Latest / Masculine Containment / 27 - How to Get Her to Stop Disrespecting You

Transcript

27 - How to Get Her to Stop Disrespecting You · Masculine Containment

0:00
I've talked to hundreds of men about their relationships and one of the topics, one of the questions that comes up so often is how do I get her to stop disrespecting me?
0:10
And that's what I want to talk about today because it's such a big issue in relationships.
0:15
What is perceived as a lack of respect or when men feel a lack of respect and I've been there.
0:20
I've absolutely felt it.
0:21
I've been in that situation.
0:24
It's incredibly challenging.
0:25
And it's one of the things that not only challenges the relationship, it challenges connection, it challenges how the two people see each other, and it challenges containment.
0:34
It makes it very hard to maintain a level of containment and being in your body and being present and aware when you feel like you're being disrespected.
0:43
And I've been there, you know.
0:46
I had a lot of these behaviors in my relationship.
0:48
Here's what often we see as disrespect.
0:51
When men ask me this question, how do I get her to stop disrespecting me?
0:54
And I ask, it's things like being corrected in public or undermining.
1:00
You say one thing, she says another.
1:01
Um...
1:03
Telling you how to do something that you're fully capable of knowing how to do.
1:07
Verifying whether something got done when, you know, you've done it and she's chasing you around asking you, hey, did you do this thing?
1:14
Telling you how to drive.
1:15
This was a big one in my relationship and, man, it drove me crazy.
1:19
Telling you little things like which parking space to choose.
1:23
Like I'm fully capable of choosing a parking space or telling you –
1:28
or checking details repeatedly, or over-correcting or over-directing small decisions that don't really feel like they make sense.
1:36
You know, these moments sometimes rightfully feel like disrespect and they can make men feel pretty challenged.
1:45
Like I know they make me feel managed or mothered or like Katie felt like I was incompetent or man, there were so many times in public in front of my team, in front of other people where I felt diminished.
1:57
I felt like I was cut off at the knees and undermined is a really good word.
2:03
And this is a place where I used to get massively triggered.
2:07
And this is a place where a lot of men get triggered.
2:10
And it's also a place where a lot of men start looking for answers.
2:14
And there's a reason I get this question all the time.
2:16
This is a question I used to ask.
2:19
And here's what I want to make really clear about the male experience, about my experience, is...
2:24
These behaviors feel humiliating in a lot of cases.
2:28
For me, they were humiliating sometimes, especially when I would like say something in front of my team and I would name a number like, oh, I think there was 24 of those.
2:37
And Katie would say, no, there was 18.
2:38
And I'd think like, did the number really matter?
2:40
I mean, it wasn't like didn't need to be precise, but there were corrections.
2:46
It didn't really feel like they needed to be there.
2:49
They, for me, triggered anger and defensiveness, and often I would withdraw.
2:53
And honestly, like, there was times where I'd feel shame.
2:56
I'd go into a spiral because I think, why is it that my wife can't stop doing this to me?
3:01
And why does she keep doing it to me?
3:05
I interpreted them as a lack of respect, a lack of trust in public, in front of other people.
3:10
Like I said, they can feel massively more intense.
3:13
Yeah.
3:14
And here's what I now know and what I want you to know.
3:16
There's nothing wrong with noticing that something feels bad.
3:20
There's nothing wrong with noticing that something feels challenging.
3:25
Feeling disrespected is real.
3:27
Man, it was so real for me.
3:29
But the interpretation of what is happening is
3:33
for me was incomplete and it may be for you and that's why I want to share this information today that's why I want to put this out there because here's what a lot of men teaching men say and I went out looking for answers for this and this is what I found and and if you've gone out looking for answers you've probably found things like this and this is this is like
3:55
pretty out there there's a lot of men who are saying things like women are naturally biologically controlling our women are naturally manipulative um they say things like every time you're corrected it's a dominance challenge and you need to look at it that way they say like every question she poses of you is a test every directive is a challenge to your masculine frame and to your masculinity um
4:19
And, you know, the relationship is like a gender war and you must not submit.
4:24
You must hold your masculine frame and you must reassert dominance and you must win every interaction.
4:31
You know, I saw information like this and I know a lot of men have.
4:35
And...
4:36
I feel like a lot of it doesn't really help the relationship.
4:39
And I know it absolutely did not help mine.
4:42
In fact, it caused more damage than solutions.
4:45
It caused more misinterpretation than anything else.
4:48
And it really drove like a wedge between Katie and I a lot of the time when I was looking at things this way, when I saw her as controlling, when I saw her as manipulative, when I saw her as manipulative,
4:57
When I saw her as challenging me and who I am and judging me, that really wasn't the best way for me to see it.
5:03
And it created more challenges than solutions.
5:05
Now, here's where there is some truth.
5:07
Like, in what men are teaching men, you know, they say, hold masculine frame, which...
5:12
I don't love that terminology, but what I hear is hold containment.
5:15
Like don't react, don't collapse, don't implode or explode.
5:20
Don't tolerate contempt.
5:22
Like if there's actually real contempt there, that's something that we need to be aware of.
5:27
And we shouldn't be managed like a child.
5:28
Like those things are fair.
5:30
Those things are real.
5:32
But here's where I think a lot of this advice goes wrong.
5:36
If we look at every time she questions you, it's a challenge.
5:39
And we look at her as naturally manipulative and controlling.
5:42
It turns every interaction into like scrimmages on a battlefield.
5:47
It makes her the enemy in your relationship.
5:49
Which, by the way, like if you want connection and closeness and intimacy.
5:53
And maybe those things are missing in your relationship.
5:55
Or they've gone down over time.
5:57
Or there's not enough of those things right now.
6:00
If you start looking at her as the enemy, you're not going to start moving in a better direction.
6:04
Right?
6:05
And it treats nervous system protection on her case as manipulation.
6:10
I'm going to explain this in detail.
6:12
And here's some big stuff for us as men.
6:14
It prevents curiosity and repair and emotional safety.
6:17
And it keeps us focused on winning instead of understanding what's going on.
6:24
This is a huge challenge because that argument you quote unquote won or when you see every challenge as something that you need to win and overcome, what you're really doing is you're stepping into that five-step pattern that I talk about all the time.
6:38
There's a trigger, escalation, rupture.
6:42
This is a lot of times where we think we're winning.
6:44
Then there's a withdrawal period and we come back and create some type of repair.
6:48
And if you've been in a relationship for a while, you know that repair over time is
6:54
doesn't work as well as it used to.
6:56
Like I always share, you know, before I just discovered masculine containment, before I started doing this work, before I really started taking responsibility in my relationship, I became a ninja at repair.
7:07
I was amazing at repair.
7:08
Uh,
7:09
All the stuff that I read out there said you need to come back and repair and make things better.
7:13
But the problem is if we are in constant conflict with her, she's taking on more impact.
7:18
Her nervous system is feeling it.
7:19
She's starting not to learn she can't trust us, especially when we're escalating, especially when we're quote unquote winning.
7:25
And so men treating men tell us to treat every correction like a dominance challenge.
7:32
And I think that turns your relationship, that turns your marriage into a battlefield.
7:38
I had a recently pretty, recently I had a pretty interesting experience with this whole like women challenging men or women, how they behave around men or disrespecting men.
7:48
I was honored to be invited on the Kelly Brogan podcast.
7:52
It'll be coming out later this year.
7:54
If you don't know who Kelly is, she is really well known in the relationship space.
7:59
She's interviewed a ton of
8:01
really well-known other people.
8:02
She works with women and shows them how to become more embodied.
8:05
She actually teaches women self-containment.
8:08
Like she's kind of the other side of what I teach men.
8:10
In some ways she teaches women the same thing, like how to nurture themselves, how to understand themselves, how to get into their bodies, how to feel better about themselves.
8:19
I have a ton of respect for what Kelly does.
8:21
And I've seen a lot of women's lives changed by her work.
8:25
And I was on her show and it was interesting.
8:30
She brought up how often women's nervous system activation and them not calming themselves and then not doing enough work and them not being in their bodies and not knowing how to self-soothe brings up challenges for men.
8:46
And
8:47
She was looking for me to agree with her.
8:49
I know she was because she was saying like, you know, how do you see this?
8:53
And she brought up this really interesting example.
8:56
The example she used was driving.
8:58
And she said, you know, when she's telling you how to drive or she's telling you you need to slow down or telling you how to behave in a car when you're behind the wheel, you know, she and what Kelly said was, you know, that's a place where she's.
9:11
The man's in charge and the woman needs to understand just how to self-soothe and how to not correct and how to not bring things up.
9:18
And I couldn't agree with her.
9:21
In fact, I shared with Kelly what I'm going to share with you today.
9:25
I know that there's a ton of men that would immediately agree with that.
9:28
They would say, yes, that's how their wives need to be.
9:31
But I've been in a relationship for 22 years.
9:34
And this driving thing was an issue in my relationship from the beginning until the
9:40
a few years ago or several years ago.
9:42
I can't remember exactly.
9:44
But it was recent history, relatively recent history when you compare it to 22 years.
9:50
Here's what I learned about my wife and driving.
9:53
Now, I just want to make it clear.
9:54
For our whole relationship, I'd be in the driver's seat, and this is what I shared with Kelly.
10:00
I'm actually a train driver.
10:01
Like, I've spent...
10:02
a ton of hours training how to drive.
10:05
I've driven cars on racetracks.
10:07
I've 160 miles an hour wheel to wheel with other cars.
10:12
I can put a car right on the edge.
10:14
And if you want to see what your car can do, give me the keys and let's go for a drive.
10:18
And you'll be shocked at what like a normal street car can do if you really know what you're doing, if you know how to find the apex of a turn, if you know how to accelerate out of it, if you know how to carry speed in the right way.
10:27
I'm really good at it.
10:28
And I'm not competitively good, not like, you know, driving in actual races good, but I'm really good at driving a car.
10:37
And like I said, I can get a lot out of it.
10:40
And so for a lot of our relationship and most of the cars I've ever driven have been really high performance modified sports cars, basically race cars on the street.
10:50
And what I shared with Kelly was that for most of my relationship, when we were driving, Katie would brace.
10:57
She would grab the handle.
10:59
She would like have reactions and deep breaths.
11:02
She would look up and like get startled.
11:04
Yeah.
11:05
And here's how I saw all of that for most of our relationship.
11:10
I thought it was a challenge to my skill level.
11:12
I thought it was a challenge to her trusting me.
11:15
I thought it was her saying, you know, you're not safe in this car.
11:18
You don't know what you're doing.
11:20
I felt like it was disrespect.
11:21
It was a massive, massive amount of disrespect for most of my relationship.
11:25
And there was times...
11:27
where we would drive somewhere and Katie would have so many consistent reactions in the car that by the time we got there, I was frustrated with her.
11:34
I was irritated with her.
11:35
You know, we didn't even have to say anything.
11:37
We were in an energetic rupture.
11:39
We were in this place where like I didn't want to be around her and I was frustrated with her and she could feel it and there was challenges there.
11:46
And it was horrible.
11:47
It sucked.
11:48
For so much of our relationship, there was this thing we couldn't get past.
11:51
And like you have to drive.
11:52
You have to go places.
11:53
Yeah.
11:54
Well, here's what I came to find out about my wife is that –
11:58
As a child, she was repeatedly in a car with a father who would road rage and make things incredibly dangerous.
12:05
And then she had a stepfather where she would be in the car and get lectured and talked to and not really have a conversation with, but she was just treated as an audience.
12:15
And so the car was a place where she would disassociate just from being, like, talked at.
12:20
And the car was a place where she would actually feel traumatized because her other father was so unsafe.
12:27
And when I understood this and...
12:31
I started thinking about her behaviors.
12:33
I'm like, you know what?
12:34
She's in a survival mechanism.
12:36
She's in a survival, nervous system survival mode.
12:39
She's triggered.
12:40
She's feeling unsafe.
12:42
She's feeling panicked.
12:43
She's feeling traumatized.
12:45
When I found all this out that it wasn't control, it wasn't correction, it wasn't some crazy dominance challenge, it was her nervous system responding to a past trauma, to a past experience that told her the car was a place where she wasn't safe.
12:59
And so every time I went too fast, every time I changed lanes, you know, with not enough room, every time I was putting the car close to its edge.
13:07
And with her, I used to think to myself, like, you know, I'm only using 60, 70% of this car, which is way more than anybody else would ever use.
13:15
But I'm so safe knowing my skill set and my abilities.
13:19
But once I found out that what was really going on was I was re-traumatizing Katie from a childhood pattern.
13:24
I was literally traumatizing her inner child.
13:28
It changed everything about how I drive.
13:30
And I stopped seeing it as her emasculating me.
13:35
I stopped seeing it as her not trusting me.
13:37
I started knowing and understanding that was her nervous system learned cars aren't safe.
13:43
And understanding that actually changed how I behaved in a car.
13:49
I would say it actually changed how I lead in a car.
13:53
Because when I'm driving, I am in charge.
13:55
And that's leadership.
13:56
And when I understood that Katie's fear about the car was not my driving and not my skill set and not my ability, but about what her nervous system had learned in the past, it changed everything about how I drive.
14:08
And I shared that with Kelly and it was really an interesting exchange.
14:12
That podcast, like I said, will be coming out later this year.
14:15
But I couldn't agree with her that that was disrespect.
14:17
I couldn't agree with her that that was a place where Katie needed to self-soothe.
14:20
It was actually a place where I needed to support her.
14:23
And I needed to see it through a totally different lens.
14:26
And so instead of asking, how do I stop her from disrespecting me?
14:31
Here are some better questions when this kind of stuff is happening.
14:35
when the over-controlling, undermining, checking in too much, smothering, mothering, all those things happen.
14:42
A question that we should be asking as men is what's happening in her nervous system?
14:46
What has she experienced that makes control in this moment feel safer than trust?
14:53
Is this contempt or is this protection?
14:55
Is this about me or is this from something older in her past?
14:58
Is this a pattern that I helped create?
15:01
I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second because believe me, there were patterns I actually created in our relationship.
15:09
And instead of asking, how do I get her to stop respecting me?
15:13
Ask, how much responsibility can I take here?
15:16
Now, I know some men are going to get triggered by that question.
15:20
And if you are, I understand.
15:23
Believe me.
15:25
Ten years ago, if somebody had said, oh, when Katie's upset when you're driving, ask the question, how much responsibility can you take?
15:31
I would have been frustrated.
15:33
I would have been, I probably wouldn't have been frustrated.
15:35
I probably would have wanted to punch you in the face.
15:37
Let's be honest, especially ten years ago.
15:41
It probably would have made me feel violent because it was such an issue and it had come up over and over and over again.
15:48
But I have a lot more experience now.
15:50
You know, I've learned a lot at this stage in my life.
15:54
And I'm less interested in figuring out who's technically responsible for what.
15:59
I'm a lot more interested in figuring out how much responsibility can I take here because here's –
16:05
What I've learned about saying, which part of this am I responsible for and how much responsibility can I take here?
16:10
What I've learned is not that everything's my fault and not that I caused everything and not that she has no responsibility.
16:18
But the more responsibility I take, the more I can change what's going on.
16:25
The more I can be a solution rather than being the problem, the more I can understand about what's happening.
16:31
Because here's what I know about me and about everybody I've ever worked with.
16:35
The more we're blaming, the more we limit the power we have in the situation.
16:40
Because blaming puts a responsibility over there and then it just lets us sit here in righteousness and believe me so much of my life.
16:48
I blamed and then sat back in righteousness in I'm right and it's their fault and they shouldn't have done it.
16:58
But the more that I like break that down and stop doing that and the more I have done that, here's what I've come to understand.
17:04
It's like responsibility increases your power as a man, as a human.
17:09
Responsibility increases the capacity of what you can actually shift and change.
17:13
When I was only focused on what she was doing wrong, I was stuck waiting for her to change.
17:19
I mean, this thing with driving lasted like over 15 years in our relationship.
17:24
We'd been together 22 years, 15 years of pain.
17:27
Because I was so focused on what she was doing, not focused on how could I change something here.
17:33
And so when you ask, what can I own?
17:35
What can I shift?
17:36
How can I lead this differently?
17:38
You can change the dynamic immediately.
17:41
When I started driving different, Katie's behavior in a car changed 100%, like completely.
17:48
Maybe not 100%.
17:49
Let me be more accurate.
17:50
Maybe 90, 95%.
17:52
There's still times where she's triggered or maybe I'm going a little too fast or she's not feeling safe someday and something comes up.
17:59
So...
18:01
One of the things I've come to learn is when Katie is over directing, I don't think she's trying to dominate me.
18:06
There's usually something going on in her nervous system.
18:08
There's usually something behind it.
18:10
She may be trying to prevent something going from something going wrong.
18:14
She may be trying to prevent us from missing something.
18:17
She may be trying to prevent us from doing the right thing or doing the wrong and sorry, trying to prevent us from doing the wrong thing and making sure we're going in the right direction.
18:27
And when I took more responsibility, I had way more options than when I blamed her.
18:35
And here's what I also came to understand.
18:36
Like you look at these behaviors of.
18:41
Asking too much or smothering or mothering or verifying or all of these things undermining even in public.
18:48
They can come from a lot of different places.
18:50
It might not even be the present moment.
18:52
What I've come to learn in my relationship that a lot of this has come from Katie's trauma and childhood conditioning and family dynamics.
18:59
You know, her nervous system was conditioned to feel unsafe a lot of the time.
19:05
For Katie and for a lot of women, it can also come from childhood wounding or wounding throughout their careers, throughout their lives and in their careers, from being objectified in this world, feeling unsafe in this world, carrying too much responsibility in a relationship and over-functioning.
19:21
It could be that she's had past partners or caregivers like parents or people that she was with that are unreliable.
19:30
And so she is always checking on reliability.
19:33
And here's a tough one.
19:34
These behaviors can actually come from our inconsistency, from repeated experiences where unless she manages everything –
19:44
things fall apart.
19:46
And they, you know, what I know is that because of these things, because of all the things I just listed, Katie had some core nervous system beliefs that were like, I'm not safe unless I stay alert.
19:58
I'm not safe unless I manage all the details and check on everything.
20:02
I'm not safe unless I anticipate what could go wrong.
20:06
And a big one, like, I'm not safe unless I stay in control.
20:09
And so often what we feel is wrestling for control is her wrestling for safety in her nervous system.
20:17
And these behaviors don't come out of nowhere.
20:19
It doesn't mean that they're always healthy.
20:21
It doesn't mean that we should tolerate contempt and just put up with everything.
20:25
It doesn't mean every correction is fine or okay.
20:29
But it does mean that if we're just taking this surface explanation that so many men give men, we're missing the real story.
20:36
We need to look deeper than that.
20:38
We need to feel deeper than that.
20:40
Because she may not be trying to control you.
20:42
She may be trying to control the environment because control has become the only way that her body knows how to feel safe.
20:52
I know with certainty that a lot of the time that was what was going on with Katie.
20:57
And it could be from what's happened in her lifetime.
21:00
But if we look at the history of how women have been treated, there's a whole epigenetic history there that gets handed down and handed down and handed down.
21:09
And it could be from her lineage, from her family, from things that have happened in the past.
21:14
You know, there was this intense experiment done with mice.
21:18
where they took mice from the exact same place, same location, and they split them up.
21:26
And they had male mice, impregnate other female mice.
21:32
And when the babies were born, they took the baby.
21:35
So there was like no mice communication or anything going on.
21:38
And they...
21:39
They put those babies in a cage where when they introduced the scent of cherry blossoms, they were shocked.
21:48
And so cherry blossoms equals trauma.
21:51
And what they found was if they repeated this experiment and took those babies from the male lineage and had men or male men, male mice have babies and they again separated them so there was no communication going on.
22:07
And for five generations, when they exposed them to the scent of cherry blossoms, those mice reacted as though they were in trauma.
22:15
And so.
22:17
This is not like a direct correlation to human beings.
22:20
Mice and humans are different.
22:22
But if generations of mice can carry down the memory of cherry blossoms equals trauma...
22:29
makes me feel and like think what do we carry down as humans what do we carry from our past from from our our parents our grandparents our great-grandparents like think generations back things have gotten better for women but in the past they were way way worse and so you know when you think about it like the parking space might not be about the parking space the driving correction may not really be about you driving the follow-up question may not be about the task it may be a moment where her body is trying to regain safety
22:58
And when you slow down and start looking at that, you can understand that a lot of times she's responding to a history that you can't see in the moment.
23:08
And as men, when we understand this, that can help us be more empathetic.
23:13
That can help us slow down and ask questions.
23:15
That can help us maintain containment because a lot of how we respond to things are how we see it.
23:21
So if we're always seeing every correction as a challenge, that's how we're going to react.
23:26
If we can slow down and see that there might be something going on for her, then we can slow down and respond.
23:33
Another reason why these types of things happen in relationship, it's not just like, you know, family lineage.
23:39
It's just the fear that women live with in the world.
23:43
Here's my belief.
23:44
You know, I've seen a lot of studies that say like, you know, three out of five women have experienced some type of sexual trauma or whatever the percentages are.
23:53
I don't believe any of them.
23:55
Like, I know that those studies are real.
23:57
And I know that women were asked questions.
23:59
And I know they filled in surveys.
24:01
But here's my belief.
24:02
100% of women, 100% have felt objectification or a lack of safety or under threat or feeling unsafe around a man.
24:15
100%.
24:16
I don't think there's any woman that goes through life without having some incident, some issue, some challenge somewhere along their lives.
24:23
If I ever meet that woman, I would love to.
24:26
I hope that she's out there.
24:28
I don't.
24:29
But I've spent a lot of time around women.
24:31
I have three younger sisters.
24:32
I have two daughters.
24:32
I had a coaching company where a lot of my clients were female.
24:36
And...
24:37
When I talk to women one-on-one, 100% of them have had some type of traumatic experience.
24:43
And for the women that I've talked to, it's not just one.
24:46
It's a lifetime of traumatic experiences.
24:49
That's why women have behaviors that we don't really have as men in the same way.
24:55
Like women learn to scan.
24:57
They learn to watch our moods.
24:59
They learn to assess environments.
25:00
They learn to anticipate danger.
25:02
They learn to protect themselves.
25:04
You know, many women carry a level of vigilance that most men don't understand.
25:08
And I know a lot of men are like this, too.
25:10
By the way, I'm not discounting that.
25:12
I am.
25:12
You know, I scan.
25:13
I know where I am.
25:14
I understand where I am, where the exits are, who might be a threat in the room, all of those things.
25:18
But I'm doing it to protect myself and to protect her.
25:21
And I'm usually not feeling the level of mortal danger.
25:25
I'm usually not feeling like I really am going to be in some type of massive challenge.
25:31
And...
25:32
I want to make it clear too, women having these behaviors, this doesn't mean that all men are bad.
25:37
And it doesn't mean that all of us are predators.
25:39
And it doesn't mean that any of us, you know, when I heard these, when I look at this, I know that a lot of men might feel like, hey, I'm not an unsafe man.
25:48
I wouldn't do anything to a woman.
25:50
And I totally understand that.
25:52
It doesn't mean we should live in shame.
25:55
But what it does mean is that a lot of women live with nervous system activation that is part of the relationship.
26:03
It comes into our relationship.
26:06
And here's like what women have told me, like walking to the car in a parking garage or being alone at night or being looked at by men in a public place or getting into an elevator or having somebody walking behind them or walking up a stairwell in a public building.
26:20
All of those things are places where women are borderline panicked sometimes.
26:27
And as men, we might experience a feeling of a lack of safety in some of those situations, but we're not borderline panicked.
26:34
And so women walk around with a level of vulnerability and fear that we just don't understand.
26:40
I think it was Teal Swan that said women walk around feeling like prey with predators.
26:47
And I know that sometimes I've heard men say, oh, that feels like an exaggeration or not all women, not all men are bad.
26:54
You know what?
26:55
Say whatever you, you know, we can make the arguments.
26:59
But for me, it's a lot easier to accept that women live with vulnerability and fear.
27:04
And that's why I see a lot of the behaviors like correction, direction, questioning, checking, criticism, control, over explaining.
27:12
And a difficulty in just relaxing and letting go makes sense when you think about living in a place of fear, living in a place of vulnerability.
27:23
And so as men...
27:25
I think we need to understand there's a difference between disrespect and protection for her, her protecting herself.
27:32
So like real disrespect might include things like contempt or mockery or public humiliation and name calling or belittling you or eye rolling and being disgusted with you or weaponizing your mistakes and attacking you with them or treating you as incompetent or refusing to repair when there is a rupture.
27:50
So yes, there is actual disrespect.
27:54
But the problem is, for so many of us as men, we have this lens where we see disrespect where there really isn't actual disrespect.
28:04
Because her being protective, her using protective control to make herself feel safe might look like repeated checking.
28:13
And overexplaining and difficulty reacting and correcting details and trying to control logistics and needing confirmation.
28:20
And anxiety when plans are unclear and interrupting you or undermining you with a sense of urgency.
28:27
And over directing because a part of her feels unsafe.
28:31
Now here's what's important for me.
28:34
When I started practicing masculine containment...
28:37
When I stopped reacting to every trigger, when I slowed things down and started having a much higher level of discernment in my life, because when you're triggered all the time, you don't have a very high level of discernment.
28:49
You're just triggered.
28:50
And you see everything as an attack or a frustration or something to explode or implode to.
28:55
When I actually started learning masculine containment and got in my body and stopped reacting to everything, I learned to discern the difference.
29:03
Now I want to make something clear.
29:05
I don't collapse under either one.
29:08
Like if there is disrespect or there is control, I'm not going to collapse.
29:13
I'm not going to treat both the same way.
29:15
If it's contempt, there's going to be a boundary in place.
29:17
If it's something that doesn't make sense and it's coming up too often, I'm going to talk to her about it.
29:23
But if it's fear, she needs safety, not me to react and get triggered and attack her.
29:29
If it's a pattern that I helped create, which by the way, this is real.
29:34
I did it over and over again and I'll share in a minute.
29:37
It may need ownership on your part.
29:39
It needed ownership and responsibility on my part.
29:42
And if it's something that is coming up over and over, it may need a calm conversation that actually creates protection in your relationship, not fear.
29:50
Reaction, not reactivity.
29:53
Sometimes it may be disrespect.
29:55
Sometimes it may be contempt.
29:57
But far more often than we realize as men, far more often than I realized, is that it's fear that looks like control, contempt, and disrespect.
30:09
So I experienced all of this with Katie.
30:13
All of it.
30:14
Correction, overchecking on me, overdirecting, giving me directions on simple tasks.
30:20
It felt like control, judgment, disrespect, all of that.
30:24
But here's what I've eventually come to find out.
30:27
Through becoming contained, through staying with her instead of reacting and escalating and creating rupture and withdraw, I've been trying to find out.
30:35
I found out that like she was over-functioning because she carried way too much responsibility in our business and in our home.
30:42
She was kind of doing everything.
30:43
You know, I was the face of our business.
30:45
I was out speaking.
30:46
I was out creating content and getting us attention.
30:51
And she was doing a ton, like almost 100% of the logistics.
30:56
She was hypervigilant because she was always waiting for something to go wrong.
31:00
Because when something did go wrong, I'd often get frustrated with her.
31:03
And so every time I got frustrated with her when something went wrong, I can remember one time where I was speaking in Arizona and I was at an event and I
31:13
She was running our events department.
31:15
You know, I fell into a trap that a lot of entrepreneurs fall into where I was the visionary in our business and she was the operator.
31:22
She was operating everything.
31:23
She was running our, I think at the time, probably a $10 million company.
31:27
And God, it's hard to talk about this, but there was an event that I went to.
31:33
And it was pretty big.
31:34
And we had a booth.
31:36
I was speaking.
31:36
I was actually the keynote speaker.
31:39
And all the supplies and stuff that were supposed to be there for our booth didn't get there.
31:43
And I was so frustrated with her because something went wrong.
31:48
And I got on a phone call with her and I unloaded, like triggered.
31:52
And believe me, I was contemptual.
31:54
I was disrespectful.
31:56
I talked to her in a way that I never should have talked to.
31:59
I had no excuse to talk to her the way that I did.
32:01
It was horrible.
32:01
Like I look back on it.
32:04
And I've processed it and I've sat with it and I understand it and it will never happen again.
32:08
I felt shame around it for so long once I figured out just how aggressive and violent I was in that moment.
32:17
But then she would check to see if things were done and she would check with me to see if I had done things and I'd get irritated with her.
32:24
But I actually helped set that up.
32:26
Because when something went wrong, I rained down way too much energy on her.
32:31
Like, no.
32:32
violent energy, not contained energy, not safe energy, contemptual, horrible energy.
32:40
And so she wasn't just reacting to her life experience before me.
32:43
She's actually reacting to her life experience with me.
32:46
She was reacting to a pattern of having to carry too much.
32:49
She was over-directing because there was times I said I was going to do something and I didn't.
32:53
So if this is another pattern you have, you know, I used to think like why does she get so mad about something as simple as like taking out the trash?
33:00
And the reason is because she was always looking for something to go wrong.
33:04
And when it did, I would get mad at her.
33:06
And then I would tell her I was going to do something and I didn't do it.
33:10
And that broke trust.
33:11
And yes, the trash is important.
33:13
If you say you're going to do something, do it.
33:15
And I wasn't doing it.
33:17
I was in a place where I was like creating a lack of safety for her, actually behaving in a way that she shouldn't trust me.
33:25
And I'm seeing this stuff as disrespect and control.
33:28
She seemed controlling because she'd been running our household and our lives for way too long.
33:33
And she had to maintain control because that's what kept everything moving.
33:38
And often I blamed her for things that weren't entirely for hers and they weren't fair.
33:44
And so my inconsistency...
33:47
And my lack of containment trained her nervous system to follow up and to over control and to over direct and to do all the things that I felt were disrespectful.
33:56
My lack of follow through actually showed her that she couldn't fully relax and she had to be hyper vigilant.
34:04
Her overall functioning wasn't created in a vacuum.
34:06
I mean, a lot of it was there when we got together, but I reinforced it.
34:11
I actually made it worse.
34:12
I made her hyper, hyper vigilant because of my behaviors.
34:17
Because Katie's the most important thing in the world to me.
34:20
And I know she feels the same way about me.
34:22
And so she's going to take what I do and it's going to have more weight than just about anybody in the world.
34:26
More weight than, I'm not going to say just about, more weight than anybody in the world.
34:30
And so if I'm reacting when she misses something, if I'm making her feel terrible when something happens, if I'm like stepping out of containment, I'm creating these behaviors and I created these behaviors.
34:42
I was a big part of it.
34:44
And so my understanding, how much responsibility I have, actually gave me power to change the pattern.
34:52
Actually gave me a way to step into a much better relationship, a much better understanding, and to start helping Katie release some of these over-functioning, over-during,
35:06
active behaviors because here's what I now know like from talking to Katie from understanding her better from all the work that we've done together she was exhausted by them
35:17
I'm looking at her as disrespecting and controlling me.
35:19
And what's really going on is on her side, she's feeling fatigued and challenged.
35:24
And she had an autoimmune, she had the symptoms of autoimmune coming up.
35:28
And she was feeling sick a lot of days and just crushed and couldn't feel, it felt like she could never get everything done.
35:34
And so what I want you to understand as a man, if you, like me,
35:38
have inconsistency that trained her nervous system to follow up your anger and reactions aren't going to rewire that your consistency will your trustworthiness was trustworthiness will you doing what you say you're going to do is going to change everything it's what happened for me so here's what actually changes and how you can get her to stop disrespecting you like this is
36:07
It's not dominating her like some of these books out there talk about and some men teach other men.
36:12
Holy shit.
36:14
Do not ever try and dominate your wife.
36:17
That's too much pressure on your nervous system and way too much pressure on hers.
36:21
It's not punishing her or withdrawing affection.
36:24
I've actually seen men talk to other men about that like –
36:27
Does something you don't like that you hold back like, holy crap, are you serious?
36:31
You're going to put distance in your relationship on purpose.
36:34
It's not becoming cold and withdrawing like that triggers her nervous system in a worse way.
36:39
And by the way, it sucks for you.
36:41
What a terrible solution.
36:42
Like, here's a solution to me feeling uncomfortable in my relationship.
36:45
I'm going to create a situation that's even more uncomfortable.
36:48
Are you serious?
36:49
It's not demanding respect and calling everything disrespect and turning every correction into an escalation in a fight.
36:57
Those things simply make things worse.
37:00
She's only going to have more of these behaviors if that's how you treat this.
37:04
Here's the real answer.
37:05
Here's what I discovered in my relationship.
37:08
Emotional safety and security.
37:10
When I became contained, and by the way, I'm not perfect at this.
37:14
When I say I became contained, I'm saying like 90, 95% of the time I still slip.
37:19
Maybe these days it's closer to 98% of the time, but I still slip.
37:22
I still have moments where I react.
37:24
I still have moments where I have to repair.
37:26
Progress over perfection.
37:27
There's no perfection in this martial art-like discipline called masculine containment, but you can get way better at it.
37:34
And you don't have to have as many explosions or implosions.
37:37
And so when I created emotional safety and security, when I became more consistent, when I started following through on everything I said I was going to do, you know, I have an alarm on my phone to take out the trash so I don't miss it.
37:49
I have reminders so that when I've told Katie I'm going to do something, I do it.
37:53
You know what?
37:54
Doing those things for her and becoming more disciplined with her has actually made me more disciplined everywhere.
37:59
I get more done in my whole life.
38:00
It's made me a better person.
38:02
Follow through, being honest, regulating yourself, being more reliable.
38:07
And when there is an issue, repairing fast and repairing completely and taking full responsibility and listening to what she has to say without correcting it, without justifying yourself, without having to win the argument.
38:21
That's what's going to cause this type of behavior to radically go down.
38:26
So do what you say you're going to do.
38:28
Show up when you say you're going to show up.
38:29
Stop making casual promises.
38:31
Stop saying I'll handle it without actually asking questions and finding out exactly what she wants you to do so that she can see you're actually taking her seriously.
38:41
She knows you have a plan.
38:42
She knows you understand what she wants.
38:44
And then she won't be following up with you all the time.
38:46
And then close the open loops.
38:48
Get those things done.
38:50
Stop making her nervous system carry all the details.
38:54
You know, I had a realization a few years ago.
38:57
This is another tough one to talk about because I'm so annoyed with my past self for this.
39:01
But I used to often and repeatedly say to Katie, hey, Katie, can you remind me too?
39:07
Or hey, Katie, can you remember we need to?
39:10
Or hey, Katie, can you make sure we...
39:13
Instead of me just handling something or sending a reminder in my phone or writing it down on my whiteboard or making a note in my daily planner, I'm making her carry all the logistics for our relationship.
39:25
And you know what she did?
39:26
She would say, okay, sure, I'll handle it.
39:29
I'll tell you.
39:30
So here I am wanting her nervous system to check in with me, to be more calm, to not be hypervigilant, to not have all these reactions and responses to me.
39:40
And I'm adding to it every single day by saying, hey, can you handle just one more thing?
39:48
Ask yourself, have you done that to your wife?
39:51
And the next time you catch yourself doing it, just apologize and say, hey, I got it.
39:55
Because you don't want to add more to her plate.
39:58
You don't want to increase the pressure on her.
40:01
By the way, just take care of it.
40:04
Once I started doing that, life got so much easier.
40:08
Let me share a discipline that Katie and I have created that has like really revealed a lot of this and tested a lot of this and actually made her feel a lot safer.
40:17
And it's so much fun.
40:19
It's created a ton of polarity and attraction.
40:21
Um...
40:23
There's this practical exercise we do once a week.
40:26
I plan a date with Katie.
40:27
I don't say date night because sometimes it's day dates and sometimes it's night dates.
40:32
But I plan a date and I do everything.
40:35
I choose the plan.
40:36
I make the arrangements.
40:37
I make the reservations.
40:38
I buy the tickets.
40:39
I do all that stuff.
40:40
I even pick out her clothes.
40:41
Not every time, but most of the time.
40:43
I pick out her clothes and I lay them out on her counter.
40:46
And she doesn't know what we're doing.
40:48
And I don't tell her anything, but I do everything for that date.
40:53
And honestly, at the beginning, it was a little nerve wracking because Katie's really good at logistics and I was scared that I was going to get something wrong and not be able to do it right.
41:01
In fact, Katie and I used to say we're the couple that really doesn't love date night because we tried it throughout our relationship and it didn't really work.
41:08
But when we've changed it to this where I do everything and she does nothing, it has become so much fun.
41:16
Because it's me showing myself and showing her, hey, I can take care of all the details.
41:21
I'm capable.
41:22
I was capable before I was married to her.
41:24
Then she took everything over.
41:26
And then there wasn't trust there.
41:27
And so now I'm showing her every single week.
41:30
And, uh.
41:33
we love it because it's not just about the date.
41:35
It's me practicing leadership and it's her practicing letting go and having a container where she doesn't have to manage and she doesn't have to guide and she doesn't have to do everything.
41:47
And when we first started, like the first time we did this, I'm pretty sure we went, I can't remember, maybe to a museum or something.
41:56
And the first time we went to a museum, she was actually bracing and like uptight and asking too many questions.
42:02
And I was in a place where I'm like, we're doing this on purpose to let her let go.
42:06
But man, look at how much she's holding on to.
42:08
Look how reactive she is.
42:10
Look at how she feels like she has to know everything and guide everything, even though I'm there.
42:16
And what I recognized was, hey, we have a history in our relationship where even though I'm there, she feels like she needs to double check everything and know everything and see everything and make sure that it was done.
42:28
I have to be honest.
42:29
I know I created a lot of that.
42:31
Yes, some of it came with her into the relationship.
42:35
But we'd been together long enough and she'd run things for long enough and I'd handed responsibility over to her long enough and I'd asked her for tactical help and outsourced things to her for long enough that I had to admit, hey, some of that's yours.
42:45
A lot of that's yours.
42:46
A lot of that you're responsible for.
42:49
And so as we've planned these date nights and I've taken her out, it –
42:55
has gotten more and more fun because from when we started to now, she's way more relaxed.
43:02
She actually like really leans into it and has fun with it.
43:06
She lets, she lets go of feeling vulnerable and over time, the more consistent I was, the more she felt safer to trust the experience.
43:16
And she,
43:17
You know, what I want us to understand is trust is rebuilt through repeated experiences where you create trust.
43:22
It's not just one big conversation.
43:24
It's not demanding surrender.
43:27
It's related.
43:27
It's sorry.
43:28
It's repeated experiences where she doesn't have to carry all the details and nothing falls apart.
43:34
And so these date nights have started to show her and teach her and not just the date nights, but a lot of my behaviors have shifted.
43:42
But this specific weekly discipline that you can do too has started to show her, hey, she doesn't have to check everything.
43:50
She doesn't have to carry everything.
43:51
She doesn't have to brace for impact.
43:53
She doesn't have to control me or what's going on in order to feel safe.
43:57
And she can let go and still feel safe.
44:01
This helps with all of the behaviors.
44:04
Because what I've learned is you don't create respect by demanding it.
44:08
You create respect by becoming stable enough, honest enough, consistent enough that her trust has a place to land.
44:17
And you're worthy of being trusted.
44:19
For us, weekly date night has now become way less about going on a date and more about rebuilding trust and follow through and giving Katie a place where she can just relax and she manages nothing.
44:32
And here's what I can tell you about date night.
44:36
Is that when I'm doing everything and she has a place where she can surrender, I'm in the masculine and I'm leading and guiding and using process and structure and routine.
44:47
And she's in a place where she can let go.
44:51
let go of vulnerability and lean in and relax and surrender and date night creates massive polarity and a lot of attraction and a lot of intimacy and so much fun it's been like literally one of the favorite things that we do every week for me because it's created so much progress in our relationship now
45:15
That's not to say that there aren't times and it's happened recently.
45:18
And, you know, we're human.
45:20
Not to say there's not times where Katie's over correcting or over directing or tells me what to do.
45:25
And here's what I do now.
45:26
I don't snap at her.
45:28
Um, I don't say, stop telling me what to do.
45:31
I don't turn it into a fight.
45:32
I don't escalate.
45:34
I accept the correction and just keep moving and keep doing what I'm doing.
45:37
I don't look at it through the lens of she's trying to control me.
45:40
And I certainly don't address it in the moment where she's feeling activated when she's doing this.
45:44
I now know there's some level of activation and it just happened recently, you know?
45:49
Um,
45:51
There was a day where Katie corrected me two times in rapid succession with like, not corrected me.
45:57
She corrected or directed.
45:58
I think she like told me where to park and something else where I'm like, huh, okay.
46:03
So I just like parked where she said and leaned into it.
46:07
Didn't let it bother me.
46:08
And I know she knew I was capable of those things.
46:12
I know I'm capable of those things.
46:14
And in the past, it probably would have created an escalation or I would have been upset.
46:18
I would have been holding resentment and sitting there fuming and getting frustrated with her.
46:22
I would have made it about me.
46:23
I would have defended myself.
46:25
I would have told her she was disrespecting me or told her not to do it.
46:27
But instead, I waited because...
46:32
Here's the lens I look at it through now.
46:33
Hey, two corrections in rapid succession, there might be something going on for her.
46:37
And if there's something going on for her, she doesn't need more.
46:41
She doesn't need me bringing too much energy as a solution.
46:44
She doesn't need me correcting her or telling her she's wrong.
46:48
She needs like safety and security.
46:50
She needs to be seen and heard and validated.
46:52
So I waited and I waited until those corrections and some time had passed.
46:57
And I just calmly asked like, hey Katie, is there something going on for you?
47:02
You okay?
47:03
And she was like, yeah, I'm fine.
47:04
Why would you say something's going on?
47:06
And I said, well, there was these two incidences just earlier today where you did this and you kind of corrected me in a way that you don't do anymore.
47:14
And then you told me where to park, which is something you gave up a long time ago.
47:18
You've just, you know, that's not something you do anymore.
47:21
And so I was just curious, is something going on for you?
47:24
And there was.
47:27
You know, we were in a situation where our daughter had moved out of the house and there were some challenges with her roommate and her living situation and Katie was activated around it.
47:36
And when I asked her the question, she told me about it and we talked about it.
47:39
I got to listen to her and ask her questions and have her express.
47:44
And she went from, I'm fine, I'm okay, to like, yeah, you know what, I am activated and I really appreciate you talking to me about it.
47:50
And.
47:52
No rupture, no fight, no challenges.
47:55
In fact, it created a moment of connection.
47:57
It created a moment where I was supporting her.
47:59
It created a moment of like more love, more connection, more intimacy in our relationship.
48:06
And so don't fight this symptom of her telling you where to park.
48:11
That's a symptom.
48:13
Don't fight the symptom of her correcting something you do.
48:16
Slow down and look at what's really going on in your relationship for her.
48:21
What's happening for her?
48:23
Don't make it about you.
48:24
Ask yourself, is there something that is coming up for her?
48:29
And ask her.
48:30
Not in the moment, not when she's activated.
48:32
It's going to look like a correction.
48:33
But wait and have a conversation with her that creates connection instead of rupture.
48:39
When I was reactive, instead of being contained, I fought symptoms all the time.
48:47
And today, I get curious about what's happening for her.
48:51
Now, this is important.
48:53
The discipline that men often overlook and the part of this equation that we often don't look at is that we want our wives to stop checking on us while we're still giving her reasons to check.
49:05
We want her to stop overfunctioning while she's still carrying all the load and we're underfunctioning.
49:10
We want her to trust our leadership while we're still inconsistent.
49:13
We want her to stop controlling details while we keep dropping them.
49:17
And we want her to soften.
49:20
When we're creating an environment of instability and we want respect before we rebuild trust.
49:25
So if you're reinforcing fear, if you're reinforcing hypervigilance, if you're reinforcing her belief that she has to carry everything, if you're still dropping details, leaving open loops, saying you're going to do something not doing them, and making her carry a mental load or more of the mental load, then you're reinforcing, and I would say encouraging, creating the situation for making her have the symptoms that we call disrespect.
49:55
And so, again, for me, what changed it was doing what I said I was going to do, following through, closing loops, telling the truth, repairing quickly.
50:03
All of these things change everything.
50:06
See, what I know is that I wanted Katie to stop checking on me while I was still giving her reasons to check.
50:12
And I was still dropping details.
50:14
And so, of course, she's carrying the mental load and is going to be hypervigilant.
50:18
So what I want everyone to understand is masculine containment, and I want you to understand, masculine containment is not letting her disrespect you.
50:25
It's not silently absorbing infinite corrections.
50:28
It's not collapsing or agreeing with everything.
50:30
It's not fighting every behavior as a threat.
50:33
It's not performing dominance or avoiding hard conversations.
50:37
What it is is staying regulated because regardless of what's going on, when you're regulated, you're not making the situation worse.
50:44
Even if she is disrespecting you, you exploding only makes things harder.
50:48
It only makes more challenging the relationship.
50:51
Masculine containment, when you're present and grounded and aware, it gives you the ability to discern what's actually happening, to get curious, to own your contribution, to create safety, to set boundaries when you need to.
51:03
Like if a boundary needs to be set, you can.
51:05
What I did in that conversation with Katie was setting a soft boundary.
51:09
And it's protecting the relationship from repeated conflict and leading the moment without making her the enemy.
51:21
I bring a totally different energy to the situation.
51:25
I ask myself, what could brought this up?
51:28
What's happening?
51:28
What's happening for her?
51:30
Is there something that I can do to make this easier for her?
51:32
Is there something I can do to help calm her, make her feel better and not make it about me?
51:39
Because the purpose of...
51:42
Having those conversations of pointing out what's going on is not to control her.
51:47
It's actually to protect the relationship and to understand what's happening for her and show her that she's safe.
51:53
And so let's go back to the topic of this entire conversation.
51:59
How do you get her to stop disrespecting you?
52:02
Stop interrupting every anxious or over-functioning behavior.
52:06
Sorry, stop interpreting every anxious or over-functioning behavior as disrespect.
52:11
Stop giving a reason she has to manage you.
52:13
Become consistent.
52:14
Become emotionally safe.
52:16
Get grounded.
52:17
Tell the truth.
52:18
Follow through.
52:19
Repair quickly.
52:20
Stop making her nervous system choose you over the relationship.
52:25
Stop making her nervous system chase you around the relationship.
52:28
Stop.
52:29
And so over time, here's what's happened with my wife.
52:32
She's softened.
52:34
She stopped checking on everything.
52:35
She stops bracing.
52:36
She stops correcting as much.
52:38
She starts trusting.
52:39
She lets go more.
52:40
She surrenders into your safety because she can't.
52:44
Not because you forced her to respect you, not because you are dominant of her, but because your presence is,
52:51
And who you are in the relationship has made it safe for her to relax sometimes from a lifetime of feeling unsafe and over-functioning and feeling like she has to do everything and check on everything.
53:04
So the goal is never to make her submit.
53:07
It's never for you to be dominant over her.
53:10
The goal is to help her nervous system stop bracing, stop reacting, get out of that fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, and then you're going to see a massive reduction in what we call disrespect, but are really the symptoms of her not feeling safe.
53:29
So...
53:31
If you apply these things, I think it's going to change your life and your relationship.
53:35
That's what it did for me.
53:37
I'm more grounded now.
53:38
I'm more connected to my wife now.
53:40
I understand her at a level I never did before.
53:43
And we have the marriage.
53:47
I would say we have the marriage we dreamed of.
53:49
But today we have a relationship that is so much more than I ever dreamt possible.
53:55
So I hope this meant something to you.
53:57
If it did, please make a comment.
54:01
Let us know that you enjoyed this.
54:03
Review us.
54:04
I don't put ads on this podcast because I want you to be able to listen to it uninterrupted and you helping us, sharing it with somebody helps us a ton.
54:11
And if you can think of one person to share it with right now, that would be amazing.
54:15
And if you're a man who is looking to become more contained and you want to lead your relationship, especially during conflict, to a successful resolution and know that you can do that and understand how to do that, join us.
54:27
I run an organization called the Brotherhood Society and I'd be honored to walk this path with you.
54:32
When you understand masculine containment, the most important martial art there is for men.
54:37
It will change everything in your life, give you more capacity for everything you do, help you become more successful, but most importantly, it'll give you the relationship you've always wanted.
54:47
And if you're like me, it might give you more than you ever thought you could have.
54:52
Go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com and join our wait list or jump into one of our containers.
54:57
I'd love to be able to work with you.
54:59
Thanks for being here today.