We always hear that the family institution is almost totally diminished. Have you ever thought about why this is happening?

I’d like to prompt you to think about that one reason we’re going to talk about.

I want to say 85% (though it’s probably a higher percentage in reality) of families have partners with competitive relationships. Many many years ago, all competitive sports were only for men. Somehow, we decided that being in men’s shoes is for us, women, too. So, in these families that I’m talking about, the women often get in their ‘competitive mode’. Therefore, a family is on the brink of a disaster when a woman is competing with her man for leadership. Too often it goes like that for years and decades, and the woman can ‘win’, be ‘proud of herself’, and a ‘higher achiever’ (among other fancy words), but at some point in time, that hierarchy will collapse because the nature of a woman is completely different than that of a man’s.

She’s not the one who has to achieve things. No; achieving things makes a woman anxious, cranky, and unsatisfied.

The innate desire of any woman is to relax. What I mean by that is: women are created for taking care of others, and giving comfort, and being creative in so many ways — and much more than what I just described. One can’t do all of that when in they’re in a ‘competitive mode’, no way. And there’s another thing to think about: women want to control everything. Everyone talks about relying only on themselves and doing things themselves if you want things to be done correctly. Who said that? Do you know because I don’t.

What I do know is that many spiritual books (the really spiritual ones, not those yellow-pages-type of books) talk about trusting, relying, serving, and being one with each other, and to always help each other. Can you imagine a woman who’s an extreme overachiever getting home after long day? Do you think she’ll say “Honey, can I serve you a dinner?”, or “Baby, can I be at your service?”, or will she say nothing but just be there for her loved ones. That’s kinda hard to imagine.

Now here’s a different scenario: a female overachiever comes home after a long day and goes “Take your things we’re going for dinner. I’ll drive, I’ll make an order at the restaurant and I’ll pay.” How would that sound? Personally, I’d think “Huh? What do you think a man should do, or feel, or act after that conversation?” Think about it for a second, and ask yourself, why do we want certain things from men if we treat them like that? Do you think he’ll want to be involved after that? No, he wouldn’t want to do a single thing for you. Why bother…

So here we have a woman who wants to relax and to trust her man, but is terrified that he won’t do it the right way, that he’d mess up, and that he’d fail etc.

What a nice message and picture we want our men to have in their minds.

Men were created to protect, provide, enjoy, feel cared for and loved, and all of a sudden, there’s another guy who is trying to challenge him. Do you think he’d be willing to protect under those circumstances? If I were a man, I’d fight. Why do you think he has to protect you? Are you tender like a flower and light like a veil that can disappear at any given moment? No, you are acting like another man, and men created to fight and win!!! I want to make sure you understand this: men win, especially when it comes to fighting. They have both the brains and the brawns; they have muscles that women don’t. Maybe women do have the brains, but yet again that’s a different type of ‘brain’ that doesn’t suit combat situations like men’s do. And if you fight hard enough, men just leave.

So it’s either he fights back, or he leaves. What a picture!

But let me ask you: why do you compete with your man? Why? What’s the point? Why do you compete with a man you picked and decided to be with, to create a family, and to bear your children with. You picked him to be happy with, so why are you trying to compete with him then?

Both of you are a family after all; you’re supposed to love each other and care for each other and help each other. Instead you are competing to be ‘the best’. Can you imagine how broken we’ll all be if we twist our romantic relationship in a manner where we need to prove our superiority. Why?

When you win one battle, you feel superior, but how do you think your man would feel? How will your children would view a daddy like that? Do you think there will be any respect left?

So in order to feel happy ourselves, we engage in a battle that makes everyone around us miserable. But strangely, we don’t derive any satisfaction out of it as well. As a result, we now have a separate bedroom, separate finances, separate dinners, separate vacations… The list goes on.

A family is a team — not a battlefield with enemies we need to knock out. Family is when you’re together no matter what. Sometimes against all odds, against the rest of your families, your in-laws, coworkers and so on… But ultimately you’re still together! Marriage is when two people are becoming one. It’s about cooperation, and all of it is far, far away from being competitive or selfish. Marriage means to be there for your partner at his or her service, selflessly, willingly, and happily.

A lot of people around us talk about spirituality, but when you ask them about the essence of spiritual practice, they’ll tell you thousands of things like trust the universe, learn from mistakes and so on, but don’t they understand that going with the flow is not what those books are saying. The only spiritual growth occurs in your family and being with your partner. Learn through your relationship, build on it, and grow together; learn to trust, share, and feel happiness and protection…

You cannot experience any of these if you are single. Being single is easy, but a much more selfish way to live — however, it’s not a topic of discussion for this article.

My point here is this: in our body, all organs communicate with each other effectively. That makes us feel good and healthy. If one cell takes over the whole organ, what do you think will happen next?

What happens next is cancer.