She Said Divorce. Your Frustration Is Making It Worse.

All right, so the question I'm going to answer today is one that we'll all face at some point, which is how do we support our wives and show true leadership when they hold resentment and anger without getting frustrated ourselves? So the key, the key shift here to actually dealing with this, to, to deal with the resentment and anger which you're inevitably going to get, is, is to understand that you have to shift from hunter-gatherer to farmer. So the key reason that the frustration comes in and the resentment comes in is because we've all been hunter-gatherers to this point. We're pretty much all successful men here, and we're used to action equaling immediate result. We action something in the morning, we get the result in the afternoon. And even at, even at a simpler level than that, we pay the Netflix subscription at 12 o'clock and we're watching movies at 12:01. We're in an instant gratification society. We're in a hunter-gatherer society. And when you're the hunter-gatherer, you go out and you kill an animal and the whole village eats, and then you get gratitude and everybody's happy. You're the hero. But here's the problem, right? We're all here because that's what we are. What we need to be is a farmer. Hunter-gatherers are on a hand-to-mouth basis. You eat what you kill, and that's that. And if you don't eat anything, you don't kill. If you want a long-term sustainable community, then you have to learn to farm. And here's the shift in identity, right? Like, the ground— when you're the farmer, the ground does not respond to your need. The ground only responds to the seed that you put in it, and it responds to it through seasons. You have to prepare the ground in winter. You have to pick the rocks out of the ground. You have to plant the seed in spring. You have to protect it in summer. And God willing, if you do all of that, then in the fall you get a harvest. But no picking rocks, no planting, no protecting— there's no harvest. And there's no feedback, and there's no guarantee that the farmer is going to have a crop. The farmer can do everything right in winter, spring, and summer, and a hailstorm comes the day before the harvest, or a locust swarm comes and eats the crop. There's no guarantee that the farmer is going to get a crop, but he does it because he knows it's the only way to sustainably support the village. And what we absolutely know for sure is if you don't plant the seed, you don't get the harvest. But the second part of the farmer versus the hunter-gatherer, here's the thing, even if you're, even if your harvest fails in the fall, then we know that there's another spring coming and you get to plant again. We know the cycle. So one of the hardest parts, man, of actually winning your wife back is staying calm while resentment is still coming towards you from her. And we've all been there, and most of us are still there. So men often think this: if I'm changing, or I am changing, so why is she still angry? Why is she still pissed off at me? Why is she not recognizing my changes? Why am I not getting the harvest, even though I haven't even picked the first rock out of the field yet? All I've done is acknowledge that there's rocks in the field. Why am I not getting the harvest? And when that happens, the frustration grows. When effort is not immediately rewarded, the frustration grows because we're a hunter-gatherer. We go out in the morning, we shoot a deer in the afternoon, we eat in the evening. There's an instant feedback cycle. We know that what we did worked and we get gratitude immediately. But we've got to, we've got to move off that instant reward dopamine hit that we're on, that instant feedback loop that we're on. We've got to start to operate from understanding, not feedback. We understand that if we plant seeds in the spring, We protect them in the summer, we potentially get a harvest in the fall. We understand that. And in order to see it through for the 6 or 8 months or the 9 months of the growing season, it's understanding that takes you to the conclusion, not feedback. The farmer that digs up the crop 15 minutes after planting it, going, why is this seed not growing? Or, I need reassurance that this seed has grown. All he does is kill the seed. This is different. This is the difference between faith and immediate feedback. The farmer operates from a place of faith. The hunter-gatherer operates from a place of immediate feedback. You've been operating as a hunter-gatherer. My question is, how is it working out at this point? So the core misunderstanding that we need to address here is what men expect. Expectations, right? The key to, the key to a positive outcome is positive expectations. If you think this is going to take 6 days and it's actually going to take 6 months, you're going to get very disappointed. And something I heard from Tony Robbins a long, long time ago, but it's always stuck with me, he said, you— most people vastly overestimate what they can achieve in a year and vastly underestimate what can be achieved in 10. And the result that that produces in reality is because you think you're going to achieve much more than you are in the short term, you become frustrated. And you become discouraged and you give up. And because you give up, you never get to access the 10-year gain. It hasn't even entered into most people's mind what they could achieve over a 10-year period, but it also hasn't really entered into most people's minds how little is going to be achieved in that first period. It's the, the growth is not linear, it's slow, slow, slow exponential. So the expectations that we show up with quite often is if I change, her anger should disappear. Progress should create immediate warmth. Improvement should quickly rebuild connection. These are the expectations that we hold, which we're setting up rules. If I, if this, then that. If I change, then anger will disappear. If I progress, then warmth will reappear. If improvement shows up in me, then connection should rebuild. This is not an if-then statement. So the reality of the situation is her nervous system doesn't— does not instantly trust change. Emotional safety rebuilds slower than your behavioral changes, and resentment is an accumulation. It's accumulated emotional pain. So let me give you an example here. If you had— you've been in prison 20 years on a lie, and after 20 years the person comes forward and says, I lied, I was embarrassed about the truth, so I lied. And now this person— I've put you in prison for 20 years as a result. I'm really, really sorry. I apologize, and I genuinely mean it, and I see the error of my ways. It is 20 years of accumulated pain just, just evaporate? Does it just evaporate based on the fact that that person has apologized to you for taking 20 years of your life? Because this is, this is how it's being viewed. You've taken 20 years of her life the way she sees it. You've taken the best 20 years. You've taken 20 years she'll never get back. You've caused her pain for 20 years. You've essentially metaphorically put her in that prison for 20 years. And then go, "Whoops, sorry, my bad, my mistake, shouldn't have done that, but I see the error of my ways." And then we, when we do that, we come back to, "Well, why is she not immediately warming up to me? Why is this trust not rebuilding quickly?" This is why it's an unrealistic expectation. It's not understanding your situation as it actually is. You know, here's a takeaway for you, man. Our goal is to understand the situation as it is, not better than it is or worse than it is. Both are erroneous. If you think your situation is better than it is, you're in trouble. And if you think your situation is worse than it is, you're in trouble. Accurate action can only be taken based on accurate information. You need to understand what seed you're putting in the ground. Is that a corn seed, or is that poison ivy? Is it nightshade? Because if you, if you think the seed is corn or wheat and you— it's actually nightshade, then all of your effort is going— you can put a massive amount of effort in and all you're going to do is poison yourself without having an accurate diagnosis of where you are and truly understanding your situation, not making it better, not making it worse, then we can go to work. And this is what I'm sharing with you right now is reality. And quite frankly, reality is offensive to most people. They just don't want this to be true. They create a third version of reality, which is, if I reject this, if I reject reality, then my version of reality becomes reality. It does not. So why do men become frustrated? Well, because they feel unseen. I'm making effort and she's not seeing it. That frustrates me. It's not getting acknowledged. We're not getting a cookie for our behavior. And we continue to be punished despite effort. It feels unfair. It feels unjust. But here's the situation. You don't know what you don't know. And as we've covered in previous classes, If you're in a state of unconscious incompetence, you've been punishing her for a long time without her knowing it. She's made effort that's been unseen. She's felt ignored, unacknowledged. She feels like she's been punished despite her effort to reconcile the situation. And that's been going on for a really, really long time. So the internal belief that fuels the frustration is, I'm trying now, why can't she see it? The truth is she probably can see it, but she doesn't care at this point. The frustration needs to be resolved before she can see it. So frustration often comes from the expectation of an emotional payoff. I did X, therefore you should do Y. It's conditional love. It's conditional repentance. It's conditional growth. I have done this, therefore I expect you to do that. And that makes it performative. If what was happening truly is transformational, inspirational, motivational from you, it doesn't require reward. If you need a reward to do the right thing, then your behavior is performative, and she's absolutely right to reject it. If you adopt the position of I am going to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, regardless if it goes unseen, regardless if there's payoff, regardless if I get a reward. I'm doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. That's transformation. I'm trying now, why can't she see it as performance? If I am doing X, so why is she not doing Y? It's control, it's manipulation still. It's more of the same thing she said no to. So let's understand the resentment properly, because resentment is a killer. If you're resentful of your wife, eventually you're going to stop trying. If she's resentful of you, which is the problem right now, she's going to stop trying. Resentment is death to a relationship. So resentment is usually accumulated pain. It's repeated disappointment. and it's unresolved injury. You draw it on my presentation, Paul. Put you in the naughty corner. I don't even know how to get that off. Anyway, all right, we'll leave it on there. The red line, it's the red line, Paul. Anyway, so anger is often It's self-protection, it's grief, and it's exhaustion. So a great example is when I was drinking, if my wife ever brought up drinking as a problem, like she was now getting ready to ask me to stop or expect me to stop, I got very, very angry because that protected— that was my mechanism to protect the drinking. I made it so painful for her, so dangerous for her to bring up drinking. That's— she would never do it. I used it as a self-protection mechanism. It can also be you've hurt her many times. And now her anger is protection, is to keep you away, is to stop you hurting her anymore. She's not angry because she's angry. She's angry because it's self-protection. It can be grief. It can simply be exhaustion. I can't go through this again. It's easy to get angry with you and push you away than, than to go through the process that is going to end in exhaustion. So understand that her resentment is not necessarily hatred towards you. It's not rejection of you. It's not, it's not proof that change is impossible, then the outcome is impossible. It could be many things. It could be many things. And if we're in that place of negative interpretation, toxic habit, right, negative interpretation, we see resentment, and we immediately go to that negative. This means that she hates me. This means that she's never going to change her mind. This means that this is not possible. This means that, quite frankly, you don't know what it means. So, defensiveness. Why does defensiveness make this work? This is, this is a typical response when her resentment comes back. We get it, we get defensive, we try to defend ourselves. So when you do that, when she's being resentful, because quite frankly, let's look at it this way. You could have— you've just demonstrated, you've just given her evidence that you could have done this all along. You've just given her evidence that you are capable of understanding what's wrong. You are capable of changing. You are capable of doing and providing what she needs, and it took her exiting the relationship or extreme behavior from her to get what she needs from you. And you've only done it because she's threatened you. So yes, quite often your change is going to trigger a negative response, as it would in you. But ultimately, what her— what your defensiveness tells her when you react to her resentment is that her emotional experience is unsafe. She's— this is the destruction and the death of emotional safety. You're saying that she cannot be emotionally vulnerable around you. If she feels resentful right now, then she feels resentful right now. That's her state. And if she expresses that, if you allow that expression of resentfulness to sit, then that's providing emotional safety. If you reject that emotional— if you reject that resentment because that's emotionally threatening to you, then this is you destroying emotional safety. So this frustration also turns, often turns into pressure, emotional invalidation, and impatience. Because we've negatively interpreted what's going on as she hates you, she's never going to change, this is permanent. You then feel the pressure to act upon the situation, to control, to manipulate, to direct. You apply the very thing that her resentment is designed to escape from. Her resentment simply is a tool to release some emotional pressure and get some space, get some relief. And when you respond to her mechanism with more pressure, then you're just doubling down. You're adding gasoline onto an already raging fire. You emotionally invalidate her. If she feels resentful, she feels resentful. It's the height of human experience for me to tell you that you don't feel what you feel. You don't feel that, John. "I'm really frustrated right now, Cody." No, you're not. No, you're not. You're wrong. You don't even know. You're so incapable of even understanding your own feelings. This is what you're saying. You don't know what you're feeling. "I'm telling you that I'm very resentful, Cody." Well, you're wrong. You're not resentful. It's the height of ignorance, and it demonstrates impatience. Which again points back to a performative transformation. If you're doing the right thing for the right thing to do, how long does it take? It takes as long as it takes. How long are you going to give it? If your 2-year-old can't walk, how long do you give them to walk? How long— how much grace time are you going to give them? Do you go, son, you're 2 years old, it's time for you to start walking now, you've got 3 months or we're going to have a problem? If the child's still not work— walking at 3, what do you do? If this child's still not walking at 5, what do you do? How much patience do you give your child to arrive at the place that they need to arrive at? We didn't— we don't demonstrate the same level of patience and grace with our wife. If your child couldn't walk at 2 years old and you said, you've got 3 months to sort this out or I'm going to be thinking about moving on to a new child, you would be considered an animal, a monster. But we say that to our wife, if you can't sort your life out the way I think you should sort it out in the next 3 to 6 months, then I'm going to have no choice but to move on. So when you become frustrated, all you reinforce is great. Now I have to re— as well as dealing with my own emotional stress of this separation, Now I have to regulate him as well. Now I have to regulate him, his emotions as well. You are forcing her into a position of leadership within the marriage that you, sir, should be taking. You are forcing her to assume the leadership role and you know where she's leading this. So what's the nervous system dynamic? So if she carries resentment, which she absolutely certainly does, her nervous system expects disappointment, confirmation bias. She expects you to screw up. She expects this to be temporary. She expects you to disappoint her. Why? Because every time she's got her hope up for the last 20 years, you've proved to her that you're going to let her down. Men get frustrated with their wife and go, why can't she just trust me? Because you've taught her that you're not trustworthy, bro. That's why. Her nervous system moves to— all change is internally initially viewed with suspicion, rightly so. The employee that shows up late every day for a year, and then finally you say, this is it, if you're late one more time, and the person goes, I'm never, I'm never going to be late again— do we just immediately go to, they've reformed, they've seen the error of the way, they're most certainly going to be a good employee now? Or do we actually expect them to show up late again. We absolutely, we're just waiting for it to happen. So what matters here is consistency matters more than intensity. It's not, you don't have to, if you, if you're that employee that now has gone, okay, I see it, this is unacceptable, I need to show up on time. You don't need to tell people that you're showing up on time. You need to just show up on time. You don't need to make a point that you've shown up on time. Trust me, it's been noticed. And the only thing really that's going to make a difference in this situation is consistency over time. Nothing else is going to reset her nervous system. Boring, consistent, ongoing, low-intensity, low-emotion transformation is, is how safety is rebuilt. Safety is rebuilt through repeated experience. We teach through habit, we teach through repeated exposure. So the solution here, let's go to the solution. The solution is authentic masculine leadership. What is that? Well, we can summarize it as this: it's protector, provider, prophet, priest. This is your role in the household, this is your role in the home. Protector, provider, most of us have got nailed, right? We think that's what authentic masculine leadership is. And when I say a masculine leadership, I'm talking about a level of leadership that she voluntarily chooses to submit herself to and is free to leave at any point. She's there because she chooses to be there, because she has the freedom to leave. She can reject it at any point, and there's no pressure, coercion, manipulation, or control that keeps her there. She chooses your leadership because it is better than anything else by an order of magnitude. Most of us have nailed this. We are a protector, we are a provider. But here's the, here's the problem, right? Prophet and priest. Prophet should be PH, right? PHRO, something like that. Prophet, not that kind of prophet, but you know what I'm saying. So a lot of people think this has religious connotations. It doesn't. That's not what I'm talking about. Prophet in this, in this context is the ability to speak a future into her life that she cannot see yet. This is what I'm doing right now for you who's watching this video, speaking a future that you do not yet have the ability to see yourself, to speak an outcome that is beyond your vision. My children need to grow up as men. I have 3 boys. They need to grow up as men. They don't know what being a man is yet. I have to speak that into their life. I have to see them as that man. I have to see them as those three men that they're going to grow into, and I have to speak that into their existence. I have to guide them towards that. That's the role of the prophet. I have to see a future that's positive, that draws you towards it, that is beneficial, that is desirable, and speak it into existence. That is the role of the prophet. And the role of the priest is to accept the confession. Again, not a religious connotation. Can she confess her wrongdoings to you? Can she confess her fears to you? Can she confess her emotional weaknesses to you? Can she confess? Again, this is what's happening. This is what will happen at the end of this call. Men will say, I've screwed up. Men will say, I made a mistake. Men will say, I did this and I need, I need to change. This is the confession. It's not a religious connotation. It's simply the ability to express when you've lost your way and to provide an environment where there is reconciliation and there is a path back. That's all it is. This is, this is your, this is when you assume this role of protector, provider, prophet, and priest. This is authentic masculine leadership summarized in 4 words. So let's start out, let's define this a little bit further by what people think leadership is, what it is, and what it is not. So people think, men think leadership is taking charge, problem solving. We're problem solvers, right? We're Mr. Fix-It. She comes to you with a problem, she wants to give you her confession, I've messed up, I've done this, we just want to solve the problem. The role of the priest is not to fix the problem. The role of the priest is to take the confession, to hear it, to understand it, to allow the person to express it. Being the problem solver, Mr. Fix-It, eliminates you from that role. Many men think that true leadership is just getting this back on track. It's my job to get this back on track as quickly as possible. No. Or controlling the emotional outcome here, being able to move her around emotionally, and quite frankly, be able to move yourself around emotionally too. So what leadership actually is, it's emotional steadiness. Are you the rock? Are you the oak tree? Are you the shelter from the storm, or are you the storm? Many of you are the storm. You are the storm that she needs, and then she needs to find shelter from that storm somewhere else. This is the problem, man. You need to become the shelter from the storm, the storm that she is going through. You need to be the shelter. Leadership is regulation under pressure, creating safety during emotional difficulty, and is staying grounded without demanding immediate validation. Can you plant the seeds and just trust? Or do you need to dig them up? So here's what we can summarize this very succinctly: are you stronger than your wife's moods, or is your wife's moods— or are your wife's moods stronger than you? If you are reactive to her resentment and any other emotion that she brings to you that you find difficult, then— and you, and you are reactive to that, your wife's moods are stronger than you. When I have to discipline my children, I have young children, they say things to me like, "I hate you, Dad. You're the worst dad in the world." Happened yesterday. I said, "You've lost your computer for a week. No screens for a week." "I hate you, Dad. You're the worst dad in the world." It is my job to be stronger than that child's emotion. Many of us, when our wives say something in such, in such a way, her emotional dysregulation, her emotional instability, just her emotional period, which is what women are, they're emotional. We're logical, they're emotion. Those emotions are simply stronger than us. How can a woman follow a man whose emotions are stronger than him? To be a good father, I cannot allow my children's emotions in the moment to influence my decision. It's irrelevant. I am stronger than my children's emotions, and that's where their feeling of safety comes from. They'll come back a few hours later and apologize or say, I'll bring it up. They'll say it like yesterday, my child said something to me and I said, well, what are you talking to me for? I'm the worst dad in the world. And he just went on, he's like, oh yeah, sorry, Dad, I didn't mean that. I was just angry. That's what it is. Like when you assume, when you are stronger than the emotions in front of you, then you're safe. When the emotions in front of you are stronger than you and can move you and blow you around like the wind, you're a liability. So this is what true leadership actually looks like in the protector, provider, prophet, priest role. It's listening without collapsing. Can she, she, can she bring her confession to you without you collapsing? This marriage is over. I feel like this marriage is over. This is a waste of time. I don't trust you. I feel like you're manipulating me. I think you're just doing this. When she brings that to you, what do you do? Do you collapse or are you strong enough to hear that confession from her? Are you emotionally regulated enough to take that without collapsing? Or are those emotions bigger than you? Can you hear pain without defensiveness? When she's resentful, that's pain. That's speaking from a place of pain. Can you hear her pain? Can you sit with her pain? Can you hold her pain? Can you be bigger than her pain without the— without becoming defensive? Because if you cannot, all you are communicating is that it is unsafe for her to feel pain. And guess what? You are asking something of her that she cannot achieve. You cannot ask somebody to not feel pain. Pointless. You will lose. Pain is a part of the human experience. We will all— we all suffer. We all feel pain. And for you to communicate that it is not safe to feel pain, you're telling her it's not safe to be a human being. It's not safe to hurt around me. Regulate your frustration internally. Can you do that? Can you take the pain and regulate it. The farmer understands that the storm is going to come. The farmer understands that pestilence is going to come. The farmer understands that crops are going to fail. He doesn't fall to pieces. He regulates those catastrophes internally and he moves forward. Can you remain grounded when emotions rise? Or your emotions attached to her emotions? When she gets emotional, you get emotional. When she's grounded, you're grounded. Because if that's the case, what you are effectively doing, man, is you're going to her saying, "You need to regulate me." You are putting her in a de facto position of leadership. You're putting her in charge. You are abdicating your role of true masculine leadership. If you— if my wife needs to regulate my emotions, That is the role of parent-child. You want to— what you want to know why your wife is not sexually attracted to you anymore? Because she's looking at you like a child. Why? Because you're acting like a child. And I don't mean that offensively. I mean in the way that your emotions need to be regulated by her. She's responsible for you in the way that she's responsible for her children. Patience without passivity. What does that mean? Well, the farmer's patient, but is he passive? He patiently waits for the crop. He plants in the spring. He patiently waits for the harvest in the fall. Is he passive during those 9 months, or is he weeding? Is he protecting? Is he taking many actions to protect the crop? He's demonstrating patience while activity. He's not passive. Detachment is not passivity. Strength without control. Can you demonstrate strength? This strength without needing to control the situation. Most of us can demonstrate strength when we get the cookie at the end of it. If I'm strong and I remain emotionally regulated, she will come back. Or if I remain strong, then she will come back. If I do 'If I operate from a place of strength, then she will return.' Can you operate from a straight— that's control. Can you operate from a place of strength when, 'If I behave strong as a strong man, she probably won't come back regardless'? An apple is an apple regardless of the season. A strong man is a strong man regardless of the season. If you're only strong when the wind is blowing in the right direction, you're a liability. Strength is not dependent on outcome. Strength is strength. And if you, if you can't demonstrate strength and control and self-regulation when things are not going your way, when resentment's coming your way, when negative news is coming, what— you're not strong. You're performing strength. You're putting on the outfit of strength. It's a weak man dressed in strong clothing, and it's fooling nobody. So the key internal questions to ask yourself here, men: Can I stay emotionally stable without needing reassurance? Can I re— can I tolerate her current emotions without making them about my worth? She's telling me it's over. That's not about you. When the priest takes the confession, he doesn't make it about him. He takes the confession, he listens. He doesn't internalize that as his own worth. When your wife is sending resentment your way, can you just hear that resentment? Can you sit with that resentment? Can you hold that resentment? Can you validate that resentment without making it about you? About who you are, what you're worth, what the rest of your life is going to look like, what you're losing? She comes to you with her confession, and you refuse to accept it. Because you can't see beyond yourself. That's not leadership. That's a man performing leadership. So the important distinctions to make here, man, supporting her— and hear this very clearly— supporting her is not, is not agreeing with everything that she says. It's not abandoning your boundaries. It's not becoming passive. And is not tolerating her abuse, is not tolerating abuse. All of these things may be present, and there is a healthy, effective way to deal with these. This is not what we're talking about here. You don't need— hearing her does not equal agreeing with her. What supporting her does mean is become emotionally steady. It's emotional steadiness. This really is about boring, simple, boring, repetitious behavior. The farmer's life is not exciting. The hunter-gatherer's life is. But again, this is why women are attracted to hunter-gatherers early on, because it's exciting. When children come into this, into the scene, they don't want to be with a warlord. They don't want to be with a man that's unpredictable. They don't want to be with a man that's violent. They don't want to be with a man that can't guarantee food on the table. When a woman moves to a later stage of life, i.e., wife, mother, she needs steadiness, she needs stability, she needs emotional responsibility, she needs safety, and she needs a reduction of escalation, not an increase in it. She doesn't need excitement at this point in her life. She needs to know that her children are safe. She needs to know that she's provided for. She needs hope of a future, which the prophet speaks into the relationship, sets the vision, sets the goal, speaks the future. And she needs the priest to accept her emotional confession. I'm weak. I'm broken. That's what a strong man does. That's true masculine leadership. And I'm telling you, when you provide that, She won't— she will stay with you not because it's better than leaving. She will stay with you because you are the best option bar none. You are untouchable at that point. Nothing will compare to you. So our core learning points for this presentation: leadership in marriage is emotional regulation under pressure. Can you regulate yourself emotional and emotionally under pressure? When you are tested, what do you do? Do you turn into a monkey with a machine gun? Do you turn into an aggravatable, annoyed, self-defensive, protective, immature adolescent? Or do you stand there as an emotionally regulated, self-controlled rock? It's as simple as that. Which one? I asked you the question, which one is attractive to a woman? Use your common sense here. Don't let me guide you to a conclusion. Rationalize this out for yourself. So here's, here's the key takeaway, right? Most men lead— try to lead externally before they can lead themselves internally. They want to show them, their wives, the leadership externally. They want their leadership to be recognized externally before they've mastered this. Leadership simply comes down to this: emotional self-regulation regulation under pressure. Many of you cannot do it, or cannot do it adequately yet. Yet you want to take that and demonstrate it externally to your wife. And when she sees through the facade, when she sees that you're just wearing an outfit, when she sees that your words actually have no real substance— not because you're a liar, but because the emotional regulation under pressure has not been fully established yet— you just come across as performative. You just come across as controlling, manipulative, scared, just grabbing at straws to try and change the situation. So the emotional safety in the relationship grows when your frustration decreases, when your steadiness increases, and your defensiveness drops. Ask yourself these 3 questions: Am I being defensive? Is this demonstrating steadiness? Am I steady? Is my defensiveness decreasing? If the answer is yes, it's just a matter of time before the resentment goes away. If the answer is no, then what are you doing trying to have conversations with your wife? What are you doing trying to take control of this situation again? Hopefully you can see when I say work on the man harder than you work on the marriage, that this makes that clear somewhat. This is the key to your success. Work on the man harder than you work on the marriage. When the man— fix the man, fix the marriage. Fix the man, fix the marriage. The marriage is a byproduct of the man. The man does not show up when the marriage is fixed. The marriage is a byproduct of the man. So our conclusion: true masculine leadership in marriage crisis means emotional self-regulation, not external control or immediate results. That's it. Say it again. True masculine leadership in marriage crisis, the kind that causes reconciliation, that causes attraction, that causes her to gravitate to you because she loves you and she's drawn to you, not because she fears being alone or it's financially inconvenient to start again. True masculine leadership in marriage crisis means emotional self regulation. Emotional self-regulation, not external control, and not immediate results. If you can grasp this, you can understand what I'm telling you here, you are 90% of the way there. So that's it, man. That's my presentation. Let's jump over to some Q&A.