Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When You Don't Notice Your Wife's Haircut/Change Of Appearance/Whatever Else

Transcript

When You Don't Notice Your Wife's Haircut/Change Of Appearance/Whatever Else · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi, everybody, and welcome to the dr.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show. Today, we are going to talk
• 0:10
  about what you can do to notice more things.
• 0:15
  If your wife says, you don't notice anything and then you
• 0:19
  think that's just part of who I am.
• 0:21
  I cannot notice more things. This is some bullshit and
• 0:25
  instead you can reframe and you can actually change something
• 0:29
  and I will tell you how before that I want to tell you all to
• 0:33
  subscribe. The most recent one was why You
• 0:36
  know, it is true, nobody likes a whiner and there's going to be
• 0:38
  some more upcoming ones. I think the next one, whatever I
• 0:41
  decide to do out of my head tomorrow is going to be the next
• 0:47
  subscriber episode plus, there's all the ones about sex
• 0:49
  relationships, boundaries needs more sex, Etc.
• 0:54
  So you should be subscribing to get 100% of my episodes versus
• 0:58
  only 75% and it may keep going down.
• 1:02
  If I got to motivate you you may end up With a third of the
• 1:06
  episodes being subscriber only but not yet.
• 1:08
  Not yet because I still do like, providing this service.
• 1:11
  Same as my blog. That is pretty free.
• 1:14
  I mean it's going to be free no matter what for the amount that
• 1:17
  are not subscriber only, it's never going to be 100%
• 1:20
  subscriber, only you have my word on that.
• 1:23
  Anyway, um, so moving on. So a lot of times guys say, my
• 1:27
  wife came home with a haircut. I didn't know how the fuck am I
• 1:30
  supposed to know. It looks exactly the same as
• 1:32
  before and she got mad at me or my wife.
• 1:35
  It's like rearrange your living room.
• 1:37
  I didn't realize she got mad at me.
• 1:39
  My wife had some sort of interaction with our daughter,
• 1:43
  where they were apparently mad at each other.
• 1:45
  She would have wanted me to step in and be on her side.
• 1:48
  I didn't even fucking notice, they were fighting.
• 1:49
  You know, what's the big deal? You know, and she's setting me
• 1:53
  up to fail. I'm not highly sensitive person
• 1:55
  like her because I just recently learned that term from your
• 1:58
  podcast or from her telling it to me.
• 2:00
  And what's the biggie? Well the big deal is like what
• 2:04
  if you Walked out with like your dick out and like your wife
• 2:08
  started to talk about what cereal she wanted for breakfast.
• 2:11
  You know, makes you feel like shit when you're trying to
• 2:14
  implicitly convey something, which we all do Being Human and
• 2:18
  the other person just fucking doesn't, notice it because it
• 2:20
  doesn't even rise to the level of importance in their mind that
• 2:23
  they should have to notice it. And so like like think about it
• 2:29
  like it's not like that weird that your wife would spend like
• 2:32
  $150 on a haircut and like hope that you notice.
• 2:35
  That isn't like a her problem, it's a couple problem and if
• 2:40
  it's her problem man it's your problem too.
• 2:42
  So as you've hopefully become aware and if you have a problem
• 2:45
  it should be her problem too. So yeah.
• 2:47
  What's good for the goose Etc. But then again we don't want to
• 2:50
  go to send down that Fairplay Rabbit Hole of constant, the Tit
• 2:55
  for Tat. So why don't you just work on
• 2:57
  you? You know, your wife notices more
• 2:59
  shit than you do. Literally that's the point of
• 3:02
  who she is probably is like an observant Persons probably like
• 3:06
  a major like tenets of her core personality and self-identity
• 3:11
  and yours isn't. Yours is the guy who forget
• 3:14
  shit. So how can you change this?
• 3:16
  Well first of all like as I said in the complement podcast, you
• 3:20
  should be scanning your wife when she walks in the door.
• 3:23
  Or when she comes down in the morning and telling her, she
• 3:25
  looks beautiful. Notice her.
• 3:28
  Literally, if you just stopped and noticed your wife, probably
• 3:31
  a marriage would be a thousand times better.
• 3:33
  If you're a guy that doesn't do this, You can just notice her
• 3:37
  from top to toe, pretend you're in one of those things where,
• 3:41
  you know, those those really frustrating pictures where
• 3:44
  there's one picture next to another, and there's something
• 3:46
  wrong, there's something different in between them and
• 3:49
  you're supposed to notice that in one picture.
• 3:50
  The guy has like no sock or something.
• 3:53
  Well, look at her, with that level of focus.
• 3:56
  And usually you're going to see something that's different or
• 3:59
  that's pretty because if she walked in the door with the new
• 4:02
  haircut, by the way and you were like, man, you look great in
• 4:04
  that outfit. It she wouldn't give a shit that
• 4:06
  you didn't notice the haircut. She would laugh.
• 4:08
  She's like, oh ha ha is probably the haircut but like you just
• 4:11
  thought I'd look better. You thought it was that outfit.
• 4:13
  You're so cute. Let's have sex, right?
• 4:15
  So it, but if you notice nothing, if she walks in, and
• 4:18
  it's like as though, like a ghost walked in because you
• 4:21
  notice absolutely nothing might as well be invisible, then
• 4:24
  you're going to have marital problems which you probably
• 4:26
  already have due to this tree first.
• 4:28
  It's so first of all, get used to scanning your wife from top
• 4:31
  to bottom and commenting positively on something.
• 4:34
  It doesn't Either if you catch the right thing, as long as you
• 4:37
  compliment positively on something, that's certainly a
• 4:40
  thousand times better than what you were doing before.
• 4:44
  Next is get treated for ADHD, listen to my podcast on ADHD.
• 4:48
  Figure out if you have it, if you have it, go get treated for
• 4:51
  it or at least understand it, by reading books, like driven to
• 4:54
  distraction. But the first step is, is listen
• 4:57
  to my podcast about ADHD because a lot of guys with untreated
• 5:01
  ADHD, they don't notice shit. The wife could forget about
• 5:04
  Arabia, arranging the living room.
• 5:06
  She could burn down the house and they could come home and not
• 5:08
  notice. So if you are somebody like that
• 5:11
  and if you lose a lot of shit and forget a lot of shit and
• 5:14
  you're always procrastinating, you're always cramming and you
• 5:17
  always need a Dremel in or coffee or 1000.
• 5:20
  So does to focus, you may have ADHD.
• 5:22
  And that's why your wife, you don't notice anything about her
• 5:25
  because she could like her hair could be on fire and you
• 5:28
  wouldn't notice and that is an ADHD problem versus your wife
• 5:33
  being passive-aggressive problem.
• 5:35
  The next one is examine your own resentment towards your wife,
• 5:40
  maybe you are an observant guy, maybe you do notice the haircut,
• 5:43
  but maybe you're like, I don't want her spending hundred $50 in
• 5:46
  the fucking haircut. So then you're like, I'm not
• 5:49
  even gonna notice it, because if I don't notice it, it's like my
• 5:51
  podcast with the guy wouldn't call his wife, beautiful,
• 5:54
  because she was overweight, so he's still have sex with her.
• 5:57
  He still thought he was sexy, but he wouldn't call her that
• 5:59
  word because he thought it would be reinforcing that he likes
• 6:02
  her, body, how it is. Now, obviously, you could tell
• 6:05
  from My tone and from literally the situation that that's really
• 6:09
  fucked up and I made sure to tell him that and hopefully was
• 6:12
  dose of tough love that he needed.
• 6:15
  But either way, if you are passive-aggressively not
• 6:18
  noticing shit. So, like you don't notice, when
• 6:20
  the living room is rearranged because you think your wife
• 6:22
  should be working at a paid job and not just sitting around for
• 6:26
  during away her time rearranging where the couch is, but you're
• 6:28
  not going to say that instead. What you're going to do is with
• 6:30
  whole compliments about the house.
• 6:33
  I think about that when did that happen to you?
• 6:34
  Because if Our person that did that, you definitely learn that
• 6:37
  in your family of origin, which one of your parents is a
• 6:39
  positive aggressive fuck which one of them when you want to
• 6:42
  play football and they didn't want you to play football
• 6:44
  refused to even acknowledge that you were somebody who played
• 6:47
  football. Because if you could figure that
• 6:49
  out, then, you know why you're doing it to somebody else and
• 6:52
  you could try to work on it and realize, it's not fair and it's
• 6:54
  sabotaging your marriage. So, these are a few things.
• 6:58
  There's also, you may be depressed, depressed, people,
• 7:01
  don't notice anything because they're in a fog, it can kind of
• 7:04
  look like an attentive. ADHD because they don't know
• 7:06
  what's going on because they can't kind of they don't have
• 7:09
  the bandwidth so your wife could come in with her head on fire
• 7:12
  and you would have noticed because you are thinking, okay,
• 7:16
  I have to I have to check my email.
• 7:19
  I'm supposed to hang out with the kids, okay?
• 7:23
  Okay. And then maybe I watch TV and
• 7:24
  drop asleep by 9:00 because you're so tired all the time
• 7:27
  because fatigue is a big symptom of depression.
• 7:30
  So if you're generally kind of a negative or a pathetic guy, if
• 7:35
  Found it hard to have fun recently by which, I mean, in
• 7:38
  the past year, or six months or more, then maybe you are
• 7:42
  struggling with untreated depression, that kind of makes
• 7:44
  it very hard to notice. Or even if you notice, it makes
• 7:47
  it hard for anything to rise to the level where you care enough
• 7:50
  to say it or will you think that it's important.
• 7:53
  So if that is the case and apathy is a big Hallmark of
• 7:56
  depression and then that's something to think about and to
• 8:00
  talk to a provider about potentially getting treated and
• 8:03
  therapy is can be helpful. But meds can be helpful to and
• 8:08
  you would have to think about whether it is this.
• 8:10
  This is this, a larger pattern? Is it hard for you to give a
• 8:13
  shit at work also? It's everything kind of seems
• 8:15
  stupid and meaningless there and the same kind of dumb careless.
• 8:18
  Mistakes that people make when they have ADHD they make those
• 8:21
  same kind of careless mistakes when they're depressed.
• 8:24
  So that's why I can be hard to distinguish between ADHD and
• 8:26
  depression. The major one is the person with
• 8:28
  depression never Smiles like at all and rarely laughs and does
• 8:33
  not have good funny ideas. Is or anything like the person
• 8:36
  with ADHD, who kind of does still get excited, you know, get
• 8:41
  sometimes overly excited about shit and, you know, is
• 8:44
  sensation-seeking and that way the person with depression,
• 8:47
  especially men, they're most likely don't really feel much
• 8:50
  about anything ever. So that's how you could tell
• 8:53
  what else can you do? You can enlist your wife?
• 8:56
  You can say listen, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me.
• 8:59
  I feel bad whenever I don't notice your haircut.
• 9:01
  Can you tell me when you get a haircut?
• 9:03
  And I look at it and I'll I'll tell you what I think because I
• 9:07
  always think you look beautiful. This is not my wheelhouse.
• 9:10
  Every time you come home, I feel bad that I didn't notice or if
• 9:13
  you do something with the house or if you made a craft project
• 9:16
  with the kids that you hung on the wall, whatever it is that
• 9:18
  I'm not noticing. Can you please help me?
• 9:20
  Notice it because I don't notice it and I feel bad and this is
• 9:25
  just not my strong suit. I'm going to try to think about
• 9:27
  it. I'm going to try to actively
• 9:30
  proactively pay more attention. Like think about it.
• 9:33
  This way about the paying more attention if Like oh yeah.
• 9:35
  Oh great. I could Snap My Fingers, pay
• 9:37
  more attention. How would you respond at work?
• 9:39
  If they sent you a document to review and edit versus the
• 9:43
  document just to sign off on, sign off on you read it, you
• 9:46
  make sure it doesn't say that you're committing to like
• 9:49
  egregious fraud and you're out the one we're supposed to edit
• 9:52
  it. You're actually reading it.
• 9:53
  You're trying to notice. So what could I were a
• 9:55
  differently? I'm telling you to look at your
• 9:57
  wife like that. You can just put those goggles
• 10:00
  on. It's a lot different.
• 10:02
  You can proactively decide. To look at her coming down the
• 10:07
  stairs in the morning in that way, you got u.s. 30 seconds of
• 10:12
  scanning on purpose. It's a different way that you
• 10:15
  look at your kid after they've been sick versus when they're
• 10:17
  just a regular kid, you know, like so all right, they got not.
• 10:21
  They're going to school. All right.
• 10:22
  Cool by, you know, versus if they had been ill, you look at
• 10:27
  them, you do feel their head, you take their temperature, you
• 10:29
  ask how they slept, you look see if their eyes are glassy and if
• 10:33
  women are like, oh yeah, no. Husband, the kids could drop
• 10:36
  dead and he wouldn't notice. That's not true if you were away
• 10:39
  and the kid was sick. The 99% of men would say, okay I
• 10:45
  have to see if they have a fever before they go to school.
• 10:48
  If that was told to me at something to do, I'm now going
• 10:51
  to own that that is definitely something I'm going to do and
• 10:53
  I'm going to ask the kid how they were and I'm going to ask
• 10:56
  them if they feel better. So that is something you can do,
• 10:59
  you know? And that is something that
• 11:01
  people do if the kid is safe versus the kid is healthy.
• 11:04
  So you can put On this different, these different
• 11:07
  goggles where you're looking at things more closely that is
• 11:10
  something possible, but while you are learning to do that and
• 11:14
  while you're getting assessed for ADHD while you're thinking
• 11:16
  about whether you're depressed and while you're thinking about,
• 11:19
  if you have underlying resentment, that is stopping you
• 11:21
  from being coming forward. In these moments, you can ask
• 11:24
  your wife for support and if you really fall on your sword and
• 11:29
  you take ownership of this as a, you problem versus how you've
• 11:32
  been prior saying, it's a her problem, like the funky kind of
• 11:35
  Test is this you fucking walk it?
• 11:36
  You expect that I should know this.
• 11:38
  You think that's going to work. Has it worked?
• 11:40
  That's not work. And if you're not the kind who
• 11:42
  would say things that are aggressive like that, you may be
• 11:45
  saying passive-aggressive stuff. Like I guess I didn't realize it
• 11:49
  was my job to notice when your hair is a quarter inch shorter,
• 11:55
  I'll make sure to add that to the list of ways that I have
• 11:58
  failed you. I also got people who are very
• 12:01
  passive aggressive like that, either way, you're not being
• 12:04
  Prince, Arming and, you know it. So why don't you stop with both
• 12:07
  of those aggressive or passive aggressive and just say, hey,
• 12:10
  can I have some help? Literally, I want to do the
• 12:13
  right thing. Something's wrong with me and
• 12:15
  also another one to think about is, did anybody notice anybody
• 12:18
  in your family of origin? Did anybody ever notice your
• 12:20
  mother's haircut? Now that you think about it?
• 12:22
  Do you even know that your mother used to get her hair?
• 12:24
  Cut let me tell you. She did, she did.
• 12:27
  Like if if if it wasn't down to her feet she did get a haircut.
• 12:31
  But was that something that was ever discussed if not?
• 12:34
  Then ding ding. You know why you don't talk
• 12:36
  about it now because you have no language to talk about it at
• 12:38
  all. It was not done in your family
• 12:40
  for junior. Father, did not notice your
• 12:41
  mother's haircut. You were not told to notice your
• 12:43
  mother's hair, got this? By the way, if you're a mother
• 12:45
  of your woman, listening to this, teach your son to look at
• 12:48
  your haircut. I mean, I always say this
• 12:50
  mothers, teach your son, how to recognize feelings, how to be a
• 12:53
  good spouse one day, right? So say, hey I got my haircut,
• 12:56
  doesn't it? Look nice and be like, yeah.
• 12:57
  Mommy. All right.
• 12:59
  Cool. Like now they know we went into
• 13:01
  their subconscious. Oh, women get haircut.
• 13:03
  You're supposed to say, it looks nice.
• 13:05
  That's it, you know, like it's no big, you don't have to have a
• 13:07
  big PowerPoint in front of your tween son.
• 13:10
  You should be saying this stuff to both genders but women do it
• 13:13
  with their girls all the time. The girl may even come to get
• 13:15
  the haircut but with the boys they're frequently.
• 13:17
  In fact, women are like my God, he's just like his father.
• 13:19
  He doesn't notice my hair cut. Hey man.
• 13:21
  How's it going to notice your haircut?
• 13:22
  What he cares about his Legos so you got to tell him.
• 13:25
  Hey, I got my haircut. Look, you see, it's a different
• 13:27
  color. Look at my hair look good.
• 13:28
  Oh okay, this looks good right? Oh, thank you.
• 13:33
  And they learn oh that's what you do.
• 13:34
  This is how I am going to be a normative human in the world
• 13:37
  with women is engaged on how they look if it's different.
• 13:40
  Oh, noted and that goes into their algorithm.
• 13:43
  But anyway. So if you are somebody who never
• 13:47
  saw it, then you're going to have to teach yourself how to do
• 13:49
  it in much the ways that I'm telling you to do, stop scan,
• 13:52
  find something positive, see if something's different do this
• 13:55
  proactively and, or look at all these other Myriad reasons that
• 13:59
  may be sabotaging your efforts to do so, but enlist your wife's
• 14:02
  help in the interim while you are learning this new Behavior.
• 14:05
  Savior and things will go a lot better because then she atleast
• 14:07
  thinks you're trying, right? Doesn't show you say, you're not
• 14:10
  even trying, you don't even try in this marriage.
• 14:13
  I feel like I'm putting in all the work in this marriage.
• 14:16
  I feel like I'm the engine of this marriage.
• 14:17
  All this shit, right? That you always hear.
• 14:20
  If any of that resonates, she doesn't even think you try.
• 14:22
  I mean, no shit. That's what she say.
• 14:24
  So, try by saying, I'm going to try and XYZ ways including
• 14:28
  introspecting into my family of origin.
• 14:30
  Always her favorite topic when your mother could be blamed for
• 14:32
  something. Am I wrong?
• 14:33
  So then, She knows that you guys are on board together as a team
• 14:39
  to work on this couple problem. Where you notice nothing.
• 14:42
  Alright. Hopefully you got something out
• 14:43
  of this and if not, there's only 14 minutes of your life and
• 14:49
  please do subscribe, either way, talk to you soon.