Take Back Control: How to Stop Being a Victim of Her Emotions

Hey, Cody Butler here, and I help men save their marriages in divorce situations, and I want to address the topic today, which is you cannot save your marriage if her mood is controlling your mood. If every time she has a good day, you have a good day, and every time she has a bad day, you have a bad day, it's going to be very, very difficult. So I want to share with you why this is going on, some strategies to where you can actually get control of your mood internally independent of hers, and what you need to do to save your marriage. So the situation here is that you're typically swinging between hope and despair. Now I've worked with thousands of men in divorce situations and this is a very, very common thing. If she indicates a little bit of hope, and it can be something as simple as putting an X, a little kiss at the end of a message, then you're in a state of hope and everything's great. But if she doesn't, if something changes or she has a bad day, then you end up in a state of despair. You're really on a severe roller coaster, right? So one kind word from her and you're elated, one cold look And you're destroyed. How do you stabilize yourself in this situation? Because if you want to save your marriage, you do have to stabilize yourself. So the reality here is that in divorce crisis, emotional instability becomes extreme. Even the most stable man typically, or historically, is going to experience immense emotional instability in a divorce situation. So as I've said, one positive interaction from her produces hope, relief, excitement. It stabilizes you. Or one cold interaction, a bad message about something she does or says is devastating, creates panic, creates collapse, and you're on this roller coaster. And of course what's going on is you're actually, you're pumping that instability back into the marriage. So the thing to understand here if you want to save your marriage is what she's actually getting moving away from. What you have to solve the right problem, right? If you solve the wrong problem very well, you still get a bad result. So The reason she's looking to move out of the marriage, or has moved out, basically comes down to one thing. The pressure within the marriage is too much for her to bear, and she needs some relief for that. Now, that can take many, many formats, right? Like she can just say she wants a divorce. She can move out of the house. She can start to see another man. How she experiences that relief is different in every situation, but ultimately what is going on is she's experiencing too much pressure within the marriage. She needs pressure relief. She can't get it within the marriage, so she goes outside of the marriage. And now, in order for you— you want to bring her back into the marriage. Obviously, the solution to this is you have to reduce pressure. And if every time she interacts with you, it creates more pressure, you're actually piling on the very thing that she's trying to get away from. So this is not just an interesting video as to, you know, let's get some female psychology here. This is absolutely critical to you saving your marriage. So right now, her behavior is controlling your emotional state. So why is that? Why do the positive interactions feel so powerful? Well, it— and vice versa, right? The negative interactions feel so devastating. It's because the internal identity collapse that's going on right now has already reached catastrophic levels inside of you. We're dealing with much more than just marriage collapse. We're actually dealing with a full-blown identity catastrophe at this point. So divorce doesn't just threaten your marriage and your family, it threatens much, much deeper things than that, such as masculine identity, Your leadership, your sense of self-worth, competency levels, self-esteem, value, stuff like that. All of these things that really— this is what really actually determines our happiness. And quite often that we've been taking, we've been taking these things, we've been borrowing them at a— we've been borrowing them from the relationship. So if our marriage is going well, we feel a sense of self-worth and value. If it's not going well, Then that confidence goes down, that level of self-worth goes down. Our level of competency— again, when a marriage breakup or a marriage collapse is made public, a man's worst fear, worst fear is to be found incompetent, right? And if that marriage collapse is made public, then that incompetency, or at least the perception of that incompetency, is going to be put public, going to be made public. I've got videos on this channel About what to do if your wife is telling people. It's a big, it's a big deal for a man when it's made public that his marriage is collapsing, and it comes down to the competency issue. So the divorce scenario is not just about losing your wife, it's about losing so much more than that. There's so much more at stake. So emotional survival becomes attached to reconciliation hope and signs that she might stay. It's not just about getting your wife back, it's about getting all of these things back that are currently threatened by the divorce right now. So what happens here is tiny moments within the marriage, little tiny things such as she smiled at me, or she made a joke with me, or she put a little kiss at the end of an SMS message. It's oxygen. Like right now you're suffocating. There's no relief anywhere for you. And these tiny little things, they produce temporary relief from the collapse. So even though they're very small, In actuality, the, the relief that they're producing for you is massive. There's a disproportional sense of relief to the actual event itself. So we start to experience the distortion about what's going on in the relationship, which obviously is going to cause problems later on, as we see here. So the core emotional dynamic that's going on in most situations is I either cling to hope that this marriage is salvageable and she's going to come back, or I have to accept something that is completely unbearable and unthinkable, which is a complete and total identity collapse. A catastrophic situation is what's happening here. So both of these situations have extreme consequences. So when we view the collapse of the marriage or the breakdown of the marriage in those terms, it causes us to have A distorted view of what's going on. And if we have a distorted view of what's going on, it causes us obviously to take distorted behaviors, which again is going to be problematic as we go through this. So what's going on with you right now is your nervous system is desperate for reassurance that everything's going to be okay. It's desperate for certainty, it's desperate for emotional relief, and it's actively seeking those things out. And of course, This is completely natural and understandable, right? And this is why every single interaction becomes so emotionally loaded for you because of what is actually resting on it, and why every single negative action becomes catastrophic. So, what is actually truly going on here is you're placing far more emphasis on both of these. You're finding hope where you really shouldn't be finding hope in these little interactions, and you're also finding— you're seeing catastrophe Where again, you shouldn't be seeing catastrophe. You're seeing things that aren't there, and it's causing you to react in a very, very dysregulated way. So what happens here is when you have such a distorted view and such an extreme view of what's going on, is temporary moments feel eternal. When she's cold, for example, it feels like it's over and it's never— it feels eternal at that point. When she gives you some hope, it feels eternal at that point. So because of the distortion in the interpretation, this, this hope is not eternal. It's way blown out of proportion, right? Or the catastrophe is way blown out of proportion. So when that hope is seemingly removed from you, it shifts you all the way over, all the way over to catastrophe. Or when the catastrophe that you're experiencing all of a sudden gets some hope added to it, it shifts you all the way over to this end of the spectrum. So you're experiencing reality in a way that isn't true. So the belief that's driving this, which needs to be addressed, is that this moment is permanent and how I feel, this is how life will feel forever. And the antidote to this is the belief or the statement when you have these extremes of this too is a feeling, this too is just a feeling, and it too will pass. This moment is just a feeling. And it too will pass. Now, as long as you are viewing these circumstances or viewing these interactions as being forever, as being permanent, then of course you are going to place so much more emotion, emotional weight on it than actually exists. So what happens here is a cold interaction, for example, it becomes, it becomes proof to you of hopelessness. It becomes proof to you that The loss is permanent. It becomes proof to you of failure, and it also reminds you that you're now going to have to experience all of these identity collapse issues, or the identity collapse is going to be made public, which is quite frankly for most men is far worse than the idea of actually losing their wife. So what's actually going on here? The real psychological problem that you're experiencing that needs to be addressed. Is you, you— it's not a collapse of the marriage that is causing you to be very dysregulated and very unstable. It's a collapse of perspective is truly what's going on. So there's no emotional separation going on in your mind, or no rational separation going on between momentary emotional states that really are nothing more than data points and permanent reality. So With the many men that I work with, and if you're interested in getting some help with this, check it out. There's a link in the description. I work with men very closely, and one of the things that we look at here is differentiating between a conclusion and a data point. A negative interaction is simply a data point. It's all it is. It's a data point that gives you the possibility of course correction and feedback. And when you look at an emotional interaction or a situation as a as a permanent reality instead of just a data point, just a point of feedback that allows you to course correct, then of course your actions are not going to be appropriate. And if your actions are inappropriate to the situation, then the results are not going to be what you're looking for. So again, as I've said here, temporary interactions with your wife get perceived as eternal consequences, and then your nervous system starts catastrophizing events. And of course, the state that you're in is very important. A state is always going to produce more of the same state. If you're in a state of anxiety, no state, no action taken in a state of anxiety has produced calm. No state in it, in no action taken out of a state of anger and aggression has produced peace. The state that you're in is going to produce more of the state that you're in. So again, one of the things that we really work on very closely in the Win Your Wife Back program is how to manage your state, how to control your state. Because if you want to turn this situation, situation around and save your marriage, you have to become stable, you have to be calm, you have to become grounded, and you have to be in a state that's productive to actually analyzing the data points that are coming into your situation accurately and taking the correct action. And the only way you can do that is to be in a productive, empowering state, not a state where your nervous system is consistently and always catastrophizing every data point that's coming in. So why does it make the situation worse when you do this? It's because your emotional response— when you catastrophize, your emotional response becomes completely disproportionate. If you feel— if you take it, simply take a data point and you catastrophize it, and it's a very small point, and your conclusion is that the marriage is now over unless I do X, Y, and Z, it is going to take you— it's going to cause you to take massive action In— when it's completely unnecessary, it's going to cause you to overreact in a way that's going to do more harm than good. Or again, with the men that I work with, we call it hitting the stupid button. This is when you hit the stupid button. It's when you disproportionately react to, to a situation because of your catastrophizing, because your state is not accurate. So these small, these small interactions create massive emotional swings within you. They create massive instability with you, and they create instability, they create unpredictability. And again, when we understand that really the core problem that we're trying to solve here is your wife needs some relief from the pressure that she's experiencing within the marriage, and she's determined that rightly or wrongly that the only way she can get that pressure relief is, is to leave the marriage, the question becomes, and I present to you, Does massive emotional spring swings within you create that? Does that help the situation or does it make it worse? Does it— does massive instability within you help her find pressure relief and, and, and decompress, or does it make the situation worse? Does pumping unpredictability and instability into the marriage because you're having these emotional swings, does that help the situation or does it make it worse? I think the answer is obvious, right? All of, all of these states Create a condition that really just pumps more of the emotional conditions into the marriage that she's actively trying to escape from right now. And again, one of the main questions that we ask the men that I work with in the Win Your Wife Back program is, what is your wife— what is she moving away from in the marriage? Like, very rarely is the woman moving towards something new. She's moving away from something that's unacceptable within the marriage. And while that unacceptable behavior or condition is still there, there's no space for her to come back into the marriage. If you want her to come back, you have to remove the deal breakers. You have to remove the conditions that she's categorically said, "I would rather leave this marriage than continue to experience." And quite often, it's going to be that the emotional swings, unpredictability, instability, etc., etc. So what happens when you're having these emotional springs swings because you're You're literally being governed and controlled by her moods. She experiences more volatility, more dysregulation from you, more unstable. She experiences you as being very unstable, and she experiences you as being very unsafe. And again, let's just separate ourselves from, from your own situation right now and get some perspective on this. If you were advising a man whose wife was leaving him and he came to you and said, help me understand why my wife is leaving me, I'm emotionally volatile, I'm completely dysregulated, I'm unstable, I'm dysfunctional, I'm emotionally What advice would you give to that man? When you can emotionally detach yourself from your own situation and look back at the situation, the path forward actually becomes very, very easy. But again, this is one of the problems that men experience when trying to do this alone, is you can have the information that I'm sharing in this video, but without that detached view, somebody looking at your situation and giving you the feedback from an emotionally detached perspective, It's very difficult for you to see what's actually going on, and it's very difficult for you to accurately diagnose the behavior that you're going— that you're involved with that's causing her to actively move away from you. So what happens here is an emotional time distortion. So neutral moments, moments that in a healthy marriage situation would really mean nothing at all, they get interpreted as being catastrophic. Something that means nothing at all is interpreted as being deeply meaningful, and events that ordinarily would just fly under the radar completely unnoticed become actually relationship-defining in that moment. So reactions and interpretations of those reactions completely— are completely disconnected from reality. The man finds— the man who was in the divorce situation Generally finds it very, very difficult to accurately diagnose what is going on, which again makes it very, very difficult for him to accurately come up with a course of behavior and action that is going to be productive to saving then saving the marriage. So when this goes on and and these moments are blown out of proportion, emotions no longer there's a disconnect between the emotion and the response to the circumstance, the intent, the consequence, etc., etc. So the shift that needs to take place here. Is it's very important to understand that every interaction that goes on is not a verdict on the marriage. It's not an indictment. It's not proof of permanent outcome either way. And it's not a final answer to the question of, is this marriage over or is she going to come back? It's simply a data point. An interaction with your wife is neither positive nor negative. It's simply a data point that provides useful information. It's feedback. It's an emotional feedback loop. This part of a bigger process. So again, the strategy that we use within the Win Your Wife Back program is try, fail, analyze, adjust. Because here's what's going to happen. You're going to try and you're going to fail. This is inevitable. Like, we want to understand what reality is, and you are going to try and you are going to fail. But that is— if you take that as a catastrophic endpoint, then it's going to cause problems with you trying to save your marriage. When you try and you fail, all that does is create a data feedback loop. It creates something to analyze. So when I work with, with men, here's how we work. We watch, we have information like you're receiving in this YouTube video. You try it, you implement it, it doesn't work, it fails in some way, doesn't get you the result. Then we analyze exactly what's happened. We analyze the feedback and we adjust the approach and we create a new approach and a new plan. Based on the feedback, you try again. You fail again, but you don't fail quite as badly. You maybe get a little bit better response. We analyze the data points. We adjust, and we continue the feedback loop until we no longer try and fail. We try, we succeed, and we move forward. This is the process. This is how you save your marriage. There is no one size fits all. Do this, do that. Say this, say this, that. Bada boom, bada mat, bam! Your marriage is. has succeeded, is now saved. It's a process that we have to go through, and we have to understand how that process actually works and have realistic expectations in order for us to not get disappointed and just quit or hit that stupid button over and over again. So here's the key principle, right? Saving your marriage requires, requires you to become emotionally stable, and you becoming emotionally stable requires accurate perspective of what's going on. My goal when I work with you is to help you see the situation as it is. Many of— many men swing back and forth between they either see the situation as significantly worse than what it is, or they see the situation as significantly better than what it is. Either one is an error and is going to cause you to fail. If you think that your situation is way worse than it is, you're going to catastrophize and it's going to turn you into a monkey with a machine gun. Or if you think the situation is way better than it is, you're not going to take the required level of action or the appropriate action. So again, what, what is required for you to save your, your marriage is an accurate diagnosis of where the marriage actually is, and then a treatment plan, a course of action that corresponds to the accurate diagnosis. The best treatment plan in the world is not going to work without an accurate diagnosis. So there are 3 things That you need to achieve any result in any situation. And all we're talking about here is a result. You saving your marriage is a result. And the 3 things that are required are you need a destination, you need a map, and you need a starting point. If you have those 3 things, if you know exactly where you're going to, a destination, and you have the map to get you there, But you don't have an accurate starting point, the map is inaccurate and you will never reach your destination. The critical part that I cannot give you in these videos across YouTube or wherever you're watching this video, I can't give you the accurate starting point. I can give you the strategies and the map that will get you, that will help you to get to where you go, and obviously you know the destination. You want to save your marriage. But you have to also have the accurate starting point, which is one of the things, one of the benefits of the people that work with me closely. That's one of the things that we actually work on, and that's one of the benefits you get. So perspective separates the temporary from the permanent. If you understand that she's just in a— she's just in a— she's having an emotion right now, she's having a mood, she's, she's a woman, on a good day she is emotional. And there's days when she's going to feel hope, and there's days when she's going to feel hopeless, and it's temporary. I, I always say your wife's mood is like the tides of the ocean. If it's out, you don't need to worry, it's going to come back in. And if it's in, you don't need to worry, it's going to go back out again. You don't need to freak out because the tide's out, it's coming back in. And when you understand that this is just a pendulum And moods are temporary and they shift like the tides of the ocean or the seasons, then you're able to separate what's temporary from what's permanent, and then you're able to get some perspective, and then you're able to take appropriate action and understand the difference between an outcome and a data point. This is very critical. So one moment in time, it doesn't define your identity, it doesn't define your future, it doesn't define your outcome, and I do understand that it feels like that. I have every sympathy for you in this situation, but it doesn't define any of those things. It's merely a data point. So what matters more here is regulation. Nervous, nervous system regulation matters more than the emotional reaction, because ultimately, again, I keep pulling it back to this because this is critical. If you solve the wrong problem, even if it's a good solution, you still have a bad outcome, right? She's looking for pressure relief. She's looking for stability. She's tired of the eggshells. She's tired of the landmines. And the only way that you can turn that around, you have to create space for her to step back into. And as long as there's landmines in that space, she's not going to do it. This comes down to you. The key here, the goal is emotional sovereignty, meaning that you are in control of your emotions. You have sovereign control over your emotions independent of her mood. Independent of her emotions. She's having a bad day, you're in control. She's having a good day, you're in control. She's telling you she wants a divorce, you're pumping stability into the situation. She's telling you she's questioning whether she wants a divorce, you're pumping stability into the situation. You have to arrive at this place or you cannot create the pressure relief that she needs to create an environment for her to step back into. So what does it actually look like, brother? What is stabilization? Actually look like? Well, it's what I just said. It's that internal emotional regulation or internal sovereignty. You are in control of your emotions. The environment doesn't control your emotions. And that means observing instead of catastrophizing. Observe the situation and accept that it's a moment in time, it's temporary, and it's simply a data point. It is not a catastrophic end to the day. It means detaching identity from interactions. If you have a negative interaction with her, that does not affect who you are as a man. That does not affect your sense of self-worth, self-esteem, competency, etc., etc. You are inherently valuable. You are inherently priceless with her or without her. And again, this is a key breakdown for many men. Their sense of worth is derived, their sense of identity is derived from the marriage. You're losing more than just your marriage. You're losing your source of identity. And as long as that's the case, as long as your identity is attached to the marriage, her actions are going to control you. Her mood is going to control you. Detachment from that is absolutely critical to success here. So again, you have to learn to see moments as information. As data points, not as destiny. You have to learn emotional discipline under uncertainty. The— what causes many of us to act very unpredictably and pump that, that, that pressure back into the marriage is we can't handle the uncertainty. If you're going to save your marriage, there's going to be a lot of uncertainty. I don't have time to go into all of those elements in this 30-minute video. It's not possible. But suffice to say, you have a lot of uncertainty ahead of you. She's not just going to go— even if she's going to come back into this marriage, she's, she's going to question that decision repeatedly, and she's going to go back and forth between in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out. You have a lot of a certain uncertainty ahead of you, and one of the keys to a genuine reconciliation, which is she comes back and she stays back, she doesn't just come back and then leaves again, is you have to have the ability to handle that uncertainty and act consistently in the face of uncertainty. So again, when your uncertainty— why is this, why is this stability important in divorce crisis? Because she's already overwhelmed. She's already overwhelmed with emotion. She's already overwhelmed with uncertainty. She's looking for solid ground to stand on. And if you just pump more overwhelm into the situation, if you pump more uncertainty into the situation, You're just adding fuel to the burning fire, and it just isn't going to end well for everyone, anyone involved here. So what cannot happen, and what's probably happening right now, is she cannot become the regulator of your nervous system, and she cannot become the rate— the stabilizer of your emotions. So typically what happens here is you're drawing your stability from the, from the marriage. So if the marriage— if she's showing signs of coming back and there's stabilization within the marriage, then that stabilizes you. If she's showing signs of pulling away further, that destabilizes you. So effectively, she is now responsible for your internal state or your stabilization. Or in other words, this is a complete role reverse. So as the man, as the masculine, uh, as the masculine energy in this situation, it is your role and your job to pump stability into the system. She is an inherently unstable creature. She's hormonally driven, emotionally driven. I don't think anybody, male or female, would deny or dispute that women are emotionally driven. They're creatures of emotion. Men are creatures of logic. And it's her— it's your job to pump that stability into her inherently unstable emotional system. If, if your stability is derived or based on her emotions, she is now responsible for your emotional regulation. when you should be responsible for her emotional regulation. And it's a role reversal. And this is very problematic because, again, we're not going to get into it in this video. I've got videos on this channel on I love you, but I'm not in love with you, or I'm not sexually attracted to you anymore. This is what it is. If you want a woman to be sexually attracted to you, you have to be in a masculine energy. She has— she's not going to be attracted to a man that, that's moving within a feminine energy or moving within a feminine Role reversal system. It's not going to happen. I'm not going to get into that here, but just understand I've got other videos that you can check out on that. You'll find them on this channel. But what you need is emotional steadiness, and what that emotional steadiness creates, brother, is safety, predictability, and it reduces pressure, which is the very thing that she's looking for. It creates the space that you need to create. So the internal shift that needs to happen here is you have to stop asking the question Of what does this moment that I'm experiencing right now mean about my future? It means nothing about your future. It means nothing. And you've got to start asking the question of what information does this— what does this moment actually provide? Regardless of how bad the information that she's given you or how catastrophic it seems, there is something useful in what she's given you. And you're going to do one of two things with the information that she provides in the moment. You're either going to take it and you're going to turn it internally weaponize it against yourself, and you're going to effectively become a 3-year-old with a hand grenade. Or you're going to take that information and go, this is, this is just a data point, and I'm going to use this. I'm going to— I've tried, I failed. This is the data point. I need to analyze it, and I need to adjust. And if you want some help with that, check out Cody AI. Actually, there's a— you know, I, I can't work with everybody individually. It's why I've actually created Cody AI. There's a link in the description where it's literally built on over 5,000 coaching calls, thousands and thousands of hours of my frameworks and structures. Check it out. It's going to be highly useful if you want some specific advice into your, your specific situation and you don't actually want to work with me in a personal way. That's there for you. So the conclusion here, man, is most men suffer because they experience temporary emotions as permanent realities. This is the crux. This is the key idea to take away from the video here. If you want to stop being driven by her emotions, then you have to stop experiencing temporary events as permanent realities. That's the key here. Emotional instability— when you do this, it creates emotional instability with you, and that emotional instability creates emotional unsafety for her. Now, men ask me all the time, right, Cody, can this marriage— can my marriage be saved? And how long is it going to take? These are the 2 questions. Well, my answer is always the saying, are you able to create emotional safety and how long is it going to take? If you can create emotional safety, good chance she'll come back. If you can do it in a reasonable amount of time, very good chance she'll come back. The instability that I'm discussing in this video today, right now, it does the exact opposite of that. While you're still viewing temporary events as permanent realities, it's creating the instability that's going to destroy the very thing that you need to create in order to get your wife To reconsider her decision for divorce. Divorce. So perception creates internal regulation. Stability comes from separating your identity from your interactions, or separating your identity from the marriage and her behavior, and also from separating temporary moments that take place within the marriage from eternal conclusions. Every interaction is information, and that is it. It is not destiny. It is not eternity. So if you want more on that, on how to do this specifically, as I said, I've got Cody AI, Coach Cody AI. Check it out. I've also got a free masterclass where I go into what actually works in late-stage marriage and divorce crisis, how to stop reinforcing the emotional exhaustion that she's looking to escape from right now, and how to become that emotionally stable man under all conditions. And there's some other links in the description. I highly suggest you check that out. And I do work with men on this. I do have programs and, and, uh, opportunities to work with me personally if you want my personal help on this. And if you don't, that's great too. If you just want some more free help, there's another video you can watch right here. But please understand, I cannot give you everything you need to know in these YouTube videos. That's why I have programs. It's just not possible to give you everything in a 30 to 40 minute video. So, but check this video out, and I'll see you all in another video. God bless you all.