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10 - When Will She Do Her Work · Masculine Containment

• 0:01
  When I share the concept of masculine containment with men, the question I get most often is, when is she going to have to do work as well?
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  What is her work?
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  What does she have to do?
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  Well, she definitely has work and she will do it.
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  Let me explain to you exactly what I mean.
• 0:16
  First, let's quickly understand the concept of masculine containment.
• 0:20
  In most relationships, there's a pattern of trigger, escalation, rupture and damage being done, then a withdrawal period where we try to cool off and then we come back and repair.
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  Well, here's the challenge with that pattern.
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  As a man, we're actually built for conflict.
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  We escalate quickly, neutralize threat and come right back down to baseline.
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  For women, it's not the same.
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  Women are built for safety and preservation.
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  This is evolutionary biology.
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  When a woman experiences any type of conflict, her body takes a lot longer to return to baseline.
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  And in the conflict itself, because we represent an actual threat to her and she does not represent a real physical threat to us, her nervous system is registering us as a threat over and over again.
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  Well, masculine containment is us understanding this and doing the work so that we can regulate and calm down and stay present and contain ourselves.
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  And so when there is a trigger, we don't allow it to escalate.
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  When we see a trigger in our relationship.
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  We get curious.
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  We start asking questions.
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  We lead with curiosity over judgment.
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  We want to understand what's actually going on for her.
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  And as we inquire and understand, she might escalate further and then she'll start calming down and start being able to express herself and feel vulnerable.
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  And we can prove to ourselves that her emotions are not a threat.
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  And not only are they not a threat, they're beautiful.
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  They're her letting us into her inner world.
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  They're her showing us what's really going on for her.
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  Now, a lot of men hear this and they say, well, it sounds like I'm going to have to do a lot of work to hold containment.
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  When does she do her work?
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  Well, let me explain both of our work.
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  So first, if we go back to the scenario where there's a conflict between us and her, we're going to have a conflict between us and her.
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  What we know is that in reality, we represent a physical threat to her, an actual, real, physical, mortal threat to her.
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  Now, you might not ever feel like you're going to actually touch her or do anything to her.
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  Most of us don't.
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  And she might believe that you're not going to do those things ever.
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  But this is not at the conscious level.
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  This is at a nervous system level.
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  We are the bigger nervous system or the bigger person in the room.
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  We're more physically capable.
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  We're typically more strong.
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  We're more capable of violence.
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  And so we actually register in her nervous system as a real threat.
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  And when this happens, that conflict, if it continues, she's going to have less and less time, less and less return to baseline in between conflicts to the point where she's just in a fight, flight, fawn, or freeze all of the time.
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  Now here's how we figure out where both of us do our work.
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  So for us as men, when there's a trigger and an escalation, we need to stop it by asking questions, by regulating ourselves, by calming ourselves down because there is no threat in the room.
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  There is no real threat to us.
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  We have to let that register that anything we're reacting to is not a real threat.
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  So we should be able to calm down.
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  We should be able to see her not as a threat.
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  And if we can't, that's our work.
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  You know, that's the wounding we have as children.
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  That is the trauma that we've experienced.
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  That's the attachment issues that we have.
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  Those are not things that we should wear as a badge of honor.
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  Those are things that we should create awareness around and then go resolve.
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  Work with an EMDR therapist.
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  Spend time in neutral.
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  Go for a walk with no electronics and clear your mind.
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  And build your capacity so that when there is a trigger, you have the capacity to stay in the room, to stay present, to stay right there, to know that you're not under threat.
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  And if you can't or something comes up, that is where you should do work.
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  Now for her, when you're holding containment,
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  when you calm down, when you are present and grounded and leading with curiosity, and she is not registering a threat any longer, you can create emotional safety and security for her.
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  You can actually create stability for her.
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  You can let her be seen, heard, and feel safe and less vulnerable.
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  Now, here's where her work is.
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  Once you're creating that contained space and once you've done it for a while and you've listened to her and you understand her and she tells you where she feels vulnerable, now this might take a while.
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  Most women have never felt emotional safety and security in their lives.
• 4:28
  When you hold containment over and over again, you're going to hear about her history.
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  You're going to hear about how she's feeling.
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  You're going to hear about what happened that day.
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  You're going to hear how she feels and where she feels vulnerable.
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  And eventually, the longer you hold containment, you might start seeing the same issues come up over and over again.
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  The same triggers, the same patterns, the same frustrations.
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  She might have trouble holding boundaries.
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  She might have challenges with somebody at work.
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  She might have challenges with when something happens in her life, it creates this repeated trigger.
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  And when we see that triggered over and over again, and we don't have this pattern in our relationship of actually creating unsafety for her,
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  Those things that come up in a safe space, that's her work.
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  See, we're already in a safe space.
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  So what comes up for us, that's where we go do work.
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  But once we've created emotional safety and security for her, once we're no longer causing escalation and rupture, anything that's coming up is potentially her work.
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  And she can go work on that.
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  I've been holding masculine containment every day for my wife in a sit-down formal ceremony where,
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  where we talk and understand each other better.
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  And I hold containment for anything that's bothering her so I can understand her.
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  And I've been doing this since December 26, 2023.
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  And in that time, I've learned so much about her.
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  I've learned her vulnerabilities.
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  I've learned what's happened in her life.
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  I've learned how she feels.
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  I've learned where she feels fear.
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  And I've learned so much about myself.
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  I've learned the triggers I have and the childhood trauma that keeps coming up.
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  I've learned where I'm leaking and losing capacity by not processing the things that are bothering me.
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  And, you know, I often tell entrepreneurs, I used to be a coach for six and seven figure, well, for seven and eight figure entrepreneurs, sometimes six, mostly seven and eight figure entrepreneurs.
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  And I used to tell them, the calmest nervous system in the room always wins.
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  Because when you're the calmest and the most regulated, you see the opportunities in the room.
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  You understand what's going on.
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  You allow intuition and inspiration to come to you because you're not moving so fast and so frenetic that you run right by it.
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  Calm is a superpower.
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  Presence is a superpower.
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  Masculine containment is a superpower.
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  Now on that same token, for her, if she's still dysregulated and still feeling things and still has things coming up, same thing for her.
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  That's where she can go do the work.
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  That's where she can dig in.
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  That's where she can get EMDR therapy or spend time in neutral or go for a walk and understand what's happening for her.
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  And so, so often what men tell me is, I want her to do the work first.
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  Well, let me tell you what happens.
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  If you're in the situation of trigger, escalation, rupture, withdraw, and then repair where everything's fine, if she doesn't does work, chances are it's going to be about you.
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  It's going to be about the lack of safety that she's feeling.
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  It's going to be about the conflict that she's experiencing.
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  It's going to be about the fear that she has.
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  It's going to be about her dysregulation.
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  And some of the most heartbreaking messages that I get from both men and women.
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  I get these all the time.
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  I get thousands of comments on social media every month.
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  And hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands of direct messages.
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  And...
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  When you look at those messages and when I look at them in a composite, I get messages from men that say something like, you know, I wish I knew this 10 years ago because I was in this situation and my wife went and got therapy.
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  And what she realized was I was the problem and I didn't understand how to change it and I lost the love of my life.
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  Whenever a man sends me a message like that, I don't just read it, I feel it.
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  It makes me so determined to share this information with as many people as I can because I don't think those relationships really have to end.
• 8:13
  I think it's our conditioning and our patterns and our belief that this is normal and it's okay to have these continued conflicts that move into rupture and into withdraw and then some type of repair.
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  We're trained, we're conditioned that that's just how it should be.
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  But when we change things, it changes everything.
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  See, on the other side, when we contain ourselves and we show her emotional safety and security...
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  It gives her a chance to be vulnerable and a chance to be present and a chance to get the things in her body that are causing chaos out.
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  Because here's the message I get from women.
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  And it's a composite.
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  This is a summary of a bunch of Debra messages.
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  But it's something like, Alex, I love him more than anything.
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  And he was the most important person in my life.
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  And he was my person.
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  But my body kept telling me I wasn't safe.
• 9:01
  And I went and got therapy.
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  And my therapist told me I had to talk to him about this issue.
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  And so I tried to, but he didn't hear me.
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  And I tried to explain how I felt, and he kept telling me I needed to do work.
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  And I tried to explain what was going on for me, but it just didn't get through.
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  So I had to make the hardest decision of my life and leave him.
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  When I get messages like that, I feel so deeply grateful for the day that my wife gave me a reckoning.
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  A reckoning changes everything.
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  It's like hits the reset on your life, and I remember it vividly.
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  We were in a quiet moment and we were talking about our relationship.
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  And she said, Alex, I don't feel heard.
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  I don't feel seen.
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  I don't feel safe.
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  And if something doesn't change, I can't do this anymore.
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  And it ignited an obsession in me like nothing I've ever felt because I thought we were doing fine.
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  I thought things were getting better.
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  And here I find out she's towards the end of her rope.
• 10:00
  And at that point when she told me, I knew she wasn't leaving.
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  I knew she was giving me an opportunity.
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  I knew she was giving me a calling to do something different.
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  And what I now know is that Katie saying those things to me
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  was the most important initiation I've ever gone through in my life.
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  As men, we need an initiation.
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  We need a place where we can put our energy and have an understanding of what work we need to do so that we can do better, so that we can become the man we've always been, so we can reveal to ourselves who we are.
• 10:31
  And practicing masculine containment with my wife and hearing her and seeing her and processing what I needed to process so that I could do that changed everything.
• 10:41
  It made me who I am today, and it gave me the strength and courage to lead an organization like the Brotherhood Society to be able to share this information with other men so that they can change their lives, so that they can improve their relationships, so that they can solidify the strength and the bonds within their family.
• 10:56
  And so they can have the capacity to go out and do whatever it is they want to do.
• 11:02
  When you understand that you should do your work and then you reveal hers and you both work on this together, you will create a relationship that will create stability, that will be the foundation of everything you do, that will create confidence and capacity in your life and change everything.
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  I'm new at this.
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  If this landed for you, do me a favor.
• 11:26
  Make a comment or subscribe.
• 11:28
  I'd love to hear from you, and I appreciate you watching this video.
• 11:31
  Thanks for listening.
• 11:32
  If you're ready to learn more about masculine containment so that you can have more capacity, show a present grounded and aware, be the calmest man in the room who always wins, go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com.
• 11:43
  The Brotherhood is an international organization of men and a society where we learn masculine containment
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  so that we can be better at everything we do, and I'd be honored to walk this path with you.
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  I'll see you there.