Reset Her Emotions To Save The Marriage - The Detachment Method

All right, so today we're going to be talking about the power of detachment in winning your wife back. One of the, the most important topics, and probably actually one of the most misunderstood topics as well when it comes to, to winning your wife back. So let me share my screen with you all and, uh, we'll get cracking with that. Okay. You see my screen, gentlemen? Give me a thumbs up. Awesome. So what we're going to cover today, and we'll go through this and we'll do a Q&A at the end, and anybody wants to hot seat their situation, we'll work through that as well. So what we're going to cover is why effort alone has failed to save the marriage today. None of us are lacking effort. We're lacking strategy and direction. We're going to talk about the real reasons why your wife's not talking to you. Well, she doesn't want to talk. We're going to talk about what emotional detachment actually means. We're going to put some, some myths to rest here. We're going to, we're going to get some accurate definitions so we can act intelligently. And we're also going to talk about what it does not mean, which is where a lot of men go wrong. We're going to talk about how attachment to your situation really completely destroys any hope of saving your marriage. We're going to talk about why self-improvement only works when it's outcome independent. Everyone here has heard that working on yourself is, is the solution to saving your marriage. Well, that's true, but it's only partially true. It's like saying a bullet is a key to killing the enemy. It's not. You need a gun as well, and you need training. Detachment by itself, or personal development by itself, is inadequate. It needs It needs focus, direction, and first principle guidance. And we're going to talk about identity shift required to stop self-sabotaging the recovery process. So you've all heard me say many times, like, identity transformation is the key. Well, let's make that a little bit more practical, tangible today, and talk about what needs to happen to stop the self-sabotaging in the process. So to understand how to fix the marriage, we've got to understand what actually broke the marriage in the first place. And the marriage— the marriage failed for one first principle reason only, and that's emotional fails— emotional safety collapsed in the relationship. Everything can be— everything can be traced back to that ultimately. So everyone here, everybody watching this video has got a story as to what happened in their marriage, and You're talking about— everybody's talking about the symptoms. Everybody believes that their situation is unique and that their circumstances are relevant. They're not. Every, every circumstance points back to one thing, and that is a collapse of emotional safety. And when ultimately people say, my situation is unique, or you don't understand my situation, what they're saying is, these spots on my face, Cody, is caused measles. It's not true the measles caused the spots. So we need to get back to the first principle reason of what the— what was the cause of the collapse. And I'll give you a brief example of this before moving on. Like, I talked to a gentleman this week and he says, my wife had an affair and that caused the collapse of the marriage. And it's like, no sir, the collapse of the marriage caused the affair. That's what happened. Because the marriage— the marriage— the affair became the fracture point and the focal point. They became the spots on the face. The affair simply revealed the fractures within the marriage already. The, the damage had already happened before the affair occurred, and the damage was in a total collapse of emotional safety. It can always be traced, traced back to that. Whenever a marriage goes wrong, it's because emotional safety is collapse. Now there's multiple pathways to the collapse, but this is the first principal reason of the failure— that emotional safety disappears. So we're going to look at how to fix that today. So here's what happens when the emotional safety in the, in the marriage collapses: honesty disappears, vulnerability disappears, and attraction disappears. Well, why is this? Why, why do I say honesty disappears? Because the wife, or even you in a lot of cases, feel like you can no longer be honest in the marriage. If I tell you how I feel, it's going to create conflict. If I tell you how I actually feel, it's going to cause pain. If I tell you what I did today, if I tell you who I was with, if I tell you where I was, it's going to cause a fight. So a lot of men say, well, my wife wants me to be honest with her, but when I'm honest, all she does is beat me up. This is a collapse of emotional safety, and it means that honesty is an impossibility within the relationship. The same is, the same is true with your wife. You'll say, I want my wife to talk to me, but every time she talks to you, she's punished. Or you go, I want my wife to tell me the truth. I just want her to tell me the truth. But when she does, she's punished. She's learned that telling you the truth is dangerous. So the natural follow-on from that is that vulnerability disappears. I do an amnesty every week with my children, or, you know, on a regular basis where I go "Tell me, tell me what you guys have done that's bad." Because they're children and I know they're gonna sneak behind my back, but I would rather know about it so I can put safeguards in place than have the honesty disappear. So if I say, you know, "Boys, I'll take them out one at a time, we'll have a boys' day out," and I say, "So what have you done this week, EJ, that if I knew about it, I wouldn't be very happy?" You go, I got up in the middle of the night and I played Minecraft on my computer for 2 hours in the middle of the night. Well, if I punish him for that, his honesty disappears and his vulnerability disappears and his attraction to me as a father also disappears. I stop, I stop being someone who's asking because I care and I become a tyrant. I promise him safety if he's honest, and then when he's honest, I punish him. And this is what we've got to do. Like, with, you know, emotional safety, it's difficult. It's why most of us don't do it, is because emotional safety is uncomfortable. But without it, there can be no honesty, vulnerability, or attraction. Excuse me. And your wife didn't lose attraction because you got fat or the hair left your head and went to your back. It's because the honesty left the room. So let's talk about emotional safety in terms of a definition so we're all on the same page. We know exactly, we know exactly what we're talking about here. So emotional safety means your wife, like, the gold standard would be perfect emotional safety would be she can be 100% of herself 100% of the time without emotional consequence. So the degree to which that is reduced is the degree to which she has emotional safety. So if she feels she can be herself 10% of the time around you, meaning that she's got to hide 90% of her thoughts, feelings, and emotions from you because they carry consequence, 90% of her emotional safety has disappeared. And when that safety disappears, withdrawal becomes 100% inevitable. It's not, it might happen, it's possible this could cause problems. If your wife is at 90% and 10% emotional safety, she's gone. In the same way that if, if my son can only share 10% of his life with me, because when he shares the other 90%, How much of his life do you think is he going to share with me? Withdrawal becomes not a possibility or a probability, it becomes an inevitability with mathematical certainty. Basically what we're saying here is you, you've, you've absolutely categorically prevented your wife from being herself and then criticized her for not being herself. You've created a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. You've created a scenario in which she cannot win. In the same way that I criticize my son if he doesn't open up to me, and I criticize him and punish him if he does. What— where is there left for him to go now apart from mental illness or withdrawal or both? Again, I'll say this again because this is important. Understand this is not a probability. If you destroy emotional safety, it is an inevitability that she will withdraw. So the antidote to this is detachment. So let me talk about some, some, some common mistakes to avoid that detachment is not, right? So detachment is not giving up on the marriage. It's not an I don't care attitude. It's not withdrawing emotionally, stonewalling, ignoring your wife, punishing, punishing her, or becoming cold and indifferent to the situation. These are mistakes when we talk about detachment that almost all men will make immediately. I think that detachment are these things here. This is not detachment. This is avoidant behavior. It's an avoidance strategy. And it does not create safety at all. So let's talk about what emotional detachment is. So it's releasing the need to control her emotions. So again, when I talk to my son and say, what have you done this week, the goal is not to control his behavior in, in, in that situation. It's to understand his behavior. It's not about controlling him and controlling it. I'm not doing this to control his behavior. I'm doing this to get some visibility into his behavior. I would rather know what he's doing and at least be aware of the situation than not, right? So I'm releasing control, and only when I release control of his behavior is he actually going to be willing to open up to me. So I'm also releasing the need for reassurance. I'm not— when we detach, we're probably not going to be reassured. My son is not going to give me reassurance that he's on the right path. He's going to give me insight into where I need to modify my behavior, is what he's going to do. When we sit down and be honest for the first time with either our partners or our employees or our spouses, and they truly open up to how they feel about us and what's going on in the relationship, whatever that relationship is, relationship is, it's not going to be reassuring. It's going to be very confronting and it's going to be very difficult to deal with. But the question is, are you man enough? Are you strong enough to deal with that confrontation and control it and manage it? Your emotions, that is, not her? Or are you going to need to control her to avoid facing your own emotions and your own lack of, lack of reassurance and confrontation in that moment? If my son told me he was doing a lot of stuff that I didn't like, that, that scared me, it's like my immediate response would be to control him. But the position of strength would be to control myself and to control my own emotions, to maintain the safety for the dialogue, not to control him or the situation. And often this need to control her emotions comes out of your uncontrollable desire for reassurance that everything is going to be okay. The detachment is also releasing the need for immediate clarity. When we're often not going to get that, and when we require that immediate clarity, because ultimately what, what you're looking for is an answer to the question, how long am I going to have to suffer? How long am I going to have to deal with this pain? And often we come to the situ— we come— when we communicate with our wives, it's not about communicating what are you going through right now. The, the communication is, how long am I going to have to experience this pain before you sort your life out? How long am I going to have to suffer before you change? That, that's how we're coming in. It's not communicating care and love and safety, it's communicating a need to control, and it's creating a need for reassurance, or it's communicating a need for reassurance, and it's communicating your desire for pain relief, not your underlying desire to help her. So detachment is also releasing that need for a specific outcome. Am I communicating with my son, or what is the most effective way to communicate with my children? Is it to, is it to understand their behavior? Or is it to control their behavior? If I, if I invite my children into open dialogue with me and then I use the information that they've given me to control a specific outcome, does that help me or does that hurt me? So this is why detachment from a specific outcome, in this case, the the need for reconciliation, it's not optional. As long as your desired outcome is to reconcile, you are actually actively sabotaging your outcome. If my need is to control my children's behavior, I'm actually pushing them more into uncontrolled behavior. I'm sabotaging my outcome. So our attitude is preferred indifference. So again, when we look at 'I don't care'— no, I do care, but I've also released the outcome. I would prefer my children to behave in a certain way, but I'm going to have to act indifferently. I would prefer I would prefer outcomes. I have definite preferences, but at the same time, I'm indifferent to those outcomes. These two things can exist simultaneously. I would prefer that my wife behaves in a certain way, absolutely, but if she doesn't, I'm okay with that. And this means that we have— we're still focusing on a direction, we're still moving the situation in a preferred direction, but we are not doing any of these things. We're not needy for reassurance, we're not— we don't have a specified mandatory outcome, we don't need immediate clarity, because whatever happens is okay. If she— if I have a conversation with my wife today and she gets hostile towards me, that's okay. If I have a conversation with my wife today, she responds very well, that's okay. Do I have a preference in which one I want? Of course I do. I would prefer that she has a favorable, emotionally safe conversation with me if she responds well, but if she doesn't, I'm okay with that. I have a preference, but I'm ultimately indifferent. And this is where most men fail. They either have a preference or they're indifferent. They don't understand that two things can, can exist simultaneously. So what does detachment mean? It means acting correctly without requiring a response. Means leading yourself regardless of how she responds. Do I let my children determine how I parent based on their behavior, or do I, do I parent based on first principles? Again, here's something that's very difficult for a lot of people, and any— anybody that's worked for me or worked— has worked with me can see this, but I'm loyal to principles, not people. I'm loyal to principles. Honesty is one of my principles. If you're dishonest, you're gone. I can't work with you. Personality never supersedes principle. And many of us are the other way around. We're loyal to personality at the expense of principle. It's very difficult because it can seem very harsh. But this is boundaries, right? This is setting boundaries. It's like the boundary is, you cross this line, we've got a problem. And no personality is going to overcome that. So detachment means acting correctly without requiring a response, leading yourself regardless of how she responds, becoming emotionally regulated and predictable. This ultimately is emotional safety. Very few of you watching this video right now are emotionally regulated and predictable. Your, your behavior is based on her behavior, and you, you have no regulation. She is emotionally regulated, right? So first principle is doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. So my favorite example of this is the biblical story of the Hebrew children who were commanded to bow down before Nebuchadnezzar's gold statue. They said, we're not doing it. They were principled. They said, we will not bow down before this idol. And Nebuchadnezzar said, then we'll throw you in the furnace. And the children said, if you throw us in the furnace, I believe our God will show up and save us. But if he doesn't, We'd rather burn than violate our principles. Then they were thrown in the fire, and the story concludes— there were 3 children, 3 Hebrew children. The story concludes there was a 4th that showed up in the fire, likened to the Son of God. God himself showed up. But they had to be— they had to be loyal to their principle. They had to be willing to sacrifice, to be loyal to that principle, and they had to get in the fire before the solution showed up. They had no assurance that they were going to be saved from that fire. So this detachment is strength under control. You're all strong men, but strength without control is danger. Another great example was Jesus when he commanded the storm. He said, strength, be muzzled. Strength under control. It's not, it's not enough to be strong. You have to be strong with emotional regulation. If somebody gives you a gun, you're a monkey with a machine gun. You have to be strong. Your strength has to be under control, and attachment is what emotionally regulates you and makes you predictable. If you've got a gun, you better be emotionally regulated and you better be predictable with that thing. Otherwise, you're simply dangerous. So how this actually works in your home— this is the chain of custody. Renee, you've marked all over my display like a 5-year-old with a crayon. What's happened, bro? So anyway, never mind, we'll get through it. So attachment creates pressure. Pressure creates emotional danger. Emotional danger causes withdrawal. It's as simple as that. Attachment creates pressure. When we— if you— if we do a one-to-one call, or we have a call and you're putting a lot of pressure on me, Cody, this has to work. Cody, you've got to help me. Cody, I have to save my marriage. Cody, my life depends on this. Cody, my life will be ruined. It's like, this is creating pressure. This is putting pressure. That pressure creates danger. I'm like, this man is unstable. I don't know how this man is going to act because he's emotionally unregulated and he's applying a lot of pressure. This is creating danger. That danger does not draw me towards you. It causes me to withdraw. Because when you do that, like Who knows what you're going to do? You could become vicious and viciously reach out and try to do damage because you're emotionally unstable. When, when all that pressure gets applied, when you're attached to the outcome and the outcome doesn't go your way You can start spewing venom out of your mouth. All of these things become a possibility when pressure is being applied. All of these things become a possibility. And it's like the second that that pressure is applied, consciously or unconsciously— often it's unconsciously, but sometimes when the pressure is very high, it becomes conscious. And, and it's happened recently. I'm like, I have no choice but to cut you off now. Because you've become a liability. As I said earlier, emotional danger will record— will, will cause withdrawal 100% of the time. It's not a probability, it's a certainty. So detachment reverses this process. So detachment creates calm in your home, it creates predictability within you. Predictability creates safety. Safety creates curiosity. And this— if you get anything from this, if you want to save your marriage, curiosity is your only path. It's the only path. She doesn't believe you anymore. She doesn't trust you anymore. And a lot of what— a lot of times she doesn't even like you anymore. So what is our pathway back to reconciliation? Well, it's not— it's not, well, I'll show her that I can trust her. She doesn't trust you, bro. I'll create attraction. No, you won't. Attraction has been destroyed through the absolute destruction of emotional safety, and that door has been slammed in your face now. So again, let's take this back to the Talking to my children because it's easy to understand and it's emotionally detached from your situation, so there's no emotionally involved involvement, right? So when I calmly talk to my children and go, let's talk about what's happened this week, and that happens week after week, I become predictable to them. They, they predictably understand that they can— it's like going to church and having confession, right? I become predictable. They understand what they're going to get when we have that talk on Sunday. And that calm and predictability, guess what it creates for them? Safety. They understand that what they say is not going to create a nuclear reaction. Now, that's not to say they get a free pass. Like, quite often they'll tell me they've done something and I'll say, what do you think I should do? And they say, yeah, that was bad, I need to be punished for that. But with your wife, when, when you go from an emotionally reactive, totally unpredictable emotionally unsafe person to where you demonstrate that these qualities, it creates curiosity within your wife, and curiosity is the door to reconnection. It's the only door. Tell me how you're going to do it another way. Tell me how you're going to do it. We're not, we're not having a debate here as to what's the best path back, or there are many paths that lead to Rome. No, there are not. This is why when I talk to people, you know, who want to enroll in this program, it's like it sounds very harsh sometimes, but I'm like, we're not having a conversation here. This is not a negotiation as to what works. If you're telling me that you think there's some path other than curiosity to reopen the door to connection, and you think there's a, you know, if you think rebuilding trust is the way back, then we're not going to have a very good relationship because you're going to apply pressure to me. You're going to give me the, you know, you're going to give me the path to reconciliation that, quite frankly, you don't understand. You're going to, you're going to apply pressure. It's going to create danger for me. I'm going to withdraw, and you're going to say, I don't care, I don't care about you. No, I can't help a man who's hell-bent on self-destructing. Best thing to do is just let him get it over with. So again, let's understand this: emotional safety is the key. This is the most critical aspect of your marriage. Men go to me, the most common question I get is, can my marriage be saved and how long will it be, how long will it take? Which the real question they're asking is, how long do I have to be in this pain for? That's the real question. How long do I have to suffer is what they're asking. The question's got nothing to do with the marriage, but the answer to the question is that, can the marriage be safe, or can you create emotional safety? Because if you can't, there's no doorway to recreation. And how long is it going to take for you to depart from your own ways and return to a different way, or come to a different way? And here's the key, right? Emotional safety is not negotiated or declared. It is experienced by the woman. I don't tell my children, you're emotionally safe with me. They have to experience it. They have to tell me what they've done, and they have to be given a course of action following that. That doesn't make them regret having done that. I can't tell my children, you're emotionally safe here and you're physically safe here. They have to experience it. They have to feel it. So any man that says, how do I communicate emotional safety, you're on the wrong track. You're heading in the wrong direction. And you almost certainly will fail. Almost certainly. And the caveat to that— I say almost certainly will fail— there will be some women that will return because the option of staying away is worse than coming back to you. They're not coming back because they love you or they've seen the error of their ways. They're coming back because they've seen that being a 50 or 60-year-old woman in 2026 is not the same as being a old woman in 2000 or, or 1989. They've realized that the reality of leaving is worse than the reality of staying. That's why they come back, not because they've realized you're right, but because they've realized that you are a better option than leaving. They didn't understand that an apartment is $4,000 a month. They didn't understand how much health insurance costs. They didn't understand that they're unemployable. They didn't understand that they're going to have— they're going to be alone for the rest of their life. And when they come face to face with that reality, they go, he's better option than that. That's not reconciliation. That's you being the worst of a bunch of bad options. That's not what you want to be. Let's talk about identity shift because this is the key. So we understand the problem. Hopefully this is the old identity, and this is how many of you have showed up. I'll only be okay if she comes back. Does that create pressure on your wife, on people around you, on coaches, on me? Or does it create an environment where honest interaction can take place? I need this to work. What you're communicating there is, if you don't make this work for me, Cody, or if you don't— if this doesn't work out woman. I am not going to be okay, and if I'm not okay, ain't nobody gonna be happy. That's what that's communicating. I can't lose her. What this says is, I am a 3-year-old with a hand grenade, and I will pull the pin if I don't get my way. I can't lose her says, I will do anything. All of these basically communicate, I will do anything to get her back. Well, a man that will do anything is, is, is dangerous. In his mind, he's saying, 'I will do anything because I love her unconditionally.' But what the world here hears is, 'I will do anything regardless of whether it's ethical, regardless of whether it's emotionally safe or not, regardless of whether it's manipulative.' It's in her best interest to come back to me, so if I have to manipulate her, so be it. It's in her interest that I manipulate her. So the identity that honestly most of us show up with is needy, dependent on her emotions, following her moods instead of regulating your own moods, and utterly tethered. To her behavior, to her moods. If you think she's coming back, then you, then you behave well. If she— if you think that she's lost, then you behave badly. And everything's on a continuum in between every given— any given day. And you're communicating to your wife that his behavior is dependent on my moods. And it's like, well, who here knows that a woman's moods can at times be unpredictable? Which means you can be unpredictable. Your job is not to go up and down with your emotional moods. Your, your job is to be the emotional rock that your, your wife can depend on regardless of her moods. My children need to be— I need to be the rock for my children, dependent on how— independent on their moods or their behavior. My children tell me from time to time that I'm the worst dad in the world and they hate me. If I respond to that, that's not going to make me a good parent. I preferred indifference, right? Where is it? I would prefer that my children like me. But I'm indifferent to that. I tell my wife all the time, your job is not to be their friend. Your job is to prepare them for life, because there's going to come a time, and we don't know when it is, that they're going to have to go into the world by themselves without us. And our job is to prepare them for that. That's the principle, right? As I said earlier, I'm loyal to principles, not personality. They can tell me they hate me, that's fine. My I'm loyal to the principle that I'm preparing them for this world. I'm preparing them for a life without me. I would prefer that they— that we're friends, but I'm also indifferent to that outcome. What I, what I need is for them to be prepared. So if I'm needy, dependent, and tethered to them liking me, then it is going to make me a bad parent, and it is going to my need to be liked is going to supersede my duty to prepare them for this world, and they are not going to feel safe, and they're certainly not going to be prepared. So this is the new identity, identity that has to be adopted, and this is absolutely non-negotiable. Like, we're not having a conversation about this if you want to save your marriage. I am responsible for my behavior. So let's look at this. Oh, let's change it to that. It's R-E-S-P-O-N-S-I-B-L-E. I can't spell. There we go. I am response-able. I am able to respond with my behavior. You know, when I say responsible, that triggers some people, right? Go, so if she's done this, I'm responsible for that? No, you are able to respond in every single situation. You are able to respond to your wife's behavior in every If I go, I'm responsible for my children's behavior, well, so it's my fault they got up at 2 o'clock in the morning and got on their computers and played Minecraft. No, it's not. I'm not responsible that they did that necessarily, but I am able to respond to that. I'm able to choose how I respond to it. You can choose your response. That's what response-able means— responsible. That's what it means. And many of us on this, on this call have gone to— they've abdicated that responsibility and said, I am not response-able. I am tethered to her emotions and my response is dependent on her emotion. I am not response-able. I am response-tethered. And if you're tethered to her behavior, you're not— you're a man who is not responsible and That's a very difficult place for a woman to be. Does not— it does not induce or cause curiosity, does not cause attraction. It causes concern. I lead regardless of outcome. The Hebrew children. We are loyal to our principles. Which is we will not bow down to idols. We are not loyal to personality Nebuchadnezzar, and we will, we will do the right thing regardless of the outcome. And if that means us being thrown in a furnace, so be it. And that means for you, I will do the right thing even if it means the end of my marriage. I am a principled man who is responsible, and I will not sacrifice my principles for this marriage. That is not what you're asked to do, because ultimately what happens when you do that is, is identity number 3: I choose leadership over fear and chaos. If you don't choose this then if you don't choose to lead regardless of outcome, then you by default choose fear and chaos. These are your options. I am a man responsible for my behavior. I lead regardless of outcome. I choose clarity and leadership over fear and chaos. These are the three identities that create the foundation for reconciliation. So, warnings. Let's see, how do I remove this scribble on my screen? Does anyone know? I don't know. We'll deal with it, I guess. It'll be okay. So we talk about self-improvement, personal development, right? Every Any program, reconciliation program that you talk about, it's going to go, the cues to solve the reconciliation is you, it's self-improvement. Partially true, partially true. Self-improvement done to get her back is manipulation, pure and simple. If you're improving yourself because that's what you have to do to get her back, you see no value in self-improvement. You see value in the outcome. Self-improvement done because it is required of you is leadership. The truth here is, if you approach self-improvement— well, let's put it this way, and again, this is harsh but it's true. Like, let's let reality guide us. This is not about my opinion. Our best friend is reality. Our best friend is truth. Anybody watching this has been weighed, measured, and found inadequate by their wife, have been measured and not measured up. And we can take one of two approaches to that. We can say, well, the, the scales that she used are inadequate, so she needs to go out and get some new scales. Or we can say, well, that's telling, and that's a problem for me. I, I ask my children when, when— and this is very hard to do— when I have these conversations with my children, I had it yesterday, I asked them, how am I doing as a father? You know, and they'll tell me, they'll— hopefully— I'm not giving myself a pat on the back, but hopefully, like, that They have enough safety to tell me. Now, is it true that there's a lot of stuff they're not telling me? And I'm grading my own homework, of course. Like, it's possible that they're only— that maybe they're stopping here because they don't feel safe to go further. But they'll tell me, you know, they go, well, you're doing a pretty good job as a dad, but here's where you could improve, here's what we don't like. And some of it's valid, some of it's a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old wanting more freedom than they've got. You know, we had a big blow-up over Christmas with the family, as you do, right, with the in-laws. And afterwards, my children were there. I said, how— what do you think about what happened? Was I unreasonable? Was I irrational? Did I overreact? And their response was, generally, you were— generally, you were in order, Dad. Generally, what was said was necessary, but you went a bit far there. 'You went a bit too far there. You probably shouldn't have said that.' It's like, you know, these are my children telling me this. It's like, why? Because they're clearly weighing me. They're clearly measuring me as a father. And if they're, you know, they're— just because I'm not talking about it doesn't mean they're not thinking it. They're not going, 'Dad's a loose cannon. Dad went too far. Dad said some stuff he shouldn't have said.' They're thinking that anyway, so why not get it out on the table? And why not have my children grade my homework? Because they're the ones that are important to me, you know. And, and why would I do that? Am I doing that because I'm trying to manipulate an outcome, or I'm doing it because I genuinely want to be a better father? I genuinely want to get a better result. You know, the key is to do this before the crisis. How many of us have actually gone to our wives and said, how can I be a better husband? Where am I screwing up? Where am I dropping the ball? You know, it's like a lot, a lot of guys now come back to me and go, I did that, Cody, and she just won't talk to me. No, because you passed the Rubicon, man. Like You're out of runway. You have no runway left. This is why curiosity has to come into play at this point. It's emotionally unsafe. She's told you, she's told you how you can be a better husband for years, and it's proved to be dangerous for us, proved to be emotionally and physically unsafe. So the question is, when it comes to self-improvement, I mean, who, who here, who here is really happy with being weighed, measured, and found inadequate? Like, are you doing this because you want to be the man you can be, or are you doing this because this is the manipulation that's required to stop the pain that you don't want to experience? So here's the truth: your motivation is felt more than your performance. Mango, what do I say? Or how— yeah, it doesn't matter what you say. It's like, what are you coming— why are you— what, what are you coming to this situation with? What's your intention? What's your motivation? Are you asking your children 'How are you doing as a father?' What— why are you asking them that? When you have a conversation with your wife, why are you having the conversation? What's the outcome? Is it because you're trying to get her back, or is it because you're trying to genuinely understand where you screwed up? Because you're not happy with— reality has revealed you. Reality has revealed your shortcomings, your shortfalls, the problem areas, the rough spots that need sanding. Reality has revealed those areas, and you come into the conversation because you genuinely want to understand them so you can smooth out the rough spots, or are you coming at the conversation as, well, if I do this, she'll probably come back. If I do this, she'll feel emotionally safe. No, she will not. She will feel your motivation, not your performance. I can give you the right words and you can say the right words in the right order with the right tone and inflection and get a horrible result. So the first principle to learn here is what Why is, is significantly more important than what. Why you are doing this is significantly more important than what you're actually doing in the moment. Why I am talking to my children is more important than what I am talking to them about. Why you are trying to build emotional safety with your wife, why you understand that detachment is— or why you are trying to detach— is significantly more important than what you are doing to create that. If your why is, I need to do this because I'm in a role of leadership, I see myself as a leader, and self-improvement is the path to improved leadership, that is your why. You will continually self-correct until you find the right path. When you go into a conversation or situation and it doesn't go well, if your why is on point, you will evaluate and you'll self-correct and you'll come back and you'll continue to course correct a little bit at a time until you find the right path. If all you care about is what, you'll look for the script, you'll look for what to say, it won't work, and you'll go, see, it didn't work, what's the next strategy? Very few people ask me to help them uncover the why. Almost every— ask everyone asks me what, what do I say, Cody? What do I do? So our final thoughts: this process only works if the following is true. You're not using detachment to provoke a response in anyone else— your spouse, your children, me. You're not withholding emotionally as punishment. So again, this is, this is big, right? Like, this is on here for a reason. A lot of men think that detachment is emotionally withholding. I'm just gonna— I, I'm detached. Does not mean I don't care, and it does not give you permission to emotionally withhold as punishment. And Cody's just given me permission to do that. You're not scorekeeping or tracking her emotions. Detachment means I don't care what the score is. Do I have a preference? Of course I do. I'd rather it be 100-0 me. I'd rather win convincingly. That's my preference, but if it's 0 or 100, I'm okay with that because I'm going to use that as feedback and go, well, I need, I need to course correct. I'm okay with that. So this lesson fails predictably, and when I say predictably, I mean with certainty, and when I say with certainty, I mean 100% certainty. If detachment is being used as a tactic, best of luck, prove me wrong. If behavior is outcome-dependent, we've got problems. And if growth is conditioned— if your growth is conditional on her responses, we've got problems. Because she, my friend, is a different species to you, and she does not think like you, and she does not act like you. And her behavior is not measurable in the same way your behavior is. Let me give you an example with this. You've probably heard this before, but for those who haven't, so we went to Sydney with the in-laws, I don't know, a year or so ago, and we came back and, you know, my wife and I shared the same personal trainer, and my personal trainer says to me 'Well, your wife's impressed with you. You must be doing something right.' And I said, 'What are you talking about?' And she goes, 'She's very impressed with how you behaved over Christmas,' or whenever it was. 'She's very impressed with your behavior and your restraint and self-control.' I said, 'Well, first I've heard of it. First I've heard.' She hadn't talked to me. It's like my behavior was being watched, weighed, and measured and judged. And she gave me no feedback on that because she wanted to see, was this self-improvement done as a manipulation to get more sex, or was this self-improvement done as leadership? If she provided positive feedback to me, there's no way she could know if it was manipulation to get an outcome. The only way she can determine if this is leadership or manipulation is to give no feedback. Zero. So if I'm stuck in a position of needing feedback from her in order to continue the process, we're done. So when traditionally going to the in-laws is a very difficult situation and is a high probability of a conflictual situation, conflict, and that doesn't happen, does— do you think that required— do you think that might produce curiosity when it didn't happen? When she got leadership behavior instead of reactive, responsive behavior, do you think that created some curiosity in her and got her to lean in a little bit more? My growth was not conditional on her response at all. Your wife is what, like, mango all the time? Another very, very, very common question that should never be asked really, but is asked almost all the time, is how can I show my wife these changes if she's not present? Well, the answer, the answer is in the question, right? Why are you showing your wife these changes? Why? What— what is your purpose to that question? That, that question indicates that your motivation is wrong. That question indicates that your motivation is one of manipulation. So the question is, what is going to happen? The question should not be, how do I get in my wife's presence so she can see my, my changes? The question should be What is my wife going to see when she does finally come into my presence? A great example is like, I'm a musician and I was watching, uh, I love Nashville sound, I love Nashville session musicians. They're fascinating to me because they're so talented. They're the most talented musicians in the world as far as I'm concerned. I was watching session players answer questions and one of the questions was, how do I get a break as a session musician in Nashville? Which is pretty much the same question that that you guys are asking, right? How do I get it? How do I get a break to get an opportunity to show my wife that I'm something special? And the guy goes, don't be in a hurry to get a chance because you're probably not ready for it, and you're not going to have more than one chance. Because if you're not getting the opportunity, don't, don't curse that and don't force it. Use it to get ready because you're probably not ready. And when you do get that chance You need to be ready because it won't come twice. And the same is true here. Instead of asking the question, well, how do I get the opportunity to get in front of— how does my wife see these changes when she's— well, what changes, bro? Like, who's even— the, the very question shows me that you haven't understood the first principle of what's going on here. What are you going to communicate, that you're controlling, manipulative, and needy still? That's what you're going to communicate. Not one person in God knows how long of doing this, and God knows how many calls, thousands, and we can ask Justin or Alex or, or Rob here, how many people have got on a coaching call and asked the question, am I ready? Am I ready to get in front of my wife? Not one person ever has asked me that question. Am I ready for this opportunity? Seriously, not once has that ever been asked. So let's wrap this up and then go to a Q&A. So correct application matters more than intensity. So what is this lesson really about? What's this class about? This is not about saving your marriage. If you think it is, you're confused. It's about becoming a man that the marriage can survive. Can this marriage survive you? The answer— again, let's let reality be our guide. Let's let reality mentor. Like, I'm not making any statements here out of— I'm not just— I'm just stating what is observable. The marriage has not survived you. And that's what every marriage ultimately is. It's a give and take. It's a street fight to the end. It's never going to be this utopic environment that we think it is. It's a give and take. It's compromise. It's transactional to some extent. We have to create that environment. You have to become a man that that environment can survive. As does your wife. And right now, any of us that are on this call or watching this, we are not a man that this marriage can survive. And that is demonstratable through reality. That should be your goal. So you do not rebuild trust by convincing. You rebuild trust by becoming calm, stable, and safe. The marriage will never outgrow the man. The business will never outgrow the business owner. You will never have a better marriage than the man— than the man running it. It's like saying you have no business skills yet you're going to grow your business. Really? How? Just happens? No, it doesn't. And if it does happen by accident, you better, you better grow quickly. This is why, what, this is why most lottery or all lottery owners and end off, end up worse than they were when they won the lottery, because they became wealthier than the man controlling the wealth. Somebody who was broke was broke because that was the skill level that they had, and as soon as they were given wealth, they did not have the skill to maintain it. Their wealth level reset to the level of their skill. Your marriage will always reset to the level of the skill of the man running it. So let's wrap this up on emotional detachment. Is not the absence of care or concern. It's not, I don't care. Emotional detachment is the presence of internal authority. It's being strong enough to show up calm, stable, and safe regardless of the outcome. It's the ability to have the internal authority to self-regulate, to be the calming, stabilizing force in chaos, not to be reactive to chaos and become the chaos. So what you should now understand is why your current approach is backfiring on you, what must change internally in you, not the marriage or your wife, before anything externally can change within the marriage. Why emotional safety is actually the true bottleneck within your marriage or your parenting or your business. To grow your business, you need accurate feedback between the customer base and the business, and your, your employees are the interface. If they don't feel like they can come to you and tell you what's going on. There's a disconnect between reality and perception. Why detachment is non-negotiable for leadership: because true leadership is principle-based, not cult of personality-based. And if you are making decisions based on personality versus principles, you are not in a position of leadership. And lead— marriage is the ultimate leadership position. It's the ultimate leadership position. You will never— you will never be given anything more important to lead than your wife and children's future. You will never be given a more important assignment than that as a leader. This is a leadership program. Not a marriage skills program. And here's the internal shift to adopt: clarity precedes correction. That's why, that's why we're doing this, right? We're going through what detachment is. You're not going to correct your behavior until you have clarity as to what the behavior is, the definitions and the consequences of those continued behaviors. Once you have clarity, correction becomes possible. Correction precedes results. Most of you want the other way around. You want results, and then you're willing to correct your behavior, and then once your behavior is corrected, you're willing to get some clarity onto what went wrong. No, no, no, completely backwards. Clarity leads to correction. Correction leads to results. That's why we say principle number 1: never grade your own homework. The best, the best question that you can be asking is, where am I not clear, Cody? What am I missing, Cody? What am I lacking here? Where am I going wrong? What do I think is true that isn't? What do I think is right that is not? What are my blind spots? Am I delusional anywhere? Where am I going wrong? What point am I missing? My results are not where they want to be, so obviously I need correction. What correction do I need? Those are the words and questions of men who save their marriage and grow. The men who don't: You don't understand my situation, Cody. My situation is unique. You don't know what she's done. I've already done that. I understand what you're saying, but I can see why that would work for most people, but my situation is different. These are the words of men who will lose and have and will not— lost their marriage and will not recover. Will not. You must seek clarity with the intention of that clarity leading to correction. If you cannot stomach correction, you cannot have your family back. It's as simple as that. So this is— we can sum this entire lesson up in one statement. The true test: if your wife never ever ever changed her mind, would this man still be the man that you choose to be? That man being the man that you're working towards. When you say, I'm willing to do the work, I'm willing to improve myself, I am improving myself— if your wife never came back, if the marriage was over, would you continue the self-improvement process, or would you just feel resentful that you put in time, effort, and treasure and you got— didn't get your wife back, and now you're pissed off? That's the question. 'I need to do this work in spite of whether I get my wife back or not' is detachment. 'I need to do this work to get my wife back' is the words of a loser. When I say loser, again, because of reality— you've lost your wife and family. A man that loses everything is a loser. Lost everything. It's not an insult, it's just a statement of objective fact. I open it to you gentlemen. That's my workshop for the week. 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.