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25 - Powerful Women Are Not the Problem · Masculine Containment

• 0:01
  Since I've gotten into the relationship space, I often feel like I'm swimming upstream against what so many other people are saying and what so many other people believe is truth.
• 0:12
  And honestly, it's been like that for a lot of my life.
• 0:15
  Even when I was a business coach, I felt the same way.
• 0:17
  And today's episode is no different.
• 0:19
  Today I want to discuss why powerful women, why women who make more money, why women who are successful and fully expressed are not the problem when it comes to relationships.
• 0:31
  And I'll give you the origin of this.
• 0:33
  So there's this unwritten rule or this belief in the relationship space that if a woman makes more money than a man, then there won't be polarity in the relationship.
• 0:45
  That it's going to affect attraction in the relationship.
• 0:47
  That the woman's going to be too far into her masculine and that'll put the man in his feminine.
• 0:52
  And then they won't want to have sex.
• 0:53
  They won't be intimate.
• 0:54
  And it'll throw the relationship off.
• 0:57
  In fact, this is such an ingrained belief that during my sabbatical, Katie and I, during our sabbatical, Katie and I took a lot of different relationship classes.
• 1:09
  And I was in one relationship class with a really well-known sex, intimacy, and relationship influencer, a woman, who runs a company where, I mean, it's a several million dollar a year company from the outside looking in.
• 1:24
  And she works with hundreds and hundreds of people at a time in her programs.
• 1:29
  And I was on one of her calls and she did Q&As every week.
• 1:33
  And there was a question from a guy.
• 1:36
  He said, you know, he started talking about his relationship and he said his wife made more money than him.
• 1:42
  How did he protect the polarity in the relationship?
• 1:44
  And her answer was almost immediate and it was stated as fact.
• 1:49
  And it was...
• 1:51
  somewhat aggressive and she said well you need to hurry up and make more money or you're gonna have big challenges and polarity in your relationship so it was like an on-off switch if she makes more money then you are going to have challenges with polarity and just so that I explain what polarity is polarity is
• 2:09
  attraction.
• 2:09
  So if you think of magnets, magnets, when they're, when they are turned towards each other, they attract when they're opposite each other, they, they push away.
• 2:18
  And so polarity is the attraction in a relationship.
• 2:22
  When a man is in his masculine and a woman in his, is in her feminine, it's believed that, and by the way, I believe this, that they are going to be more attracted to each other.
• 2:31
  And there's this belief in the, again, the relationship space that if a woman is making money, it somehow makes her masculine and she's not going.
• 2:38
  And then if she makes more money than the man, they're not going to have attraction.
• 2:42
  And this woman reinforced the belief.
• 2:45
  And I remember watching the guy's face and there was this look of panic and distress and frustration.
• 2:52
  And I remember thinking like, this just doesn't sit right.
• 2:55
  Like it doesn't sit right with me.
• 2:56
  And it was so frustrating for me.
• 2:58
  And so I kind of went on a quest to disprove this.
• 3:01
  And here's why.
• 3:03
  I think that money is only one type of energy.
• 3:10
  And if what we're saying is that this outside energy with the world, this money that we make, either the woman makes it or the man makes it, affects the relationship in a way that if the woman makes more money, it's not going to work.
• 3:23
  I just don't believe that.
• 3:24
  My personal experience doesn't allow me to believe that.
• 3:27
  You know, I've been a business coach for a long time.
• 3:29
  Before I started doing this work, I was a business coach and I worked with a lot of couples and I worked
• 3:35
  female CEOs, like women CEOs who were running substantial companies.
• 3:40
  And over and over again, I saw women who were making a ton of money.
• 3:44
  Their partners were not making as much money, but they had extraordinary relationships.
• 3:48
  I remember one woman we worked with who, while she worked with us, her business went from one or two million to I think 13 million.
• 3:55
  It just took off and she got a lot of attention and the business growth was spectacular and
• 4:01
  And her husband, I'm pretty sure was a stay-at-home husband and he took care of their house and their kids.
• 4:06
  I think they had three or four kids and...
• 4:10
  She was on stage one time and somebody asked her, like, what do you attribute to your success to?
• 4:14
  And she said a bunch of things.
• 4:15
  And then towards the end of her statement, she said, you know, but probably what's most important is my husband.
• 4:21
  He is my support system.
• 4:23
  He's my everything.
• 4:24
  He sees me.
• 4:25
  He hears me when I'm having a bad day.
• 4:27
  If I go to him, everything gets better.
• 4:28
  And, and like, I saw that more than once.
• 4:32
  Now I definitely saw relationships where women were making more money than men and the relationship wasn't working out.
• 4:38
  But I saw tons of relationships where men were making more money than the women and it didn't work out.
• 4:44
  And here's why I believe this happened and why I think this belief is totally broken.
• 4:50
  It's like I said, money is only one type of energy.
• 4:53
  It's outside energy with the world.
• 4:55
  If you really look at money, it's energy.
• 4:57
  It's energy that I can exchange with you for energy back.
• 5:00
  So I can give you this energy for a product or for coaching or for a service or for whatever I need in my life.
• 5:07
  I can exchange it with you.
• 5:09
  And so it's really energetic and energy inside a relationship is so much more important than the energy outside the relationship.
• 5:17
  And this is my undying belief in what's happened in my relationship and what I've seen in other relationships, because here's the issue with this belief system that's,
• 5:26
  That if a woman makes more money, it doesn't work and it's just not going to work.
• 5:31
  We create this hierarchy where we see money as a potential threat or an enemy.
• 5:38
  So you're in a relationship and there's a man and a woman and they both own businesses.
• 5:42
  Does that mean like if the woman's business gets bigger, then there's not going to be polarity.
• 5:46
  It's going to kill their attraction.
• 5:48
  It's going to kill their relationship.
• 5:50
  If you're in this situation as a man or a woman, like what we never want to do is create a situation with money where we are pushing it away, where we're saying, hey, I don't want money.
• 6:01
  I don't want money coming into my life.
• 6:02
  We don't ever want to create a situation where we create competition around money.
• 6:07
  It's like, oh, she might make more money than me, so I need to hurry up and compete with this because then you're competing with your spouse.
• 6:12
  You're competing with the person who's most important to you in the world.
• 6:15
  In fact, recently, I'll share another story with you.
• 6:19
  I was talking to a friend of mine who is one of the most talented entrepreneurs I've ever worked with, period.
• 6:24
  And notice I didn't say women entrepreneurs.
• 6:27
  She's just one of the most talented people I've ever worked with.
• 6:30
  She's an extraordinary coach, like has changed my life, has changed my wife's life, has changed friends of mine's lives.
• 6:38
  She's just amazing.
• 6:39
  She has a level of mastery unlike anything I've ever seen.
• 6:43
  And we were in an intimate conversation, me, Katie, her, and she said something that just stood out to me.
• 6:51
  She said, you know, one of the reasons her business has stayed small, she believes, is that she has a fear that if she makes more money than her husband, it's going to kill their marriage and it's going to kill their relationship.
• 7:02
  And I immediately said, like, I just don't believe that.
• 7:06
  Because here's one of the most extraordinary entrepreneurs there is and one of the most extraordinary people I've ever met.
• 7:12
  And I want to see her go out and make the biggest contribution she can.
• 7:16
  I want her to go affect as many people as she possibly can.
• 7:20
  And here she is with this belief that's been implanted by so many people in the relationship space that if you make money, everything's going to fall apart.
• 7:29
  And we get to this place, literally, she's pushing money away.
• 7:31
  She's afraid to make more money, which also means she's afraid to make a bigger contribution.
• 7:35
  She's afraid to affect more people.
• 7:38
  She's afraid to help more people, which just kills me because I want to see her do all of those things.
• 7:47
  And she's
• 7:49
  What happens here is what it creates is this belief system that the way for men to become better in a relationship is for women to not fully express themselves.
• 8:02
  Or the way for men to become better is for women to become less.
• 8:07
  And that drives me nuts because –
• 8:12
  A fully expressed woman, a woman who's in her expression, a woman who's doing what she's passionate about and excited about and out there making a difference and making a change.
• 8:19
  And by the way, this can be being a mom.
• 8:22
  This can be running a business.
• 8:25
  This can be in a job.
• 8:26
  This can be doing charity work, whatever she wants to do.
• 8:30
  I mean performing.
• 8:31
  Yeah.
• 8:32
  You know, when I look at someone who's like one of the most extraordinary performers in the history of the world, Oprah Winfrey, when she's in her full expression, the entire world lines up to listen.
• 8:42
  She is extraordinary.
• 8:43
  She's been one of my entrepreneurial heroes forever.
• 8:46
  Do we want her being less because she's afraid of losing a relationship?
• 8:50
  In fact, she's been with the same person forever.
• 8:52
  I think his name is Stedman Graham.
• 8:54
  And when you hear her talk about him, she says, he sees me, he hears me, he's my safe place.
• 8:58
  Like we don't need to have her be less so that she can be in a relationship.
• 9:03
  It just doesn't make sense.
• 9:05
  And what we hear and what I hear a lot in the relationship space is that women need to be more quiet.
• 9:12
  They need to soften.
• 9:13
  They need to suppress their ambition, their intelligence, their creativity, their leadership, their purpose.
• 9:18
  So men can feel more comfortable.
• 9:21
  Does this sound right to you?
• 9:24
  I feel like this is like old thinking.
• 9:26
  I feel like this is broken thinking.
• 9:27
  I feel like this is thinking that is actually, to be honest with you, quite lazy.
• 9:32
  It's like, here's what everybody else has said forever, or here's this belief in the relationship space.
• 9:38
  So I'm going to adopt it rather than push against it, rather than see if there's another way around this, rather than see if there's a way that makes sense.
• 9:46
  that this isn't true.
• 9:48
  And I've obsessed about that because if a woman needs to be less for polarity to be possible,
• 9:56
  I think we've got a major issue.
• 9:58
  I think we've got a major problem.
• 9:59
  And what we're saying is we don't want women to go out and change the world and make a contribution.
• 10:03
  And I can tell you, I was raised by a strong woman.
• 10:06
  I'm married to an incredibly strong woman.
• 10:08
  Like I would not want to see my mom do less than she did because she was afraid of making more money than my dad, which she did at one point.
• 10:17
  And I would not want to see Katie do less than what she's capable of.
• 10:21
  And in her full expression, which by the way,
• 10:24
  seeing my wife and her full expression is one of the most exciting and, and like, it's the biggest turn on.
• 10:30
  And I love watching her speak and influence people and change people's lives.
• 10:34
  She's capable of all of those things.
• 10:35
  I certainly wouldn't want her suppressing those so that I could feel more comfortable in the relationship.
• 10:42
  It just doesn't make sense.
• 10:44
  Now, I don't want this misinterpreted.
• 10:46
  Like I think sweetness can be beautiful and softness can be beautiful and accountability can be beautiful, but not in a way that takes a woman –
• 10:56
  or quite frankly, a man out of their full expression.
• 10:59
  I think that that is actually dangerous because when either party in, or sorry, when either partner in a relationship is not fully expressed, is not chasing their dreams, chasing their passions, they're not excited about their life, that is going to kill the energy in a relationship far more than this silly money argument.
• 11:19
  When someone's holding back in their lives, when a woman is actually fearful of doing what she wants to do because of this argument, that's going to really affect both of them because here's what really kills polarity.
• 11:35
  Holding back part of yourself to protect the other person or suppressing part of yourself to protect the other person, that is going to kill polarity because it creates resentment.
• 11:46
  And resentment is one of the most damaging energies you can have in a relationship.
• 11:51
  It's one of the most damaging feelings you can have in a relationship.
• 11:55
  When we resent our partner –
• 11:57
  Resentment comes out in all types of different ways.
• 12:00
  It comes out in challenging behaviors.
• 12:01
  It comes out in rupture It comes out in withdrawing from our partner resentment is is not something that we want to cultivate so when we tell a woman you can't fully express Because it's going to damage your relationship.
• 12:12
  We are almost automatically creating resentment and like I said a woman in her full expression is exciting and world-changing and For me
• 12:24
  Again, seeing my wife in her full expression is one of the most extraordinary things ever.
• 12:28
  Honestly, it's one of the most erotic things for me.
• 12:31
  It's a huge turn on for me to see Katie do what she does best.
• 12:36
  And so energy, contribution, money in a relate in or outside of relationship that is outside energy.
• 12:44
  That's you and everybody else.
• 12:46
  Energy inside the relationship is most important.
• 12:49
  See, what I think we do is we conflate this energy with money with what's going on inside a relationship.
• 12:55
  Now.
• 12:56
  Are there cases where a woman is making more money and that causes intimidation in the man and he doesn't show up fully and he's afraid of the situation and that kills polarity?
• 13:05
  Of course.
• 13:06
  Of course there is.
• 13:07
  However, I think containment and understanding masculine containment changes this entire argument.
• 13:18
  Let me show you how it works for me and how it works for me and what I think the argument should be in the relationship space.
• 13:25
  See, devotion is the foundation for all energy in our lives.
• 13:30
  And when I say devotion, what I mean is there's a hierarchy of devotion.
• 13:35
  And what is taught in the world is kind of challenging because here's what I believe the hierarchy of devotion is.
• 13:40
  Devotion to God.
• 13:42
  Now, I want to make it clear.
• 13:43
  I'm not religious.
• 13:44
  I was raised Catholic, but I'm not religious.
• 13:48
  But I have a very close relationship with my higher power, with God, as I consider him.
• 13:53
  I think religion makes me right and other people wrong.
• 13:56
  It keeps us in victim energy.
• 13:57
  I've had a hard time with it my whole life.
• 13:59
  But I'm devoted to my relationship with God, with my higher power.
• 14:03
  Then I'm devoted to myself.
• 14:05
  There's a level of self-devotion here.
• 14:07
  That means I take care of myself.
• 14:09
  That means I've cultivated self-love.
• 14:11
  I have a ton of self-forgiveness.
• 14:13
  And I want to make it clear when I say self-love, I used to have a huge, huge issue with self-love.
• 14:21
  When somebody on stage would say, you know, all you have to do is love yourself more.
• 14:25
  I would say in my mind, all you have to do is F yourself more because I didn't understand.
• 14:29
  I didn't understand what self-love was.
• 14:31
  But now I know devotion to myself is having goals for me and knowing what I like and what I want to do and taking care of myself and working out in a way where I'm like making progress and I'm excited about it and following the excitement that I have in my life and doing so much less out of obligation.
• 14:49
  That's how I cultivate self-love.
• 14:52
  And then there's devotion to the relationship.
• 14:54
  So hierarchy, God, me, then the relationship, Katie, my wife –
• 15:00
  then my family, and then my mission and what I'm doing in the world.
• 15:05
  And the reason that I have that hierarchy is because to me it makes sense.
• 15:10
  And I know this flies in the face of a lot of what's, again, taught in relationships.
• 15:14
  Because what's taught is, especially for men, mission over everything.
• 15:19
  In fact, mission over marriage is one of the arguments that's made all the time.
• 15:23
  That if you don't put more importance on your mission than your marriage, it's going to collapse everything.
• 15:30
  And I just totally and completely disagree.
• 15:33
  Because I watched it when I was a business coach.
• 15:37
  I watched people all the time put mission above everything else.
• 15:41
  Actually, put mission above sometimes God, sometimes themselves, sometimes their family, their relationships.
• 15:49
  And it was a disaster.
• 15:51
  I saw so many people who were so poor, all they had was money.
• 15:55
  And I watched it over and over again.
• 15:58
  When I watched, when I coached entrepreneurs, it sacrificed everything for success.
• 16:02
  They didn't create success.
• 16:03
  They just created finances.
• 16:05
  They created money.
• 16:06
  They created a spreadsheet.
• 16:07
  They created dollars in the bank.
• 16:10
  And those dollars stared at them and became a judgment.
• 16:13
  Right?
• 16:14
  A judgment of look how much money you have and you're still not happy.
• 16:17
  A judgment of look how much money you have and things still aren't going right in your life.
• 16:21
  A judgment of look how much money you have, how much quote unquote success you've created, but you don't feel like a success.
• 16:26
  You feel like you're failing.
• 16:27
  You feel like you're falling apart.
• 16:28
  You feel like your life's falling apart around you.
• 16:30
  I watched it all the time.
• 16:33
  Coaching entrepreneurs who sacrificed everything else to create success were miserable.
• 16:39
  Like completely and totally miserable.
• 16:41
  Yeah.
• 16:43
  In fact, so many of the entrepreneurs who are really successful these days, well, they'll tell you right out loud how miserable they are.
• 16:49
  They'll tell you how they sacrifice everything and how they don't feel their feelings and how they won't do therapy and they don't do anything else.
• 16:56
  They just go out and make money.
• 16:58
  And that's a miserable existence.
• 17:02
  Having just one scoreboard in your life of money just doesn't make sense.
• 17:06
  You can have it all.
• 17:07
  You can actually have massive financial success and a ton of happiness and be in your body and grounded and feel present and aware.
• 17:17
  Years ago, Katie and I were a mastermind up in Canada and, um, we were sitting at a table with a guy who I could tell felt really upset, really frustrated.
• 17:30
  And throughout the morning, um, um,
• 17:33
  I could tell he was like disassociated.
• 17:35
  He wasn't even really in the room.
• 17:36
  He was having a hard time.
• 17:38
  And we went on a break and I went over and talked to him just because it was at our table and I wanted to understand what was going on for him.
• 17:44
  And I was like, hey man, is something going on?
• 17:47
  And he's like, yeah, I'm having a really hard time.
• 17:50
  I expected to hear he was getting divorced or I expected to hear he was going bankrupt or maybe his company is closed down.
• 17:57
  And I said, well, tell me about it, man.
• 17:58
  What happened?
• 17:59
  I'd love to hear.
• 18:00
  And I'm one of those people that for most of my life, if I open a door for someone, they'll share a lot.
• 18:06
  And I'm proud of that.
• 18:08
  I'm proud of being a space where people feel like they can share and feel like they can be transparent.
• 18:14
  And what he told me may shock you.
• 18:17
  He said,
• 18:19
  about, I think it was maybe six months ago, and I'm paraphrasing all of this, and I might get some of the details wrong.
• 18:25
  But he said, you know, six months ago, I sold my company for, and it was over $100 million.
• 18:29
  I don't remember what it was, like $125 million, something like that.
• 18:32
  He said, I had a massive exit.
• 18:34
  I was the only owner.
• 18:36
  I pulled a ton of money out of it.
• 18:39
  He said, you know, I bought a Ferrari and a McLaren.
• 18:41
  I've got a Lamborghini on the way.
• 18:43
  I've got a huge house.
• 18:45
  And he said, you know, and none of it matters.
• 18:47
  Yeah.
• 18:48
  And the day after I sold my company, I was so bored and so frustrated.
• 18:53
  And I thought this was what I wanted my whole life.
• 18:55
  And then I finally got it.
• 18:57
  And it's the most frustrating, most challenging thing ever.
• 19:02
  And I remember thinking like, you know, this is what happens when you put all of your cards into the money basket.
• 19:09
  And it's all about success.
• 19:11
  And this is literally what is taught in relationship classes and courses, mission, especially for men, mission over your relationship, mission over everything else.
• 19:24
  And I just totally disagree.
• 19:26
  Because the happiest entrepreneurs I've ever known, and I've worked with tons of them, I've been in this space for decades, are the ones who have a really solid relationship, are the ones who have the foundation, are the ones who are happy with what they're doing.
• 19:40
  And when you don't put energy in the right place in your life, success becomes meaningless.
• 19:48
  We had a conversation about this this week on the Brotherhood Call.
• 19:51
  When you have all of your effort directed at making money and all of your effort as a man directed at creating success –
• 20:01
  Here's what I know about people who live like that is that we set goals.
• 20:05
  And by the way, I've been there in my life.
• 20:07
  I've definitely been there.
• 20:08
  Like there was times where I've believed this distortion.
• 20:12
  I read a book where I said mission over marriage.
• 20:13
  I'm like, okay, I've got to do this.
• 20:15
  And here's what would happen.
• 20:16
  Like every goal I achieved as I was achieving it, it would lose importance and it was onto the next one.
• 20:22
  Like I couldn't find happiness.
• 20:23
  I couldn't find satisfaction.
• 20:24
  I couldn't find success.
• 20:26
  I couldn't find anything that really mattered to me.
• 20:30
  And, and,
• 20:31
  When I was coaching entrepreneurs, especially recently, since 2016 and on, I started really recognizing just how big of a challenge this was for us of putting money first.
• 20:44
  And what I did coaching entrepreneurs was I put a focus on self, a focus on devotion to self.
• 20:49
  And I didn't know that language back then.
• 20:52
  But here's what I knew.
• 20:53
  If I could get entrepreneurs hydrating and paying attention to themselves and doing time in neutral, just putting a mask on and spending time just with themselves and walking without distraction, without electronics, prioritizing their life and getting the right things in the right order, prioritizing their relationship, prioritizing their family, and doing things like EMDR, which is an act of self-love.
• 21:14
  When I used to say – when those people used to say, you just have to love yourself more and I would say you just have to F yourself more, it's because I didn't understand.
• 21:22
  that doing something like going to therapy is an act of self-love.
• 21:26
  It's an act of self-care.
• 21:28
  It's an act of self-devotion.
• 21:30
  And when I had entrepreneurs hydrate, time in neutral, walk, prioritize, do EMDR, and then create alignment in their relationship at the same time,
• 21:43
  What almost always happened, in fact, I can't remember a time where this didn't happen, where the entrepreneur was actually more successful, made more money, felt better, got healthier, looked better.
• 21:58
  Their energy was totally different.
• 22:00
  And here's what's interesting.
• 22:01
  Their level of satisfaction in life went through the roof.
• 22:05
  And at one point I've shared this before on this podcast, I had a high level coaching mastermind where everybody had multimillion dollar businesses.
• 22:13
  And in that room, that was the conversation.
• 22:16
  It was self care.
• 22:16
  It was EMDR.
• 22:17
  It was how satisfied are you?
• 22:19
  How excited are you?
• 22:20
  How's your life going?
• 22:22
  And when you take care of yourself and you have devotion to yourself first, so devotion to God, then you take care of yourself and,
• 22:32
  You can create the energy where you can actually have devotion to your partner in your relationship.
• 22:40
  And as a man, devotion to her...
• 22:44
  whether she makes more money than you or not, and masculine containment with her, containing yourself with her and showing her safety and security trumps any amount of money she will ever make.
• 22:58
  Masculine containment and creating safety and security for her will create polarity like you've never believed was possible.
• 23:08
  It'll create sexual attraction, physical attraction.
• 23:10
  It will make you excited about your relationship in ways that,
• 23:14
  It's hard to describe.
• 23:15
  It's hard to understand because it's more than I ever imagined was possible.
• 23:20
  And this is what happened in my relationship.
• 23:24
  This is how containment changed the equation in my relationship.
• 23:29
  Since December 26th, 2023, I've been sitting with Katie and in what we call a daily ceremony in an act of active containment.
• 23:38
  What this means is I show up present and grounded and aware and curious and ready to hear her and see her and validate her.
• 23:47
  And in this space, especially at the beginning, she was able to fully express the issues in our relationship.
• 23:53
  She was able to fully tell me like how she felt and where I had misstepped and what I had done wrong.
• 23:56
  She was able to fully express the issues in our relationship.
• 23:58
  And as time went on, she told me what happened in her life and how she felt about her life and things that had come up for her.
• 24:03
  And I was able to hear these things and not argue with them.
• 24:06
  I wasn't, I didn't do one of the four things that I used to do where I would try and fix what she was saying, or I would try and build process around what she was saying, or I would,
• 24:15
  withdraw and run away from what she was saying, or I would escalate.
• 24:19
  All of those things invalidated her and created rupture in our relationship.
• 24:24
  For so long, we were in that pattern of trigger, escalation, rupture, withdraw and repair and pretending like you repair because what happens over time,
• 24:32
  It's just not really repair.
• 24:34
  She is just bracing for the next time that there's a big explosion.
• 24:38
  When my wife finally told me, 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, I thought we were doing fine.
• 24:45
  I actually thought we were doing better.
• 24:47
  But because we were in that pattern of rupture, that was not going well for her.
• 24:53
  She was taking on far more impact than me.
• 24:55
  She did not feel safe in our relationship.
• 24:58
  And so when I learned to train the trigger and stop exploding or imploding every time something came up for us, here's what I did.
• 25:07
  I want to show you how to do this.
• 25:08
  I want to tell you how to do this.
• 25:10
  So in case your wife does make more money or in case she's capable of making more money and she's holding back right now, when you sit down,
• 25:18
  And you have conversations where you hold containment and you create that masculine container where you hold devotion and dominance over yourself.
• 25:31
  Not reacting to every trigger.
• 25:33
  Every trigger is an opportunity.
• 25:35
  But I think far too many people see it as an opportunity to like explode.
• 25:39
  Every trigger is an opportunity to show you as a man that her emotions aren't a threat.
• 25:43
  And you know what happens?
• 25:44
  Then you learn that emotions out in the world aren't a threat.
• 25:49
  I held containment and I had the same, and she would share, and I would actually feel like I was dying, or I would be so triggered.
• 25:57
  That showed me the work that I actually needed to do to solve my trauma, or not to solve, to resolve my trauma, to be on the path to healing my wounding, to let go of societal conditioning.
• 26:09
  When I sat there with her on a daily basis, it peeled away anything that wasn't me.
• 26:16
  Because when you're sitting there with your partner and she's telling you what's going on and what's happened and you're hearing really difficult things, there's no masking.
• 26:25
  There's no pretending.
• 26:26
  You can't keep a facade.
• 26:27
  It was all I could do to just be there.
• 26:30
  And it revealed myself to me.
• 26:34
  See, I don't think that we're on this journey of becoming somebody else in this lifetime or as humans.
• 26:40
  I think we're actually on a journey of revealing ourselves, of peeling away the trauma, the wounding, the conditioning, and showing us who we really are.
• 26:47
  And that's what happened through sitting down with Katie.
• 26:52
  It's created the fullest expression of myself I've ever had.
• 26:56
  And by creating emotional safety and security for Katie –
• 27:00
  It really has made me the calmest man in almost every room I walk into.
• 27:04
  There's this saying, the calmest man in the room wins.
• 27:07
  I am that man these days.
• 27:09
  I am that man today.
• 27:10
  And like I said, almost every room I've been in recently, I am that man.
• 27:16
  And when Katie was in this place of me holding containment, me dominating myself, me creating this energetic of dominance and presence and curiosity and inquiry and safety and security, she was safe to express.
• 27:33
  She was safe to be vulnerable.
• 27:35
  She was safe to share.
• 27:37
  And she was safe to tell me anything she needed to tell me.
• 27:40
  And here's what happened over time.
• 27:43
  The same way that me holding containment revealed my work to me where I was triggered, where I had too much energy, where I felt like I was going to die.
• 27:51
  I went and worked on those things.
• 27:52
  I spent time in neutral.
• 27:55
  I meditated around them.
• 27:56
  I went to an EMDR therapist.
• 27:58
  I went on walks.
• 27:58
  I journaled.
• 27:59
  I really spent time releasing those things from my system.
• 28:03
  And the same thing happened for Katie but in a different way.
• 28:05
  When I held containment and we no longer had that five-step trigger, escalation, rupture, withdraw, and repair –
• 28:14
  it showed Katie what her work was because she was no longer fighting with me.
• 28:18
  There was no longer an energetic of me pushing back on her.
• 28:22
  And so when she had stuff come up over and over again, that was the stuff she took to meditation and time and neutral and walking and therapy and journaling.
• 28:29
  And what ended up happening is it created emotional safety and security for the two of us.
• 28:35
  But more importantly, it created the most intense feeling of polarity and attraction we've ever had.
• 28:43
  I share this story often.
• 28:44
  Early in sitting with Katie, it was, you know, a long time ago, years ago.
• 28:54
  There was this night where I was holding containment and I was letting her express her truth and I was validating it.
• 29:00
  And she was telling me really difficult things about me.
• 29:04
  She was telling me how I didn't make her feel safe.
• 29:06
  And she was telling me how I scared her and how when I escalated her body panicked and how there were times where she said no and I just kept pushing and I was really persistent.
• 29:18
  And then she ended up saying yes when it wasn't really a full yes.
• 29:22
  It was incredibly difficult to hear.
• 29:25
  But I didn't argue with her because at that point, sitting with her and hearing her and seeing her, here's what I knew.
• 29:35
  I knew that she was being vulnerable.
• 29:36
  She was sharing with me her inner world.
• 29:38
  She was sharing with me the chaos that I had caused in her body.
• 29:42
  That night, that's what was happening.
• 29:44
  And so I listened and I validated and I told her she's absolutely right.
• 29:48
  And I told her that I wanted to hear more and I wanted to understand all of it.
• 29:54
  And I didn't say, here's what I really meant.
• 29:57
  And I didn't say, here's what I thought I was doing.
• 30:00
  I accepted the fact that my behaviors had a massive impact on my wife and I listened to her.
• 30:07
  And we sat there in our ceremony and there was an arc where she got more upset and more expressive.
• 30:13
  And it was harder for me, but I, I breathe.
• 30:16
  I felt my feelings.
• 30:18
  I didn't suppress.
• 30:19
  I didn't repress anything.
• 30:21
  I just, I breathe and I showed myself I was safe and I showed myself I was capable of doing this.
• 30:27
  And when it was over, I,
• 30:28
  I remember as soon as we closed our ceremony space, she was sitting across from me.
• 30:33
  I remember immediately feeling like, man, I feel kind of amazing.
• 30:38
  I don't know how else to describe it, but I felt like a man.
• 30:40
  I felt this masculine power, this like –
• 30:45
  energy coming out of my core, feeling like I can do anything.
• 30:49
  And I went to pick up my stuff and to leave the ceremony space.
• 30:54
  And before I was done with it, Katie jumped on me.
• 30:58
  And we had this extraordinary intimacy, like better than we ever had in our entire marriage.
• 31:07
  And at that point we had been together for almost 20 years and,
• 31:10
  And it was amazing.
• 31:13
  Like, you know, people say you can have the relationship of your dreams.
• 31:18
  Where we are today is better than I ever dreamt.
• 31:20
  That night was more than I ever expected, more than I ever would have asked for.
• 31:23
  I didn't know it could feel that way.
• 31:24
  I didn't know I could be that present, that with her, that connected to her, and that attracted to her.
• 31:31
  And it was all in holding this energy inside our relationship.
• 31:35
  Right.
• 31:37
  And for her, she had this plate.
• 31:40
  The reason that this worked was because in holding containment, like I said, I created this atmospheric of dominant dominance of myself, dominion over myself, moving towards self mastery, not perfection.
• 31:51
  There's no such thing, but I was in a place I'd never been before.
• 31:54
  And, and,
• 31:57
  I reveal the fuller expression of myself by doing that.
• 32:00
  And for her, this was a place where she felt safe and she had emotional safety and security and she was able to fully express.
• 32:08
  And it was a place for her to surrender, for her to let go, for her to lean into softness and to lean into openness because she felt like she could, because she wanted to, not because I made her, because she wanted to.
• 32:23
  And for the two of us, this created full expression for both of us.
• 32:27
  Like both of us are in a place in our lives that I don't think we ever would have dreamt of.
• 32:34
  And here's what containment creates.
• 32:36
  It creates massive polarity regardless of outside energy in the relationship.
• 32:43
  What it did for me, it's the greatest growth opportunity I've ever had.
• 32:46
  I've done tons of personal development.
• 32:47
  I've had a lot of financial success and financial independence.
• 32:51
  That's why I could go on a sabbatical for as long as I wanted to.
• 32:54
  And so did my wife.
• 32:56
  I've helped tens of thousands of people.
• 32:58
  And I know a lot of us look at successful people who say things like, I put my mission over my marriage and everything worked out.
• 33:05
  Well, is that why it worked out or did it work out in spite of them doing that?
• 33:09
  Because what I can tell you is this is the most effective thing I've ever done in my life for growth and for success and for feeling joy and excited every day and massive feelings of momentum.
• 33:23
  I spent most of my life chasing potential and momentum.
• 33:28
  And how could I get more momentum?
• 33:30
  And today I know that this has given me more than I've ever had in my life.
• 33:35
  I'm more grounded, more regulated.
• 33:37
  I can see divine timing happening in my life as things are happening.
• 33:41
  I can see divine order rolling out in front of me.
• 33:44
  I'm actually enjoying my life.
• 33:45
  I'm excited about my life.
• 33:46
  I'm happy to get up every day.
• 33:48
  There were times where I made tons of money and every day was a grind.
• 33:53
  I had to convince myself to check in every day.
• 33:56
  These days, I'm excited about the day when it starts.
• 33:59
  I've got more to do every day than I ever get done because I'm so excited about what I'm doing and the men that I'm helping and the organization that I'm running.
• 34:06
  I'm so excited to be with my wife.
• 34:09
  and spend time with her and be in ceremony with her every day.
• 34:12
  I'm so excited about the way that we connect.
• 34:14
  And the relationship with my daughters is better than it's ever been.
• 34:17
  The relationship with my friends is closer than it's ever been.
• 34:20
  I have more support in my life than I've ever had.
• 34:22
  This is the best time I've ever had.
• 34:26
  And I don't really have or I have way less negative self-talk and way less beating myself up and way less addictive compulsive behaviors.
• 34:39
  And
• 34:41
  You know, when I look at most of my life, those things were present forever.
• 34:44
  Most of my life was driven.
• 34:45
  If you're a man, you probably will relate to this.
• 34:48
  Most of my life was driven by feeling negatively about myself.
• 34:52
  I share with people all the time.
• 34:53
  You know, I've worked out and I was a bodybuilder for a long time.
• 34:57
  Um, and I used to go into the gym and I weighed like 250, 260 pounds.
• 35:01
  I had a 19 inch neck.
• 35:03
  I had a 32 inch waist.
• 35:04
  I'd have everything custom made.
• 35:06
  I was, I was big and I would go into the gym and find anyone who looked better than me or was bigger than me.
• 35:12
  And I would use them to beat my own ass all the whole time I was in the gym.
• 35:19
  I'd be working out and I'd look over at them and I'd have negative self-talk like, hey, you're not good enough.
• 35:22
  You're not – look how much better they look than you.
• 35:25
  You better do this next set as hard as you can.
• 35:28
  That's gone away.
• 35:30
  Today, I'm actually healthier than I've ever been.
• 35:33
  I feel better than I've ever been.
• 35:35
  I look in the mirror, I'm happier with how I look than I've ever been.
• 35:38
  I walk around with a shirt off all the time and I never would have when I was a bodybuilder, when I was bigger, when I had all that extra muscle and armoring.
• 35:50
  I have less fear in my life, less insecurity.
• 35:53
  I'm more comfortable with myself.
• 35:54
  I don't do hardly anything out of obligation.
• 35:56
  I do what I want on a daily basis.
• 35:58
  And I think the path to getting there and actually understanding what I wanted was containment, was devotion, devotion to my higher power, to me, to Katie, to my family, then to my mission.
• 36:13
  In fact, that's what revealed my mission.
• 36:14
  And that's why I run the Brotherhood Society today.
• 36:16
  And...
• 36:19
  I want you not to just hear what I'm saying.
• 36:22
  I want you to feel the energy behind it.
• 36:25
  Because this isn't a performance for me to sell something.
• 36:28
  I've done that before.
• 36:29
  I performed most of my life.
• 36:31
  This is my actual lived reality.
• 36:33
  I want you to hear this.
• 36:35
  For me, this is true.
• 36:37
  And here's what I know.
• 36:38
  It doesn't matter where you are today.
• 36:40
  It doesn't matter what's going on in your life today.
• 36:42
  If you step into this place of this hierarchy and you step into this place of containment and you hold yourself to a higher standard of not exploding or imploding every time there's a trigger in the world, you too can step into an entirely different way of being and an entirely different life.
• 37:01
  Right?
• 37:03
  In the brotherhood, we talk about this as this is the way.
• 37:07
  The way of living a better life is to get into a place where you're contained.
• 37:13
  For so much of my life, when I was reacting to every trigger, my life was more difficult than it is today.
• 37:22
  In fact, there were so many periods of my life where it was excruciating.
• 37:25
  Because I was blowing up at people and constantly having to repair.
• 37:29
  I was so frustrated and angry all the time that oftentimes people didn't hear me, didn't understand me.
• 37:34
  I was correcting people all the time.
• 37:36
  I was trying to be seen and heard, but I had such intense energy behind it and so reactive.
• 37:43
  Or I was so withdrawn that people were intimidated and scared by me.
• 37:48
  And today I'm heard and understood and there's so much less, less wasted time and so much less repair in my life.
• 37:57
  I hardly ever have to repair.
• 37:59
  It still happens.
• 37:59
  I'm not perfect.
• 38:00
  I mean, it happened a couple of weeks ago with my youngest daughter.
• 38:02
  So I don't want anybody holding me to a standard of perfection, but it doesn't happen like it used to.
• 38:08
  It's not as explosive or as implosive and, um,
• 38:13
  When I go to repair these days, I'm actually hurt.
• 38:15
  And the person knows my, whether it's Katie, whether it's one of my daughters, whether it's somebody I know when I repair, the person knows that I'm coming from a genuine place and I'm not doing it because it's a checklist and I'm not doing it because everybody else said that I should do it.
• 38:28
  And for Katie in our relationship, the more contained I've become, the more expressed she is, the more intimacy there is, the more I see her and hear her and understand her and the,
• 38:41
  I'm so much more attracted to her than I've ever been in my life.
• 38:46
  I literally, like, I see other women and I see attractive women and I see their attractiveness, but objectification has gone out of my life.
• 38:52
  I've trained it out of my entire system through this process of devotion and containment.
• 39:00
  And, you know, soon Katie may start sharing what she's learned through this process.
• 39:07
  In fact, we just had a conversation about it recently.
• 39:10
  And I know something about my wife.
• 39:13
  She's magical.
• 39:15
  She is literally one of the most extraordinary people on the planet.
• 39:21
  For me, she's the most extraordinary person I've ever met.
• 39:23
  And I've watched her for years in events.
• 39:26
  And when we ran companies and when she ran teams, I've watched her change people's lives with conversations.
• 39:32
  I've watched her influence entire audiences from stage.
• 39:34
  You know, I used to speak for three days in our events.
• 39:37
  And Katie would get up and speak for an hour.
• 39:39
  And during her hour...
• 39:41
  Nobody would move.
• 39:41
  Nobody would leave the room except for writing on a tablet or a piece of paper and taking notes furiously.
• 39:47
  People were so drawn in by her and so captivated by her.
• 39:52
  And she's going to start sharing soon.
• 39:54
  And I have this sinking suspicion, this belief that when she does, it's going to explode.
• 40:02
  And she's going to build a massive following.
• 40:06
  And I'm pretty sure she's going to build a much bigger following than me because that's just who she is.
• 40:12
  For years, I would work so hard at social media and I would be at some level of success.
• 40:17
  And Katie would write a post and it would do more and go further than anything I've ever written.
• 40:21
  So I think that's going to happen again.
• 40:25
  Here's what's so exciting about that.
• 40:27
  I want her in her excitement.
• 40:29
  I want her making a contribution.
• 40:31
  I want her making a difference.
• 40:32
  And by the way, if she wants to just keep doing pottery and doing her artwork and doing energy work with her friends, which is what she's been doing for a while and focusing on herself, I'm also 100% okay with that because she's excited about it and every day is fulfilling for her.
• 40:48
  But if she goes out and starts sharing,
• 40:50
  and she starts creating success, here's what I can tell you.
• 40:54
  She's going to have my full support and my full devotion.
• 40:57
  And I'm so excited for it.
• 40:59
  And there's not one ounce of intimidation or feeling of competition with her.
• 41:04
  I want her to do everything she's possibly capable of, everything she can do for the outside energy in the world.
• 41:13
  Because here's what I know with certainty.
• 41:16
  The energy in our relationship is,
• 41:19
  The energy that we have between each other, the energy that I have because I'm contained and because she has a place to surrender and soften and open, that energy is more important than anything the outside world is going to bring to our relationship.
• 41:34
  And so the problem is not powerful women.
• 41:38
  The problem is this crazy set of beliefs that we've created around them and that's
• 41:46
  I want every woman out there to be able to fully express, and I want every man she's with to have the confidence that he can hold that expression, that he can hold her, validate her, see her, hear her in a way that creates that energy in the relationship that is impenetrable.
• 42:03
  And I believe it's possible through masculine containment.
• 42:05
  I think this is the solution to the distortion that has been
• 42:11
  shared far too many times and implanted in far too many minds and causing chaos in far too many lives and relationships.
• 42:24
  If you're a man who relates to anything that I shared tonight and you're
• 42:28
  you're interested in understanding this extraordinary discipline of masculine containment where you can change your relationship and you can change the level of success you have in your life.
• 42:38
  And if you're in a relationship where you have that five-step pattern of trigger, escalation, rupture, withdraw, and repair, and you can feel her slipping away,
• 42:45
  It would be an honor to walk this path with you.
• 42:47
  I'd love to show you what I've learned.
• 42:50
  And I'd love to show you the Brotherhood, which is an international organization of men that are supporting each other and validating each other and holding each other in this work and changing their lives.
• 43:01
  And I know we're going to go out and change the world.
• 43:04
  If you're interested in learning more, go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com and either sign up for our wait list or join one of the next interviews that we have.
• 43:12
  We would love to have you, and I'd love to see you there.
• 43:15
  And thank you for listening to this podcast.
• 43:19
  And if this meant something to you, take a moment and please leave a review, leave a comment.
• 43:25
  We don't pay to put this podcast out there, so if you give us some attention, it really helps us –
• 43:31
  um, do more in the world.
• 43:33
  And I don't want to have to, I'm not going to ever add ads or, uh, anything else to this podcast.
• 43:40
  So if you make a comment and you subscribe and you share this with somebody, it really helps us.
• 43:46
  And it helps me and it helps the brotherhood society grow, go to the brotherhood society.com.
• 43:51
  Look forward to meeting you.