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8 WAYS GOOD PEOPLE INVALIDATE THEIR PARTNERS AND RUIN 5. Misinterpreting What It Means to Be Present. Sometimes people think that being in the same room, or the same house, is the same as being WITH someone. We’re not off doing something on our own away from home. We’re right there, watching TV, YOU’RE RIGHT, GUYS—YOU CAN’T MAKE WOMEN HAPPY Bad news, guys: You CAN’T make your wife or girlfriend happy no matter how hard you try. Not because they’re hard to please, but because all people must make peace with themselves before they can ever feel content and comfortable in their own skin. Until then, we’re all just fumbling around in the dark breaking shit. WHY DIVORCE HURTS MEN MORE THAN WOMEN Men lose more in divorce than women and it’s because (in my estimation) they didn’t give enough during the marriage. And the scariest part of this pattern of neglect and emotional abuse is that the vast majority of guys are NOT bad men, or abnormally large POOR MEAL PLANNING CAN END YOUR MARRIAGE Poor Meal Planning Can End Your Marriage. (Image/quickenloans.com) “My DH (Darling Husband) makes me want to kill him over dinner. Kill him. I don’t know why 30 minutes that occur exactly the same way each day can drive us to such rage. Marriages would be so much better without dinner.”. – A wife, speaking for many. . MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE I'm a single dad documenting his journey. A guy trying to walk a higher path. And messing up. A lot. AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS Vol. 1. I was in a lot of pain and blaming my ex-wife in the immediate aftermath of her leaving. Vol. 1 represented the first time I began learning to accept responsibility for my very large role in destroying the marriage. An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 1. IS YOUR SPOUSE HURTING YOU ON PURPOSE? Pain sucks. Some people enjoy the muscle burn after a hard workout because it feels like progress. Others like the achy remnants of vigorous bedroom activities, or headaches the morning after a fun party, as a reminder of the fun. But we can mostly agree that pain in most forms and at most times is a AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 1 Dear Shitty Husband, Yep. You. I know what you’re thinking. It’s one of, or some combination of, the following: I’m not a shitty husband! I work 50-hour-plus weeks to pay for our house, and our cars, and our vacations, and her jewelry, and the kids’ activities. I love my wife and family! I’m not a AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 5 An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 5. “So what you are saying is, I need to help you around the house and with the kids whether I want to or not?”. – Husband, searching for answers after wife left him yesterday, taking their two children. Now you’ve done it. SHE DIVORCED ME BECAUSE I WAS NICER TO STRANGERS THAN I I was usually nicer to strangers than I was to my wife. People I didn’t know and would never see again. I treated them with patience, courtesy and politeness. But the person who lived in the same house, gave birth to my son, and did more for me than anyone else? I oftendidn't extend
8 WAYS GOOD PEOPLE INVALIDATE THEIR PARTNERS AND RUIN 5. Misinterpreting What It Means to Be Present. Sometimes people think that being in the same room, or the same house, is the same as being WITH someone. We’re not off doing something on our own away from home. We’re right there, watching TV, YOU’RE RIGHT, GUYS—YOU CAN’T MAKE WOMEN HAPPY Bad news, guys: You CAN’T make your wife or girlfriend happy no matter how hard you try. Not because they’re hard to please, but because all people must make peace with themselves before they can ever feel content and comfortable in their own skin. Until then, we’re all just fumbling around in the dark breaking shit. WHY DIVORCE HURTS MEN MORE THAN WOMEN Men lose more in divorce than women and it’s because (in my estimation) they didn’t give enough during the marriage. And the scariest part of this pattern of neglect and emotional abuse is that the vast majority of guys are NOT bad men, or abnormally large POOR MEAL PLANNING CAN END YOUR MARRIAGE Poor Meal Planning Can End Your Marriage. (Image/quickenloans.com) “My DH (Darling Husband) makes me want to kill him over dinner. Kill him. I don’t know why 30 minutes that occur exactly the same way each day can drive us to such rage. Marriages would be so much better without dinner.”. – A wife, speaking for many. . START HERE | MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE Hi. I’m Matthew Fray. I work as a relationship coach as well as write and speak about marriage and divorce. Let's call it self-help or personal development without all of the cheesy bullshit that I hate about self-help and personal development. I'm currently writing my first book and considering opportunities in scripted and unscriptedtelevision.
AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 5 An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 5. “So what you are saying is, I need to help you around the house and with the kids whether I want to or not?”. – Husband, searching for answers after wife left him yesterday, taking their two children. Now you’ve done it. SAFETY AND TRUST IN RELATIONSHIPS: THOSE WORDS DON’T MEAN Author’s Note: I think the #1 problem in the world is how poorly humans manage their relationships. Even if you disagree, follow my logic, please. The biggest influence on whether our lives suck or are awesome is the quality of our closest relationships. For most of our lives, that’s the relationship with our spouses or AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 3 I met a shitty husband last night. And I liked him. First impressions go a long way with me. And I don’t think he’s a bad guy. Not at all. But I do think he’s a shitty husband. He’s 34 like me. He reminds me of me five years ago. He’s not a father, and AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 4 An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 4. You have a couple choices. I hope you’ll make the correct one. She’s going to leave you. And even if she doesn’t, she’s going to want to. She’s going to fantasize about your best friend. Or her friend’s husband. Or her co-worker who pays attention to her. Or the guy who smiled at her at YOUR WIFE THINKS YOU’RE A BAD HUSBAND BECAUSE YOU ARE ONE We have a problem, guys. I don’t know why we have the problem, but if you want to have a non-sucky marriage, it will help to acknowledge this, then work daily to overcome it. You think your wife is unfairly critical of you. That she's ungrateful. That she’s always coming upwith a
I HEARD SOMEONE UPSTAIRS WHEN NO ONE ELSE WAS HOME It was about 10 p.m. last night when my friend dropped me off at home. I unlocked my back door, kicked off my shoes, turned on a light, and lounged on one of my couches, half-watching an NBA playoff game while reading a book. I live in a two-story cape cod. Sometimes my son wakes WHY I THINK MOST MARRIED PEOPLE GET BORED AND STOP WANTING Author’s Note: I’m not a doctor. I’m not much of an expert on anything. But I’m curious, and I think a lot, and I like to explain WHY I think things. I don’t want there to be any confusion about what I believe or the reasons that led me here. I don’t think I have I’M NOT SPECIAL AND IT’S OKAY I’m going to die and no one will care. I don’t mean “no one,” like zero people. Maybe someone will cry or write a nice note on an online memorial. I mean “no one,” like hardly anyone. I’m not whining. It will probably happen to you, too. Sometimes I hear about someone dying—someone famous. So ‘SHOULD I DIVORCE MY WIFE?’ You two are fighting a lot, sleeping in separate places, not having sex, nor really even talking to each other any more than you have to. You haven’t felt like yourself—the person you remember being growing up—in months. Maybe years. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how you got here. That’s probably because no one thing MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE I'm a single dad documenting his journey. A guy trying to walk a higher path. And messing up. A lot. AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS Vol. 1. I was in a lot of pain and blaming my ex-wife in the immediate aftermath of her leaving. Vol. 1 represented the first time I began learning to accept responsibility for my very large role in destroying the marriage. An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 1. IS YOUR SPOUSE HURTING YOU ON PURPOSE? Pain sucks. Some people enjoy the muscle burn after a hard workout because it feels like progress. Others like the achy remnants of vigorous bedroom activities, or headaches the morning after a fun party, as a reminder of the fun. But we can mostly agree that pain in most forms and at most times is a AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 1 Dear Shitty Husband, Yep. You. I know what you’re thinking. It’s one of, or some combination of, the following: I’m not a shitty husband! I work 50-hour-plus weeks to pay for our house, and our cars, and our vacations, and her jewelry, and the kids’ activities. I love my wife and family! I’m not a YOU’RE RIGHT, GUYS—YOU CAN’T MAKE WOMEN HAPPY Bad news, guys: You CAN’T make your wife or girlfriend happy no matter how hard you try. Not because they’re hard to please, but because all people must make peace with themselves before they can ever feel content and comfortable in their own skin. Until then, we’re all just fumbling around in the dark breaking shit. WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR WIFE DOESN’T RESPECT YOU Oh no. You feel disrespected by your wife. This is definitely bad for your marriage and a poor example for any children you might have. You’ve done the best possible thing you could have in this situation, and I hope you’ll choose to feel good about it. You’ve 8 WAYS GOOD PEOPLE INVALIDATE THEIR PARTNERS AND RUIN 5. Misinterpreting What It Means to Be Present. Sometimes people think that being in the same room, or the same house, is the same as being WITH someone. We’re not off doing something on our own away from home. We’re right there, watching TV, ‘SHOULD I DIVORCE MY WIFE?’ You two are fighting a lot, sleeping in separate places, not having sex, nor really even talking to each other any more than you have to. You haven’t felt like yourself—the person you remember being growing up—in months. Maybe years. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how you got here. That’s probably because no one thing YOUR WIFE THINKS YOU’RE A BAD HUSBAND BECAUSE YOU ARE ONE You think your wife is unfairly critical of you. That she’s ungrateful. That she’s always coming up with a new problem or complaint with your behavior. That she’s constantly nagging you about something, and usually at the least-convenient times after a long day at work. You think your wife is a POOR MEAL PLANNING CAN END YOUR MARRIAGE Poor Meal Planning Can End Your Marriage. (Image/quickenloans.com) “My DH (Darling Husband) makes me want to kill him over dinner. Kill him. I don’t know why 30 minutes that occur exactly the same way each day can drive us to such rage. Marriages would be so much better without dinner.”. – A wife, speaking for many. . MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE I'm a single dad documenting his journey. A guy trying to walk a higher path. And messing up. A lot. AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS Vol. 1. I was in a lot of pain and blaming my ex-wife in the immediate aftermath of her leaving. Vol. 1 represented the first time I began learning to accept responsibility for my very large role in destroying the marriage. An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 1. IS YOUR SPOUSE HURTING YOU ON PURPOSE? Pain sucks. Some people enjoy the muscle burn after a hard workout because it feels like progress. Others like the achy remnants of vigorous bedroom activities, or headaches the morning after a fun party, as a reminder of the fun. But we can mostly agree that pain in most forms and at most times is a AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 1 Dear Shitty Husband, Yep. You. I know what you’re thinking. It’s one of, or some combination of, the following: I’m not a shitty husband! I work 50-hour-plus weeks to pay for our house, and our cars, and our vacations, and her jewelry, and the kids’ activities. I love my wife and family! I’m not a YOU’RE RIGHT, GUYS—YOU CAN’T MAKE WOMEN HAPPY Bad news, guys: You CAN’T make your wife or girlfriend happy no matter how hard you try. Not because they’re hard to please, but because all people must make peace with themselves before they can ever feel content and comfortable in their own skin. Until then, we’re all just fumbling around in the dark breaking shit. WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR WIFE DOESN’T RESPECT YOU Oh no. You feel disrespected by your wife. This is definitely bad for your marriage and a poor example for any children you might have. You’ve done the best possible thing you could have in this situation, and I hope you’ll choose to feel good about it. You’ve 8 WAYS GOOD PEOPLE INVALIDATE THEIR PARTNERS AND RUIN 5. Misinterpreting What It Means to Be Present. Sometimes people think that being in the same room, or the same house, is the same as being WITH someone. We’re not off doing something on our own away from home. We’re right there, watching TV, ‘SHOULD I DIVORCE MY WIFE?’ You two are fighting a lot, sleeping in separate places, not having sex, nor really even talking to each other any more than you have to. You haven’t felt like yourself—the person you remember being growing up—in months. Maybe years. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how you got here. That’s probably because no one thing YOUR WIFE THINKS YOU’RE A BAD HUSBAND BECAUSE YOU ARE ONE You think your wife is unfairly critical of you. That she’s ungrateful. That she’s always coming up with a new problem or complaint with your behavior. That she’s constantly nagging you about something, and usually at the least-convenient times after a long day at work. You think your wife is a POOR MEAL PLANNING CAN END YOUR MARRIAGE Poor Meal Planning Can End Your Marriage. (Image/quickenloans.com) “My DH (Darling Husband) makes me want to kill him over dinner. Kill him. I don’t know why 30 minutes that occur exactly the same way each day can drive us to such rage. Marriages would be so much better without dinner.”. – A wife, speaking for many. . START HERE | MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE Hi. I’m Matthew Fray. I work as a relationship coach as well as write and speak about marriage and divorce. Let's call it self-help or personal development without all of the cheesy bullshit that I hate about self-help and personal development. I'm currently writing my first book and considering opportunities in scripted and unscriptedtelevision.
MAY | 2021 | MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE Sadness. Anger. Fear. Embarrassment. Anxiety. Everything feels wrong, and when things hurt and feel wrong, our top objective is to get back to normal. To stop the pain. When the pain is emotional, and stemming from a relationship, it makes sense for one partner to AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 15 (Image/Shutterstock) “My husband isn’t honest with me,” wives sometimes say to me. “You mean, he lies to you?” I reply. “No. I think the things he says are true,” they say. “It’s not that he lies. It’s that he doesn’t always share the truth.” Trust is the thing your relationship requires most to stay AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 5 An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 5. “So what you are saying is, I need to help you around the house and with the kids whether I want to or not?”. – Husband, searching for answers after wife left him yesterday, taking their two children. Now you’ve done it. SHE DIVORCED ME BECAUSE I WAS NICER TO STRANGERS THAN I I was usually nicer to strangers than I was to my wife. People I didn’t know and would never see again. I treated them with patience, courtesy and politeness. But the person who lived in the same house, gave birth to my son, and did more for me than anyone else? I oftendidn't extend
WHY DIVORCE HURTS MEN MORE THAN WOMEN Men lose more in divorce than women and it’s because (in my estimation) they didn’t give enough during the marriage. And the scariest part of this pattern of neglect and emotional abuse is that the vast majority of guys are NOT bad men, or abnormally large AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 4 An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 4. You have a couple choices. I hope you’ll make the correct one. She’s going to leave you. And even if she doesn’t, she’s going to want to. She’s going to fantasize about your best friend. Or her friend’s husband. Or her co-worker who pays attention to her. Or the guy who smiled at her at AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 3 I met a shitty husband last night. And I liked him. First impressions go a long way with me. And I don’t think he’s a bad guy. Not at all. But I do think he’s a shitty husband. He’s 34 like me. He reminds me of me five years ago. He’s not a father, and SHE DIVORCED ME BECAUSE I LEFT DISHES BY THE SINK It seems so unreasonable when you put it that way: My wife left me because sometimes I leave dishes by the sink. It makes her seem ridiculous; and makes me seem like a victim of unfair expectations. We like to point fingers at other things to explain why something went wrong, like when Biff Tannen crashed George McFly’s car and spilled beer on his clothes, but it was all George’s fault for ONLINE DATING IS NONSENSE Online Dating is Nonsense. Online dating is bullshit. Just like regular dating. But it feels unavoidable. You know, like death. So, the other night, I went on my first date since 2001. Because I’m 34, only know married people, and am infinitely less attractive than I MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE I'm a single dad documenting his journey. A guy trying to walk a higher path. And messing up. A lot. AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS Vol. 1. I was in a lot of pain and blaming my ex-wife in the immediate aftermath of her leaving. Vol. 1 represented the first time I began learning to accept responsibility for my very large role in destroying the marriage. An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 1. IS YOUR SPOUSE HURTING YOU ON PURPOSE? Pain sucks. Some people enjoy the muscle burn after a hard workout because it feels like progress. Others like the achy remnants of vigorous bedroom activities, or headaches the morning after a fun party, as a reminder of the fun. But we can mostly agree that pain in most forms and at most times is a HOW TO COMFORT (AND NOT COMFORT) SOMEONE GOING THROUGH A Only two kinds of people could help me feel better during my first year of coping with, adjusting to, and healing from my divorce. The first kind of person was a friend or family member who knew me before I was married. My relationship with them lived independent of my marriage. My identity—for them—wasn’t intertwined WHY I WROTE “AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS” Why I Wrote “An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands”. Families matter. And if you believe your husband doesn’t think so, there’s a good chance you’re wrong. “Wow. Your marriage is a complete replica of mine except I haven’t walked out yet and you sound a bit more attentive than my husband. I wish he would read your blog and considerit
AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 1 Dear Shitty Husband, Yep. You. I know what you’re thinking. It’s one of, or some combination of, the following: I’m not a shitty husband! I work 50-hour-plus weeks to pay for our house, and our cars, and our vacations, and her jewelry, and the kids’ activities. I love my wife and family! I’m not a 8 WAYS GOOD PEOPLE INVALIDATE THEIR PARTNERS AND RUIN 5. Misinterpreting What It Means to Be Present. Sometimes people think that being in the same room, or the same house, is the same as being WITH someone. We’re not off doing something on our own away from home. We’re right there, watching TV, WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU COULD LEARN ALMOST ANYTHING YOU Somewhere in the world, there exists a person who could objectively and legitimately be called The Smartest Person on Earth. Maybe she’s a Nobel Laureate in the field of astrophysics. Maybe he’s the global thought leader in the development of artificial intelligence. I don’t know. But what if I told you that—no matter your education WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR WIFE DOESN’T RESPECT YOU Oh no. You feel disrespected by your wife. This is definitely bad for your marriage and a poor example for any children you might have. You’ve done the best possible thing you could have in this situation, and I hope you’ll choose to feel good about it. You’ve WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR SPOUSE ISN’T YOUR SOULMATE What to do When Your Spouse Isn’t Your Soulmate. You can continue chasing that elusive Tron game of blue-ish transcendent love. Or you can simply create it with a couple of pretty simple choices. (Image/Ascended Relationship) The person you’re married to—or will marry one day—isn’t your soulmate. [Insert very dramatic orchestramusic
MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE I'm a single dad documenting his journey. A guy trying to walk a higher path. And messing up. A lot. AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS Vol. 1. I was in a lot of pain and blaming my ex-wife in the immediate aftermath of her leaving. Vol. 1 represented the first time I began learning to accept responsibility for my very large role in destroying the marriage. An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 1. IS YOUR SPOUSE HURTING YOU ON PURPOSE? Pain sucks. Some people enjoy the muscle burn after a hard workout because it feels like progress. Others like the achy remnants of vigorous bedroom activities, or headaches the morning after a fun party, as a reminder of the fun. But we can mostly agree that pain in most forms and at most times is a HOW TO COMFORT (AND NOT COMFORT) SOMEONE GOING THROUGH A Only two kinds of people could help me feel better during my first year of coping with, adjusting to, and healing from my divorce. The first kind of person was a friend or family member who knew me before I was married. My relationship with them lived independent of my marriage. My identity—for them—wasn’t intertwined WHY I WROTE “AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS” Why I Wrote “An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands”. Families matter. And if you believe your husband doesn’t think so, there’s a good chance you’re wrong. “Wow. Your marriage is a complete replica of mine except I haven’t walked out yet and you sound a bit more attentive than my husband. I wish he would read your blog and considerit
AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 1 Dear Shitty Husband, Yep. You. I know what you’re thinking. It’s one of, or some combination of, the following: I’m not a shitty husband! I work 50-hour-plus weeks to pay for our house, and our cars, and our vacations, and her jewelry, and the kids’ activities. I love my wife and family! I’m not a 8 WAYS GOOD PEOPLE INVALIDATE THEIR PARTNERS AND RUIN 5. Misinterpreting What It Means to Be Present. Sometimes people think that being in the same room, or the same house, is the same as being WITH someone. We’re not off doing something on our own away from home. We’re right there, watching TV, WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU COULD LEARN ALMOST ANYTHING YOU Somewhere in the world, there exists a person who could objectively and legitimately be called The Smartest Person on Earth. Maybe she’s a Nobel Laureate in the field of astrophysics. Maybe he’s the global thought leader in the development of artificial intelligence. I don’t know. But what if I told you that—no matter your education WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR WIFE DOESN’T RESPECT YOU Oh no. You feel disrespected by your wife. This is definitely bad for your marriage and a poor example for any children you might have. You’ve done the best possible thing you could have in this situation, and I hope you’ll choose to feel good about it. You’ve WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR SPOUSE ISN’T YOUR SOULMATE What to do When Your Spouse Isn’t Your Soulmate. You can continue chasing that elusive Tron game of blue-ish transcendent love. Or you can simply create it with a couple of pretty simple choices. (Image/Ascended Relationship) The person you’re married to—or will marry one day—isn’t your soulmate. [Insert very dramatic orchestramusic
START HERE | MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE Hi. I’m Matthew Fray. I work as a relationship coach as well as write and speak about marriage and divorce. Let's call it self-help or personal development without all of the cheesy bullshit that I hate about self-help and personal development. I'm currently writing my first book and considering opportunities in scripted and unscriptedtelevision.
MAY | 2021 | MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE Sadness. Anger. Fear. Embarrassment. Anxiety. Everything feels wrong, and when things hurt and feel wrong, our top objective is to get back to normal. To stop the pain. When the pain is emotional, and stemming from a relationship, it makes sense for one partner to AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 15 (Image/Shutterstock) “My husband isn’t honest with me,” wives sometimes say to me. “You mean, he lies to you?” I reply. “No. I think the things he says are true,” they say. “It’s not that he lies. It’s that he doesn’t always share the truth.” Trust is the thing your relationship requires most to stay HOW TO DETERMINE YOUR WORTH AS A PERSON The 4 Kinds of Value. There might be more variations. I don’t know. 1. Intrinsic Value – the concept of something having worth “in itself” or “in its own right.”. I believe human beings have intrinsic value. When people have intrinsic value, we don’t rape, murder, steal, injure, defraud, defame, or I’M NOT SPECIAL AND IT’S OKAY I’m going to die and no one will care. I don’t mean “no one,” like zero people. Maybe someone will cry or write a nice note on an online memorial. I mean “no one,” like hardly anyone. I’m not whining. It will probably happen to you, too. Sometimes I hear about someone dying—someone famous. So AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 1 Dear Shitty Husband, Yep. You. I know what you’re thinking. It’s one of, or some combination of, the following: I’m not a shitty husband! I work 50-hour-plus weeks to pay for our house, and our cars, and our vacations, and her jewelry, and the kids’ activities. I love my wife and family! I’m not a YOU’RE RIGHT, GUYS—YOU CAN’T MAKE WOMEN HAPPY Bad news, guys: You CAN’T make your wife or girlfriend happy no matter how hard you try. Not because they’re hard to please, but because all people must make peace with themselves before they can ever feel content and comfortable in their own skin. Until then, we’re all just fumbling around in the dark breaking shit. SHE DIVORCED ME BECAUSE I WAS NICER TO STRANGERS THAN I I was usually nicer to strangers than I was to my wife. People I didn’t know and would never see again. I treated them with patience, courtesy and politeness. But the person who lived in the same house, gave birth to my son, and did more for me than anyone else? I oftendidn't extend
WHY I THINK MOST MARRIED PEOPLE GET BORED AND STOP WANTING Author’s Note: I’m not a doctor. I’m not much of an expert on anything. But I’m curious, and I think a lot, and I like to explain WHY I think things. I don’t want there to be any confusion about what I believe or the reasons that led me here. I don’t think I have WHY DIVORCE HURTS MEN MORE THAN WOMEN Men lose more in divorce than women and it’s because (in my estimation) they didn’t give enough during the marriage. And the scariest part of this pattern of neglect and emotional abuse is that the vast majority of guys are NOT bad men, or abnormally large MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE I'm a single dad documenting his journey. A guy trying to walk a higher path. And messing up. A lot. AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS Vol. 1. I was in a lot of pain and blaming my ex-wife in the immediate aftermath of her leaving. Vol. 1 represented the first time I began learning to accept responsibility for my very large role in destroying the marriage. An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 1. IS YOUR SPOUSE HURTING YOU ON PURPOSE? Pain sucks. Some people enjoy the muscle burn after a hard workout because it feels like progress. Others like the achy remnants of vigorous bedroom activities, or headaches the morning after a fun party, as a reminder of the fun. But we can mostly agree that pain in most forms and at most times is a AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 1 Dear Shitty Husband, Yep. You. I know what you’re thinking. It’s one of, or some combination of, the following: I’m not a shitty husband! I work 50-hour-plus weeks to pay for our house, and our cars, and our vacations, and her jewelry, and the kids’ activities. I love my wife and family! I’m not a AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 3 Or why all of these things keep happening to you. 2. Make it about them. Ask yourself how you can make your partner feel the way you want to feel. How you can make good things happen for them. Lead by example, even when it’s hard. Even when you don’t feel like it. HOW TO COMFORT (AND NOT COMFORT) SOMEONE GOING THROUGH A Only two kinds of people could help me feel better during my first year of coping with, adjusting to, and healing from my divorce. The first kind of person was a friend or family member who knew me before I was married. My relationship with them lived independent of my marriage. My identity—for them—wasn’t intertwined WHY DIVORCE HURTS MEN MORE THAN WOMEN Men lose more in divorce than women and it’s because (in my estimation) they didn’t give enough during the marriage. And the scariest part of this pattern of neglect and emotional abuse is that the vast majority of guys are NOT bad men, or abnormally large SHE DIVORCED ME BECAUSE I WAS NICER TO STRANGERS THAN I I was usually nicer to strangers than I was to my wife. People I didn’t know and would never see again. I treated them with patience, courtesy and politeness. But the person who lived in the same house, gave birth to my son, and did more for me than anyone else? I oftendidn't extend
‘SHOULD I DIVORCE MY WIFE?’ You two are fighting a lot, sleeping in separate places, not having sex, nor really even talking to each other any more than you have to. You haven’t felt like yourself—the person you remember being growing up—in months. Maybe years. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how you got here. That’s probably because no one thing 8 WAYS GOOD PEOPLE INVALIDATE THEIR PARTNERS AND RUIN 5. Misinterpreting What It Means to Be Present. Sometimes people think that being in the same room, or the same house, is the same as being WITH someone. We’re not off doing something on our own away from home. We’re right there, watching TV, MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE I'm a single dad documenting his journey. A guy trying to walk a higher path. And messing up. A lot. AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS Vol. 1. I was in a lot of pain and blaming my ex-wife in the immediate aftermath of her leaving. Vol. 1 represented the first time I began learning to accept responsibility for my very large role in destroying the marriage. An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 1. IS YOUR SPOUSE HURTING YOU ON PURPOSE? Pain sucks. Some people enjoy the muscle burn after a hard workout because it feels like progress. Others like the achy remnants of vigorous bedroom activities, or headaches the morning after a fun party, as a reminder of the fun. But we can mostly agree that pain in most forms and at most times is a AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 1 Dear Shitty Husband, Yep. You. I know what you’re thinking. It’s one of, or some combination of, the following: I’m not a shitty husband! I work 50-hour-plus weeks to pay for our house, and our cars, and our vacations, and her jewelry, and the kids’ activities. I love my wife and family! I’m not a AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 3 Or why all of these things keep happening to you. 2. Make it about them. Ask yourself how you can make your partner feel the way you want to feel. How you can make good things happen for them. Lead by example, even when it’s hard. Even when you don’t feel like it. HOW TO COMFORT (AND NOT COMFORT) SOMEONE GOING THROUGH A Only two kinds of people could help me feel better during my first year of coping with, adjusting to, and healing from my divorce. The first kind of person was a friend or family member who knew me before I was married. My relationship with them lived independent of my marriage. My identity—for them—wasn’t intertwined WHY DIVORCE HURTS MEN MORE THAN WOMEN Men lose more in divorce than women and it’s because (in my estimation) they didn’t give enough during the marriage. And the scariest part of this pattern of neglect and emotional abuse is that the vast majority of guys are NOT bad men, or abnormally large SHE DIVORCED ME BECAUSE I WAS NICER TO STRANGERS THAN I I was usually nicer to strangers than I was to my wife. People I didn’t know and would never see again. I treated them with patience, courtesy and politeness. But the person who lived in the same house, gave birth to my son, and did more for me than anyone else? I oftendidn't extend
‘SHOULD I DIVORCE MY WIFE?’ You two are fighting a lot, sleeping in separate places, not having sex, nor really even talking to each other any more than you have to. You haven’t felt like yourself—the person you remember being growing up—in months. Maybe years. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how you got here. That’s probably because no one thing 8 WAYS GOOD PEOPLE INVALIDATE THEIR PARTNERS AND RUIN 5. Misinterpreting What It Means to Be Present. Sometimes people think that being in the same room, or the same house, is the same as being WITH someone. We’re not off doing something on our own away from home. We’re right there, watching TV, I’M NOT SPECIAL AND IT’S OKAY I’m going to die and no one will care. I don’t mean “no one,” like zero people. Maybe someone will cry or write a nice note on an online memorial. I mean “no one,” like hardly anyone. I’m not whining. It will probably happen to you, too. Sometimes I hear about someone dying—someone famous. So AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 5 An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 5. “So what you are saying is, I need to help you around the house and with the kids whether I want to or not?”. – Husband, searching for answers after wife left him yesterday, taking their two children. Now you’ve done it. THE REAL REASON WHY WOMEN LEAVE MEN This truth is uncomfortable because it requires that we trust other people more than we trust ourselves, and we are understandably afraid of doing that. This truth is uncomfortable because it shatters our very perception of reality. Other people hurt us. Other people don’t always have our best interests at heart. VOWS, BULLSHIT AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 2. Don’t Take Vows if You Don’t Mean Them. I hate to break it to you, bonbon2, but after you say “I do” and promise all that shit in front of spouse, God and country, it kind of DOES become your responsibility to help your husband be a better husband if that’s what it takes to save your marriage. WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR WIFE DOESN’T RESPECT YOU Oh no. You feel disrespected by your wife. This is definitely bad for your marriage and a poor example for any children you might have. You’ve done the best possible thing you could have in this situation, and I hope you’ll choose to feel good about it. You’ve AN OPEN LETTER TO SHITTY HUSBANDS, VOL. 4 An Open Letter to Shitty Husbands, Vol. 4. You have a couple choices. I hope you’ll make the correct one. She’s going to leave you. And even if she doesn’t, she’s going to want to. She’s going to fantasize about your best friend. Or her friend’s husband. Or her co-worker who pays attention to her. Or the guy who smiled at her at YOUR WIFE THINKS YOU’RE A BAD HUSBAND BECAUSE YOU ARE ONE We have a problem, guys. I don’t know why we have the problem, but if you want to have a non-sucky marriage, it will help to acknowledge this, then work daily to overcome it. You think your wife is unfairly critical of you. That she's ungrateful. That she’s always coming upwith a
WHY I THINK MOST MARRIED PEOPLE GET BORED AND STOP WANTING Author’s Note: I’m not a doctor. I’m not much of an expert on anything. But I’m curious, and I think a lot, and I like to explain WHY I think things. I don’t want there to be any confusion about what I believe or the reasons that led me here. I don’t think I have WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU COULD LEARN ALMOST ANYTHING YOU Somewhere in the world, there exists a person who could objectively and legitimately be called The Smartest Person on Earth. Maybe she’s a Nobel Laureate in the field of astrophysics. Maybe he’s the global thought leader in the development of artificial intelligence. I don’t know. But what if I told you that—no matter your education ONLINE DATING IS NONSENSE Online Dating is Nonsense. Online dating is bullshit. Just like regular dating. But it feels unavoidable. You know, like death. So, the other night, I went on my first date since 2001. Because I’m 34, only know married people, and am infinitely less attractive than I MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE I'M A SINGLE DAD DOCUMENTING HIS JOURNEY. A GUY TRYING TO WALK A HIGHER PATH. AND MESSING UP. A LOT.* Home
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Sep 16 2019
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HOW TO RESPOND TO YOUR EMOTIONAL SPOUSE WITHOUT MAKING THINGS WORSE (Image/cristianobaraghini.it) More often than not, when my wife reacted emotionally to anything—something I said or did; something on TV; something that happened at work, whatever—my gut reaction was to think of her response as an overreaction. This was not me intentionally trying to demean or disrespect her. This was my honest, natural, and I believed—objective—reaction to whatever she was saying or doing that I perceived to be disproportionate to whatever triggered the emotional response. I was using commonplace, relationship-killing invalidation methods,
but I wasn’t doing so maliciously. Never. I don’t like injustice. So if my wife told me a story about how a co-worker or client had upset her earlier in the day, and I agreed with the offending co-worker or client, I would say so. I was sharing my honest opinions and feelings, and believed that happy, healthy marriages were built on such things. When my wife would act pissy because I wasn’t taking her side, I was once again appalled by the notion that my wife would rather me dishonestly side with her than share my actual beliefs. Lastly, I felt protective of my wife. Loved her and wanted her to be the best, healthiest, smartest, most balanced person she could be. I felt morally and lovingly obligated to point out that I thought many of these situations were beneath her. _Babe. You are very smart. You are very talented. You are very decent. I wish you wouldn’t let these inconsequential things negatively affect how you feel. If you learn to see them as minor nuisances rather than these big, day-ruining things, then moving forward you will have more good days and feel happy._ I believed these were honest thoughts and feelings, and that sharing them with my wife was not only appropriate, but that I was offering her a path to feeling more peace and joy in her life. But then, of course, in all of my blind ignorance, my marriage continued to slowly—very slowly—deteriorate,
one dinner or car-ride conversation like this at a time, until it felt like my wife hated me, and we spent more than a year sleeping in separate bedrooms until she finally ended it for good. The entire time, me thinking she was emotionally broken—that her internal calibration was misaligned—and that once she made a few subtle adjustments, she would feel better, and then we could get back to having that marriage we both believed we were signing up for. THE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE LITMUS TEST If you’ve read this far, and you are in 100-percent lockstep philosophical agreement with how I processed and responded to my wife sharing her emotions with me during our marriage, then I think it’s safe to assume you have a lot of conflict in your romanticrelationships.
If you agree with my good-hearted, well-intentioned approach to supporting my wife in my now-failed marriage, or are married to (or dating) someone who behaves as I did, I bet you have The Same Fight,
which produce the same toxic feelings of stress and anxiety, tones of voice, and emotionally unpleasant results over and over again. I assume you are incredibly frustrated with your failure to make progress in these conversations, because you are stuck in this conflict cycle that won’t stop repeating itself. Most of us are familiar with the Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, but fewer of us, it seems, are familiar with the Emotional Quotient, or EQ—the measure of a person’s emotional intelligence. While IQ can help you solve advanced math theorems or learn a foreign language, it’s EQ that will determine the quality and fate of your romantic and interpersonal relationships. HERE’S A MIND TOOL FOR CONNECTING WITH YOUR EMOTIONAL PARTNER AND ENDING THE FIGHT CYCLE This is not exclusively a male behavior—this attempt to “correct” or “adjust” someone else’s emotional reactions—but it’s most typically seen in men, which is why we have the stereotype of men frustrated by their overly emotional wivesor girlfriends.
The majority of my male coaching clients report feeling this same sense of helplessness with theirwives.
_“Suddenly, she’s mad about something again, and I don’t even know what I did wrong. It’s like nothing I do is ever good enoughfor her.”_
Right now, some of you guys are nodding. I am too. This is exactly how I felt when I was married. Like I could never win. And I didn’t understand why my efforts to help my wife feel better only seemed to make her feel worse. Men in this scenario have an opportunity (responsibility?) to adjust their response habits to their relationship partners during these conversations and situations, and many will discover that by doing so, these emotionally volatile, conflict-heavy discussions will lessen in both frequency and severity, leading to two partners increasing their connection and moving closer together instead of drifting furtherapart
.
…
Here’s where I was getting it wrong, and where you (or your partner) may also be getting it wrong. When my wife started reacting emotionally to something, my first reaction was to evaluate the situation and determine whether I would react the same way to that same scenario. I was very good at empathizing with people whenever I recognized that I would feel just like them if I had gone through what they had. But my wife would typically react to things in ways that I would not. AND MY VERY FIRST ACTION WAS TO DECIDE THAT HER REACTION WAS DISPROPORTIONATE TO WHATEVER HAD HAPPENED. Another way to say that is that my very first move was to determine that my wife was wrong,
incorrect, mistaken, misinformed, ignorant, crazy, or emotionally weak to be acting the way she was. Imagine that every time you told your spouse that something made you mad, sad, or hurt, they told you were wrong—that you either didn’t know how you really felt because you were confused, or that you were incorrect for feeling as you did. That you’re too dumb to know that none of that stuff matters. Imagine that when you told them that THEY were saying or doing things that resulted in you feeling shitty, that they DEFENDED and JUSTIFIED their actions, all but ensuring that in the future—both short-term and long-term—you could count on feeling shitty because of your partner’s actions over and over again. What they did wasn’t bad or wrong! YOUR feelings and opinions are what’s bad and wrong! So you just go ahead and fix whatever is wrong with your brain and body chemistry, and then you won’t have to feelbad anymore!
Imagine it.
When a person tells you that something you did or said caused them pain, and then you respond in ways that essentially promise you will repeat that pain-causing behavior because you don’t think there’s anything wrong with it? It makes perfect sense for that person to hurriedly remove you from their life. We should not allow people to hurt us after they refuse to stop doing something we have repeatedly asked them to stop doing. Those people should not be granted permission to continue torpedoing our lives. IT’S THIS INCLINATION TO MATCH OR COMPARE HOW WE WOULD REACT TO CERTAIN EVENTS THAT CREATES CONFLICT WITH OUR PARTNERS.I ask my coaching
clients who report this conflict pattern in their relationships to cut that shit out, stat. Instead of matching or comparing their predicted reaction to an identical scenario, I ask them to reverse-engineer it. I ASK THEM TO MATCH OR COMPARE THEIR CURRENT EMOTIONAL STATE TO THAT OF THEIR PARTNER’S. Psychologists call it emotional mirroring. I’m not asking people to intentionally make themselves feel sad or angry. I’m simply asking them to swap out the thing they’re currently comparing for something else that will foster positive emotional connectivity, which is often what’s missing in conflict-heavy relationships. It’s not useful to waste the time debating the merits of whether they SHOULD feel as they feel. They DO feel as they feel. Deal in reality. And an effective emotionally intelligent response to someone in pain, or who feels sad or angry, is to match or compare YOUR emotions to THEIRS. They’re sad. _Should they be sad? _WHO CARES? They ARE sad. What makes you sad? What happened the last time you were sad? What behaviors and words are consistent with what feels appropriate when you’re in that state? They’re angry. _Should they be angry?_ Doesn’t matter. They ARE angry. What makes you angry? Can you remember the last time you were really angry and your entire body felt shitty? What could your wife or friend or whoever have said or done to help? Trying to correct someone else’s emotions is a recipe for DESTROYING your relationship with them.
Instead, attempt to evoke that same emotion. Notice how they feel. Communicate that you understand that they’re feeling that, and that you know it sucks. Communicate that what they think and feel MATTERS, because THEY matter. Communicate that you’re there to be whatever version of a support system they need to get through whatever ishappening.
If it’s something you said or did to trigger those feelings, DO NOT attempt to defend or justify whatever happened. Do not double down on the thing that’s causing all of this suck. Seek to understand both WHAT and WHY something hurt. Communicate that you want to be their teammate—their partner—in cooperatively finding new ways to say and do things so that the shitty thing doesn’t repeat itself.…
After a competitive sporting event like a football game, all of the viewers, fans, and participants have WILDLY different reactions. The winning players, coaches, and fans are happy. The losing players, coaches, and fans are sad or angry. Some neutral viewers didn’t experience any emotion at all. You can see the lunacy in any of those people acting as if others should share their identical emotional reaction, yes? OF COURSE losing players and fans are typically going to feel shittier than winningplayers and fans.
Same event. Different reactions. Just as contextually, all of those different reactions make sense when you understand things from their perspective, we’ll discover that people reacting emotionally to something in ways that might be foreign or surprising to us ALSO have a very sensible, understandable reason for responding that way. If you’re interested in loving, living with, sleeping with, sharing resources with, this other human being who behaves differently than you would, I think you’ll find it incredibly useful to seek out those reasons for this surprising reaction. That’s information you’ll be able to use to NOT say and do things that lead to your partner (or anyone you care about) feeling hurt and mistreated.…
Our relationship problems are subtle.
Nuanced.
And the adjustments we must make in our minds and hearts are equallysubtle and nuanced.
It’s not hard because it’s especially difficult to do any of this stuff. It’s hard because we frequently struggle to notice, to see, to recognize these moments for what they are. Good news: We can do hard things.SHARE THIS:
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Aug 26 2019
27 Comments
Divorce , Life
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MUST WOMEN LEAVE MEN TO GET THEM TO CHANGE? (Image/David Colarusso) _“Would you have changed if she had not left you?”_ Within an hour of answering this exact question in the comments of How to Change Your Shitty Husband,
someone else sent an email asking the same question, and whether I’d written an article about it before. I have answered this question many times—but I think thoughtlessly and too cynically. Maybe because I thought the question was actually about me. Maybe sometimes it is. Wives and girlfriends, I think, are mostly asking this because they’re trying to decide whether there’s hope for their partner to experience the same emotional intelligence evolution that I did WITHOUT going through divorce, since divorce sucks more than shitty drivers trying to kill you and your 11-year-old at highway speeds.
People frequently ask whether my wife had to divorce me in order for me to make the changes that I did, and it’s easy to say yes. For me, under my specific life circumstances, it’s easy to efficiently and truthfully say that it took the pain of losing my family to motivate me since to learn all that I have about humanrelationships.
But that’s a dangerously simplistic answer AND eliminates the opportunity for me to humble-brag about my coaching work with husbands and boyfriends, which sometimes results in clients demonstrating vastly improved emotional intelligence and relationship habits.
You know, without all of the limp-wiener sobbing and vomit parties that accompanies the dark and scary early days of divorce when you’re still trying to decide each day whether you want to continue breathing and feeling things. (Or maybe that was just me.) THE ANSWER IS NOT EITHER OR It’s not a binary choice. It’s much more than just one or the other. There are other possibilities to consider beyond whether to divorce/break up, or remain in a toxic relationship. There’s nothing particularly special about me or the coaching work that I do. It’s unique, I suppose, in that only I can be me, and only I can think and speak the way I think and speak. People frequently reach out to me because of articles I’ve written which they say explains their relationship to them in ways that make sense where other self-help content had failed to connect or resonate. I’m not for everyone. But I am for those people. The people who speak my language and think and feel kind of like how I think and feel. Those are the people I can help via coaching. For other people, different coaches, or therapists, or marriage counselors, or even just some great books might be what can helpthem the most.
Like figuring out how to fine-tune your specific relationship with your specific partner by tailoring your behavioral and communication habits to THEIR individual needs in order to achieve balance and peace, so too should you use the tools and resources best suited to helping you succeed.…
I didn’t have me to talk to. But I think Now Me could have helped Then Me because I know how to say things in ways that make sense to me. My ex-wife did NOT know how to say things in ways that made sense to me. She said things in ways that made sense to her, and I was too ignorant and immature to put in the work necessary to help both of us learn how to say and do things in the ways that made sense to one another. People don’t divorce on the reg because all these people who were once madly in love and super-connected to one another suddenly disagree about every possible thing. People divorce because they don’t know how to explain what’s wrong from the OTHER person’s point of view.
Unless you can clearly explain your spouse’s argument or feelings in a way that makes them say _“Yes! You totally get it! That’s exactly right!”_ then it’s safe to conclude you STILL don’t getit.
It’s not your failure to understand it that will get you divorced as much as your stubborn unwillingness to legitimately TRY to understand. That usually ends with your spouse concluding (sensibly) that you don’t care enough about them for them to justify investing the rest of their lives in your relationship, which to them, feels bad everyday.
THE RIGHT WORDS, THE RIGHT WAY, THE RIGHT TIME The 5 Love Languages is a simple, profound, and useful way to frame relationship communication and behavior, which is why the book’s author Dr. Gary Chapman has more money than really good bank robbers. There are five common ways in which people receive love—meaning when people do these things to or for them, they literally feel loved. What most of us do is show our love to others in the way that makes sense to us—in the way WE feel loved. But whenever OUR love language doesn’t align with our romantic partner’s love language (and vice versa), things can get super-hairy like the Elephant Exhibit at the Jimmy John’s Wildlife Preserve. For many people, the simple adjustment to using words and behavior tailored to their partner’s specific love language can revolutionize the way two people communicate with and connect to one another. This same principle can be applied to any kind of human connection or communication challenge. We find answers to our problems when we ask the right questions. There is a way THAT person learns things, hears things, feels things. It’s probably different than the way you and I learn, hear, and feelstuff.
So to get through to them, it’s our job to understand HOW things get through to them, and then using behavior and communication methods consistent with the way the other person absorbs new information. WOULD YOU HAVE CHANGED IF SHE HAD NOT LEFT YOU? It’s easy to say no. It’s easy to say my wife had to leave me for me to hurt badly enough in order to motivate me to learn WHY, thus developing the emotional intelligence and empathy necessary to learn how be less of an asshole in life and relationships.
But I can’t be sure that’s true. I might even say I AM sure that I would have changed if I’d had the requisite amount of information I needed back when I needed it. You can’t know what you don’t know. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. The key difference between me now versus me then, is then I believed I knew a lot, and now I’m pretty committed to never assuming I KNOW things. If I ‘know’ things, I can’t learn. If I ‘know’ things, I won’t ask good questions. If I ‘know’ things, I’ll be wrong the exact same amount as I always am, but a much bigger asshole along the way.…
We just need the right people, the right conditions, and partners willing and able to speak the language and use the vocabulary that weunderstand.
It’s a choice.
And no matter which side of the broken-translator crisis you live on, I hope you’ll choose it.SHARE THIS:
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Aug 14 2019
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Divorce , Life
HOW TO CHANGE YOUR SHITTY HUSBAND Image/”Change Ahead” artwork by Ed Myers _“I fucking hated you,”_ she said. _“I hated you because you’re the guy who made a damn name for himself because he was a self-proclaimed ‘shitty’ husband, which he was. The adoration and praise you would get from women for telling the damn truth about your ignorance in your relationship nauseatedme.”_
…
Today would have been my 15th wedding anniversary. If I wasn’tdivorced.
Instead, it’s the sixth anniversary that isn’t. Things changed. I changed, even though the angry reader might not think that’s worth anything. “Just asking for you to evaluate me based on today instead of yesterday,” I replied. _“I can’t evaluate you based on today,”_ the reader said. _“You don’t understand—I might as well be your wife. I am every woman whose husband prioritized himself or things over his wife. I am every woman who worked her ass off to helper her husband heal only to be met with his criticism, judgment, or dismissal. _ _“I am every woman who sacrificed for the wellbeing of the family until she realized that she’s wasting away to nothing and no one wasgoing to notice. _
_“I might as well be your wife—because you might as well be my husband. Can’t erase the pain of being mistreated, as much as Iwould like to.”_
…
I didn’t make a name for myself. I’m just the guy a handful of people know about who learned how to see that which was previously invisible, and now people want to know the secret. Men afraid of losing their wives or girlfriends ask me to work with them because they want to learn how to see it too.
Women afraid of being forced into the same situation I forced my wife into—having to choose between mental and emotional health, and divorce—ask me to work with them or to at least help them understand how they can help their husbands or boyfriends to learn what I’velearned.
People don’t care about me, necessarily. They care because sometimes things I write or say about my failed marriage sounds just like what is happening in their marriage. People are just trying to save their families. Their lives. People will do anything to save those things. ‘HOW DO I GET MY HUSBAND TO CHANGE?’ That’s the million-dollar question. The one I’ve gotten the most in various forms over the past six years of writing here. Seth Godin , perhaps the world’s thought leader in the field of marketing, wrote: _“People don’t change. (Unless they want to.) Humans are unique in their ability to willingly change. We can change our attitude, our appearance and our skillset._ _“But only when we want to._ _“The hard part, then, isn’t the changing it._ _“It’s the wanting it.”_…
The answer is you DON’T get your husband to change. Your husband either will or won’t change in any number of ways for the rest of his life, and most if not all of those changes will come about because of his desire for them to. _“Why didn’t you get it when you were married?” _people ask me. _“Why did she have to leave you for you to get it?”_ Because I didn’t want to change until it hurt. It’s common for people to be surprised by the idea that I didn’t know that I was a shitty husband,
while I was being one during my nine-year marriage. People, I think, struggle to believe it, because it seems so obvious to them. The English language seems obvious to me. Driving in the right lane (as opposed to the left as they do in the United Kingdom and Ireland) seems obvious to me. Wearing shoes in buildings seems obvious to me (as opposed to removing them as they commonly do in Japan). There are 7.7 billion people in the world, and each of us has our own version of ‘normal.’ And this is the source of all human conflict, from schoolyard arguments, to political disagreements, to marriage fights, to terrorist attacks, all the way up to wars between nations.Always.
The nature of conflict is one person or group believing they are right, while another person or group is wrong. That’s all relationship fights are. Sometimes, these are fact-based arguments that can be settled quickly. Usually they’re not, which is why long-term committed relationships fail more than half the time. I CHANGED BECAUSE I WANTED TO CHANGE I changed because I thought I was going to die, and I knew I never wanted to feel that hurt and broken again. I changed because I was motivated to protect myself and my son—and later, others—from the negative consequences of my previous thought and behavior patterns. I didn’t change when my wife asked me to because I didn’t want to, and because I didn’t know it mattered. I’m not going to hear that EVERYTHING your spouse tells you is a thing you accept as gospel. Something they say either feels important and credible to you, or it doesn’t. And then you respond accordingly in a very natural, organicway.
Husbands don’t dismiss, judge, contradict, or otherwise invalidate their wives as part of some master-planned strategy from the playbook we were all handed in Patriarchy School. Husbands do these things because they have no idea—absolutely NONE—that what they’re doing amounts to literally abusing and neglecting their wives, and certainly not that after it happens enough times, the marriage and family are going to fall apart when it’s super emotionally, and financially, and logistically inconvenient todo so.
I tried to help my wife solve her work and social problems when she’d talk to me about them. I thought I was being helpful, but I was accidentally, blindly, being an insensitive prick, and a bademotional partner.
I treated my wife just like I treated EVERYONE I loved the most. I’d use playful banter to mock and tease when the situation seemed to call for it. My wife didn’t like it. Sarcasm pointed her direction caused unique invisible pains due to things she’d encountered years before I knew her. These weren’t ideas that I was intellectually mature enough to grasp. I just knew that sarcasm was fun, and all my best friends and I laughed at and with each other constantly because of it. Laughing and fun are GOOD things. Thus, my wife was ‘wrong,’ and Iwas right.
These are the same types of thought processes and blind spots that everyone has. Everyone’s blind spots are just different. Just like everyone’s family customs, and traffic laws, and native tongues are different depending on where they’re from and what they’ve experienced. WHAT DOES THAT CHANGE LOOK LIKE? Because it’s a little bit semantics, right? Am I REALLY a different person? Not entirely. My personality is more or less the same. My likes and dislikes are more or less the same. Many of my habits and base chemical emotional reactions to various circumstances are the same. What is different is my ability to INTENTIONALLY seek and find what I was previously blind to and not looking for. I’ve changed the way I think. Drastically. Seven years ago, if someone wrote me a note that said they “fucking hated me,” it would have made me very sad, angry, or both. Today, it makes me nothing. The woman doesn’t hate me. She doesn’t know the first thing about what it’s like to be me or to be around me, no matter how much I try to explain it on these pages. She’s hurt. Badly. Just like I was when my wife chose to leave. No one has a monopoly on pain. I was the problem in my marriage, but that doesn’t mean I still didn’t suffer mentally and emotionally as victims do. When my wife left, and I still didn’t understand why. In my reality, I was being abandoned and betrayed, and it wasn’t until years later when I finally realized: _Holy shit. She totally did the right thing by divorcing me_, did I finally achieve the mental and emotional maturity needed to navigate all of this messy human stuff that most of usstruggle with.
…
Change isn’t wholesale change. It’s modification. Enhancement.Evolution.
Change means “to make different.” You don’t have to give up who you are to be the person your romantic partner or children might need you to be. You just have to decide you want to know and do things you didn’t previously know or do. Like learning a new language. It’s very difficult. Particularly as an adult. Because, whether you’re writing, reading, speaking, or listening, nearly everything about the process is fundamentally new, different, unrecognizable, anduncomfortable.
Our brains crave the comfort of efficiently and effectively communicating the way we always have, because “it just works.” To become fluent in that new language, you have to WANT it. When life is comfortable, and nothing hurts, and there’s not just misunderstanding, but a literal blindness to how ones thoughts and actions adversely affect others? Who would choose uncomfortablechange, and why?
We choose to restrict our diets and exercise when we WANT (health, strength, endurance, physical attractiveness, skill, etc.) what those uncomfortable sacrifices will give us. People change when they understand the tradeoff involved. People change when they realize what’s at stake. I realized what was at stake when she drove away with our son in the back seat, and then I sobbed in my kitchen and threw up over and over again in the sink next to which I usually set that drinking glass.
I realized how I was responsible for so much of what had gone wrong when I finally committed to understanding WHY my marriage had failed, which I did because I needed that knowledge to feel secure that it wouldn’t happen again. People change, but only when they want to. So it’s not about the changing it. It’s about the wanting to. In this case, 15 years too late.…
The reader used the word “hated.” Past tense. So maybe notanymore. _Change._
She continued.
_“And yet, your divorce taught you something. Something important about yourself, but also your wife. Some men never bother to look,” _she said. _“The adoration and praise you would get from women for telling the damn truth about your ignorance in your relationship nauseated me. _ _“Then you wrote this—which
is my damn story._
_“The jury is still out.”_ Indeed, it is. Such is life.SHARE THIS:
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Aug 05 2019
18 Comments
Life
THE 2,000 REASONS I’M GLAD I DIDN’T DIE LAST NIGHT (Image/Aron Visuals) There haven’t been many days when I’ve wanted to die. Maybe zero. I felt really bad for a long time after my marriage ended, and I sort of stopped caring. I figured being dead might hurt less. A little boy and you guys gave me reasons to dust myself off and keeptrying every day.
There aren’t many days when I actually thought that I was going to die, even though I’ve probably almost died a bunch of times. Three of those times stand out above the rest. One was the first day of my life when the docs and nurses told my parents to expect the worst. I don’t remember this, of course, but I’ve heard the story so many times that it feels like I do. Another was a three-wheeler ATV accident when I was a teenager where a little safety bar sticking out from behind the seat probably saved me. And the third happened last night while driving home from a concert with my 11-year-old in the passenger seat. I assume I’m not the only one who feels this really surreal feeling when my brain realizes that something bad is about to go down. It’s all happening so fast that you don’t have time to be afraid, so there’s no fear or anxiety, just real-time acceptance that the bad thing is happening, and you just sort of hope things will be okay on the other side, knowing it’s out of your hands.…
My son was dozing off in the seat next to me even though the new Volbeat album was playing pretty loudly. I had just changed lanes from the right lane to the center lane of a three-lane highway at about 70 miles per hour to pass a large semi hauling gasoline, and then exit for home about a mile later. That’s when a white SUV passed quickly on my left and started merging into the center lane right where we were. I probably said a bad word. A collision with either the merging, speeding vehicle on my left OR the massive fuel tanker on my right seemed like they would end poorly, but I was pretty sure one or both of those things was about tohappen.
I _knew_ we were going to have a high-speed highway accident. I hit the brakes hard and moved as close to the semi as I could. Maybe he saw what was happening and drifted a little to give me room. All I know is I left an epic trail of fishtailing rubber down the center lane of the highway I drive several times per week, I didn’t hear the expected crunch of metal on metal from either the left or the right, and then—miraculously—no one smoked us from behind which could have sent us in any number of directions to some unknown fate. It happened too fast to really feel anything. _“Did we just almost get in a car accident, dad?”_ “Yeah bud. A bad one, I think. Are you okay?” _“Yeah. Are you okay?”_ “I’m having a little moment, but yeah, I think so. Did you feel ushit anything?”
_“No.”_
“That’s insane. I don’t understand how we didn’t hit something. I was sure we were going to. I guess I did a good job.” _“You did do a good job, dad. We’re both okay.”_2,000 DAYS LATER
It was about six years—about 2,000 or so days—ago when I used to drive down this same stretch of road imagining a large truck driving in the opposite direction crossing over center and just insta-taking me out in a freak accident. I remember thinking: _Do your worst. I don’t fucking care._ Back when I didn’t really know how to smile anymore. Back when it felt impossible to focus on what was in front of me. Back when it felt hard to breathe.…
My son and I were driving home from an Imagine Dragons concert when I felt certain we were going to be involved in the worst vehicular accident of my life. The most poignant part of the evening came when Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds intro’d a song talking specifically to kids in the audience about mental health and depression, speaking about the cultural stigma attached to opening up about depression, or about seeking therapy. He was sharing his story to normalize the idea that you can be the lead singer for one of the most popular rock bands in the world, and still need help. And that that doesn’t make you weak. It makes you strong. It doesn’t make you broken. It makes you wise. _“Life is ALWAYS worth living,”_ he said, before they started playing again in what turned out to be the most visually impressive musical performance I’ve ever seen. It was pretty rad. (Image/Matthew Fray)…
The almost-accident shook me. Down in the places we can’t see and mostly don’t talk about. Presumably because the little person I’m most alive for was rightthere with me.
And it dawned on me this morning how unsettling it was to think about family and friends—including you guys (if word ever even got to you)—that I was just gone without so much as a goodbye note telling you how much you matter. How much this matters. How much life matters. WHAT MIGHT 2,000 MORE DAYS BRING? Sometimes my coaching work brings me people who were in the same dark place I was 2,000 days ago. People who are legitimately asking themselves the question: _Why am I even getting up today? What is the point of all of this?_ The answer to that question is different for everyone. But 2,000 days later, I’m more confident than ever that there’s ALWAYS an answer. There’s always a reason. Interpret that with as much or as little spirituality as you want. The answer stands either way.…
These past 2,000 days represent about one-fifth of my 40 years—about 20%, and I can’t remember the first 2,000, so it’s really morelike 25%.
That number shocks me. You make the decision to breathe. When everything hurts. You make the decision to get to tomorrow, whatever may come. You don’t have to do it 2,000 times. You just have to do it one more time. We can always do things one more time. Heavy things become lighter to carry. Sometimes because we set a bunch of it down and leave it behind us. But mostly because we becomestronger.
Ugly things become beautiful. Not because things we used to hate become things we love. But because we would be so much less capable had we not endured the difficult human trial. Darkness becomes light. Which is a choice. To light up the darkness. One you feel prepared to make after wandering around in the dark for a while and deciding it sucks enough to do something else. Every day that we wake up offers the possibility of being the best day of our lives. Every single day. I don’t always remember to, but Ichoose hope.
…
I don’t know how close I actually came to dying last night. Maybe it doesn’t matter since it eventually happens to all of us, and time is never on our side. We are not promised tomorrow, and never have been. But it felt like a thing in the moment. I was shook. Still am. I’ve been in lots of things, and this one was different. It made me want to hug my son. _I’m so glad you’re here._ It made me want to write to you. _I’m so glad you’re here._ It made me realize that I’m not the same person I was 2,000 days ago, and that I won’t be the same person in 2,000 more. And neither will you.But who will we be?
Decisions, decisions.SHARE THIS:
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Jul 12 2019
6 Comments
Divorce , Life
, Marriage
ADDING SPICE TO YOUR LOVE LIFE THROUGH ROUTINE AND PREDICTABILITY “We almost died like 15 times throughout this movie, Sandra. We should totally go home and do it.” – Keanu Reeves (Image/whodatedwho.com) Have you ever been an audience member during a speaking presentation or concert where the audience is asked to do something to participate—like share something to the group, or clap, or sing? You remember that feeling?Yeah, you do.
I’ve always hated that shit. It triggers whatever big red Discomfort Button that lives in the invisible parts of me, and every time it gets pushed, the loudspeaker in my brain yells, _“Everyone is looking at you and judging you and thinking that you’re a stupid asshole!”_ It’s irrational. I know it’s silly and unnecessary to think and feel that way. I’m intellectually aware that it’s unhealthy, that hardly anyone is paying attention to me, ever, and if they are, they give zero effs what I’m doing, because they’re too busy worrying about themselves if they’re neurotic like me, or not having a care in the world if they’ve achieved a higher level of mental and emotional maturity than I have. At 40, I get this in ways I did not in my teens and twenties. But lifelong habits are hard to break, so this is still the default mental and emotional experience whenever I’m in those situations.…
Public displays of affection (unless I quiet that internal loudspeaker with the requisite amount of alcohol) trigger those same thoughts andfeelings.
My ex-wife used to playfully make fun of me for it, but I think it also made her feel bad. If she grabbed my hand while we were walking together, I’d tense up a little, hold it for just a bit, give it a quick double-squeeze which was SUPPOSED to communicate: _“I really do love you! I swear!” _but which I’m pretty sure communicated: _“It’s sweet that you want to hold my hand, but I care more about what OTHER people think of me/us than I care about you feeling connected and cared for in our relationship! So piss off with the hand-holding, babe!”_ Can you imagine? Caring more about what strangers you’ve never met, and probably never will, might think about you for holding your wife’s hand or kissing her? It’s some next-level dickbag stuff. Life tip: Care more about the emotional wellbeing of the people you love than you do about the neurotic stories you conjure up in your own brain regarding what strangers might think. Simply, one of those things matters and has genuine relevance to your life, and the other does not. ROMANTIC SPONTANEITY VS. ‘BORING’ ROUTINES If you’re guessing that because I operated that way about hand-holding and any other form of public affection, that I also resisted forced romantic and/or intimate encounters because they didn’t seem ‘authentic’ due to their inherent lack of spontaneity, you’re a fabulous guesser. Reminder: My wife totally divorced me six years ago, and in my estimation, made an appropriate choice to preserve what was left of her mental/emotional health.
This irrational thing I was doing inside my own head inevitably led to countless situations in which repeated attempts by my wife to connect with me were rejected. Several times per year for more than a dozenyears.
Romance and sexual desire doesn’t always manifest in the daily hum-drum routines of the average married couple who spent a long day at work and are maybe caring for kids and pets throughout the mornings and evenings the way it does between two super-attractive Hollywood actors who just survived a dramatic near-death experience in themovies.
I guess I thought that’s what was supposed to happen. LEVERAGING THE POWER OF HABIT TO INCREASE EMOTIONAL CONNECTION WITHOUR PARTNERS
I was reminded of how egregiously I failed my wife while watching a recent Mindvalley video featuring Jon and Missy Butcher, called 9 DAILY HABITS THAT WILL HELP YOU LEAD AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE . Here’s a couple married 25 years, and instead of them complaining about one another to anyone who will listen like most of the 25-year couples I’ve encountered, these two take a walk together every single day, as a daily check-in. While most of us are busy holding in our frustrations so they can spew out in an undisciplined way at what usually ends up being the most inopportune times, Jon and Missy plan a time each day to unload all of that crap to one another. A daily appointment with one another to listen to each other about the things they experienced earlier in the day, good and bad. This is what it looks like to intentionally move toward one another instead of allowing the natural drift-apart to occur by being too busy with everything else.
And then, once per week, the couple has an overnight date night. Maybe at home. Maybe somewhere else. But every single week, Friday night overnight, no matter where they are, belongs to them, and arrangements are made for everything else in their lives (children, pets, work) tobe cared for.
This is their Connection Ritual. This is what it means to water your own lawn so that your own grass ALWAYS looks greener and better than whatever is on the other side ofthe fence.
Having a good marriage or a quality, connected romantic relationship of any kind, I think, is a lot like getting in good physical shape. A select few don’t have to work very hard to look and feel great. Butmost of us do.
And despite the efforts of many magic diet and supplement salespeople, there are no shortcuts to being our best selves physically. You just do the work. It’s really hard at the beginning. Inertia is always the greatest obstacle. Something new is always more difficult to accomplish than something routine. Our first week of work is always more challenging and intimidating than our 18th month on the job. We move every day. We are mindful about what we consume. The more healthy choices we make, the more our health and wellness benefits from thosechoices.
And so it is with our relationships. They are what the participants mindfully choose for them to be. When two people wake up every day making the choice to choose one another, and
prioritizing one another over everything else,
our connections grow. Our love flourishes. Our relationships thrive. And when you derpy-derp around like I did with your fingers crossed that everything will work out without having to give anything or do anything uncomfortable to achieve it? I think it’s telling that I don’t even have to say it.SHARE THIS:
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Like Loading... TAGGED Divorce , Emotional connection, Habits
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Jun 14 2019
24 Comments
Divorce , Life
, Marriage
DRIFTING APART: HOW BAD THINGS HAPPEN EVEN WHEN IT FEELS LIKENOTHING HAPPENED
Did you almost cry but pretend like you weren’t because crying over a volleyball feels REALLY stupid when you watched our boy Tom lose his only friend in the movie “Cast Away”? Whatever. That’s what I did. (Image/newsmov.biz) I almost wrote something outrageous about how Galileo Galilei’s and Isaac Newton’s first law of motion was effing up relationships. The first law of motion—also called the “law of inertia”—states that a body or object at rest remains at rest, and that a body or object in motion continues to move at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. Or, in regular-speak: If shit doesn’t happen, nothing changes. At least that’s how I always thought about it. If I set a lamp on a bedroom nightstand and never touch it, the expectation is that the lamp will sit still—right there—forever. Applying that to my marriage, I believed stillness—inactivity or uneventfulness such as going several days or weeks without an argument or negative incident—while not necessarily a positive, was at worst—a non-event. Harmless. Benign. Safe. If my wife was watching something on HGTV in the living room, and I was watching basketball in the basement rec room, NOTHING was happening. Thus, in my brain, nothing bad happened. I was going to quibble immaturely with Galileo and Newton. I was going to say that their laws of motion don’t apply to movement within our human relationships. But then I realized I was the one getting it wrong (_shock_). The laws of motion absolutely apply to our relationships. My mistake was thinking of the people in the relationship as being still. If they were still—then nothing happening would be totally harmless. But they’re not still. In our relationships, we are not at rest. We are CONSTANTLY adrift, and in my estimation, slow drifting away from one another when we don’t have a strong tether. It’s only now occurring to me how apt the metaphor “tying the knot” is. And since a body in motion continues to move at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force, two people doing nothing AREN’T sitting still. They’re drifting apart at a constant velocity until someone does something about it. MOVING TOWARD EACH OTHER VS. MOVING AWAY FROM EACH OTHER This was the running theme of both of MY COACHING CALLSyesterday.
While we’re busy at work, distracted by our personal stresses, tasks, hopes, and dreams. While we’re busy simply trying to stay alive, do a good job at work, keep our bills paid, etc., we are drifting away from our romantic partner.A visual aid:
I <——> I
Connected.
…
_A month later._
I <————————————> I Drifted apart a little.…
_Three months later after a great vacation, a nice anniversary dinner and gift exchange, mind-bending orgasms, and a job promotion for one of them which alleviated financial stress. _I <–> I
Boom.
…
_Four years later after a new baby, a blown anniversary by the husband because ANOTHER promotion made him super-busy and away from home a lot, five consecutive months without sex, and quiet avoidance of oneanother at home._
I
<—————————————————————————————————————————>I
On the brink.
…
If they continue to avoid the growing distance between them, they will continue to drift away from one another. The further they distance themselves, the weaker their connection—their bond—becomes, which then makes it vulnerable to outside forces. (Traumatic illness, a death in the family, sexual affairs, etc.)…
EVERY DAY—EVERY CONVERSATION, EVERY MOMENT—IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MOVE CLOSER TO ONE ANOTHER OR FURTHER APART Doing nothing is a death sentence. Because when we do nothing, we are NOT sitting still, biding our time waiting for something to happen. While we wait, we move apart. And I think couples—often men—are unaware of this drift that’s constantly occurring. This is why focused, connected, mindful, present dinner conversationsare so important.
This is why six-second hugs are significant. This is why planning activities to do together—often and intentionally—is fundamental to the health of the relationship. And most notably, THIS is why being competitive with one another—trying to WIN debate points in your next emotion-fueled fight with one another is, as Galileo famously said: “_totallyfucking stupid.”_
His mother was very disappointed in his word choices. THE OBJECTIVE IS TO CONNECT—NOT TO TEARDOWN OR DOMINATE YOUR PARTNER We are always moving away from each other. Always. So we need to row our little boats against the current back toward each other. Tie knots. Tether ourselves to one another. Anchor ourselves to oneanother.
The goal of an emotional conversation with your partner can be to try to win debate points with them, while you essentially shove them further away from you. Or, maybe the goal of an emotional conversation with your partner can simply be to decrease the distance between youtwo.
Maybe the merits of right vs. wrong—the value of being “correct”—is a big, fat zero when it comes to your relationship. Maybe the only thing you should be measuring is the gap between you, and constantly fighting to move toward the other. Just maybe, that shift alone would change everything for you.…
When you wake up in the morning, you can make the choice to connect. A kind word. A thoughtful action. When you’re sitting at the office, or hiking in the park, or waiting for the doctor’s appointment, or standing in line at the grocery store, you can make the choice to connect. _Maybe I can text her right now to let her know how important and beautiful she is. Maybe I can remind her today and every other day, how grateful I am for her to choose me and sacrifice for me._ When we’re tired after a long day at work, or irritated by our unsympathetic children, or in the middle of something at home—maybe we can strengthen our capacity for awareness, for patience, for mentaldiscipline.
Maybe we can NOTICE the things in our lives that are All The Time. The stuff we look past. Forget to feel grateful for.Forget to hug.
Forget to nurture.
Forget to love—not the feeling. We think and feel love, and forget that other people don’t always know that we think and feel it. We forget to love—the action. They NEVER misunderstand love the action. We forget every day to prioritize that which matters most to us.…
It’s so hard to be a person and juggle all of the things. We grew up with no one but ourselves to care for and our parents and guardians did most of the heavy lifting. It takes work—guts and work—to show up every day for the unpleasantness of adulthood. And it’s even harder to be that person when caught up in the vortex of life and dysfunctional relationships, and trying to put our families and jobs ahead of our personal wellness, and then wonder why we don’t have anything left to give our marriages when it feels like our spouse thinks we’re constantly letting them down anyway. But it’s almost impossible when no one sees you. When everything you live for and invest in every day—your reason for living—goes unnoticed by the people who matter most. If it doesn’t physically kill us, it kills all of the invisible parts. This is why relationships are a thing. This is why marriage brings beauty and value and enrichment to people’s lives when it’s donewell.
Because all of this shit is hard, but we can do it when we have people in our corner, lifting us up, and helping us carry things when ourpiles get too high.
…
The inevitability of doing nothing—of inertia—is a broken relationship. The inevitability is broken people. When we’re not moving toward one another, we’re moving away.Love is a choice.
Please choose it.
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Jun 04 2019
24 Comments
Being Human ,
Life
‘WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU’: A STORY ABOUT MARRIAGE AND BOOK-PUBLISHING FAILURE (Image/Now and There) I felt that little jolt of hope and nervous excitement in my chest when I saw the unopened email and recognized who it was from. _Pleaselet this be it._
It wasn’t it.
_“Dear Matt. You’re not good enough. I’m not interested. Goodluck.”_
_Damn it, _I thought. _I can’t believe this is happening again._…
There was a lot riding on the first major non-marriage promise I’d made to my wife, because I didn’t know if I’d get to keep her if I didn’t fulfill it. We moved to a beach town near Tampa, Fla. after graduating from the Ohio university where we’d met. I was a newspaper reporter. I wrote business stories for a daily newspaper, covering things like commercial real estate development and Florida’s regulated energyindustry.
We were still five years away from the first iPhone launch, so it wasn’t weird to put your economic future in print journalism backthen.
We both liked Florida—its gorgeous beaches, its mostly beautiful weather, its amazing seafood, and having sun-soaked skin most of the year. But. People—family, friends, community—mattered more to us than those great things. We missed home. We had limited financial resources in our early twenties, and it was cost-prohibitive for us to travel home. We missed funerals, weddings, class reunions, and holiday gatherings because of the distance. It affected my wife more intensely than me. I was raised as an only child who split time between two parents who lived hundreds of miles apart. I was accustomed to living far away from people I love. I was pretty good at by-myself stuff. But this was her first encounter with it. The distance. And she tookit hard.
Living far from home was hurting her. Her hurting was hurting me. After our first year or so in Florida, my singular purpose became finding a job back home. That might seem like not that big of a deal. But I was a newspaper reporter. Guess how many newspaper reporting jobs are available at any given time in a livable city in Ohio? I flew to several job interviews in Ohio. I even interviewed in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and Detroit because they were much closer tohome.
There was so much riding on these interviews. It wasn’t about me getting more money or advancing my career. It was so much bigger than that. It was me fundamentally fulfilling my first promise to my wife who I married DURING the couple-year job hunt in a largely attended, and beautiful ceremony near Cleveland. In the car, sitting at dinner, or lounging in bed, we’d talk about how much we hoped this time it would work out. That we’d finally get the offer. Total strangers I needed to be good enough for so that I could be good enough for my wife.…
Sometimes I’d get a letter in the mailbox, or receive an email or phone call from a newspaper I’d interviewed with. My chest would thump. Before answering the phone, clicking the email, or opening the envelope. _This has to be it. Please God. Let this beit._
But for many months, the message was always the same: “_Thank you for your interest in working with us! It was such a pleasure to meet you! Everyone on staff loved you and thought you’d be the perfect fit! Unfortunately, competition was really high for this opening, and we had a ton of qualified candidates. It was such a hard decision, but we did choose to go with someone else.”_ And then I’d die a little on the inside. _“Have fun telling your wife that you failed her again. I’m sure she’ll think you’re awesome and have no regrets about hitching her wagon to a constant failure!”_ Sometimes, I’d wait several hours to tell her. Because she cried almost every time. And in a way, I couldn’t make it better, because in some respects, it was my failure to win the job that made it hurt.…
Other than the unfortunate situation with my parents living hundreds of miles apart from one another in my formative years, I’d never encountered personal adversity before this. If I tried to accomplish something, I usually did. (Not because I’m awesome, but mostly because I only tried to do things in which I had a certain degree of confidence, and those things tended to work out.) I thought I was done with that experience. And I was grateful for it. But—in a much different way—I find myself back here once again. _“Sorry Matt! We really appreciate you contacting us, but we’re just not interested in anything you have to say and don’t think anyone else is going to be either. You’re not good enough. But hey!Good luck!”_
I’M TRYING TO MAKE A NON-FICTION BOOK TITLED ‘SHE DIVORCED ME BECAUSE I LEFT DISHES BY THE SINK’ As most of you know, back in early 2016, I PUBLISHED A POST WITH THISTITLE
,
and then all hell broke loose. A few days later, it was the most popular thing on the internet globally for 15 minutes, and I was getting dozens of media interview requests, and large publications seeking permission to republish it. More than five million people read it on this blog. I can’t imagine how many more must have read it on the larger sites like _The Huffington Post, Your Tango, Thought Catalog, Babble_, etc. _The Inquistr_ published AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE ARTICLE.
That’s when I got scared, because I was seriously trying to keep my writing a secret in my personal life. But that’s when everything changed. That’s when I learned that things I wrote could matter to people more than I ever imagined. A thousand people told me over the following week or so that I’d saved their marriage. And it was no doubt hyperbole, but all I could think about was that maybe that was a thousand husbands who didn’t have to cry like I cried when my wife packed a suitcase and drove away. Maybe that was a thousand little kids who didn’t have to cry like I cried when I waved to one of my parents out the rear window while we drove theopposite direction.
That’s the moment my life became less about me and more about other people. My blog audience tripled after a solid few months of viralwebsite traffic.
Credible publications invited me to write for them. Event organizers invited me to speak at their events. TV, radio, and podcast producersdid the same.
Me! An idiot who started a blog drunk on vodka because I was upset about my divorce, and jokingly named it _Must Be This Tall To Ride_, because I’m not very tall (5’9”-ish) and was only then realizing what a handicap that was while pathetically TRYING AND FAILING TOONLINE DATE
.
The blog was supposed to be about not being good enough for my wife, and not being good enough for anyone else either. I didn’t think people would actually read this shit. But then theydid.
Everything in my life unrelated to parenting is about trying to help others have better relationships. More accurately, it’s about helping people NOT accidentally poison them through a series of innocent, thoughtless behaviors and habits that happen in their blind spots—behaviors that ended my marriage, and ends thousands per day. Just because we didn’t know any better.…
I think I can write a book. And I think I can write a book thatdoesn’t suck.
Everything I write and publish is a stream-of-consciousness first draft with no editing, and no thoughtful organization. I unprofessionally spit it out in about an hour during a lunch break. Just like right now. With the guidance of professional book makers and editors, as well as actual time to research and interview, I’m excited to see what’spossible.
BUT FIRST, I NEED SOMEONE TO SAY YES About three weeks ago, I started querying literary agents for a full-length non-fiction book titled “She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink.” You might say I have strong data to support the title’s effectiveness. When trying to publish a book the traditional way (through the old guard publishing houses in New York—there are four primary ones that have consolidated most of the traditional printing press industry) as an unknown, first-time author, the first step is sending a query letter to book agents. I have to research agents and agencies who represent authors writing in the genres I’m interested in writing for. Then I email them a little pitch telling them about the book idea, why I think it has merit, why I think it’s unique, and why I think I’m the person who should be writing it. And then you email them with something like “QUERY: ‘She Divorced me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink’ (nonfiction relationship self-help/memoir)” in the subject line, and hope that someone givesa shit.
The biggest agencies MIGHT write you back sometime within six months. (It can seriously take that long.) Others might write back faster. Some have. Four, to be exact. About 25 percent of the agents I’vequeried so far.
All with the same message: _“Sorry. Not interested.”_ And that’s when it hit me that this wasn’t going to be easy. I don’t know whether I thought it would be easy, but somewhere deep down, I guess I hoped it wouldn’t be hard. And I don’t mean difficult. I don’t mind difficult. I mind _hard._ Where you feel it in the head and chest and feel like that 23-year-old all over again: _Maybe I’m just not good enough._ Or maybe I am. I think I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE ANOPINION THAT COUNTS
.
But, and this shouldn’t surprise anyone, it feels as if everyone’s opinion but mine matters.Ultimately, yours.
But before I even have the opportunity to try to make something substantive for you to decide what to do with, I need some faceless stranger reading hundreds of book pitches per day to decide that mine is worth taking a closer look at. I wish the fate of the most personally relevant and important project of my life weren’t in the hands of people I’ve never met and most likely will never meet. But that’s where we find ourselves.Again.
Trying to be smart enough. Trying to be good enough. Trying to matterenough.
Jobs. Wife. Dates.
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May 22 2019
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Divorce , Life
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HOW THE COLOR PURPLE IS HARMING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS(Image/Science)
Pop quiz: If your relationship problems are decreasing mathematically and your romantic partner is observably adjusting his or her behavior in an honest attempt to connect with you emotionally, but your brain and subsequent emotions are telling you otherwise, is your relationship actually improving? _But Matt! What a silly question! If my partner were lovingly changing their behavior for my benefit and the benefit of our relationship, my mind and heart would NEVER tell me otherwise!_ Awww. It’s cute because I would have totally said that too before learning about the Blue Dot Effect. It occurred to me only after learning about the Blue Dot Effect that sometimes it doesn’t matter whether there is objective, measurable improvement. Our brains will sometimes invent new negatives to replace the ones that went away. Simply put: Even though the world is measurably the best it’s ever been (longest life expectancy, best health care, most material wealth, most educated, most freedoms, most mobile, most access to information in human history), everyone feels shitty and complains to each other about it on social media when they’re not too busy bragging about the awesome new thing they just acquired or did to earn street cred with all of the people they went to high school with. It’s largely the premise of Mark Manson’s new book _Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope . _(It’s good.) Manson is among my favorite writers because he tries to do what I try to do, only more effectively and his focus extends beyond romanticrelationships.
WHAT IS THE BLUE DOT EFFECT? It was Manson’s book which introduced me to the Blue Dot Effect, but writer Sam Brinson had written about it a year ago not long after a group of scientists published their findings on “Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment”in the June 19,
2018 issue of _Science_. The conclusion of the study was simple: When humans are on the lookout for something, like bad behavior or threats, when instances of that bad behavior or those threats lessen, people will expand their definition of “bad behavior” or “threats” to include things they wouldn’t have previously. From Brinson’s _Medium_ article “The Psychology of Finding What You’re Looking For”:
“The researchers ran several experiments, most of which involved participants identifying blue dots from a series that ranged in color from ‘very blue’ to ‘very purple.’ After some time, the number of blue dots would reduce, and the participants would react by selecting as blue dots those they had previously considered purple — their category of ‘blue’ expanded as the number of examples of blue decreased.”Brinson continues:
“In further experiments, the researchers found the same effect when participants had to identify aggressive faces from a group that ranged from ‘very threatening’ to ‘not very threatening,’ and again when separating unethical research proposals from ethical ones. “When increasing the number of blue dots instead of reducing them, the effect reverses — what had previously counted as blue suddenly gets left out. What’s more, THE RESEARCHERS ALSO FOUND THE EFFECT TO OCCUR WHEN PEOPLE WERE TOLD THEY WERE DOING IT, AND EVEN WHEN THOSE PEOPLE WERE PAID TO NOT FALL INTO THE TRAP.” Important note, Brinson points out: “This experiment seems to prove that we are incapable of making our concepts rigid, and must give in to ebbing and flowing. It should be noted, however, that this effect occurred when people were _looking_ for instances of the concept — the blue category expanded as people sought to find blue dots, neutral faces became threatening when people were on a mission to find threateningfaces.
“People in normal circumstances, who aren’t actively looking to label certain things, might not be as susceptible to the same concept shifts. If I remain indifferent to acts of aggression and acts of kindness, even if the frequency of either act changes, will I be more likely to recognize that change or to alter my definition?” WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIPS What this means is, if you’ve identified a pattern of behavior in your relationship partner that you don’t like—like a wife who feels disrespected and unloved because of an incomplete house chore or display of forgetfulness from her husband; or like a husband who feels disrespected and unloved because he perceives EVERY attempt by his wife to communicate with him about her feelings as an unprovoked and unfair attack on his character—you’re likely to find instances of your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend doing the same old bullshit things they always did even if they are legitimately doing things ‘better’ per previous conversations and agreements between the twoof you.
And it’s not always because your partner is a huge, selfish asshole who will never change. Sometimes, it’s simply because things you used to be cool with are now things you’ve labeled unacceptable. Things that were once benign are now painful. Things that were once just humans being humans are now relationship killers.…
This tendency to find negatives even when things are improving around us is NOT a weapon for narcissists to wield in another mind-game argument where they invalidate their partner’s expressed feelings and try to convince them that the things they think and feel aren’treal.
It’s merely another opportunity for self-reflection and personal growth. An opportunity to check your own biases and bullshit at thedoor
.
…
Human behavior is messy. Human emotion and mental health is messy. It’s HARD to be an adult. And that’s why finding someone to walk side-by-side with for the rest of our lives is such a beautiful thing. Sometimes we need to be lifted up. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we’re not the only ones who are afraid or unsure of what to do next. Sometimes we need tobe forgiven.
The people who promised to love us, and who we promised to love in return, deserve our best. They deserve our most generous thoughts and assumptions. They deserve our most humble and compassionate responses. They deserve our focus and energy and effort to remind them that we’ve got their back. That they are respected, appreciated, and cherished. That they are good enough, honored, and supported. Sometimes, they show up as purple dots and we should lovingly and compassionately remind them they’re kind of being dicks when theydo.
Other times, the people who promised to love us forever are showing up as blue dots, and because we are imperfect creatures, we think that dot is purple. We’re LOOKING FOR purple. And we treat those purple-dotting sonsofbitches accordingly. But really, that dot is blue. Our person showed up just as they’d promised. It feels like they failed us, but really we’re failingthem.
And we don’t have to.We can do better.
We must.
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May 20 2019
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Divorce , Life
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PODCAST INTERVIEW: THE MINDSET YOU MUST CHANGE IF YOU WANT AGREAT MARRIAGE
(Image/thelifestyleplaybook.com) I know what you’re probably not thinking: _I really want to listen to Matt blather on about conflict in relationships!_ And because you’re not thinking that, this is me encouraging you to start thinking about it because clearly I’m an attention-whore. Therapist and author LESLI DOARES , because she’s kind and gracious, invites me onto her podcast _Happily Ever After is Just the Beginning_ every so often to jam about relationship stuff. (You can also check out Lesli’s THE HERO HUSBAND PROJECT HERE .) Today, her newest episode _“The Mindset You Must Change if You Want a Great Marriage,”_ features … wait for it … me, soapboxing about people’s beliefs and how everyone thinks they’re right all of the time, and how that condition is the root of most relationship conflict (and every other kind of conflict). In this episode, Lesli and I discuss this unhelpful mindset, and kick around ideas for how people can connect more powerfully with loved ones to improve their romantic relationships, as well as connect with other people, so they can have better social relationships in general. You can LISTEN HERE ON THE WEB AT WEB TALK RADIO,
or from your favorite podcast service (because I’m an Apple user, I can’t provide a Google Play link, and I’m sorry), but HERE IS THE LINK TO THE APPLE PODCASTS EPISODE.
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May 15 2019
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Life , Marriage
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR WIFE DOESN’T RESPECT YOU (Image/Respect360.org) Oh no. You feel disrespected by your wife. This is definitely bad for your marriage and a poor example for any children you might have. You’ve done the best possible thing you could have in this situation, and I hope you’ll choose to feel good about it. You’ve asked great questions: _Why doesn’t my wife respect me? What do I doabout it?_
But it’s possible you’ve missed one: _Are my feelings about my wife’s respect level for me accurate?_ One of the biggest problems EVERYONE contends with in life is our inclination to believe everything we think.
Just maybe she DOES respect you. That would save you a lot of time, energy, and frustration if that were the case. And for some of you,that will be true.
But for the sake of this exercise, let’s just say that your wife legitimately lacks respect for you. If your brain and/or heart are telling you that this condition is bad for your marriage and that you don’t want to be part of a marriage that lacks basic respect, I applaud you and totally agree. A marriage without respect is a marriage in name only. I used to be married to a woman who didn’t respect me. It feels really bad, and if that’s where you are right now, I’m so sorry. Eventually, my wife chose to not be my wife anymore. I cried and vomited and felt sorry for myself and blamed everything on her. I thought she was ungrateful. Cruel. A promise-breaker. Selfish. And then, over the following six years I asked myself a thousand uncomfortable questions, I wrote about many of the realizations I’d made about how I was showing up in my marriage (spoiler alert: like a piece-of-shit husband),
and today, despite being a divorced single guy, people pay me actual money to coach them about relationship stuff.
I know. It’s crazy.Let’s talk about:
* Whether your wife respects you; and * How you can earn her respect. DOES YOUR WIFE RESPECT YOU? The most important job you have any time you’re faced with a decision or encounter conflict with someone else, is to be damn sure you’re not accidentally being the bigger asshole without realizingit.
This is hard, because we spend the vast majority of our lives making snap judgments about everything, and mostly being right. If we have friends and jobs and are reasonably educated and have mostly avoided things like prison and Darwin Award-worthy near-death experiences, then—mathematically speaking—we have a pretty good track record with our gut reactions. Recent example from my life: Because I am frequently calling strangers that I meet on the internet for coaching work, I toggle my phone’s Caller ID setting off so that my number shows up ‘Restricted’ or ‘Private’ on people’s phones when I call them. A few weeks ago, when I was trying to call my dad on his birthday, my calls kept getting rejected. The first couple of times, I didn’t think much of it. But after six or seven tries over the course of many hours, I was feeling shitty. _My dad’s too busy to talk to me. He’d rather do whatever he’s doing right now than talk to hisson._
On Mother’s Day, the same thing was happening with my mom, though I realized my mistake much faster that time. You’ve no doubt already solved the mystery. I had forgotten to toggle my phone settings to “Show Caller ID,” which resulted in my parents doing EXACTLY what I would do in the same situation—ignore the phone call from an unrecognized number. Stuff like this happens all of the time in our human relationships—particularly in our marriages. We FEEL certain negative emotions when an event happens (someone else says or does something) that we would not have felt had we known one simple, but critical, piece of information to put the situation in its most proper and accurate context. POWERFUL QUESTIONS THAT CAN HELP YOU MAKE DIFFICULT DECISIONS (INCLUDING HOW TO FEEL) The world’s thought leader on the subject of question-asking once sent me an email asking whether he could interview me for a book he was writing. (I said yes, because duh. Life highlight.) Bestselling author Warren Berger’s _The Book of Beautiful Questions_
is one of my go-to resources for the questions I need to ask—or that my coaching clients might need to be asking—to arrive at answers that can help us achieve clarity about what we believe and why, and which can help us find answers to life’s most difficult problems. The section of the book that includes things I said about human connection isn’t necessarily where I’ve find found the most value. It was the section on better decision-making—about anything. And because ‘anything’ includes our relationships, I hope you’ll take the following exercise seriously. It might help you. From Berger’s _The Book of Beautiful Questions_: ASK THESE 4 QUESTIONS TO CHECK YOUR BIASES AND BELIEFS * _WHAT AM I INCLINED TO BELIEVE ON THIS PARTICULAR ISSUE?_ Start by trying to articulate your beliefs/biases. * _WHY DO I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE?_ The “jugular question,” per Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arno Penzias, forces you to consider the basis of those beliefs. * _WHAT WOULD I LIKE TO BE TRUE?_ A “desirability bias” may lead you to think something is true because you want it to be true. * _WHAT IF THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE?_ This question is inspired by ‘debiasing’ experts and Seinfeld’s George Costanza. That last question is my favorite. I’d ask you to think about it like a mock courtroom trial. There’s what you believe—The Defense Attorney. And then there’s what the other person believes—The Prosecuting Attorney. I’ve never been to law school, but I’m pretty sure part of the process involves mock trials where law students (not unlike practicing lawyers) are sometimes required to prepare legal arguments for one side of a case they don’t necessarily believe or agree with. I’m asking you to do the same thing. GIVE YOUR BEST EFFORT TO ARGUE THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU BELIEVE. IT TAKES GUTS. I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT. What evidence is there—what reasonable explanations exist—for how the opposite of what you believe could be true? What happens afterward is several positive possibilities: 1. You get to be totally sure you believe what you believe, or 2. You get to abandon an incorrect or poorly conceived belief, and replace it with a better one, or 3. You get to, at the very least, come to understand how someone else could come to the conclusions that they did. And maybe when we fully understand _The Why_ behind their actions, we can see that they were never trying to be assholes after all, and we get to feel all that wonderful lovey-dovey stuff again for a few minutes until the dopamine wears off. _‘OH SHIT. MY WIFE REALLY DOESN’T RESPECT ME’_That’s bad.
There’s no reasonable way to offer useful ‘advice,’ because it’s totally possible that the healthiest thing you could do is tell your meanie wife to piss off and file for divorce. But maybe you don’t want to do that because you have three kids together, and you calculate that the most loving fatherly thing you can do is stay married on their behalf.I get it.
I get it because I’m pretty sure my wife stayed with me for a few more years than she wanted to for that exact same reason.…
My wife stopped loving me and wanted to leave our marriage because I didn’t demonstrate the type of respect a wife deserves in a healthy marriage. While it was all pissing and moaning and whining at the beginning of my divorce, once I started asking myself a bunch of difficult questions and figuring out that I was actually a tremendously intolerable asshole throughout the majority of our marriage, I was able to empathize with my wife. When you discover that you inflicted a bunch of bullshit on someone you care about that they didn’t deserve, and you view their behavior and decision-making through THAT prism, then the mystery of what happened, and the unjustified victimhood you were experiencingdisappears.
When you’re a victim, life is _happening_ to you. You’re just there, and a bunch of crap affects your life and there’s nothing youcan do about it.
When you accept responsibility for your actions, and realize that what’s happening—or what has happened—are the consequence of your own actions, then it gives you a bunch of control of thesituation
that you couldn’t otherwise have. It’s powerlessness that’s mostterrifying.
I don’t get to go back in time and fix my past mistakes. But I DO get to not feel anger now. I get to not enter future relationships blind to the things that destroys them. I get to make decisions armed with a bunch of critical information I didn’t have before. I like the confidence that gives me.…
Just maybe, you execute the skills and duties of a husband at an incredibly high level. You’re a good husband, but you’re still not respected by your spouse. Ugh. Sorry. This won’t do. Question (an uncomfortable and unpleasant one): _Do you respectyourself?_
I’m not a psychologist. But. A bunch of bad shit happens to us throughout our entire lives, starting in childhood. And all of that bad shit helps to shape our beliefs about ourselves, which affects what we feel—and how intensely we feel both positive and negative things throughout the rest of our lives. Just maybe, YOU don’t believe you’re worthy of being respected (even though you might wear a metaphorical mask like I used to, and probably still sometimes do in order to convince others that we’reself-confident).
Do you ever say and do things around your wife one way, say and do things around your guy friends a different way, and say and do things around your coworkers yet a different way? A component of that is social awareness and politeness, which is totally cool. But another portion of that might be that you adjust your behavior to fit into whatever environment you’re in, because you want to be accepted and/or liked by the people around you. I totally do this sometimes. It’s lame. I want to be liked. It feels so much better than not being liked. Self-confident people say and do the things that are true for them regardless of whether someone might not like them afterward. They give no phucks. None. Because they already respect themselves and don’t require others’ approval to know they are a person with inherentvalue.
They love and accept themselves. (Side note: Narcissists ALSO love and accept themselves and do all of these things, but struggle with gaining respect, because they rarely offer it themselves.) HOW YOU EARN YOUR WIFE’S RESPECT * RESPECT YOURSELF. Don’t you dare say that you do until you know it’s true. It’s okay to admit that you don’t. I do not always respect myself or act in my own healthy best interests. You’re notthe only one.
* RESPECT YOUR WIFE. You might be thinking: _“But Matt! I do respect my wife! I married her and have children with her and love her more than anyone! I trust her with our finances, and for raising our children, and to not murder me in my sleep! What more could I possiblydo?”_
Great question.
While you humbly acknowledge to your wife that you’re actively working on learning how to behave with self-respect in order to grow into the best version of yourself you can possibly be because you, and your marriage, and your family deserve that, you also ask your wife what could change within your relationship so that she felt morerespected.
You might be surprised by her answers, because there’s a better-than-average chance it will involve things you’ve heard before like housework, how you speak to her in the company of friends and family, and maybe some things you’ve never considered—like her desire to see you let your guard down by being uncomfortably _real and honest _with her about what goes on in your head and heart. By being vulnerable instead of pretending you’re the toughest guy she knows, she may feel both closer to you and more accepted by you because maybe she’s _also _sometimes insecure about what goes on in her head andheart.
Have the courage to expose your greatest flaws, weaknesses, and scars. Lovingly accept her greatest flaws, weaknesses, and scars. REGULARLY DEMONSTRATE THAT THE SHIT THAT MATTERS TO HER MATTERS TO YOU—SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU RESPECT THE THINGS THAT AFFECT HER, AND YOU VALUE HERWELLBEING.
That’s what you could possibly do. That’s how you might earn back your wife’s respect. _“Being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none.”_ – Mark Manson, author of _Everything is F*cked: A BookAbout Hope _.
Go be the best of us.Go be a hero.
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