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Dec. 8, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:12
How to Deal With a Nagging Wife!
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At what point can you blame someone after you've married them for something that is seemingly inherent to them and And we both accepted our own flaws when we entered marriage.
But yet, at the same time, we want to hold each other to a kind of a higher standard.
We'll also be accepting...
Okay, this is all very abstract, and I appreciate that.
But you're going to have to, if you don't mind, if you can give me to some more specific details.
Yes, absolutely.
So specifically, for example, more specifically, generally, she will think she's very clear in a statement.
So she may think she makes, she tells exactly what she wants to happen.
So she may say, Nick, I need you to come home and clean tonight, right?
And so I may come home and I may clean one thing.
But she thinks she wanted me to clean this whole area.
And I agreed to clean, but I didn't clean exactly how she wanted me to clean.
So she thought she was being clear.
I thought I was listening, and it didn't get done exactly her way.
And so how she responds to that, to me, may not be an appropriate response.
It may be a little bit over the top.
And I may respond, hey, I hear you.
I think your response is a little bit over the top, given I was listening to you.
But she feels like I wasn't listening to her, and I feel like this is something that is, I'm sure, not unique to my marriage.
It's very common where there's just that little bit of a communication gap, and then, you know, one side overreacts, the other side feels attacked, and it kind of gets, you know, that weird zone there.
Right. That is very common, and, like, I really, really appreciate you bringing this up.
And give me a sense about the cleaning thing.
So do you and your wife both work?
So she just went back.
She stayed home for six months.
She just went back this week.
And I work regular hours, 9 to 5, and she's a teacher, so she leaves about 7 o'clock to about 3 o'clock.
And why did she go back?
She went back. Our plan is to go back for about a year while we save money and hopefully she can stay at home for our second child.
And her mother lives about a mile away, is watching her for the next, hopefully a year or so, while we just save a little bit more money to be stable.
Have you done the math in terms of how much she's actually making after taxes?
I guess you've got childcare with your mom, right?
Yeah, so we pay her a small amount because she just retired.
We have done the math.
So a quick important piece of the math is I have about 90,000 school loans.
I make about 70 plus thousand a year and I've got pretty good upwards track there and I'm kind of hoping inflation pays off my school loan.
What did you get your schooling in?
So it was a long...
I ended up with accounting and I'm three classes away from my master's in data analytics.
So it should be worth it.
But it was before that not so much worth it.
I bounced around. I thought I wanted to help people.
I was going to get into early childhood educational research, teaching.
I was just kind of young and I didn't feel like I was really pushed in the right direction.
I'm very... I'm just...
Back around me, I'm kind of ADHD, high energy, high intelligence, probably 140 to 160 IQ, kind of that type of personality.
And so I bounced around, thought I knew stuff, didn't know stuff, and just kind of ended up in there.
So I'm 30. I got a job basically what I could have been doing when I was 23.
I ended up doing when I was 29.
So I'm You know, I feel like I'm six years behind, but...
Was that because of school or other things?
Long story short, go ahead.
Was that because of school or other things?
Just... So I was in and out of school.
I hated school. I dropped out of high school, actually, and completed in summer school, and I bounced around, and I was so anxious in school, and then couldn't really make up my mind.
I never really felt like I was comfortable anywhere.
It's kind of, I mean, I think you've talked about it a little bit on the show.
You feel like you're a different person.
I feel like I have a hard time connecting sometimes.
I never want to just... The standards and I was in food service.
I tried to make food service work for a long time and it just never quite could get it to work.
And that's why I ended up going with accounting and just going a different route.
I just kind of wish someone told me just to stick to something and do it and be an entrepreneur, but I kind of got sucked into the school loan.
School loan, go to school, get an degree thing, and kind of went that route.
Okay, I think I understand.
So your wife is going to work for a year, your mom is going to take care of your baby, and then you're going to have another baby, is that right?
So, I mean, financially, I think that makes sense, given the expected raises, I'm doing pretty well on my job, and And yeah, we hope to have three kids.
That's the plan. I think we can support it if I can get $80,000 to $90,000 a year.
And with the government-backed loans, a little bit of inflation, paying back minimum amounts and suffering and not saving too much for retirement, doing the math, I think we can make that work.
Not saving too much money, but it's worth it to keep her at home.
And what is she doing about breastfeeding?
We're trying. She's actually pumping right now.
She's all nervous and making fun of me.
But she had a low supply, so it was tough for her.
But we were about half and half for the first six months.
And she's trying to do it now.
She nurses her as much as she can.
Her supply is dwindling as it speaks.
Yeah, and please give her my sympathies.
Breastfeeding is one of these things that you kind of imagine is kind of what, you know, it's like peeing, you know, that's half of what the penis is for.
So you think it's going to be pretty smooth sailing.
But for a lot of women, I remember a friend of mine's wife would just have to sit there for like six hours straight trying to get the baby to...
Breastfeed until she became almost hysterical because it was like, oh my gosh, how do you just make this damn thing work?
This whole thing, you'd be cutting around these feed bags for decades and then it's like, now it's time to do your job.
No, we quit.
So I'm sorry about that.
It was shocking.
It was absolutely shocking to me.
I just assumed going in, oh yeah, women just make enough to feed their babies, then she's part of breastfeed groups and some pump out gallons a day and others.
I can't even feed the daughter at all.
So it was crazy.
But yeah, so that's our story.
But I think she's happy and she's got some and she gets to love and support.
And I think she gets at least the emotional bond from breastfeeding.
Okay. So let's take the cleaning example, right?
So your wife says, I need you to clean, right?
Yeah. And...
Or a specific task.
If we do too abstract, it's tough to solve anything.
So let's do a specific one, which is the cleaning, right?
So then you come home and you do your cleaning as you see fit, and then she says it's not right.
Is that right? So that would put it mildly for me, is what would happen is maybe how I would see it is Maybe she went over to see her mom,
I would come home, I would do what I thought, she would come in, and in my view, I would take a, she would come in and attack me and say, Nick, I thought you were going to do this, you told me you were going to do this, and with an aggressive tone, maybe not screaming at me, but with a pretty aggressive tone, as if I didn't do something that I thought I was supposed to do.
Wait, so you did or didn't do what you had said you were going to do?
So I would come home and maybe do what I thought I was supposed to do.
But in her mind, I did about half of what I was supposed to do.
And when did this sharp tone originate?
Did it happen before the baby, before the marriage, before engagement, early in dating?
Or when did you first see this?
So I've seen elements of this all along.
So in the sense that she always...
It was always, things always were a big deal.
She's very emotional. And so things that aren't always a big deal to everyone else, to her, seem to be big deals.
And so it's kind of one of those things that I try to accept on some level, which is, you know, how much of it, you have to accept different people's, different people speak in different tones and maybe different things, if that makes sense.
No, hang on, hang on, hang on.
You don't like it when she speaks to you in this tone, right?
Yes, I agree.
So why would you accept that as a way of being communicated with?
Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but if you don't like the way that tone comes to you, then you say to her, okay, let's do this.
Okay, you pretend to be your wife, right?
Yeah. Okay, you come home, something is not to your satisfaction, and what do you say?
And then I'll be you. What do you say?
I would say, Nick, why didn't you clean the living room like you told me you would?
And I would say, okay, I really don't like that tone.
That's really unpleasant for me.
Like, the first thing, you know, I would say, listen, when we meet each other, like we've been away from each other during the day, the first minute or two kind of determine how our evening is going to go and maybe how tomorrow is going to go.
You know, and if the first thing I hear out of your mouth is, Nick, I'm like, whoa, that's unpleasant.
Yeah. I mean, what's going on?
Why would you talk to me that way?
I told you to do something, you told me you were going to do something, and it wasn't done.
So? It's not fair to me.
So, wait, are we saying, is the rule going to be now, my dear, is the rule going to be that any time Our partner, our spouse, doesn't do exactly what we want.
We can snap at them?
Is that how we're going to run them out?
Is that the rule now? Like, what are we doing here?
That's not right. Listen, there are times when I expect you to do things and it doesn't happen exactly the way that I want.
Do I get to just, like, snap at you and say, hey!
You know, I mean, is that how we want to run things?
That doesn't seem quite right.
Yeah, and this is where I... You should know how to respond to this.
And this has happened, and I somehow cannot reproduce the words.
You cannot what? My wife's right here.
My wife's right here.
You don't have to get on the phone, but when I say that to you, when you snap at me, she's right here, so she'll give you a response.
When I say to you, I said this exact thing, when I say to you that this is not how we can talk to each other, when you snap at me, I say, this is our standard.
We can't talk like this to each other.
You respond and you say, because...
She responds because she feels defenseless.
She feels like... You feel kind of hopeless, right?
When... Things that you think are very clear, I can't do, that I don't do.
No, no, no. Okay, listen, let's get it.
Listen, you've got to get out of the self-help section here, okay?
So here's the thing.
So if someone...
Sorry, was she saying something? She said she doesn't...
She doesn't feel like she knows how to communicate it more clearly than she did.
Yeah, it's not a matter of clarity.
No, no, no. Okay, it's not a matter of clarity, right?
So let's say that she gives you a simple instruction and you get it wrong.
She still doesn't get to snap at you.
That's like snapping at someone.
You know, maybe if your child is about to wander into traffic, you say, hey!
You know, like you've got to keep it.
But for the big things, because you've got this thing like, oh, well, she'd feel helpless.
It doesn't matter.
Because you're trying to find some causality, some earlier domino that falls down, wherein somehow it's justified for your wife to snap at you when she comes in.
Now, the problem is, there is no causality.
There is no prior series of dominoes that makes it okay for your wife to snap at you.
Yeah. Like, that's just like, that's the baseline.
Like, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.
That we're not going to do. You can be upset with me.
You can be disappointed with me.
You can think I've done something wrong, and we can talk about it.
But you're not going to snap at me like I'm one of your students who put the wrong glue in the wrong jar.
Like, that's not going to happen.
And the reason why that's not going to happen is that if you ever want to make yourself miserable as a wife, you'd start treating me with disrespect.
If you start treating me with disrespect, if you start treating me like a naughty little boy, you are going to be so miserable as a wife.
Because then you're going to say to yourself at 3 o'clock in the morning, you're going to wake up and you say, Oh my God, I married a child.
Oh my God, I married an idiot.
Oh, I married a fool who can't follow simple instructions.
And boy... I mean, if you ever want to see a miserable wife, you look at a wife who treats her husband with disrespect.
So you say to her, listen, I don't like being talked to in that way, and I won't accept it.
Like, I'm not going to have a conversation With this tone.
Not going to happen, right?
And I do that, I say that, not just because I don't like it, but because if I allow this to happen, our marriage is going to be seriously undermined, and your happiness is going to be seriously undermined.
And here's another thing. We have a child in the house, and if that child sees you snapping at me and bossing at me and disrespecting me, how is that child going?
How is that child going to have respect for you?
Because that child is going to look at you, my dear, and they're going to say, oh, you're snapping at your husband like he's some fool, which meant that you voluntarily chose to date, get engaged to, get married to, and have a child with a fool.
And we cannot afford, as parents, to diminish each other, either as marriage partners, but particularly in front of our child.
We cannot do it.
It is not. Now, if you had a tough day and you kind of want to boss someone around to feel better and so on, we can talk about that.
You can say, oh man, I had this desire to really come in and snap at you because I had a bad day.
Yeah, we can talk about that like adults.
But I'm not going to sit there and be this scared little boy who hopes that mommy is happy with what he did when she told him to do stuff.
Because this thing where she says to you, well, I told you to clean the living room and you said you would.
It's a way of dominating you.
It's a way of bossing slash bullying you.
Like, you made a commitment and you failed to deliver on your commitment and I'm going to snap at you because you have displeased Her Highness, right?
Like, that's not...
No, you can't let that happen, man.
You can't let that happen as a husband.
You can't let that happen as a man.
And you sure as hell can't let that happen as a father because that lack of respect for you is going to drip straight down the chain of command to your kid.
Yeah. Yeah, and I think I've tried to not let it happen, and it's kind of escalated a little bit.
Well, no, you don't engage, right?
So if someone, you know, I mean, my wife would never, but if she, or if some girlfriend or whatever came in and talked to me like that, I would say, no, no, no.
I said, tell you what, tell you what, here's what we're going to do.
Why don't you go back outside the house, come in and try, I'll give you a do, I'll give you a mulligan, I'll give you a do-over.
Okay, because, you know, clearly you've had a bad day, you're in a bad mood, you want to take it out on someone, and like, come on, that's not fair, right?
So why don't you go out, come back in, and try that again, like we like each other, you know?
Like we're married, like we love each other, like we made a baby together, like we enjoy each other's company, like we respect each other, like we care for each other.
Go out, come back in, try it again.
Because That's not how this scene is going to play out.
Now, she may sit there and say, well, I'm still really bad at you, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, okay, listen, if you're going to talk in that tone to me, I am not going to participate in the conversation.
Right? And if it means putting headphones on, if it means picking up your child and going to a coffee shop, like if it means like you just not, I'm not going to engage in that level of conversation because it's not fair, it's not reasonable, it's not respectful, it undermines our marriage, it's bad for us, right? Like if she said to you, hey, you know, I've got a really lovely spider cake here, you'd be like, hmm...
I know the elites want us to eat insects, but I'm not putting spider cake in my mouth, right?
And if she's like, no, I really want you to eat spider cakes, like, I'm not, you know?
So you just don't participate in that.
And of course, you also have to ask the questions to help figure out what's at the bottom of that.
What is at the bottom of someone coming in and snapping at you?
It's got nothing to do with you.
It's got nothing to do with the cleaning.
It's got nothing to do with the living room.
It has nothing to do with her job.
It's way back down deep.
It's how her mother dealt with her father.
It's how her sister deals with her husband.
It's something. Way back, way deep.
And if you engage at the level of, well, you're upset because I didn't clean the way you wanted to, you're masking yourself.
The actual deep causes of that behavior.
And you're convicting yourself rather than looking for the actual problem, which is a very interesting, fascinating, deep, complex, and multilayered conversation.
So do not engage at the surface level.
If people want to stay at the surface snappy level, you cannot.
You cannot, as a man, as a husband, as a father, and if your husband is doing this to you as a wife, as a mother, you can't accept it.
You can't accept it. Don't engage at that level.
It is incredibly harmful.
It kills your sex drive.
It kills your attraction. Your wife needs to look up to you and you need to look up to your wife.
And everything you do in a marriage that diminishes your partner one-tenth of one percent is shooting yourself in the foot.
If she gives you the sense, and this is the sense that I get.
Tell me if it's different for you, of course.
But if she gives you the sense that you're just some naughty boy who doesn't listen to simple instructions, then she is diminishing you In an eventually catastrophic way.
And you simply...
You cannot allow yourself to be diminished.
For you, for her, and for yourself.
Yeah, it's not that far off.
And I think... It's close.
I do feel like I try and then I make decisions and it's almost like she doesn't trust that I'm making the right decisions.
I mean, I'm thinking about it. I'm trying to make the best decisions sometimes and it ends up being the wrong decision in her mind and I get attacked for it, which doesn't feel great.
But in her defense, just real quick.
No, no, no. I don't want to hear in her defense.
I really don't. I really don't because there is no defense.
No, yeah, I hear you. No, listen. So, you know, what I would say to something like that is, wait a minute, I chose you to be my wife.
Are you saying I don't make good decisions?
Yeah. And you chose me to be your husband.
Are you saying that you don't make good decisions?
Like, why would you choose someone who doesn't make good decisions?
And why, if I don't make good decisions, why would I be married to you?
That's a foundational question.
The moment you start undermining your spouse's fundamental belief in their own competence, you're undermining the marriage.
You're hacking at the base of the bonds that keep you together.
I'm sorry? Yeah. I think we're down that path a little bit, and I think I want to stop it before it goes too far down that path, because I think it's already started kind of where we're going down that road where we're kind of like questioning that, you know what I mean?
Yeah, and that is going to happen, you know, that there is no bigger predictor for the end of a relationship than contempt.
And I'm not saying that you're there yet.
I don't know, right? I don't think so.
I don't think so. But, you know, chipping away at that disrespect stuff, oof.
There is something in women that enjoys being a matriarch and enjoys feeling more competent than the men.
Right? And you see this all over the place in, you know, these stupid men are idiots commercials and, you know, it's all over the place.
And it is, you know, I get it.
Men have their own weaknesses and their own foibles.
But this sort of The bossy, naggy arrogance that comes from women is something that, some women, it is something that, yeah, you can't have in you.
You just can't have it. You can't have it.
You say, okay, what's the long-term, what is going to be the long-term effect, my dear, of you treating me as someone who's incompetent, as someone who's foolish, as someone who makes bad, what is the long-term effect of that going to be on our marriage?
What is the long-term effect going to be On your sexual desire for me, if you think I'm sort of a retarded boy.
What is going to be the long-term effect of our parenting strategies?
You know, there's this thing, you know, this cliche, some people call it a hen party, some people call it a stitch and bitch, where women get together, have some wine, and bitch about their husbands.
And I've never had a girlfriend who ever indulged in that.
My wife certainly would never in a million years, just as I would never sit there and bitch about my wife or anything like that, because she's wonderful.
And there's something about women, they just, I don't know if it's like, if I really love my husband, other women are going to attack me or reject me or like you have to somehow join this coven of discontent and your husband is an idiot and you just roll your eyes and put up with him and, oh, it's such a load of garbage.
It really is such a load of garbage.
It's so self-indulgent.
It's so mean.
It's so diminishing.
And it's one of the things that makes women the most unhappy.
You know, your wife needs to worship you.
You need to worship her. And you need to very strongly.
Now, I don't mean forcefully.
I don't mean yelling. I don't mean, because, you know, strength is not yelling.
You know, strength is just certainty.
You know, like when I had a debate years ago, it's one of my most popular videos with the flat earth guy.
I didn't yell at the guy. It's like, no, the sun is not closer to us than Australia.
It's just like, I don't need to yell it, right?
Two and two make four. You don't need to yell that.
I mean, you just know.
And so when you're not...
See, here's the thing. When you get into a lot of conflict with your spouse, what happens is when you're not in conflict, you want to avoid contentious topics, right?
Because you get kind of exhausted with a lot of conflict.
And then when you're not in conflict, you just want to have fun.
But the problem is then you only ever deal with conflict when one or both of you is upset.
And that's a terrible time.
To deal with conflict. The way you deal with conflict is when you've cooled down, when the kid's asleep or whatever it is, you know, it's 10 o'clock at night or it's 11 o'clock at night, you sit there, you have your decaf coffee if you're me or whatever.
Some people have a glass of wine or whatever.
And you sit there and you say, okay, let's rewind a little today because things got a little nutty there.
And let's try and find ways to avoid that.
So, you know, what is going on?
Now, your wife may want to keep it at the level of, well, I keep telling you what to do and you keep getting it wrong.
Right? And...
You can't let her keep it at that level.
Like, that's absolutely unfair.
I mean, just the empirical evidence, right?
You're successful in your career.
You're going to make $70,000, $80,000, $90,000.
You're going to support the family.
Like, she chose you.
You can't choose someone to spend your life with.
Choose someone to have a baby with or babies with and then say that person is incompetent.
I mean, that's just wrong. That is just so foundationally and fundamentally wrong.
I don't even know what to say about it.
So, like, no, we're not talking about it at this level.
Like, we're not talking about it at this level.
Like, somehow, you're the hard-done-by-one here, and I just get everything wrong.
I mean, that's wrong.
That's incorrect. And I'm not going to live in a situation or in an environment where that's the perspective.
Because it's not fair. You know, I'm pulling home reasonable money.
I'm going to be responsible for my debts.
I'm going to take care of my family.
I'm going to pay for you and three kids to be raised.
Like, for God's sakes. And the other thing, too, if your wife enjoys you having a decent income, do you know the best way that she can get you to move ahead in your career where you outstrip people Who started 10 years earlier?
You said you lost some time in your 20s.
The best way for your wife to have you move ahead in your career and make lots of money and have a lot of success is to think you're a god.
Right? To think that you're an incredibly competent person, that you're wise, that you're sensible.
If you have that kind of support, there is literally no limit to what you can do in your career.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, seriously. I'm not fucking kidding.
No, I'm laughing because it's inaccurate.
I mean, it's not accurate because I'm pretty confident myself.
But it's going to change.
The thoughts creep up. It's like, yeah.
You cannot be more successful than the people in your life give you permission to be.
This is a foundational reality.
You know, people who read The Ayn Rand, and it's also independent, and Howard Rourke, and John Galt, and they're all just so...
It's like, that's not how we are, because we're bound in with each other.
I cannot be more successful than my listeners want me to be.
I cannot be more competent than my family and friends encourage me to be.
Like, I can't do it. That's the power of enmeshing yourself in a family.
You get great power or you get great weakness.
And so not only is she going to kill her sexual desire for you, not only is she going to undermine your authority as parents, she's undermining your career.
And it's, you know, it's all well and good for her who has government unions and government protections and no competition from the free market.
You know, it's all well and good for her to say, well, you know, you're not that competent.
It's like, honey, you work for the government.
You know, no disrespect, but it's not really the same kind of environment.
So, you know, maybe cool it a little bit with the competent stuff.
Yeah. Yeah, and I think this, I mean, it's definitely helpful because I'm torn between, I think, listening to you, I definitely...
Feel that way. I feel like maybe you would have said that, but also I know you've, looking at some of my own flaws, it's kind of like there's certain things that are off limits, though, but I know you've also mentioned taking maximum responsibilities as kind of another route, and I think there's certainly things that I could do better.
No, no, listen. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. Listen. No, it's important, important.
So with regards to fundamental, like, okay, flaws, right?
You say, I know I have my own flaws, right?
Yeah. Okay.
Do you snap at your wife a lot?
Not a lot. Very occasionally.
Okay, so your wife snaps at you more than you snap at her.
Usually in response to her snapping. No, in terms of initiating the snapping, your wife snaps at you more than you snap at her, right?
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so she's treating you with disrespect a lot more often than you treat her with disrespect, at least the initiation of it, right?
Yeah. Absolutely.
Okay. You may have other flaws.
I'm sure you do. But in this particular instance, this is on your wife.
So I get, you know, well, we're gonna...
But you can't sit there and say, well, I have my own flaws and therefore I can never criticize someone who's treating me disrespectfully.
It's like, well, of course you can. You don't have to be perfect to demand reasonable treatment from someone who claims to love you.
Yeah. You understand?
I think it's worse when she...
How do you understand? Go ahead.
Yeah. And once you get married...
Once you get married, you cannot focus on fundamental flaws.
Because if there are fundamental flaws, you shouldn't have got married!
Once you tie that knot, once you bind your life together, once you make children together and you live together, you cannot look at your partner and say, there are fundamental flaws.
I can't imagine looking at my wife and saying she's fundamentally flawed.
She's not. Now, I had a whole bunch of girlfriends before I got married, and those women had some fundamental flaws, at least relative to what I wanted.
So I didn't marry them.
But once you find the woman who's perfect for you, Focusing on the flaws is like marriage is not a fucking reform school.
Marriage is not a prison where you've got to earn your way out.
Marriage is not an endless bicycle race up a hill.
Marriage is I've decided you are perfect for me.
And so I'm not going to police everything you do and try to spend the rest of my fucking life improving you and tinkering with you and trying to fix you and trying to change you.
You know, if you've got 40 cars in the lot, or 400 cars in the lot, and you go up and down, and you look everything up, and you test drive, and you finally pick that one car, do you take that car home and say, man, I've got to change this car?
No! That was the choice you made!
Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.
I was going to say, that's part of the reason why I chose her, because I felt like she showed, at least earlier, before marriage, she...
She showed a great ability to be self-critical and she showed the ability to say, like, I do feel like I was too aggressive.
I feel like I was being too hard on you.
I need to be nicer and stuff like that.
And so I felt, I didn't feel like she was perfect in this area, but I felt like she was improving.
I think maybe at some point she stopped improving or maybe just stresses with the baby and just being worried mom or anxiety.
No, no, no. Listen, you're trying to be the understanding guy.
Stop that. Stop being the understanding guy and stop being the leader in this area, okay?
There is nothing about stress that has us turn on each other.
So, she's having a stressful day at work.
She can come home. She can put her head on your shoulder.
You can give her a hug. You can talk about it.
Right? There is nothing in stress or difficulty that makes us turn on each other.
Nothing. There's absolutely no reason why Stress and difficulty can't bring you closer together, have you be more supportive and more loving with each other.
Because how the fuck does it help her day if she comes home, snaps and craps at you and has more conflict?
That doesn't help her. It doesn't help her de-stress, does it?
So stop giving her excuses.
Well, I'm not perfect.
It's like, no, no, you are perfect for her.
Otherwise, she shouldn't have married you and had a baby with you.
And you have to demand that.
Like, let me just give you this as a thought experiment.
Give this to the whole world as a thought experiment.
What if you woke up tomorrow and nothing needed to be fixed about you?
What if nothing needed to change?
What if there was no big fundamental foundational flaw that you had to fix?
What if you woke up in the morning, looked in the mirror and said, yeah, this is great.
I'm fine. I'm doing well.
Well, are you perfect?
It's like, Jesus, I don't know.
What the fuck does that even mean?
You know, when I had cancer, sorry, I know that's a bit of a segue, lobster.
But when I had cancer, I had a full-on body scan because, you know, when they first found the lymphoma in my neck, right?
They had a full body scan.
And it was not the best medical experience because they're a full body scan because they needed to see if there were tumors anywhere else, right?
So then I remember I was getting my first round of chemo or something.
The nurse came up and she said, oh, we've got the results of your scan.
And you have a tiny little cyst here and you've got a little wobble there and there's a little whatever, whatever, right?
Now, there was no doctor there saying, but none of that matters.
I'm like, oh, well, what the hell does that mean?
I don't know. Am I not perfect, right?
And, you know, it turns out none of that stuff, everybody has like weird little shit in their body, right?
Whatever it is, right? Yeah.
And it didn't matter, right?
So you say, you know, I'm a healthy guy.
I am. I am a healthy guy.
I am a healthy guy. I went rock climbing with my daughter the other day, did an hour and a half.
I'm like, yeah, I'm a healthy guy.
Now you say, ah! But when you had that full body scan, there was a little cyst here, and there was a little, eh, there, a little, eh.
It's like, no, I'm a healthy guy, right?
Compared to what? Compared to having cancer?
Yeah, pretty healthy guy. So what if, and this is just a conversation to have with you and your wife, right?
Yeah. Because she should be a part of this too.
What if your home, your sanctuary, your marriage, your wife, your husband, what if that's the one place where nothing needs to be fixed?
Nothing needs to change.
There's nothing wrong. Because look, and you say, well, does that mean I never improve?
It's like, but you improve from a place of self-acceptance.
You improve from a place of being loved.
You improve out of an enthusiasm for the better rather than a fear of criticism and nagging.
What if there was nothing wrong with you?
Isn't that a wild thought?
What if there's nothing that needs to be fixed?
What if there's nothing that needs to change?
I tell you... That's a much healthier place to start, I think, than the alternative.
You're thinking of starting again, which indicates that there's some place you need to be.
Just accepting who you are.
Just accepting who you are and enjoying who you are.
There's growth just in that.
And look, it's trusting that you're going to grow out of curiosity and joy and excitement and all of that.
That's just going to happen of its own.
I mean, you don't sit there...
With a sapling in your backyard, like I planted some fruit trees, right?
Because I like fruit and I'm patient.
So I planted some fruit trees and they started off pretty small.
And I don't stand out there every day saying, you're too small!
Grow, you idiots! I don't.
They're perfect just the way they are.
If I wanted bigger trees, I guess I could have dug up some stuff and put some bigger trees.
I put the trees in just right. They're going to grow of their own accord.
There's nothing wrong with them being small at all.
It's a necessary part of where they are.
And I hope they don't sit there.
Of course, they don't. They don't have any brains.
Sit there and say, oh, I'm so small.
I'm so short. I'm not producing any fruit.
I'm so discontented with myself.
It's like, what if?
What if? Because, you know, it's not just a personal thing.
It's a cultural thing, too, right?
Because, you know, like we in the West, you know, his legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and oppression and war and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, People just try and grind you down.
They try and beat you down. They try and set you against yourself.
I'm not putting your wife in the category of cultural Marxism here.
I want to be very, very clear about that.
It's a little issue to deal with.
But what if you could just look across from your wife and say, man, you are just...
I wouldn't change a thing.
I would not change a thing about you.
Because you had the opportunity to choose someone different and you didn't.
And whoever you choose is perfect.
Because you could have chosen someone else or you could have chosen to not get married at all.
What if you and your wife could sit across from each other and say, you're perfect.
There's nothing I would change about you.
Because we're not these little dials.
I haven't done that. Yeah, you need to.
You need to. Now, of course, I know, sorry to interrupt, I'll shut up in a sec, but I know that people are listening to this and saying, yeah, I know that people are listening to this and say, well, what if, well, he's saying he's nothing he should change about his wife, but he does want to change things about his wife because his wife is snapping at him and so on.
It's like, yes, but his wife is snapping at him because she wants something to change about him.
And when you want something to change about someone, you are automatically rejecting who they are.
And you're dealing from a place of being rejected.
And that's not fun.
And that's not good. And you can't marry someone and then reject them.
So try this as an experiment, man.
It's a very, very powerful thing to do.
Try this as an experiment and say to your wife, let's try a week.
A week where we only say positive things to each other.
A week where nothing happens.
Needs to be fixed and nothing needs to change.
A week where we're perfect.
Let's see what comes out of that.
I can't even tell you, man, how much joy and happiness is going to come out of that.
I bet. And I have said several times to her that the only thing I would change about her is that she snaps at I've said that to her specifically.
The only thing I would change is that you snap a thing that I think are over the top and unnecessary.
But you don't need to put up with any of that.
You can just disengage from those conversations.
You can't control her. You can only control yourself.
But see, once you get to the root cause, and listen, if she ever wants to call into my show, she's certainly welcome to, but if you get to the root cause of that, it'll stop.
It'll stop. Yeah. I appreciate it a lot.
I mean, it's very helpful. All right.
Keep me posted if you can.
And thanks very much for the call.
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