She Asked for a Divorce...Don't Have This Conversation Yet

In this live class, Cody shares how to get your wife to stop shutting down, walking away, or refusing to talk when your marriage is in crisis. Cody reveals why she no longer feels safe talking to you, the mistakes most men make when trying to fix it, and how to create the conditions that cause her to actually want to open up to you again. Let's jump straight into this live workshop.

Today, I'm going to talk about a question that I get asked on a, on a very regular basis. And that is, "Every time I try to have a calm conversation about us, i.e., me and my wife, she shuts down or she walks away. So the question is, how do I create the conditions where she will actually want to talk to me?" Right? So this is the key here, "want to talk to you." So we have to understand that human beings only do things for two reasons. They do it to avoid pain or they do it to experience pleasure. So if she's not wanting to talk to you, it's probably because it's causing pain and it's not providing any pleasure. So that if we keep that in mind, then it's about creating the environment where she actually wants to do this versus just manipulating a situation and saying, well, how do I create an environment, etc., etc. So, so here's the situation we're in, right? Obviously you want to fix this, you want to have Your marriage is not going to improve until you guys talk this out, and you can't talk it out if she won't have a conversation. So maybe you're in the situation where every time you try to talk, she shuts down, she walks away, avoids the conversation totally, she disengages emotionally, etc., etc. And the frustration that we experience as men is, "I don't understand this. I'm trying to communicate." with her calmly. I'm trying to talk this out. I'm trying to be the adult in the room here. Why won't she talk to me? Why won't she communicate? So typically where we go with this as the man, we make some assumptions. We try to figure this out and the conclusions that we usually come to are: She's avoiding communication. She's just not interested in a resolution to this situation. She refuses. She's just refusing to engage. She's being obstinate, stubborn, obstinate, or she's emotionally unavailable. Or we may, we may associate, we may tie some labels to that, like avoidant personality or anxious avoidant or some other diagnosis that we, that we tie to that, that explains why she's emotionally unavailable. This is how we tend to explain the situation. But this is, this is what's actually happening. She doesn't believe that you're capable of having a safe conversation is what it comes down to. So ultimately, like, the thing that we have to understand, man, is like sex communication to a woman is the equivalent of sex to a man. So I got it. I got a comment on a YouTube video the other day. It was about this very topic, and the comment basically said something like, "They don't like to communicate," or, "They just don't communicate." And it's like, well, that's the equivalent of a woman going, "Men just don't like having sex." It's an absolute absurdity. It's just not true at all. It's like, if a man— if a woman comes to the conclusion that a man doesn't like sex, it's like, what it actually means is he doesn't like having sex with you. He certainly likes having sex. And the same is true here. If a woman's not having conversation, it's not because she doesn't talk. Like, I talk to men and they go, "My wife just doesn't like talking." And it's like, no, no, that's, that's not true. She doesn't like talking to you. She doesn't feel safe talking to you. I guarantee she's talking to somebody. So what's going on is communication to her is one of three things: painless, pointless, painful, pointless, or both. And when she's arrived over an extended period of time of learning that communication is painful, pointless, or both, then she just stops doing it as you would stop doing it as well. This is not a di— this is not a disorder that needs diagnosing. It's a situation that needs to be simply understood. So her nervous system, which is her predictive mechanism, right? This is the subconscious predictive mechanism of how this conversation is going to go. We all have expectations. Our nervous system projects expectations onto a situation. You have expectations of what's going to happen on this call today. And if you think it's something good, helpful, or beneficial to you, then that— your nervous system predicting that that's going to happen gets you on the call. If your nervous system predicted through experience that every time you got on a call with me or similar, it was a waste of time. Then you wouldn't do it. So this predictive mechanism called the nervous system has been trained over an extended period of time that a conversation with you, she can expect pressure, invalidation, it can be emotionally laborious, hard work, and it's probably going to escalate into something more serious that she just simply doesn't want to deal with. Not only does the situation, the conversation, not create any kind of pleasure, relief, or calmness, it also produces pain simultaneously. So remember when, when the two things that motivate us as human beings are moving away from pain or moving towards pleasure, it does neither one of those things. It moves you closer to, moves her closer to pain and moves her further away from pleasure. And this is why she doesn't want to communicate, and when you understand that, then the situation is not diagnosing what's going on, it's going, "Okay, how can I make this conversation both painless and pleasurable simultaneously?" And that's, that's what we're going to cover for the rest of this presentation here. So, why does she avoid conversation? Well, historically, her nervous system has learnt that conversation, it didn't create understanding, it didn't create relief. It didn't create calmness for her. And conversely to that, the conversations that she's had actually just created emotional exhaustion or pain or frustration. So when we, when we look at her as a human being just trying to get her needs met in the same way that you're a human being just trying to get your needs met, when none of her needs are getting met in that conversation, it makes sense that she's not going to want to engage with it. And instead of just labeling her as somebody who doesn't want to talk or doesn't want to communicate or isn't capable of it, if we can look at it and go, she's just trying to get her needs met and her needs are not currently getting met. If I can meet her needs, then she will want to communicate in the same way. That's how you function as well. If your needs are not getting met, you disengage. If your needs are getting met, you engage more. So this fundamentally comes down to how to, how to motivate anybody, right? Children, like children's a great example. We reward behavior that we like and we punish behavior that we don't. If a child does something that we like, we reward that. If they do something we don't, we create a negative experience so they don't do it again. And the same happens with your wife here. This is how we get her to re-engage. We reward behavior that we like and we ignore or punish behavior that we don't. So what, what the relationship effectively has become for her is your ego management. If she challenges you or triggers you, it becomes very problematic, right? Like how many of us have done that? Our wife has brought something up and it's triggered us. She says she doesn't like something, or she's brought up a behavior or situation and just triggers us. Happens to me all the time. Have to be fully aware of that or it's going to happen. Any conversation simply becomes walking on eggshells. There are landmines everywhere. She could step on a landmine at any point and blow her leg off and your arm off simultaneously. The conversation becomes about emotional containment. Again, this can go both ways, right? Like, she's afraid of saying something that's going to emotionally trigger you, that's caused a problem, going to cause a problem. And you're probably afraid of saying something that's going to trigger her, that's going to cause an emotional containment situation where you have to contain the situation. So, and as we just said, it's— this is not about having a conversation, it's just Mind Field Navigation, is all it is. Now, When you look at it this way and go, well, this is what a conversation is, and not just with you, this is what a conversation is with, with the marriage. Why would anybody want this? Why would you want to move into that situation? Ego management, eggshells, emotional containment, minefield navigation. Why would you want to do that when you know that the end result is it's not going to be what you want it to be? The nervous system over an extended period of time has been trained that all you're going to do is experience all this pain and there's no benefit on the other side. And when you look at it like that, this— it becomes very clear why she doesn't want to communicate, why she doesn't want to engage. So we need to provide the opposite of this, and if we can do that, then it's just logical and natural, and it's just— she will engage because she wants to again. So again, The result of this is conversations have become emotionally expensive, painful. So let's talk about what you as the man think a calm conversation is, right? So the question, the question at the beginning is, every time I try to have a calm conversation, she blows up or she won't do it. So a calm conversation to a man is very difficult to— very different rather to a calm conversation for a woman. For a man, if we're trading, if we're having a logical discussion, that's calm, right? We're being calm. We're just talking facts. We're just talking logic. Factual clarity is calmness. Correct timelines, technical accuracy, solving the misunderstandings. Let's just solve this problem and let me explain what actually happened here. Or if we can summarize this as a persona, as an avatar, what's going on is you're showing up as Mr. Fix-It. You're here to fix things. You're here to resolve misunderstandings. You're here to set the record straight. You're here to do— this is just a misunderstanding, right, as far as you're concerned, and you just want to get the facts right. And then when the facts are right, the misunderstanding is solved. Mr. Fix-It. But unfortunately, that is not a calm conversation for a woman. That's a very, very frustrating conversation for a woman. So the woman couldn't care less about logic. She couldn't care less about factual accuracy nearly as much as emotional understanding, feeling heard, emotional acknowledgement. Having the safety in the conversation, in the relationship to express her pain and having her emotional experience understood. So to summarize this simply and concisely, a man enters the conversation to listen for facts and to make sure that the record is straight and everything is factually accurate and true. He's listening for facts. The woman is listening for emotion. So for example, a woman might say, "In that restaurant on Tuesday night, you said blah blah blah," and the man will say, "Actually, it was Monday night. It wasn't Tuesday." The man is listening for the facts. But if you want to turn this around, if you want your wife to listen to you, this is the key right here, and this is the takeaway really from this whole presentation. Stop listening for facts, start listening for emotion. What emotion is your woman, your wife communicating right now? Is she trying— is, is her communication frustrated? Is it hurt? Is it angry? And her goal is to feel connected to you, and the way she feels connected is to express her emotion, and then you connect with that emotion. And when you, when you listen for emotion, not facts, when you're listening for emotion, not words so much, and then you're listening for the situation going, okay, your response is not, well, I think that was actually Monday, not Tuesday. I think it was red, not green. I think you'll find this is what was actually said, not that. And you go, sounds like, it sounds like that upset you a lot. That's what she's trying to communicate when she wants to feel heard is that she was upset. She doesn't care about the facts. She felt upset and that's what she wants you to understand. When you're listening and she goes, "I just, every time, every time I try to talk to you, you don't listen to me," and you go, "I do because you just said this and this and this and this and this and this," and you repeat what she just said. What she's trying to communicate, man, is that she's frustrated with you. She's frustrated with the situation. And she's not looking to be proved wrong. She's looking for you to acknowledge that frustration. And instead of saying, "Well, actually I am listening, Mr. Fix-It, and here's why I'm listening, Mr. Fix-It." If you can say, "It sounds like you sound— it sounds like you're very frustrated right now," then you're connecting with the emotion. So again, here's the key takeaway to this, right? Here's the key. This is, this is Communication 101, 201, 301, and 401. From fundamental to advanced is this: emotion— memory is emotional, not factual. The memory is very poor. And the truth of the matter is You won't remember hardly anything from this, this call a year from now or 2 years from now, but you will remember how you felt on this call. The, the, the, the— what you'll take away from this in your long-term memory or even, you know, short and medium-term memory is how you felt. You'll take away how I made you feel today. If you leave this call with clarity and calmness, you won't remember the conversation. You'll just remember Cody made me feel calm, or Cody produced calmness. Cody produced clarity, and then you'll associate calmness and clarity with me, and that's how you'll feel about me long-term. The same is true with your wife. She's not looking, she's not remembering the conversations, she's not remembering the events that happened. She's remembering your response to those events and how that made her feel. She's remembering the feeling. Memory is predominantly emotional in nature. We remember feelings, not facts. And when you understand that, this is the key to reconciling your marriage. Many of your wives are leaving you or threatening to leave because They don't feel connected to you. They don't feel understood by you. They don't feel like they have a shared emotional experience with you. And the only way to fix that is to stop listening for the words and start listening for the emotion that she's communicating. So the core disconnect here, man, is that the man is listening for facts. He's listening for details. He's listening for accuracy, accuracy. And he's just waiting for a gap in the conversation to where he can jump in and correct her because the man thinks that if he can correct the facts, she just misunderstands the situation and if she understood it correctly, everything would be fine. Nothing is further from the truth. She's not in the least bit concerned about facts, details, and accuracy. So the woman in the conversation, she's speaking the language of frustration, pain, emotional impact, and experience. So again, let's juxtaposition these two against each other. Man, facts, details, accuracy, correction. This is his conversation. Woman, frustration, pain, emotional impact and experience. So hopefully you can start to see here that even though you're talking to her, you're having two different conversations simultaneously here. You're speaking one language, the language of factual accuracy, and she's speaking another language, the language of frustration and emotion. Emotional pain. And here's the thing, right? If she's going to come back into this marriage, I know some of you will say now, "Well, so I have to communicate the way she wants to. I have to get on her page. I have to do this. I have to do that." Well, let me ask you a question. If she's going to come back into this marriage, is it for her reasons or for your reasons? 100% it's going to be for her reasons. So yes. In late-stage marriage, which is what this presentation is aimed at, or late-stage marriage crisis, yes, if the woman has asked for a divorce, if she's leaving, yes, you have to get on her page because there's a complete leverage collapse here. In a healthy, normal marriage, is that the case? No, it should be 50/50. She should be meeting you in the middle, but we're not in a normal, healthy marriage situation at this point. We have to move towards this. So if you want her to come back, then you have to understand that it's only going to be for her reasons, not yours. And when you understand that and we start to listen for frustration, we start to listen for emotion, not for words or not for factual accuracy, then we start to connect with her reasons. She starts to feel connected with you again. Many of you have had this experience, right? Like you just listen to your wife and She smiles, or many of you have said things like, I see it, I see a side of her that I haven't seen in a long time. This is it, man. This is how you get your wife back. You start listening for emotion and stop listening for facts. So why fact fire? What? Why the male form of communication backfires in this late stage of marriage crisis is the experience that you're giving her. In conversation is one of correction, one of invalidation, one of— you're communicating to her emotional blindness, that you're emotionally blind, incapable of experiencing her emotions and connecting with her. So she immediately feels misunderstood, emotionally dismissed, and unheard. Now here's the challenge, right? You're not— in your mind, you're not doing that. In your mind, you're making every effort to understand her. In your mind, you're making every effort. You're not emotionally dismissing her, you're trying to figure that out, and you, you're certainly listening to her. But the truth of the matter is you're coming across with schoolteacher energy. When you show up as Mr. Fix-It, it's like you, you, you're coming from a place of superiority, or this is how it's coming across, and it's that schoolteacher energy and she's not going to connect with that. She's not going to participate in that, as many of you are experiencing, right? So fundamentally, what is happening here is you are misunderstanding the purpose of the conversation itself. Again, I'm, I'm repeating myself, but this is very, very important, right? Repetition is the mother of skill. You must— the purpose of the conversation is to feel her emotion, to recognize her emotion, not to communicate the facts of the situation. You must connect with the emotion that she's communicating. So why does conversation for her become a net negative? Right? Because it doesn't solve her emotional pain. A woman, a woman's pain goes away by communication, by talking. A man's pain goes away by having the problem solved. You're here with me right now because you've got a problem, you're in pain and you want a solution to that problem because the way your pain goes away is by having a solution and just making it disappear. That's not how a woman resolves pain. Her pain doesn't go away from you giving her a solution. Her pain goes away from being heard and understood. This is why women talk, right? They talk for hours and hours and hours. It's, it's that they're healing each other's pain when they do that. The way you solve her problem, the way you alleviate her pain is by listening to her without interruption, understanding the emotion that she's trying to communicate, and then listen until she asks for your response. When she feels heard and understood and connected with, she will ask you for your response. What do you think about that, John? What do you think I should do, Dave? How would you handle this, Cody Butler Butler? Once you've given her that space to openly communicate and you've recognized her pain and she feels understood, then she will bring you in. You're no longer a sponge that has to absorb her emotion. Then you become her partner again. She invites you into her life and says, "Help me solve this problem." But in order to solve a woman's problem, man, you have to understand it's invitation only. You have to be invited. If you try to solve a woman's problems without that invitation, you're going to come across as the schoolteacher. You're going to come across as being dismissive, egotistical, superior, and she just simply isn't going to want to communicate with you. So it compounds— when you do this, it compounds her frustration, it compounds the pressure that she's feeling and the exhaustion that she's experiencing within the relationship. We've just been through that. So the goal of the conversation is not these things, right? It's not factual accuracy, proving your intent, proving your innocence, proving your intention, you know, my intention was good, etc., etc. The goal is to understand the emotional impact of the situation. The goal is hearing her pain. And experiencing her pain with her. And the way you do that is, I've said it already, right? You listen for the emotion and then you say, or you communicate back that you understand. That sounds frustrating, John. Sounds like you're really frustrated right now. Sounds like you're scared right now, Dave. Sounds like you've had a tough week, Mike. That reduces the emotional pressure that she's experiencing, which is why she's come to you. So again, this is, this is the key right here, right? What actually creates safety for her is listening for emotions instead of listening for logistics. That's it. It's as simple as that. If you can do that, this will transform your marriage. This is, this is really the key to everything. This is the beginning. So, so yeah, no, don't interrupt with corrections, explanations, defensiveness, etc. The critical principle to understand, man, is that emotional conversations with your wife, the kind that she wants, they're not courtroom trials. It's not about who's right or wrong. They're emotional disclosures is what they are. Your wife is emotionally disclosing how she's feel— not feeling. Now keep this in mind, like, life period is a game of energy management and energy conservation. As human beings, we have to consume more energy than we exert or we die. That's the way it works. A business has to absorb more energy from the marketplace than it costs to get that energy or it dies. You have to consume more calories than you put out or you die. That's every aspect of life. So when you understand that, there comes a point when it becomes self-preservation, right? If being in the marriage or having conversation consumes more energy then it replenishes, then there comes a point when there simply is no choice but to leave. It stops being she doesn't want to try and it becomes self-preservation. And we've all experienced that as human beings, right? I'm sure as men we've had that experience within the marriage where there comes a time when it just, it consumes more energy to participate than we get back. Now, in a healthy marriage The opposite is true, right? Kids are like this. If you have a healthy relationship with your kids, they consume a huge amount of energy, but they replenish far more than they take. I had a— I just had a wonderful 2 days with my boys where we did a bunch of new stuff. We went go-kart racing for the first time. We did some other stuff, all kinds of stuff. You know, my boys are young, my children are young, and it consumed a lot of energy to do that. It was a whole day out. My youngest is 5 years old, you know, 8 hours on his feet the whole day. Hard work for him, hard work for me. And it consumed a lot of energy, but it replenished significantly more energy than it took. I got more out of that than I gave to it. And this is what a healthy marriage looks like. You have to contribute a huge amount of energy. There's no two ways about that. Marriage is difficult. But in a good marriage, you'll get far more back, far more energy back than you put into it, and vice versa. This is, this is the miracle, right? This is the miracle of the situation. When two people come together, you can put out more energy collectively than the two of you are putting into it. And that's what a healthy marriage is. You put in a lot, she puts in a lot, it takes a lot out of both of you. But collectively love produces more energy than the effort required, requiring to produce it. It's a net positive situation. That is not true right now. You've moved to a net negative situation where it requires more energy to maintain this marriage. You have, you have to put more energy in, or she has to put more energy in than she gets out. So this is not about she wants to leave or you want a divorce or she's not this. This is a survival situation. And the same is true for you, right? There comes a point where you're going to go, I just can't do this anymore. There will come a point if things don't turn around where you go, I just can't do this anymore. It's not that you don't care. It's not that you want out. It's not that you just want to be with someone else. The relationship has consumed more energy from you. Than it is producing, and now the batteries are low and you have no choice. When we understand that, we can move away from blame and frustration and resentment, and we can move into that positive regard, and we can move into that gratitude and go, she's not being mean, vindictive, or she just wants out. This is simply an energy conservation situation. So for her, for your wife, the facts of the situation matter far less than the emotional impact, the emotional interpretation, and the emotional experience. She doesn't care if it was Monday or Tuesday. She doesn't care if it was, you know, you had 7 drinks or 10 drinks. She doesn't care if it was at your cousin's house or if your friend's house. She couldn't care less about that, right? All she cares about is the emotional impact that it has on her. So why will she start talking again? When she starts to feel— when she no longer feels corrected, managed, or emotionally contained. Or in other words, when she's able to emotionally unload and she's able to get more back from, from you, from the relationship than she's actually given to it in that moment. That's when she's going to actually start to talk again, or in other words, when she gets more benefit from talking than not talking. More pleasure is gained from talking than the pain experienced from not talking. So what we want her nervous system to begin associating with, with conversations is relief, understanding, and safety. If every time you have a call with me like this, You feel a sense of relief, you feel understood, it feels safe, and it feels like you've moved forward and you've progressed towards your destination. In other words, the pressure in your situation has decreased, your confidence and emotional trust is increasing, you're going to keep coming back for more. If I want you to keep coming back to these calls, I have to reward— I have to reward you for coming to this call. By giving you relief, understanding, safety, and a decrease in pressure. This is what you have to do within your marriage. Now, keep in mind, this is, this is a lagging indicator, meaning that the nervous system is not responding to what is happening right now. It is responding to what happened 6 months ago, 12 months ago. This is why many of you You have to understand the timeframe. You go, I've made the changes, I've done this, I've done that, blah, blah, blah. Yes, I understand that, but you understand her nervous system is a lagging indicator. She's not responding to what you did today or yesterday. She's responding to what you did 6 months ago, and there's no way around this. The only way around this, the only way you can speed this up is to stop giving her negative signals. And start the process of the positive association now. Start to associate relief, understanding, safety, and calmness, understanding, right, with conversation. Again, this is a completely different conversation. The question will be, my wife is not recognizing my changes, or she acknowledges my changes, but she's not responding to them. Why is that? Because her nervous system is in a lagging state. It's responding to what you did 6 months ago. She can intellectually acknowledge that you've changed, but her nervous system is predicting that, is predicting something completely different. So let's get, make some important distinctions here. So this is not a case of like, so I've just got to, I've just got to sacrifice myself. I've got to stop being me. If it's true, I've got to. I've got to pretend that true is not true, and so on and so forth. What I'm talking about here does not mean agreeing with false facts and just agreeing with everything she says. I'm not talking about abandoning your boundaries within conversation, suppressing your own perspective, or becoming just completely passive, or, you know, simping or whatever it's called, right? Basically just becoming a doormat and going, right, I've just got to agree with everything. That's not what we're talking about at all. You, you get to present the facts. You get to maintain your boundaries. You don't have to suppress your perspective or become passive, but you have to understand where it fits within the conversation. You have to give to get. You have to understand. You have to make— you have to understand before being understood. You have to listen before being listened to. If you want to— if you want to be heard in this marriage, you have to learn how to listen. We always say in business leadership, if you want to be a good leader, you have to be a good follower. Before you can be an excellent, exceptional leader, you have to be an excellent, exceptional follower. You can't lead if you can't follow. You can't lead somebody if you're incapable of following people. And the same is true in the marriage, right? You can't expect— if you want to be heard, you have to become exceptional at hearing. If you want to be understood, you have to first become exceptional at understanding. And you will get your day, you will get your reward, you will get your hour, but it has to be in sequence. So this is not about abandoning yourself and anything like that. It's about understanding where this fits into the sequence. So again, it does mean— absolutely means prioritizing understanding her situation emotionally first. It absolutely means regulating your defensiveness. If she can't make what you would consider accusations at this point and say, 'You made me feel unsafe, Dave. You made me feel unsafe, Paul,' if you're going to immediately meet that with Well, that's not true. Then this is the correction. This is you being factual. This is you holding court. You have to, you have to be able to hear her emotion even though you don't like the emotion and even though you don't agree with the emotion. Again, this, there's parallels here with child raising, right? How many of us have had a child who's been misbehaved and we're ready to punish the child and the child goes, "Can I just explain what happened? Can I just explain what happened?" No, no, you can't. I do that from— I've got to catch myself with that. No, you can't explain yourself. This is what we're doing with our wives. I feel misunderstood. I feel unsafe. I don't feel comfortable talking to you. Can I explain myself why? And effectively that's, that's met with no, no, you cannot. Through defensiveness, right? Because it just becomes so offensive to us that she's told us that she doesn't feel safe or whatever it is that's triggered our emotion and we have to defend ourselves. It does mean hearing her emotional experience before the accuracy of the situation. I didn't feel safe with you that time, Cody. I didn't— I didn't— when we were in the car and you started honking the horn, I didn't feel safe in the car. What do you mean you didn't feel safe? What do you think was going to happen? You don't think I can take care of business? Versus going, I understand, it sounds like you were quite scared in that moment, and I understand you didn't— that didn't make you feel good. So the core, the core internal shift here, man, is like, we don't get her to talk by asking the question, how do I get her to talk? We get her to talk by asking the question, how do I make the conversation emotionally safe enough for honesty? That's the, that's the real question. If you can, if you can start to communicate in a way that makes conversation emotionally safe enough for her to be open and honest, good chance you've just saved your marriage. So our summary here is most women in late-stage marriage crisis or a divorce scenario, they're not avoiding communication. They're quite capable of having it. They're not avoidant. They're not any of those things. They're avoiding the emotional exhaustion that comes with it. Is what they're avoiding. Conversations for a female, for your wife, become safe when her emotional experience is heard. That communication reduces pressure, correction stops, understanding increases. In other words, Mr. Fix-It sits down and takes a break. And ultimately, that emotional safety of doing this, that's what creates the openness for her to reconnect with you. And the reason she's leaving you is because she doesn't feel connected to you anymore. This is the solution. All roads point to this. So that's it for this, man. I'm going to jump over to the Q&A now and, uh, let's answer some questions.