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Being married for 12 plus years, um, it's a blessing, man. It's a blessing. Um, it got to a point in my life, I got to a point in my life before marriage where I was I was looking to get married. Like I really wanted like a partner, somebody to share my life with. And of course I had read up like I was like how to find a wife, you know, what to look for, this and that. And at the end of the day, it was like finding a wife who believed the same things that I believed. As far as like faith goes and believing in God and stuff like that. And that was like the main factor. Of course, you have you know being being attractive to somebody, uh, but that's not everything. Like the main thing was like having uh a wife, a spouse that believes in God, believes in Jesus, and is is actually working on her relationship with God, with Jesus, and constantly evolving, like as I as I am, as I was at that point. I mean, because you can say that, like, and it sucks because in that world, people can say that they're a Christian, and that can be misleading because they're using that to try to get into a relationship for the wrong reasons. Um so even even in the church, even in like even in your church or wherever you are looking for that woman, there's there's women that are using that title uh Christian or believer or whatever to manipulate whatever they're whatever they're trying to do with uh in relation to the opposite sex, or the opposite, the the person of the opposite gender, whatever the person, those relations, right? So being a Christian in marriage, or a Christian looking for marriage, you have to vet the Christian world, yeah, and you have to vet the secular, the people in the secular world, like outside of church, somebody that you might meet outside of church, and seeing where they stand biblically, you know, in their relationship with God, and that's what I that's what I was having to do. Um so and and I dated a few people before I met my wife, um or married before I married my wife. And once I once I found my wife, I was like, okay, we were both on board, we both wanted to get married, and that was it. That's the decision we made. Um and no, I mean, there's no regrets, there's no like I should have done this, should have done that, la la la. Because at the end of the day, when you when we look back at it like that, it that's not the that's not a way to look at it, you know. Um and then so I guess one of the things when going into marriage is your expectations your expectations change. My expectations of marriage changed because I thought marriage was gonna be like this, right? Um, but then it turned out to be this, and so at that point I had to rearrange my mind to adjust to how marriage is gonna be because it's no it was no longer me living by myself, it was me living with another person, and I'm expecting this person to be, I'm expecting my wife or my spouse to be a certain way inside the Christian marriage or inside the marriage, and when they're not like that, my expectations are like, wait, wait a minute, I thought marriage was supposed to be like this. Um and then I had then I had then you have those thoughts like what's happening, like you know what I mean, and then you you have these doubts, like why did I get married? You know, do I divorce this person? Do I should I not be with this person? And then in times like that, like in times like that, it's that's where I have to remember when my wife and I were at the altar in the church reading our vows to each other, and it was like a covenant between my me and my wife and God. Like God was the one there through a pastor or somebody that that ceremoniously did our marriage, right? And in front of people, in front of the congregation, like it's one of those things where you say what that covenant means to you, to your wife in front of people, in front of God, right? And I think back to those vows, like we're in it for the long haul, like until death do us part. And there's no there's there's some reasons biblically to leave your spouse. Um you know, and and I'm just I'm talking to those people that may have been in that situation that might be saying, like, oh well, my spouse is this, that, they did this, whatever. They're abusive, they they've been uh in fornication, you know, those types of situations. But but other situations like I'm talking about that where I think married like an expectation, like, oh, my wife should should do this for me, or she should do that, or I should do this for her, or every we should always be happy all the time, and all this stuff, those things are just like a reminder of why we got married in the like of our vows in the first place. Um and then you start working on those, and then you start working on those particular points in marriage, you start communicating with your spouse. Um, one of the things I'm thinking about now is like trusting the other person, like learning how to trust another person that you're in a relationship with is difficult because you might have been in a relationship prior to that relationship. Um it didn't work out, you couldn't trust them because they did this to you, whatever, yada yada. So trust like happens, it starts before marriage, and then you get into marriage, and then you continue trusting them, and then that trust gets strong to where you're not you're not worried about where they're going, you're not worried about who they're talking to, you're not worried about uh who they're calling, who they're messaging, you know, all this stuff, all this insecure thoughts that that one might have in a marriage regarding trust. So it's an ongoing thing. Marriage is an ongoing thing. It's it's it's constantly evolving, constantly changing for people that are in Christian marriages, that believe in the vows that they said, you know, at the altar before God, in front of people, in front of the congregation. People that actually believe in that stuff, it's it's an on it's an evolving thing. You evolve with that person. You learn you learn how they are, you know what I mean? Like you learn how yourself are, like you learn stuff about yourself. And I tell this to people, like, marriage is is the next level for single people. Like after singlehood, the next the next part of growing as a person is getting into a marriage. If you're seeking marriage, because I know the Bible talks about people that um and these are these I'm talking about whole like people that are actually striving to live for God. I'm not talking about singles that are promiscuous, I'm talking about singles according to the Bible. Like it it talks about single people that can stay single throughout their life and devote their life to God. But it but Paul says too, like in that same scripture, that if if you're you're burning with passion, like you you you need to be with someone physically, then get married. You know what I mean? That's what Paul says. But if you can handle the singleness, you know, where you're where you don't burn with passion with wanting to be with another, you know, person in intimacy-wise, then be single. But if you can't do that, then get married, you know. So for the for those marriages, get the next level is to get married, right? And then the next level after marriage is having kids. Having kids changes your perspective on life, it changes changes you, both your wife and you change at the same time, and you share that experience of change. It's just another level of being a human on this earth, being responsible with who you are as a person, um, and realizing that realizing that I can still have a life outside not outside of my my marriage or my family, but still be an individual person. Like I'm trying stand-up comedy. Um, I'm podcasting. You know what I mean? My my kids and my wife know about that part of my life, even though they're not a part of that, if that makes sense, you know what I mean? Like my wife, I I've asked my wife several times to do a podcast with me. She says maybe. And, you know, and that's fine. She does, you know, they do things that are outside of me being a part of their thing. Um, so being able to still have that type of independence in a marriage is still possible, even though you're still with one partner throughout the rest of your life. And that's another thing too, like intimacy-wise in a marriage with when you when you're newly married, you get to know that person intimacy, in intimacy-wise, like intimately. Um, you know, and that's a whole nother whole nother realm of the marriage in itself. Because if you grew up watching corn, then your expectations in going into the marriage are expectations, right? And once you go into mar to the marriage and you're intimate with your wife or your your with your wife, your spouse, or your husband or whatever, you take those expectations that you had seen in those, you know, prior, and those expectations will be shot down. Because you think that, oh, intimacy needs to be like this, we need to do it like this, because that's the way I saw it. That's because that's how our brain had been wired, because watching that stuff, and that changes, and corn is bad to begin with, like, right, even before you get like altogether, before marriage, in marriage, outside of marriage, like it's it's bad. When you take that into a marriage, you take those expectations, and then those expectations are shattered. Some marriages end because of that, you know what I mean? It's which is sad because we have a misunderstanding of how intimacy works or how it should work. Um once you get past that, then you're you start to learn that that's not the entire portion of marriage. Like, that's not all marriage is about. You st my dad, and I like I coined my dad for always telling me this. He's like, it's not just about intimacy. That's just a small, he says, that's he says, that's just a small portion of being married. And like, I understand that now, like, that makes a lot of sense to me. Uh now being married for 12 years, and he's been married for, I don't know, a bunch of years. Um, more way more than me. And but that that's that's just something that that's just a part of marriage. And it's not so much about being happy in a marriage, it's more about being joyful. Because there's gonna be times when you're happy. When you're when you go out on date night or something. You go, my wife and I, we've traveled a couple times, we went to a couple of places, and both places we went to out of state, we went to a comedy show. We like seeing comedy shows. We were happy. I would say we were happy at those moments. She was happy. My wife is happy. I like when she's happy. Sometimes you'll have down times where where you're both like discouraged from work, discouraged from be from from parenting, like, are we doing this right? You know what I mean? You know, discouraged from us, from like me not not going to work out or not being healthy. You know what I mean? You're gonna have those times when you're going through that with your spouse, and that those aren't gonna be happy times, you know what I mean? So that the word joy comes up where you where joy is not so much happy, it's more like I'm I see what's happening. It's like joy is like, I see what's happening, I see what this is, but I'm not going to let it define my marriage. I'm not going to let it um take over the thought process in my marriage. And you get into those those valleys to where you start finding stuff out about yourself that you want to change so that the marriage can continue to be joyous. Um things like, oh, I didn't know I was um I didn't know I was I was because of my ADHD that I show that I show my wife that I don't listen, right? Because there's times when she feels like I'm not listening to her, and like it and it and it and I'm not truly not because I'm either focusing on like say I'm at the computer doing something, right? To get you need to get my attention. I found that you need to get my attention first, like tap me on the shoulder, and then start talking to me. And that's when you have my attention. But if I'm typing and you're trying to talk to me from what from like right here, I'm not listening because my brain is focused on something, right? Like that aspect of marriage, we've had to figure out. Like being ADHD in a marriage is another thing. Uh, topic that I'll talk about probably in another video, being ADHD in marriage. You start to learn, my my spouse at that point starts to learn about ADHD and how I am. So you start to learn about each other, you start to adapt to each other in the marriage, and that's what makes marriage marriage. You start changing for the betterment of the relationship with your spouse. You get into finances, you get into all this. There's there's a bunch of avenues of marriage where you work together, you work together. It's it's a process where you're working together. No partner is greater than the other, it's just two people in it together. That's what it is. Basically, what it is. But, anyways, I just came up with another topic that I can talk about in another video. If there's topics you like for me guys to talk about, uh leave them in the comments, and it helps me to come up with stuff to talk about as far as my experience goes in those particular topics. But thanks a lot, you guys, for watching. Let me know how you like this new sound. Thanks a lot. Bye.