How To Stay Calm When Your Marriage Is Falling Apart

Hey, Cody Butler here, men's marriage coach, and doing something new here, doing a live today. We're going to see how this goes. If this works out, then we'll be doing a lot more of these. So I want to talk to you today about how do you stop emotionally collapsing in a divorce scenario every time something happens in the relationship. Every time you get a text message, something happens, something doesn't happen. You're so emotionally involved in the microscopic details every day that the smallest things are causing you to collapse. So let's give you some, some tips today on why that's happening and more importantly, what you can do about it. So what's going on is Every, every text message destroys you. If it's got an X at the end of it, you're happy. If it doesn't, it causes you to collapse. One cold interaction can completely destabilize you. One hopeful moment lifts you and makes your whole day. One bad interaction can ruin your whole day or your whole week. One clap, one difficult conversation collapses you again. So your emotional state is constantly in this swinging situation of hope, despair, panic, relief. It's going to work out. It isn't going to work out. There's hope. There isn't. And this is absolutely exhausting because it feels uncontrollable. It feels chaotic and it just is a horrible place to live. And your nervous system was never designed to be like this. This is why this feels so, so awful to you, because the autonomic, autonomic nervous system is only designed to be in this heightened state of awareness maybe 15 minutes every 2 or 3 days. Now, if you think about this in from a natural environment, you might be going, where do you get this information from, Cody Butler? Think about this naturally, right? If you were, if you were in an environment where you were hunting, gathering, or whatever, you're a caveman, your nervous system is going to be brought to that heightened state for a very short period of time every couple of days. When you find an animal you're hunting, you go into that heightened state of awareness. Maybe when an animal finds you and it's hunting you, you go into that state of awareness. So you come into contact with another human being that's a threat to you, you're only designed to be in this state for a few minutes every couple of days, and then go back to a normal state. You were never designed to remain in this state all the time. And that's why it's absolutely exhausting, uncontrollable, and chaotic, because it just is not normal. And it's quite frankly, it's unsustainable as well. So why do you emotionally collapse in these situations? Well, it's because disproportionate consequences are aligned to small events. You have, you have no perspective is the problem. Really, ultimately, if we want to talk about the solution, the solution is a different perspective, right? A lot of the issues here are being caused because you, you are seeing a temporal moment in time as eternal. You're measuring something that is just a passing moment. It's just seconds or minutes in your life that's going to pass, and you're seeing it as an eternal event. Every little thing, like if she gives you— sends you a negative text message, this then becomes eternal in consequence. It's a completely different consequence aligned to the size of events. So Every event that's happening here, it's interpreted in isolation. It's determined, it's interpreted as being final. It's interpreted as being decisive. It's determined as being the conclusion, the end result. It's not— there's no perspective going on. And of course, when something happens that's going to challenge really who you are as a human being, who you are as a man, your masculinity, of course that's going to threaten you. You've got to find some kind of perspective here, or else this is, this is just going to destroy you. And quite frankly, this is, this is very harmful to the marriage, very harmful to the relationship, because her seeing you as an emotional wreck is not attractive to her. She's, she's, she's finding this behavior, quite frankly, probably repulsive. She's finding you showing up as a nervous wreck, as depressed, anxious. This is not masculine behavior. This is not leadership behavior. She's not finding this attractive. This is not helping you win your wife back. This is not helping you save your marriage. So what happens is every small moment becomes emotionally catastrophic to you. And when your whole future is placed on a single tiny moment, of course it's going to impact you like that. So why is this happening? Well, it's because the outcome of the marriage has been catastrophized, for one. You, you've put so much weight on the consequences, and I've got lots of other videos on, on YouTube on this, on Who am I if, if my marriage fails? And finding out who you truly are as a man and how you've outsourced your identity to the marriage. I'm not going to go into that in this live here, this video, because I've covered that in lots of other videos. Definitely go and check that out. But essentially what's happened, the marriage, the outcome of the marriage has been absolutely catastrophized to where everything depends on it. If you get your marriage back, everything is fine. If you don't, everything is, is a catastrophe. So because of the perspective that you've chosen there, every interaction becomes emotionally loaded. Every interaction carries emotional weight and consequence that it really doesn't have. So you start majoring in minor things. Little things become big deals, and that's why every interaction feels catastrophic. So let's look at some of the reasons why it feels so catastrophic, why it feels so out of control, and put some, some guardrails in place here so that you can start to feel in control again. So the first reason is that there's no framework in place to contextualize events. What is your protocol? What, what is your process when something feels catastrophic to you, or something when this happens, what framework do you have in place to bring yourself back under control? What are the rules when you start to lose control? In other words, there's no governing criteria, there's no perspective, there's only emotional interpretation going on. And emotions simply are not reliable at the best of times. When you're in a crisis situation, such as potentially losing your wife and family, your emotions are not going to serve you. So let me define very quickly how to succeed and how to fail, because it's very, it's very easy. So failure is inconsistent execution governed by emotion. Success is the exact opposite. And this is very true in marriage crisis situations. Success is consistent execution regardless of emotion. I'm going to show up regardless of how I feel. I'm going to choose to be stable regardless of how I feel. I'm going to interpret this way regardless regardless of how I feel. I'm going to execute on my stability regardless of how I feel. You have to get emotions out of the situation. You have to. And to do that, you have to have a framework. So again, the failure formula is inconsistent execution governed by emotion. I'll give you some short examples here. Going to the gym. You don't go to the gym today because you're tired or you don't feel like it. A diet fails through inconsistent execution governed by emotion. You feel like having a cheat day, you feel like— you don't feel like being hungry at this particular moment, you don't feel like experiencing the pain, the discomfort. So your emotion determines your behavior, or in other words, you inconsistently execute in the diet, you inconsistently execute and go into the gym based on emotional decisions. So Getting back to the marriage, what's going on is events within the marriage are not being measured by facts. They're not being placed up against facts and the question being asked, is this true? Is this really happening? Is this what's actually going on? Or is this just my feelings going haywire? Excuse me. You're meant to be measured by your feelings. If they feel good, you feel good. If the feelings feel bad to you, you feel bad. So your emotional reaction to the situation, this is what determines the perceived importance of the situation, the perceived danger or threat level to you, and the perceived permanence of what's going on. When you look at a situation such as a text message, for example, just as an example, and you place significantly more importance on it than there is, you interpret it as danger because now you're convinced she's going to leave you, and you turn the situation into permanence. A permanent situation. Of course you're going to emotionally collapse under the weight of that. But the reality is, maybe she's just busy. I don't— there's many times I don't respond to my wife just because I'm on the phone with a client or some, some other thing that I can't respond. And then I forget, or I send a very short text message to her because I'm doing something else and I just want to communicate information. Doesn't mean I don't love her. Just means I'm busy. But how you determine that determines how you feel and how you feel determines how you act. How you act determines the outcome of your marriage. So what we're ultimately looking for here is data, not drama. You've got to, you've got to adopt the position of, I am a man who operates from data, not drama. Right now you're very likely in the position of operating from drama. Drama, not data. So emotional collapse happens because you allow your nervous system to become the interpreter of the situation. You get it? I keep using the text message. We'll stick with that, but it can be a lot of different things, right? It can be a bunch of different stimulus that's stimulating. You allow your nervous system to feel something like, well, this is cold. And then that becomes the interpreter. That feeling is then interpreted as, well, that was cold, therefore X, Y, and Z. There's— it's a drama interpretation based on a feeling, not logic, not values, not rules, and not perspective. True masculinity. If you want to become independent, uh, sovereign, emotionally sovereign as a man, which is actually what your wife needs from you regardless of what she says. A woman— many men just go, well, just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. Tell me what I like. Do you think she finds that attractive? A, do you think she finds it attractive? And B, do you think she believes it? A man that just goes, tell me what you want and I'll do it. Tell me what you need to be and I'll become it. Tell me how you need to act and I'll act it. That, that man is going to repulse his wife. She's literally going to be repulsed by him. She's not going to find that attractive at all. What she's going to find attractive is a strong, independent, emotionally sovereign man who's governed by, governed by logic, rules, values, and perspective. He's able to step back from the situation, look at the big picture, and decide how he's going to respond to the situation and do that because that's what he wants to do, versus emotionally collapsing and becoming highly reactive. Effectively, you're her child at that point. You're— she's a caregiver and you're a dependent. This is not attractive to her, and unless you can move out of that perspective, it's going to be very, very different. So what happens to the emotionally unstable man, the emotionally weak man, is he uses his feelings as evidence. This, I feel like the number of coaching calls I do where the man goes, I feel like she's doing this, or I feel like she's having an affair. Do you know any of this stuff or are you just making this up? Is the question. Do you, do you know that that's what she's thinking? No. So you've allowed your feelings, which are highly unreliable on a good day, to become evidence of a situation of which you're now taking action on, stimulating the situation and making it worse. You've allowed your feelings to create a conclusion, and you've allowed your feeling to become judge, jury, and sentencer, executioner, and to pass the jury. A man that is driven by his emotions like this is closer to a woman than a man. So why does this create chaos in the marriage? Well, it's because the same circumstances can produce very different reactions from you, depending on emotionally where you're coming from and the perspective that you have. When you change your perspective, when you change how you see the situation, the situation you see changes. And really, The question here is, is what else could this mean? So let me give you an example here, how the same circumstance can produce different reactions in people. So, um, I got this from the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, I think, by Stephen Covey. And it's the story of the man on the train where the man has some children on the train, train, and they're being very unruly. They're not behaving well and the passengers are getting really frustrated around him until finally the passenger, one passenger comes up to the man and says, can you please get your children under control? They're behaving very badly and this is a public space. And the man goes, you're absolutely right, I'm sorry, they should be behaving better, but we've just come from the hospital, they've just lost their mother and they don't know how to react. And quite frankly, I don't really know how to handle it either. Same situation. What do you think happened to the empathy in those people? What do you think happened to those people in that situation? They changed. Circumstances was the same, that what they were looking at was the same. But they changed how they saw the situation and the situation changed. So how you see the situation in your marriage right now is very much dependent on your emotional conditioning. It's very dependent on your fear level. It's very dependent on your nervous system automation, activation, which is fully activated right now. You're not seeing the situation as it is. There's many other ways you could see this situation. But your emotions are determining the, the interpretation. So as a result, of course, what's going to happen? Well, your behavior becomes inconsistent, you become unpredictable, you become unstable, you become unreliable. And let me ask you, how many of those things do you think is impressing your wife? Do you think being inconsistent, unpredictable, and unstable is making her question whether she's made the right decision to leave or not? I'll leave the conclusion to that with you. So why does this make the marriage worse when effectively what I'm saying here is you're emotionally driven, not rules-driven? You're operating out of just pure nervous system emotion and feelings, not out of a framework. Well, it's because the emotional collapse creates inconsistent execution. Again, failure formula: inconsistent execution driven by emotion. It produces that inevitably with a high level of certainty. Stability, your stability as a man becomes absolutely impossible when your behavior is emotionally governed. When you're, when you're governed by how you feel, there's no stability in you. Effectively, we always say in the Win Your Wife Back program, it's not, it's not how you show up when you've had a good night's sleep and a full belly of food and everything's going well. That's not when we figure out what kind of man you are. We figure out the kind of man you are when you've had no sleep, when you're hungry, when you're cold, and your wife has just told you it's over and there's no hope. That's when, that's when we figure out who you truly are. That's when we figure out your baseline, right? Your wife is not looking at you and making the decision on whether she comes back or not based on what you're capable of doing. She's doing it based on the baseline, right? And let me tell you how elite selection takes place. Whether it's Special Forces, whether it's sport, whether it's elite musicianship, etc., they're not selecting you based on what you're capable of doing. They're selecting you based on what is the worst-case scenario if this guy has a really, really bad day, right? That's what they're selecting you on. If he, if he's had no sleep, if he's hungry, if he's cold, if he's just marched 30 miles with 100 pounds of weight on his back, and now he's got to fight a fight. He's having a really, really bad day. What is the worst this guy is going to perform? That is what they're measuring you against. In music, I was a musician for a long time. They're not hiring you based on what you're capable of doing. They're hiring you based on what is the worst-case scenario. If Cody Butler has a really, really, really bad day, is that standard still acceptable? And this is the, this is the problem that we, we don't understand and we have to face as men, is she's not— mango, it's not, you know, I'm making these changes, Cody, I'm doing this stuff, Cody, I'm becoming stable, Cody, I'm doing all these things, Cody. Okay, awesome, but that's on your best day. What about on your bad day? Who are you on your worst day? Because that's who she cares about. So when, when your stability becomes, or your stability does become impossible when behavior is emotionally governed and she's going to experience you as unpredictable and unstable, high level of instability, and she's going to, she's going to know that your nervous system is in chaos. You're going to throw that chaos into the marriage, destabilizing her, which frankly is what she's trying to get away from. So again, we've covered this, but the root problem is responses are feeling-driven, not rules-driven, and feelings are sensory experiences, not objective reality. You have to understand that. Again, the man on the train, right? That this is how we move through this. When you're facing something that seems catastrophic to you, you gotta ask the question, what else could this mean? I had a, a client that I worked with a few years ago now, and he was a CEO, had a board, had a board meeting and a woman came in and he started the meeting and she was just talking through the meeting and he was getting really frustrated. He was about to shout at that woman and scream at her and, uh, he stopped based on the conversation we had. He asked himself, what else could this mean? And, and he pulled back and he, he came up with other meanings and decided to go on with the meeting. Turns out she was pretty much deaf and couldn't hear. She was unaware that the movie— that the meeting had started. And he was about to scream at this woman, this deaf woman. Would have been catastrophic. But because he had a framework to work within, and when he was getting triggered, when he was becoming emotionally unstable because of the situation, he asked himself the question, what else could this mean? Found a meaning, a perspective that allowed him to remain in control and stable, and as a result, maintain control of the situation. So The critical principle here, man, is emotional stability requires consistent execution. Consistent execution. Again, the musician on the stage, the Special Forces operator— it's not about what you're capable of doing on a good day, it's about what are you going to consistently execute. Inconsistent execution governed by emotion is the failure of the Special Forces operator. He got emotional, didn't execute, now everyone's dead. The musician on the stage became emotional, forgot his parts, didn't execute, now it's hugely embarrassing. So what this, what this requires to move from emotional instability and emotionally driven inconsistent behavior to consistent execution, it requires behavior governed by rules, not the emotional weather that's going on. You, your goal is to become shelter from the storm, not to become the storm. Right now you are the storm, and your wife is looking for shelter. And the reason she's looking to go outside of this marriage or leave this marriage is because the only shelter available to her is outside of the marriage. Your goal is to become the shelter from her storm. Not become her storm. When you become the rock, when you become the oak tree, when you become rooted and grounded, then she be— you become attractive to her because you're serving a purpose that she requires. So what actually stabilizes the man? Well, it's identity construction, not willpower. So The stability begins when a man intentionally defines who he is, how he behaves, what he values, what emotional environment he is going to create and live it. So again, this is becoming a rules-based man. We operate based on rules. Let me tell you something. Set plays win games. You have to have set plays because here's the thing, right? You know, you're going to get emotional. You know you're going to get triggered. This is, this is, this is not a question. The question is, when are you going to get emotion? When are you going to get triggered? But do you have a set play in the moment to mitigate that and remain stable, or do you just fall apart in the moment? Because I can tell you, but when the emotion shows up, when you feel that heat coming up and the red coming into your face and you've been triggered, it's too late to decide what you're going to do at that point. You You have to have a framework ahead of time to decide. So the stability returns when the man intentionally defines who he is. I am the rock. I am the shelter from the storm. I am protector, provider, prophet, and priest in my house. I protect my wife. I provide for my wife and family. I'm the prophet. I listen to her. I listen to her, and the prophet speaks into the person's future, right? You speak good things, you see positive future that she doesn't see for herself yet, and you take the— you're the priest, you take her confession. This is not a religious thing. You're there when she wants to talk to you, when she wants to confess all the things that are not going well for her. You become protector, provider, prophet, priest. This is the identity. You define how you behave ahead of time. You define what you value, and your behavior becomes subordinate to your values. And you define what emotional environments you are going to create. When you're around me, you can expect this emotional environment. You, you, you're not going to get chaos. You're not going to get pandemonium. You're going to get stability. This has to be defined. The man has to choose this, and then he has to actively build this environment, this, this personality and identity. So let's, let's ask a different question. Stop asking, how do I feel? Or how do I feel differently? And start asking the question, who am I committed to becoming? Who are you committed to becoming right now? What kind of man are you committed to becoming? That's where the magic happens. So what our goal here, man, is to put identity before emotion. We become identity-driven before emotionally driven. So when, when you do this, when, when we, when we're building that identity, my suggestion would be, I am a man who puts identity before emotion. That way your behavior becomes identity-driven, not emotionally driven. I am a man who remains calm and stable in difficult situations, not I am a man who falls apart when the wind changes. To become a man who is not emotionally driven, to become a man whose values become governed by the law that you decide, not the emotion that you feel, and not to be governed by temporary feelings that are simply going to come and go. So the dynamic here to understand— excuse me— is that if you allow it, your feelings will demand behavior out of you in the same way that an emotional child will demand behavior out of you. It will control you. It just simply will control you. But when, when you become this man who has established an identity of protector, provider, prophet, priest, of I'm the oak tree, I'm the rock, I'm the shelter from the storm. I'm not the— I'm not the storm. When you, when you actually truly step into that identity and become that man, which is what your wife is desperate for, by the way, it's what she wants, whether she knows it or not, then the value system that you are operating by simply must override the feelings that you're experiencing. There's no other way around it. Like when you become truly value-driven and those values become non-negotiable, your operating system becomes the values, and those values override the feelings every single time. So what we're talking about here, the emotional sovereignty becoming independent of being able to operate emotionally with emotional sovereignty, which means being able to choose how you behave independent of the situation. I choose— I chose to be on this live today. Nobody forced me. Nobody made me do this. I chose to do this. This was an act of independent sovereignty, right? Someone held a gun to my head and said, you have to do this, then my sovereignty would be gone. The same is true in your marriage. You're not behaving this way because you're choosing it. You're behaving this way because your emotions are holding that gun to your head. So emotionally, sovereignty, emotional sovereignty is not suppressing the emotion. It's not pretending that you don't care. It's not just becoming emotionally numb or dominant. It is values governing your behavior. It's becoming value-driven, rules-driven, law-driven, not emotionally driven. It's about internal authority governing your reactions. I choose to react this way, or I choose, I choose this reaction. It's just not impulsive. And it's about emotional discipline. Are you actually in control of yourself? Or are your emotions in control of yourself? Because keep in mind, a man that is governed by his emotions is a very dangerous man to a woman. So stable men are rules-driven, unstable men are feelings-driven. Which are you? Are you rules-driven right now or are you feelings-driven right now? This is going to be very diagnostic of why what's going on in your marriage is going on. Emotional sovereignty means behavior remains stable regardless of the emotional fluctuations that are going on within the marriage. You show up as a unified man, one man, all the time. So this identity stabilization that we're talking about, what it does, it creates, it stabilizes your nervous system, it creates in you, it creates predictability, it creates structure, it creates internal authority, it creates emotional sovereignty, it creates behavioral consistency. It makes you safe. And let me just ask you, how do you feel about it? Do you want to be that man? Do you want to be all of those things I've just said— predictable, structured, internal authority, emotionally sovereign, behaviorally consistent, in control of yourself? Or do you want to be a loose cannon that just whatever the wind does is the direction your flags blow in? So when you become these things, her nervous system becomes calm. It calms her nervous system. When your behavior becomes predictable, this is what she needs to reset. So fundamentally, like, at a surface level, there's lots of reasons she'll say she's leaving the marriage, but fundamentally what's happening is she's leaving the marriage because there's, there's too much pressure. She's experiencing too much pressure and she needs some relief from it. She's looking to escape the pressure from the marriage by leaving the marriage. And typically, as men, our response to that is to create more pressure within the marriage, right? So what we, what we need to do if we want to keep our wife is we have to, we have to reduce the pressure level within the marriage. We have to lower that. And the way we do that is we stabilize our own nervous system, which pumps stability into the marriage, which reduces the pressure level, which allows her to reset and reconsider. Right now, when you're emotionally unstable, you're requiring her behavior to stabilize you. If she's, if she's behaving in a way that you like, you're stable. If she's not, then you're unstable. So she effectively is stabilizing the marriage, which means she doesn't need you. She's looking for stability, and the only way she can get it is to produce that herself. You've made yourself obsolete. She just doesn't need you at this point. She— the only stability she's getting is coming from herself. So the goal here, man, is one unified man. One man under pressure, one man during conflict, one man during uncertainty, one man during certainty, one man in rejection, one man at church on Sunday morning, one man at work on Monday morning. One man. Right now we're fractured men with many different personalities, and it's like we're stable if this condition is here, we're unstable if this condition is here. We act this way in this circumstance, we act that way in that environment. We're different men in different circumstances. Each one of us, myself included, becomes multiple personalities effectively, right? Like, we're different men in different situations, and depending on the mood that you're in and what's happening is the man that's going to show up. So if things are going really well, she's going to get a nice version of you. If things are not going well, she's going to get a very unstable version of you. The solution is a one unified man, one unified personality, one unified governing law ruling you, one unified outcome. Become one unified man. That's it. I know who I'm going to get regardless. If you're having a bad day, I know I'm getting John. If I'm getting— if you're having a good day, I know I'm getting John. If you're— if you've been triggered emotionally, I know I'm getting John. I'm not getting his unstable 14-year-old alter ego. So this comes down to one— the way you do this is have one governing value system that rules your life, one behavioral standard that rules your life. You don't tell dirty jokes in the bar, in the pub on Friday night, and go and be a completely different man in church on Sunday morning. You're just one person, independent of circumstances. You have a value system that governs your life regardless of where you are. So again, let's make some distinctions here because we do have a tendency to go off the deep end and go way off to Neverland. So some important distinctions are emotional stability does not mean not feeling pain. It does not mean not feeling fear. It's not emotional suppression. It's not emotion. It's not becoming emotionally robotic. You still feel these things. You just, you are ruling your emotions. You feel them and you subject them to you put them in subjection to yourself, to your legal system, your rules. Or in other words, values override your emotional impulses, stability governs your execution, emotional regulation rules the day, and your behavior becomes identity-driven. So the solution is always ask better questions, right? Tony Robbins says it. If you want better results, ask better questions. If you do that, you get better results. And the better question here is, or the bad question is, how do I stop feeling this chaos? How do I stop feeling this uncertainty? How do I stop feeling this? Essentially, stop asking that question and start asking the question, what kind of man do I need to become to execute regardless of what I feel? What kind of man do I need to become? Where do I need to do the work to operate within a principle of consistent execution regardless of emotion? When you become a man who can operate, execute consistently regardless of how you feel, you're a man who's moving forward in the world. That's a, that's a very attractive man, both to other men in work environments and etc., as someone to be by your side, and also to a woman as protector, provider, prophet, and priest. So in conclusion here, men, the emotional collapse happens when feelings are your governing authority. If you're emotionally collapsing right now, this is the diagnostic, right? The canary in the coal mine. If you're emotionally collapsing, feelings are your governing authority. Flat. That's it. That's all there is to it. Stability emerges when identity and values govern your behavior, not emotion. Or in other words, stability emerges when you execute consistently regardless of emotion. Your nervous system stabilizes through predictable execution, which also then pumps stability into the relationship, which causes her nervous system to stabilize and reset, which is absolutely essential if she's going to reconsider this marriage. If you can't stabilize her nervous system, or more importantly, if you can't, if you can't stabilize your nervous system, then there's no way you're going to stabilize her nervous system because you stabilizing yourself is a prerequisite to her stability. If you can't stabilize her nervous system, she is not going to reconsider this marriage. She's simply not going to. This is prerequisite. So the nervous system predict— your nervous system stabilizes through predictable execution, not through emotional control. You don't, you don't white-knuckle this. So again, strong men are not emotionless. They feel emotions. They act in spite of it. Strong men feel, feel fear. They act in spite of it. The man in the vanguard on the front line of the battle does not feel— he's not fearless. He feels experience. He's experiencing terror. He's experiencing every single emotion in his body is telling him to flee that battle. But why does he move forward? Because he's governed by law. His mind tells him to move forward even though every emotion, emotion in his body is screaming at him, run, run, run. The man on the battlefield is identity governed. He's a soldier. He's value governed. He's not a coward, and he's internally regulated. He's going to do this regardless. He would rather die than, than be a fleeing coward. This is the perfect example of an identity governed, value governed man that is able to overcome the most powerful emotion and progress and get the job done anyway. So that's it for me. If you want to learn more about this, then I've got a free workshop link in the description. Check that out if you want to. Let's have a quick look at the comments here. Trevor Clapham, hi from Canada. How are you, Trevor? Good to, good to have you. First, first live here. So I'm going to be doing a few more of these lives. So keep a look out. I'm gonna— I think I'm gonna shoot for 2 a week, see how— see how we go to where we can actually get on here. You can ask your questions in the comments, stuff like that. And, uh, let's see how this goes. So hopefully, hopefully you enjoyed this, and, uh, we'll do more of these very soon. Bless you, man. Go save your marriage. Go become stable, reliable, predictable men. You can do this. Your marriage is savable. These are all learnable skills. Is what I want to say. I know, uh, a lot of times you look at this stuff and go, this is hard, or this is really difficult, or this is gonna— yes, it's hard, yes, it's difficult, but two things, right? A, it's doable, and two, look at the reward. The amount of effort required is proportional to the reward that you're going to get. You getting your wife and children back, to me, is worth any amount of effort. So I Uh, hundreds, thousands of men have actually done this successfully. This is doable. You just have to decide you want to do it. You have to decide that you want to be— the man that you want to be is not the man that you are. And you have to set the goal of, I want to be a bigger, better man than I am right now. Not that there's anything wrong with the man that you are, but ultimately, here's the challenge, right? You— if you want to save your marriage, you have to become a man that can carry the weight of the marriage. And if your marriage is failing right now, if the wife is leaving the marriage, then it comes down to this. The marriage is more weight than you can carry. You know, it's like when I work with the men in the Win Your Wife Back program, one of the things we say is we let reality— I'm not your mentor. I'm not your guide. I'm not your coach. Reality is, and if the marriage is collapsing, it's because the weight of the marriage is more than you're able to carry right now. And the solution is not to make the marriage lighter, it's to just go to the emotional gym and carry more weight. That's, it's as simple as that. Effectively, what this is, is the marriage collapsing is a level 7 problem. And at this point, you're a level 6 man. The solution is not to go, Cody, how do I make the problem a level 5 problem so I don't have to change? The solution is to go, well, it's a level 7 problem. I'm a level 6 man. And I need to up my game. If I was a level 8 man, then level 7 problem wouldn't be a problem at all to me. And that's the solution to this. You have to look at it that the problem in the marriage is what it is, and it's not going to go away, and it's not going to get easier. And men who go, how do I make this problem go away? How do I make my wife behave this way? How do I do— you can't. It's not going to happen. That's just simply not realistic. And restoration, reconciliation doesn't happen that way. For the men who actually reconcile, are the men who look at the marriage and go, the marriage is a level 7 problem and I'm a level 6 man. So how do I up my game, Cody? How do I up my game to become a level 8, level 9, level 10 man to where it simply isn't a problem anymore? Many, many, many— if we look at how we were as children, many of the problems that we had as children were catastrophic to us. At the age of 5, 6, 7, we had problems that were catastrophic to us. When we were teenagers, maybe we had acne. I had acne on my face, had pizza face. It was the end of the world problem for me. Like, I get spots of acne every now and again. It's like, it's just not a big deal anymore. Why? Because I've grown, because I've come bigger. When you're a child and kids won't share their toys with you— I've got young children sometimes, like my youngest has a problem because my brothers won't share their toys. It's an end of the world problem to him. But it's because he's a level 1 person, right? He's 5 years old, he's a level 1 person, and he's faced a level 2 problem. My brothers won't share their toys. That's a level 2 problem. Like, in a few years, when he's 6, 7 years, when he's 8 years old, he'll be a level 3 person, and then that just won't be a problem anymore. The problem will still be there, the problem will still be the same, but he will have grown. The solution is never to make your problems go away. Because they're not going to go away. Show me a life where there's no problems. Life's full of problems. It's all it is. Your, your job as a man is to become a bulldozer. That's how I view myself. I'm a bulldozer. I just bulldoze through the problems. Nothing's going to stop me. Like, to try to create an environment where you're never going to have any problems, it's just completely unrealistic. At the end of the day, you're going to have health problems at some point. You're going to have probably financial problems. Problems at some point. You're going to have— we're all going to have, you know, problems with your kids. You're going to have problems with it. You're going to have problems with taxes. You're going to have problems with politicians. None of these things are ever going to go away, man. None of these problems are ever going to go away. The men who succeed are the men that just look at the problem and go, right, I'm going over it, I'm going under it, I'm going around it, I'm going through it. I don't care. I don't care what you— like, I feel, I feel sorry for my problems because they've got no chance. The battle's already won. You put a problem in front of me, I'm just going to bulldoze. And if I can't, if I can't go through it, I'll go over it, around it, under it. And that, and that's how you gotta, that's how you gotta view this. This is, this is just another problem to be solved, is all it is. And when you understand that, then the solution becomes, I need to grow as a man. It doesn't matter what your wife's doing. Who cares? Like, yeah, look, people get the wrong idea, right? Let's just say this because we're on live right now. Like, A lot of men go, oh, so the man's wrong all the time, Cody. No, like, your wife's probably Satan too. Your wife's probably batshit crazy as well. Like, I'm not saying that's not the case. I'm not saying your wife's not the problem. I'm not saying that, uh, she's not responsible for a good chunk of this. I'm not saying that at all. But what I'm saying is, where do you have the ability to act? Can you, can you stop your wife being crazy? Can you stop your wife being narcissistic? Can you stop your wife being any of these things? No, you can't. You have— you— if you put the problem in that area, my wife is the problem, then you've completely disempowered yourself and you have no ability whatsoever to act on this marriage anymore. You're completely dependent on whether she changes and pleases you, which she's not going to do, by the way. The only area that you have any power to operate in is in yourself. And there's two types of men, right? There's men that go, this is a— this marriage is a level 7 problem and I'm a level 5, I'm a level 6 man, so tell me how to make this it's a level 5 problem, Cody, so I don't have to change. Well, you're divorced already. You're dead in the water. You're a dead man walking. You're a divorced man walking. I can't help you because the problem is never going away. And then there's men who go, Cody, I've got— my marriage is a level 7 problem. And instead of getting all bent out of shape and salty and throwing my toys out of the pram, I accept that this marriage has revealed to me that I'm a level 6 man, and I don't like that. I don't want to be a level 6 man, and it really bothers me that I'm getting taken down by a level 7 problem. So help me become a level 8 man. Help me become a level 9 man. That's the solution. Your wife is never, never going to stop being the problem. And if you go somewhere else and go, well, I'll just go, I'll just go find a perfect specimen of that creature, the female creature, I'll just go find one that isn't emotional, that isn't all of these things. Yeah, good luck with that strategy. Good luck for sure. So that's it. That's it for, for me, man. I'm gonna, uh, I'm gonna wrap it up here. We'll do another one of these towards the end of the week. I haven't quite got a schedule yet. I've got really consistent with my, my posting of the, of videos But I've just started doing these lives. This is the first one, so I will get a regular schedule and you can jump on here, ask your questions and go from there. So thank you. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate you and bless you all. You can save your marriage. It is doable with the right skills, with the right determination, with the right perspective. You can do it. It is doable. And appreciate you all, and I see you all on the next one.