Eli Finkel

Like I can get past this and I certainly love my daughter, but

I need to stop trying to have fun because if I'm trying to enjoy my life and I'm trying to enjoy you, I keep end up disappointed.

And she was very upset about that.

And, you know, I made her cry.

I'm not proud of this at all, but she cried and thought, what, is this the end of us trying to live a good life together?

Are we just going to hunker down and be unhappy together?

But the truth is this ended up being the lowest point, but also the starting of where I started to recover a little bit

It took that moment before I started to get serious about making life better again.

And one of the major ways I did it was by recalibrating my expectations, yes, but also reinvesting in a way that made sure that I was more connected to my wife than we had been.

And it took some work.

And it did require that we lower expectations in some ways and then try to meet those lowered expectations.

And we were, in fact, able to do it.

But it certainly wasn't easy.

Some of your listeners might be fans of Marcel Proust, who argues that mystery is not about traveling to new places, but about looking with new eyes.

And the love hacks are exactly that.

There are ways that we can try to experience the same relationship, but view it in a different way and therefore be a little bit happier in the relationship itself.

Right.

And I'm not saying it's magic.

I'm not saying it's the easiest thing to do.

But I'm saying that with some effort, we can get a little better at this.