Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
[Music] yes [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you are in the world it’s dr janice hooker fortman with relationship matters tv i hope everyone is having a beautiful morning afternoon or evening well you know i always start my show with just a little bit of something i’d like to say and i’m usually on my soapbox and i thought i could get down off of my soapbox but it seems as though i can’t because that now there’s another variant i think they’re going to run out of letters so but this is ba something or other whatever but now um it’s reinfecting people with the covet virus what they’re saying is that you should wear your mask especially if you are indoors you’re not wearing your mask out there wear your please so we can get over this we can get through with this i know we’re tired i’m tired i’m sick and tired of that mask and sometimes i feel like i can’t even breathe but i don’t want to get infected and i don’t want to infect you so i’ll get down off of my soapbox now well i know that what we’re going to talk about is something that the majority of us out there and in here really want to talk about we want to talk about how to keep our marriages together i tell my god daughter all the time it is when they say marriages work they mean it it is worth but we have a lovely couple on today and let me find i want to tell you a little bit about them before i bring them on this is shiva and sula wait wait a minute let me get it right sula jhana and if and he told me how to pronounce it correctly so if i’m pronouncing that incorrectly gotta forgive me but you gotta tell me but anyway let me tell you about them they have been married 30 plus years and that also with pastoral expertise they’ve created a unique mentorship process that guarantees breakthrough for married couples facing breakdown they live in the niagara region of canada and they are the parents of three married children they’re gonna tell you a little bit more about themselves as we bring them in so right now i want to bring to you hi hello you told me how to pronounce your name correctly know your name yeah how are you all today
Jiva and Sulojana
We’re doing great thank you
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I’m happy i’m happy i’m happy now you know what you say that you guarantee and you very seldom get guarantees but you guarantee for married couples on the brink of breakdown you can fix all of that in as little as 10 weeks you guarantee that
Jiva and Sulojana
Yes
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay all right so let me let me start with this i have a question and my question is do you think all couples should have pre-marital counseling or coaching even couples who’ve been married before
Jiva
Oh absolutely i mean i was a pastor for over 35 years and and so i did my fair share of uh weddings uh and so i always made sure that was very strictly enforced in our denomination that you could not get married until you went through some form of marriage preparation now marriage preparation is a bit of a a nebulous term in a way uh because what that actually turns into in practice varies from place to place uh so for example when i did marriage preparation you know i always started people off by getting them to do an inventory we use the prepare enrich inventory it’s called and then had a feedback session and if that assessment showed certain well it showed all the strengths and growth areas i you know showed them shared that with them they got a copy of that part of the report and then you know there was something glaring showing that they really needed to address then you know you gave them some tools or sometimes you referred them to someone else they needed more help but that was about the extent of it at certain stage of my ministry i used to do like a six week course where we used to bring couples together yeah now our son our youngest son just got married and the pastor that married him here and his wife together actually met with them and said six times yeah yeah six times one-on-one and went into great depth uh you know in marriage preparation so marriage preparation is absolutely necessary what we know now is that the more thorough it is the better it is for the couple because sadly some of those couples that i did the two sessions with uh are not married anymore today
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay so now you’re talking about marriage preparation but i understand that you two had an arranged marriage and so you didn’t have the preparation so you had never met each other so but you’ve been married over 38 years so tell us tell us about that
Sulojana
Yeah so we we did meet um maybe you know not like dating or anything like that we may meant maybe two or three times before we got married in the presence of our family and only only one time one of those meetings that i really have a what we would call like a heart-to-heart conversation with her
Jiva
15 minutes
Sulojana
15 minutes yeah yeah and they thought that was way too long we didn’t need that much time to get to know each other yeah yeah you know yeah yeah this is 38 years ago and it’s it’s the culture that we were brought up in that’s all i knew and uh jeeva was here in canada already for a few years but he was still you know ingrained in the indian culture so so for us for me that was normal you know so and it worked for our parents our you know aunts uncles so that’s all i knew and i i just uh believed it will work for us also you know i i knew there will be challenges there will be you know difficulties um but you know the uh with with the with the you know the the example our parents had you know and the the family said uh i knew we can we should be we will be able to get through and and also you know we had that faith we came from we come from the faith background uh you know having gone you know in the midst of everything that we do and we know you know with with the help of god we can overcome any challenges that we may face
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes so how did so did they choose you for him or did they choose him
Jiva
Well the arranged marriage process uh works in two ways sometimes families will just you know arrange between themselves families that know each other say hey i think our dog our daughter would be a good match for your son or the other way around and so the marriage gets arranged that way in our case because uh our family was already in canada for i think it was about seven years at that point then the second method kicked in which is where you work through a marriage broker and so yeah so there are these people called marriage brokers and and so the marriage broker basically has a list of parents who are looking for a groom for their daughter and another list of parents who are looking you know for a bride for their son and so so they assess you know the the suitability uh of the couple for each other uh and one of the things that uh that factors into arrange marriages way more than it does in north america in you know in the traditional you know dayton mate scene is the importance of your families being compatible and so you don’t usually see marriages arranged where somebody is like really upper class the other one is lower class you know or different faith backgrounds um and so so when for example when our parents gave the broker a list of qualities then they would basically stress those things it has to be a christian you know has to have a degree uh it has to be really good-looking and then no drinking smoking you know those kind of things were important for our parents um also yeah the fake background yeah yeah and yeah yeah and so so the brokers you know generally speaking do a very good job of matching and so what they do is like in our case the broker came to us and said you know i believe i found a good match you know for your son he said he spoke to my dad i wasn’t involved in the conversation and gave some details about slozana and then my parents said to me hey it looks like there’s a good match for you uh how about we set up a time and go and see the girl and meet her family and and so so that’s that’s how it gets going it’s essentially the families that do the arranging uh you you have a say in it like once we had our meeting at that point both of us had a veto we could have said i could have said no we’re not going to do this or she could have said no i don’t like him you know not good look good looking enough for me or whatever the reason maybe but uh but the parents you know they respect our wishes and the other thing to dr janice um they also give not just one choice they they’ll give you a few few choices um with my parents you know that’s how it goes so you you kind of go through a few before you pick one so yeah yeah unless unless things really click with the first one
Sulojana
Exactly then you are clicked right yeah yeah weekly
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay so now you will enter in an arranged merit how did you decide to become marriage coaches how did that come about
Jiva
Okay yeah so that actually happened very late uh in the process of i mean through our years of marriage uh there was decide two decisive moments uh one of them was just over 10 years ago there’s a canadian christian network called crossroads and and they wanted to do something unique with the love there do you remember the love there that came out of the uh fireproof years ago kind of yeah it was called the 40 day love there uh there’s the fireproof movie was with kirk cameron it was about a firefighter whose marriage was falling apart and then his father-in-law gives him this book and in the in the book uh of the called the 40-day love there there were dares or challenges that they that he had to do every day uh kind of you know doing something pleasant for his wife that was a surprise that type of thing and so at the end of the movie people wanted copies of the book uh because it worked so well the only problem was there was no book there were only three there’s that were written to the movie script so the producers actually came up with a book called the 40 day love there and couples started to use it and like it was really impacting their marriages and so this christian television station said we want to introduce that to our viewers however we want to add a twist to it and the twist is we’re going to invite three couples who are at different stages of their marriage you know to actually go through it for 40 days and give us a report a video report every day of what they did how the dare went you know and if they messed up or whatever and so we were one of three couples that uh that were chosen and you know like and so we we i’m sure yeah we’ll do it it started to have an impact on our marriage um and even even though at that point we’ve been married for 26 years yeah i remember that yeah there were still some things that you know that were in there that strengthened our marriage and the other thing that happened is because um of what people saw us reporting we had couples contact us quite often the the ladies contacted us uh not the guys but the women contacted us and said hey i’m going through this you know can you pray for me can you give me some advice etc so anyway when the whole season was over the 40 day season was over uh slogan turned to me and said
Sulojana
I i said to him uh i think you know god wants us to do something more uh in this not this is not the end you know this is just the beginning of something but um jeeva wasn’t quite ready he said you know i’ve worked with uh this was you you have to tell the exact words i’ll i’ll try uh you know i’ve worked with married couples before uh many times and um uh yeah and i said slogan i said you don’t want to go there because they’ll suck the life out of you
Jiva
Yeah yeah so i i i was disappointed you know i i knew in my heart we are meant to do something more because we would go somewhere and people would see us and they’ll say oh you’re the couple who are on on that love there you know on uh 100 huntley street and and you know right away it will you know something will say in my heart you know there is a need out there you know for people you know and marriages uh people are you know searching and uh so i would again bring it up and diva said no no we are not ready we are not going to go there so this went down for a few years and then
Jiva
Yeah and then i started to mentor some some people most of them were business people high achieving uh professionals uh in the marketplace and i was bringing a faith perspective to them teach them you know how to hear the voice of god for their businesses to make wise decisions and so on and and these guys were doing really really well applying some of the the strong the the foundational biblical principles that i was teaching them but then it seemed like they were hitting a ceiling okay yeah and so i’m thinking this doesn’t make sense because they’re doing everything right and and they’re not really progressing you know exponentially and so i just started praying and asking god like what’s going on you know what am i doing wrong what shall i be doing differently and i just got this one sentence response from the holy spirit he said ask them how they’re doing in their marriages and so when i asked that question i found out that uh like virtually every one of them you know had some issue in their marriage like their marriage was not you know like totally joyful harmonious uh you know anyway and so at that point like okay that’s the bottleneck and and so uh so i still didn’t do anything but all of a sudden i started getting phone calls you know not just from those guys and you but some others totally random would call me and say hey uh uh you know like we’re having some difficulties in our marriage and because of uh their profiles they’re high-profile people people in leadership we just don’t want to go to anybody can you help us and so so this is you know like kept on coming and so after a while i just couldn’t resist anymore okay this is the holy spirit that is right well i said to slojana okay i think we’re gonna go for it uh and do something uh and so that that’s how we actually got started with marriage meditation so this was about um five six years ago
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah yeah about six years yeah hey so a question came in already okay it says as a pastor what is the most difficult issue that you have had to help repair uh the marriage with one of your couples
Jiva
Okay yeah well um you know i mean i’ll go from both pastoring and from mentorship okay one of the one of the biggest issues we find is that people neglect their marriage yeah in other words uh you start taking each other for granted and so like the things that you did before you got married or in the early years of your marriage and i’m not saying it’s going to be you know like all you know candlelight and wine and roses you know all the time it can turn easily but if you don’t do don’t keep that up you can easily you know turn into darkness and whining and cactus and then you start you know rubbing each other the wrong way being prickly and so a lot of it is actually neglect uh that contributes to it um you know and people get very busy you know with their work and uh or taking care of children whatever the case may be and uh and really i’ll can i just just boil this down to one sentence it is that you do not treat your spouse as the number one person in your life
Sulojana
All righty okay so it’s the priority you know priority in your life
Jiva
Yeah and and so sometimes out of that you know then people start doing stupid stuff you know and that’s where you know emotional affairs start happening and then move into physical adultery and so on uh but uh like you can pretty well trace it all back you know to to that neglect to lack of paying attention you know to each other communication yeah building on a strong foundation yeah it’s really interesting doctor january because i know you know you’re you also do coaching you know people people come to us and you know because i do coaching on a spiritual level for business people and stuff uh everybody agrees in the business world today that we need coaches and mentors in our lives yes yeah if you want to stay on track and then keep on reaching higher levels yes the funny thing is we think we can do marriage on our own and marriage is probably the most uh you know committed relationship that you will be in marriage is probably the uh the the most uh involved and uh and expensive enterprise that you enter into and when i say expensive not just cost you know like money-wise but in terms of relationships and so on and of course when children come along there’s parenting and if you get good models then you’ll you’ll do fine and the models may not doesn’t don’t just have to be your own parents and grandparents it could be people you connect with you know in your church in your workplace community whatever the case may be but if you don’t have it you try and do it on your own at some stage you know you are going to run into issues and and that’s why one of the one of the things that uh like like churches really need to be doing and if you look at growing thriving churches uh they will almost always have something that is designed to keep marriage couples on their toes keep on reminding there’s not a whole lot new you teach them you just have to keep on reminding them of the things that they keep on needing to do
Sulojana
Yeah yeah like a a marriage ministry of some sort
Jiva
Yes yeah yeah but not just a social thing you know like i’ve known of marriage ministries where people just get together have a good meal listen to a speaker go home and nothing changes no like a real in intensive involved marriage ministry is i’ll kind of be honest with you i think the best model for marriage ministry that i’ve seen is something where you pair up a couple who are young in their marriage with someone who’s been married for a few years and you help them develop a personal relationship maybe they go through a curriculum maybe they can take a book like ours and work through it together for 10 or 12 weeks but then maintain an ongoing relationship so when something comes up you know and if your parents are not available to provide you with that unfortunately a lot of times if you’re coming from a broken home that’s not available then you have another couple with whom you establish a relationship that can be there for you and maybe sometimes they don’t have to give you answers they just need to wrap their arms around you and say hey it’s going to work out don’t worry if this is something that you are for the course
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay so how do you recapture you know when you first meet and and that that first love and you’re feeling so good and but then as time goes on uh like you said you ended up you end up taking each other for granted or and not putting each other first so how do you recapture that is there ever a time when it’s too late
Jiva
Yeah you know um lots of couples that we have dealt with um so far no most of them you know they are they’re in in major trouble so what we try and do in the beginning is uh work on themselves first because you know this there’s not much of a relationship uh there are couples who come to us they are not even looking at each other so first of all you know we we try we teach them how to you know work on themselves you know spending some quiet time with god and you know some of the uh some of the faith the basic things yeah you know and
Jiva
Yeah i think another way to maybe rephrase that would be they need to rebuild the foundation okay you know and and and because of the the where we come from in terms of our faith background and so on uh there are a couple of principles that that are at work through our mentorship that are actually responsible for providing the kind of results and the guarantee that we offer number one is to recognize that that god created us as spirit beings with the soul in a body in other words like a lot of times when somebody has a problem a behavioral issue they try to change things at the behavioral level okay and and that will go on for a little while especially if you have some reinforcement possible reinforcement negative reinforcement somebody will change you know yeah if you don’t stop your drinking then i’m out of here buddy okay well that will force somebody to change if they want to change but that change will not last long if the problem has to do with something that is from their soul which is their mind will and emotions you know or something that is spiritual like what do we mean by spiritual i’ll boil this down very simply because of time a lot of spiritual issues in a marriage have to do with forgiveness [Music] yeah if couples learn to forgive each other very quickly we’ll be out of business so we have to teach people some of these basic things you know and so it’s not just about you know get yourself a date night going yes date night is good and it needs to be part of it that’s one of the healthy things that we do teach but that’s not the starting point you know that’s an outgrowth of what happens on the inside and so slowly started hitting on something i’ll just say this and then hand it over to her uh we have a saying that there are no such things as marriage problems but people with their own problems coupled together in a marriage
Sulojana
Okay so in the in the indian tradition when you come into marriage you bring your dowry with you uh in the western context when you come into a marriage you break your package yeah you bring your mother your dad your grandpa previous generations your bad experiences yeah trauma trauma you know uh any kind of abuse so if they are not dealt with it will show up you know you will um you’re seeing everything through that lens there at your spouse so you know that’s where you know like jiva said the forgiveness and we we send our couples to train people who can you know um go through um whatever they’ve been gone through in the early years of their life um lots of forgiveness prayers and you know uh just to clean themselves up so that you know they can you know have a good relationship healthy relationship with their spouse so that’s how it starts
Jiva
Yeah well you’ve you know you’ve heard the saying hurt people hurt people
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah
Jiva
Yeah and so in a marriage if you have two people who have and i prefer to use the word unhealed if they have um we all have wounds but if we have unhealed wounds that we come into the marriage with or that we inflict on each other during the marriage and we don’t seek healing for those wounds then we will continue to hurt each other and so that’s one of the big things we focus on is healing each other each of them individually so they can function together as a as two healed people relating to each other so now they don’t want to hurt each other
Sulojana
Okay yeah yeah and they’re they find it easier to forgive and and they’re both on common ground and this is another big uh you know issue is that you know when because not not two of no two of us are alike coming into a marriage as a matter of fact most of the time opposites attract and so our backgrounds are different even our level of maturity yeah you know in faith in emotional health you know maybe very very different and so unless we have some common ground some common principles some common practices and that’s what we start teaching them right off the bat beginning in the spirit level and then we take that you know you know into conflict resolution communication and so on but when both people are on the same ground huge difference and that’s what really our marriage mentorship does for couples
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay so let me ask you this i know you come from a christian perspective but what about do you have cl uh clients or couples that are not christian do you you know do you work with them and how does that work
Jiva
Okay well so far in our experience simply because of my pastoral background and the communities where people know us uh virtually all the couples that have come to us i would say virtually every couple that has come to us is from a christian background
Sulojana
Okay yeah yeah maybe one you know uh there are cases where one uh one person’s faith uh is stronger than the other spouse
Jiva
Yeah either one is more actively practicing their faith where the other one is yeah so they are you know like on different levels even though they wouldn’t label themselves as people of different faith now it’s funny i actually i ran you know our book and our mentorship by a mentor of mine you know uh brian kurtz who was jewish and uh and and brian said to me jiva yes you are writing this from a christian perspective but what you are sharing in your book is something that any couple can use
Sulojana
Yes
Jiva
Because the principles are universal you know we we provide a solid biblical foundation for everything that we have in the book however uh somebody who you know has a very different faith background or maybe even has no faith connection and still take and apply you know a lot of the stuff that we have in the book if they can get past you know the terminology you know or the the religious lingo that isn’t there
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay so um i gotta make take a quick break and we will come back because there are other questions that have come in and i want to try to get all of them in so so we’ll be right back right after this [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we are back with jiva and suladjana doing good okay all right now let’s okay so one of the questions that came in is has there been a relationship that you’ve worked on and it just didn’t work they just ended up splitting up anyway
Jiva
Uh absolutely yeah and and the reason is um because it takes two to make a relationship work
Sulojana
Okay
Jiva
Yeah and so if one person decides you know at some point that like they don’t have the will to keep it going and keep working uh then at that point sadly you know like our hands are tied and so so that that does happen but not not too many just a few right
Sulojana
Yeah we can count the number of them um yeah yeah
Jiva
Yeah but but it does happen you know and that’s why one of the things uh when we when we take somebody on to work with uh you know we really probe them at that point when they start working with us to make sure that both are a hundred percent committed to making the relationship work and if we don’t sense that we don’t take them on
Sulojana
Okay
Jiva
Yeah yeah yeah now now and we you know basically get them to check off omar like a box uh when we have the initial intake form and if they say the husband is more uh you know keen about it than the wife or the other way around we will still meet with them just to make sure what level of commitment they do have and uh but if they don’t have that distortion and say sorry you know like individual counseling is probably better for you
Sulojana
Okay
Jiva
Our process because we we want to get them both on common ground and for both them to be on common ground they both need to be in the same space the same place yeah we learned parts of this you know uh the hard way um we we used used to take on anybody and you know sometimes we felt like we wanted their marriage to work more than them and just so you know the uh the money the money back guarantee results guaranteed or money back for somebody to qualify for that we expect them to do some daily disciplines you know and and keep accountable to us we have an accountability tracker uh that they have to check off every day and they cannot miss a day if they miss a day then they forfeit the guarantee and so we we hold their feet to the fire now i’m not going to say that every couple that has got the bear the breakthrough has been 100 perfect but they’re very close they may miss one day here or there and and we can pretty well tell like when somebody starts uh you know being a little bit lacks about it and we call them on it like we’ve had a couple of times you know where we and we actually let one couple go uh because they would not maintain their daily accountability one of them
Sulojana
Yeah yeah yeah one of the one of the two would not do it and so it’s like guys you’re wasting your time the one spouse and money with us so let’s just end this right now uh and when you’re ready to do do it together uh then you know we we can talk and so so we we’re very very particular about that about that and that’s another ingredient in our whole process that actually makes it work uh is that very strict accountability
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay so now there are two usually main reasons when marriages kind of start having challenges and uh one is money and the other one is usually sex so do couples come to you and there’s just this issue you see that you know they really want to work it out but there’s this money issue so what examples uh have you had where the couples came in and it was all about money and what did you do about it
Jiva
Okay well uh money unfortunately causes way more stress than it are to in a marriage and uh you know way out of proportion you know to any other factor and it’s because money is our blood sweat and tears you know it’s not just you know like a dollar bill here and there and so the the the two issues that often uh cause a lot of stress in marriage with finances uh one is debt you know if they’ve gotten themselves into some you know bad spending habits and uh maxed out credit cards that type of thing uh then quite often like one person will get blamed for it and and that rightly so in our case this is actually a very real life example as i wish you had to ask the question but but i was the one that actually racked up a lot of credit card debt that she didn’t know about which is the second issue in finances is the lack of transparency and and so so for example like we’ve dealt with couples who once had a like a gambling problem uh never the other person ever knew about it or one kept on you know sending money to you know a few other people family and so on but the other person didn’t know about a secret bank accounts uh you know um debts different loans to friends that type of thing so so that’s that’s one but the the biggest issues with finances is what is that people don’t have a budget to work no yeah like they don’t do it together now now it’s true that in most marriages one person is better with handling money than the other but when there’s when you don’t know like for example in our case i pay all the bills so now sloja knows what the bills are but but the last thing she wants to do is to be responsible for it okay and by the way that’s how we got into the mess in the first place because i was doing all of that and she didn’t care and didn’t want to know but once we hit the crisis point then one of the first things we decided was that you know like every month just prior to the beginning of a month you know i would sit down and drop a budget put all the bills that i know that were coming how much income was coming and then we would both sit together on the first of the month or around there somewhere and so she knows the financial picture exactly the same way that i do
Sulojana
Yeah okay and yeah yeah we took a course actually it’s called um um what’s with dave ramsey ramsey financial people
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah yeah i used to listen to him all the time
Sulojana
Is that right yeah yeah a cd or a book um
Jiva
Yeah yeah right that’s where we learned lots of good things and you know learned how to budget
Sulojana
Yeah and that helped us a lot to get out of that
Jiva
Yeah and and let’s go say what about why dave ramsey because both of us were raised in families with different financial philosophies of finances and so so that’s one of the reasons why we couldn’t see eye to eye uh like slogan’s family like you know your dad
Sulojana
Yeah he he said you know we we were brought up where we we shouldn’t borrow any money to even for things uh schooling or even little things or to big things like buying a house you always save it up and then um uh and then buy and then purchase uh never go into debt that’s how you know i was brought up
Jiva
Yeah and yeah whereas you know i mean my parents you know were also very responsible with their money but they were okay with taking loans you know for certain purposes as long as you have the capacity to pay it off now i took that to the nth degree so for me affordability meant affordability of the payments for her affordability meant you had the whole enchilada saved up first and and so so we we used to clash about finances you know all the time and so finally it came to a point where we said you know what we’re going to pick a third party we’re going to learn from that person whatever they tell us to do we’re going to follow religiously for a year without questioning and you’re not going to add your variation and i’m not going to get in the way you know right
Sulojana
Yes yeah yeah yeah so that was a big help and your second question was with regards to sex
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah
Sulojana
Yeah i think um i’ll start um you know when all the other issues that we talked about are taking care of the communication you know the the the roots of the you know the past abuse and those kind of things are all taken care of dr janice the the sex thing will come naturally so so those these are the hindrances you know that um kind of brings a wall between the the couples so once we take care of all of this the the sex is kind of you know at the end in the final yeah kind of the thing that we we get the couples to work on
Jiva
And it’s one of the later chapters in our book actually uh okay and yeah even though people may like the slogan says some of them don’t even look at each other obviously they’re not touching each other so they’re definitely not having sex with each other and and then by about week nine we can tell they’re having sex with each other you know [Laughter]
Sulojana
Yeah and you know that that’s something yeah you don’t want to force on each other for some especially the women you know uh it has to come naturally and you know you have to have that love uh you know to love between each other so so it’s not an easy thing but we tell them you know um don’t worry about that especially with the men you know don’t worry about that it will come naturally you know once you work the other things out
Jiva
And again in our book we actually outline you know quite a few reasons for sexual dysfunction in a marriage and i can’t go through all of them but i’ll just mention a couple of things one of them is just the way men and women view sex differently for men there’s a lot of emphasis on the physical pleasure you know and the need for that release and oxytocin you know all that kind of stuff uh for women sex is very much tied into you know into emotions emotions right so so one of the one of the sayings that we have you know is that uh you know like like don’t expect sorry if you treat your wife like dirt during the day don’t expect it to treat you like gold at night [Laughter] affection outside in the course of daily life has a lot to do with you know what happens you know when you want to be intimate with each other and so um generally speaking and we cannot generalize because some men are more emotional than their wives but generally speaking men really need to work at strengthening their emotional connection you know with their wives and and so for me uh that didn’t come naturally and so i relied on solojana so whenever she asked uh how are you feeling rather than saying what do you want to know that for don’t cry into me it’s like it’s like ah she’s longing for emotional connection so i’m gonna take that seriously sit down and have some of those heart-to-heart conversations you know where you know you know like it doesn’t seem like much to me but for soldier that means a lot
Sulojana
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it’s it’s like tuning in actually
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right and as you said you know women we’re more into not the the the physical but but the emotional yeah so just kind of briefly give me the steps uh like i know you uh have an assessment when they first come in yeah and then after that what do you do do you see them separately and then together or together in the beginning how does it how does it work
Sulojana
Well we have weekly sessions scheduled with the couples and and that’s with both of them together
Jiva
Yeah oh yeah yes right from the get-go
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh yeah okay
Jiva
Yeah yeah we because we want to get them on this common ground okay so when we get the assessment done uh we share the results with both of them you know simultaneously so they know you know what what’s in the assessment and we also ask like do you agree with this what this assessment says this is accurate uh because you know assessments can sometimes miss things and and so we get their involvement uh one of the other interesting things we found also helpful is to have them to go through their love languages quiz yeah because sometimes it’s not that you don’t love each other but the way in which you express your love doesn’t convey love to your spouse yeah and so that often is an eye-opening exercise for people uh and so once we get the assessments done then uh our process starts out by you know building or rebuilding the foundation at the beginning at the spirit level and so we what what we’ve essentially found is that there are 10 habits that if you learn to develop these uh some of them are things you do on your own you know like for example slogan talked about spending some time in silence earlier on and that’s something you do on your own you know or your bible reading in our case you know you do that on your own uh but there are also some things you do together like praying together as a couple which unfortunately a lot of christian couples uh don’t do well we we actually read a survey result that many pastors don’t actually pray with their spouses on a regular basis they they have a great prayer life on their own so some of these things so we start with that and then um the the common things are like journaling you know um journaling like a gratitude journal attitude journal
Sulojana
Okay yeah and sharing with each other
Jiva
Yeah yeah yeah and the second section that we do is probably the the toughest one in a way uh that takes the longest time and that’s what we call removing spiritual blockages and so that’s when we really go deep down inside of them and this is where they will do a lot of work on their own but the the thing that we do dr jan is that midweek we have a an extra session and that is uh where i will meet with the man and slow down meet with the with the lady you know usually over the phone it’s kind of a checkup session so at that time if there are some things that that come up that they want to bring up uh that you know they may not be comfortable sharing with their spouse present then that gives them the opportunity to do that
Sulojana
Yeah yeah it’s like a check-up thing you know midweek
Jiva
Yeah and in the process we teach them some things that they can do on their own but in it’s in that segment that we also send them to someone who’s got a specialty in doing what we would call inner healing ministry so that is healing all those hurts that you’ve been maybe holding on to yourself and one of the things we’re becoming more aware of right now is that when there’s trauma involved we need more help than that so we need to do a referral to a trained therapist you know who can help them really go deep and and i’m sure you find this in your practice uh dr jan sadly there’s a lot of trauma that people have been infected by uh you know especially in their early years sometimes in their marriage but more often than not it goes back to your childhood years
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes i just spoke with someone about um why they fear reach they fear rejection so much so that they sabotage their love relationships
Jiva
Yeah
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah and that’s from way back
Jiva
Yeah
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah way back um actually to her father
Jiva
Yeah yeah exactly yeah father wounds unfortunately um are very common with uh with women and some some men as well you know who cannot live up to the expectations of their fathers or cannot forget about the the wounds the the wounding with the hurtful words and so on uh so so that spiritual blockages is a is a tough process but and we off always tell couples don’t expect to see any big results for at least the first five weeks because we’re going to be doing some deep digging on the inside and once we’ve got that taken care of it’ll help them to forgive each other and they get to that place now we teach them how to restore peace following a conflict because we know that like in every marriage there’s going to be conflict uh and so you expect conflict but conflict by itself is not bad i think conflict is always a good sign that two people are communicating however how you resolve conflict can be either good or bad it can be helpful or can be hurtful
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right now i don’t want to we we got maybe what um six minutes but i i want to show them your book yeah the unbreakable marriage so now does this uh in this book uh do you go through the steps that you have been talking about
Jiva
Yes yeah everything is in that book uh there are action steps at the end of each chapter that uh you know you can go through uh we’re also producing a workbook that you can use so so what we encourage couples is get a copy of the book but also get a copy of each for of the workbook rather for each of you and and then work on it together and the best way i believe people are going to get results is by working with the mentoring couple not necessarily us not everybody maybe at the stage where they need someone like us to come in and you know and and work with them in great depth uh but find a mentoring couple part of it is to keep them accountable
Sulojana
Yeah yeah but also you know when something comes up that you’re not sure about there’s somebody there to clarify things for you uh you know from their experience so we have this quick question that we it’s probably not a quick answer but ranita dixon wants to know and we got maybe three minutes what is your advice for singles who would like to be married but don’t have a great role but don’t have great role models
Jiva
Okay unfortunately this is the case for a lot of singles today and so my simple answer to ebu would be become the best you that you can be uh in other words like you know what we talked about the removing spiritual blockages and so on when when you’re married you know you do that separately as the husband and the wife when you’re single you do that for yourself you know and so you take care of you know your past hurts your past trauma and and so that and forgive those poor role models that you had that’s a big part of it a lot of us have to forgive our parents you know for not setting the right example for us and so so that’s that’s a huge huge part of of of becoming free on your own and and you know what you will attract the right kind of person when you are healed okay when you are carrying hurts unhealed hurts you’re going to find somebody that looks like they’re going to address those hurts for you but they may be actually looking to you to heal their wounds and that is not a good combination and that’s one of the things we tell couples uh you know singles that come to us they were engaged for example guys take care of all this baggage before you get married so that you don’t have to come to see us like prepare adequately before you get to the repair stage of your marriage
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay all right now if people want to get in contact with you and and have an unbreakable marriage then they can email you yes at jivasam gmail.com or they can go on your website and i think when they go on your website uh they’ll see of the link where they can get a uh i guess um an excerpt of your book
Jiva
Yeah actually you know what dr jan uh your audience right now this is only for a limited time that we’re offering this if you go there you will actually get to download a pdf of the entire book for free
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Shut your mouth [Laughter] i’m leaving it up there so you can see it
Jiva
Yeah and we also have a little teaching a video teaching on restoring peace following a conflict if you click on that there’s a calendar link and so if you do need help get on our calendar and and we’ll be happy to meet with you give you a free consultation that we you know would normally be charging 500 for so we’re we’re glad to give that to you but if you have any questions just yeah send us an email or text me at that number and i’ll respond to every one of them
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Thank you you know i got to get my copy i think that is so wonderful and you know what uh uh i um i have a a very close friend that wants to get married and um and i tell her marriages work and it’s not all fantasyland like she thinks but i am definitely going to direct her to your website so she can get um a copy of your book you know this this hour has it’s not been quite it’s going by so fast you didn’t even get to but oh my goodness thank you so much your service and what you are doing is so valuable and it’s so so much needed it really really is so i i want to thank you really for appearing on the show and also i just want to tell people this if they want to see you they can go to youtube so just look for you jiva sam and you know you click on youtube it will come up they will come up if you don’t go directly to their channel so thank you so much but after even though i’m going to uh close out the show i don’t want you to go anywhere okay
Jiva and Sulojana
Thank you please do but thank you so much thank you so much thank you for this
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You’re welcome yeah i appreciate it yeah i’m gonna leave this up here so folks can see this yes indeedy this has been this has been great this is i know you all got a lot of value and if you know some couples and they’re not on tonight uh direct them to my youtube channel dr janice fortman or or my facebook page so they can watch this because to me this was an extremely important episode so i want to thank all of you all for tuning in and i want you to come back next week when i’m going to have someone who’s going to talk to us about getting our stories from our ancestors from our grandmothers great-grandmothers just so we can see exactly where we came from and she’s going to show us how to do it actually we know about ancestry but she has a unique way of finding the stories from the past so i am so happy again that you all came this evening and i know you got a lot of value from this so i will see you again next week bye [Music] you