Can I Be Happy Again In My Marriage?

The episode delves into the idea that happiness is a choice, especially after experiencing life's hardships. Dr. Joe Beam shares personal stories and practical insights about interpreting events positively, whether dealing with serious illness or relationship difficulties.

• Exploring the question of happiness after trauma 
• The significance of personal perspective on happiness 
• The power of interpreting life's challenges positively 
• Personal anecdotes highlighting the journey to happiness 
• The impact of relationship narratives on emotional wellbeing 
• Encouraging listeners to focus on the good in their lives 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Finding Happiness Through Life's Challenges
• 11:39 Life's Challenges Leading to Blessings
• 17:30 Choosing Happiness Through Marriage Workshops

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Will I ever be happy again? I get that question all the time. I'm Dr Joe Beam with MH International. You probably know us as Marriage Helper. I want to talk about that for a few minutes. Can you be happy again if some terrible thing has happened, particularly in your marriage? Say, your spouse cheated on you or somebody gambled away all the money, or, let's say that a child got sick and God forbid died. In other words, some event occurred in your life, either caused by your spouse or just caused by nature itself, or just the circumstances and situations of life, and you find yourself being miserable, miserable, miserable and you're thinking can I ever be happy again? The short answer is yes, if you might be saying if what, dr Beam? If you choose to be Now, stay with me a minute. No, this is not one of those self-help, punch you up, make you feel like a tiger, kind of things. We're going to talk about real life here, not some yaw-yaw rah-rah speech. Okay when I say if, if you choose to be happy again, you see, all kinds of things in life will come along that cause all kinds of pain.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Recently I was diagnosed as having prostate cancer, for example. I have been taking medicine for it since last July. I'm actually recording this right at the beginning of 2025. And I have gone through 29 sessions of proton radiation therapy and hopefully all of that will have cured my cancer. But you realize that nobody with cancer can actually claim to be cured until they go at least five years being cancer free. And so five years well, we're starting 2025. We had five years to that. You mean, that's when you can finally say I'm cancer free, yes.

Speaker 1: 1:59

Aren't you scared? No, yes. Aren't you scared? No, aren't you worried? No. Now, when I told my daughters about it, one of my daughters, joanna, began to be very upset very quickly, because she misunderstood when I said prostate cancer, she thought I said pancreatic cancer, which is the cancer that killed my father, and she thought, oh no, if you had that dad, then you're dead. And so she was very upset and we helped her understand oh, this is a different kind of cancer, much better prognosis with this one and et cetera. So my daughters know, of course, my wife knows, my brothers, my sister and many people on Facebook, because I'm one of those transparent people that said, hey, if you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate your prayers.

Speaker 1: 2:46

Now I realize that this cancer has a possibility of killing me, but I'm happy. Why? You see happiness if you think about it in the most basic way. Happiness is based on what's happening, but not just on what's happening. It's how you interpret what's happening. So what do you mean?

Speaker 1: 3:08

Okay, football season, when I'm recording this, but they have all the big bowl games and the playoffs and all those kinds of things. You look at that and go okay, so you put a hundred thousand people in the stadium. Let's say, 50,000 are for this team, 50,000 are for that team. One team finally wins. It may have to be after eight overtimes, but one team finally wins. Who's happy? Well, the people whose team won. And why are they happy? Because our team won. Well, who's sad? Well, the 50,000 people whose team lost. Are they ever going to be happy again? Sure they are, because you see the way they're going to, hopefully, the way they're going to interpret that is. It's a game. I'm not going to let my attitude be determined by a group of 18 to 22-year-old young men. They play the best they can. I want them to win, I cheer for them, I buy their jerseys, but my life is not predicated upon whether these guys win a baseball or actually I should say, football, a football game, and so they can go on with their life being happy.

Speaker 1: 4:12

You say that's an illustration. That's absolutely ridiculous. How does that compare to cancer? Okay, the way I interpret this cancer is that through prayer and through proton radiation therapy and through medicines I'm taking orally, that I'm going to be cured. You say well, what if you're not? Then it could be that that cancer could go into my bones, or it could go into my kidneys, or it could go into some other organ in my body and it could wind up killing me. Don't you worry about that? No, because I choose to interpret this way, life is good and although evil things happen and bad things happen and tough things happen, life overall is still good and my happiness is not determined by how long I'm going to live Now. I want to be happy in the moment.

Speaker 1: 5:08

You say but wouldn't you like to live a long, long time? Yes, if Another, if, yeah, if I still had my mind. I mean, I've watched people die with dementia. I don't want to die like that. So are you beginning to understand? It's really about how you interpret things, how you interpret things.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Many, many years ago I used to pray this. I would pray Lord, let me live long enough to see my grandchildren get married. But I would always add this to the prayer but if something that I would do would cause any of my children or grandchildren to err in life, mess up their lives or miss heaven, then kill me now. I'd rather die at this moment and the children and grandchildren grow up not even knowing who I am or at least the grandchildren grow up not knowing who I am than being the one who would cause their fall. It's a matter of interpretation. It's a matter of how you look at it and say so.

Speaker 1: 6:10

Then a person with cancer can be happy. I am, yeah, but you don't have pancreatic cancer, I know. And if I do get pancreatic cancer which, god, I'm not asking for then I'll have to figure out do I have the strength and the faith to view that through the right lens as well? Like Lord, I've been able to do a whole lot of things in my lifetime. I've been around the world, I've been able to talk to millions of people in audiences where I've been the speaker. I've been on national television several times and have been part of an organization in Mission International which has helped save thousands and thousands of marriages around the world. Why do I want to live forever on this planet? I don't want to hurt. So, lord, if I get the pancreatic cancer, give me the good stuff so I don't have a whole lot of pain.

Speaker 1: 7:05

My interpretation is not going to be oh my goodness, I'm dying. At least I hope not. My interpretation is going to be look how good life has been. Look at all the wonderful things that have occurred. Now you can do the same thing in marriage, really, really. You see, when I divorced my wife Alice back in 1984 and left her for another woman that I was going to marry and live happily ever after, which didn't happen, it doesn't happen. And then, back in three years after that, after I divorced her, I asked Alice if she would take me back, and she did and she remarried me, and so we've been in this second marriage since 1987. So a pretty long time. As you can see.

Speaker 1: 7:54

Now, when I was divorcing Alice, when I was leaving Alice for the other woman, we went to a marriage counselor, not because of the fact that I wanted to save the marriage, but because of the fact that I still had some degree of guilt. And the marriage counselor asked me a question. He said now, when you first fell in love with Alice? And I responded by saying I never, I've never, been in love with Alice. To which he asked then, why did you marry her? And I had some excuse worked out in my brain. I told him. You said did you really believe that or are you just lying to him? Oh, I really believed it. I believed I'd never been in love with Alice. As a matter of fact, I could not remember one single good thing about Alice, literally. No, I wasn't faking it, no, I wasn't lying, it was not there. You say, but hadn't there been good things? Sure, there had been. Then why weren't you remembering them? Okay, a little Freudian psychology oversimplified.

Speaker 1: 8:46

All right, ford divided the mind into two things the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. Now, in the subconscious mind, he divided that into two, and one called the preconscious and one called the unconscious. Now, the pre-conscious is where you have information that you can access, but not readily Like. You hear a song and you think, oh, my goodness, what's the name of that song? And then an hour later it pops into your head. Basically, it was in the pre-conscious, it's available, but just not right there in the front. It's the pre-conscious. It's there, but not conscious.

Speaker 1: 9:18

At that moment the unconscious is not available, like somebody has a car wreck and they can't remember anything about that day. That whole day is obliterated in their mind. Well, technically speaking. Technically speaking, the theory is that everything that we've ever experienced in our lives is stored in there. Everything that we've ever experienced in our lives is stored in there, everything. Some people can access it. Those are the people that we say have perfect memory and photographic memory there's actually a better word for it or a technical word for it but they have that kind of memory and can call it what page something was on that they read when they were 14 years old. That's because they can access nearly everything in their head.

Speaker 1: 10:03

Wow, now, most of us are not like that and whatever's in the unconscious has been put over there because of the fact that our mind either can't deal with it or doesn't want to deal with it, or finds it just totally irrelevant, like why do I need to take up RAM with this information that I don't need? So it's way over there, right? So I can remember nothing good about Alice at all, nothing. It had been put into my unconscious mind by my mind, not because I told it to. This was all happening in here. You understand, and I remember nothing, nothing about her. And in that case, if I had not, ever, if I had not been able to put back a relationship with Alice, then my memory would have always been probably no. No, alice is a bad person. Only bad things happen with her, and anytime you would bring her up I'd be miserable. But Alice and I did get back together. But Alice and I did get back together, and slowly with time Because now it no longer was a threat To what I was doing the good memories about Alice Eased back through my pre-conscious and finally to my unconscious and I can remember things we did together On our wedding day, and I'm not talking about what you think I'm talking about. Well, I can remember all kinds of good things About Alice through life. You say so. What's your point here? The point is, when my mind decided to be positive about Alice, I can remember good things about Alice. Well, has Alice always been perfect? No, so are there some bad things about Alice you could remember? Sure, I choose not to.

Speaker 1: 11:39

I used to do a class way back in the good old days. I should say this was back in the early 1970s, before some of you were born, a friend of mine named Ron Willingham, who was a mentor and taught me many things, had designed this class called Adventures in Christian Living, and they were done in churches. And in one of the sessions I recall it was session seven, I think there were eight sessions altogether and they were done in churches, and in one of the sessions, as I recall it was session seven, I think there were eight sessions altogether and this was a six or seven, something like that what you did, everybody got up and shared in that class and on that one it was like hell about an event in your life that was horrendously bad. That turned out to be a blessing Right. Everybody in that class and I did that class in several different churches everybody had a story. I'll give you one. One guy got up. His wife was in the class. His children, who were teenagers, were also in the class.

Speaker 1: 12:32

He got up and said my first wife was amazing. She could do anything, she was an adventurer and she wanted to learn how to fly, and so she did. And when it came time for her to do her solo, to finally get licensed, she had a broken leg. She did her solo in a cast and got her license and then later she wanted to learn how to skydive and so I was going to teach her how to skydive and on her first jump, as she went out of the plane and I'm watching her from the plane her chute never opened. She went all the way to the ground. I watched my wife die.

Speaker 1: 13:10

He said it was terrible for me and my children. Here they're from that wife, my first wife, my dead wife. I was lost. I didn't know what to do. So I got my sister to take care of my two children for a while. They were very young and I just kind of wandered, lost in life and didn't know if I would ever be happy again, because I loved that woman so much. Now it's current life. I'm sitting right over there and I'm wondering how is she hearing this? And then he said until I met her. And he pointed to the woman he was married to. Now he said you know, I had no religion whatsoever before. She taught me about God. She taught me about Jesus, she taught me about faith. Not only me did she lead to Christianity, she led my two children to Christianity. She is an amazing mother. And none of that would have happened had my wife not died. Now am I happy my wife died? No, if I stop to think about it, it's still heartbreaking what I'm telling you. The blessing that came from it is amazing, because look what came from it and that's what I choose to think about, that's what I choose to focus on.

Speaker 1: 14:23

Then another lady who was very attractive as a matter of fact, she was over all the nurses in one of the major hospitals in Atlanta. Very intelligent woman, very beautiful woman, and she got up and she said a terrible thing in my life that turned out to be a blessing. She said you know, when I was very young, my mother and father fought all the time. Now my mother was cooking some fish one time and it was a deep fryer full of hot grease and they were all frying in there and I was trying to get between them to stop them from fighting and somehow they tipped that thing over and it scalded my head. And I'm looking at her thinking I see no scars. She said I have no hair. I can grow no hair. The whole top of my head is nothing but scar tissue.

Speaker 1: 15:05

She said this is a wig and I thought it's a very nice one. She said this is a wig. And I'm thinking so where's the blessing? She said you know something? Sometimes around home I have two teenage daughters and of course you know how teenage daughters are. They're always fastidious about their looks, their makeup, their hair, everything else, she said. But sometimes around home I just don't wear my wig. I've just got that scalded head up there. And my daughters tell me how beautiful I am. My husband tells me how beautiful I am. Maybe I'm one of the few women on planet earth that knows that it's not my looks that they look at. It's me as a human being and a person and they love me for that, which means they'll love me when I'm old and gray and wrinkled and crippled. They'll always love me, and I know that now. And she said oh, and the other blessing I get to change hairstyles every day.

Speaker 1: 16:06

I could go on and on with the stories. And so Alice and I share our story about my infidelity, how much it hurt her, how we put our marriage back together and how good things are now. And the reason we share that is because it helps other people. And you might say doesn't it make you sad In the midst of telling the story? Sometimes it gets a little sad, but no, because what both of us focus on is how good our life has been since 1987. And how that one of the things we decided to do after we married was have another child to celebrate that second marriage, and that child is named Kimberly Beam Holmes, because she's married now and she runs this entire organization and she's helping people all around the world. Recently, she and some of our team including our producer here, jason were in Kenya charging nothing financially going at our expense to help marriages over there, and so the blessing, the good things that have come since then, is we get to help marriages in a way we never could have before, because we understand things we never did before, and I went ahead and got a PhD to learn more because of that, and we have a daughter who runs the entire organization, and we get to work with some of the best people on planet earth.

Speaker 1: 17:30

So can you be happy again? Yes, if you choose to be, what are you going to focus on? The bad or the good? And why are you focusing on what you're focusing on? Is it helping or is it hurting? Now, if your marriage is still in trouble and you're thinking, wow, I wish we could tell your story, dr Beam, about how we put our marriage back together and my husband or wife now can think positive things about me again, and et cetera, et cetera. Good, we'd love to invite you to one of our workshops.

Speaker 1: 18:03

We do them in person here in Middle Tennessee, near Nashville. We also do them online for people who can't get here, and if you'd like to find out more about it, you can book a call with one of our representatives who can listen to your story. Now, he or she will not be a counselor or a therapist. They're a person who represents us. So listen to your story, understand what it is you're looking for, what you need, and if we have it, they'll direct you to it. They'll help you find out where it is and if you choose to follow it, they'll help you enroll in it.

Speaker 1: 18:32

They're there and they'll give you that free 30 minute phone call. All you have to do is go to marriagehelpercom that's marriagehelp E-R, marriagehelpercom slash call, and if you do that, you'll find one of those slots. Fill it in and please, if you fill in a slot, please fulfill it. In other words, that means that one of our people is going to schedule his or her time around talking to you in that half hour slot. If you forget or you ignore it, then we have a half hour of our person not being able to help somebody because you'd reserve that spot. So if you reserve it, please be there. They'll listen, they'll care, we'll help and you can be happy if you choose to be.