Divorce Reversal Map For Men Wanting To Rebuild A Failed Marriage.

So we're going to talk about the 7 stages your marriage has to go through if you, if you want to actually restore your marriage and win your wife back. And we're going to reveal why the harder you try to get your wife back, actually the case becomes the faster you lose. So we're going to give you the— or I'm going to give you the antidote to that. So all of us here are pretty much in the situation where our wife has asked us for a separation or a divorce or is in the process of that. And The worst thing that you can do in this situation, ironically, is to actually try and save your marriage. And I know that sounds crazy and it's very counterintuitive, but it's actually why most men actually fail with that task. So in this workshop, I'm going to walk you through 7 stages that men go through who actually do succeed in winning their wife back, and why skipping even, even one stage is really— it's a very negative thing. So by the end of this class today, you're going to know exactly where you are. The goal here really is to create a diagnostic for you so you can identify exactly where you are in the situation, uh, and understand that sometimes you feel like you're winning but you're losing, and sometimes you feel like you're losing and you're actually winning. So we want to make sure that you're in the right stage and understanding where you're at and give you this— give you the steps of what to do and what not to do to get through to the next stage and also why trying harder is actually the fastest way to really end your relationship with your wife. So let me share my screen with you and we'll get cracking on that. Let's get some people in here. So what we've got to actually do here is understand what kind of problem that we're dealing with. It's— you're really not going to successfully treat heart disease if you've got cancer. So an accurate diagnosis really is critical in the first stage to an accurate treatment plan. So most men fail in this process of reconciliation is because they misunderstand the game. They believe that this is— that the issue is a persuasion problem, it's a communication problem. And it's a she needs to understand problem. And the reality is it's none of those things. It's actually a pressure problem. It's actually a safety problem, and it's a credibility problem. She doesn't need to understand anything. What actually needs to happen is you need to remove the reasons that she, she needs to leave the relationship for. So the first principle here, and this is really important, I'm going to go through first principles a lot today. Because the first principle will work in any situation. Now I hear all the time guys go, well, you don't understand my situation, you don't know my story, or my situation is unique. No, it all, it all comes down to a first principle. And if you understand the first principle, you can understand the pattern, and that's going to give you an accurate diagnosis for a treatment plan. So what drives everything is an underlying principle, and The principle here is you don't need— you don't convince your wife to come back to you. You remove the reasons that she wants to leave. This is a subtraction, an exercise in subtraction more than it is an addition problem. And when we say, well, it's a persuasion problem, right? If I could only show her how much I love her, if I could only show her that I'm changing communication, if she could understand how much I care. And again, she needs to understand these, these are all convincing your wife to come back, where actually what needs to happen is you need to identify the reasons that she wants to leave and remove those reasons. If you remove the reasons that she wants to leave, then there's no reason for her to leave and no persuasion is necessary. So there are 7 stages that this process goes through, and they are— they can be sequential, but they can also be nonlinear, meaning they don't, they don't move sequentially. So it's not I'm in stage 1, and then you go to stage 2, stage 3, stage 4. It's about being able to accurately diagnose what stage you've been in, if you— what that you're in. And if you've done particularly well, you could jump forward through stages. And if you don't do so well, you can be relegated back to a previous stage very quickly. This is a game of snakes and ladders. So understand that this is a nonlinear process, and it's not a case of— it's not a checklist scenario. Hey, we just check it off and move to the next stage. You've got to be emotionally aware of where you are in the process at any given time, or your action becomes inappropriate. So the second thing is this is emotionally asymmetric. And what I mean by that is you and your wife are not experiencing the same emotional reality at the same time, and you never will be during separation. So you can, you can feel like you're moving closer to reconciliation, and she can feel like she's pulling away simultaneously. This is not the, the experiences that you have are not shared. They're emotionally asymmetrical. So understanding that, that how you feel is not how she feels, and vice versa. So this can work for and against you. You can feel as though things are not working out as you want, which, you know, you feel like she's pulling away, but she can asymmetrically be moving in the other direction and feel like things are going well even though she is not pointing that out. And we'll see that in a stage as we come up here. So this is going to happen on her timeline, not yours. So this is, this is, this is one of the big things here is like you are not in control of time and you will not ever be in control of time when it comes to a woman. And this, this is one of the biggest— when we talk about control and say, you know, a lot of times a man will say, my wife says I'm controlling and I don't see how that is. Well, trying to control the timeline, it is not necessarily just controlling her, but it's like releasing the timeline and understanding that this is going to happen on her timeline. And women always move at a slower pace than men. When you, when you started dating your wife, you wanted things to move faster than her. And now, and the same is true throughout. So what is imperative here is you must accurately locate yourself in these stages, not aspirationally or how you would like— where you would like to be, or where you think you should be. You've got to accurately diagnose your location because your behavior is going to change according to the stage that you're in. So let's go through the 7 stages. So the first stage is— or the first step in stage 1 is to stop escalating the situation. Everything you're doing right now is making the situation worse. So at this stage, your wife has already emotionally exited the relationship. Your job is not to— is not to repair the marriage at this point. It's damage limitation. It's damage containment. You've got to— you, you don't talk about rehabilitation, rehabilitation when you're laying on the road bleeding out after a car accident. You stabilize the situation. And this, this is the hardest thing to do because this is the most emotionally volatile stage of, of the process for everybody. Like, most men were not aware of how bad the situation was or what was going on, or not, not really aware of her serious intent to leave. And when that happens, it produces a huge amount of emotional volatility within the man, and it produces a huge amount of desire to control and fix. And if she says to you, I want a divorce, and you go, I'm never giving up, I'm never gonna— I'm never gonna quit, I'm gonna fight for this marriage to the bitter end, you're basically telling her, I don't respect you, I don't respect your wishes, I don't care what you want, this is about me, and I don't care how hard you push for this divorce, I'm going to fight you every stage of the way. This is introducing again the same behavior that needs to be removed. This is the behavior that caused the fracture in the first place. And again, we're not bad men here. We're not looking at this like, I'm controlling and I'm manipulative and I'm disrespectful and emotionally unstable. We're looking at it like, I'm fighting for my marriage, I'm fighting for my, for my relationship, I'm fighting for my marriage, and I'm fighting for my children. And we see what we're doing as a virtue. But the reality is we're escalating the situation, and she's not going to slow down until she feels heard. Only when she feels heard in, 'I want a divorce,' and you go, 'Okay, I accept that. I accept you want a divorce,' then she relaxes and goes, 'He's heard me.' But if you fight this, she's going to scream louder and louder and louder. It's like a— it's like a child who behaves badly. How do you— why do children behave badly? Because they're seeking attention. The quickest way to slow down bad behavior is to acknowledge them. Now, one caveat here: acknowledgement is not— it's not sanctioning the behavior. It's not saying that you agree with it. Don't make that confusion. I talked to a mother the other day that was having major issues with their child, and I was able to, over a period of very quickly, was able to really settle the child down very quickly. And she's like, how do you do that? I'm like, I hear him out. And I'm like, the mistake you're making is you think that hearing him out is sanctioning the behavior and condoning it, when actually hearing him out is just listening to his side of the story. It's not validating the behavior or agreement. Listening is not agreement. And I'm like, he's frustrated that you're not listening to him. That's the frustration. So he's going to play out more and more and more until you do listen. And it's the same in the marriage here. So here's the key insight: in this stage, you're not reacting to her decision to leave. You're reacting to the fear that it created inside of you. You're reacting to the discomfort of your emotions. You're reacting to the fear that you're going to be alone. Which again, this is, this is, there's no accusations here. There's no name-calling or saying you're a bad man or a good man or any of those things. This is simply a fact. When your wife says, I want a divorce, it creates fear and you react to the fear. You're not reacting to the situation, you're reacting to your emotions. And what that, what that makes is an emotionally volatile, emotionally unstable man, which is the very thing she's looking to escape from. So you, you have to get a grip of yourself. You have to, you have to go, this is not the end. And what you have to do in this situation is create an emotional state that slows the process down. So these are common escalations in this stage. Now keep in mind that this is the first time most of us have become aware that there's a serious problem within the relationship. Like, obviously we've known there's issues, but when she leaves believe that this is a new level that we didn't understand. I think 70% of men say that they never saw it coming. So this creates a huge amount of emotional volatility, and what that results in is begging, explaining, guilt, emotional collapse, recruiting allies, or forcing counseling. So when a man sees for the first time that he has responsibility in the breakdown of the marriage that he didn't see, and he realizes that actually I am at fault here, I have more responsibility than I realized. He explains himself to the woman. He experiences guilt for his role. 10, 15, 20 years of guilt all of a sudden floods onto the man, and he feels like he needs to resolve the situation immediately. He emotionally collapses inside. He starts to recruit allies, church members. She's being an ungodly wife. She— family members, you go to the in-laws and go, I'm fighting for this marriage, I need her, I need, I need your support to fight for this marriage for the sake of this family. And pushing, pushing counseling or pushing reconciliation means that against her will. All of these and more are simply saying, I do not recognize what you've just said, which is what you want out. That's all it's doing. It's going to push— it's going to push her further away. So when somebody wants to— wants to leave a relationship and you apply pressure, you're not inviting partnership. You're restricting their freedom is what you're doing. And let me ask you a question. A woman who's looking for emotional freedom from a situation is applying pressure and restricting the freedom that she's asking for. Productive or counterproductive? Now again, I say this doesn't make you a bad man. This doesn't make you an a-hole. It doesn't make you any of those things. It makes you a man trying to save his marriage, but you're doing it with a very limited tool set and doing it in a way that's very ineffective and is actually having the exact opposite effect to what you're trying. So remember, we're in stage 1. Slow things down. So escalation audit. So what have I done in the last 7 days to try and change her mind? Ask yourself these questions. Remember, the goal is not to change her mind. The goal is to remove the elements that are causing the fracture. And which of these, which of these have I done in the last 7 days have come from a place of fear? So our goal here throughout this entire process and this entire program is leadership. It's authentic, effective, genuine masculine leadership that, that leads from a place of protection, support, and genuine legitimate authority. So here's, here's the rule to measure. If, if your goal right now is relief, that is not leadership, then stop what you're doing. You're making it worse. Get some people in here. This is a very good diagnostic. If what you're doing is seeking relief, then stop. So now we're on to stage 2, which is remove urgency. Non-resistance slows things down. So here's the first principle that we need to imagine, uh, remember, right? Resistance creates urgency. Urgency accelerates decisions. So let me give you an example. Whenever I talk to somebody who's unhappy, the first— what is in their mind is, am I going to get what I want out of this conversation? Am I going to get my needs met? Am I going to get what you want? They're not going to hear anything that I say, or they're not going to hear anything that you say, until it's been made very clear your needs are going to be met in this conversation. So when, when we start the conversation with— not when we understand this first principle, right, that resistance creates urgency. We can, we can neutralize this and go, hey Jeff, you're going to get exactly what— like, before we start, let me tell you so you know, so you're comfortable, that you're going to get exactly what you want out of this situation. You're going to get exactly what you want today. I'm going to give it to you, so don't worry about that. But can we just talk about a few things so I can understand better what's going on? Like, now you know that you're going to get what you want. Now you've— it's been confirmed that you're going to get what you want. It opens the door to talk about the problems, and it's in, it's in that space of talking about the problems that the situation is resolved. Until it's understood that you're going to get what you want, that door is shut. So when you give resistance to the separation, to the divorce, to the breakup. All she's— all she's going is, are you going to cooperate with me? Are you going to cooperate with me? Am I going to get what I want out of this? Am I going to have to fight you? Are you going to make this difficult? I want a divorce. Are you going to stop that? That's all she can hear. So that urgency from— created by the resistance, it just accelerates her decision because she needs She needs certainty that she's going to get what she wants, and she is going to push until she gets it. So when she feels— when she feels opposed, she's going to prove that it's over. That is going to be her sole intention in your communication, is to prove to you. She's going to go, he doesn't get it, he doesn't understand, I need to get it through to him, I need for him to understand that this is over. So again, the counterintuitive truth here is acknowledging her position is not agreeing with her position. But what acknowledging her position does, it removes her need to escalate the situation. It slows things down. So here's what men misinterpret. These are common mistakes. They think that calm equals calm equals progress. It does not. And slow means solved. It does not. So a lot of times in stage 2, right, we're in stage 2, we do this and all the resistance goes away and she starts to be normal again. Things calm down because she realizes she's going to get what we want. So we, we mistake this calm for progress, and because it's now slowed down, we think that she's reconsidering. It's not. It's not the case. We've simply done what it says on the label. We slowed the situation down. So let me ask you this question to make the point. If you have an employee, if you're an employer and you're going to fire or terminate an employee, do you tell them Monday morning, hey, hey John, I'm going to fire you Friday afternoon. So this, this will be your last week here. I'm going to fire you Friday afternoon. So you've got from Monday morning to Friday afternoon to get your affairs in order. Or do you, at 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon, go, John, can you come to my office for a minute please and bring your laptop and company phone with you? Oh, and your keys as well. You do the latter because you don't want to create space between when the decision is made and when it's executed, because a lot of damage can happen in that space. If I know Monday morning I'm going to fire John at 5 o'clock, 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon, I want calm in that space. I want normality in that space. Those 5 days because I know he can cause me a lot of problems and do a lot of damage in that 5-day period. So for him, things are calm. For him, things are slow. And she's doing the same. Just because she's slowed down and just because she's calm doesn't mean the situation is resolved. It means that she wants calm until she pulls the trigger. And again, this is, this is a perfect situation of where men think they're winning when they're actually losing. They go, right, awesome, I've done step 2, I've slowed things down, everything's back to normal, and they stop. And then they get blindsided. So stage number 3 is we fix her experience. So there are only 2 reasons she ever said yes to you, right? Everything fits into one of these 2 reasons in some form or another. So The core framework is this: there are only two reasons she said she married you. She loved how she felt around you, and she saw that a future with you was a better option than a future without you. It's as simple as that. She liked the emotions that you created within her, and she's— she evaluated her options and said you're the best option. Now she wants out. Both of these are inverted. The opposite is true. She doesn't like how she feels around you, and she sees that a future without you, however bad that might be, is a better option than a future with you. These are the only two areas that we need to work on: how does she feel and what future does she see? So Let's talk about some critical truths to understand in this stage. Shared blame kills attraction. So I always hammer on, if I'm enrolling somebody in this program, if we're having an enrollment conversation, I always push really hard. What's your role in this? What's your role in this? Where did you go wrong? What did you screw up? What's your fault? How did you break down? 'Where did you—' Because I understand that she has a role in this, but when she feels like— when she doesn't care anymore, when she's at the point of exit and she is serious, she's leaving, going to her and saying you have a role in this breakdown is not helpful. The only thing that stands any chance of restoring traction, stands any chance of re-establishing attraction, is full ownership of blame. Remember, this is asymmetrical. She is not seeing the situation as you do, and she is not moving at the same speed you're moving. And if she sees in her emotional asymmetrical state that you— if she believes that you're fully to blame for the breakdown of this marriage and you tell her that it's her fault as well, you're done, bro. That is the fastest way to kill attraction. Share blame kills attraction. Ownership restores credibility. So understand this. Again, a lot of men struggle with this. This marriage reconciliation is not about fairness. It's not about what ought to be. It's about what is. It's about re-establishing influence within the marriage, and more specifically, it's about re-establishing your influence within the marriage. You have none right now. Ultimately, you can't affect the direction of this marriage without having influence. You have to re-establish influence. Shared blame or blame of any kind destroys influence. And full ownership, radical responsibility restores credibility. When you say, I fully accept, I understand you want to leave this marriage, I see your point, I agree that you've had a really rough time with this with me, and I understand that I am to blame for this, I take full responsibility— that's very different to saying, well, you don't think you had a role in this too? She's leaving. So change that needs recognition isn't change at all, it's negotiation. We'll cover that more. So stage 4, the test. Things will get worse before they start getting better. And they will get worse when you start doing better. Again, this is, this is the stage where it feels like you're losing, nothing is working, and you feel like you're losing when actually you're winning. I should have put this, this actually belongs down the bottom here, because what happens here is we make all of these changes in the relationship and she doesn't recognize them. Well, that's Stage 4. So here's, here's the first principle that we need to understand. She's not questioning your effort, she's questioning its duration. She's questioning its longevity. Or in other words, she's not questioning your desire or intention to change, she's questioning your ability to actually do it. This is what happens in stage 4. And the way she is able— the only way she's able to, A, test its longevity and test its legitimacy— are you changing because you want recognition, or are you changing because you recognize it's the right thing to do? She removes hope from the marriage. She'll double down on telling you that it's over. She will double down on telling you that she's— that I see your changes, Nathan, and I appreciate what you're doing here, and I recognize that you're doing a good thing for your family, but it's still over. How you respond in that situation reveals your motivation for change. If you collapse under that kind of hope being removed, then she's got her answer as to its duration and to the intention of the, of the transformation. It's temporary. It's It's manipulative. It's outcome-based. So this stage is often going to include legal pressure, emotional coldness, dating threats. You're going to hear too little, too late, that kind of stuff. Not because she's cruel or she doesn't care, but she's, she's testing your stability. She wants to know how you perform under pressure. He's telling me that, that he's changed because he sees the error of his ways. Well, what's going to happen if I pursue legal pressure, put legal pressure on him? Is he going to collapse? He's acting like he's going to be the man that I need him to be, but what if I tell him that this is— I— it's too little, this is not going to work? Is he going to continue with the changes, or is he going to collapse under that that pressure. This is the only way she can find out, is to test it. So if your behavior depends on her reassurance, it isn't stable. Yeah, and again, what do we need to do here to save this marriage? We don't need to convince her of things. We need to remove— we need to remove the elements that are unacceptable to her, and one of those majorly is emotional instability. If you collapse under these pressures, you're telling her that you are still emotionally unstable, and regardless of the changes that you've made, you haven't made the ones that she needs to see. So then we move to uncertainty, which is stage 5. This is where we start to again think things are moving our way. She starts to go, well, let's work on this, or I can work on this, or let's go to council, you know, those type of things, right? So Understand, at this stage, she's not choosing you. She's questioning her decision to leave. She's questioning herself. This is not about she's recognizing that you're right and you're doing the right things and she was wrong. She's questioning her decision to leave. So this is, this is the first internal shift in her. Don't mistake this for hope, because this is, this is not hope. This is not reconciliation. This is doubt. This is doubt forming in her. And what this can look like is that there's a lot of reasons this can happen. She may look at the housing market and realize how expensive it is. She may, she may actually go out into the world and realize that she's now a 50 or 60-year-old woman, and it's a very different world than when she was a 20 or 25-year-old woman. She may start to feel the financial pressures of separation. She may start to be experiencing guilt about the damage that she's doing to her children. She may be feeling social pressure from church, community, family. That all of this stuff has nothing to do with you. She's not choosing you. She's doubting her— she's doubting herself that she's made a good decision. And this really is the danger zone because men go, well, she's seen the light, she's seen the error of her ways, she's seen that I'm her best option. No, she's seen that you— she's seen that you are the worst. You are the best of a bad bunch of options. You— if she reconciles at this stage, if you think that your work is done and she reconciles, you have become the best decision. You've become the best option, the best bad option. Basically, you're the least worst option for her. And I would posit that that is not where you want to be. I don't want to be my wife's best bad decision, the least worst option for my wife. I want her to choose me because I'm her very best option. So when we get to this stage, and this will be You'll recognize it through stuff like, I'm open to counseling. Maybe, maybe we, maybe we could look at counseling. Some— but that type of language is what you hear. Most men overcorrect here. They get too eager, they get too intense, and they get too future-focused. All she's done at this stage is said, I'm open to the possibility that I'm making the wrong decision. That's it. She's not saying anything more than that. So The attraction will return unannounced. You don't announce it, you notice it. And this, again, this is where a lot of men make mistakes. They want, they want verbal reassurance. Tell me, tell me, tell me that you're attracted to me. Tell me that you want me back. Tell me. It's like, she's not going to do that. You're going to start to experience it. You're going to start to notice it. You're not going to hear it. So stage 6 is comparison, and this is why time and non-resistance matter. So the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence, and quite often she needs to experience this. So if you've given her non-resistance, if you've allowed her to experience another reality. It doesn't necessarily mean having an affair or going down the route of actually experiencing separation. But if she's gone, I want to look at apartments, and you've not— you have not resisted that, and you've even helped her with that, look, maybe she understands that an apartment's $4,000 a month now and it's a one-room apartment. Or maybe she realizes that actually, like, she had no idea what it actually costs to live in the world today. Or maybe she's realized that the world is a very dangerous place for a woman. Maybe she's realized that dating in your 50s or 60s is not the same as dating in your 20s. And, and now she has a comparison point. She's saying that yes, there are problems with you, but also there are going to be problems wherever she goes. There's not— there is no problem-free solution here. Here. So it gives her the opportunity of seeing what a life without you truly looks like, which in reality is a lot worse than she thinks it is. And she can compare that to a life around a new improved you, assuming that you've gone through the steps and you've actually taken on board what we're talking about here. And again, this cannot be forced, it cannot be speeded up. It's on her time frame. You can't push her out into the world and go, the world's a dangerous place and it's harder than you think, so get out there and see what you think, and then you'll realize I'm a better option. This is not how that works. So this is critical in this stage. At no point are you working on the marriage. At no point. At no point are you working on her feelings, and at no point are you working on the outcome. Collectively. This is, this is critical. You work on yourself. You work on creating a man that naturally creates the feelings in her when you're around her. So when we talk about the outcome, Here's how we actually work on the outcome. You can only understand and work on the conditions that provide the outcome, create the outcome, and then you chase those conditions. So for example, if you want ice, how do you make ice? How do you get ice? You have to understand the conditions in which ice is created— sub-zero environment, freezing environment, and water. If you want ice, you better, you better figure out how to create a sub-zero environment, and you better figure out how to get some water, and you figure out how to bring the two together. If you, if you create the environment and the elements in which ice is created, it's an inevitability. Ice will happen. You don't have to get down on your knees and beg God to give you ice. It's the only possible outcome. So how do you create the outcome that you want in your marriage? You have to understand the conditions in which the outcome, which is reconciliation, occurs. You cannot pursue that outcome directly. You can only create the conditions and environment in which it's conducive for it to happen. So if you're working on the marriage, you are sitting there going, how do I create ice, Cody? How do I create ice? If you're working on her feelings, you're going, how do I create ice? And if you're working on the outcome, you're doing the same thing instead of saying— the better question is, where do I find water, Cody? Where do I find a sub-zero environment? Ask questions around the elements, don't ask questions around the outcome. So What you do work on, right? So what are the elements? Your consistency. Consistency is everything. The levels of emotional safety that you provide and your leadership. These are, these are the elements that produce the outcomes that you're looking for. So Stage 7, which is re-entry. So I'm, I'm also going to give this a different, a little bit of a different start position on this. So Stage 7 actually is she comes back or she doesn't. This is really the major clarification that I've made since the last iteration of this process, is previously Stage 7 was she returns. She reenters the marriage. But that's the wrong position in retrospect. She either comes back or she doesn't. And the only position that actually creates the environment for her to come back is the attitude she comes back or she doesn't. Stage 7 is the endgame. And if she comes back, that's the endgame. And if she doesn't come back, that's the endgame. And it shouldn't— in whether she comes back or not really should have no impact on the previous 6 stages, and it should have absolutely no impact on your position and behavior. So when she does come back, understand this: you're back in proximity, you're not back in trust. Any access granted to you is extremely conditional. There is no reset, there is no let's start over again, there's only probation. It's like when you are let out of prison— not that any of us have been to prison, I don't think— but when you're released from a prison sentence, the parole board does not go, 'You've paid your debt to society, there's now a reset, you are released unconditionally back into the environment.' You get— you put on probation. There's no way to get out of prison without probation. You're being tested. It's a common failure. The enemy is comfort. Comfort leads to complacency, and complacency leads to aggression. This is why men who want that constant validation, they'll get it. Like, if you, if you continually ask for your wife for— if you continue to push your wife for validation, she'll give it to you, but it's just to shut you up. If I tell you that everything's going to be fine, you know, will you not mess with any of my clients between now and Friday when I fire you? Yeah, yeah, okay, well, everything's fine then. This leads to comfort, leads to complacency, leads to your aggression. The best The safest position through this entire process is she's not coming back. There's no downside to that. If you, if you assume the position that she's not coming back, yet you take the steps to become the man that she could come back to, and you've consistently removed the elements that have causing her to not come back, the end result is you're a better man. That's the worst— that's the downside. The worst-case scenario is she doesn't come back, but you're a better man and you've removed all the problems and all the obstacles to a future relationship and happiness. That's the only downside. If you assume that she's going to come back through this process, you get— it's going to create comfort, complacency, and regression. What the mind seeks, the mind finds. And if you're seeking comfort, if you're seeking reassurance, if you're seeking validation that the process is working, you'll find evidence for it, at which point comfort, complacency, and regression will come— will become a reality for you. So here's the reality at this point, the probation reality. And this is where they— at any point, if the marriage is unhappy, this is true at any point. Your wife can still be in the house with you. She can be at any stage from just being a dissatisfied wife all the way through to dating somebody else. Trust is borrowed and it is revoked at lightning speed. Any trust you have with her at this point is borrowed. It's not yours, and she will take that away from you in a New York second. So here's the self-sabotage scan. The way you get better outcomes is you ask better questions. So the question is, what version of you destroyed trust before? What version have you destroyed, destroyed trust before? And the next question is, what behaviors can never return to your marriage? These are, these are two profound questions, and most of us will never, never answer them in a mean, in a meaningful way. I talked to a guy the other— an enrollment conversation the other day, and I actually just pulled the plug on the guy. I'm like, this is not going to work for you, because I asked that question, what version of you destroyed trust? And he said, I, I could have been more romantic. And after digging and digging and digging, that is the extent of the ownership that was going to be accepted. And it's like, well, if the only level of ownership if that— as deep as you're willing to go in why trust has been utterly destroyed within this marriage is, I could have been more romantic, then you're never going to remove the— but you're never going to do enough introspection to understand what's broken the marriage. And if you don't understand what's broken the marriage, you're not going to identify the behaviors that can never return. And if you're not going to identify them, you're not going to remove them, and she's not going to come back. So ultimately, it's a case of the more truthful you can be with yourself, the better chance you've got. But also, the, the flip side of that coin is the more truthful that you be with yourself, the more painful it is, the harder it is to look in the mirror and see a man that's just catastrophically destroyed a marriage. That's hard to do. It's hard to look at that man and see honestly and honestly own and acknowledge that behavior truthfully and not in a, uh, you know, again, a lot of people, a common error will be people will superficially accept ownership because they think it's the right thing to do. The only way this changes is you've, you've got to look at yourself and go I had no idea that I was doing this damage, but now I realize that I am. I, I'm not that man, and I'm not going to be that man. He's got to go. What behaviors can never return? For me, it's alcohol. What destroyed trust in my— my— what destroyed trust in my marriage? Well, ultimately, it's alcohol. What behaviors can never return? It's alcohol. So here's the deal, right? You don't go back to the marriage you had, ever. That marriage has ended. You either build something new or there's nothing. And that's good, and that's right. She has no interest in going back into the marriage that was. And quite frankly, you should have no interest in going back to the marriage that was. It's either that marriage needs to die, it needs to be resurrected into something new, or it needs to be let go. Ultimately, whether you're happy or not in what was, your wife isn't. Your wife wasn't. And again, the question comes down to, are you a man that's happy to have a marriage that meets all your needs and meets none of your wife's needs? If the answer is yes, then you don't— quite frankly, you've got what you deserve. If you go, no, that is not who I am, I was not aware that that is the environment that I was creating, but now I understand, no, I am not a man that's happy to be in a situation where all my needs are met and none of her needs are met. That is not a marriage that I'm prepared to lead. Then a new marriage— building a new marriage with your wife, I mean, going and re-establishing your vows— but a new reality needs to be created, or it needs to be let go. So final integration's here. So you don't win your wife back by fixing her doubts about you. You win her back by, by becoming someone who doesn't create doubts in the first place. And my final advice, and then we'll throw it open to a Q&A here, is the marriage does not come back first. Safety returns to the marriage first. Stability returns to the marriage and respect. The relationship follows that. And again, safe— you become safe, you become stable, and you become a man who can be respected. That's it. Hey, Cody here again. I hope you got a lot of insight out of that workshop. If your marriage is unstable, and you want an unemotional assessment of whether it can still be saved, book a divorce prevention session using the link below. This is not advice or therapy. It's for men ready to take responsibility and act. We'll look at your marriage and I'll give you an unbiased view. This is also the first step to working together if you want serious help.