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51 - Why She Keeps Bringing Up the Past Even After You Apologize · Masculine Containment

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Today, I want to cover a topic that is so relevant for so many men.
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And for me, in my relationship, this came up a lot.
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And I have learned, I have a totally different perspective on it now.
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And I want to help you get inside this issue and actually shift your relationship in a real way.
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Move things in a positive direction.
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My name is Alex Sharfman, and I appreciate you listening to this Masculine Containment Podcast.
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about why she keeps bringing up the past even after you apologize.
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You know, here's the common experience that so many of us have as men.
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You have a fight or a conflict.
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There's a challenge in your relationship.
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You realize you were wrong.
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You apologize.
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You repair.
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And things calm down.
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You know, I went through this over and over again in my relationship.
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And then here's what would happen.
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Weeks later, maybe days later, sometimes even months later, she would bring it up again.
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She'd bring up the thing that happened in the past, in the present, and I would feel like...
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We've already handled this, I've said I'm sorry, we went through this, why am I hearing it again?
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How long am I going to have to pay for this?
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How many times am I gonna have to pay for this thing that happened in the past?
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For years, I thought one of the biggest issues in my relationship was that Katie couldn't let go.
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In all honesty, I read a lot of opinions and things from other men that said the same thing.
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And they said, you know, women can't let go.
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Women don't let go.
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And it kind of like added fuel to that fire of that women hold on to things for way longer than we do.
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And it's just women's nature and it's something you're going to have to get used to.
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It's something you have to put up with.
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It's something you have to like dominate and make sure that she knows she's doing the wrong thing and that she shouldn't bring these things up.
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When I look back at my behavior in those moments, which I'll share a little more detail in a moment, I now know how wrong I was.
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And I now know what an opportunity I had to change things because here's what I eventually realized that was much more uncomfortable than just blaming her, was that sometimes I repaired the incident, but I didn't change the pattern.
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I didn't change what I was doing in our relationship.
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You know, the question came up for me, what if the reason she keeps bringing up the past is that from her perspective, it isn't actually the past yet?
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Or another way to look at it is what if she's bringing up an old event because she's recognizing an old pattern that's happening again right now?
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Figuring this out changed my relationship, brought so much peace, so much connection, a level of harmony I didn't know could exist.
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And I wanna share it with you because if you're serious about changing your relationship, and you're serious about not blaming, and you're willing to take some responsibility and change some behaviors,
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You can have the relationship of your dreams.
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You can have the connection you've always wanted.
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You can have the love from your wife, the communication that you've always wanted.
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I know I'm speaking from personal experience.
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I've been there and I have the relationship.
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I would say I have the relationship of my dreams.
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I often start saying that.
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And then I have to correct myself because I have a relationship today that I didn't even know was possible.
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Let's look at the pattern here and the event versus the pattern.
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See, as men, we can experience conflict as a series of events.
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This thing happened.
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I screwed up.
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You got upset.
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We got upset.
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We talked.
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I apologized.
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We repaired.
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It's over.
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It's done.
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It's in the past.
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And that happened for me so many times where I would never think about it again.
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But what I now know is that my wife, Katie, and the wives of so many of the men that I've worked with are experiencing an accumulation.
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See, as men, we are programmed for threat detection and neutralization.
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When stuff like this happens, it's like, hey, we fixed it, it's done.
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But women are programmed for safety and security and they're looking for consistency.
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And the problem was I was being consistent in a pattern that was making her feel like it wasn't over.
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When I say she's experiencing the accumulation, what she was experiencing, what I now know my wife was going through was this happened before and it happened before that and it happened before that and now it's happening again and we repair every time but eventually we end up in the same place.
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And so the real question that I believe my wife was asking and maybe your wife is asking, are you sorry?
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Sorry, it's not are you sorry.
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It may be, is this going to happen again?
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Okay.
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That's what's on her mind.
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She's looking for safety.
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She's looking for security.
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She's looking for consistency.
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She's looking for a place where she can be comfortable.
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And so you may be trying to resolve what happened yesterday.
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She's trying to understand what's going to happen in the future.
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What is tomorrow going to feel like?
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See, there came a point in my relationship where I thought repair meant we were done.
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And I want to make something clear.
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Before I figured this out, I did a ton of work.
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I did therapy.
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I read the books.
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I listened to the podcasts.
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I did all kinds of things to understand my relationship.
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And so much of the advice that is out there focuses on repair.
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There's entire books on repair, entire seminars on repair.
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You know, you look at a lot of the thought leaders in the relationship space, and their work centers on repair.
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But I think they're missing something.
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Because Katie and I got really good at repair.
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communication, apologizing, reconnection.
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We got really good at this.
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I could genuinely, you know, I got to the place where I genuinely understood if I had made a mistake and I genuinely felt sorry.
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And after repairing, I felt dramatically better.
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I would be like, hey, we're good now.
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I assume she felt better too.
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I recovered and the issue was that I was recovering from rupture much faster than she was.
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because as men, we tend to spike, get into a lot of energy, and then come back down.
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But what I didn't know, and I now know and fully believe, and the conversations I've had with women have validated this over and over again,
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is that she wasn't recovering as fast as I was.
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Her hormones were spiking.
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Her cortisol was spiking.
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She was having all of these threat detection chemicals in her body that weren't going away.
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And from one rupture to the next, oftentimes she didn't even get back to baseline because there was this recurring pattern in my relationship.
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And if you've listened to this podcast, you've heard it before, but it bears repeating now.
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We would have a trigger
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And it didn't matter what it was.
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It was just a trigger that led to an escalation and bringing energy into the situation, some type of a rupture.
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Then we would withdraw and then we would repair.
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And here's what I now know.
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And here's what I would say to all those experts that told me the focus had to be repair is that I now understand that repair can make a dysfunctional cycle.
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survivable without actually ending the dysfunction.
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See, repair is necessary.
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I don't want you to get me wrong.
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If there's a problem, if something comes up, if you make a mistake, if you let someone down, especially your wife, your girlfriend, your significant other, repair is absolutely something necessary.
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But if you're repairing without reducing how often there is rupture, that's not transformation.
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That's not change.
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If you become excellent at repairing the same wound, it's eventually you have to stop and reflect and ask, why are you creating it over and over again?
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It took me way too long to do this.
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It took so long that Katie got to the point where in a quiet moment, she sat me down and said, I don't feel seen.
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I don't feel heard.
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I don't feel safe.
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And if something doesn't change, I can't do this anymore.
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And I want you to know, like, she said this even though I was not a man who refused to apologize.
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I was, I had done a tremendous amount of work.
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I'd gotten better.
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The ruptures weren't as big.
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They weren't as challenging.
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They repaired faster.
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They repaired in a way that was, like, honest and grounded.
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But...
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The past was showing up in our current arguments over and over again because something would happen in the present that resembled something that had happened repeatedly before.
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Now, the details were different, but the emotional pattern for her felt similar.
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And she would say things like, you always do this, or this is just like when you, or this is like the time that.
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And what I heard over and over again was that I was being horrified.
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prosecuted or persecuted or blamed again for something that I already apologized for.
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And it was frustrating.
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and painful.
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And it would send my mind in loops like, how do I ever get out of this if all we're ever gonna deal with is the past?
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And why can't we just deal with what's happening right now?
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And why does it have to always reach backwards and bring things forward?
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If you've been there, if you're there right now, if you're experiencing this, I just want you to know, I feel the pain and frustration and irritation and feeling like it's just never going to end because I was there and I felt it.
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But what she's communicating, perhaps, in your relationship, leave open the possibility that what she's not saying is, hey, we need to go backwards and keep looking at everything that's happened.
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She might say, I'm recognizing this in the present and I'm afraid we're going back there.
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And she may not be remembering because she wants to punish you.
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She may be remembering because she's trying to predict you.
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As I've shared before, there's a power imbalance in heterosexual relationships.
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As men, we're bigger, we're stronger, we're more capable of violence.
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We represent an actual threat to our partners.
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And this is at the nervous system level.
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This is at the evolutionary level.
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This is at the level of she actually registers us as a threat every time there's a rupture, every time there's an escalation.
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She registers us as a threat.
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And so she may be using previous experience to predict what's going to happen next.
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And that may be what's coming up in the present.
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If you're committed to changing your relationship, committing to creating peace and connection and harmony and having your partner be your best friend, this is really something to lean into because here are some of the patterns I had that you might have.
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I would try and fix her feelings.
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I would defend my intentions.
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I would explain instead of just listening to what was going on.
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Sometimes I would tell her I would do something and I wouldn't follow through.
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I would leave or withdraw or go cold or...
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I would raise my voice and bring way too much energy to the situation.
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And even though we were in a new situation with new details, it felt like the old pattern.
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And here's how we make it worse as men.
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Here's how I made it worse over and over again.
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And I'm going to share with you how to stop doing this.
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But first, we really need to understand the problem.
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Because here's the types of things that I would say that would make it infinitely worse.
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I would say, but I already apologized for that.
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We start arguing history instead of understanding what's happening right now.
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Or I'd say, you're never going to let this go.
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Her concern about a recurring problem is now I'm criticizing her for how she's feeling.
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I'm telling her she's feeling the wrong way.
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Man, that'll make a woman feel or anyone feel unseen and unheard.
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I would say that's not what's happened or that's not what happened.
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And so now I'm litigating details and I'm like an attorney in court trying to say, hey, this isn't really what reality is when she's trying to share her feelings with me.
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Or I'd say something like, what else do you want from me?
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Or what do you want from me?
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And the apology would become a demand that she solves it and she fixes it.
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And this was challenging because an apology where there's a deadline attached like, hey, it's over, isn't really an apology.
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The hard skill is not apologizing afterwards.
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The way you change this, the way things really transform in your relationship is staying present when she's hurt, even though you're already sorry, even though you've already said sorry, even though there's already been repair.
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You'll start understanding your relationship in a totally different way because here's what makes our apology actually believable.
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And I want to pause here for just a moment to let you know that this is hard.
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It's not easy to actually shift your behaviors as a man in a relationship.
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It's not easy to take responsibility.
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It's not easy to say, hey, what can I do here?
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And what is my responsibility here?
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And how can I actually take initiative and change this?
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What's easy is exploding.
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What's easy is blaming.
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What's easy is saying like, hey, this situation is never gonna end and just throwing your hands up.
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That's easy, but it's not the path of least resistance.
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It actually creates massive resistance in your relationship.
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Often, the path of least resistance takes discipline and it takes intention and it takes integrity to say I'm going to do something different.
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And so here's what makes the apology actually believable.
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And here's what's transformed my relationship.
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And here's what I've watched transform the relationship of tons of men that I've worked with, where they've gone from roommates without intimacy to having the relationship of their dreams, where they've gone from walking on eggshells and not knowing what to do next to feeling comfortable and having a partner that actually supports them
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When they feel, they've gone from feeling like they're being disrespected and talked down to and treated like a child to having a real partner that makes them feel confident, not just in their relationship, but confidence everywhere in the world.
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See, closure doesn't happen because you found the right words once.
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I was really good at that.
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When the relationship starts to experience real change and a new pattern becomes more consistent than the old pattern, that's where things transform.
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Let me put this simply.
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If the old pattern was defensiveness, like one of mine, then she repeatedly experiences you listening and leading with curiosity.
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If the old pattern was exploding, again, one that I was really good at in the worst way, she repeatedly experiences difficult conversations where you don't explode, where you stay, where you hold, where you hold your center, where you feel your feelings, but you don't weaponize them.
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If the old pattern was withdrawing, she repeatedly experiences you being present and grounded and aware.
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If the old pattern was broken promises, which if I'm honest and I really like share with integrity, I did it more than once.
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I did it way too often.
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I did it so often that it started to become predictable for her.
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And so if it was broken promises, she repeatedly experiences you following through.
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And if the old pattern was you trying to fix it and change it and explain it away, she repeatedly experiences you being curious and asking questions and actually seeing her and hearing her and understanding what was going on.
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See, she might not need another apology.
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She might need enough new experiences in this new pattern, this new way of you showing up that the apology finally becomes believable.
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Trust in and of itself is experiential.
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It's not something that people turn on and off.
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It's what they experience.
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It's how they feel.
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It's something that is in the resonance of the communication, in the foundation of the relationship.
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So trust is not built by convincing someone you've changed.
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Like any attempt to convince someone you've changed probably means you haven't yet because you're still trying to convince them.
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Trust is rebuilt by making the old prediction wrong enough that they stop making it, that they stop feeling like that's going to happen.
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So here's what I would recommend you do when she brings up the past.
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Slow down before arguing with what she's saying.
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Notice the urge to defend yourself and look at the situation you're in.
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get curious about what's actually getting connected and what she's seeing, what she's feeling, what's coming up for her.
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Like some of the questions that I would ask, and I wish I had ages ago so that this didn't take as long as it did in my relationship, is like, what about this still feels unresolved for you?
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And does what happened today remind you of something that I've done before?
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And what are you afraid is going to happen again?
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And what would you feel different if this pattern were actually changing?
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If I had those questions, if I was willing to ask those, if I was willing to listen earlier in our relationship, everything would have changed.
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And when I finally started asking those questions, when I finally started seeing her and hearing her, I understood our relationship at a totally different level.
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And by listening and by staying in the conversation, not fixing, not explaining, not using logic, not breaking promises, not exploding or withdrawing by staying in the conversation, I actually started changing because I had to be there and listen to it and see what was going on for her.
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And that actually gave me the fuel to change.
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That gave me the clarity of what was really going on.
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That gave me the capacity to understand.
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Like staying in the conversation gave me the capacity not just to understand, but to start shifting my behavior so I didn't have this repeated pattern that she kept feeling over and over again in our relationships.
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Curiosity gives you information.
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Containment, masculine containment, holding yourself in the moment, breathing, being present, leading with curiosity does not mean automatically agreeing with everything she says.
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It means being regulated enough to actually hear her before you decide whether you agree or not.
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And defensiveness usually will stop her from sharing and stop her from letting you see what's really going on.
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And when I slowed down and listened to Katie, it revealed the patterns that were breaking our relationship, that were making my life harder, that were putting distance between us, that were challenging intimacy between us.
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And when I started listening and staying and actually shifting my behavior and not exploding, not withdrawing, not doing any of those things, my wife felt emotional safety and security probably for the first time in her life.
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And it has created a level of connection and validation and attraction and intimacy that I, like I said earlier, I didn't really know was possible.
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This is not just the relationship of my dreams.
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It's a relationship that has exceeded the relationship of my dreams.
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There is something that I do want to share.
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Like, what if you have really changed?
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And there's men who I've worked with that have stepped into containment, that have started breathing, that have started slowing things down, that aren't defending, they're not exploding, they're not in these patterns anymore.
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This doesn't mean that what I'm sharing here does not mean in any way that you should be expected to absorb endless punishment for the past.
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So if you've really changed, if you've been consistent for a meaningful amount of time, if your behavior is no longer happening, if she continues to use the past to shame you, control you, avoid responsibility for what she's doing, which by the way, I've seen.
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I've seen with more than one man.
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That's different.
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But here's how you know that's happening.
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Containment for you, slowing things down, staying in your body, creates clarity.
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If you're still exploding, withdrawing, breaking commitments, repeating the same behavior, it's difficult to tell whether she's stuck in the past because the past keeps becoming the present.
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But once you actually start changing and once you change your side of the pattern, if her side becomes easier to see and she's still doing the same things and still repeating the same behaviors, that's a place where actually boundaries are necessary.
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That's where I have a podcast called When Will She Do Her Work?
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And it reveals the work that she needs to do.
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And by the way, this might not be because she wants to blame you.
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This might not be because she wants to hurt you.
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This might not be because she's hysterical or ridiculous or any of the things that get said out there in the public.
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I've seen a lot of those videos.
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I've seen a lot of the thought leaders that have built massive audiences, by the way, by figuring out language around blaming women and calling it their nature and saying it's their biology.
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It may be that she has trauma.
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It may be that she has a pattern in her background or in your relationship that she's having trouble letting go of.
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It may be that she is continually activated because of things that have happened with you and things that have happened in her past.
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And so this is not becoming a punching bag for the entire history of your relationship.
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It's about cleaning up your side of the relationship enough that you can clearly see what belongs to you and what doesn't.
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And so men going first and leading this and stepping into containment and stopping the pattern of trigger escalation, rupture, withdraw, and then repair, like stopping it at the trigger doesn't mean you put up with whatever happens.
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Going first creates the clarity so you understand what's actually happening.
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And so here's the deeper meaning of repair.
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Now, I didn't hear this from the relationship experts out there.
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I heard strategies around the repair process, about how to communicate better, how to communicate deeper, how to take responsibility, how to apologize, how to feel it in your body, how to really be honest in those conversations.
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So I used to think that was the finish line.
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But now, I think repair is just part of the process.
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Apologies matter.
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If I step out of line, if I let Katie down, if there's a place where I make her feel uncomfortable, I apologize.
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I take responsibility.
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We reconnect afterwards.
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That all matters.
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But here's the key.
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The deepest repair is when the behavior you keep apologizing for stops happening.
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When that is present in your relationship, that's when you've actually repaired the whole pattern, not just the incident, not just the moment, not just the thing that happened yesterday, but you actually start repairing the pattern.
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So next time your partner brings up something you already apologized for, slow down.
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In the brotherhood, we talk about slow is fast and fast is slow.
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Slow down.
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Instead of immediately thinking, like I used to, why can't she just let this go?
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As I say that, I can feel the activation of those conversations where it was like, just stop.
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Just let it go.
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I wanted to blame her.
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I did blame her.
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I wanted to make her the enemy.
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I did make her the enemy.
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Like, that is not going to help your relationship.
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And honestly, it's not going to help your life.
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It's going to take so much energy and so much capacity to be in that place that it's going to make everything you're doing harder.
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And it'll be the thing you're trying not to think about or you're thinking about constantly.
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And either way, it takes so much mental energy, so much energy out of your life.
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Then instead of asking, why can't she let this go?
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Ask a better question.
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Ask the question, is this really the past?
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Or is she recognizing a pattern that's still happening right now?
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See, your job is not to spend the rest of your life apologizing.
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And I wouldn't recommend that you do.
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Your job, your opportunity as a man is to become the man who no longer needs to keep apologizing for the same thing.
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When you do this, when you step into a place of presence, when you step into a place of awareness, when you step into a place of curiosity, when you slow things down and feel your feelings and feel your body, you step into your masculine core.
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The highest expression of masculinity is presence.
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And being in that state of presence, you can create an entirely new atmospheric in your relationship.
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And in the world today, there's so much talk around women softening and surrendering and even submitting to their husbands.
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Like, none of that can be forced.
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In fact, any attempt to force a woman to soften or surrender or submit is only going to move things in the wrong direction and cause massive pressure and noise in your relationship.
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But as a man, when you step into your masculine core, when you're present, when you're aware, when you start leading with curiosity, you actually create this atmospheric of dominion, of dominance over yourself, over the situation.
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You start leading with curiosity, start leading with questions.
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You start leading with presence and awareness.
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And that creates an atmospheric, an opportunity, a place for your partner to want to soften.
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to be able to surrender, to feel comfortable in submission and being with you.
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And again, some people get really uncomfortable with the words I'm using, like dominance and submission.
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And what I want to make clear is, as men, we dominate ourselves.
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We dominate the situation.
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We breathe.
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We create presence.
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We create awareness.
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We step into an entirely new strength and capacity as a man.
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And that creates the opportunity for our partners to soften.
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and surrender, and submit to us.
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And this has happened in my relationship.
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Like I said, in my relationship,
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The intimacy, the connection, the confidence it brings me today is unlike anything I've ever experienced.
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And I believe it's because I stopped the pattern, understood what was going on, stepped into masculine presence.
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And instead of just repeatedly over and over again going through trigger, escalation, rupture, withdrawal, and repair, I was like, oh, my God.
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Today, when there's a trigger present, I see it as an opportunity to create closeness and connection for me to lead in my relationship, for me to understand what's going on, and for me to take us to a place of resolution without ever having to go through the rest of that pattern.
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Like I said, your opportunity is to become the man who doesn't need to keep apologizing for the same thing.
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This is what we train in the brotherhood, the organization that I run.
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And it's not about perfection.
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It's not about getting this right every time.
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It's not about never getting triggered.
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Don't ever try and hold yourself to that standard.
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It's about becoming aware and contained enough that the trigger stops creating damage and stops creating reactivity, learning to stay, learning to hear difficult truth, learning to change the pattern instead of endlessly repeating the consequences.
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If this is something you want to do, go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com, register for our email list, or register for a container where we show men this martial art-like discipline of masculine containment that will change your relationship, help you understand yourself better, and make everything in your life easier.
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On the next episode, there's another side to this.
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What happens when she stops bringing up the past?
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What happens when she stops complaining?
27:58
What happens when she stops trying to get through to you?
28:01
Sometimes that looks like peace, and sometimes it means she stopped trying.
28:06
I'd love to have you listen to the next episode.
28:08
Take a moment now, and please subscribe, make a comment.
28:13
I'd love to stay connected with you, and I so deeply appreciate you listening to the Masculine Containment Podcast.
28:21
and wanting to be a better man, and wanting to have a better relationship, just by you being here, I know there's a massive level of character that you bring to the table, and I appreciate you, brother.