I've Coached Thousands of Men in Divorce Crisis. "I'm Sorry" Isn't What She Needs.

Hey, Cody Butler here, and after working with literally thousands of men in a divorce situation, I've seen what works and I've seen what doesn't work, and I can tell you categorically that "I'm sorry" is not what she wants to hear from you right now. That's not going to help your situation. So this video is specifically for men who are in a situation where their wives or wife has asked for a divorce. You want to turn it around, you want to save the marriage, and nothing you're doing is working right now. So I'm going to give you some insight into what's going on in her mind, some of the things that work and some of the things that don't work. So you're gonna have, by the end of this video, a lot of clarity around what's going on, and you're gonna have some direction about how to move forward with this as well. So right now, if your wife's asked for a divorce, you're probably, and justifiably, feeling some panic, fear, maybe you're confused. You're looking at what's happened in the past with some regret, looking at your behavior maybe. There's definitely an urgency to take action and turn this around, And there also might possibly be a feeling of helplessness or catastrophizing about the future, about is this over, is it too late, what's going to happen next. So men in this situation, they'll often find that they're asking the question, asking me the question, is this over? What does she mean by what she's saying? Why won't she listen to me? Why isn't she listening to me? I'm trying to explain what's going on here. If only she understood, this would be fine. How do I stop this? What do I do? Should I apologize? Maybe if I promise change, if she knows how much I love her, if she could see how much I cared about this marriage and how she knew what I'd do to save this, everything will change. Well, none of that is really the way forward and none of it's going to work. So your current strategy of apologizing, maybe begging, promising, negotiating, explaining, pleading, exerting effort now into the situation. None of, none of this is working right now. And it's causing confusion, right? Because the more effort that you give to this situation, the worse it seems to get, the more she digs in, and the worse the results seem to get. And that is because you're in a situation right now that your instincts are not going to serve you. And what you think is going to work is actually going to make things a lot worse. And just look at what's going on if you don't believe that or you don't think that's true. Everything you've done so far has been instinctive. Everything that you've done to help this or change her mind or save the marriage is what you intuitively believe is the right thing to do. And you're still watching this video because it's not really turning around, it's not working. So let me give you some, some ideas here about what you can do. So ultimately, what's why it's not turning around is because you're trying to solve the wrong problem. And what's going on with her inside of her mind, she's not looking at the situation in real time today. She has a predictive mechanism called her nervous system. She has expectations about you, about what you can do or what you can achieve. Can you change? Are you reliable? Are you unreliable? She's predicting, not consciously but subconsciously, through her experiences of you on her nervous system, she's got a very good idea of how this is going to play out and what you're going to do next, and she's evaluating the situation based on that. So she's expecting you to apologize, she's expecting you to beg, she's expecting you to promise change. And every time you play into her expectations of what you're going to do, you're confirming her prediction of the outcome. And right now she's predicted that you are not going to change sufficiently enough in order for her to stay. So your only hope here, your best hope here, is you have to interrupt her predictive mechanism so it questions, it causes her to question the situation and what's going to happen next. And when what she thinks is going to happen next, which is you apologizing, you're promising to change, etc., when that doesn't happen, it forces her to evaluate the situation and to actually question when, if she's made the right decision or not. So quite often, like, probably what you're thinking right now that she's evaluating in her mind is, does he love me? What's his level of regret? Does he have remorse? How much effort is he going to make? What are his intentions? So on and so forth. She's not actually evaluating any of that stuff at all. She's looking at the predictability. She's looking at your capacity for change. She's looking at your credibility, and she's looking at the future that she has with you. And right now, she's not listening to what you say regarding any of those things. She's looking at the predictions that she's made moving forward. She's She's decided what your level of predictability is. She's decided already what her capacity— your capacity for change is. She has a— you have a level of credibility within her mind. She either trusts you or she doesn't. She thinks that your promises are credible or not, and she sees— she's already decided what the future is with you. Or in other words, the main enemy that you're up against is her predictive mechanism, or to put it another way, uh, confirmation bias. She has a bias about what you— she thinks you're capable of, and apologizing is not going to change that. It's not going to do anything. So what's happening right now inside of her mind, to help you understand what's going on, she's not really thinking. She's operating from a predictive nervous system which has come to conclusions about you based on years of observations, years of repeated patterns within the marriage, what you've done, how you've shown up, When you've made promises in the past, have you followed through? When you've said you're sorry, does it actually make a difference or does it happen again? She's, she's subconsciously built a psychological profile of you. She's making predictions and she has a very high level of certainty that this is correct, which is now why she has decided that it is time to leave the marriage, because the predictions that she's making of the future have reached a certain level of certainty that she feels that now leaving is absolutely the best option, right? So what is, what is she predicting is going to happen next, which for most men is absolute— she's absolutely right. Well, she's, she's predicting that you're going to apologize, and she's discounted that already in her decision. In her decision to leave, through her predictive mechanism, the nervous system, she's discounted that. She's just, she's already taken into account that she's— you're going to make promises, and she's discounted that. Or she's figured that into her decision to leave. She's just— she's evaluated if you're going to collapse emotionally. She's figured that into her decision. All the last-minute transformations that you're promising, all of this has been predicted and taken in to her decision. So when you do all of these things, all you're doing is confirming that she's made the right decision and that her predictive mechanism is actually accurate. So why do apologies fail specifically over and above that? Well, it's because she doesn't need you. She doesn't need an apology. She doesn't need understanding. She needs hope. So when you offer an apology, you're apologizing for the past, you're showing regret, you're showing awareness of things that have gone wrong that potentially need to be fixed, right? Showing a sense of remorse for what's happened, and you're promising her a future that she doesn't really believe you're capable of producing. So telling her that you're going to do something that she doesn't think you're capable of really isn't going to help the situation. She doesn't need any of this from you. She's already discounted all of that stuff. What she actually needs to move forward is hope, and that is what she doesn't have. She's— when hope he leaves the marriage, she leaves the marriage. And she will typically stay— women will stay and fight as long as there is still hope of a future, right? So what does that hope look like for her? Well, it's, it's hope of a better future. It's hope of you being a different man. It's hope of different patterns within the relationship, different behaviors. It's hope of different outcomes from situations. And the problem is, and why apologies fail and why she doesn't need apologies from you is that remorse and sadness and regret and promise of change, it isn't hope. It doesn't provide anything that she needs. So I understand that you're not crazy for what you're doing, to think that what you're good doing is going to make a difference. The response that you're making right now is normal. The way you're seeing the marriage, the way you're thinking about her and the path forward that you think is going to rectify this situation and reconcile the marriage is normal. Most men think that this is the path forward. In fact, this is exactly what most men do, and it makes sense, right? This is logical. It makes— it's, it's natural feeling. It's intuitive. But here's the thing: most men don't reconcile. Most men don't save their marriage. The vast majority of men, once their wife has indicated they want separation or divorce, it's over for them, because they're going to go down this path that feels normal and right, and it simply isn't. So the real problem is that you're misreading the situation, you're solving the wrong problem, and you're reinforcing her predictions, right? So what's the solution? Well, it's going to be to do the exact opposite to this. It's like you have to accurately read the situation. You can't think, you can't solve a problem if you don't understand the problem. Or if you think this is the problem and this is the problem, maybe you're solving the problem, but you're, you're solving the wrong problem at the wrong time and it simply isn't going to have the outcome that you're looking for. So you've got to understand what the problem actually is here. And it, the real problem honestly is that all hope, she has no hope of transformation at this point. She has no hope of the marriage meeting her needs, and that's where we've got to go to work. You're solving the wrong problem, and ultimately you're reinforcing— by solving the wrong problem, you're reinforcing that you don't even understand what the problem is. And quite frankly, this is— how can there be any hope for her if you can't demonstrate and you can't show that you understand what the problem actually is? Then there's absolutely no hope in her mind for that problem ever being solved. So in order for, in order for her, when a man goes to his wife and says, I understand what the problem is here, it's this, this, this, and this, and you miss the mark on that, she just goes, you've got, you don't even know what the problem is. Like, how, how can I expect you to change? Or how can I expect this situation, situation to change? You don't even understand what the problem is. So the starting point here is you've got to ask, you've got to ask different questions. Right now you're asking, what's, you know, what do I need to say? What do I need to do? How do I turn this around? How do I convince her? How do I make her believe that I love her? And how do I get her back? These, these are not questions that are going to get you the result that you're looking for. Quite often, she's probably not doubting how much you love her. She's probably not doubting how much you care. She's probably not doubting what you would give for her or the family. That's not, that's not the problem. What she's doubting is, can her needs be met within this marriage? So when you try, when you ask the question, how do I show her? How do I convince her? What do I do? You're just reinforcing her predictive mechanism that you don't even know what's going on, right? So you got to start asking the question, what is she actually evaluating right now? What is it that she's— what has she evaluated and decided that that's not going to work for me anymore? What has she looked at and gone, I can't live with this? What future— ask the question, what future am I demonstrating right now that she wants no part of? What future is she seeing with me in this marriage that she doesn't, doesn't want to participate in? Because again, if you can answer that question, and ultimately saving your marriage is not about bringing stuff to the marriage, it's not about adding stuff, it's generally going to be about subtractions and about moving stuff, removing stuff from the marriage. It's everything that she needed to say yes to spending her life with you was present when, when, when she said yes to that. It's stuff that's come into the marriage. It's attitudes, it's behaviors, it's patterns. And if you are demonstrating a future full of those behaviors and patterns, then that's what she's evaluating. That's what she's saying no to. So you gotta ask the question, what pattern, pattern am I actually interrupting right now? Because it's those pattern interruptions that are going to cause her to question whether she's making the right decision or not. If she thinks when she presents divorce to you that you're going to do this, this, this, this, and this in that order, and you do this, this, this, this, and this in that order, all you've done is completely and totally validate that everything she believes about you is true. Every prediction she has about you is true. And if you validate this set of predictions here, which is in the present, then that also validates this set of predictions about you, which is in the future. And those predictions are not good for you right now. If you can interrupt this set of predictions by here, by when she, for example, just as a short example here, she's expecting you to fight this divorce. She's expecting you to push back and cause her problems. If you move into an attitude of acceptance— now when I say acceptance, I'm not talking about surrender or accepting that the marriage is over. Accepting that she wants divorce right now, because she does. All you're doing is accepting reality. The truth is she wants a divorce. And if accepting that and communicating her to her that you accept that— she's not expecting that from you. She's expecting you to fight, and that interrupts her predictive mechanism. That causes her to question, have I, have I actually got this right? Is this prediction right? Or am I making a mistake? And then move into the question of who, who am I becoming? This ultimately is going to be what really decides if she comes back to you or not, or if she interrupts the divorce and stops the divorce or not. Who am I becoming? Is it to her? She's looking at who she's going to spend the rest of her life with. She needs to see a man that she's comfortable with. And by asking the question, who am I becoming? That again gives her a hope of a better future. Now, if you want some help with this decoding what she's thinking, and identifying who you need to become, and then taking steps to be that man. Now, this is not for men who just go, well, so I should change. It's not— this is for men who understand that they want to grow, that they want to be better, that they have not reached their full potential and they want to get there. If that's you and you want to save your marriage or have a chance of saving your marriage, I do offer coaching and there's a link in the description if you're interested in that. If you want to work with me or join one of my programs and have access to my coaching, then there's a link in the description and I would love to have me or my team talk to you about that. But also we've got, if you want to know on right now, some steps that you can take as well, then watch this video here. And give us a like, give us a thumbs up if you, if you like this content. And I'll see you in another video. God bless you.