choosing Us, I share two vows that I ask couples to consider — one grounded in selflessness and the other in self-reflection. Together, they change the question from “When will my spouse finally change?” to “How are we choosing to show up today?” I’m going to resist unpacking those vows here because they deserve more than a short explanation. Just remember that forgiveness doesn’t ask you to deny what happened. And it definitely doesn’t require you to carry your marriage alone. It asks whether you are willing to stop making your spouse’s worst behavior the final verdict on who they are as a person. Whether your marriage survives or not, your freedom from pain may begin when you can see them as a human being who caused you pain — not as the embodiment of the pain itself. My final challenge to you: “Can you separate who your spouse is from what they’ve done?” That is where forgiveness begins.
Before Part 2, I want you to write down your answers to all these challenge questions: 1. Are you willing to say, “I want a chosen and cherished marriage, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to have it.” 2. “Is there anything about my spouse that I still like?” 3. “What happens to resentment when you send your spouse the message that you see the good person you know they are?” 4. “Do I like my spouse as much today as I did when we first met?” 5. “Can you separate who your spouse is from what they’ve done?” Remember to focus on the qualities you still genuinely like about your spouse — most importantly, the parts of who they are you still like that their worst behavior hasn’t erased. You don’t have to share it with them yet. You just have to prove to yourself that the pain isn’t the only thing you can still see. | 