What Five Words Describe Your Marriage?

0:00Through 25 seasons, 4 ,561 episodes, I believe the Oprah Winfrey Show is one of the greatest classrooms in the world. I really never thought of it that way. The aha moments, the breakthroughs, the connections, the occasional ugly cry. I miss him so terribly. I miss him every single minute. The LOLs. The moments that mattered. The eye-opening life lessons. Never allow them to take you somewhere else. I'm bringing them back. It's time to open the vault. I've personally chosen these classic episodes to share with you again. Every single person you ever will meet shares that common desire. They want to know, do you see me?

0:47Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you? You are listening to The Oprah Winfrey Show, the podcast.

0:59I want you to go grab a pen right now and a piece of paper because we're going to try and experiment, okay? I'm going to give you time to get it. Pull it out of that kitchen drawer. And what I'm going to ask you to do in the next 60 seconds could be eye-opening, and the audience here is going to try it too. You have pencils and paper or pens on your chair. Okay? Ready? I want you to write down five words that really describe your marriage. If you're not married, describe the relationship that you're in right now. And I want you to be as honest as you can. Don't write down words that describe what you wish it would be in the fantasy world of your brain.

1:40Pick five words to describe your marriage or partnership, relationship right now. And later on, when your partner gets home, I want you to ask them to do the same thing. And I assure you, we'll start a very interesting conversation. We opened an Oprah show hotline where we asked viewers to do the same thing and asked them to do it anonymously, to tell us what five words described their marriage. And here is what some of you revealed. I would describe our relationship as stagnant, sometimes lonely, fixable, worth working towards, but also passionless. Deceit, dishonesty, distrust, horrible, and mean.

2:23Invigorating, intimate, joyful, its balanced, and its spiritual. Passionless, frustrating, completely platonic, separate, and lonely. Lonely, loveless, chaotic, friendship, hopelessness. I really need to find myself again. End of message. Okay, my guest today is an old friend and says that making this list could be one of the first steps to transforming your relationship into something more, a real spiritual partnership. He is the author of one of my favorite books of all time, The Seat of the Soul. That's the book that's always by my bedside. Please welcome back Gary Zukav. Nice to see you, Gary.

3:08We are here today talking about spiritual partnerships. First of all, I want to clear up what does spiritual mean, because a lot of people think it means religion. And we are not talking about religion. We are talking about, when we say spirit... We're talking about your soul. But in practical terms, we're talking about getting to know yourself. Yeah. Getting to know what you're feeling, what you're thinking, what you're intending, what your fears are... Yeah. ...and what your loves are. And that is what being spiritual means. That is what it means. While you're walking on the earth, if you're praying all the time, that can help.

3:47But if you erupt in anger, if you're jealous, if you're resentful, you are a spiritual person if you have set the intention to heal those parts of yourself that are creating destructively in this world and in your life. So today we're talking about making marriages or relationships, partnerships, a spiritual partnership. Are most marriages spiritual partnerships, would you say? No. No. But millions are becoming spiritual partnerships. Okay. And what does spiritual partnership mean? A spiritual partnership is a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. And so that means when you go into marriage, you go into marriage with the understanding that your spirit is going to grow, and in order to grow, it's going to be challenged in many ways, correct?

4:37And his spirit is going to grow, and it's going to be challenging to him and to you in many ways. That's a spiritual partnership. Right, right, if you recognize that. Yes, a spiritual partnership is a new dynamic. It's different from a traditional marriage. And by the way, a spiritual partnership doesn't necessarily mean that it's a couple's dynamic. It doesn't. That it's only for two people. A spiritual partnership can be your biological family. Yes. It can be co-workers. It can be a sports team. It can be your friends. It can be the PTA. Whenever there are people together who know that they are equals and they are together for the purpose of spiritual growth, that's a spiritual partnership.

5:15And by spiritual growth, you mean growing themselves. Yes. Growing themselves. Yes. And being willing to let the other person grow themselves. Precisely. Okay. On Oprah.com, we asked, do you believe that there is one true partner that completes you? And 60 % of those who responded said, yes. They believe that there is a soulmate and there is a one and only soulmate, and that soulmate comes into your life and that soulmate completes you. That's a myth. Only you can complete yourself. Correct. No one can complete you for you. And that's why so many marriages fail, because people go into the relationship looking to be completed.

5:57And we got tricked that way. with Tom Cruise. Love Tom. Love Tom. But when Tom said that to, who was it, Renee Selweger? When he said, you complete me. What was that movie? What was it? Jerry Maguire. Jerry Maguire. When he said, you complete me, and we all went, oh, she completes him. No, she can't. She can't complete him. And this dynamic of a romantic attachment, of feeling that someone is going to complete you, is going to lead to disappointment. And everyone knows that's the honeymoon phase Yeah. That comes to an end. It's got to come to an end because you begin to see eventually that all of your expectations that you put on someone else were unrealistic.

6:38You begin to see his anger or his shyness. You begin to see his fears. He begins to see your need to please or your need to dominate. These are all the things that we need to heal. And there is the power struggle. Power struggle is continual. Yeah. In some cases. Mm-hmm. Gary says that to help understand the current state of your marriage or any relationship, go back and ask yourself, what was my... I love this. What was my real intention when I entered this relationship? Dr. You can always tell what you have intended in the past by looking at what you're experiencing in the present. Now, if what you're experiencing in the present is painful, you can look at what you did to create it.

7:18And once you make that connection, then you can begin to create differently by making different choices. And, by the way, Oprah, I do want to say with the this for a moment about marriage and spiritual partnership. I am married. Linda and I are married. And we have a spiritual partnership above all. There are hundreds of millions of individuals who are marriage partners who are realizing that there is more that they want from their marriage than simply raising the kids, surviving, getting a second home. They want something...they want lives of meaning and purpose and fulfillment. Okay, let's go back to intention, because intention rules my life.

7:54And you know that that started when I first read Seat of the Soul. I read Seat of the Soul, when, in 1989? Mr. Nine. And I called up Gary. This is before I had a book club. So I called up Gary Zukav and I had to explain, I had to go O-P-R-A-H because he didn't have a television and hadn't seen the show. And what struck me about Seat of the Soul was the principle of intention. Can you explain that? Mr. Yes. Intention is your act of creation. You create with your choices, but what you really choose is your intention. Yeah. An intention is a motivation. It is the reason that you make the choice. For example...

8:36I got it. ...someone may say, my intention is to make more money. I want a new job so I can make more money. Well, that we can call an out-tension. That's what you want to do in the physical world. But why do you want to make more money? Why do you want the job to do that? That would be the intention. That's the intention. And so what Gary is saying is that your intention always determines what the outcome is going to be. It de...yes, it determines the consequences that you create. For example, someone may want to make more money so they can buy a more impressive car, so they can feel better about themselves.

9:11Or we have a friend at home who works three jobs because his wife has a potentially life-threatening illness and he doesn't have health insurance. Okay. These are vastly different intentions. One is based in fear, the feeling of inadequacy, and the need to impress others with a car, with a home. The other is based purely in love. And so if you have the intention, for example, of buying the car because you want to impress other people, what is more likely to be the outcome? You will start drawing to you people in your lives who are trying to impress you. And by the way, that is the pursuit of external power.

9:46Yeah. Yeah. That's trying to change the world to make you feel better. Okay. What five words describe your marriage? Gary Zukav says that your answers could be the first step in transforming your relationship into a spiritual partnership. It can be that way if you do something about it, because a lot of people are going to write it down and then not do anything about it. That's correct. If you want to have the kind of relationship that your heart yearns for, you have to create it. You can't depend on somebody else creating it for you. And don't you have to be in tune or in touch with what your heart really is yearning for, because I think a lot of people are yearning for the picture.

10:25They are yearning for that picture of Tom Cruise saying to Renee Zellweger, you complete me. They're yearning for the romantic notion of what they think love is. Oh, that's a good point. When I say what your heart wants, I'm not talking about a romantic heart. I'm talking about the healthiest, most grounded, powerful place in you, what it wants, the meaning that it wants, what gifts do you want to give to the world? What is your potential? Why are you on the earth? You have a reason. Fulfill it. Okay. Sheila and Jim came up with these words to describe their marriage. The five adjectives I'd use to describe a marriage are sucks, sad, boring, lonely, on edge, lacking, tiring, definitely on edge, and empty, and tiring, retiring.

11:17Sheila and I have been married 15 years. We've got three wonderful boys. We pretty much argue every day. Every day is a wildfire in our household. If you were to come into my house, you would feel such high-strung, high-level intensity, almost like it's ready to explode. I'm a screamer. My mom was a screamer, so I tend to be a screamer. There's always some type of conflict almost every day. Snide remarks, comments, criticisms, stuff like that. or it could be knock down, drag outs. Unfortunately, it's words cut deep. If I could go back and there's a hundred things I wish I would never have said, I just hate it.

11:57I hate it with a passion. There's times I've thought about calling quits, throwing in the towel, but I like to pride myself that I'm number one, a man of my word. And whenever we took our vows, till death do you part? To me, that means death do you part. And I would endure hell, torture, punishment, anything, to hold our family together. We've been through a lot together. A lot. And so I can't see throwing 15 years away. Well, welcome to you both. And I know that's hard to say on national television in front of everybody, but I think that probably, I would say, millions of people out there identify with your adjectives.

12:43But I heard that you said to the producers that just writing those adjectives down, those words, really was an eye-opening for you? That's actually the first time I'd ever admitted it. Really? Admitted it. I mean, I'd always felt it and basically ignored it, pretty much, but that's the first time I've ever verbalized it. Really? In 15 years? Fifteen years. For you also? No. I'm more vocal, but he doesn't always try to talk. and work things out, and he doesn't. He doesn't. So you understand what we're talking about by spiritual partnership, right? You understand that, about your soul being able to grow, your purpose on earth being able to be fulfilled, and yours equally as so, because you're equals.

13:26What do you want to say to them about what's going on in their marriage? I can feel the love that you have. So I want you to call upon that. And I'm not talking about it in a romantic way. you have the opportunity, and everyone has the opportunity, to realize that you can use these painful interactions that you have to grow, each of you in your own way, not to change each other. And as you do, that infuses spiritual partnership into your marriage. For example, you said you would endure hell and torture to hold your family together. That means that you will endure hell and torture in order to grow spiritually, to become a healthy and wholesome person, because that's what is required to hold your family together.

14:15And that means looking at the parts of you that you need to change in order to do that. I'm calling these parts of your personality that are based in fear, the parts that make the snide comments, the part that react when they hear snide comments, the part that say things that hurt. Okay. I think you need to explain what you mean by fear. Because men say, and I'm sure a lot of men in this audience, I'm not afraid of anything, so I'm not acting out of fear. So can you explain what you mean by fear? Yes. I used to think that when I was at Green Beret. Yeah. I used to think, I'm not afraid of anything.

14:48I can jump out of an airplane. I can go on combat patrol. You think I can't? Come here. Let's talk about it. That...those are the words of a frightened person. When I say parts of your personality that are based in fear, I'm talking about parts of your personality that are angry, that are jealous, that are vengeful, that feel superior, that feel inferior, that need to please, that feel entitled, that feel unworthy. Yes. And because behind every piece of anger, all anger, is really just masquerading pain. And pain is masquerading fear. That's precisely it. I didn't realize, Oprah, that I didn't have the courage when I was in the military to look at what I was most afraid of looking at.

15:31I was terrified to be ridiculed. I didn't have the courage to see that what I was really afraid of was not living up to expectations, other people's and mine. I was afraid of being rejected. Isn't the ultimate fear, though, what you're describing here with this couple and everybody, the ultimate fear is, is that I'm not good enough? That is the ultimate fear, that I'm intrinsically flawed, that there's something wrong with me, that if people knew me the way I really am, they wouldn't want to be with me. Okay. So people lash out. Any time anybody's lashing out at you, it is really because of their own pain and their own fear.

16:09Precisely. So when you're with someone who's angry, you're with someone who's frightened. And instead of looking at each other in the judgmental ways that you have been, understand that the person you're speaking with is frightened. And you said, I don't want to throw away 15 years. You will throw away the next 15 years unless you begin to use these interactions that you're having in order to grow spiritually. That means to become more emotionally aware, to start making responsible choices about your intentions, which means become aware of what you're intending because that's what you're creating.

16:44And so if you look at the intentions that you have when you speak with each other in these ways, you'll see that you're creating exactly what you were intending. And it's so, so painful. Okay. So to be more specific, for example, you're in an argument and what you, when you lash and you say something that you want to be hurtful, you want to cut them, you want to put them in their place. And what that does is cuts them, it puts them in their place, and the consequence of that is their reaction to you. And so that's what you're really talking about by intention, because your intention was to upset the person by cutting them or saying something snide to them.

17:20And the effect is that the energy of that intention comes back to you in direct proportion that you put it out. And so they're always doing this, right? That's right. Yeah. So what would be the words that you would use to describe the marriage that you want? Romantic. I would really like to be romantic. I said spiritual bonding, too, or I thought that, too, because I thought about when we got married and we did the unity candle. To me, that was a spiritual thing. You're bringing two totally different people together, and you're bonding together to become one. and happy and not so tiring. I just want to live forever with them.

17:59But, look, can I stop you on the romance thing? Because I'm telling you, romance has screwed us up. We are screwed by romance in this country. We are screwed by it.

18:12So when you say, you know, when you say, you know, I want to be romantic, women want the guy to bring you flowers. What you want is to have a flower on your mind, in your mind, in your heart. So it doesn't matter how big the real bouquet is. What you want is the relationship to come from what is real and truthful between the two of you, and that is where the romance comes from. It comes out of something that is real. Because you can light the candles and have the roses and, you know, the chocolate and all that stuff, and it really doesn't mean anything, because it's not coming from a real place.

18:44I guess my romance, what I mean by that, I mean, I don't... I love, of course, I love flowers and candy and all that. Yeah. But for him to just tell me he loves me, tells me that I'm the one. I'm perfect. No, I'm not perfect. But, you know, that... You're the one for him. Yes. That I'm the one for him, that I could... I'm the best mom that I could be, you know, that he makes me feel like I'm somebody. But that can't happen if he's angry and you're angry. Right. Even if it did happen, no matter how many times he would say it to you, you wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't in your heart believe it.

19:18Right. That is the heart of the issue. When you understand that you are loving and compassionate, that you are worth being on this earth, that you are worthy of your life, that you have gifts to give, then you don't need your husband or your friends or your children to tell you. And as long as you do, you'll try to pull that from them, and that is attempting to manipulate them so that you'll feel better about yourself. Now, when you develop in you the strength and the clarity that lets you know that you are a soul on this earth with gifts to give and that your painful experiences are self-created, you can begin to create differently.

20:03Yeah. That's really hard to get, though. That is your...that is the path of your own spiritual growth, to realize that your painful experiences are created by yourself, that he's not doing it to you, she's not doing it to you, that you are doing it yourself. That is what spiritual growth is. We've been saying this for years on this show, that most people don't realize that you are attracted in ways that you don't even understand to your mate, to your partner, because that person has the most to teach you and the most to begin to heal the parts of yourself that need healing. Isn't that true? Yes, that's true.

20:36And not only to your partner, but to everyone. Your energy attracts like energy. So if you want... I say that about this company. We are all attracted to each other at Harpo, because our energies have drawn ourselves to this place because of what we have to give to the world. Precisely. I want you to meet Lisa and Alistair, who've been married for 12 years. I'd say the five adjectives that I would use to describe my marriage would be indifferent, lifeless, apathetic, fake, resentful. Boring, routine, unfulfilling, uneventful. People in our community think, I mean, we are, you know, still pretty much the id couple.

21:18You know, we have this beautiful home and all this, but it doesn't mean everything is where it needs to be on the inside. She's a very strong-willed woman, and I don't think she knows how strong-willed she is. Her opinion is her opinion. I don't think either one of us are understanding or listening. Sometimes we'll look at each other like we have two heads or something, like, where are you coming from? We see things differently, and I don't think she's come to that realization. So sometimes it's just like, you know, because she'll look at me crazy. Like, you just don't get it. I'm thinking to myself, no, you don't get it.

21:46If there's a problem, let's talk it out, let's work it out, let's do this. When there's some sort of disagreement, I'll voice my opinion one time, and then she'll voice her opinion over and over. I'm not one to argue. I think a lot of times she wants me to say, OK, you're completely right. And if I don't feel that way, I'll be like, whatever. I think I'm just asking for basic communication. We're definitely in a rut. Did you say you're definitely in a rut? Yes. Yes. What do you want to say to them, Gary? It's good that you're here because you can begin to use your experiences for you to grow, Lisa, and for you to grow, Alistair, instead of being locked in these power struggles that you're in.

22:27Now, you are spending your time together now trying to change each other. And that's squandering that pain. you can use that pain to change yourself. For example, Alistair, you say she doesn't know how strong-willed she is. I think she does know. And I think you know how strong-willed you are. You just have a different way of expressing it. You lay back. You withdraw. You let her talk. But you don't change. And you're locked in that struggle. And it's painful. But you have love. You have a history. and you can begin to draw on that love and that history in order to grow. What does that mean? It means to heal the parts of your personality, Lisa, and your personality, Alistair, that are keeping you from moving into your fullest potential, from giving the gifts that you have to give.

23:25These are the gifts that you can give each other, to each grow into the healthiest, most wholesome person that you can become, to become emotionally aware, to become aware of what you're feeling when you're locked in these struggles. Okay. I'm going to ask this couple, and I'm asking those of you at home, what is your... This is a really powerful question. What is your intention for your marriage? And that does not mean what do you want for your marriage. It is what do you want and why do you want it. The why do you want it would explain the intention. So what is your intention for your marriage, Alistair?

24:03I think we both believe in helping others. I've always been involved in helping other people. And when I met Lisa, she was a very supportive person. She supported me all through college as far as what I was trying to accomplish. And I think we are a giving family. And I think what we want most is to be able to give a lot. But sometimes we disagree on things. Ms. I'm not satisfied by that answer. Gary, maybe. I'm not satisfied by the answer because I see what you're talking about. I do understand what you're talking about. But I remember doing a show many years ago with fathers. And there was an African-American father who stood up and said something I never forgot.

24:48He says, you know, every father has a dream for his family. And I never thought of it that way. He says, every father has a dream for his family. He may not be able to fulfill the dream, but every father has a dream for his family. So, what I'm trying to figure out is, have you even thought about what is the dream, what is the vision, and what is the intention of your marriage? Well, most of all, to develop our kids. Okay. I mean, my kids are everything. But before you married and before you, I mean, before you, as you were, you know, doing the romance thing, and before you had children, what was the intention?

25:26Which is, that's a really powerful question you may have to think about. But what was the intention of you getting married? Because I loved it. Love. What was your intention? Well, and for me, I don't think, and either of us, I mean, we were college sweethearts and, you know, campus couple and all that good stuff and what everybody thought was the perfect couple. And I think maybe they perceive that just in the fact that, you know, we had a good, like, best friends and we got along. We had the same, our intention for our lives, you know, our goals, you know, we're pretty much in sync. And that, you know, so now as I think people still look at us that way, as this couple, they're doing this, they've adopted children, they give, it's in the community, they're very active.