She’s Talking About Divorce To Everyone—Is Your Marriage Over?

Hey, Cody Butler here, and in this video I want to talk about a very painful situation for most men when it comes to divorce, and that is, my wife has started to openly discuss the divorce with family and friends, and I feel humiliated, ambushed. How do I handle this situation without blowing up and making the situation worse? So let's get into that. Let's talk about today why you feel this way, why you feel humiliated and ambushed, and how to handle this in a way that's going to give you the best chance of saving the marriage. What we're talking about here is a man that's in late-stage marriage crisis divorce scenario where the wife has now actively started discussing the divorce with family and friends, talking to friends and opening up externally about this situation. So this is painful in a number of ways. One, because obviously the dirty laundry is now being done publicly, and also it's painful from the respect that it's now becoming more and more obvious that she's serious about this. And the more she talks about this and the more people she tells, Then obviously the closer to the actual divorce that she's actually becoming and the harder this is to turn around. So there's the double whammy of pain going on here. So the immediate male reaction here typically is going to be to feel humiliated, betrayed, be angry about this, panic about the situation. All kinds of negative emotions can, can come up here, but typically it's going to put you into a state of fight or flight. You're going to want to fight this situation or you're just going to want to run away. And not deal with it at all. But either one, either of those situations is very detrimental to actually— if your goal is to save your marriage, then, then state management is a big thing here, right? Fight or flight, neither one of those help your situation. So we need to find a way to interpret what's going on in a way that's empowering and helps you to actually act in a way that helps the situation. So you might feel publicly exposed here, judged, attacked. Shamed. All of these emotions become present, right? So why does this feel so devastating when she starts telling the family and friends? Well, it goes much deeper than just the fact that she's, she's moving the marriage closer to divorce. For most men, marriage is really heavily tied to masculine identity and who we are as men, and divorce is interpreted internally by Us, the man, as failure, incompetence, a collapse of leadership, and inadequacy. And really, the greatest fear of any man is, is to be incompetent. None of us want that. And it's bad enough that the divorce itself is challenging our own self-perception and causing us to look at ourselves like maybe we failed here, incompetent leadership collapse, etc., etc. It's bad enough that that's going on internally inside of us, but now that it's being made public, the public knowledge of the divorce, it doubles down on this and it makes it feel like a public declaration of failure, public exposure of masculine weakness, a public exposure of incompetency. So it triggers more than just the loss of the marriage, it triggers the deeper fear of the wider community, your family, friends, and the wider environment as Seeing you as incompetent or seeing you as as inadequate in some way. So there's a lot of additional triggers going on here that's causing fear, pain, and discomfort that's really agitating the problem. So until we can get to the bottom of that and understand why this is so triggering for us and what to do about it, we're going to continue to act in a way that actually causes a lot of damage to the marriage. So why why does the man often experience this? As a betrayal, telling the family as a betrayal, or her friends as a betrayal? Well, for one, it's the interpretation of the situation. He sees this, his interpretation of what she's doing is it's badmouthing, it's rumor spreading, gossip, it's vindictiveness. She's causing, she's doing this out of spite or whatever reasons. There's a vindictiveness to it. Vindictiveness. It's reputation destruction. She's destroying your reputation. She's telling all these people what's going on. She's telling people publicly what's going on privately, and this is a public attack upon not just— this is not her just sharing with her friends and family what's going on in the marriage, in your life. This is a public attack upon you as a man and your masculinity. And obviously when you see things this way and you experience things this way, it's It is going to feel like your wife is betraying you, but her experience is very different. She's not, she's not experiencing this as any of those things that you are. She's experiencing this as she's seeking emotional relief, and by sharing this with her friends and family and wider community, she's getting some kind of emotional relief and de-escalation from this. She's searching for emotional regulation. She wants a sense of certainty and stability. She's looking for somebody to understand her situation. She's looking for validation, safety, and support. And all of these things are going to be very important. Remember these as we move through this presentation, because this is actually very, very important. Like, we have to understand what she's actually looking for here and stop— we have to stop interpreting the situation about how, through the lens of how we feel. And what it's doing to our masculine identity, and start to evaluate through what she's actually looking for. So the problem here, the core problem is that relief that she's desperately seeking is unavailable for her inside the marriage. Therefore, that relief is sought externally. So again, when we look at divorce as a totality, what is actually happening here at its core level is she's looking for relief. She's— look, the divorce or the separation is a pressure relief valve. She— the pressure within the marriage, for whatever reason, has become too much. It's become overwhelming and too much, and now she wants— she can no longer get that relief within the marriage, so she goes outside of the marriage through separation, divorce, whatever it is, space, in order to get that relief. It's a relief valve. So all of these things simply provide that relief externally now that she originally sought Internally. So the emotional mismatch between what you as the man is experiencing and what the woman is experiencing in trying to, and what she's trying to achieve here is you, you potentially, the man is seeing this as betrayal, humiliation, and exposure. She's being disloyal or she's behaving badly. She's not experiencing it like that. She, what she's experiencing here by telling her friends and family is emotional survival, Relief-seeking and emotional processing. So ultimately you're both on the same page in terms of what you want. You don't like it because this challenges your emotional survival. It's a threat to your emotional survival. She sees this as her emotional survival. So essentially you're both pursuing the same goal. You're set, you, you're both pursuing emotional, emotional relief, relief-seeking, emotional processing, etc. You're just going about it in 2 different ways. So... Ultimately, what's happening here is you've got the same behavior, 2 completely different mechanisms to get to that outcome, and 2 completely different meanings that are being assigned to it. So quite often what we do here as men when she starts to talk outside of the marriage, and why this actually makes this much worse, is we can get angry. We try to control the situation in terms of trying to stop her talking, trying to stop her sharing. We demand that she stops talking. We become defensive. We get into narrative management. We try to control what's going on, etc., etc. And we can get into accusations. We can accuse her of being malicious, vindictive, trying to destroy your reputation, trying to jockey for the best position in a separation or child custody and stuff like that. We can, we can look at it as though she's trying to build a team and getting people around you, friends and family, to take sides. That's how we can look at that, and when we make those accusations, we're just simply going to make the situation worse. The key fundamental thing to understand and take away from this video is that she's looking for relief. All she wants is relief, and if she can find that relief outside of the marriage and not in the marriage, she's going to take it. So your job is to understand that she's Only looking for relief, and, and to uncover why she feels the need to do this outside of the marriage to get that relief, and then give her that relief from inside of the marriage. So when you get angry, when you explode, when you, when you lose the plot because she's telling people, here's what she experiences. She's experienced a man who created emotional pain within the marriage, denied relief from that pain, within the marriage, and now is trying to stop that same relief that she's looking for from outside the marriage. Or to put it another way, she wanted emotional relief in the marriage, you didn't give it to her, she was unable to get it, so she was left in her mind with no choice but to go outside of the marriage to get that emotional relief, and now she's outside of the marriage, you're also denying that emotional relief. Which ultimately is going to lead her to the third option, which is complete and total cutoff of communication and complete and total separation from you. That is where this ends. So when she can't get relief in the marriage, so she goes outside of the marriage, and then you cut off that avenue to relief outside of the marriage, what she actually experiences from you in that point is emotional imprisonment, emotional containment, suffocation. Uh, and validation that emotional safety does not exist inside the marriage or outside of the marriage. She— you're basically reinforcing that you are emotionally unsafe in any capacity, anywhere whatsoever. So the goal here, if you want her to stop talking outside of the marriage, is you have to create emotional safety internally. You have to reduce the need for that external relief. So again, when you understand that all she is looking for is emotional relief, and this is the only place that she thinks she can get it, the solution is to give her another place to get it. So becoming emotionally safe, or emotionally safe enough for honest dialogue inside of the marriage, prevents her from going outside, or prevents the need from going outside. So The critical principle to understand here is that people seek externally what they cannot safely experience internally. So as men, we can understand this. If your wife's not— like, why do men watch porn, right? Why do you watch porn? Women complain all the time. Why does my husband watch porn? Because he's getting— he's looking externally what you're not willing to give him internally. If, if he cannot get sexual satisfaction internally, then he's likely and very probably going to turn to porn. If he could get that satisfactionally— satisfaction internally within the marriage, he would not need to turn to porn. So the core principle is people will naturally seek and lean towards external validation if they cannot get that internally. So the external process in here, her talking to friends and family, etc., It's just a symptom, it's not the problem. The problem is she's talking to— No, it's the symptoms, it's not the root cause of the problem. The root issue is not that she is talking, or the root problem is not that she's talking externally to people. The issue is, or the question to ask is, why does she feel like she has to do that? If you can answer that question, then you can solve the problem in the same way that if a woman says, I don't want my husband watching porn, then you're gonna have to step up and solve that problem internally. You're going to have to meet his needs within the marriage if you don't want him to go to a third party, i.e., porn or whatever, to solve that problem. The same is true here, men. So the key is for you to really step up in, in a maturity level. If you fix the man, you fix the marriage. If you— the key is that what she's seeking in talking to her friends has to be provided. Internally, and that comes through emotional maturity. So what does that emotional maturity look like? How do you bring it? So it's emotional regulation under humiliation. So you're humiliated right now. I understand that, and it's a horrible situation, and who wouldn't be? But the challenge is, are you going to allow this perception of humiliation or humiliation, actual humiliation, turn you into a dysregulated, dysfunctional person that's controlling, angry, manipulative, going to make accusations, all of these things, right, that creates pressure? Or are you going— are you able to control yourself and regulate yourself under this humiliation and pressure? Because the answer to that question is going to, A, determine whether she continues with this behavior, and B, is going to set the groundwork for is it even possible to save this marriage. At the end of the day, emotional She, she, if she wasn't leaving the marriage, she wouldn't be telling her family that she's leaving the marriage. And the reason she's leaving the marriage is the relief from pressure. That's what she's looking for, right? So the way that we solve this problem is that we give her that pressure relief within the marriage. So, uh, so the key is we've got to stay emotionally grounded, and we've got to react, uh, we've got to react from, from a place— we've got to stop reacting from a place of shame, ego collapse, and wounded pride. That's what's going on here. Ultimately, this is a problem if we're being honest, because it's producing a sense of shame, it's challenging our ego, and of course there's wounded pride going on here. This is not something that we want to be made public. We don't want it going on privately, let alone being made public, right? So, so what actually changes this dynamic? What changes the situation? Well, For you, you have to become emotionally safe. You have to become emotionally regulated, and you have to become emotionally receptive. How do you do this? You, you allow emotional expression from her. You allow honesty, and you allow frustration. Quite, quite often we, we take emotional expression, honesty, and frustration as a challenge to the marriage, and it challenges all of the things that I've just said we're looking to get away from, right? And it creates more of the emotion, the pressure that she's looking To escape. So the goal here is to reduce pressure within the marriage, to reduce defensiveness, and to reduce any sort of emotional punishment that she experiences when she behaves in a way that you don't like within the marriage. So this doesn't mean— this does not mean approving of disrespect. It doesn't mean tolerating humiliation from her. It doesn't mean abandoning your boundaries and principles, and it doesn't mean Passively accepting everything that's going on. It doesn't mean any of those things. It does mean that understanding that she's seeking emotional relief here, that's all that's going on. It does mean regulating your emotional reactions around that to where she can get that emotional relief in-house from inside of the marriage. It means understanding what— understanding and focusing On the root cause of the problems here, not the symptoms. The fact that she wants a divorce or she's talking to friends, that's just a symptom of the problem. The problem is that she has no emotional safety and she has no pressure relief valve within the marriage. And whatever's causing that, those are the real root cause issues of the problems that need to be addressed. Address— go and— she wants a divorce, how do I change that? Or she's talking to friends, that, that, that is not the problem at all. And It's creating an environment of emotional safety within the marriage instead of an environment of emotional control. The emotional control is what she is trying to get away from. And any man, if you're watching this and going, well, I've done this, Cody, I've created emotional safety and she— I'm not controlling and she still wants to leave. One of the key principles here is never grade your own homework, right? Like, let reality guide you. If she's leaving the marriage, if she's doing these things, Then she does feel emotionally controlled and she does not feel emotionally safe. Never grade your own homework. You have to get external, but you have to talk this out with somebody who's emotionally detached from the situation and get outside of your own head. You're too close right now. So the core internal shift here to turn this situation around is you have to stop asking the question, how do I stop her talking to other people about this? How do I stop her doing that? And start asking the question, why does she feel emotionally safer processing this outside of the marriage than inside of the marriage? All that's going on here is she's emotionally processing and she wants to do it in the safest, most pressure-free environment possible. And right now she feels the safest environment to emotionally process what's going on is external to the marriage. The reason she's doing that is because there are, there are things within the marriage that's causing her to not feel emotionally safe, to feel emotionally pressured. Identify and remove what is causing that, and she will emotionally process within the marriage. She likely does not want to share this outside of the marriage either. It's not good for her. Very few people want to acknowledge that their relationship has failed. Very few people want to acknowledge that their marriage is breaking down publicly. If she's doing this publicly, then this is not good for her either. It's an indication that she believes now that this is her only course of action and her only choice to emotionally process. And that is the core opportunity for you to identify and remove the obstacles that's preventing that from happening within the marriage. So what are our takeaways here? Let's summarize. So most men react to the public exposure of being, you know, wife talking to friends and family with control and anger. They don't respond well. That reaction reinforces the emotional imprisonment that she is experiencing within the marriage. That is the very thing that she's looking to escape by talking to friends and family. I understand that she is relief-seeking, and that relief-seeking is not necessarily a betrayal of you. It's not her being disloyal to you necessarily. It's a self— it's It's a self-preservation and a survival mechanism at this point in time. Emotional safety within the marriage reduces her need for external processing or talking to friends and family. This is the real key to the solution. If you can provide that emotional safety within the marriage, which she is not getting now, not only do you remove the need for her to talk to friends and family about this, you remove the desire Often for her to even want to exit the marriage. So the solution here is not controlling the narrative. Most men want to control what's going on in terms of the narrative. This is not the solution. The solution to this problem is changing the emotional environment of the marriage. As I've said many times now, I'm not going to repeat it. So our conclusion is that most men accidentally reinforce the emotional shutdown through their own shame and trying to control the situation. That is actually causing the undesirable behavior in the first place. The solution to this is to create emotional safety within the marriage. That changes the entire dynamic and the entire situation. So if you want some more specific details on how to do that, I've got a free masterclass on what actually works in late-stage marriage crisis. I go into some specific details, how to stop reinforcing that emotional exhaustion, how to create conditions where that safety can start to return. There's a link in the description. And also, if you want to talk this through, I have Cody AI, which is trained on all of my frameworks, strategies, doctrines, philosophies on late-stage marriage crisis for men. There's also a link in the description for Cody AI. Check that out if you want some direct, specific advice into your exact situation. That's it for me. Go ahead and watch this video next, and I'll see you in the next video.