If you’re a man who just got married to the woman of your dreams, you’re gonna wanna avoid these mistakes.

Congratulations though, you just made one of the most difficult decisions you’ll ever have to make in your life as a man. And that is, picking your wife.

You more than likely exchanged vows and said something along the lines of “til death do us part, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer…blah blah blah”

This is just what you tend to do when you’re standing at that altar. But what most newlyweds don’t realize is that when you get married you are forming a covenant. Not signing a contract.

I learned this from a man named Myron Golden, so don’t give me credit for this. But the difference between a covenant and a contract is that a contract is based on mutual distrust. What does that mean?

It means that if someone messes up and doesn’t keep their part of the contract, the one being taken advantage of gets to break the contract. And penalize the person who didn’t deliver on what was expected.

A covenant is based on a mutual trust. It means that you’ve vetted this person so thoroughly that you would trust this person with your life. And you would sacrifice your life if needed for this person because they have earned that level of commitment from you.

In fact, back in the days when they would form covenants, each person would slaughter an animal. Cut their right hand with a knife, shake hands, and take the other person’s name. Now we don’t really do it like that anymore, except for maybe your wife taking your last name.

The point is that the covenant between husband and wife should not be taken lightly. Most people get married nowadays with the thought in the back of their mind being, “if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just get a divorce, no big deal, everybody else does it.” Think about how sad that is and it’s no wonder we have so many divorces happening in our world. People give up on their marriages too easily, because they don’t understand that it is a covenant rather than a contract.

Now I don’t want this to be you. I don’t want you and your beautiful bride to become just another statistic.

So in this episode, we’re going over the 3 common mistakes men who just got married make so that you can avoid them and set your marriage up for success right from the start.

Today, we are talking to the man that just married the woman of his dreams. He may or may not be a dad yet, but a big part of creating your ideal family life is making sure your marriage is dialed in. And a lot of the mistakes we make in marriage as men stem from what we did right after we got married.

I always tell men that one of the hardest years in marriage is the 2nd year and I’ll tell you why that is in a moment as we dive into these 3 common mistakes.

So let’s get into these mistakes…

1. The Conqueror Mentality

I’ve always really enjoyed a good action flick. Especially, like old school Van Damme, Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone, there were so many of them I watched growing up. And a common trope among a lot of these movies is that you not only had the hero taking out the bad guys, but at the end of the movie our action movie star would get the girl. Sometimes he’d have to fight the final boss to get the girl, but he would always get the girl. And then there would be a scene right before the credits of them getting married and they all looked so happy.

Now this may sound funny, but growing up I kind of always wanted that. I wanted to go out and conquer the world, “beat the bad guys” sort of speak, find my dream girl and marry her. And if I did that we would have that happy ending I saw in the movies. So I did my version of that and I got my dream girl. Except, we got married in a living room instead of the top of a church or next to a beautiful scenery, but everyone in that living room was absolutely happy for us. And I remember that day, in my mind I felt like I had beat the game and I got a sense of relief from that.

I had conquered all of my obstacles in life up to that point and married the woman of my dreams. And I thought the game of life was over, like this was the last level, and now we can roll the credits of my movie and this thing will just be on auto-pilot. Man, did I have this wrong. You see, that’s the thing about watching all those movies growing. We never got to see that hero and his dream girl throughout the rest of their marriage.

A lot of us men marry our dream girl and we adopt this false belief like we’ve beat the game. In my marriage, what this resulted in was me not doing the same things I would do for my wife before we got married. All the random dates, the flowers, the new experiences, the stimulating conversations about the future, you know what I’m talking about. You were giving it your all because you had the conqueror mentality. You wanted to win her over so that she would say yes to marrying you and once you put a ring on it, you think the game is over.

Well I’m here to give you a reality check bro, if you just got married, the game has just begun. Because while you had this mentality going into the marriage that you’ve accomplished this great thing and you’re done. She’s going into the marriage thinking that she’s gonna get the 2.0 version of you. Like she’s thinking, “wow, look how great he treated me while we were dating, if I marry him he’s gonna treat me even better.” We enter the marriage game with these false expectations without even realizing it and it sets us up for failure.

And this reality usually sets in at the 2 year mark. The husband will think everything is cool, and then all of a sudden you find out your wife is not happy anymore because you sold her on a false version of you. This almost caused me my marriage and had I not snapped out of it, we would be just another divorce statistic right now. Your wedding day is just the beginning fellas, do not stop dating your wife. Level up your game and show her that she’s still your dream girl and will always be your dream girl every single day for the rest of your life.

2. Settling Into Comfort

My dad growing up was an old school type of man. His flawed philosophy was that a man shouldn’t have to do any house work at all. So when it came to doing dishes, vacuuming the house, laundry, cooking, bathing my brother and I as kids…etc. He wouldn’t really do squat and my mom always complained about it to me especially being the oldest. You see, not only did my mom have to work a full time job, but after coming home she still had to be a mom. My dad on the other hand, would get home from work and settle into comfort by watching tv for the rest of the evening until it came time to go to bed. He worked a lot of evening shifts at times too, so during the day he was asleep most of the time. Yet, even on his days off he never did anything to help my mom with chores around the house.

Now the reason why I bring this up is because a lot of the men in my generation are the same way. Instead of tv though, nowadays it’s video games. You gotta beat that next level or you gotta go do a raid with your boys tonight because you have to unlock this imaginary weapon that’s gonna make your character in the game so much more badass. So, no honey, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to wash the dishes tonight or take out the trash. What the hell are we doing fellas?

Make no mistake, the reason I am saying this is because this was me early on in our marriage. I was the guy that would logon right after eating dinner and then stay up until 3am playing a video game. While my wife had not only worked her shift, but also cooked dinner, cleaned up and then did the dishes right after. And I’m over there on the couch settling in my comfort with headphones on completely ignoring her for the rest of the night, yelling at my boys as we play pretend in some imaginary world that improves my life in no way whatsoever.

For me it was video games, but plug whatever vice in there you want, it’s the same thing. Binging a show, smoking weed, scrolling through your phone, consuming alcohol after you get home because you need to “wind down.” Whatever takes you away from showing up for your wife in a way that matters, will contribute to the downfall of your marriage given enough time.

She is watching you bro, and you can keep telling her you’ll do it tomorrow, but she knows you’re full of crap. Show her that you are willing to do hard things and that if she needs help you have her back in every area. I’m using chores as an example because it’s so common in marriages. But it could be demonstrated to her in different ways. Like right now with my wife, she sees me working out in our gym room even on days when I’m mentally drained and exhausted. When I don’t feel like working out, she sees me do it anyway. When I don’t feel like staying up scripting out a video for this show, she sees me do it anyway. When I don’t feel like taking out the trash, she sees me do it anyway. And not only do I do it anyway, but I do it with a good attitude to show her that it’s not an inconvenience for me, it’s an act of love for how I wanna show up for her every day.

It wasn’t always like this, but when I flipped that switch in our marriage, it changed the game for me and my wife. Don’t wait years to learn this lesson like I did, start now.

3. No Vision

You have been called to lead your wife and your entire family. I meet some men and women that have such an issue with the idea of the man leading his family that it becomes a point of contention. There’s this assumption that if you call the man the leader of the home, automatically the woman becomes somehow less valuable than the man. Or that the man now has the ability to tell the woman what to do or how to dress or that she can’t go to the store without his permission. Like damn, y’all take this stuff way too far. So I’m gonna clear this up by giving you my perception of this because it ties in to this third point I’m making.

A true leader leads by example and sets the tone for the entire team he is leading and works hard to build up other leaders. I do not boss my wife around. She is an intelligent, beautiful, amazingly talented woman who has her own sovereignty and free will to do whatever she wants. It is within her free will for her to go file for divorce tomorrow and leave me. I could not stop her even if I wanted to. But if you were to have a conversation with my wife and ask her who leads our home, she will very quickly tell you, “my husband does.” And no I haven’t coerced her or trained her to say that. She will give you that answer because I have earned that role in her life.

There’s a reason why I asked my wife to marry me. Why I asked her to take my last name. Her saying yes meant that she was going to follow my lead as her husband. Yes we are partners in this parenting game and yes we are a team and we never make big decisions without talking it over. But when a threat comes to harm my family, I face that threat first. If I want my wife to be honest, faithful and loving towards me, I am hones, faithful and loving towards her first. If I want her to be smiling, joyful and in a good mood, I put a smile on, become joyful and put myself in a good mood first. As the leader of the home, you set the tone for your family and you don’t do that by being a tyrant.

And as the leader, it is important that you have a vision for your family. A destination for where you want to take them and clarity on the work you need to do to make it happen. Most men have this dream of getting that high paying job and allowing your wife to be a stay at home mom raising the kids. The big house, the nice car, great neighborhood, you know the American dream we’ve been sold on forever. It’s easy to say that you want that, but what are you going to do to make that a reality? How badly do you actually want that dream family life?

I’m a firm believer that it’s all on you. And if you don’t have a clear vision of what you want your family life too look like in the next year, 3 years, 5 years or 10 years, then you’re not thinking long term. Look around you and take a look at the men that have their family life in order. The men that have the results that you want. They are not short term thinkers. They are playing a game of chess in which they are strategically planning moves that lead to a win in every area of their life. Whether that’s their marriage, the way they raised their kids, their finances, their faith, their health and even their skill set.

Get clarity on that vision now, and start leading it out.

Until next time my fellow Alpha Dad,
- G. Vidal