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17 - The Moment That Matters Most (and Why Most Men Miss It) · Masculine Containment

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  Most of the challenges in your relationship happen in a single moment.
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  A moment that most men don't see.
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  A moment we haven't been trained to see.
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  And once it passes, you can't get it back.
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  So what is that moment and why does it matter so much?
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  It's not the argument.
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  It's not what you say later.
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  It's not the repair.
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  It's the moment right after you feel a trigger.
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  When you see something off that frustrates you or when she says something that you react to or when something shifts in the room.
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  When you feel that internal reaction start, that is the moment.
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  Everything that happens next is decided before you speak.
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  Because what actually happens in that moment is there's a microsecond where you feel that trigger.
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  For me, it always felt like tightness in my chest or heat or urgency.
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  It's the moment right after you feel a trigger.
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  And for me, it was always the need to respond aggressively, unfortunately.
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  And then you react.
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  You defend.
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  You escalate.
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  You get into this place where you're not really in the moment and then you withdraw.
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  And that moment, right before all that happens, is the fork in the road.
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  Most men miss it because it happens too fast.
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  We've never been trained to notice it.
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  We've seen way too many examples of triggering and exploding.
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  And we think the problem is the thing that happened right before the trigger, the thing that we didn't like or that she said or that happened when we started reacting.
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  So we focus on that thing, the context, her words, the situation, being right instead of what's happening inside of us.
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  See, we feel like the moment's out there, but it's actually in here.
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  What do most men do when this happens?
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  We react immediately.
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  We try to fix.
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  We try to explain.
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  We try to win.
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  Winning is one of the big goals for us as men.
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  Or we try to shut it down.
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  Or we leave.
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  We withdraw.
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  We avoid.
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  We isolate.
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  We skip the moment and we go straight into this pattern that has been taught to us over and over again.
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  And we've applied it over and over again, most of the time, less than consciously.
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  And here's why this moment is so important.
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  If you react, escalation begins.
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  If you stabilize, everything changes.
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  That one moment determines whether she feels safe, whether she opens to you or closes, whether the conversation builds or breaks and explodes.
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  You don't lose the relationship in the argument.
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  You lose it in your first reaction.
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  And over time, the more you react, the more you lose that relationship.
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  The more she pulls away from you, the more she doesn't feel as close to you, the less she invites or initiates.
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  And for a lot of us as men, if you've been in a relationship for a while, you can feel her slipping away.
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  And so here's what's available as an alternative in that moment of trigger.
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  A pause.
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  A breath.
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  awareness, the ability not to move immediately, the ability to slow things down and stay in your body, and the ability to choose instead of reacting.
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  The moment's small, but that moment in a relationship, especially with your significant other, is everything.
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  That moment in most relationships you have is everything.
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  Because if you're the man who can feel the trigger and not act on it, you stay present.
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  You listen.
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  You don't defend immediately.
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  You don't escalate.
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  You don't
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  you actually start to create safety and security for the person that you're talking to.
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  You actually become that thing that everybody talks about.
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  You know, the calmest man in the room wins.
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  Well, this is how you actually become that man, by understanding this moment.
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  And when you do that, something shifts.
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  The energy slows down.
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  She softens, or the person that you're talking to hears you and sees you and understands what you're trying to say.
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  The conversation changes direction.
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  And in a relationship with your wife, with your girlfriend, you're not controlling her.
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  You're controlling yourself.
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  You're not dominating her.
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  You're actually dominating yourself.
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  And as men, we should seek to be dominant over ourselves to dominate those triggers, to slow them down because it changes everything.
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  If you interrupt the pattern, you stop escalation before it starts.
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  You create safety instead of threat.
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  And over time, especially in your most important relationship, trust builds and openness increases.
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  And intimacy goes through the roof.
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  And conflict can actually become productive instead of destructive.
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  When you're slowing things down and having the conversation, you can actually understand the real problem and see if there's a solution there and talk about solutions rather than getting to the place where you escalate and then there's rupture and then there's withdrawal and then you have to come back and try and repair it.
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  This is so hard at first.
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  I know for me, when I understood this pattern, when I knew what was unconsciously living inside of me and acting out over and over again, it was hard to stop because my body was reacting before my mind had a chance to know what was going on.
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  And it feels totally and completely unnatural to pause and stop and slow things down rather than react and try and win.
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  And let's be honest, detect and then eliminate the threat.
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  And it feels like you're not doing anything when you slow things down.
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  But here's the reality.
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  The pause is the most powerful thing you can do.
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  So the next time you feel that trigger moving into a reaction, that moment moving into escalation, that incident that now is going to become some type of rupture, withdraw, and then you're going to have to come back and try and clean it up, just notice it.
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  Stop.
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  And notice what's going on because that's the moment.
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  And if you can stay there, even for a second longer than you did before, you start building capacity.
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  If you can stay there through the feelings in your body without allowing them to erupt outwards and without allowing them to create a feeling of lack of safety for everybody around you, you actually start building even more capacity.
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  And if you can slow things down to the point where you don't react to the trigger, and instead you lead with curiosity and start asking questions and really understand what's happening, maybe for yourself, maybe for her, depending on who's triggered, you start to change everything.
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  See, you don't need to win every conversation, every conflict.
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  You need to win the moment.
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  And if you want a simple way of catching that and slowing things down and understanding this process so that you can start to build far more capacity as a man...
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  I want you to download my resource called Stop the Fight because it's that simple.
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  If you stop the fight, then everything in your relationship will change.
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  That's what happened for me.
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  By slowing down and understanding I was triggered and not reacting to that trigger, I started to build capacity in the moment.
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  But here's what no one tells us is if you build capacity in that moment over and over again, you actually build capacity as a man everywhere.
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  One of my obsessions throughout my life is having more energy, more capacity, being able to get more done, being able to have more success, being able to move my life forward as far as I can and as fast as I can.
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  But what I didn't realize was speed to execution and doing everything fast doesn't work in this moment.
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  And it actually stops you from building capacity.
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  That fast as I can thing, when you slow it down and start understanding that if I stop in this moment, I'm building capacity I can apply anywhere in my life
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  will change everything for you.
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  So take a moment and go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com forward slash stop the fight and download the resource that will help you stop this pattern in your relationship, stop reacting so you no longer have to repair, and let it help you build capacity everywhere in your life.
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  Brotherhoodsociety.com forward slash stop the fight.
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  And if this landed for you or if it helped you in any way, hit the subscribe button and leave me a comment.
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  I read every one of them myself and I look forward to hearing from you.