Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Dec. 24, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:49:55

STEF! PLEASE SAVE MY MARRIAGE FOR CHRISTMAS!

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	So, do you want to, I guess, well, let's hope we can make this a merrier Christmas, then it otherwise looks like it's shaping up to be, and my massive sympathies for the challenges you're facing in your marriage, but let's see what we can work out.
	Do you want to start off by reading the email and getting me and, I guess, the planet up to speed?
	Yeah, so, I mean, it's a linked email, as you saw, but I think it covers a lot of parts that I think have all come together, so I'll just go ahead and start here.
	I said, you recently did a call-in show about how to save your marriage and I felt you had some really good insight and advice.
	To piggyback off that episode, I have a situation that is similar to that caller if things had deteriorated a little bit further.
	My wife told me today, this is yesterday at this point, that in her eyes our marriage is over and she's done.
	I want to get your input on if my marriage can be saved and any potential ways to do that.
	I met my wife in college and I loved her right off the bat.
	I had my fair share of wild times in college, but I never slept around.
	I knew what I wanted from a partner and from an earlier age than most guys.
	I dated a few people, but I always learned fairly quickly that it wouldn't work long-term, which is what I was focused on.
	My wife had a rough childhood, and we'll get into more of that in a bit, but she had extreme self-knowledge as soon as I met her and was not a girl with daddy issues, even though she could have easily leaned into that.
	It was attractive that she had taken time on herself.
	Once we started dating, I knew I would marry her, and we are married in 2012 after living together for just a little while.
	Our marriage has been wracked with a lot of tragedy and stress.
	Her dad passed away a few months before our wedding, and my dad passed away almost two months the day after our wedding.
	I've had some health scares that have since been taken care of, among other things, but I always felt like these things made us stronger, but now I'm not so sure.
	We had our son in 2014 and then suffered back-to-back miscarriages before having our daughter in 2017.
	More on that as well.
	The reason she states our relationship is over in her eyes is based on years of not being heard.
	I'm sorry, I just took off my glasses when you said the reason why, and it was something like, was it years of not being heard?
	I just want to make sure I didn't miss that part.
	Yeah, years of not being heard and my self-admitted anger issues along with lack of support from the outside.
	Got it. Okay, sorry, go ahead. Yep.
	I think we've had really similar arguments to any married couple.
	I don't handle confrontation very well and would often pull back.
	Until I felt I could properly address and respond to a conflict, she wanted it wrapped up immediately.
	This would often lead me to retreating and her pursuing until I would eventually lash out and say something hurtful.
	She would stay awake, upset, and I would go to bed.
	We didn't often fight, but those blowouts, I've learned, poison you over a period of time.
	These arguments would often start over something trivial and then build into the fate of our relationship.
	I'm not rationalizing my way out of my herbal outbursts, but I often felt unprepared to deal with mountainous issues on the fly, and consciously or subconsciously felt like...
	Which issues? Mountainous issues, just big issues.
	Okay, got it. Sorry, go ahead. Yep, and either consciously or subconsciously, I felt like if I could show her that I was angry for pursuing and hounding me about it, that maybe she would back off or see my point.
	That tactic never served me well and never worked.
	I admit... To saying things, swearing, sometimes throwing things in anger and frustration.
	I'm ashamed of those occurrences.
	I would take them back if I could.
	It's nothing you should ever do to your spouse.
	In her mind, the damage has been done for too long.
	She pushed me to seek counseling in the past and I never did.
	This in her mind is seeing me as not caring about our relationship when I don't think that's accurate.
	We've been a happy couple and a happy family.
	I believe we've had much more good than bad.
	But when things start going well, you stop worrying about the old arguments and recognizing that may be a mistake.
	Just a little more background on us.
	My wife is a stay-at-home mother, homeschools our children.
	This was incredibly important to both of us, and I would call myself incredibly lucky for being able to provide this lifestyle.
	We cut corners, made sacrifices to make it work, and it did for a time.
	I'm learning now the importance of community and raising a family.
	Maybe two years or so ago, my wife started seeming depressed.
	She started giving up on the house and leaning into her phone more and more.
	She said it was her outlet.
	It might be easy to be cynical about that, but I think it's something that's really overlooked or undervalued as an important factor to consider when someone stays home with small children.
	Another issue here is my mother is retired and lives probably five minutes from where we live.
	She's a natural-born caretaker and was literally a special needs teacher for many years.
	She stayed at home with all of my siblings and is motherly to a fault.
	My family has a rare muscle disorder that left my dad, brother, and one of my sisters physically disabled.
	I'm affected as well, but not nearly to that extent.
	Two of my mom's sisters also have age-related disabilities that she helps with all the time.
	In between that, I do have a sister that's a little bit of a disaster.
	We could probably spend a whole other show on her poor life choices, but long story short, she lives at my mom's house right now with her two children.
	My wife and I set boundaries so that we don't spend any time with my sister, and unfortunately, that's cut off a lot of assistance from my mom and led to some really deep emotional hurt from my wife, especially when we needed that help after our miscarriages.
	My wife feels like we've always been on the bottom of the list from my family and that kind of support.
	About a year ago, my wife got involved in some independent media and political pursuits with people on the internet.
	It was a beacon for her and made her happy in ways that I hadn't seen in a long time.
	It gave her an identity that she'd been lacking for so long.
	I did and do support her in these pursuits, but I've also felt frustration that it's taken over center stage and her attention.
	She's on the phone a lot.
	I've literally felt like I'm missing her while she's in our own home.
	It made working on our relationship pretty difficult and I felt like I stepped up a lot to try to help more with the kids and give her space for that and her appreciation overall just seemed to tank.
	This kind of came to a head earlier this month and we had an argument about it.
	I told her I was frustrated with that it was seemingly the only thing she had energy for.
	She said it's one of the only things that make her happy.
	This seems to be the nail in our relationship in her eyes.
	I think she views our relationship as something that wasn't making her happy, and now she's found something that's exciting and does make her happy.
	She's stating she thinks she wants to move back with her mom, who lives about two and a half hours away from where we do, put the kids back in school and work.
	I feel like this would be a betrayal of so many values we've shared for our entire relationship and would devastate Me and the children in a lot of ways.
	I'm working to get myself into a therapist and I've attempted to try to coax her into doing some counseling together.
	Right now she doesn't think it's worth it and her mind is made up.
	Previously we did see kind of an informal counselor and it led to a lot of understanding about some of the issues with my family.
	So I found it to be positive and I obviously would want to continue with that if we could.
	She feels she's given all her chances, and I feel like I didn't realize the extent of everything until now, and I'm committed to owning my actions and emotions and seeking help however we can.
	Just a tiny bit more back information on bringing us up to speed here.
	Her mother was born into a really strict religious household and abandoned it when she was 18.
	She was shunned by her family.
	My wife grew up never knowing her extended family on either her mother or father's side.
	Our father was 30 years older than her mother and had a previous family and a divorce before that.
	He was a workaholic and verbally abusive, and that marriage ended in a bitter divorce that my wife says traumatized her.
	She said she would never be like her mother, but now I feel like we're repeating a cycle.
	I find it tragic and depressing and not good for our children.
	My wife and I share so many values that And it's hard because I see her reaching out to some people that I know don't share those values and supporting her and finding herself.
	My wife is a lot smarter than a lot of toxic cultural things, but I just don't know the type of people that are giving her support right now.
	I don't actually even know some of the people she's talking to.
	I've read the number one reason why one spouse cheats on the other is when they feel like they're trying to regain their identity.
	And that terrifies me, especially if she already views this as done.
	I love her mother, and I've been talking to her mother for the past few weeks on the phone, but yesterday when my wife said she felt she was done, her mother flipped so fast, it's still shocking to me.
	I overheard them talking about her moving back in and starting fresh.
	You said her mother flipped?
	Yeah, her mother flipped.
	Oh, to her side in the marriage, that kind of thing, right?
	Yeah, I mean, it was almost immediate, just, you know, Yeah, let's get you moved back in here.
	Let's start fresh. You know, I kind of would hear them whispering from across the room and, you know, that's tough.
	So, again, I understand it's her daughter, but I just feel like it's something that you'd want to push harder for.
	So, ultimately, I feel like I'm kind of in a mess, but I don't think I'm past the point of saving this.
	I knew my wife was depressed and I knew there were a lot of things we had to work on, but my head is still spinning that we're here right now.
	Even a few months back, I would have told you I had everything and was king of the world.
	I attached a picture to you to capture everything I'm fighting for and how beautiful the family we have is right now.
	As is, I spend every minute thinking I feel like I'm going to throw up, but I also have the unyielding passion to try to make this work if I can.
	I know that's a lot, but that brings us up to speed a little bit.
	Right, right. Do you think she's got another guy?
	You know, I've only talked to a couple people about this.
	That's something that everybody's asked.
	We've been together for coming up on 12 years.
	There's literally never been a time in the 12 years where I was ever worried about that.
	I don't have any evidence to that.
	I don't know. So it's definitely...
	Something that I've thought about.
	I don't know who she's talking to on her phone, that sort of thing, but I've never once tried to snoop on her phone.
	I'm not going to do that.
	I don't know.
	I guess what it comes down to is I don't have evidence for that.
	I don't think so, but I think maybe the prospect of someone else could be intriguing.
	I don't know. Right, okay.
	And of course she hasn't said anything.
	No, obviously. Right.
	And tell me about when she started getting depressed.
	So she's not like a depressed person, if I understand this correctly, as a whole.
	Some people are just kind of melancholy in their natures.
	Sort of Eeyore kind of people.
	Was she not that way when you met her and throughout the early part of the relationship that's changed a lot since?
	Yeah, I don't think she would be that type of person.
	It's probably about two years ago.
	I mean, I get it, you know, when you are a stay-at-home mom with, you know, the ages that our kids are at.
	We have a five-year-old and a two-year-old.
	I mean, it's stressful.
	I don't know if she just got overwhelmed.
	I don't know.
	It seemed like she just sort of pulled back and just kind of let things slide a lot more.
	You know, the housework, just kind of everything.
	And she would talk about feeling...
	So, was it the fights?
	I mean, what was it, do you think, that brought about this?
	Well, you know, I don't know if it was...
	I mean, she's stating now she thinks it's all built around me.
	She's, you know, saying she feels like she's been in an abusive relationship with me, verbally abusive.
	For a long time...
	You know, we had the two miscarriages back to back, and it was very hard on her.
	If she put so much of her identity in being a mother, she would do things.
	No, no, no. That's okay. Listen, the hardships is not the problem.
	And listen, two miscarriages back to back.
	How far along with the baby?
	A little under 10 weeks.
	Okay. So, was that both times?
	Yeah, yeah. You know what?
	It doesn't matter. Because, you know, sometimes when women have miscarriages, they have to induce labor.
	There could be a DNC. Some women showered and passed the baby, and then what do you do with it?
	There's a real horror show aspect to miscarriages.
	Because, you know, if it's early, it's still terrible and painful and all of that.
	But you don't have this, you know, holding...
	Half-formed dead baby and your hands in the shower kind of thing.
	So I just wanted to get a sense of the horror.
	Now, but that stuff, horrible though it is, is not the problem.
	There's no objective reason why trauma, difficulty, and pain in a marriage should drive you apart.
	It can very much bring you closer together.
	You're two people suffering a terrible natural occurrence.
	And it doesn't...
	I mean, it may...
	Walking on a floor doesn't make it break, unless the floor has a significant weakness already.
	You know what I mean? So it's not the events themselves that cause that.
	They may reveal an underlying weakness or instability, but they don't create it, if that makes sense.
	Right, right. So, how's her bond with your kids?
	Her bond with the kids?
	Yeah. It's good.
	She is a great mother.
	I would say she's even telling me that she feels like she's not being the mother she wants to because she's completely stressed out.
	As I mentioned, she has retreated a lot to her computer and her phone.
	Well, that's not being a good mom, is it?
	Well... Right.
	I mean, we have to stay, like, if you want a productive conversation, which I know you do, we have to stay away from the sentimentality.
	You know, we have to stay away from, oh, she's a great mom, and it's like, come on.
	If she's depressed, if she's on the phone with the political stuff all the time, if she's, like, scrolling through Twitter, or if she's emailing, and she's supposed to be homeschooling, no.
	Right. No, no, no. You can't put all that together, right?
	And get good mom coming out of the equation.
	I mean, I'm not saying she's a terrible mom.
	She may be good, but there's problems with that, right?
	And people do say, oh, you know, well, you're home with little kids.
	And that's somehow the source of the problem.
	I don't, I mean, I was home with a little kid, and if you have a great bond with your kids, it's not like you don't need adult time or adult company and so on, but it's such a great relationship, even when they're toddlers, babies, you name it, right?
	That you spend more time interacting with another human being when you're home with kids than you normally do at work, right?
	Where you're doing a lot of typing, emailing, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So it's not being home with the kids.
	So, if she has a great relationship with her two kids...
	That would be what would stave off the isolation, the loneliness, the depression, and looking outside the home for meaning.
	Because you're saying, well, she's getting involved in all this political stuff, right?
	She's looking outside the home for meaning, and that's the big question.
	Why is she looking outside the home for meaning?
	I mean, what in politics could be more meaningful than homeschooling your own flesh and blood?
	And I'm not saying it's like, oh, well, if you're homeschooling, you can't get involved in politics.
	I'm not saying it. But in terms of where her focus is, If the relationship with the kids is not super strong, she's going to get depressed.
	And then she's going to feel that her life is sort of meaningless, right?
	If you're not real tight with your kids and you're home and you're homeschooling them, then you have, you know, that old meme, like, you had one job, right?
	You have one job, which is to be close to your children.
	If that's not playing out the way that she wants it to...
	Then she's going to get depressed.
	Life is going to feel meaningless.
	And then if she can't confront...
	The lack of connection with her children.
	And I don't mean no connection. I just mean a lack relative to, right?
	Like, I lack sprinting speed.
	It doesn't mean I can't sprint at all, right?
	So then she's going to start looking for meaning outside the relationship.
	And then home is going to be a place of unhappiness because it is a place, I think...
	It's just a theory. You can tell me it's completely false, of course, right?
	But if she's failing in her connection, close connection with your children...
	Then home is going to be a place of failure and she's going to start wanting to get out, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, yeah. I can see that.
	I think just the spark that she's had doing this other stuff, which it's been a hard thing for me to know how to support it because when you see someone you love feeling depressed and then there is something that sparks them, You want to encourage that, but then it's also a frustration because it seems I can see the other side of it, you know, the lack with the house.
	And so I feel like I'm in a position where we have argued over this, and it really was this last argument, which was the first time we really had kind of a blow up about this issue, is I think it was, you know, the atomic bomb type scenario in her head where it was, I finally found something that makes me happy and now you're undermining it.
	Even though the fight itself was really not No, no, but it's her narrative, right?
	People can talk themselves in and out of things with terrifying rapidity.
	Elon Musk was saying lately that if you read your own Wikipedia page, if you have one, it's sort of an example of the fiction that lives in other people's head about you.
	But if she's saying, like if she's saying, finally, I found something that makes me happy, that gives me meaning, and you're undermining it, I mean, that is such an indictment of you and of the marriage that if you say that stuff to yourself, that is such an indictment of you and of the marriage that Then your marriage is doomed, right?
	I mean, I'm sort of saying this to her in absentia, of course, right?
	But if you say, aha, you know, like, I finally find something that makes me happy and my husband is trying to destroy it and undermine it.
	It's like, well, you're just rolling grenades into the marriage, right?
	Oh, wow. Funnily enough, it didn't stand up.
	It's like, well, you rolled all these grenades into it, right?
	So, the arguments that you've been having...
	Which you say start with little things and then escalate.
	Now the reason they escalate is to avoid the big things.
	So people don't usually understand this, right?
	So you start with little things because the little things are indicative of the big things and then you escalate in order to avoid talking about the big things because you're terrified that talking about the big things is going to disrupt or destroy the marriage.
	And then by continually escalating, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing in order to avoid the big things, you end up wrecking the marriage anyway.
	So you might as well talk about the big things, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, what you just said there is exactly what has been in my mind.
	And I take on my ownership of that.
	And I even said this to her the other day.
	I said, I feel like I have spent a lot of time being afraid to have conversations that might blow up our marriage.
	And in doing so, I've blown up our marriage or not helped it.
	Well, okay. I mean, I get that you want to take ownership, and I think that's great, but don't take so much ownership that she ceases to exist, because that's probably one of the problems that she has is not feeling particularly present, right?
	And so one of the things that people do in marriages is they play this kind of hot potato blame game, which is like, it's all you, right?
	And then you feel bad about that, and you're like, oh, man, I'm the one with the temper.
	I'm the one who has to change. And it's like, well, no, it's...
	It's two people, right?
	Two people who need to come together and if you take 50% and give 50%, that's real, right?
	Because if you take it all on, then you give her some relief.
	In terms of, well, I guess it's not me who has to change.
	My husband's the bad person and he has to change and so on.
	It gives us some relief, but then what happens is she feels invisible in the relationship because she has no agency, no presence, right?
	Whereas if you dump it all on her, then she's just going to react to that and say, oh, so you're perfect and I'm just the bad guy, like all this kind of stuff, right?
	So you've got to do a 50-50 thing here.
	But that's tricky, right?
	That's tricky. So tell me sort of the major themes that you would be arguing about, at least at the surface, like the home kind of stuff, like a messy house or what?
	Yeah, I mean, we really actually have not had too many big arguments over the last few months and things.
	Not to roll another grenade into the conversation here, but something I didn't mention in the email is my brother actually passed away in September.
	Oh man, I'm so sorry.
	What happened? Well, he was 40.
	He's a little bit older than me.
	He was much more...
	You say that like, well, 40. My God, he's just...
	I'm 53, dude.
	Don't tell me that 40 is hanging on by the skin of your teeth.
	No, no, no. I didn't mean like, oh, he was...
	I just meant he was a little bit older than me, but...
	He was much more affected by the muscular disorder that my family has.
	I mean, to be honest, I think it was a combination of his body just not being able to take it and him not taking care of himself.
	He was a brilliant man.
	He had a PhD in philosophy, which I'm I'm sure you can appreciate it.
	Do you mind just sending it on to me?
	I'm sure that would help. Now, sorry, the muscular thing that you guys are talking about, I'm sorry to sort of make light of this, but is it a degenerative thing?
	Is it a constant contraction kind of thing?
	Yeah, it's a type of muscular dystrophy and impacted my family in different ways.
	He was very impacted by it.
	He lost his ability to walk years ago.
	He was this brilliant guy trapped in a body that he was losing the ability to care for himself.
	He lived on his own. I think he was a very lonely guy.
	He was a life of the party when he was around.
	I think it was, you know, just kind of a...
	There's a lot of sort of 3 a.m.
	stuff staring at the moon out the window.
	Yeah. What is my life for?
	What is the purpose? And so on.
	And I assume that this also affects, of course, the heart musculature and digestive musculature and all that kind of stuff.
	So it just really goes inside and out, right?
	Yeah, exactly. And anyway, so I... Sorry to bring that up.
	It's just, you know, another thing that...
	We faced here together.
	I spent the week with him as he passed.
	He was in hospice in his apartment.
	I guess I'm kind of...
	Sorry, I'm getting a little scattered, but it's still fresh.
	Let's follow where the conversation goes.
	This is very important, in my opinion, obviously.
	Go ahead. I literally sat by him for a week and watched that decline.
	I've never... had been that close to watching a manifestation of death Surround someone.
	And it's funny, too, and I hugely sympathize with this enormously.
	And I've got to tell you, I've kind of dodged this bullet.
	Like, I'm 53. I've known a few people who've died, but I've never been involved in any lengthy period of time at all.
	Like, some people just, oh, this guy's mom, she just, like, had a brain aneurysm in the bathroom and just died, you know?
	And they've got to deal with it, but it wasn't like I'm sitting there for a week that Stephen King talks about when his own mother died, just, you know, holding hands and You know, watching this light slowly go out.
	And I mean, I'm sure I will, but so far, you know, I say this just so I can get to a certain degree from imagination, but I've not had the same experience.
	So forgive me if I sort of get it wrong at times.
	So go ahead. No, it's all right.
	And, you know, I lost my father right after our wedding, but that was very sudden and, you know, it was horrible.
	And so it was a cardiac issue.
	Was it related to the muscularity?
	Yes. I have the same issue that affected my dad, but I've been treated for that at a much earlier age than he was.
	We're hoping to avoid that with me.
	You said that your brother had not been taking care of himself.
	What do you mean by that?
	He drank a lot.
	I think it was his outlet to feel normal.
	It's I mean, it's easy to understand in a way.
	And he knew that this was going to be particularly bad for the condition, is that right?
	Yeah, he knew.
	He's taking that sort of Christopher Hitchens way out, because Christopher Hitchens, I think, had this susceptibility to certain illnesses that were highly exacerbated by drinking and smoking, and that's kind of all he did, right?
	Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I don't know how conscious at all I mean, it was conscious.
	I'm not going to say it wasn't.
	I don't think he thought it would hit him as quickly as it did.
	I mean, he knew it was coming.
	What did he do with his life?
	So I guess he spent his 20s and early 30s getting his PhD.
	Then he had like, what, eight years to go?
	He lost his ability to walk, as you said.
	But what did he do with his time?
	Yeah, he was a professor.
	He taught at a couple different universities.
	He lived... Across the country, he lived in Germany for some time.
	He studied German philosophy, so that's pretty intense.
	I think he knew he was going to lose his ability to walk at some point and really kind of went for it.
	He traveled a lot.
	I think he was always a little bit tortured by not being able to have a family.
	He had a few...
	Girlfriends at times, but they never developed much further.
	Wow, a nice place to visit, right?
	Wouldn't necessarily want to live there for most women.
	That's a lot to take on, especially if they themselves want kids, right?
	Right, and I think that was what came up with at least a couple of those girls.
	And did he work up until he got terminal or what?
	Well, up until about a year.
	Two years or so before, he kind of semi-retired.
	A little side story, he was a lifelong avowed liberal and then he spent a lot of time in academia and kind of shifted his view on that a little bit towards the end and just said, this is nuts.
	I can't work here anymore.
	So he kind of semi-retired.
	He taught some online courses and he was living near the beach and I think just kind of went out Trying to be as happy as he could.
	And did he get savings?
	It's always my mystery.
	How do people pay for these things?
	Yeah, he had built up a lot of savings over a period of time.
	I believe he did get some disability.
	He kind of was against taking that for a long time, even though he's the type of person that that's designed for.
	I think he still had a little bit of a complex about that, but I think he was taking some disability by the end.
	I mean, he paid into the system.
	I have no particular issue with that.
	And, you know, if there is a use for the system, it's that kind of situation.
	Exactly. And, you know, I guess the reason why my mind went to this, just as an aside here, was, you know, spending that time, getting that perspective on the end of your life.
	I'm still processing it.
	I mean, it was just a few months ago, but...
	It's too short to get hung up on the bullshit.
	And I think back to the person that I was when we got married and some of the things we spent energy arguing about.
	And it kills me that that's the type of stuff that has poisoned the well over these years.
	I mean, I get what you're saying.
	I really do. And I don't mean to counter any of your wisdom, especially given the grim manner in which you achieved it.
	It's not about, you know, it's not about the surface stuff.
	It's much, much deeper.
	The surface stuff is all just a distraction, as is the sound and fury, like the noise, the yelling, the throwing, the swearing, the insult.
	That's all just a way of, I don't want to go there, I don't want to go there, I don't want to go there.
	It's too painful to my identity to go where this dysfunction actually is, so I'm just going to I'm just going to make a lot of noise elsewhere and pretend I'm dealing with something when I'm not.
	And so, I mean, I understand what you're saying.
	But this idea, well, if I only had this depth now, it would have solved things earlier.
	Maybe, maybe. But there's probably a big case that this is the great opportunity in your marriage.
	I know this sounds kind of like an odd thing to do, but you guys are really close to the core.
	And when you get really close to the core of the problems, You either break up or you break through.
	You split up or you just get right there and you solve it.
	It's not good that it has to come to this kind of brinksmanship, but you can get there in these kinds of crises and you can look back and say, that was a horrible thing to go through, but by God, did it ever help us.
	Would you trade this particular passage for knowing you never really had to fight again for the rest of your life with your wife?
	If this is where you have to be to get there, maybe.
	It's not a bad deal, right?
	Yeah. I said to her the other night, I said, this is one of the hardest things I've ever gone through.
	Saying that after just going through everything with my brother, this has made me feel Worse, in a lot of ways, as horrible as that was.
	Well, I get it, because this is going to be the end, right?
	But if you guys get divorced, and you've got little kids, and you've got the next quarter century, you're at this swamp, right?
	It's a hell.
	It's worse than a hell, just thinking about that.
	Sorry, did your brother...
	Was he conscious in the week that you were with him?
	Was he able to talk? Did you guys have conversations before he left?
	For the first couple days, he was.
	You know, his organs were shutting down.
	And yeah, he knew. And he called some of his best friends from high school and they flew down and we took him to the beach.
	I mean, it was a beautiful and horrible thing at the same time.
	So yeah, I mean, he knew, but The last few days, he was just kind of comatose.
	So we had a little bit of time.
	I mean, I didn't have any Hallmark movie moment where everything was perfect, but we talked a little bit.
	Wait, what do you mean you talked a little bit?
	You were there for days, right? Well, I mean, like, I mean, we talked.
	I don't know. It was a complicated situation because it was a lot of people there.
	I mean, I spent time literally just sitting on the bed with him and talking.
	So we talked.
	Um, but I mean, he was starting when, when your organs start shutting down, there's confusion that sets in.
	Um, it was not always, it would seem like a clear conversation sometimes, and then he would be completely confused.
	And that's why I'm saying it, it, it had some kind of unfulfilling conversations at times, but Right.
	So there was this sort of light from the edge of the grave that casts a deep and powerful relief upon your remaining life.
	You didn't get to that wisdom aspects of the canyon, right?
	Right. Okay.
	Okay. So that's, I mean, that's tough because then there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot to process either way, but I think it's tougher without that stuff.
	Okay. So that was September, right?
	Right. Right. And now December, your wife is...
	I mean, is she officially like, I'm moving out tomorrow?
	Or is she officially like, is it like 100% as far as she sits?
	Or where is it now?
	I don't know for sure.
	She told me yesterday that...
	Well, I mean, she said her mind was made up.
	She was done.
	But I don't think there's been any concrete steps taken.
	Okay, that's good. Okay, so this is...
	Okay, let me run a theory past you, and then I'll get back to asking questions, but I kind of want to run a theory past you.
	Okay, so I've been thinking about this over the last little while, about this sort of issue or question of divorce.
	It sounds kind of bad for a married guy to be saying that, but it's come up in a number of different conversations I've had online.
	I've really been thinking about it. Like, why on earth do people get divorced?
	Like, how do you go from I love you.
	Spend the rest of your life with me.
	Be my wife. Be the mother of my children, too.
	Or be the father, I guess, in her view, too.
	Like, that's it. I'm done. I'm moving out, right?
	So, I think that the way it works a lot of times is really, really tragic.
	And I think this is why so many people, like the science is somewhat clear on this, like up to three quarters of people.
	Really, really regret getting divorced.
	You know, you ask them down the road.
	And that's just the people who are willing to admit it, right?
	So what the hell goes on?
	I think what goes on is you hit some issue that one or both husband and wife, they just can't go there.
	Maybe they don't even know wherever it is that they need to go in terms of dysfunction or history or whatever.
	And so these conflicts start coming up.
	And because they can't be resolved, because everybody's talking, you know, it's like trying to slow your car down by shouting at the steering wheel, right?
	I mean, it's not affecting the fundamental physics of the situation, right?
	Especially if your foot's lead footing it on the gas, right?
	So I think what happens is people start to escalate.
	Now, the escalation comes in terms of raised voices.
	It comes in terms of thrown objects.
	It comes in terms of, you know, that sort of white-lipped kitchen cupboard door slamming cold-eyed withdrawal that happens, which is just, you know, really punitive.
	And then it escalates sometimes to the point of having affairs or driving dangerously or getting drunk or whatever it is, right?
	And then, because both parties are waiting for the other party to sort of back down and melt, Both parties keep escalating and escalating.
	And then the D-bomb gets thrown, right?
	Like, if you don't comply or if we can't solve this, I'm going to get a divorce.
	Now, that is a negotiating strategy.
	Now, it's not a good negotiating strategy.
	Ultimatums are terrible in relationships.
	But it's more like a negotiation strategy to bring up divorce.
	But then what happens is you keep repeating it over and over again.
	And it starts to normalize in your brain.
	It starts to become not a sort of edgelord desperation negotiation tactic, but it starts to become a potentially viable course of action.
	And I think people end up blowing up these kinds of things.
	They don't really mean to.
	They don't really want to.
	But once you...
	This is why ultimatums are so bad, right?
	So once you throw the divorce ultimatum into the relationship, into the marriage, right?
	You either have to get your way, get divorced, or you have to back down and you have to say to your partner, I'm really sorry, I threatened you with divorce just to get my way.
	Now that, that is a hell of a thing to do in terms of just pride and vanity and ego and all that kind of stuff.
	It's really hard to say.
	Oh no, I didn't really mean I wanted to get divorced.
	I was just saying that to you.
	To emotionally terrorize you into complying with my wishes or whatever it is, right?
	And so I think that the escalation doesn't get, you know, let's say your wife is escalated, right?
	She doesn't get what she wants.
	And she can't withdraw the threat without admitting that it was a bullying tactic against you.
	And that's a hard thing.
	To admit, because then suddenly she goes from having the power of waving the divorce sword around the delicate ecosystem of the marriage, the bull in a china shop style.
	She loses that power and goes from having the power of threatening divorce to suddenly being so far in the wrong that you have all the power.
	And because she has made these threats and put these ultimatums forth, In her mind, well, if she loses power and you gain power, you're going to act like she acted, and you're going to be a bully, and you're going to threaten the relationship and all of that.
	And so I think that's kind of how people end up.
	It's sort of like World War I. Nobody wanted it.
	I mean, the European powers didn't sit there and say, you know, it'd be great if we could get into a four to five year war that would destroy all the wealth generated through the sacrifices of the Industrial Revolution, kill 10 million people, and then kill another 20 million people with the Spanish flu because the population is weakened and all the returning soldiers are on the move.
	But they just kind of stumbled into it because of escalation and pride and bit by bit, right?
	And there's so many human conflicts that arise out of this.
	Nobody wants the end result, yet the end result inevitably death marches its way towards them and they just stand there, you know, watching it like a guy just standing in the road with some Big, giant machine coming towards him, and he's like, you know, you could just step out of the way.
	No! I have my pride.
	It's like, well, you have your pride, and you're now very flat.
	So, I mean, that's just the kind of theory.
	And I don't know, obviously, if it applies.
	I have a sense it might, but, you know, it's your life.
	I mean, obviously, tell me if I'm going astray.
	But do you think it started as a really bullish kind of negotiation tactic, and now it's suddenly slowly hardened?
	I mean, there's a lot to take in with that, but I can say I have never threatened our relationship.
	She has many times in the past saying if this doesn't...
	When did it close out? I'm trying to remember exactly.
	Probably a few years ago.
	Oh, post-marriage.
	Like, you guys didn't break out before you got married, right?
	Oh, no. No.
	No, everything was great before that, and everything was great for the first few years.
	I mean, she would say that my anger issues would go back as long as we've been dating.
	She's been saying she feels that she wishes she would have made this threat to leave earlier.
	That was one of the things she said the other night.
	Oh, she said that she wished she had threatened before you'd even got married kind of thing?
	Or earlier in the marriage, just I wish you would have taken me seriously a long time ago because now it's real type situation.
	Oh, so is it 100% you from her standpoint?
	Like you're the one crushing her political dreams.
	You're the one with the anger issue.
	You're the one not taking her seriously.
	Is she like floating, you know, Venus to Milo style on this eggshell of perfection and you're just like this troll with a bad temper?
	No, I mean, I know you're going to say, well, you're just trying to defend her.
	I mean, she is a wonderful partner, and it's not just her.
	She states that there's issues she has as well.
	We don't necessarily get into those quite as much as my issues.
	Well, okay. What issues would she say that she has?
	Because those are the ones you're going to take.
	If you think it's all your partner and you're like a goddess of perfection, it's all your partner, then you imagine that you go someplace new and everything's going to be great.
	But of course, if you have a lot of issues, then every place you go, you've got to bring the same dynamic, right?
	Right. I will say it's interesting, and I'm still trying to wrestle with this a little bit, but when she describes her frustration with our communication, I feel like she's describing exactly how I would describe her.
	We're describing the same type of things.
	And what would she say? Give me her speech about what the problem is.
	She would say that my emotions have dictated our relationship.
	That if she's upset about something and brings it to me, then I get mad.
	And I've ruled the feelings of the marriage with my anger the whole time.
	I would say, personally, I feel like I have a very hard time even providing, not even criticism sometimes, but just kind of even general feedback about things because I'm like, well, this might blow up or she might get mad about this.
	Sometimes it's totally fine. Sometimes it's not.
	So she's used a phrase that sometimes I feel like I'm walking on eggshells around you and I would say, well, I feel the same way about you.
	And then it turns into...
	You know, you're trying to be the victim here and, you know, that sort of thing.
	And this working on eggshell stuff, was that around before you guys got married?
	I don't, I never felt that before we got married.
	But you had your temper back then too, right?
	Yeah, yeah. And so tell me how the temper, I mean, I know you gave me some general examples, you know, throwing and yelling and so on, but how does the temper manifest for her?
	Hers is just a little...
	I think mine gets bigger and blows up more.
	Let's talk about yours first, if that's alright.
	We're talking about mine? Yeah.
	Yeah, I feel like mine is...
	I mean, I feel like it's almost just a kind of a cliche kind of very common thing that I'm sure a lot of guys especially go through where it's, alright, I'm not going to let that bug me.
	It's kind of the bottling up and then blowing it up down the road type of thing where...
	I just won't let a lot of little things bug me, and then at one point I will let them all go and say things that I regret.
	Well, that's...
	Okay, I think that's...
	You know, this is just my understanding of it, right?
	And I'm sorry to interrupt you at the beginning.
	That's kind of a myth that, you know, we bottle things up, we bottle things up, and then it's sort of like shaking a can of Pavi, right?
	That's not... I don't think that's actually the way things work.
	I think what happens is you get a little needled, you get a little boss around, you get a little bullied, you get a little insulted.
	But, you know, these kinds of things can come and go and you don't want to make a big deal out of every little misstep that your partner makes and so on.
	So you say, okay, well, I'm going to let this one go, right?
	So there's this theory that says, okay, if you get 10 insults over a month, 10 being when you blow up.
	They just add up, right?
	But I don't think that's true.
	I think what happens is something goes awry.
	Someone's a little snappy.
	Someone's a little bad-tempered. And you're like, well, okay.
	I do it too.
	It's not the end of the world and so on.
	And then what you do is you wait for your partner to say, oh man, you know, I was really kind of snappy there.
	I'm sorry about that. It wasn't your fault or whatever, right?
	I just had a headache or a bad day or whatever it is, right?
	Or at least you wait for the behavior to diminish, right, over time.
	But what happens is...
	It's sort of like, I mean, I hate to cast your wife in the Hitler mold here.
	Let's take a silly example, right?
	It's a very silly example, right?
	It's like, oh, okay, you want the Sudetenland?
	Well, okay, that's not the end of the world.
	You know, okay, well, I guess the western part of Czechoslovakia has a lot of Germans there.
	Ah, the Rhineland, okay.
	I'm not going in historical sequence here.
	And then at some point, it's like, holy shit, he's just taking everything.
	You know what I mean? But that's not how it's portrayed.
	It's portrayed as this one little thing.
	So I think that the anger comes when you realize that not being angry is not helping.
	Being the bigger person, being above it, it's not like each one makes you more and more angry and then you blow.
	Each one is like, okay, well, I'll let this go because it's probably not a pattern.
	And then deep down in your unconscious, you go, no, this is a pattern.
	No, this is a pattern.
	And this being the bigger person and rising above and not getting mad, maybe getting mad, the way you've been doing it certainly is not helping, but...
	I think it's because the behavior is kind of repetitive and either staying at a constant hum or usually it kind of escalates and then you kind of got to push back and the way you push back is too hard, I'm sure.
	But I don't think it's like, well, I bottle it up and then I blow.
	It's like, well, no, I let things go until I realize that letting them go is making it worse.
	Yeah, and I even kind of said that in the email where I have this just tiny voice in the back of my mind sometimes when I've lost my temper where I'm like, If she just sees how much this is making me mad, maybe she'll get it this time.
	And it never works, and it's an overreaction, but I think that actually applies to what you just said there, that it is more of, you're not seeing me with my little anger that I don't let go, and now I need you to really see this, and it's counterproductive.
	But I think there's something to that for sure.
	And so when you...
	Get angry. You say it sort of starts.
	Give me the rough outline of the fight, like what happens.
	A bad one. Yeah, and I mean, to be honest with you, we really haven't had huge fights like this in a while, which is why this whole situation is kind of a little surreal in some ways.
	But, you know, it would start with, I don't have a great example off the top of my head, but she would want to sit down and talk about finances or something and She's mad about something, some bill or something.
	Like something you spend money on kind of thing?
	Yeah. I don't have a real specific example here, but just something kind of mundane like that, which will start getting escalated.
	Well, hang on.
	Escalated how? And is the bill thing like that's a real one?
	You don't have to remember what it was, but that's like a real thing?
	Yeah, probably. I don't want you to make up a fight because I'm sure you can remember something you fought about and how it started.
	Yeah, I would say generally we've had some fights over financial things.
	And that's your spending and she's in charge of the finances, is that right?
	Yeah. Well, yeah.
	And that's a whole other aspect of frustration as well, is that I make the money and then she pays the bills and we don't have money to pay X bill or whatever the case may be.
	And it'll be a situation where things snowball into bigger issues.
	Like, we don't have money for this bill, so that's why we have to do this thing.
	That's why we have to...
	Rethink about this other thing.
	So it starts building and then that's when I I mean, the fact that you have to juggle money, I mean, you know, you stay at home mom and two kids.
	I mean, that's certainly understandable.
	And that doesn't have to be a big, traumatic, terrible thing.
	It's like, oh, yeah, it'd be nice if we went away this weekend, but we can't afford it or we can't eat out next week or whatever it is.
	I mean, I think certainly new married couples.
	I mean, I remember when I first got married, I mean, we had to live lean for like, I don't know, close to two years just to pay off some money.
	Some issues, some debts and all that.
	I mean, it's, you know, it's a little tough, but, you know, if you're enjoying each other's company, it's like, oh, so I get to hang with you again.
	Well, that's good, right? Right, right.
	So I would say I pull away and, I don't know, she wants to keep, I mean, there's, and I mentioned in the email, there's times where, you know, I've gone into another room, I've gone into the basement or whatever, and she'll follow me.
	And keep kind of pecking at something that I don't have an answer for.
	Yeah, so you're giving me the shape of the fight, and you're giving me the description of the fight, but I don't know the content as yet.
	So what is it? Give me the sort of back and forth.
	Like, what would she say, and what would you say?
	She said, you know, you're not taking it seriously that we have to not spend money this weekend, and last weekend we said we weren't, and then we ordered pizza, or something along those lines, where it's kind of a pecking on Specifics on a larger issue.
	And I say, well, you know, we'll try to save money this way.
	And then I don't have a clear cut answer for that.
	I'm sorry. I know I'm...
	No, but so she would say we were supposed to not spend money last weekend, but we ordered pizza.
	I mean, she was there. Right, right.
	So how does she get to skate out of that choice?
	Well, I don't know.
	Yeah. So she gets overwhelmed or panicked by financial issues, and then she says that they're your fault.
	I mean, I don't want to make her the bad person in this.
	I'm just trying to sort it out.
	Yeah, I would say things like that have happened before.
	Okay, but when you say, hey, maybe it wasn't a great...
	Decision to order pizza last weekend, but we did both kind of do it.
	It was a really nice evening, and we can find some other way to cut back.
	And then she'd say, well, how? How are we going to cut back, right?
	Exactly. And then it's like, well, whoa.
	You're running the finances here.
	I mean, I can work more.
	We can decide not to, whatever it is you might do, a trip or something, we can decide not to do that.
	We can not eat out for the next month or whatever.
	And then she's like, oh, that's more work for me, more cooking for me.
	Is it this?
	Yeah, I would feel like she would say that, you know, all you do is toss out ideas, but you don't actually do anything.
	And it's on me, and that makes it work.
	Harder for me. I mean, that's what she would say about a situation like that.
	Right. Okay. So you've got a problem, which is contempt.
	Lack of respect. Right?
	Because from her to you, that's a big problem.
	It's really the biggest problem. It's probably the thing that has most led to this crack, right?
	Because everything that you've talked about in terms of what she complains about you is disrespectful.
	Right? Well, because she's saying, well, all you do is talk.
	And you're the one who decided to order the pizza.
	And you don't think about these things.
	And it's all on me.
	Because you can claim to be a victim.
	You can self-pity all you want.
	It just destroys you.
	The price of being a victim, the price of self-pity is losing respect for anyone around you.
	Because if anyone around you was a decent person, they would never let you Being that hard done by position, right?
	That's the price of victimhood is contempt for the people around you.
	Because that's, I mean, again, tell me if I'm wrong, of course, right?
	But that seems to be kind of the theme.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that's a lot to chew on as well.
	But yeah, I think there's a lot to that.
	I think she... Sorry, go ahead.
	No, I was just going to say, I think she...
	I think in her mind, I don't think she would use the word contempt because I think that's kind of a negative word.
	But I think some of that has built to a point where then she had just, in her mind, right or wrong, just sort of collapsed into apathy over the last few months.
	And obviously that doesn't help as well.
	I don't get that, collapse into apathy based upon a lack of respect.
	I don't follow that. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just don't follow the path.
	Yeah, I think there was a long time where she would have contempt for me about a lot of things, and then now in her mind it's like, well, I'm just done with it.
	I'm just completely done with it.
	And not even getting as angry about it.
	I don't know. Well, but that's where contempt leads, is to indifference, right?
	Right, and that's what I'm saying.
	So when did the lack of respect, or we can say lack of respect instead of contempt if it's too strong, but when did that first start to show up that you can think of looking back?
	Was it before you got married or after?
	It's hard to say, but I don't think until we got married and got our house.
	We bought a house about a year after we got married, and I think...
	I think it developed probably a little bit more around that time, probably right before kids.
	Yeah, probably around that time.
	I think we just started arguing more about the mundane parts of life.
	We were a lot more carefree about everything.
	We had an apartment together.
	We lived together. We were broke college kids together.
	It's not like we never...
	We had to face those financial issues, but I think it's a different thing when you have a home and then we were planning on starting a family.
	I think it just makes those things bigger.
	I don't know if it's the stress of thinking about those things coming in the future.
	With regards to spending, does she have a point in terms of you're out there spreading the cash around like nobody's business?
	No, I think it's, I mean, we, you know, I'm sure we both could probably cut back on a couple frivolous things, but I really don't spend much money other than, you know, occasionally getting lunch at work.
	But, I mean, we're just tight in general with, you know, her staying home and having a house and two kids.
	It's just, it's not, neither of us are really frivolously spending.
	It's just a stressful situation.
	Well, you've got to have a couple little things here and there, right?
	Oh, yeah. You can't live entirely like a monk.
	That's good, right?
	Right. Okay, so you're not like out there like throwing money at the horse races or anything like that?
	No, no, not at all.
	Okay, all right. So...
	Does she take your income for granted, do you think?
	I mean, in other words, is it just like, hey, you know, the money just comes rolling in and my husband mysteriously vanishes and it's like air.
	You don't sort of say thank you to the planet for giving you air every day.
	Like, is that something that sort of stayed front and center in her mind that you're paying the bills and that's a very big deal?
	That's why you can do what you do as a family?
	I don't know how she would answer that.
	I don't know.
	I mean, it's... Not something that I try to throw around, but there is sometimes where you're like, look, I... Oh, no, you need to throw it around.
	Oh, no, no, no. Listen, you need to throw it around.
	I say this to all the men out there.
	And I don't mean you throw it, I own you, I bought you.
	I mean, nothing like that. And I say this based upon, I don't have this in my marriage, but in prior relationships.
	There's something interesting about women as a whole, which is that They view the resources that the man brings as somehow not contributing to the marriage.
	They don't sit there and...
	Because if you say, you know, if you could clean the place up, that'd be great, right?
	Then she's like, oh, man, that can take two hours to clean the place, right?
	It's like, yeah, but I'm at work for 10 hours a day, right?
	So even if you do two hours a day of cleaning, which seems excessive...
	I'm still doing five times more work during the day.
	It's like, well, there's also child raising and so on.
	It's like, yes, absolutely. And you get paid for that.
	You know, like you're paying her to raise your children and to run the house.
	So, I mean, when I was a waiter, I don't go into work and say, well, I'd really like to pick up my paycheck now without doing any waitering.
	Because they'd say, well, you get paid when you wait.
	You don't get paid when you don't wait.
	And so reminding women that you paying the bills is a massive contribution to the family.
	Now, her raising the children, running the finances, running the household, that's a huge deal as well, right?
	But it's funny because if you sort of take for granted the fact that your wife, let's say, she cooks the meals, right?
	So you come home from work and you put your feet up and you, you know, read the paper or I guess check Twitter nowadays and Half an hour later, there's a nice hot piping meal on the table.
	What do you say to your wife? Thank you.
	Yeah, thanks. This is fantastic.
	And that appreciation is so important in a marriage, right?
	And again, I think maybe it's 51, 49, women and so on.
	But how often do you come home from work?
	And your wife says, oh man, thank you so much for going to work and paying for all of this.
	I hugely appreciate it.
	I get to stay home with the kids, which is great fun.
	You go out and do your job, which is not as much fun.
	I'm so grateful for that.
	Thank you. Do you ever hear that?
	Not a lot.
	How often? I think...
	That really only comes up when we are having, like, a really nice time together.
	We're already in a good mood.
	I don't think it really comes out on just kind of an average day.
	Well, okay, so how often a year, how many times a year do you hear, thank you for breaking your back 10 hours a day, five days a week for this family?
	Just, I don't know, maybe just a handful.
	Like two or three? Yeah, about five or six, maybe.
	Okay. I don't know. Okay.
	So, if she's cooking meals for you every day, and cooking meals costs a hell of a lot less time than going to work for 10 hours a day, and you could say to her, listen, if I only thanked you five or six times over the course of the year for all the work you do with the kids and the finances and the meals and the groceries and the whatever, right? I mean, you'd feel kind of like, what the hell, right?
	Where's the appreciation, right?
	And this issue where a man's contribution by working, it just becomes like physics.
	It just becomes like, you know, we don't call up the city every day and say, hey man, thanks for these roads.
	Thanks for this, you know, the water is pretty clean, right?
	Assuming you're not in Flint, right?
	The water is drinkable, it's potable, thank you.
	Right? Thanks for this sewage system, man.
	It's great to be here. It's just something we take for granted, right?
	We pay our bills. We flush the toilet.
	We turn on the tap. We drink the water.
	And it's just... We really do take it for granted, right?
	Until it's not there. It's some power failure or whatever.
	And it's like, oh my God. Call up the hydro companies.
	Hey, man. Thanks for this electricity.
	This is great. This really is like not medieval at all, right?
	But we can't treat people in our household like that, right?
	And the fastest way to lose respect from your wife is to give up the entirely sane request for appreciation for the work that you do to keep the family in food and shelter.
	because the moment a woman starts to take that for granted she will start to lose respect and that's something that men because we're trained to be invisible providers Like a woman cooks us a really nice meal and she expects us to say thank you and to show deep appreciation.
	And if we don't, well, we know how that plays out nine times out of ten, right?
	I mean, not only do we, well, not only is she mad, but usually we have to spend half an hour, an hour, five hours figuring out why she's mad.
	So you get the anger, you get the coldness, and then you get the giant Sherlock Holmes unlock-a-box mystery of trying to figure out what the hell happened.
	And I think especially there's something to it where, and this is not just my observation, but other friends of mine have mentioned that there is this idea that you have been away from the house all day.
	Oh, so you've got to take over when you get home.
	Well, that or just, you know, it's not even really necessarily viewed as working.
	It was just like you were out of the house.
	Yeah, you were just gone playing golf all day while I'm stuck at home with these kids, right?
	Right, and I'm not saying she necessarily does that all the time.
	I've heard lots of other people have mentioned that as well, but I think it is sort of this idea of, yeah, you were gone, so now I need my space, and it's I love coming home and playing with the kids and doing that sort of thing, but I'd rather that be something that's fun to do rather than just an expectation necessarily.
	Yeah. Right, right.
	This is the appreciation that you need to maintain.
	You know how you get your car oil changed and you check the filters in your furnace and all of this stuff that you need to do?
	Even more important than all of that stuff is you need to maintain the basic economic, fiscal, and resource reality that you're out there Working for the family and turning over about 80% of your profits or your proceeds to the family, right? And that's something she needs to be reminded of because the moment you start taking people for granted, you start to feel like a victim.
	Right? The moment you get to work, you don't call up your wife and say, hey man, you've got to come and start doing my typing.
	Right? You've got to come and answer these emails.
	She'd say, what are you talking about?
	You'd say, hey, I just got to my job and I need you to come and do my job.
	But then the moment you get home and her job is raising the kids, she says, well, now that you're home, you've got to do my job.
	But you don't get to work and say, you've got to do my job.
	Now, again, I know I'm not trying to compare being a parent with being an employee or anything like that, but from a logic standpoint, it wouldn't make much sense for you to say, hey, I just showed up to work, so you've got to come do my job.
	And that is really important to maintain.
	Now, of course, you know, one of the reasons why it's a little tougher to maintain is because she could just divorce you and take your stuff anyway, right?
	Which we're trying to avoid here, right?
	But it's not going to be satisfying to her.
	It's going to be, I mean, extraordinarily miserable for her.
	And, you know, the emotional thinkers, they don't think this stuff through.
	Like, she doesn't sit there and say, okay, well, what's dating going to be like when I have two kids under the age of five?
	What kind of man is going to want to come and blow huge amounts of money on another man's children?
	How's this going to play? This is why I know for sure it's brinksmanship.
	It's a strategy. It's not a strategy I hugely respect, but it happens.
	You've got to deal with it, right? Yeah, and it's the idea of Actually moving into that space and actually having this happen is...
	I can't even...
	I've been trying to figure out the words.
	It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen.
	When you guys got married, did you take the vows?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So she took a vow to love.
	I don't know if you threw obey in, to love, to honor.
	In sickness and in health, better and for worse, until death is due part, right?
	You guys say those words?
	Yeah. Were you in a church?
	No. All right.
	Does she take those vows seriously?
	We literally were just talking about our wedding vows the other day, and she says that she takes them very seriously, and this is not something she's taking lightly.
	Well, no, no. I'm sorry.
	That's not an option. It's not like, well, I take my wedding vows seriously and I'm going to break them because she's breaking the vows.
	She made a promise to you for the rest of your lives in front of everyone, in the eyes of God if you're a believer.
	She made, and that's the vow that you based the marriage on.
	I mean, to take a silly example, imagine your wife signs up for a cell phone plan and they say she gets 10 gigs of data, right?
	And then she uses a gig of data and then they cut her off saying, hey, you're over your plan, right?
	What would she do? I mean, she's bound to the contract, but...
	Well, she'd call them up and she'd give them holy hell, right?
	And she'd say, hey, no, no, I got a contract right here.
	It says 10 gigs. You can't give me a gig and cut me off, right?
	That's not paying for 10 gigs.
	I want my 10 gigs. And they'd have to say, oh yeah, sorry about that, right?
	That's a fucking cell phone plan, not a family.
	Right? So you got involved in this marriage on the basis of the promise that she made to you to stay with you, right?
	She didn't say, well, unless we have a bunch of blow-ups, or unless I get involved in politics, or unless I'm depressed, or, or, or, right?
	I mean, you didn't, right? Right.
	You're like, hey, we're going to work this shit out, right?
	I'm trying, yeah.
	But no, this is the important thing, right?
	Is that the children only exist because of the vows that she made.
	And obviously the vows that you made, but you want to keep working on things, right?
	So those children only exist because of the contract that you made.
	I'll give you another silly example, right?
	Let's say you're a construction worker.
	You work for a construction company.
	They pay you to build a house, right?
	And then when the house is built, it's some big, beautiful house, right?
	You move in, right? And they say, what are you doing?
	And you say, hey, man, I built this house.
	So I'm moving in. I homesteaded it.
	And they're like, no, we paid for all the materials.
	We did the paperwork.
	We got the permits.
	We bought the land. We paid you.
	You don't get the house, right?
	That's the contract. So those children, I mean, if you knew ahead of time, like if you knew when you first met that this is where you'd be after a certain number of years, right?
	Facing divorce with two kids who are very little, right?
	You wouldn't have gone ahead, right?
	Probably not. No, come on.
	Of course not, right? No, no.
	I mean, again, I know you love your kids, and this is a real theoretical.
	I get all of that, right? Right, right.
	But if you'd have said, oh, yeah, she's going to be walking out on me with two kids under the age of five, right?
	You'd be like, oh, I think I'll get married to a woman who actually takes these vows seriously, right?
	Well, that's the thing where she...
	I feel like she's already discussing things down the road as if we were divorced and this is what we do for the kids and we have to focus on the kids.
	No, no, no. She made a vow.
	Right. And I have said to her...
	In my mind, the best way to advocate for those kids is to advocate for us.
	It's not about anything other than that.
	We... I don't know if that makes sense, but...
	Of course. Of course. But no, I mean, listen.
	She made a vow.
	She made a promise to you to stay and work things out.
	Have you made mistakes?
	Yes. I think you'd be the first to admit that, as you were in the email.
	And we'll talk about those.
	But she doesn't have the choice to get up and walk because she made a vow, and that's the only reason you married her, and that's the only reason these children exist.
	She cannot break that vow.
	Now, she could say, oh, but you've been abusive, right?
	Right, because this is what she said, right?
	You've yelled, you've thrown things.
	That's terrible. I mean, no, that's terrible.
	We'll get to that. I promise you, right?
	Yeah. But she knew you had a temper when she married you.
	She made the vow to stay with you when she knew you had a temper.
	It doesn't justify your temper.
	It doesn't mean you shouldn't change it.
	You bloody well should. But she made a vow and she can't claim that there was false advertising, right?
	You weren't bottling up this temper for years before you got married, before you had kids, right?
	Right. So she can't suddenly claim, well, I was misled.
	I mean, you were wearing your anger on your sleeve, so to speak, right?
	Yeah, yeah. And how's she going to teach these kids to keep their word?
	How's she going to teach these kids to honor their commitments?
	How's she going to teach these kids to be mature and work things out if she bolts from the marriage?
	It's so harmful to them.
	Come on. You know that, right? Well, I mean, she says that the divorce that her parents went through was...
	Super impactful on her and very traumatizing.
	That's what I mentioned. The fact that we're at a point of her repeating a cycle.
	Yeah, she can't. No, she can't because you already have the kids, right?
	The kids? No, no, no.
	Okay, if you guys were just like two guys, you just married at some start of marriage or whatever.
	I mean, it's bad for sure. And I would still encourage you guys to work it out.
	But there are two kids here.
	There are two kids here. I mean, what, is she going to date and have strange guys floating around these kids and you're going to date and the income is going to be cut in half?
	Come on. I mean, this is a disaster.
	And it's so unnecessary.
	Right. So I've just, you know, this is to the men out there as a whole.
	I mean, just take your vows seriously.
	The vows are the foundation of civilization.
	If we can't keep our word, we can't keep anything.
	And you make those vows.
	It's not just shit you say at the wedding.
	This is your blood commitment.
	This is your bone marrow commitment.
	And just, you know, it's important to remind her of that.
	It's like, hey, you made a vow.
	Now, say to her, you making that vow doesn't mean that I shouldn't improve.
	But I was who I was when you made that vow.
	I'm not a totally different human being now.
	I can be a better person, and I commit to doing that.
	But, who the hell has she been talking to that's making all this manifest?
	Do you think it's her mom? I don't know.
	She's got a group of friends that I don't know.
	Any divorcees among those friends?
	Quite a few. Yeah, I tell you, man, this is going to sound horrible and I'm going to get flack like hell, but I don't care because I'm saving your marriage for Christmas if I can, right?
	I don't have divorced people around my marriage.
	I don't do it, man.
	I don't let people coughing up blood hang around my kid or me.
	I do not have divorced people around my marriage.
	They're too screwed up about it all as a whole, right?
	And it's not like I don't know any divorced people and, you know, there are some people, if they've remarried, that's fine.
	And their new marriage is happy, right?
	Yeah, okay. But divorced people are too invested in justifying the failure of marriage.
	Well, I think with her mom, she's remarried now and her husband is great and they have a great marriage now.
	But, and like I said in the email, you know, I'd been talking with her mom for weeks, going back to this fight when this all started, and I felt like we were understanding each other a lot more, and then it was just, oh, well, she says she's done, so you better just start work on moving on.
	And I don't know if that's a revert back to...
	No, no, because the mom, the mom could say, oh, honey, you made a vow.
	Marriage is tough. You made a vow.
	And that's what I've...
	See, I... I've been trying to ask some people that I know that she's been talking to, I want your support to work on this.
	And that's what I've been asking for from people that I know that are talking to her.
	And I haven't really gotten any response back.
	Her mom's not giving that to you, right?
	Well, she was to me personally while we were talking.
	And then it was like when my wife said to her, you know, I've made up my mind.
	Her mom was like, all right, well, okay, I'll support you.
	You're my daughter. And on one hand, you know, the Great to support your child's decision.
	No, it's not great to support your child's decision to detonate a family with two kids in it just because your husband has a bad temper and yells and throws things, all of which are terrifying and terrible and we'll get to, but...
	Right. No, that's not...
	No, you don't support that.
	You don't support that.
	Okay, so the mother-in-law's turned against you, right?
	Right. Well, I wouldn't necessarily say turn against me.
	I haven't really talked to her since yesterday.
	No, no, she's saying that I support my daughter's decision to divorce you, right?
	Well, yeah. Okay.
	All right. So, that's not good.
	And that means, you see, that your mother-in-law has now become the mortal enemy of your children.
	Because she's thrown in with the divorce bomb, right?
	It's ironic, too, in some ways that me and my wife have discussed how our values for the peaceful parenting, the stay-at-home, the homeschooling, in some ways that me and my wife have discussed how our values for Her mom has never—she's not been against those things, but that's not really her.
	My wife has said in the past that her mom doesn't necessarily have her values, and some of her siblings don't necessarily have her values, and then it was just sort of this circle the wagons thing around Christmas down there.
	Sorry, she went down to her mom's, right?
	Yeah, I was down there as well, and then I left them for just a day or two because I... You know, they're coming back tomorrow to do Christmas with me and everything at our house, but I was down there for the weekend and left on Sunday.
	God help us from the shitty Christmases, eh?
	Jesus. No, they're awful, especially when you've got kids, because you've got to sit around and be miserable with each other.
	You've got to put on the happy face for the kids.
	Well, yep, yep, yep.
	All right, so let's get back to you.
	Okay. So tell me the worst thing you did that's really sticking in your wife's brain.
	I think she would just say, I don't know that there's one thing that would stick out.
	It's just accumulation of, you know, this explosive anger at times.
	And then just, you know, she would...
	And in her fairness, she did try to get me to see a counselor in the past.
	She's bought me a book in the past, you know, with anger issues and things.
	I did read the book.
	I have not.
	Oh, dude. Okay, why?
	Why? Why would you not read the book?
	She's getting you a book saying, your anger is very scary to me.
	Please read this book.
	And you don't. Now, it doesn't mean you've got to agree with the book, but, you know, read the damn thing and talk about it with your wife.
	So why not? Yeah. What's the story that you have about, like, because, I mean, looking back, you wish you'd read the book, right?
	Well, I wish I did a lot of things, yeah.
	Okay, so why didn't you read the book?
	I think when you go through some arguments and then time passes and everything seems okay, you just kind of roll with it and don't look back.
	No, no, no, no, come on.
	You're a smart guy. You listen to this show.
	Everybody who listens to this show gets smart guy, smart woman in my book, right?
	So, no, no, that's not it.
	That's not it, man. That's not it.
	You know, it's like saying, well, I had a health scare, but now that the health scare's gone away, I'll get back to my terrible habits, right?
	I mean, that's not it.
	I can tell you why I didn't read the book, if we want to, because I know we've been talking for a long time.
	The reason you didn't read the book is you felt insulted and humiliated that she portrayed you as the only person in the relationship that had a problem.
	Well, that's...
	Never thought of that, but I think that certainly has a lot of merit to it.
	The only problem we have, you see, is your temper.
	You fix that. Everything's fine.
	It's like, nope. Nope, nope, nope.
	That's not it. It's the same thing with, honey, you go to therapy.
	I mean, I'm no marital therapist, but my understanding is marital therapists kind of want to see both people, right?
	Yeah. So you feel that if you read the book, you're accepting the basic premise that you're the only one with the problem.
	If you go to therapy, you're accepting the basic premise that you're the only one with the problem, and you don't want to do that.
	Yeah. I think that's...
	I hadn't consciously put those pieces together, but I think as soon as you said that, I think that's a lot of my stalling behavior is not wanting to face...
	You know, what that may mean about me.
	Well, let's say that you accept the basic premise that you're the only one with the problem and you go to therapy and you read the book and you do the exercises or whatever it is.
	You take the anger management class, whatever it is that's going on, right?
	And let's say that things don't improve.
	Well, now you're really toast, right?
	Because you've already accepted that you're the problem and if the problems don't get better, it's because you're not doing the right work.
	That's not a great position to be in.
	Now, you could, of course, trade and say, okay, listen, man, let's trade.
	I will absolutely read your book.
	I'll go through the exercises.
	We'll talk about it. Here's a book I have for you called Emotional Quote Reasoning or whatever.
	It's not a real book, but it could be, I guess, if I write it.
	But let's trade off because we could both stand to be better and so on.
	And even if I'm just this terrible guy with this terrible temper, well, you chose a terrible guy with a terrible temper, so you've got that to work on, right?
	And you can also say, listen, my love, mother of my children, wife of my heart, it's tough to change.
	Do you know why it's so tough to change?
	Because you chose me and promised to love me for who I was when we got married.
	Now, if I'm going to fundamentally change that, it's scary for me because I don't know if you'll actually like it.
	You say, oh, well, I want a different guy, right?
	I want a guy who's not got a temper or whatever.
	And I'm just like, deep down, we don't want to change too much from the person who won our bride, right?
	Do you know what I mean? If I go out and buy a Ferrari, I don't want someone in there tinkering and turning it into a Lada or a Gremlin, right?
	I know, I bought a Ferrari.
	I don't want you mucking around with it, right?
	And so it's tough to change from the person your wife married because she loved you enough to marry you, who has attracted you enough to marry you, and now she's changed.
	It's like, wait, you want me to change from the guy you loved enough to marry?
	Like, what does that mean? Yeah, yeah.
	I think there's a lot to that and what what gets you so mad I What is the anger covering up, right?
	What's underneath that?
	That's something I'm trying to work on.
	I don't know. I mean, I've mentioned with the health issues that my family has going back, I had a conversation with my brother years ago, and he was in a much worse situation than I was, where it was just It's almost this feeling that there is some latent anger that you just have when you have a disability or something like that.
	Some people try to say you're angry at your parents.
	That's weird to me and it doesn't really ring true, but there is something that I've always felt.
	I remember my dad when I was back in high school, I don't remember what the situation was, but he told me It's like, you've got to get that anger under control or it's going to ruin something you love.
	And I don't know.
	I don't have that answer right now, where exactly that comes from.
	Yeah, I don't think it's a disability.
	I hate to go against family history or family law and I could be entirely talking out of my armpit.
	Yeah, I'm not saying it is.
	No, because does it manifest at work?
	I mean, not really. Right.
	So, if you were just an angry guy, then it would manifest everywhere, right?
	But it manifests, lo and behold, with your wife, right?
	Yeah. And I think that's what hurts her, is that, why is this coming out at me when...
	Well, that's passive, right?
	Yeah. Tell me. And this is not to excuse your temper, right?
	But we're looking for cause and effect here, right?
	Right. Like, if I say, you know, if you were a smoker, right, there'd be certain things, oh, after dinner with a coffee, cigarettes, or okay, so that's, right?
	That doesn't mean keep smoking, it just means you're figuring out the course, right?
	What does your wife do that enrages you so much?
	I think I've had a fear to tell her how I feel about things that make me angry.
	And I think that's, I mean, that ties into a lot of things that you were saying, is that I I'm scared to make her mad because then I think that that'll undermine our relationship.
	And like we were saying earlier, you're scared to do certain things to hurt a relationship which, ironically, in a roundabout way, end up hurting it.
	And I think I have felt afraid to tell her about things that make me upset.
	Okay, so give me the speech you'd want to give.
	Imagine you give the speech with no consequences, right?
	What's the speech you want to give to her?
	What I was talking about earlier is that I feel like I have to bite my tongue.
	She's way too sensitive to criticism, even when it's not even intended to be criticism.
	I had this conversation with her mom recently.
	Her mom said, oh, she's always been that way.
	She doesn't take criticism very well.
	I need to be able to Have you accept the criticism and not get upset if you want me to take the criticism and not get upset.
	And that's just a...
	I don't know.
	That's something I need to work on.
	Okay, so... Is it like...
	It's not what you say, it's how you say it.
	Is there this magic, like if you have the right tone, you can pick the lock of her ears or something like that?
	Sometimes. That's why I said...
	Sometimes I might be able to point something out I'm a little more critically and it's like, oh, thank you.
	I'm really sorry. I was tired and I didn't mean to do that.
	Then other days, you'll think everything's fine and you'll just point out something mundane and then it's a blow up.
	And it's led me to just not really say anything a lot of times.
	And how old was she when her parents got divorced?
	I believe in middle school.
	You know, a rough time already.
	Like sort of 8, 9, 10 years old?
	Well, no, I think it was more, she was probably a little before a teenager, probably 12, 13.
	Right, okay. Does she have anyone in her family who has a temper?
	Well, I, her dad passed.
	I only met her dad twice, very briefly.
	Apparently he did. I mean, I I didn't see it because I only met him twice, but apparently he had a temper.
	You know, the story was he was very verbally aggressive and abusive, and I fear that I'm being put into the role of her dad.
	Well, her mom would be even more sensitive to that, right?
	Just maybe why she flipped sides.
	Well, right. And that's what I'm saying.
	You know, she's remarried and happy, but she still...
	They had a very bitter divorce, and she...
	Doesn't even say his name.
	You know, she has a lot of anger at my wife's dad.
	So, I don't know.
	You think she would have talked to you about your temper and say, I don't know, did she ever do that?
	Did she ever say, hey, you know, like her dad had a temper and you're going down the same path.
	It's not going to end well. I mean, not that direct.
	I mean, she's... Talk to, you know, when we've had fights before, you know, your wife calls their mom a lot.
	I've talked to her mom off and on over the years.
	Not a ton, but, I mean, nothing that direct.
	Okay, good. Okay, now I have a plan.
	All right. Are you ready? Yes.
	So, you remember how I was talking about, like, the 50-50 stuff before?
	Mm-hmm. Half you, half her?
	Okay, you've got to throw all that out the window.
	I'm sorry to be annoying. You've got to throw all that out of the window.
	Now, this is an unusual thing.
	I call it the 100% solution.
	So, if someone's not taking responsibility, we can either nag them to take responsibility, which doesn't usually work.
	Maybe if they sort of share that value, then you could remind them of it, but it doesn't sound like she wholly shares that value.
	So, It's sort of like if, like, think of two overweight people in a marriage, right?
	So you can sit there and say, well, I'll lose weight if you'll lose weight, right?
	And what happens from that?
	Neither does. Yeah, yeah, because, you know, you just, you're both going to, oh, I'll wait for you to do it first, right?
	Right. Now, if you're overweight, and I'm not saying you are, in the analogy, I say you're overweight, your wife's overweight.
	If you say, hey, you know, it'd be great if you lost weight, but I can't wait.
	I'm going to Take 100% responsibility for my weight.
	And I'm just going to start losing weight, right?
	And now, does that mean that she has no responsibility?
	Like in terms of your combined weight, it's 100% you and zero?
	No. But what she sees is you losing weight.
	And if you can't convince her by reason, you can convince her by evidence.
	So if you say, listen, you say, she's come back tomorrow, right?
	Right. You say, you know what?
	I have been the worst kind of husband.
	And I'll tell you why.
	Because if I was just a terrible husband, A, you would never have married me, and B, you wouldn't have stuck around.
	I've been... I've been putting out just enough honey, like a bee hive, that I could sting you.
	I've been just good enough that you stay, but not so good enough that you're happy.
	And that's been wearing you down.
	And that's... I'm really...
	I get that. I'm wrong about...
	That's the worst kind of person.
	Because... Terrible person you run from, great person you stay, person just great enough that you hang around while you keep getting stung, that's the worst situation, and I've worn you down.
	And I've been really wrong about that.
	Now, I think that's kind of true.
	And I know that that's not putting any onus on her.
	But I'm just telling you, like, from...
	And again, you tell me where I've gone astray.
	I think there's some real truth in that.
	Like, you're a great enough guy that she's stuck around, but she does get stung by the temper and other things, right?
	I think that's perfect.
	Okay. So, like, once she gets that you get that, a huge weight will come off her shoulders.
	And then you say, listen, I could sit here and say 50-50, I don't care about that anymore.
	Because us having this 50-50 standoff where you're trying to convince me it's all me, I'm trying to convince you it's all you, that's a way that I have been excusing and avoiding the action I need to take to be a better person.
	Not just for you, not just for the kids, but for me.
	Mm-hmm. If I can get my temper not only under control, like I've got some rabid beast that I'm keeping in a bag tied to my gonads for the rest of my life, which is not, hey, it's under control, but it's not very relaxing, right?
	I don't mean get my anger under control.
	I mean harnessing my anger.
	To drive this family to the next level of intimacy, the next level of protection, the next level of income.
	Can you imagine? If you could harness your anger and use it as assertiveness in your career, man, you'd fly.
	You'd fly. So instead of this being a rocket sled that keeps rocketing around the house and knocking us over, what if we could ride it someplace cool, someplace high up with a view?
	So I'm no longer, like, as of now, I am not going to try and get you to change.
	The only thing that I'm dedicated to is changing me.
	To keep all the good, enhance the good, ditch the bad.
	Now... I talked to a guy, this crazy guy on the internet last night, and do you know what I did right after that?
	I picked up that fucking book you gave me.
	I read it cover to cover.
	I made notes. Here are my notes.
	Here's my plan. Here's my work book.
	Here's what I'm going to do.
	It literally is a workbook, so...
	Good, good, good. No, I like that.
	That stuff's practical, right?
	That's like the John Gray, Nathaniel Brandon, all that kind of stuff.
	It's really, really good. Got to put some, you know, some verbs in your tenses, right?
	Right. So, you know, stay up all night, read the book.
	Write the stuff down.
	Well, what is one sleepless night relative to how many sleepless nights you're going to have if you get divorced, right?
	It's the 100% solution.
	We're both fat, but I'm not nagging you anymore.
	I'm only focused on what I'm putting on my plate and what I'm putting in my belly.
	It's 100% me.
	The problems in the family are 100% me.
	Now, if she is an emotional reasoner, you can't talk her into taking 50% because she's too hurt.
	But if you take 100%, you invite her to see the benefits of taking 100%, right?
	And you can let her have her self-righteousness, and you can let her have, I told you two years ago to read this book, and you know what?
	You absolutely did. And I could spend the rest of my life kicking myself about not going back two years and reading this book.
	But it was pride.
	It was vanity. Because I didn't like the implication that it was all me.
	But you know what? I now love the implication that it's all me, because if it's all me, I can 100% improve everything that's going on here.
	Yeah, yeah. That's cool.
	That's putting ego aside.
	That's putting pride aside.
	And focusing on the goal, which is to not...
	You don't want to save the marriage.
	You don't want to fix the marriage.
	You want to elevate the marriage.
	You think like a boat that's sinking in the water.
	It's like, oh, I want to save the boat.
	It's like, yeah, but you've still got some damn leaky rowboat underneath you, right?
	You can patch things up, but three more waves and you're titanic-ing again, right?
	You don't want to fix the marriage because that's to restore it to a former state that led to where you are.
	You want to fundamentally transform and elevate the marriage, which means fundamentally transform and elevate yourself.
	You have to... You know how I said...
	Your wife took a vow. Well, you took a vow too.
	Right? To love, to honor the mother of your children.
	Which means you cannot be yelling at her.
	That's breaking the vow.
	It's yelling, intimidating, throwing things at her, calling her names, whatever it's escalated to.
	That's as bad as having an affair.
	Intimidating. The mother of your children, the woman dependent upon you, Bullying her is as bad as having an affair.
	And in some ways, it's even worse, because you have an affair, she could just leave you and say, well, you had an affair, and everyone's like, all right.
	But this being good enough to stay, but not good enough that she can be happy?
	Mm-hmm. You know, you want the...
	You want the obvious con man, so to speak, who's like, hey, I can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.
	And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I missed a carnival barker.
	I'm moving on, right? But it's the Bernie Madoffs and the Federal Reserve, so they're a real problem, right?
	Because they've got credibility, right?
	You have credibility with her.
	So you have to say to yourself, like, listen, you're at work and some hottie who matches your particular phenotype for attractiveness comes on to you.
	You're like, hey, no, like, you know, attractive and all of that, but I'm a married man.
	I'm a dad, right? I can't do it, right?
	And you have to have that same strictness when it comes to your temper.
	Now, I know she follows you and she harangues you and so on, right?
	I get all of that. And that's like the hot woman pursuing you to have an affair, right?
	You don't sit there and say, well, now you've asked three times.
	I'm giving in. Let's go to the Super 8, right?
	You just have to, like, no.
	No, no, no. You have to be strong that way.
	It's a form of self-indulgence, right?
	To sort of let the temper blow up, right?
	And lust and anger are two of the seven deadly sins, right?
	And there's a reason why.
	But the problem for you is...
	To put aside your ego and take the 100% solution will give you such power to transform your marriage that, you know, maybe sometimes it's women, but in this particular instance, you need to be the leader in this marriage.
	I don't mean to get all biblical on you, but you need to be the leader in this marriage, right?
	And you need to rise above, and you need to take 100% ownership of the marriage.
	She will... She will take more ownership if she sees you doing it.
	But again, you're reasoning her into it or yelling her into it or bullying her into it or whatever, right?
	It doesn't work.
	So you've got to lead by example.
	You want her to lose weight, you've got to drop the pounds.
	And then she'll go like, holy shit, he can climb the stairs.
	Wow. I'd like to do that too, right?
	We're not fat, by the way.
	I know. I know.
	I saw the picture. I know.
	It's an analogy. I know you're not fat.
	But it's the easiest analogy for ownership, right?
	Because we're all so intertwined in a marriage, right?
	But that's the 100% solution.
	Okay. What if it was 100% me?
	That was the cause of my problems in my life.
	And it kind of is, insofar as you chose her too.
	Oh, she drives me crazy.
	She makes me so angry. She follows.
	You chose her, and you chose to have children with her.
	So it's still 100% you.
	Yeah, yeah. Like, it's not a shotgun wedding, right?
	No, not at all.
	So you are 100% responsible for where you are in your life.
	And that's a hard thing to do, because I get the reality that she provokes you and all of that, but you still chose her.
	So she's only there to provoke you because of 100% you.
	So when people say, it's all your fault, and we react to that, and we're like, we want to push back on that hard.
	No, it's not all. We are here too, 50-50, right?
	Now, you can make that case a number of times.
	I try to keep the number of times five or less.
	No, seriously, because if I try and make the case with someone, And it's been five times and they're still pushing back as hard.
	It's like, well, they're not going to take this case the way I'm presenting it to them, right?
	Yeah. So, it's 100% you.
	That's where you have to go when you're intertwined with someone who only learns by example.
	You have to take 100% you And lead by example.
	And it really is amazing what that can achieve.
	You know, I think she's been asking for me to do that in her own way of saying, I need to see things.
	And yeah, I... I think you're dead on.
	Well, and you may have given her reason to disbelieve your protestations of your next plans or actions or whatever it is, right?
	You may have said, oh, I'm sorry I yelled at you, I'm not going to, whatever, right?
	Right. So if you've given her, I mean, it's all complicated, we don't have to get into the whole history, but if you've given her reason to doubt your vows, so to speak, then you have to shut up and just do it instead of talking about it.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	Well, I... Sorry, the last thing I'll say, and I'm sorry, I know we're closing up here, but the last thing I'll say is, you know this, right, as well as I do, that when you become a parent, your ego doesn't matter anymore.
	Right. Because it's about what's best for your kids, right?
	It's like, what do your kids want you to do?
	Do your kids want you to be a right fighter who's pushing 50-50 after you've discredited yourself, yelled at and thrown things at your wife?
	Do your kids want that?
	No. They want whatever fixes things.
	Yeah, right. You know, if you've got water leaking into the side of the boat, there's not the time to argue who did what and who caused it and who should have checked something and who, you know, threw a fork.
	It's like you've got to patch the hole and you can get back to arguing about whose fault it was.
	Not that that will really, you've got to patch the hole.
	So right now you put your ego aside and say, if I had no vanity in this situation, if I was a space alien viewing all of this from orbit, What would I do to fix a situation?
	Well, I think, I think it's the 100% solution.
	The leadership is, the buck stops here, it's 100% me.
	I think you're right. And I really appreciate the conversation.
	And once you get that control, like what's your anger is coming from helplessness.
	And your helplessness comes from wanting it to be 50-50.
	You either haven't given yourself the credibility with her to do that or she's resistant on that for history reasons or whatever.
	But once you take the 100% solution, you have enough control that you won't get that angry.
	Like, why do you yell?
	You yell because it's like being around someone who's hard of hearing, right?
	Around someone who's really hard of hearing, you've got to raise your voice.
	Why? Because they can't hear you otherwise. So, if your actions have discredited your words and then you keep raising your voice because your wife doesn't believe you or doesn't listen to you, well, raising your voice is just going to deafen her, right?
	Right. Yeah.
	So, once you have the 100% solution, that will give you the kind of control, self-mastery, self-authority that you won't need to yell at her.
	If you're losing weight, there's no point yelling at your wife, For having fatty food on the table, right?
	Because you're losing weight.
	Now, of course, again, you do want her to lose weight and all of that, but this is the way to do it.
	You take the 100% because what you want is both people in the relationship taking 100%.
	Because 50-50 is too easy to shuck off responsibilities, right?
	But both people take it 100%.
	Man, that's the sweet spot.
	That's the golden age of a manager.
	Yeah, yeah. So what do you think?
	Is it a reasonable plan?
	I think so.
	I've told her, and I'll say it here, that there's nothing ever in my life that I've wanted to do more than to make this right and figure out how to make it right.
	And feel free to beg, man.
	Yeah. Feel free to beg.
	Show her how much she means to you.
	Stay up all night, read the book, do the workbooks, whatever you need to do.
	Now, I know people are going to say, well, if you beg, that's so beta and she won't respect that.
	But no, no. Show her how much you need her.
	All you're trying to do is buy yourself 24 hours, 24 hours at a time, right?
	You're really on the firing squad here, right?
	She's saying she's done.
	Right. Right? So you just got it like 24 hours, please.
	Just 24 hours at a time.
	And you got to get on your knees.
	Whatever you need to do.
	She needs to know how serious you are.
	I'm not trying to fix it.
	I want to elevate it.
	I want us to look back and say, this was the darkest, the most amazing and positive passage we ever went through as human beings.
	I want us to look back in a year and say, I'm so glad we went through that.
	By God, that was horrible.
	But man, did it ever elevate us.
	Yeah, not to sound kind of corny or anything, but I've had this dream at different points in my life.
	It's kind of a reoccurring thing.
	Where I'm moving out of a house.
	And on the last day when I'm moving out, I realized there was like a giant room or a wing of the house that I've never seen before.
	It's this kind of melancholy feeling of, oh man, the whole time I lived there, I didn't know I had access to this beautiful room in this house.
	And it's really depressing.
	And the thought of moving out of this relationship and missing what could still and is still there.
	Has really just been a driver to make sure that that doesn't happen.
	Yeah. I mean, can you imagine you dating after your heart's broken, your heart's eviscerated, and you're having two kids with a woman who now hates you, and it turns into a bitter thing.
	I mean, we're talking about your children's future, the next 10 years of your life, your finances, your dating, everything.
	Everything is on the line. So whatever it takes, whatever she wants.
	You say, oh, but that's giving her too much control.
	That's giving her all the power.
	It's like, you want to give her that power in the marriage.
	You don't want to give that power to her fucking army of lawyers, right?
	Right. Right, right, right.
	And just, yeah, the idea of, you know, her bringing home some boyfriend, I mean, it's just, it's the worst thought in the world I really, I can't describe.
	Will you keep me posted about how it goes?
	I will. Will you stay up all night and do what you need?
	Yeah, I'm going to do some things tonight.
	All right, crack the coffee, man.
	And I wish you a very, very Christmas.
	Listen, if she wants to call in and talk to me, I'm open, man.
	I'm happy to listen to everything that she has to say.
	I just did this call. I'll send you actually a link.
	It hasn't been published yet. It's a call between a couple.
	It's an hour and a half of her, then an hour and a half of him.
	And if she wants to call, I can keep it...
	Like, I don't do private calls, but in this particular instance, if she wants me to mask her voice or if she doesn't want it to go out at all, I'd be happy to do that.
	But if she wants to call me, you know, I'll send you a copy of this and I'm available.
	Like, whatever I can do, I'm happy to do.
	Okay. I really appreciate that a lot.
	Yeah, I look forward to, you know, Taking these steps and hopefully having her listen to this soon and seeing where we can go and taking charge with it.
	All right, man. Keep me posted.
	Merry Christmas and I wish you the best.
	I'm sure you could fix it. Elevate it.
	Elevate it. I'm getting the language wrong.
	All right, man. Take care. Thank you very much.

▲