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55 - Why Her Silence Might Be Worse Than Her Anger · Masculine Containment

0:00
Maybe your wife has been bringing up the same thing for years.
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We don't spend enough time together.
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You don't listen to me.
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You're always working.
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I don't feel close to you.
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You get defensive every time I tell you how I feel.
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Something has to change.
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And eventually you start thinking, can she just please stop?
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Can we live one week without talking about the relationship?
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Can we have some peace?
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Then one day she does.
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She stops bringing things up.
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She stops asking as much from you.
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She stops starting difficult conversations.
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And you think, finally, things are getting better.
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But did the relationship actually get better?
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Or did she just stop trying to make it better?
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That's what this episode is all about.
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I want us to discuss one of the things I see over and over and over in a relationship is that when a relationship goes quiet, it may not be what we as men think.
0:52
It may actually be that there's a level of disconnection and a level of resignation and a level of her not really working towards the relationship improving anymore, right?
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The question that I ask is, what if she didn't become more peaceful?
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What if she stopped believing you were going to hear her or you were going to change or you were going to understand what she was talking about?
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So I think here's what's really important in a relationship.
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When a relationship gets quiet and it feels calmer.
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We have to look at that there's two different types of quiet.
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And I'd ask you to just take a second, get into your body, take a few breaths, especially if you have this feeling in your relationship like things have gone quiet.
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This may be a good thing because you may be in a period of or you maybe have achieved
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Connected quiet.
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And connected quiet is, I think, what we all want in our relationship.
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It's the place where I believe I am right now in my relationship.
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You fight less because you're becoming better together.
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There's more warmth, more affection, more connection, more laughter, more touch, more intimacy, more honesty, more real conversations.
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She tells you what's really happening for her.
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She is okay to disagree with you, and the two of you can talk about it.
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She still brings you difficult subjects and difficult things because she trusts that you and your relationship can hold them.
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And you're talking more honestly, not simply talking less.
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That is what I think all of us want to achieve in our relationship, this connected, peace, calm, quiet, and connection, and love, and joy.
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And so many men that I've worked with have gotten here, and they describe it as feeling peace for the first time in their lives, feeling regulation in their body, feeling connection to their partners, feeling massive attraction to their partners and excitement around their partners.
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Now, the second type of quiet, if you felt like there was a lot of noise for a long time and it goes away,
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is the one that we need to be concerned about as men.
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And it's the one that I see often blindsides men.
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And this is where you fight less, but everything else is decreasing too.
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She tells you less.
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She asks for less.
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She expects less.
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There's less connection, less fun.
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She stops asking you to come to bed.
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She stops asking you to talk.
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She handles things herself or on her own.
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She builds more emotional connection outside of you.
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She maybe makes your home feel easier, but your marriage feels flatter, kind of disconnected.
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I've had men describe this as feeling like roommates where there's not really a lot of connection, but there's also not a lot of engagement or tension or anything else.
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And so one of the key distinctions for us as men is that we don't want to measure the health of our marriage by how little we fight.
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We want to look at whether connection is increasing while conflict is decreasing.
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So the question isn't, is she quieter?
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The question is,
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What happened to the connection?
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Did it get better or is there less there?
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Because I think there's this progression that as men, maybe we miss and we don't see, but I've seen it over and over again.
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And some of the toughest conversations I have with men, especially these days, are
4:05
are men who are either in the process of exiting their relationship through a divorce or through a separation, and they're losing their relationship, or the men who have just lost their relationship.
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Because so often, what they say to me is, I didn't see it coming, and I didn't know what was going on back then, and I wish I could have seen it, I wish I could have understood it.
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And so often they say, you know, I lost the love of my life or the person that was most important to me or the person that now I really feel like I want to go back because I'm having trouble with life without her.
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And it's heartbreaking and it's difficult and it's challenging.
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I have those conversations way too often and that's why I'm recording this episode.
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Because there's this progression that is present in so many relationships that.
4:53
And I want you to just understand the steps.
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It's like, first there's protest, then there's protection, then there's resignation, then there's detachment, then there's often a decision and a separation.
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Let's talk first about the protest.
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This is the situation in a marriage that most of us as men find incredibly challenging.
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We can't stand it.
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It feels so hard.
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She complains.
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She gets emotional.
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She brings things up.
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She keeps bringing the same things up.
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She says, we need to talk.
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I don't feel close to you.
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You don't listen.
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I need more from this relationship.
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I've asked you so many times.
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I've come to you over and over again, and it can feel relentless.
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It can feel like every time you come home, you're walking into a pressure cooker, and you don't know what to do right, and you feel like you can't do anything right.
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It can feel extraordinarily challenging, but there may be something increasingly important inside the protest is that she still believes there's a reason to tell you.
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She's still trying.
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She believes you might hear her.
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She believes she's going to get through to you.
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She still has expectations of the relationship.
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And believe me, we want her to have expectations of the relationship because sometimes, you
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Sometimes when she's complaining about the relationship, it means she's still fighting for the relationship.
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And I know there's so many men who teach men out there that are saying, if your wife complains, move along.
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If she's too challenging, you don't need to be with her.
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If she's not supportive of you, then walk away.
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But I've met men who've gotten that advice and followed it, and they are in a really challenging place.
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And I think there's a better way.
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This doesn't mean every one of her complaints is fair.
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This doesn't mean she can speak to you however she wants.
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This certainly doesn't mean she can be contemptual or abusive.
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That is a place where a boundary is needed.
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It means her attempts to reach you contain information that can be valuable to you.
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And I'm gonna get to that more in just a minute.
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I wanna get through this progression of what happens.
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The second step after protest is protection.
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Protection comes when she starts realizing she's not gonna be seen, she's not gonna be heard, and it's painful for her.
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So she starts protecting herself.
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She starts choosing her battles.
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She doesn't bring up the small stuff.
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She stops explaining things.
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She stops asking you for things.
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She avoids conversations she expects are gonna be defensive or escalation or lead to a rupture.
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She becomes way more careful, more guarded.
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She still may want the relationship desperately when she's in this protective phase, but she's beginning to be careful with limiting how much she exposes herself to disappointment, to frustration, to rupture, to feeling unsafe, to feeling unheard.
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And this can actually look like an improvement from the outside.
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There are fewer fights.
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There's far less vulnerability.
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And that is the issue.
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Like no vulnerability in a relationship means you're losing connection.
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You're losing the spark in the relationship.
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You're losing the communication in the relationship.
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You're losing seeing each other in the relationship.
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And so after protection, what can often happen is that you get to a place of she goes into resignation.
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And the story inside of her might actually shift from something of like, how do I get him to understand to he's never going to understand.
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This is hopeless.
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And I get these messages on social media all the time, not just in the comments, but often in the direct messages.
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And a woman will come into my DMs and say,
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I love him, I care about him, he's my person, but I've been trying to tell him for years how I feel and I've been trying to explain what's going on and he dismisses it or explains it away or explodes and doesn't hear me and I just don't think he's going to understand and then I hear things like, this is just who he is, there's no point in bringing it up, I've already told him, I'm tired of trying, I'm exhausted from working so hard.
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And paradoxically, like this is where we get into like some contradictory feelings because when she's in this place of getting into resignation, she actually might feel easier to live with.
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There's less anger, less demand, less emotion.
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And the man may think, I think we might be doing better.
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This is one of the biggest issues in a relationship because if the relationship starts feeling easier to you because your partner has stopped expecting to get better, that's extraordinarily challenging.
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Because anger, frustration, communication, even complaints can all contain hope.
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And resignation is often the absence of hope.
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And after resignation comes this progression of detachment.
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Detachment is where a lot of men start feeling something.
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They feel she's not connected.
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She's not playful.
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There's less intimacy.
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There's less...
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time together.
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And this is where you might see she starts reorganizing her life, both emotionally and tactically.
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She doesn't need every argument resolved anymore.
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She doesn't need you to agree.
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She spends more time with friends, with children, with work, with fitness, with spirituality herself.
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I hear this a lot from men.
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You know, my wife is so busy that there's not time for me anymore.
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And I'm like, you might be in this place where she stops waiting for you.
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She makes her own plans.
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And maybe instead of asking to come to bed, she just goes to sleep.
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For you to come to bed, she just goes to sleep.
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And maybe she stops talking about your sex life.
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And she seems strangely calm.
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That's detachment in a lot of cases.
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In some cases, it's not.
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That's for you to really feel into because sometimes she seems calmer, not because she finally feels safe in the marriage.
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That is a massive win, and you would feel it if she did.
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A lot of times, she seems calmer because she's beginning to imagine herself outside of the relationship.
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Not always, sometimes.
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Okay.
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A marriage, and a lot of marriages, can begin separating emotionally long before anyone says the word divorce or moves in that direction or takes any kind of tactical appointments or calling attorneys or any of that.
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A lot of the time, it starts reorganizing within the marriage before that stuff happens.
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And the next step, the progression that often happens in marriages, is the decision.
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This is where a long emotional process for her starts becoming tactical.
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She starts researching.
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She starts talking to someone she trusts, her friends.
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She starts looking at the finances.
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She starts building a small team around her, maybe some people who are going to support her.
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She tells her family she's not happy in the marriage.
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She talks to a lawyer.
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She thinks about where she's going to live.
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Or she simply walks in one day and says, I'm done.
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And
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It's hard to say this, but I've seen it far too many times.
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So often, as men, what men have communicated to me is when she walks in and says, I'm done, I'm talking to attorneys, I'm not doing this anymore, I'm leaving, the husband experiences that moment as the beginning.
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Like, oh, we're in this process now.
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Yesterday we were married, today she wants a divorce.
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And he often says it came out of nowhere.
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I hear this dialogue from men over and over again.
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I'm recently separated.
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It came out of nowhere.
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My wife told me she wanted a divorce.
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I had no idea she was even going in that direction.
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My wife said she wants a separation and she wants me to move out with no contact.
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And I thought we were doing better.
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And she experiences this as I've been trying to tell you for years.
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I've been...
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clear with you, I've shown you, I've told you, I haven't felt seen, I haven't felt heard, I haven't felt safe, and something had to change or I couldn't do it anymore.
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You know, I went through a version of this in my marriage where...
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My wife finally sat me down and said, I don't feel seen, I don't feel hurt, I don't feel safe, and if something doesn't change, I can't do this anymore.
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I did not know we were there.
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I feel so fortunate that she wasn't in the place of actually making tactical moves and talking to an attorney or moving out or walking away.
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And I had the opportunity to create some connection on our marriage.
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And I'll tell you in a minute how I did that.
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And to create massive connection, to have the marriage of my dreams a relationship.
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And I often say the marriage or relationship of my dreams.
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But I didn't dream it could be this good.
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And I want to share with you how I got there.
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But first I want to share why men completely misread this process.
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The key here is, if your wife is still trying to get through you, if there's still tension there, if she's still trying to communicate with you, don't wait until she stops.
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Don't wait until she stops and connection goes down.
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Remember, that's the litmus test.
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Has connection gone up or has connection gone down?
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If connection goes down when she stops, there's most likely an issue in the relationship.
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And this is why as men,
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We misread this and it's not your fault.
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You know, I look back and when I finally started understanding what was going on for Katie and my relationship, I felt shame and frustration and I judged myself just this morning.
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I had a guy reach out to me through Instagram that found my podcast yesterday and this podcast.
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And he said he found it and he listened to it for eight hours straight and that it really helped him and it helped him process.
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And he told me sometimes he looks back in horror at his relationship and judges himself and feels shame.
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And what I remind myself and what I want you to remind yourself is we're doing the best we can up until the point where we understand we can do something better and hopefully we
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This information I'm sharing with you is that opportunity to see that we can do something better.
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Because, let's be real, we misread this process because her protest feels like pressure.
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Her emotions feel like a threat.
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Her disappointment feels like judgment.
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Her feedback can sound like you're failing, you're not enough, you're not doing it right, you're a bad husband.
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I felt those things.
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You know, I felt those things.
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I felt like I was failing even though I was trying as hard as I possibly could.
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Oftentimes I felt like I was walking on eggshells and trying to do everything right, but I couldn't.
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Even though Katie never said those things, she never said you're failing, you're not enough, you're a bad husband, but I heard it that way.
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And I would explain and defend and try and fix it and withdraw or go cold or get angry and bring way too much energy to the situation.
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I would tell her she was overreacting.
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All of those things and I would say, why are we doing this right now?
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Can we please not do this again?
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10 minutes ago, everything was okay.
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Why are we in this situation again?
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And for so many men, here's what happens.
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Eventually, she stops.
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And your body might feel some relief.
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Your nervous system might feel some relief.
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It might actually feel better.
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But this is a trap because
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You get exactly what you and your feelings and your understanding of the world have been asking for, but you lose exactly what your heart really wants.
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You wanted the pressure to stop, but you didn't want her to stop reaching for you.
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Those are two completely different things.
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And like I said, I've been through this personally.
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I've experienced these feelings personally.
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I've been in the place where I felt judged and where I felt like I was a disappointment and where I felt like I was being disrespected and all of those things.
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But what I learned was that those communications were a signal.
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It was her nervous system communicating information to me.
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You know, looking back, I don't think I was one conversation away from losing my marriage.
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I was in a fortunate position.
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But I think I'd been, and I know, not think, I know I had been receiving information about what was wrong for Katie for years.
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And I didn't understand how serious it was.
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And I didn't know how to hear it.
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And I didn't know how to see it.
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And I didn't know how to make her feel seen and heard and safe.
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And that's what I wanna share with you.
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Because if you're in the situation where she used to care about everything, now she doesn't, this is really important.
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If she used to complain that you didn't go out, don't go out enough, and now she doesn't really care and makes plans with friends.
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She used to insist that you talk and now she really doesn't ask.
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And she used to ask you where you are and now she doesn't really care.
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And she used to want to fix your sex life and now she barely mentions it and doesn't seem interested.
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You know, for a lot of men, it's like she stopped controlling me.
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She stopped disrespecting me.
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She stopped insulting me.
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She stopped telling me that everything was wrong and it might feel good, might feel better than where you were.
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But what we really need to understand is, did she stop trying to control you or communicate with you or give you information or disrespect you?
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Or did she just stop expecting anything from you?
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I don't want to assume the answer for you.
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You need to feel into this for yourself.
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Because one of the biggest mistakes men make is that a man is
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is often measuring the health of his marriage by how little his wife bothers him about it.
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Because quiet can mean peace.
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But quiet can also mean I've given up trying to get through to you.
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And I don't feel like it's ever going to happen.
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And we might not discover that difference until much later.
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So I want you to know something.
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If you're in a relationship where...
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you're not feeling the connection and it feels more peaceful.
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But now that you're listening to this, you're thinking she really doesn't reach for me and she doesn't really communicate.
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And yeah, there's less connection.
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There's less fun.
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There's less playfulness.
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There's less intimacy.
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Don't panic and try and fix everything all at once and right away.
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That's the most important advice I can give you because if you panic and try and change everything, as men, when we collapse into a void we find in our relationship, we create massive pressure on the feminine.
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We create massive pressure on her by trying to do it all once and right away and fix it all because so many men in this situation, and I've heard the stories, I've
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Been one-on-one.
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I've heard him in our group, in the brotherhood.
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I've heard so many men on calls say that they immediately want to fix it, and they want to make it better.
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So they start asking things like, do you still love me?
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Are you going to leave me?
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Are we okay?
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Hey, can we go have sex?
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Can we be intimate?
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I want to be with you.
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You know, they're buying flowers and trying to expect that she's going to reset.
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They make giant promises of becoming a different man tomorrow.
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I want you to just be careful with those.
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Don't force her to reassure you because your fear becomes another thing that she has to manage.
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You cannot pressure someone back into vulnerability.
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I want to say that again.
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You can't pressure someone back into vulnerability.
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Because you don't get her to start reaching for you again by demanding that she reach for you.
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And here's the key.
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This is what I did.
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This is what I didn't understand.
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It took me far, far, far too long to figure out.
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And I don't want that to happen to you.
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You don't get her to reach for you by demanding that she does.
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You actually become safer for her to reach for.
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And you change things.
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You changed the trajectory of our marriage, or sorry, your marriage.
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I changed the trajectory of our marriage, not with grand gestures, not with doing everything all at once and right away, not with planning elaborate dates, not with buying her flowers, not with buying her jewelry, not with doing any of those things.
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It was repeated new experiences with her over and over and over again that eventually created emotional safety and security and brought back the vulnerability, brought back the communication,
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understanding her and her understanding me and sometimes brought back some difficult conversations, a lot of difficult conversations at the beginning.
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But over time, the noise went down and the connection went through the roof.
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I'm more connected, more intimate, more attracted to, more excited about, more thrilled to be with my wife today after 22 years together than I've been in the entire history of our relationship.
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And here's what I would suggest you do.
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When she says something difficult, you listen.
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When your body gets defensive, you breathe.
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You slow things down.
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Slow is fast and fast is slow.
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You don't have to react to every trigger.
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When she disagrees with you, don't punish the disagreement.
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Seek to understand, ask questions, and understand where she's coming from.
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When you say you'll do something, follow through.
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This was a big one for me.
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It's kind of embarrassing to admit how many times Katie would say, hey, will you do this thing?
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And I would say, yeah.
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And honestly, if I'm like integral with myself right now, I would almost immediately forget about it because I had so many important things going on and it wasn't.
22:26
something that felt important in the moment.
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And I would think to myself, I'll do that later.
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And then I'd forget.
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And she'd end up having to ask me over and over again.
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I mean, it just creates this feeling of she doesn't feel seen.
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She doesn't feel hurt.
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She doesn't feel safe.
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Stop making emotions proof that you are a bad person.
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Like, let her have her emotions.
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When the conversation becomes uncomfortable, stay with her and understand her emotions are not a threat.
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Give the relationship attention before you have the emergency because she doesn't need another promise that the relationship matters.
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What she most likely needs is to experience that it matters, to feel like it matters, to understand that it matters because she feels it in her body, in her nervous system.
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She feels you with her.
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In the highest expression of masculine presence, or sorry, in the highest expression of masculinity, which is presence, it's being present, it's staying, it's leading with curiosity, it's not overriding her feelings or telling her she's wrong or giving her logical reasons why she needs to change things.
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Your commitment to the marriage and bringing her energy back into the marriage means giving the relationship
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believable new experiences over and over again.
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Now there's a practice that I have with my wife that I wanna share with you.
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It's one of the practices we train in the brotherhood.
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And it might sound a little weird at first.
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I call it the daily ceremony.
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And what a daily ceremony is for me and Katie, we still do this every day.
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We've done it every day since December 26, 2024.
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It's been a long time.
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of sitting down in a face-to-face interaction together, which is purposeful.
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It's a reason, or sorry, it's a place for her to tell you what's going on.
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It's a safe place for her, but it's also a safe place for you because you know you're going to have an interaction and you can prepare for it.
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You can walk, you can drink water, you can get in your body, you can calm yourself down before you get into this daily ceremony.
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And we do this every day.
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Not because the relationship is in crisis every day.
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Not because Katie has somehow earned it.
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Not because there was a disagreement or even an agreement or an argument.
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But because my relationship matters.
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I used to be an entrepreneur with a pretty big team in a company and I realized I met every day with members of my team, but I didn't meet every day with my wife.
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And when I look back now, my wife is infinitely more important than the people that I used to meet with every day, so I do this daily.
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Every day there's a space where she can tell me what's going on for her.
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I listen.
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I stay curious.
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I breathe.
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I feel my feelings.
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I don't weaponize them.
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I don't overreact.
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I stay in the moment.
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I don't fix or explain or overpower.
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I don't disappear.
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I let her tell me what she needs to tell me because I don't want my wife ever to have to become louder and louder again before I pay attention.
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I don't want a problem to have to become an emergency before my relationship gets my full attention.
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I wanna know what's going on for her every single day.
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And since we've started doing this, I can tell you our relationship is in a place that is, to say that it's transformed is like not enough.
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It has transmuted and grown into the most important thing in my life.
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And
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having this connection with Katie and knowing that I have a relationship that is securely bonded and I have somebody who understands me, who knows me, who's telling me everything.
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There's no secrets between us.
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There's the massive level of vulnerability between us.
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You know, because in daily ceremony, after a time where she shared with me what was going on and I learned that her emotions were safe and I could feel that in my body and I stopped reacting, I was able to communicate with her what was going on for me and I am able to communicate with her what's going on for me.
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If there's a place I'm frustrated or there's a boundary needed or a place where I feel like we need to talk, I can do that from a contained place, from a grounded place, from a place of presence.
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And I often tell men, if you do the work first to see and hear her in daily ceremony so she can communicate to you, once she's regulated, once she's communicated, once she's been able to do that, then you will be able to be seen and heard and validated in a way you never have before.
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If you haven't yet, you might want to listen to the interview podcast I did with Mac McKay.
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He went through exactly this, and his relationship has done a complete 180, literally from dead bedroom feeling like roommates to connection and intimacy and fun and playfulness.
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And so this practice could change your life.
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Now, if you're here at this point and you're thinking to yourself, yeah, my relationship has become a bit quieter,
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I wonder if it's okay.
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I want you to like go through a bit of a analysis or an assessment.
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Ask yourself, you know, are we fighting less and connecting more?
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Is there more warmth, more affection, more laughter, more communication, more touch, more sexual connection?
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Does she bring up difficult things with you?
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Does she reach for you?
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Do you reach for her?
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Are you curious about each other?
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Does she seem more open around you or more guarded?
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When something significant happens, are you still the person she comes to to tell?
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Or has she stopped asking you for things she used to care deeply about?
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This is the analysis we have to go through.
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Because if you're in that place of more connection and more safety and more vulnerability, then you are moving in the right direction.
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And congratulations, brother.
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It's not easy.
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But if you're in that place where there's less connection, less vulnerability, she's reaching for you less, you're reaching for her less, it's a time to get real and be honest with yourself and step into integrity and say, is this relationship important to me?
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And start moving towards her in a way that she feels safe.
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Because one of the most important questions you can ask yourself in this situation is, what did my wife used to ask me for that she stopped asking me for?
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And then really think about it.
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What was it for you?
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Was it time?
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Was it affection?
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Was it sex?
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Was it attention?
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Was it conversation?
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Was it dates?
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Was it help with things around the house?
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Was it presence or follow through?
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What was it?
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And then ask yourself, did she stop giving it to me because I finally gave it to her?
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Or did she stop believing that I would ever give it to her?
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This is important.
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And...
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This isn't to scare you.
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You know, less conflict can absolutely mean the relationship is getting better.
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People mature.
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Life stages change.
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Stress in our lives can go down.
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A partner can become more independent in super healthy ways.
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Not every quiet marriage is emotionally disconnected.
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Some of the most successful marriages I know are extraordinarily quiet when it comes to these things.
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I know mine is.
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So do not diagnose your marriage from one symptom.
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Look at everything.
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Look at the whole relationship.
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Take a minute and really sit with it.
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And the question isn't whether she's quiet.
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The question is what happened to the connection?
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Did it go up or go down?
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So again, if she's already attached, understand there's hope.
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There's no promises of what will happen, but there's hope.
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Don't expect a couple weeks of you moving in a different direction to change years of her experience.
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Don't ask for credit.
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Don't say, see, I changed.
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Why aren't you responding?
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That attention-seeking behavior, that's coming from your inner child, and you stepping into your inner child makes her get into a maternal place, and that's going to kill connection and kill polarity, kill attraction.
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It's also going to make her feel even less safe.
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So instead...
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Don't turn masculine containment into a transaction.
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Don't say, I'm doing this, so she needs to do this.
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Change because you want to become that man.
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Change because you want to be the calmest man in the room.
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Change because you want to see her, hear her, understand her in a real way so that you can lead in your relationship regardless of what happens and move it to a successful conclusion.
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Stay consistent.
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Let her experience her.
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Respect her agency.
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She might reconnect, she might not, and that matters because masculine containment and stepping into the strategy of being present is not a manipulation strategy for making a woman stay or change or shift or become something else.
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It's for us as men to actually become grounded enough to show up with integrity regardless of what the outcome is.
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You can change how you show up.
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You cannot control how quickly someone else trusts what they experience in you.
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So in closing, if fighting for your relationship has gone down, I hope it's because you become safer with each other.
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And that is an absolute possibility.
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I hope there's more affection and more fun, more intimacy, more laughter, more vulnerability.
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But if the fighting has disappeared and affection has disappeared with it, if the questions stopped, the reaching stopped, the sex stopped, and the belief that things could get better has disappeared,
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Don't confuse those two.
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Sometimes her complaints are not evidence the relationship is failing.
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They may be evidence that she believes the relationship is worth fighting for and lean into that.
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The goal isn't to make her stop bringing you problems.
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The goal is being the man she trusts enough to bring you the truth every time over and over again.
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And then becoming the man that can hear that truth.
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that can breathe, that can stay present without getting activated with feeling your feelings, not suppressing, not repressing, not shoving things down, but understanding what's going on, understanding what's going on for you, feeling your feelings fully so that you can move through them and be present in your relationship.
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Because if you achieve this in your relationship presence and being able to stop being triggered and stop reacting, it will change everywhere in your life.
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This is what we train in the brotherhood.
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This martial art-like discipline called masculine containment.
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It's not how to stop your wife from having her feelings.
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It's not how to win an argument.
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It's not how to dominate.
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It's not how to get her to submit.
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It's not how to control things.
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It's how to hear something difficult without exploding, without weaponizing it, without withdrawing, without disappearing, without trying to fix it.
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And...
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It's about using your relationship as the initiation to become the best version of yourself you ever could and then having your relationship as the foundation for the confidence you walk out into the world with.
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It will change everything in your life.
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If you're interested in understanding more about this discipline, please.
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Go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com, register for our list.
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I would love to meet you personally and walk this path with you.
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Masculine containment has changed my life, my relationship, and everything in my world for the better, and I'd be honored to share it with you.
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Thanks so much for being here today.
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Take a minute right now and think, is there a man you could share this with?
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Is there someone that needs to hear this?
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And please, subscribe and leave me a comment.
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I read every one of them personally.
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Again, thebrotherhoodsociety.com for more information.