September 16, 2024 • 17 mins
Ever wondered if prioritizing your marriage over your children could actually strengthen your family? Discover how nearly 20 years of marital experience has shown me the profound impact of focusing on your spouse first.
In this episode, we share personal stories of how neglecting our relationship for the sake of our children strained our bond, and reveal the transformative power of travel in reigniting that spark. Learn from our memorable trip to Hawaii, a journey that not only fulfilled a dream but also rejuvenated our marriage, providing key insights into why investing in your relationship is essential.
Join us as I explore the importance of creating a cohesive family unit through a strong marital foundation. Hear how taking time away together can not only benefit your relationship but also provide a more stable and nurturing environment for your children.
Through insightful discussion and real-life examples, I'll show you how travel can be a powerful tool to fortify your relationship and family life. This episode is a heartfelt guide to prioritizing your marriage and ultimately ensuring your children grow up in a responsible, well-rounded household.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You are listening to.
Travel is Cheaper than Divorce.
This podcast for all those whomay be struggling with their
spouse or their children and therelationship with them.
We help give you tips andtricks by using travel as the
means to be able to help yourrelationships with your family.
I'll provide those tricks andother ways to help travel with
(00:29):
little or no cost.
So let's get into it.
I can, over my time in mymarriage and we've been married
for almost 20 years can thinkback to the times when things
were the biggest strugglebetween my spouse and I were
(00:53):
when I lose focus on her, and Imean this even in the case of
your children In my case, mychildren.
It is important to nurture yourchildren, to raise them and to
(01:17):
bring them out to be the bestpeople they could be.
At the same time, do you askyourself this, and this is what
I did for myself Do you thinkyour children are best raised by
one parent or two?
These are questions I askmyself literally.
Do you think it is beneficialor best for your children to
(01:43):
live in a household where theycan feel because if you don't
think they can feel, I promiseyou they can that they feel like
there is no love between youand your spouse.
Priorities have been messed up,messed up, and that's sometimes
(02:04):
what happened between me and myspouse.
The priorities in your lifeshould be your family.
It really should be number onefamily.
For some of you, and for meeven, it's God and family, but
with a focus on this being whatit is.
Yes, your children are a partof that family, but if the
(02:27):
marriage is broken at the top ofthe family, that's going to
filter down.
I told you before that I'm achild of a divorce and that has
affected not only me but mysiblings in a great way.
Sometimes I imagine what mylife would be like if my parents
never got divorced, and I knowthat's more common now, and I
(02:48):
know there's a lot of people outthere who may say to me, as
they have before well, everybodyhas divorced somewhere in their
family, so blah, blah.
Okay, so we should just acceptthat I don't and I didn't, I
still don't.
So what I'm trying to say toyou is this If you spend your
(03:09):
time and your days worrying somuch about your children that
you don't worry about yourspouse, you're doomed.
I have spent some time in someof these episodes I have been
talking about getting away, andalmost every time I talk about
with your children, but that isnot the most important thing you
can do.
From experience, this is notthe most important thing you can
(03:35):
do.
The most important trips youcan take are with your spouse,
bar none.
You want to be able to saveyour marriage, then you don't go
places with your children allthe time.
If you're going to rekindle amarriage, you're not bringing
(04:00):
your children with you.
Let me ask you a question.
In fact, this is something youcan struggle with yourself.
Would you bring your childrento a marriage therapy session?
Of course you wouldn't.
Why would you bring themeverywhere you go?
My wife and I, as I said earlier, don't have a perfect marriage
(04:21):
now, but we had a worse marriagebefore this whole system and
everything started with thetraveling and although we have
traveled with our children, thathas built memories.
What has saved the family isnot going on trips with the
family.
What saved our family was goingon trips with my spouse family
(04:46):
was going on trips with myspouse.
My wife has always wanted to goto Hawaii.
My wife is a very big beachperson, loves the beach, and at
the beginning of this journeythat I've talked about before.
There is no way on this earth Iwas going to be able to take
her to Hawaii.
No way, no way.
(05:08):
But once I did which I did, andit didn't take very many years
after I learned what I learnedto be able to take her there for
very little cost.
Our marriage truly hasn't beenthe same since we built
something.
What does it feel like whenyou're sitting next to your
spouse on a six hour flight orso, I don't know.
(05:31):
Maybe you're on the East Coast,I don't know, but six hours for
us and you're sitting therewith her and are you just going
to avoid touching each other?
Are you going to avoid talkingto each other?
Are you never going to holdhands the entire time?
Maybe on the way there?
Maybe your marriage is prettyrocky right now, but do you
think on the way back you'regoing to feel the same as when
(05:52):
you started?
If you go to a place like that,to a destination she's always
wanted to go to, because thatseems impossible to me we went
to Hawaii, someplace she alwayswanted to go, and it's changed a
lot of things, because itbrings the heart back into
everything.
You can't lie on a beach.
(06:13):
You can't be with your spousealone in a hotel room and not
somehow kindle some of that back.
Actually, you can even gothrough all of the, even some of
the Hollywood movies and otherthings you can see when people
travel.
There's just a different sense,a different feeling with your
spouse, not with your spouse andyour children.
(06:38):
Now I will tell you this Ididn't obviously start by
sending my spouse and I toHawaii.
I said that was a couple yearsafter I started running the
system that I've talked about oralluded to most of this podcast
.
We started with little trips,little trips to get away and
again, always out of the area.
(07:00):
If you're just going to a hoteldown the street, you're still
connected to your household andlittle trips can mean even not
even on an airplane.
Maybe you drive four hourssouth or four hours north or
four hours east or west.
That's not really as relevantas just getting out of the area
and getting out of the area withyour spouse to a destination,
(07:22):
meaning the hotel, to adestination, meaning the hotel.
That won't make you feelcompletely, utterly
uncomfortable Because, again,unpopular opinion.
But my point of view here isthat in a marriage, children
don't come first.
Everything filters from the topdown.
(07:43):
It's just like going to work.
If you work in a very largecorporation I've worked in some
of the more major corporationsin America the culture that is
brought down from the top downaffects the entire workplace.
So if you think that, soultimately, what I'm really
saying is and this is from myexperience my wife and I, when
we started wanting to travel, wedid.
(08:04):
We just went, sometimes justtwo or three hours south, to the
closest major major city thatwas around us, and we did it
once.
What my wife and I decided oncea quarter.
Did we do anything exorbitant?
Not really.
We went to a hotel room for twoor three days, sometimes over a
(08:24):
weekend, and we ate out acouple times and maybe we went
to a movie theater, which wecould do in our own town.
But it was different Becauseyou can rekindle a lot of
intimacy, a lot of things thathave been lost in your life by
getting away.
(08:45):
You bring your children withyou.
You can't rekindle that as well.
So, like I was saying before,in marriage, children don't come
first.
Your spouse, your marriagecomes first, and that will
(09:06):
filter down into your children.
And this, again, this is whatI'm saying.
This is the same thing withyour children.
Now, to be upfront with you,this is a two-part episode.
I want you to be able tounderstand the importance of
what I'm saying to you right now.
(09:27):
You need to feel and understandthat your marriage is dependent
on you and your wife's.
Your family is dependent on youand your wife's passion for
each other, the love that youhave for each other, and not
just passing in the hallways ata glance.
It needs to be rekindled, itneeds to be ultimately needs to
(10:01):
be.
It needs to be sparked again.
It needs to always be fed.
That's what the word I waslooking for.
It just continually needs to befed.
What are you feeding it rightnow?
(10:26):
So my wife and I, we traveledonce a quarter together for a
while.
We don't really do that muchanymore because our trips have
become more all over the worldand different places and other
things, because of the systemthat I talked about and alluded
to.
But the system that I have, andI have built and understood and
what I like to teach people, isnot a system that can be done
(10:47):
overnight.
But you can't wait.
I couldn't.
You can't wait for the systemto start.
You can't wait for you to learnall the things you learn, and
then I'll travel.
And then what?
In the meantime, you loseeverything around you.
(11:09):
You can't wait.
This is not a, this is not a.
In a year maybe we'll getaround to it.
No, you do it now because I'veseen what happens here.
We started growing closer andcloser.
Every quarter we did miss aquarter here or there too.
(11:35):
I mean, it's not, it can't beexact.
There has to be.
You know there's I had.
We had children in the home, aswe've talked about before.
We had foster kids, which is awhole nother animal because you
can't have regular quote unquotebabysitters.
We had foster kids, which is awhole nother animal because you
can't have regular quote unquotebabysitters babysitting foster
kids.
The state doesn't quite likethat.
So there was a lot of arranging.
We had to do so.
If you can't, if you feel likeyou can't arrange with your kids
(11:57):
, if you feel like you can'tarrange your kids or your dog or
whatever, we had a really hardtime arranging because of the
foster kids that we had in ourhome.
So don't tell me that you don'thave family.
(12:20):
You think we had our familybabysit our kids.
We had problems with our family.
In fact, my wife's mother atone point said don't you ever
leave your kids like this withus again.
We decided from that pointforward, we're never going to
have her watch our kids again.
We didn't do anything, we justdropped off our kids.
(12:40):
But that's her mother andthat's a different story, but
just an example of how it wasfor us.
It's not easy.
It's a whole different, almosta complete lifestyle change.
But isn't that what you need?
That's what we needed.
We need a complete change ofscenery.
I mean, I we had to get away,but I want to make it easy on
(13:05):
you.
The system I built allows you totravel in luxury all over the
world pretty much for little orno cost.
But at the very beginning, it'snot something that happens
overnight, but you need totravel overnight.
This needs to happen now.
You don't have time to startsomething like this, whether
it's quarterly, twice a year,you know the frequency is
(13:29):
irrelevant, but it needs to bedone, like within the next
couple of months, with you andyour spouse.
If you're listening to my voiceand this feels like something
you need to do, then you justneed to do it.
In the second part of thisepisode I'm going to go through
a step-by-step on that.
I want to teach you, evenwithout the system, because the
system is based on points andmiles and getting all that stuff
(13:52):
done for you.
You won't have time for that,but there is another way to
travel with cash.
That is dirt cheap.
We did it.
We had hardly any money at thetime, but it is possible and it
needs to happen now because youhave to save your marriage.
You have to save your children.
(14:13):
It's almost like I'm talking tomy little self here, because I
wanted my parents to save.
I wanted my children to besaved.
I wanted to grow up so bad withmy mom and dad and I couldn't.
Now their situation isdifferent.
In most had to do with adulteryand other things, but still I'm
(14:37):
just telling you how muchdivorce affects children.
So you think you have to bearound your children all the
time to control them.
That's another thing.
You don't want to be ahelicopter parent.
This is a way to disconnect.
They'll be okay.
They'll be okay.
And if you think they won't beokay, maybe that's a problem
with you or maybe it's the areayou live in.
(15:00):
You have to have people aroundyou to trust, to watch your kids
If you want to save yourmarriage, you get away from your
children.
So what I want to take away, Iwant you to take away from this
and what I want.
If this sounds like you, thenlisten to the next episode,
(15:30):
where I go through part two,where I go through the how to do
it now, not the system, thesystem and take some time to
build.
This is the how for now, foryou and your spouse.
This is the hail, mary.
This is the thing that's goingto help you.
Now I feel like you guys outthere, the people I'm speaking
(15:51):
to right now.
You can hear me, so listen tome when I say you go away with
your spouse, you rekindle.
You want to save yourchildren's lives.
You want to have them be raisedthe way they need to be raised
to graduate and become people ofsociety that are good and then
(16:15):
to be one.
We want to be around you.
Do you want them going toseparate houses when they grow
up and all your kids, all theirgrandkids, going to separate
houses and wondering who's goingto who's for Christmas?
Do you want that?
I know you don't, so listen tothe next episode.
It's time to get away.
It's time to get away right nowand time to get away, not from
(16:38):
just the area, but it's time toget away from your children.
You have been listening toTravel is cheaper than divorce.
With me, your host, davidpacker, please connect with us
on our youtube channel at travelpoint pros.
There you will learn many tipsand tricks on how to use points
and miles to travel in luxuryfor little to no cost.
(17:01):
Remember to like and subscribeand comment on any of the videos
that you find helpful to you.
Thank you for listening.
You are listening to.
Travel is Cheaper than Divorce.
This podcast for all those whomay be struggling with their
spouse or their children and therelationship with them.
We help give you tips andtricks by using travel as the
means to be able to help yourrelationships with your family.
I'll provide those tricks andother ways to help travel with
(00:29):
little or no cost.
So let's get into it.
I can, over my time in mymarriage and we've been married
for almost 20 years can thinkback to the times when things
were the biggest strugglebetween my spouse and I were
(00:53):
when I lose focus on her, and Imean this even in the case of
your children In my case, mychildren.
It is important to nurture yourchildren, to raise them and to
(01:17):
bring them out to be the bestpeople they could be.
At the same time, do you askyourself this, and this is what
I did for myself Do you thinkyour children are best raised by
one parent or two?
These are questions I askmyself literally.
Do you think it is beneficialor best for your children to
(01:43):
live in a household where theycan feel because if you don't
think they can feel, I promiseyou they can that they feel like
there is no love between youand your spouse.
Priorities have been messed up,messed up, and that's sometimes
(02:04):
what happened between me and myspouse.
The priorities in your lifeshould be your family.
It really should be number onefamily.
For some of you, and for meeven, it's God and family, but
with a focus on this being whatit is.
Yes, your children are a partof that family, but if the
(02:27):
marriage is broken at the top ofthe family, that's going to
filter down.
I told you before that I'm achild of a divorce and that has
affected not only me but mysiblings in a great way.
Sometimes I imagine what mylife would be like if my parents
never got divorced, and I knowthat's more common now, and I
(02:48):
know there's a lot of people outthere who may say to me, as
they have before well, everybodyhas divorced somewhere in their
family, so blah, blah.
Okay, so we should just acceptthat I don't and I didn't, I
still don't.
So what I'm trying to say toyou is this If you spend your
(03:09):
time and your days worrying somuch about your children that
you don't worry about yourspouse, you're doomed.
I have spent some time in someof these episodes I have been
talking about getting away, andalmost every time I talk about
with your children, but that isnot the most important thing you
can do.
From experience, this is notthe most important thing you can
(03:35):
do.
The most important trips youcan take are with your spouse,
bar none.
You want to be able to saveyour marriage, then you don't go
places with your children allthe time.
If you're going to rekindle amarriage, you're not bringing
(04:00):
your children with you.
Let me ask you a question.
In fact, this is something youcan struggle with yourself.
Would you bring your childrento a marriage therapy session?
Of course you wouldn't.
Why would you bring themeverywhere you go?
My wife and I, as I said earlier, don't have a perfect marriage
(04:21):
now, but we had a worse marriagebefore this whole system and
everything started with thetraveling and although we have
traveled with our children, thathas built memories.
What has saved the family isnot going on trips with the
family.
What saved our family was goingon trips with my spouse family
(04:46):
was going on trips with myspouse.
My wife has always wanted to goto Hawaii.
My wife is a very big beachperson, loves the beach, and at
the beginning of this journeythat I've talked about before.
There is no way on this earth Iwas going to be able to take
her to Hawaii.
No way, no way.
(05:08):
But once I did which I did, andit didn't take very many years
after I learned what I learnedto be able to take her there for
very little cost.
Our marriage truly hasn't beenthe same since we built
something.
What does it feel like whenyou're sitting next to your
spouse on a six hour flight orso, I don't know.
(05:31):
Maybe you're on the East Coast,I don't know, but six hours for
us and you're sitting therewith her and are you just going
to avoid touching each other?
Are you going to avoid talkingto each other?
Are you never going to holdhands the entire time?
Maybe on the way there?
Maybe your marriage is prettyrocky right now, but do you
think on the way back you'regoing to feel the same as when
(05:52):
you started?
If you go to a place like that,to a destination she's always
wanted to go to, because thatseems impossible to me we went
to Hawaii, someplace she alwayswanted to go, and it's changed a
lot of things, because itbrings the heart back into
everything.
You can't lie on a beach.
(06:13):
You can't be with your spousealone in a hotel room and not
somehow kindle some of that back.
Actually, you can even gothrough all of the, even some of
the Hollywood movies and otherthings you can see when people
travel.
There's just a different sense,a different feeling with your
spouse, not with your spouse andyour children.
(06:38):
Now I will tell you this Ididn't obviously start by
sending my spouse and I toHawaii.
I said that was a couple yearsafter I started running the
system that I've talked about oralluded to most of this podcast
.
We started with little trips,little trips to get away and
again, always out of the area.
(07:00):
If you're just going to a hoteldown the street, you're still
connected to your household andlittle trips can mean even not
even on an airplane.
Maybe you drive four hourssouth or four hours north or
four hours east or west.
That's not really as relevantas just getting out of the area
and getting out of the area withyour spouse to a destination,
(07:22):
meaning the hotel, to adestination, meaning the hotel.
That won't make you feelcompletely, utterly
uncomfortable Because, again,unpopular opinion.
But my point of view here isthat in a marriage, children
don't come first.
Everything filters from the topdown.
(07:43):
It's just like going to work.
If you work in a very largecorporation I've worked in some
of the more major corporationsin America the culture that is
brought down from the top downaffects the entire workplace.
So if you think that, soultimately, what I'm really
saying is and this is from myexperience my wife and I, when
we started wanting to travel, wedid.
(08:04):
We just went, sometimes justtwo or three hours south, to the
closest major major city thatwas around us, and we did it
once.
What my wife and I decided oncea quarter.
Did we do anything exorbitant?
Not really.
We went to a hotel room for twoor three days, sometimes over a
(08:24):
weekend, and we ate out acouple times and maybe we went
to a movie theater, which wecould do in our own town.
But it was different Becauseyou can rekindle a lot of
intimacy, a lot of things thathave been lost in your life by
getting away.
(08:45):
You bring your children withyou.
You can't rekindle that as well.
So, like I was saying before,in marriage, children don't come
first.
Your spouse, your marriagecomes first, and that will
(09:06):
filter down into your children.
And this, again, this is whatI'm saying.
This is the same thing withyour children.
Now, to be upfront with you,this is a two-part episode.
I want you to be able tounderstand the importance of
what I'm saying to you right now.
(09:27):
You need to feel and understandthat your marriage is dependent
on you and your wife's.
Your family is dependent on youand your wife's passion for
each other, the love that youhave for each other, and not
just passing in the hallways ata glance.
It needs to be rekindled, itneeds to be ultimately needs to
(10:01):
be.
It needs to be sparked again.
It needs to always be fed.
That's what the word I waslooking for.
It just continually needs to befed.
What are you feeding it rightnow?
(10:26):
So my wife and I, we traveledonce a quarter together for a
while.
We don't really do that muchanymore because our trips have
become more all over the worldand different places and other
things, because of the systemthat I talked about and alluded
to.
But the system that I have, andI have built and understood and
what I like to teach people, isnot a system that can be done
(10:47):
overnight.
But you can't wait.
I couldn't.
You can't wait for the systemto start.
You can't wait for you to learnall the things you learn, and
then I'll travel.
And then what?
In the meantime, you loseeverything around you.
(11:09):
You can't wait.
This is not a, this is not a.
In a year maybe we'll getaround to it.
No, you do it now because I'veseen what happens here.
We started growing closer andcloser.
Every quarter we did miss aquarter here or there too.
(11:35):
I mean, it's not, it can't beexact.
There has to be.
You know there's I had.
We had children in the home, aswe've talked about before.
We had foster kids, which is awhole nother animal because you
can't have regular quote unquotebabysitters.
We had foster kids, which is awhole nother animal because you
can't have regular quote unquotebabysitters babysitting foster
kids.
The state doesn't quite likethat.
So there was a lot of arranging.
We had to do so.
If you can't, if you feel likeyou can't arrange with your kids
(11:57):
, if you feel like you can'tarrange your kids or your dog or
whatever, we had a really hardtime arranging because of the
foster kids that we had in ourhome.
So don't tell me that you don'thave family.
(12:20):
You think we had our familybabysit our kids.
We had problems with our family.
In fact, my wife's mother atone point said don't you ever
leave your kids like this withus again.
We decided from that pointforward, we're never going to
have her watch our kids again.
We didn't do anything, we justdropped off our kids.
(12:40):
But that's her mother andthat's a different story, but
just an example of how it wasfor us.
It's not easy.
It's a whole different, almosta complete lifestyle change.
But isn't that what you need?
That's what we needed.
We need a complete change ofscenery.
I mean, I we had to get away,but I want to make it easy on
(13:05):
you.
The system I built allows you totravel in luxury all over the
world pretty much for little orno cost.
But at the very beginning, it'snot something that happens
overnight, but you need totravel overnight.
This needs to happen now.
You don't have time to startsomething like this, whether
it's quarterly, twice a year,you know the frequency is
(13:29):
irrelevant, but it needs to bedone, like within the next
couple of months, with you andyour spouse.
If you're listening to my voiceand this feels like something
you need to do, then you justneed to do it.
In the second part of thisepisode I'm going to go through
a step-by-step on that.
I want to teach you, evenwithout the system, because the
system is based on points andmiles and getting all that stuff
(13:52):
done for you.
You won't have time for that,but there is another way to
travel with cash.
That is dirt cheap.
We did it.
We had hardly any money at thetime, but it is possible and it
needs to happen now because youhave to save your marriage.
You have to save your children.
(14:13):
It's almost like I'm talking tomy little self here, because I
wanted my parents to save.
I wanted my children to besaved.
I wanted to grow up so bad withmy mom and dad and I couldn't.
Now their situation isdifferent.
In most had to do with adulteryand other things, but still I'm
(14:37):
just telling you how muchdivorce affects children.
So you think you have to bearound your children all the
time to control them.
That's another thing.
You don't want to be ahelicopter parent.
This is a way to disconnect.
They'll be okay.
They'll be okay.
And if you think they won't beokay, maybe that's a problem
with you or maybe it's the areayou live in.
(15:00):
You have to have people aroundyou to trust, to watch your kids
If you want to save yourmarriage, you get away from your
children.
So what I want to take away, Iwant you to take away from this
and what I want.
If this sounds like you, thenlisten to the next episode,
(15:30):
where I go through part two,where I go through the how to do
it now, not the system, thesystem and take some time to
build.
This is the how for now, foryou and your spouse.
This is the hail, mary.
This is the thing that's goingto help you.
Now I feel like you guys outthere, the people I'm speaking
(15:51):
to right now.
You can hear me, so listen tome when I say you go away with
your spouse, you rekindle.
You want to save yourchildren's lives.
You want to have them be raisedthe way they need to be raised
to graduate and become people ofsociety that are good and then
(16:15):
to be one.
We want to be around you.
Do you want them going toseparate houses when they grow
up and all your kids, all theirgrandkids, going to separate
houses and wondering who's goingto who's for Christmas?
Do you want that?
I know you don't, so listen tothe next episode.
It's time to get away.
It's time to get away right nowand time to get away, not from
(16:38):
just the area, but it's time toget away from your children.
You have been listening toTravel is cheaper than divorce.
With me, your host, davidpacker, please connect with us
on our youtube channel at travelpoint pros.
There you will learn many tipsand tricks on how to use points
and miles to travel in luxuryfor little to no cost.
(17:01):
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that you find helpful to you.
Thank you for listening.
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