4 Ways A “GOOD HUSBAND” Accidentally Destroys His Marriage

All right guys, so today I want to talk about emotional safety, which is in fact the real predictor of whether your marriage can and will likely recover or not. And what I want to give you today is the definitive guide to emotional safety. So it's a very subjective term. It's quite hard to understand, but it is very, very important to understand as well. So the 2 questions that I get asked all the time from men that are in marriage crisis. The 2 questions is, one, can my marriage be saved? And the second question is, how long is it going to take to save it if in fact it can be saved? But the real questions behind that, or the answers to those questions, are going to be, can emotional safety be reestablished within the marriage? And if it can, how long is it going to take to do that? Because the answer to those questions really answers the 2 previous questions, which is, can my marriage be saved? Well, if emotional safety can be reestablished, then very probably. And how long is it going to take to save the marriage? Well, again, how long is it going to take for you to effectively do that? So in this video, we're going to, we're going to put some myths to bed once and for all, right? So I want to talk about exactly what emotional safety means. So it's objective, not subjective. I want to go through the process to help you understand how men accidentally destroy emotional safety in the belief that they're actually trying to help their marriage or just be a reasonable, reasonable human being. I want to talk about the 4 behaviors that progressively make things worse. And also, I want to give you some strategies, some definitive strategies on how you can rebuild the emotional safety once it's been destroyed. Or to be honest, wherever you are in the marriage, these strategies will take you to the next level. If you're good, it's going to take you to great. If you're great, it's going to take you to awesome. If you're terrible, it'll take you to okay. So let's talk about what emotional safety actually is. So you can answer this question by asking one simple question. Just asking you one simple question about your wife, and that is what percentage can your wife be herself? What percentage of the time? So the gold standard on this one is if she can be 100% of herself 100% of the time, meaning she doesn't need to censor herself in any way at any point for any reason, that's, that's 100% emotional safety. Now, of course, this is the gold standard and realistically unachievable. We're human beings. But if we get into the 70, 80, 90% range, we're going to be doing really, really well here. So when she feels emotionally safe, it means that she can safely, without the fear of consequence or the need to manage your mood and responses, she can safely express what she thinks about anything. She can express what she feels about anything. She can tell you openly what she wants. She can tell you what she doesn't want, what she likes, what she doesn't like, or basically she can express anything that she feels about the marriage, whether that's good, bad, or just downright ugly, right? What she dislikes, what hurts her, disappoints her, what she disagrees with, ultimately without needing to manage your reactions to that. So there is an emotional safety score. So emotional safety falls as self-suppression rises. So she feels like she needs to regulate herself to regulate you. Emotional safety is going down. So if we put this into an infographic, this is what it's going to look like, right? So at 100%, she can be completely herself all the time. She's not worried. She can tell you something really bad, really ugly, something that's really offensive to you, and she's, she's okay with that because she knows you're going to be able to regulate and respond. At 75%, she has to avoid saying some things. At 50%, she has to think carefully before speaking. At 25%, she's at the level of most of the time it's easier just to keep things to myself, just to keep quiet in the name of keeping the peace. And at 10%, she's at the point where I can barely be myself around him at all. I have to completely censor myself in order to keep the peace in this marriage. So we're all on this scale. Our wives are all on this scale. And you're also on this scale with your wife, and your children are on this scale with you, and your employees or your coworkers Because this, the emotional safety score is a scorecard that goes across every relationship in your life, not just marriage. So by the time your wife gets to the point of wanting to leave the relationship, the emotional safety score may be in single digits at that point. It could be 5%, 10%. She's literally completely removed herself from the marriage in the name of keeping herself emotionally protected and emotionally safe. So to keep the peace, To keep her own sanity, she may have learned at this point to suppress her opinions, suppress her needs, suppress her frustrations, suppress her disappointments, suppress her boundaries, vulnerabilities, and eventually, obviously, to suppress herself. And this is where many of you I've had conversations with, and it's like the outcome is, the conclusion is there's just no room in this marriage for your wife. There's only room for your opinions. There's no room. There's no room for her. So the key idea to take away from this is every time your wife expresses, if every time expressing herself creates pain for her, then guess what she learns? She learns to not express herself. If she learns that every time she speaks openly and freely, it costs her something. that she doesn't want to pay, then she learns not to express herself. And this is the silent destruction of the marriage. This is why it's insidious and it sneaks up on us, because it's one conversation at a time. It's one little piece that disappears at a time. Rarely is it one big catastrophic, catastrophic event, right? So let's look at the 4 habits that destroy emotional safety within a marriage. And I call this the escalation ladder. So This is an in-your-face chart at this time in the morning, right? Nice and bright. So the emotional safety escalation ladder is— this is how good intentions within a marriage, how you as a man trying to make things better, can actually make things worse and create that emotional distance. So the first one is negative interpretation. She says one thing, you hear something else, right? We're going to go into each one of these in more detail. That then leads to invalidation. He corrects What he has misinterpreted or believes is negative, explains, defends, or basically chooses to be right, protects himself instead of understanding what's actually going on. That then leads, of course, to escalation. The hurt builds, the emotional, uh, the emotional hurt gets louder and louder, which ultimately leads to withdrawal. She stops bringing up things, you withdraw from bringing up things. And this is the point where neither one of you are really talking about things at all anymore. So each one of these 4 stages teaches your wife that being myself around you carries a cost, and a cost that I don't particularly want to pay, right? So if we look at these from the perspective of what she says and what he hears, she says something like, From the, in the negative interpretation stage, I wish we spent more time together, or we don't spend enough time together. That's what she says. What he hears or negatively interprets that to mean is, you're a terrible husband. You never do enough. We're never together enough. Nothing makes you happy. Nothing, nothing is enough for you. You don't appreciate the fact that the reason I'm not spending more time with you is because I'm at work making the money, et cetera. Et cetera. She simply indicated that she wants to spend more time. That's, that is negatively interpreted into all of these things, which of course are going to escalate. So what the man at this point believes he's doing is he believes he's reading between the lines. Yes, she said she just wants to spend more time together, but what that really means is this. He's negatively interpreting what she said. He's, he's identifying what he believes she really means. He's protecting himself. From the criticism that he thinks he's getting, he's preparing himself for accusations. Instead of we need to spend more time together, I'd like to spend more time together being a corrective step in the marriage that I'm not happy, I'm not feeling fulfilled, and here's how we correct that. It becomes an accusation, and ultimately he starts defending against the disrespect that he believes. is being poured upon him at this point. So what she experiences in comparison to that is, that's not what I said. He always assumes the worst about me. He always thinks bad things about me. I mean, all I'm trying to do is make things better, and he thinks that I'm criticizing. I can't even raise an issue without it being turning into something bigger. He's responding to a version of me that doesn't exist. He's responding to a person that really isn't there. And of course, does this work the other way? Of course it does. It works both ways, right? But we, you know, this this video here, this lesson here is about I'm talking to men right now. How to deal with your wife? Of course, this works both ways, and of course, you're going to have similar experiences in the other direction. So the consequences meant to that is she begins to edit herself. She begins to censor herself, and before she speaks to you, she asks herself the question: How's he going to take this? Will he get defensive if I bring this up? Is this going to turn into an argument? Is this Is this a carton of eggs? Are these eggshells? Is this a landmine? Is this even worth saying? Is this even worth bringing up? And again, emotional safety drops in this moment, not because she's physically unsafe or because she's physically scared of you. Remember, she's reducing, removing herself from the relationship to avoid the consequences of actually being herself in the relationship. And as you can see, this is not necessarily a horrible man or a horrible woman at this time. This is just people misunderstanding each other. So then we move to the next step, and these can go in any order, right? It doesn't have to follow this order, but this is a good logical order. Now we move to invalidation. So now he responds to the meaning that he has assigned to what she said, not what she actually said. So let's give an example to make this concrete. She may say something Say something like, you embarrassed me the other night. He responds with, no, I didn't. That's ridiculous. Nobody else thought that. You're the only one that was embarrassed. Nobody else thought that. That's not exactly what happened, is it? Or, you're exaggerating. He's not acknowledging the emotion or the feeling that she felt embarrassed. He's simply— he's invalidating that by saying, no, I didn't. That's ridiculous, etc., etc. Well, now she's He's negative— negatively interpreting what's been said, turning it into invalidation. So what he thinks he's doing in this moment in time is he's just simply correcting bad information, right? Making the conversation fair, explaining what his intentions actually were, because surely if she understood what I meant, or surely if she understood what I intended, this would all just go away, right? Or if she understood the accurate— she just, she just— this is just inaccuracy is all this is right now. If she understood the facts, this would just go away. So he's providing false accusations, providing context, not understanding that he's ignoring the emotion and invalidating the emotion, thinking that if he just gives the facts, the problem goes away. And what he thinks he's doing naturally in this situation, man, is just solving the misunderstanding. This is just a simple misunderstanding. Let me just put this to rest, sweetheart, and we'll be done here. Job done. We can get on with our day. But what she experiences, as an example, when she says, I was embarrassed the other night when you did this, and you defend that, what she experiences is, my experiences don't count in your world. He gets to decide how I feel. I don't— I'm not allowed to feel embarrassed. I'm not allowed to have that opinion. If he doesn't agree with how I feel, then I'm not allowed to feel it. I have to prove to him that my emotions are legitimate. They can't just exist by themselves. I can't just be happy, sad, Embarrassed, upset, angry. I'm only allowed to have these emotions. I'm only allowed to be myself if he believes that it's legitimate for me to be those things. And of course, he cares more about being correct than understanding me. So the consequences of this when this happens is she tries harder to make him understand. She explains more. She gives more examples, more emotion, more frustration. She gets louder and louder and louder in her— in what the man is perceiving as complaining or nagging in order to get her point made, which of course leads to step 3 in the ladder, which is escalation. Now we're escalating a problem that never needed to be escalated in the first place. So when the message wasn't heard, naturally the volume increases. You never listen to me. You always do this. You— or you can— you don't— you just don't care about me. Nothing ever changes in this relationship. Nothing ever changes in this marriage. You never change. None of us have heard that, right? So the man, in his logical mind, immediately goes to, well, she's just being irrational now. This is just hormones, time of the month, menopause. Let's find a label we can stick on it. Well, she's attacking me. She's disrespecting me. She's completely overreacting. None of this is justified. None of this is real. She's not even right about what happened, and now it's turning into this. I've got to shut this down now. This is getting out of hand, right? So of course, he goes into damage limitation mode, which may involve raising his voice, getting sharper in his tone, becoming more forceful in his approach, defending his position harder, counterattacking, using sarcasm, or just simply walking away pissed off and angry. But of course, what does that teach your wife? What does that teach somebody else when they're experiencing that from you? They've tried to communicate an emotion to you and they've, they've met— they've been met with hostility. So what she experiences, what she learns in that moment is, I have to really fight hard. I have to really fight to be heard in this marriage. Speaking honestly creates conflict. Speaking honestly and openly about how I feel creates pain for me. When I communicate my emotions, and keep in mind, a woman is an emotional creature, right? This is how she communicates. This is how she experiences the world. So in other words, when she goes, how I, when I experienced the world in the way that feels natural and complete to me, just makes my life miserable, just makes the situation worse. And of course, it's not safe to express what I really feel. So what's the consequence? Well, eventually she learns, I'm just going to stop talking. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut because that's way easier, right? Which then leads to stage 4, which again, this can go both ways. I've put she stops trying here, but also you stop trying as well quite often, right? When, when you feel like your argument is logical and it's not being, it's not being met with any kind of reasonable response, you can withdraw as well. You can pull away as well. So stage 4, we now move into a withdrawal scenario where she just stops trying. You just stop trying as well. So at that point when, when the trying stops, you get fewer complaints from her. You get fewer requests for, let's say, rehabilitation, for change within the marriage. You get fewer arguments from her. You get fewer vulnerable conversations and you get less emotional expression. And of course, as a man, this is great, right? Like, you know, she's She's not requiring me to be emotional, vulnerable, talk, or deal with complaints and requests that I really quite frankly don't want to deal with. This is a good thing for a man. And a lot of times when I talk to men, they go, we really don't argue. It's like, like that's a good thing. Like arguing is not a problem. We don't argue. No, that, that's a huge problem. That's a huge problem because we're right here. We're in stage 4, which we're close to the end of the marriage if we're in stage 4. So what the man naturally thinks is, of course, things are getting better. We're fighting less. She's calmed down. She's finally, she's finally starting to see logic. And it's not even a case of she's starting to see things my way. It's not even though you as the man is coming from the perspective of this is my way. It's just logic, right? She's just seeing facts now. This is where we can go wrong as men is when we see something as a fact, we don't see it as enforcing our opinion or pushing our way on somebody. We're just simply the arbiter of truth. We're just giving somebody a situation and allowing them to decide for themselves what's going on. But he'll say things like, we haven't had arguments in weeks or months, or maybe we've moved past this. And this is why 70% of men never see the separation coming. They never see the hammer being dropped because they just think that finally she's settled down and she's become logical. Couldn't be further from the truth. That couldn't be— you couldn't be further from a misinterpretation, right? Because what she is actually experiencing in this moment is there's simply no point. This is a total and utter waste of time. He won't, he doesn't, he can't, he will not understand. Period. End of story. Communicating to him is a complete and total waste of time. Talking to him about things that's important to me, that I would like to see change, that I need to see rehabilitated within this relationship for me to stay in this relationship and be happy and fulfilled. Forget it. Not, not happening. Can't talk about that. Significantly easier just to keep this to myself than it is to bring it up and talk to him about it, right? This is the emotional safety score decreasing now, going into single digit, single digits. Or I'll deal with this on my own, which in truth is never true. She— a woman will not deal with this on her own. She's dealing it with somebody. And I talk to men all the time and they go, well, my wife just doesn't like to talk, Cody. It's like, I understand what you're saying, but that doesn't apply to me because my wife, she doesn't like to talk. It's like, well, that's saying a dog doesn't bark or a man doesn't like sex. It's ridiculous. It's like, no, brother, she loves talking. Let's clarify, she doesn't like talking to you. Let's be clear, there's a difference between she doesn't like talking And she doesn't like talking to and with you. I promise you, she's talking to somebody. She's talking to friends, family, counselors, somebody she's talking to about this. So the dangerous paradox that is created in this scenario is he sees that there's less conflict, which is a good thing. He thinks the marriage is moving in the right direction. She feels less connection, which is a bad thing. She thinks the marriage is moving in the wrong direction. They're literally Couldn't be, couldn't be further apart on their views and couldn't be moving in different directions at greater speed at this point. So of course, in the man's mind, he goes, well, this marriage isn't breathing. This is great. I'm doing a good job. Give a dog a bone. And she thinks nothing's getting better. I've just, I've just given up trying. I've just stopped wasting my time trying to make things better. So the complete collapse scenario here is, you know, we go, the ladder is negative interpretation, right? He assumes the worst about what I mean. Validation. My experience doesn't matter to him. How I feel doesn't matter to him. Escalation. I have to fight to be heard. If I, if I don't shout, scream, and make a lot of noise and quite frankly behave badly, I'm just not even going to get any attention at all. That of course leads to withdrawal on both sides. She doesn't want to deal with your mood. You don't want to deal with her irrationality. So boom, you separate. Emotional detachment takes place and she arrives at the, at a conclusion of, It's safer to not need him than to need him. It's safer to not be around him, or not talk to him, or not bring up issues than it is to bring these things up. This is the collapse cycle that takes place, and this is important because we need to understand this if we're going to turn this around, right? So again, the crisis. Eventually, she arrives at a point, we get to the point where the hammer's dropped. I'm done. I don't love you anymore. I need space. I want a separation. I'm out of here. I want a divorce. I'm out of here. divorce. I don't want to be with you, etc., etc. We've all heard it. He thinks, where did this come from, man? What? How? What? Huh? Huh? Got to be another man, right? Got to be another man involved. What's going on here? She thinks, what are you talking about, bro? I've been trying to tell you for years that there's problems in this marriage. I've been trying to communicate with you about this marriage for years, and you were not having a bone of it, and now I'm done. I'm out of here. This is where many of us find ourselves, right? So this is, this is what it looks like at this point. He thinks, where the hell did this come from? How did this happen? She thinks, well, I've been trying to tell you for years, bro, that things need to change and I've given you every opportunity to change them and all you've done is make them worse. So at this point I'm taking the wheel, I'm taking control. So that My friends, is the collapse cycle, right? So let's turn this around now. Let's you know that's the bad news. Let's let's let's move to the good news. Let's move to part two, act two of this play where we talk about how to fix this. How do we turn this around? So how do you rebuild emotional safety? Hopefully you can see now how it's destroyed. Hopefully you can see now how possibly misunderstandings have arrived at a situation that didn't really need to be arrived at. You basically got two people that want the same thing. You just don't know how to get there. So let's be, let's be very clear here because I know some men are going to go, so when I get through the solutions here, going to go, so I just have to agree with everything she says. I just have to do everything that she wants. I just have to make her right. No, let's be clear. Absolutely not. Never, anywhere, ever do I advocate for that. A marriage is a partnership. And at no point do you have to completely agree. Like, the, the goal is not to give your wife emotional safety at the complete destruction of your own. If you had to agree with her completely, To save the marriage, if you had to give in to everything that she, that she wants or says, you just have to capitulate, then that's a complete and total destruction of emotional safety for you, right? You would have to completely disappear to be in the marriage, and that's not what we're talking about here. So the goal, to be absolutely clear, is not to make her agree with you. The goal is to make honesty feel safe again within this relationship, and I've got 3 strategies to give you. Anyone who's been around me knows this. So first strategy is ask yourself the question, do you want to be right or do you want to be married? Do you really want to die on this hill, bro? Is this really worth sacrificing your marriage over? You know, and again, sounds like a simple question, right? Do you want to be right or do you want to be married? Every single man I've ever asked that question to goes, of course I want to be married, Cody. But the truth is, they're about— their answer, their voice They say, I want to be married, but their behavior often answers— very frequently answers, I actually want to be right. So let's look at the stealth ways that men choose to be right, even though in their mind and out of their mouth they say they want to be married. The most insidious one, I would say the most common one, is going to be defensiveness. That's not what I meant. You're taking it the wrong way. That's not what I said. You're exaggerating, etc., etc. When the man feels attacked, he doesn't look at it as though he's choosing to be right. He's simply given a fact. I don't want to be right in this situation. I'm just telling you what happened. In other words, like a good example is is just correcting details, right? Like when we were out last Tuesday, you really embarrassed me and I didn't feel good. The man goes, well, it wasn't Tuesday, it was Wednesday. It's like, does it really matter? Is the argument really over whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday? Another way he chooses to be right is by explaining intentions. I was only trying to help. When the woman says, you upset me, or that upset me, or whatever, and the man goes, I was only trying to help, that's invalidation. She's saying, I'm upset, and the man effectively is saying, You have no reason to be upset. You're wrong in that interpretation because I was trying to help. Therefore— and again, he doesn't, he doesn't see that this is him trying to be right. He doesn't need to be right because he is right in his mind. He just needs to show her the facts. If he just shows her the facts, then all is well. That nothing could be further from the truth. This is you choosing to be right. Counterexamples. You never listen to me, or you, you, you never, you never take the trash out, right? You never take the trash out, Cody. Well, that's not true. What about last week? It's not about whether you took the trash out last week. She's saying that she doesn't feel supported around the house. So she's saying that you don't, maybe you don't, she doesn't feel like you're pulling your weight around the house. And instead of going, it sounds like you're not happy with the division of labor in the house, we argue about the facts. That's not true. I did this last week. Again, we're, we're, we're, this is invalidation and escalation. So scorekeeping is another one. I do far more for you than you do for me. Playing the lawyer, case building— one of the most destructive things we can do in a marriage is build cases against our partner. We build the case, we prove inconsistencies in their behavior, we find holes in their arguments. It's like we're taking it to a jury trial. We're trying to win the verdict from the judge instead of understanding her experience. Again, many times when I speak to men, Individually on a one-to-one basis, they're building a case. They're telling me everything she's done to prove they're right. And it's like, well, okay, brother, if the verdict— if the jury finds the, you know, in, in your favor, the verdict is in your favor, who wins? Who wins? Both of you lose. So the question to ask yourself in that moment is, am I trying to understand her, or am I trying to prove that my version is correct? Am I trying to understand what she's communicating? Am I actually trying to understand what she's saying with me, under to me, understanding that we're human beings and our communication is very imperfect? Not to mention we communicate differently as men and women. Women can communicate emotion, men communicate facts. Strategy number 2 to employ here is seek first to understand your wife before having your wife understand you. Your first job is not to explain yourself. Your first job is to fully understand the situation. Let's not shoot first and ask questions later. Let's ask questions first, and if we need to shoot later, then we'll do that, right? Your job is not to explain yourself. Your job is not to be understood. Your primary job is to understand her. And again, does this mean that you're never going to be understood? Does this mean that you have no viewpoint? No, of course not. That's ridiculous. It means that there's an order of things, and the order is important. You get to be understood after you've demonstrated that you understand. This alone will transform your life. So let's make some points very clear here. Listening to your wife or your children or me or anybody else— me listening to you— is not agreement. Listening to somebody tell their story of what they thought happened Does not mean that you're in agreement with that story. It does not mean that she's correct, and it does not mean that you are wrong, and it does not mean that her interpretation that she's giving you right now is factual. It does not mean that you are in agreement with the conclusion that she's come to, and it does not mean that you are accepting of the accusations that are being made and placed upon you. It means none of those things. You're simply understanding or attempting to understand where she's at in this. If she feels like she's been wronged, understand perception is reality. And if you have no interest in understanding her perception, your only interest is in communicating what you believe reality to be, you are speaking 2 different languages and this is not going to end well for anybody involved. Right? So here's the point. She's allowed to have a view, even if it's wrong, even if you disagree, even if it's abhorrent to you. She's allowed to see something differently to you. She's allowed to remember an experience differently to how you remember it. She's allowed to have a different interpretation of a situation. She's allowed to have a feeling, an emotional experience that you do not, as a man, do not understand. She's allowed to have that, and this is a problem, right? Many of us, if we can't understand the experience that she's having, she's not allowed to have it. We stop it, and she is allowed to reach a conclusion that you believe is wrong. Now, let me ask you a question. Let's throw this in the other direction very quickly. Are you going to claim the right to believe something differently to her? Are you going to— are you going to claim the right to remember something differently when she says, well, that's not what happened, and you go, well, I remember it like this? Are you going to abdicate your right and go, you're absolutely right, my memories are false, I'm going to take your memories? No, of course not. You're going to stand on your right to remember things as you choose. You're going to stand upon your right and you're going to defend your right to interpret however you want to. You're going to stand and claim your right to feel whatever the hell you want to, and you are going to claim your right and defend your right to reach any conclusion that you want to, even if she believes it wrong. So quite frankly, in this situation— and this guy, again, this goes both ways, right? I'm not just saying that this is you and she never does this. Of course she does. But she is allowed to have all these things, as are you. And if you don't want her to have these experiences, then don't have them yourself. Many of us are refusing to allow our wives to have an experience that we will not allow to be taken from us. So here's the thing, right? You do not need to correct her before understanding her position. I can understand your position and completely disagree with it, right? So— I agree with you. Let her finish. Good question to ask yourself is, when was the last time you or her was allowed to complete a thought to its conclusion without interruption, without correction, without explaining, rebutting, or preparing your answer? How many times when your wife is telling you something do you do these first four things: interrupt, correct, explain, rebut? Or if you don't do that, if you do allow her to listen, you're not actually listening. You're preparing. Your rebuttal, you're preparing your answer in your mind and you're just waiting for a break in the conversation to tell her what you think. And the same is true the other way. When was the last time you had the luxury and the privilege of completing a thought to its conclusion? My guess is maybe never, right? So here's what to do. Try listening. Try asking questions instead of making statements. Ask clarifying questions. Reflect back what you think you're hearing. Make sure you understand her position. So the new goal here is not, how do I make her understand what actually happened? Because surely if she understood what happened, everything would be fine. The new goal is, can I accurately understand how she experienced what happened, even though that might be factually incorrect in my mind? Right? Can I, can I accurately understand what she's going through? And finally, strategy number 3, man, is listen, listen for the emotion underneath the words. Most men listen for facts. She's communicating emotions. She could say something like, you upset me last Tuesday. I was, I was offended or I was upset. And he hears Tuesday. What happened Tuesday? What? Who? When? Where? Who said what? What are you talking about? Like that, that's where the man goes to immediately. He's like, well, it doesn't matter. But what she said was, last Tuesday I was upset and you were involved in that. That's what she's trying to communicate, right? What she's actually communicating in that statement is, I was hurt in that environment. I felt embarrassed. I felt alone. I felt unimportant to you or to the room. I felt angry. I was upset. Or as simple as, I felt rejected in that moment. Respond to the emotion instead of responding to, well, that's not what happened, or it doesn't, it doesn't matter who, where, what, when, why, how. It doesn't matter. None of that stuff is really very important, right? What emotion is she trying to communicate? So instead of saying, what are you talking about? That's not what happened. You connect with her when you say something like, it sounds like that really hurt you. It sounds to me like you felt alone in that moment. That's not an admission of guilt that you made her feel alone. It's not an admission of responsibility that you hurt her. I can hear you're frustrated right now. That must have been very frustrating for you. That's not an acknowledgment that you are frustrating. It's simply acknowledging that is how she feels in this moment, right? That's how she feels. That's what she's experiencing. You're not acknowledging her experience of the events, not trying to ascertain the facts that caused the experience. Very different things. So we went through the ladder of destruction. Well, let's look at the ladder of recovery, right? How safe— safer responses create more connection within the marriage, how you start to actually bring her back into the marriage. So step number 1 is move to curiosity, right? Be interested in her experience, not interested in defending your role in that experience. So again, this can be as simple as, sounds like that was very frustrating for you. I missed that that was frustrating in the moment, so help me understand so I can do better in the future. Curiosity, right? Step number 2 is understanding. Seek to understand her position before being understood. We've covered that in detail. Step number 3 is acknowledge the emotional recognition. Acknowledge and hear that the emotion underneath the words. If she says, I'm really unhappy in this marriage right now, then she doesn't need to hear, well, I do far more for you than you do for me, so what have you got to be unhappy about? If she says she's unhappy, then acknowledge that she feels unhappy. Sounds like that must be very frustrating for you. And then step number 4 is openness. When she feels safe to be honest, vulnerable, and herself again with you, when she can say, I felt like you rejected me the other day, or I felt like you didn't listen to me, or it feels like I'm the only one in this marriage that's trying. Can she say that and it be met with an open, honest— can she say that openly and honestly, or are you going to go to war over that? That's the question. If you can meet these 4 steps here, then you've got a very good chance of saving your marriage. So again, let's look at this in a sequence here. Step number 1 is, I can say— this is the recovery ladder, right? Step number 1 in that process is, I can say what I think again. I had the freedom to say what I think. Step number 2 is, she says that he will let me finish, or she believes he will let me finish. Step number 3 is he's more interested in understanding where I'm coming from than the facts of the matter. He's more interested in understanding how I feel, my emotion, and how I experience the event than the actual facts of the event. Stage 4 is I don't have to fight to be heard in this marriage anymore. He's willing to listen to me without a fight. I don't, I don't have to escalate. And then step number 5, she arrived at, well, maybe I can start to be myself around him again. Maybe I can be open in this marriage with him again. This is the reestablishment of emotional safety. So obviously we start to go in the opposite direction, right? The emotional safety score starts rising. It goes from 10% to 20% to 40% to 60%. It rarely, if ever, goes from 10% to 90%, which is what many of you want. You'll go through this slide and you'll have one conversation and go, well, that's it, Cody. I've established emotional safety and she's not responding. Incremental steps. If she— wherever you're at right now, the goal is to get 1, 2, 3% higher every conversation. If she's 2 out of 10 right now, or if she's 2 out of 100, the goal is to get to 3 out of 100. If she's 17 out of 100, the goal is to get to 20 out of 100. It's not to go from 2 out of 100 to 90 out of 100 in one conversation and go, I did it, see, it didn't work, you're full of shit, Cody, I don't know what you're talking about. So as the emotional safety score starts rising, she talks more, she shares more, she edits herself less, she becomes less defensive in conversation, she becomes less emotionally reactive to you. She becomes— more vulnerability returns to the communication and more of her actual personality starts to return, which ultimately this is what it comes down to, right? It meant even if you can get your wife back many times, there's a dozen reasons or more that a woman would return other than she wants to be with you and she loves you. She could return because she's scared of being alone. She could be— she could return because of the financial implications. Just goes on and on, the number of reasons. But if she comes back to you without emotional safety being reestablished, you're getting the shell of a woman. You're getting a spiritless woman. You're getting a dead woman walking is all you're getting. So what we are trying to create here, man, again, to be very clear, it's a shame that this is— I should have put this closer to the beginning, right? Because I'm going to get a bunch of, a bunch of comments about, so I've just got to lose myself. We're not creating a man that never disagrees. Absolutely not. We're not creating a man who never gets upset. Absolutely not. We're not creating a man who agrees with everything his wife says and just simps his way into marital happiness. Absolutely not. That is absolutely categorically Not what we are creating here. We are creating a man that also has enough emotional safety to be who he wants to be within the marriage, right? Just understand, at this point, you're in a zero-leverage situation. She's leaving you. You can't go to her and go, well, I need emotional safety too. You have to give before you get. You have to understand before she understands. And at this point in this relationship, if this was a healthy marriage, With both people equally committed to making it work, yes, your emotional safety is every bit as important as hers throughout the entire process. But understand, we're not in a healthy marriage, and this is not a he tries, she tries situation. She's, she's checked out and she's not trying. So understand that. So our goal here is to create a wife who once again feels safe enough to be herself within the marriage. And the gold standard is, as we've said, to reiterate, The goal is to get to 100% of herself 100% of the time. You're going to get there? No, probably not. Not unless you're Jesus, right? But if you can get to 80% of herself 80% of the time, you're doing a pretty good job. So she is allowed to disagree. She is allowed to be upset. She can tell you something you don't want to hear and be— and you're okay with that. And she can express herself without having to manage or regulate your emotions or thinking about how this is going to impact her. Before doing it, right? So she can agree, disagree, be upset, can tell you something you don't want to hear, and she can still express herself. So the final diagnostic here, the final takeaway, mate, is ask yourself. Here's the question: What percentage can my wife be herself around me? What percentage of the time? And we want an honest, truthful answer. That you don't. It doesn't matter. Like you don't get a reward for coming up with a. an inflated number. We want to know the truth because then we can treat the problem accurately. So once you've got that number, give her— give your wife an emotional safety score around you. So now this becomes measurable, tangible, and improvable. Ask yourself the question, what happens when she says something that I don't like? Do I negatively interpret what she says? Do I invalidate what she said? And we can see how this happens now in a very honest way, let's say, non— in a way that we don't understand that we're doing it, but nevertheless is destructive. Do I escalate the situation, and do ultimately, do I withdraw from the marriage if I don't feel like I've been heard or seen? And am I creating an environment where she also withdraws? So the big idea to take away is right now, every painful response that she's getting through the lack of emotional safety teaches her, show me less Show less of myself to him. Be less of myself to him. Show him less of yourself is what she's telling herself. She can only say that so many times before there's nothing left to take away. Every safe response that you provide teaches her you can show him more of yourself. You can be more of yourself in this relationship. And that is it, man. That is the definitive guide to emotional safety, what destroys it, And how to rebuild it. So let's jump over to Q&A and let's get some questions answered. So if you've watched this all the way to the end, there's something that I know about you, and that is that you are very serious about saving your marriage. And if you want help with that, if you were thinking, I'd love to have your advice, I'd love to have you coach me, Cody, personally, then check out Coach Cody AI, the link in the description. This is exactly what it's been created for. It is my digital mind trained on over 5,000 real coaching calls over the last 10 years, and it gives you 24-hour, 7-day-a-week access to marriage coaching when you need it most. Coach Cody AI, check it out. God bless you, and I'll see you soon.